Bob Collins
Back in the day, the people who delivered the mail were part of the glue of a neighborhood. In Georgia, one ‘postman’ found out just how much the people on his route appreciated him. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
The jobs we do
This is Lyra McKee, who was shot and killed while trying to do her job on Thursday. She’s a reporter. Read more →
It’s been a tough year to be a tow truck driver. Few people think kindly of the people who haul their cars away during snow emergencies. They’re just doing their jobs, people.
So it’s good to see one getting a little love for a simple act of concern and kindness.
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Dan Shrader, of Prior Lake, was likely out picking up the trash this morning. It’s his full-time job. Between a few stops, he helps build one of the best franchises in the National Hockey League. Read more →
If you’ve never lived in small-town America, you’ve missed heroes at work — the people who got up before dawn and went into a tiny shack somewhere, read the school-lunch menus, the lost and found items, spinning some platters, and making people feel as if they’re listening to a neighbor, because they are. Read more →
Mary Winchenbach gets excited when she sees ‘a moose take a turd.’ Who doesn’t, Mary? Read more →
We admit to being shameless hurricane voyeurs, repeatedly clicking webcam images from the Outer Banks of North Carolina .
At this point, there’s little human activity on any of them. Just the ocean trying to wipe out any evidence of an allegedly advanced civilization. Read more →
The reason we know what Hurricane Florence is doing, is because a small group of people got up this morning, as in previous mornings, and flew an airplane into it. Read more →
‘My goal for doing this is just to make at least one person believe in magic again,’ Hope McAlister said. ‘You can physically see people light up as you start talking about it.’
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The puzzling online shaming of an actor because he has a job bagging groceries betrays the reality that too many people think hard work is beneath them. Read more →
The theater surrounding executions is particularly gruesome in which reporters who are invited to watch, come out later and tell us things we’re not really sure we want to know. Read more →
Sara PorterTis’ the season! There’s been a series of increasingly frustrating road woes in the Twin Cities this summer. While it might not be your first thought while you’re driving your 20-minute detour route, there’s some impressive stuff happening on those closed stretches of highway. In a series of tweets, the Minnesota Department of Transportation shared Read more →
Bowling is reportedly still the #1 participatory sport in America, Motherboard contends.
Someone has to go to work every day to fix the contraptions that reset the pins.
Someone like Joe Martinez. Read more →
Litchfield’s drive-in theater is one of only six remaining drive-ins in Minnesota. Dave Quincer aims to keep it alive.
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A Michigan mother is providing plenty of reason why workers need some protections when dealing with family emergencies. Crystal Reynolds Fisher, of Albion, Mich., let her convenience store manager know she wouldn’t be able to work the other day. Her son was in the hospital for reasons that have not yet been made clear. The Read more →