Bob Collins
Over 190 immigrants from 59 countries became American citizens at the fourth annual Independence Day naturalization ceremony hosted by the New York Public Library. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Archives for July 2017
‘For me it was kind of like a moment of realizing that I didn’t have to just walk away,’ student Camille Denton said when encountering a vandalized civil rights memorial. So she and her friends fought back. Read more →
Although he’s given credit for the assertion, Thomas Jefferson never actually said ‘an educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.’ Maybe he knew better. The country has now survived 241 years, most of them with a sizeable percentage of the population having no clue about the origins of the nation.
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Wisconsin Public Radio reported that farmers in western Wisconsin have been visited by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and warned they’ll be back, suggesting the possibility of sweeping raids that farmers say could weaken the local economy.
Dairy workers around Durand, Wis., decided to leave after rumors swept the community that ICE was in town.
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The Duluth News Tribune’s John Lundy reports the Paris tradition of attaching a padlock as a symbol of love has made it to Duluth. Couples write their names on the lock and then attach it to three pillars on the Lakewalk in Canal Park.
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David Desper, of Pennsylvania, would have gotten to wherever he was going about 10 seconds later had he let Bianca Robinson merge as two highway lanes became one. Instead, he shot her in the head and will likely be right on time for prison. Read more →
Ayaz Virji could be forgiven if he’d followed his instinct and moved his family out of Dawson, Minn. Virgji, the medical director of a local hospital, was upset that his community had voted for Donald Trump, spurred on by the candidate’s portrayal of Muslims as terrorists. Virji was the first Muslim to move to Dawson Read more →
Jesse Sparks, of Cambridge, Mass., could have done what a lot of college football players might do when the football program at their school was dropped: go somewhere else.
But Sparks stayed at Northeastern University, which agreed to honor his scholarship even without a football program. He wanted an education. Read more →
If you’ve worked in the cubicle farms of America long enough, you’re probably familiar with the typical memos that come out at firing and layoff time, dripping with passive aggressive, but nothing you can pin the writer down on.
That’s the way the news release went from the Minnesota Timberwolves late Friday announcing they’ve traded Ricky Rubio. Read more →