In the big scheme of things, renaming Lake Calhoun is pretty small potatoes, so the pushback after Hennepin County signed off on restoring the name to Bde Maka Ska is increasingly stunning.
You could call it Joe the Lake and it’ll still be the same lake. Nobody is required to change any corresponding names so it doesn’t really cost nearby businesses a dime. Read more →
Northwest Airlines has been relegated to the ash heap of history, but it made a bit of a proud return to the nation’s consciousness on Sunday when Norman Lyle Prouse told his story to CBS’ Sunday Morning. Read more →
NPR’s Story Lab project Inter(Nation)al traveled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to the National Congress of American Indians to talk with tribal leaders, scholars and people in the legal field about these foundational, living documents. Read more →
Politics is a tough game and Franken is spilling blood in its water right now. It’s a fair bet that sharks in both parties are moving toward it just in case. Read more →
Quick! Name a ski jumper!
Odds are, you can’t. Ski jumping isn’t a big deal for the masses anymore.
It wasn’t always thus. Read more →
Generations are growing up now, having no idea of the glue that people like Erickson and his long-time radio partner Charlie Boone, provided to make a community a community. But generations of people, also declining in number, did. At one point, half of all radios in Minnesota were tuned to WCCO. Read more →
At best, perhaps, there might be an argument that changing the name of Lake Calhoun could be inconvenient for people who are simply used to the name. But this barely registers a blip on the inconvenience scale from zero to the Trail of Tears.
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A Prairie Home Companion and its various guests and stars would’ve been mere marooned nobodies without Russ Ringsak; he drove the truck, known to hard-core APHC fans as ‘Hank’. He was one of the original members of the troupe, and in many ways the only thing that distinguished his talent from Garrison Keillor’s was a CDL.
Ringsak died today, Prairie Home Productions confirmed. Read more →
It was 25 years ago that an attempt to quell gang warfare in Minneapolis ended when a gang murdered a cop while he ate pizza during a break in his shift. Read more →
It’s a pretty safe bet that the members of the Silver Chain Social Club never imagined the details of their lives would be enshrined forever in history by the Minnesota Historical Society.
The Silver Chain Social Club was an early-’70s swingers’ club in Minnesota. Read more →
There cannot be a more complicated person who ever emerged from Minnesota’s cocoon, than Lindbergh, who grew up in an unhappy home in Little Falls, ushered in the era of long-distance flight, and lived with a fame that is incomprehensible by today’s standards. He was the most famous person in the world.
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Given the recent discussions on removing controversial or offensive statues across the U.S., we wanted to ask what statues people actually like here in Minnesota. Take a look. Read more →
‘This is my country. My flesh has mixed with the soil of this continent for almost 400 years,’ Eric Chandler, of Duluth, writes. ‘My family helped build and defend a form of government that allows us to lurch forward to a better world. One where we are all created equal. That’s my heritage.’
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It’s the last remaining concrete arrow in Minnesota, where the landscape was once dotted by them, to help steer air mail pilots to their destination.
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Built in the early ’70s, the Julia Belle Swain was a fixture on the Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers until its last voyage (under its own power, anyway) in 2008, when it became a victim of the economic meltdown in America.
Its financially strapped owners were allowed to dock it in La Crosse, and there it sat for five years, not getting any healthier
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Bob Collins
Cody Nelson