Bob Collins
Barry Levenson, a Massachusetts native, developed a love affair with mustard, and then a Wisconsin mustard museum, thanks to Bill Buckner’s inability to pick up a baseball in the 1986 World Series. Yes, it’s complicated. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Arts & Culture
In almost 45 years in the radio business, the answer to the most famous person I ever met has always been the first famous person I ever met. Read more →
The school chief in Shorewood, Wis., has pulled the plug on this year’s fall play at the local high school. The ‘N word” in ‘ To Kill a Mockingbird’ was too hot to handle, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. Read more →
Congratulate someone today who has learned English as a second language. Their accomplishment is massive. Read more →
Saga Vanecek, 8, who used to call Minneapolis home, had your typical day in Sweden one day over the summer. She went to the lake, took a dip, started throwing stones to see how far they’d skip, then pulled a 1,000-year-old sword with apparent Viking ancestry out of the lake. Read more →
Mary Winchenbach gets excited when she sees ‘a moose take a turd.’ Who doesn’t, Mary? Read more →
Garrison Keillor will remain persona non grata in Vermont after a book festival where he was scheduled to appear pulled the plug on a fundraiser. Read more →
It’s been 50 years since Dylan wrote his anthem. NPR’s Lynn Neary figures it lasts because it’s an anthem of hope, rather than looking at the past.
Even if its staying power indicates that sometimes, the times don’t change. Read more →
Occasionally, justice prevails for the innocent, but the story of Valentino Dixon, whose conviction for murder was vacated today after he served 27 years, tells us that there are likely innocent people in prison because they can’t draw pretty golfscape scenes. Read more →
The writer for Bert and Ernie characters on Sesame Street says he wrote for the pair based on his own life. Read more →
Alan Abel once created The Society for Indecency to Naked Animal, which believed that a nude horse is a rude horse and animals should be clothed. There are worse ways to be remembered. Read more →
We’re pigs. There’s no getting around it. It’s an art. Read more →
A local rock tribute band has been using blackface during the Prince portion of their shows. Nobody had a problem with it, a band member says. Until now. Read more →
The only real way to survive a Minnesota winter is to embrace it and face it head-on. That was the beauty of the Art Shanty project, in which artists create spaces on a frozen lake somewhere and people who aren’t the type to get pushed around by the weather visit, each experience changing from one shanty to another.
We’re going to need a Plan B, however, because the organizers have announced they’ll take the coming winter off. Read more →
The limits on free speech will soon be seen — or not seen, as the case may be — on Red Wing’s Barn Bluff, the western face of which has served for decades as a giant billboard for people who had something to say even though there’s a graffiti ordinance in the city. Read more →