Bob Collins
If all go according to plan, I’ve got six months left to work in the news business.
Why? Because a colleague let me know today that this job is open now.
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MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
The jobs we do
Linemen with helicopters string wire on the CapX2020 project in Fergus Falls. Read more →
Fargo police chief Keith Ternes is under public scrutiny this week after the Fargo Forum published a story on Sunday about morale in the department where eight cops have resigned this year. Read more →
Let us now consider this question, thanks to the lonely trash hauler whose trash inexplicably has ended up on I-494 at Excelsior Blvd., at this hour: What’s the worst job in Minnesota?
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Over a few dozen years watching the pilots for the mosquito control districts, I’ve concluded you have to be just a little bit of a daredevil to drop the mosquito bombs, at least watching them from afar. MPR’s Tim Post today has a different perspective on these people. Clearly, there’s not a lot of room Read more →
Pam Whitfield, profiled on NewsCut a few years ago, has a way about her that allows her to reach students that other teachers and professors can’t.
But she can’t reach — or save — them all, she writes in an article this week for Insider Higher Ed. Read more →
A car is burning and you know it has a tank full of gasoline. Do you approach it? Read more →
Writing in today’s Star Tribune, Kirsten Ragatz, who has taught for 20 years, was responding to an earlier Strib article that the poorest schools get the ‘rookie’ (and by innuendo, worst) teachers. Read more →
Stopping in at the local firehouse and offering a quick word of appreciation wouldn’t be the worst idea we hear today, not after this half-week of reminders that there are people who go to work every day by running into the most horrific places that people are running away from. Read more →
Writer Theodore Ross got his first crack at parenting the same way most fathers do these days: During a two-week parental leave. His wife, using maternal leave, got 90 days.
Writing on Al Jazeera today, Ross says fathers deserve the same opportunity to bond with their children that mothers get and America’s workplaces should extend paid leave. Read more →
There’s been a brain drain in the non-commercial space program since we decided to leave manned spaceflight to other countries, and an ongoing debate about whether it suits our planetary needs anymore, but there’s no question that there’s still inspiration in the best and brightest who figured out solutions where no man has gone before.
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You can’t blame Carrie Steacy, an airline pilot in Canada, for being a little steamed. All she did was get “David in 12E” and all of the other passengers safety to their destinations in British Columbia. Read more →
I’ve been searching in the last few weeks for the perfect photo to describe Minnesota in winter. The frozen-beards, ice-fishing, pond-hockey-playing, ice-cave visiting, bike-riding snapshots have been fascinating — certainly more fascinating than pictures of your car dashboard. But this one is a perfect description.
This sign at a Walmart store in Canton, Ohio is either: (a) Proof that Walmart doesn’t pay its employees enough to make a decent living or: (b) Proof that Walmart cares about its employees. The Cleveland Plain Dealer says the idea for the food collection tubs, which are in an employees-only area, originated at the Read more →
Does two make a trend? For the second time in under a month, a restaurant server got a lecture on the meal check about her sexual orientation instead of the tip she deserved. In Bridgewater, N.J., Dayna Morales posted on the Have a Gay Day Facebook page that a couple stiffed her on the $95 Read more →