If there was a nuclear core of my childhood, it was probably the Woolworth’s store on Main Street in my hometown, which sat next to a W.T. Grant, which was across the street from an S.S. Kresge.
My home milltown had a vibrant downtown and if you were a kid with a couple of pennies, which you might have lifted from your mother’s purse and still won’t say out loud, you headed for Woolworth’s.
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It’s a sweet letter but what is particular comforting is this: Kids still write letters to the president of the United States. Read more →
We must decide for ourselves which state fair is better, but you have to admit that the outhouse races in Iowa are, as we say in Minnesota, ‘different’ Read more →
It it hadn’t been for schoolkids picking milkweeds, a lot of sailors wouldn’t have lived long enough to tell their stories of surviving ship sinkings in World War II.
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Give the people of Morristown, New Jersey some credit for at least acknowledging out loud — sort of — that a person’s car is their castle and they have a god-given right to do whatever they want therein.
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We are told today that this image of a little boy, hurt in the civil war that has leveled Aleppo in Syria, is shocking the world. Now what? Read more →
A cemetery is a destination venue, but perhaps there are better ways to attract people to them than dying and funerals.
That’s the most fascinating aspect of the brouhaha over plans for a hot rod show at a Roseville cemetery: its directors want people to come visit without having it be about dying. Read more →
Your daily dose of bittersweetness. Read more →
Not everyone deserves a microphone or an audience. And unless news organizations are willing to demand a standard of civility, they’re right to do what they are basically doing: pulling the plug on their audience.
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August is a pretty slow month for news, which might explain why newsies are — again — respewing the Old Farmer’s Almanac winter predictions.
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He acknowledges in his op-ed in the Star Tribune today that his bar for ‘nice’ is pretty low; he came to accept the rudeness of prison as normal… almost nice.
Still, he writes today, Minnesota is pretty nice for a person trying for a second chance. Read more →
Cortez Riley, of St. Cloud, may be on to something that should catch on.
He just turned 28, the St. Cloud Times says, so to celebrate, he set up a week of events to get his family and friends to join him in volunteering around his community.
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If there’s someone who should catch a break in this state, it’s Gabriele Grunewald, a professional runner who once ran the fifth-fastest time in the 1500 meters in University of Minnesota history just a day after she was diagnosed with cancer.
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Duluth still doesn’t have a fancy system for high-speed Internet. But there’s good news. There are no kids running around there named Google Fiber. Read more →
New Zealand’s Nikki Hamblin and the USA’s Abbey D’Agostino collided during their heat in the 5,000 meter running event. Down they both went, their Olympic dreams dashed.
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Bob Collins