Bob CollinsNon-Minnesota NewsCut readers: Do we seem snooty to you? City Pages today relays the findings of a travel magazine which ranks Minneapolis-St. Paul as the fourth most snooty metro area in the country. San Francisco, New York, and Boston are just ahead of us. It’s entirely possible that we are supposed to find this insulting, Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
It could be worse, kid, you could be on a bike. (h/t: Nick Ziegler)
Many Minnesota police departments have worked overtime to learn how to properly respond to calls concerning attempted suicides. Today, a North Dakota couple is speaking out against police tactics used on their son more than two years ago. In a Fargo Forum article, Mark and Tammy Erickson of Kindred, N.D., say their son Chase was Read more →
A foreclosure in Rush City, the mosquito fight we can’t win, the people who defend the poor, a bid for bus lanes, and the Lark of Duluth flies again. Read more →
This promotion by the New England Patriots might be as sad a commentary on the NFL as there is. The Patriots announced today that anyone who bought a #81 jersey from the team’s Pro Shop can exchange it for another jersey, worn by a player not currently charged with murder. Here’s the team’s press release: Read more →
A new documentary on a plane crash 17 years ago must have the National Transportation Safety Board rattled, because the NTSB today announced an unusual background briefing next week in the crash of TWA Flight 800. “The TWA Flight 800 investigation remains one of the NTSB’s most extensive and exhaustive investigations; the final report includes Read more →
Maybe if we loved our iconic places more when they’re still here, we wouldn’t have to mourn their demise. Read more →
Don’t let us down, apple pie. You’re all we’ve got left. Read more →
If you live in Minnesota or the rest of the Upper Midwest, this is the week to deliver payback to your friends who spend the winter in Arizona, and delight in sending e-mails in January that it’ll be so cold tonight — 75 — that they might have to put on a sweater.
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Back in my earlier days — just before I moved to Minnesota in 1992 — I ran the programming at a small-market radio station in Massachusetts. It was a great little station that cared about the town it served, read the school lunch menus, covered the selectmen, broadcast live from charity events, and passed along the news that your dog was lost — all the things that people say now they wanted then but didn’t really want enough to keep from turning on the public radio station from Albany instead. Read more →
The canary in the lake, learning to accept a gay son, the other Supreme Court decisions, how a model railroad fights cancer, and why news photographers matter. Read more →
Real pros say all the right things at the right time, but there’s no getting around the fact that having your show canceled and shown the door is rough on any person with a beating heart.
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Next week is the 4th of July, a day we honor our declaration of freedom to pursue happiness, if not outright attain it. Just one question: What is this happiness we are told we can pursue? Time’s cover story this week considers whether the Founding Fathers’ view of the word is the same as the Read more →
As we learned during the Tim Tebow years, religion and professional sports makes some people pretty nervous. The latest brouhaha? See if you can spot the religious symbol. Check behind the mound in St. Louis. There’s a cross and what some insist is a number 6, in honor of Cardinals great Stan Musial, allegedly put Read more →
Should Hennepin County have whitewashed a mural, the suicide detective, do your cellphone chargers need to be unplugged, the man who sent 19-year-olds to war, art and politics, and 50 states and 50 pictures. Read more →