Bob Collins
Spending an afternoon with a 100-year-old person is an invitation to examine how we square the daily reality that life alternates trying to kill us and trying to soothe us. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
You Should Meet…
As of today, I’ve written 14,318 NewsCut posts and I can tell you a story about most of them, including my favorite interviews with people that made me thankful I got into this line of work.
If there are afternoons I’ve enjoyed more than August 7, 2013, I can’t think of them. Read more →
Brent Olson had big plans for his Bush Foundation grant in Clinton, Minn. He would reopen a closed cafe and try to give people a reason to stay and live in a declining small town. How has it worked out? Read more →
If Dick Bancroft hadn’t come down from Saint Paul’s Summit Hill District as a young man, he might never have known the ‘invisible minority’ he champions so fiercely.
Like most great performers, Stephen Dragert Gallivan is a shy guy. Put him in a seersucker suit, stick him on a tricycle, and give him ice cream to sell, however, and he’s Wally Wonka. Read more →
For hundreds of people in the Twin Cities, the difference between homelessness and a more stable existence is a pair of black, no-slip shoes. Or barber tools. Or a bus pass. Or work clothes. Or an electrician’s license renewal. Read more →
The bus stop cookie lady has been shut down. Somebody blew the whistle on her. Read more →
There are only nine left in Glen’s Coffee Clique Last Man Club. Read more →
Wendy DeGeest once planned a life as an elementary school teacher. Then she found the kids who really needed her and everything became clear. It was the 1980s and Pine City, Minn., needed a special education teacher. Growing up in a family that struggled with mental illness, DeGeest knew something about the wayward ways of Read more →
Hendricks, MN., came close to losing its high school. That’s when a couple with a little creativity, some gymnastics equipment, and a plan for a farm shed stepped in.
The Northwest Angle to Key West
Vietnam didn’t get Bipes. The CIA didn’t get Bipes. And a knoll in a farmer’s field in Glencoe didn’t get Bipes. Mosquitoes almost did.
Jeff Ryan, a 23-year veteran history teacher at Prescott High School, has become one of the Lac du Flambeau band’s best friends.
Mary Steiner made her early trips to Uganda and Kenya to meet poverty. Then she met people.
Spend a few hours with Marnita Schroedl, and you’ll start thinking that if we could get 5 million people into her Minneapolis home, the state wouldn’t have a problem left to solve