Bob Collins
Here’s what I learned from yesterday’s radio show on obituaries: Quite a few people have obits of people they didn’t know taped to their refrigerators. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
We’ve got plenty of taprooms now, but the neighborhood hardware store is vanishing in a hurry.
Kraemer’s True Value Hardware will close in December. The owner of the business, which has been around for 109 years, says it seems like a good time to retire. Read more →
It might be a bit more difficult to be a good Catholic if you’ve dreamed of having your cremated remains scattered to the wind in some idyllic location. Read more →
If Chicago can’t rally around a 97-year old man who survived Pearl Harbor, there’s something wrong. All you have to do, Chicago, is give up your tickets to a Cubs World Series game. Read more →
On an otherwise calm day in the world of news, we have learned that dressing up as a tree can be as suspicious as being a clown. Read more →
Perhaps we’re going to have to go back and listen to more of Bob Dylan’s music because we think we might have done it wrong the first time around. Read more →
It’s tempting to note that it’s quite a coincidence that John Oliver’s focus last night on Last Week Tonight was the opioid epidemic, coming as it did on a weekend in which authorities announced that two people are dead — so far — in a wave of nine overdoses of opioids in the Twin Cities. Read more →
We can think of few other deaths for which this shaming over non seat-belt use so routinely and consistently appears. Read more →
The normally conservative Fargo Forum is declining to endorse a candidate for president. Not since Lyndon Johnson was challenged by Barry Goldwater in 1964 has the Forum editorial board not endorsed the Republican presidential candidate. Unlike its other editorials, the Forum hands the endorsements to the company CEO and his son — William C. Marcil, Read more →
For the most part, parents can be pretty over-the-top when it comes to protecting their kids from risks real and imagined. So why are they letting them play youth football? NBC reports on a study being released today that shows the brain changes after just one season of suiting up, even if the player doesn’t Read more →
I’m filling in for Tom Weber at 11 a.m. today on MPR News (91.1 in the Twin Cities). Here are a couple of links I’ll be referring to during the broadcast on obituaries. This is the post I wrote about Stuart Schumacher and his wife, Melissa, who started an effort to help people write obituaries Read more →
Most fans of the Cleveland Indians had never heard of Ryan Merritt, until he pitched his team into the World Series. Now they’re rewarding Merritt and his fiancee, a Rochester area native. Read more →
No pressure, Boundary Waters, but the New York Times this afternoon is telling the nation you’re the cure for the political cesspool gripping the nation right now.
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What’s happening to the nation’s big websites today is yet another reminder how vulnerable we are. Read more →
St. Paul is about to lose one of its most distinctive and quirky downtown landmarks. Read more →