Bob Collins
On the list of people who are going places in this world, we can safely add the name of Jakeem Tyler, spotted in a Chick-fil-A in Avon, Indiana last week by Cameron Nelson. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
People doing good
It was such a sweet story when KARE 11’s Boyd Huppert, who has a habit of finding them, told the tale of Greg Thomas, who restored a declining church in Montgomery, Minn. He was fighting cancer and, the story goes, he wanted to fix up St. John’s church when he stopped to pray. Read more →
Eric Schmitt-Matzen, of Tennessee, is a professionally trained Santa Claus, but nothing can prepare any Santa Claus for what the Knoxville News Sentinel says Schmitt-Matzen faced this season. Read more →
Rescuers plucked the swan out of the St. Croix river and got it to a wildlife rescue center, but it was too late.
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He didn’t shoot anybody. He didn’t call anybody names. He united rather than divided his constituency.
As near as we can tell, the state would be better of if more people were like him.
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The story of Marisa Bocanegra, a mother of five who was killed in a car crash south of Wanamingo on Tuesday, is the very portrayal of life’s unfairness.
She had finally met her birthmother just a few weeks ago, ending decades of searching for the woman who was tricked into giving her up in Colombia. Read more →
A Rochester area woman is planning to do her part to ease hunger in her area by borrowing the idea of Little Free Libraries and using it for food instead.
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Here’s your daily dose of sweetness, which has been mighty hard to find lately. That’s why I had to reach back to October to find one. In Benicia, Calif., Jourdan Duncan, 18, has to walk to his job packing boxes. “My car broke down, so I figured I had no other way to work,” he Read more →
There’s plenty in the news to get justifiably worked up about but let’s squeeze in one little ray of sunshine before we return to our regular programming.
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A New Hampshire boy whose home was targeted with racial slurs and vandalism has 17 new friends courtesy of the Manchester Motorcycle Club. Read more →
The chances are pretty good that few kids playing high school football in Minnesota have had the kind of life Dominic Leu has had.
The Barnesville, Minn., defensive end’s story, fantastically told in the Fargo Forum today, renews an old reflection and question: Why is it some kids survive the very worst life can throw at you and others do not? Read more →
When his dad, Rey, died in the spring of 2015, Sam Heras, a 17-year-old, had to give up football at his Irondale high school to help support his mother. They’d been notified they were losing their house. No time for games. Last week, his mother died. Read more →
Jim Schlegel, the 97-year-old veteran of Pearl Harbor whose daughter wanted him to see one more Chicago Cubs World Series game, is going to see one more Chicago Cubs World Series game. Read more →
Karl Randa has cancer and, from the sound of things, the prognosis isn’t great. It didn’t help when someone broke into his family’s home and stole many possessions. It didn’t help when the family was faced with losing their home. It helped when his friends stepped in. Read more →
Brandon Bakke, a sixth grader, is adopted and he never met his father. But he found out his biological father died in Chicago and is buried in an unmarked grave. Read more →