News Cut: May 22, 2009 Archive

Send your Memorial Day tributes

Posted at 7:18 AM on May 22, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)

It's really not supposed to be the first "holiday" of the summer season; Memorial Day is supposed to be about those who served their country --and are now gone -- in whatever way the times dictated. Like so.

Who's on your list? Please send me a few paragraphs about them and, if possible, a picture and on Monday I'll present the roll call.

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Five at 8 - May 22, 2009

Posted at 7:53 AM on May 22, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

I am so terribly smitten by the New York Times' series, One in 8 Million, in which reporters and photographers choose a "typical" New Yorker and find out their story. It's "hyperlocal" done right. And today's installment, Rivka Karasik's decision to leave the Lubavitch community of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn, is particularly compelling. "I'm still learning how to navigate this world. It was really overwhelming for me, the first time I walked into a clothing store and realized I could purchase anything in there and wear it," she said. And the attached comments tend not to be quite as stupid as many of those attached to newspaper stories. "You now have a great duty to teach people that freedom is what we have as Americans whether we are religious Jews or of any denomination," one said.

You know how I occasionally call for suggestions about people you know who have done something interesting? This is the sort of thing I'm talking about.

The national debt road trip. How do the new deficits compare to other presidents? It's from the same guy who did the "pennies" video mentioned in this spot a few weeks ago.

Ad Age: Social media bible weighs more than the real Bible. True, but the unemployment rate would double if people couldn't call themselves "social media experts."

Where are the best places to work for public service in the federal government? The Best Places to Work rankings are out. Here's the thing: All of the agencies are reporting higher satisfaction in 2009, than in 2007, except for the Department of Justice. Hmmmm. If we had a state version, we can assume the Gang Strike Force would show the same.

By the way, the Gang Strike Force "in the news page" hasn't been updated in a couple of weeks.

It's easier for Minnesota Timberwolves player Mark Madsen to explain the disconnect between the CIA and Congress, apparently, than to explain why the heck his team is so messed up. But big points to the guy for showing that some NBA players have a brain and are at least marginally connected to the real world.

Bonus: Followup to yesterday. 250 rods, just as a News Cut reader determined.

WHAT WE'RE DOING

I'm doing this. Don't let me down here.

Midmorning - The Hauser case in the first hour with medical ethicist Art Caplan and Teresa Nelson of the ACLU. That should be hot. Second hour: The new credit card rules.

Midday - A preview of the Minnesota History Center's "Greatest Generation" exhibit. I've been looking forward to this for more than a year. On Saturday, by the way, there's a sing-along with Prudence Johnson and Dan Chouinard.

Second hour: Former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan's speech at Macalester earlier this week.

Talk of the Nation - It's Science Friday. An update on the Mars rover and a talk on the unexpected benefits of gardening with native plants. Plus, a look at how food shortages could leave modern civilization in shambles. Keep smiling!

All Things Considered - Ambar Espinoza looks at the tribal-run Nay-ah-Shing school at Mille Lacs, which teaches students Native drumming and wild rice harvesting, and at two newer charter schools that teach Ojibwe language and culture. NPR will have a story on the Flying Fish brewery, which is developing a beer to honor every exit on the New Jersey turnpike. But why wait?

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Six degrees of medical marijuana

Posted at 11:40 AM on May 22, 2009 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Politics

A few political analysts have pointed to a conflict former state Rep. Chris DeLaForest has with his new boss, Gov. Tim Pawlenty. They needn't bother. DeLaForest, a former state rep who gave up his House seat last year, is Pawlenty's new director of legislative affairs. He's also a lobbyist who pushed legislators to pass a medical marijuana bill that Pawlenty is going to veto.

But a glance at the MPR Votetracker (a neat app that I wish we'd kept in service) shows a clearer picture. DeLaForest and Pawlenty are politically joined at the hip.

A look at his votes on major issues during his legislative career reveals that.

FOR

Charging 13 year olds as adults
Preventing local government grants from going to organizations that provide abortions
Requiring voters to show ID
Banning public funding of abortions
Welfare limits for newcomers
Defining marriage as between one man and one woman
A metro-area casino

AGAINST
Embryonic stem cell research
Gas tax
Dedicated outdoors and arts funding
Studying cancer among Iron Range miners
Expanding health care coverage

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Half full/Half empty (cont'd)

Posted at 12:01 PM on May 22, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

I listened to and read the coverage yesterday of Minnesota's unemployment rate and the math made no sense to me.

Minnesota employers shed 9,500 jobs in April, which is about half as many jobs as the state lost in March, MPR reported. "Minnesota employers shed fewer jobs in April than in the prior month," the Business Journal said. "Fewer Minnesota Jobs Cut," the Fox9 News headline said.

According to the Department of Employment and Economic Development, there are 13,389 more people with jobs in April, than had them in May. The number of officially unemployed dropped by 3,781 people.

True, there's no putting lipstick on this pig. It's the worst job market since 1984.

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Listening to the whole story

Posted at 3:44 PM on May 22, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Politics

"These are extraordinary times for our country," President Barack Obama repeated yesterday in his Washington speech outlining his national security philosophy and vision. A few minutes after that, former Vice President Dick Cheney delivered an equally strong and eloquent response. Extraordinary, indeed. We rarely have had the opportunity to hear such gripping and passionate speeches on a major issue in such a closely-timed way.

What's been fascinating in the 24 hours since both speeches, is how little of the analysis has been about the substance contained in each. Bob Schieffer on CBS this morning declared that -- politically -- Dick Cheney was the winner. "Cheney's Compelling, Human Speech Was Better Than Obama's Boring Legal Seminar," Mary Kate Cary wrote this afternoon. A local TV political reporter declared Cheney "the winner" during a radio appearance on Thursday afternoon in which the politics, not the merits, of the arguments, was the focus. The Associated Press, in its analysis this afternoon, headlined "Analysis: Obama debating Cheney is a plus for GOP."

So that's it, then? One of the most compelling days for substantive debate on one of the ost important issues facing the country is settled on the basis of style and political gamesmanship and not on the substance of the argument?

This is why Jon Stewart, who at least listened to what was in the speeches, is doing some of the best journalism in the country. The bar is low.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
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Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

So here are the entire speeches from both. Watch Obama's, then Cheney's.

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Memorial Day: Glenn Knoblauch

Posted at 4:51 PM on May 22, 2009 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Regional history

News Cut will present stories about those who served in whatever capacity and have died. Please send me a few paragraphs about them and, if possible, a picture and I'll be sure to add it here.

Part of America's Greatest Generation, my grandfather, Glenn Knoblauch, served in WWII. He was one of the men who grabbed a California cruiseliner-turned-warship and headed to Hawaii just days after Pearl Harbor, bent on saving America. He spent most of his days in the Pacific, encountering Banyan trees and blades of grass which could cut your shoes.

At least I think he did. Grandpa, who died two years ago, was known for his good-natured approach and not for his ramblings about the war. Although he would never purchase a Japanese car, he loved all his neighbors. I know the war changed him, but I only heard a few stories.

Once, as a guest speaker in my history class, he told a story about his friend leaving his foxhole only to be killed by his other friend. He had mistakenly fallen into the other foxhole on his way to the bathroom. Grandpa said "We all learned to shit in the hole," and the kids sat in silence. The kids had been asking for blood and gore, and now they had it.

Only I probably knew the magnitude of his statement; my grandfather never swore. It was then I first realized there was another side to my grandfather... I never did get to know that side of him.

What I do know: He won a lottery and was sent home days before his unit saw extremely heavy action, a battle where most of them died. He returned home after three long years, knocked on my grandmother's door, and said: "Your hair is darker!" They were married three days later. She had waited so long.

This Memorial Day, I'd like to thank my grandfather and other vets for putting their life on the line for me and my country. I truly appreciate it. My grandfather's courageous actions changed the world, and really, he lives on all around me.

-- Holly Cairns

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Memorial Day: The story behind the picture

Posted at 10:01 PM on May 22, 2009 by Bob Collins (9 Comments)
Filed under: War

This is a two-part post. The first part below was written on Friday afternoon. I asked people on Twitter and Facebook to help me track down the family below. Within an hour, I found information I've been searching for for several years. That story is the second part of the post.

(© John Francis Ficara)

This picture of the family of one of the first soldiers killed in the first Gulf War is tattered because it's been folded up and put in and taken out of my wallet occasionally for the last 18 years.

I cut it out of a Newsweek magazine in 1991 for personal and professional reasons. At the time, the news media described the cost of the war as "light." Few soldiers were killed. I cut it out to remind me -- as a writer of news -- that there's no such thing as "light casualties" when it comes to reporting on war.

I also kept it in case my then-young children ever expressed a cavalier attitude toward war. They never did.

The problem is I don't know who these people are. I didn't cut out the accompanying caption. The photographer, John Ficara, didn't remember the name of the family when I contacted him a couple of years ago, and every now and then, he drops me an email to see if I've made any progress. I haven't.

Every few months, someone writing a paper for school stumbles across a post I made on my personal blog two years ago and also asks if I've been successful in locating the family, to find out whatever happened to them? I tell them I'm still looking.

One of these days, what with Twitter and Facebook and the viral nature of the Internet, I'm hoping someone will recognize them. It's impossible to look at their faces on this day, and not hope for the best.

Update - Thanks to the power of Twitter and Jodie Gustafson (via comment below) we've found the name -- Gayle Edwards and her sons, at the funeral for Marine Capt. Jonathan 'Jack' Edwards. Armed with that, I've been able to find that he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery on February 15, 1991. They were from Grand Rapids, Michigan. He was killed Feb. 2 when his AH-1 Cobra helicopter crashed in the desert near the Saudi border with Kuwait as it escorted another helicopter with injured. He was the first Marine killed in the war. His mother is Sally Marsh Edwards of Williamstown, KY.

THE STORY

When Sally Marsh Edwards said "freedom is not free" to me when I talked to her on the phone this evening, it didn't sound like a bumper sticker slogan. It sounded like the truth; it cost her her son, Captain Jonathan "Jack" Edwards, the first Marine killed in the Gulf War of 1991.

Once I found out the name of the family in the photo above, some minor investigating found the name of Capt. Edwards' mother, and some campaign contribution records revealed her address and city. The phone book did the rest.

"Jack is our hero," she told me when I called. He graduated from high school as a junior. He did so well on his ACTs that "the principal called and said 'please let me graduate Jack now.'" He did and not longer thereafter, Jack walked into her house with a uniform on. He'd enlisted.

He'd actually left active duty when the Gulf war known as "Desert Storm" -- more recently referred to by some as "the good war " -- broke out, but was recalled to fly helicopters.

On the day he was buried (above) at Arlington National Cemetery, the wind chill was 16 below zero. "Gayle has a flag on her lap (in the photo) and the general gave me one and I remember that his tears were frozen on his cheeks," she said.

"I got my miracle that day," she said. As befits the military, graves are dug in proper order. One area fills up, they move on to the next area. As she paused at her son's grave that day, however, she realized he had been buried -- apparently by chance -- head to toe to her own aunt, a secretary during World War II to Dwight Eisenhower, and Generals Bradley and Marshall. "There shouldn't have been an open space available" there, she said. But there was.

The picture above, she says, "was on the cover of every newspaper in the country" the next day. She and her husband, who was severely handicapped by Multiple Sclerosis, were driving home and stopped at a rest area restaurant on the way home to Cincinnati. "I screamed when I saw it," she said.

She's not in the picture. She was in a van nearby with her husband. But another grandchild -- a girl -- is being held on the lap of her sister in the second row.

The youngest son, Ben, is wearing his father's jacket. He spent some time in college after receiving a full scholarship to study art, and now owns a tattoo parlor in Virginia Beach. Older brother, Spencer, is in the sales business.

"Cincinnati was very good to us," she said. The community raised money for Captain Edwards' children.

He was the first killed in Kuwait. But someone had to be the last. "I wrote to the family of a soldier who died on the last day of the war," she told me. "And we became the best of friends."

Her husband died in 2000. He, too, was an historic figure in the battles of the Mideast. He was a pilot for Pan Am Airlines. In September 1970, he piloted Pan Am Flight 93, hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Three other planes were hijacked that day, with intentions to fly them to an airstrip in Jordan. But the 747 was too big to land there, so it flew to Cairo, where it was emptied, and then blown up.

Mrs. Edwards is 75 now, and still working as a lawyer. She helps disabled people get the Social Security benefits to which they're entitled. Many are disabled veterans.

She visited her son's grave early this year. Out of the glare of the media that consumed her family's privacy in 1991, a ceremony each year remembers those who died in the Gulf War. It's mostly underwritten by the government of Kuwait.

News Cut will present stories about those who served in whatever capacity and have died. Please send me a few paragraphs about them and, if possible, a picture and I'll be sure to add it here.

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Memorial Day: PTSD

Posted at 9:41 PM on May 22, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Regional history

News Cut will present stories about those who served in whatever capacity and have died. Please send me a few paragraphs about them and, if possible, a picture and I'll be sure to add it here.

A friend of mine who retired a few years ago comes to mind. When she was just out of high school, her boyfriend was drafted for the war in Vietnam and was killed in action. We were in D.C.on business a few years ago and visited the wall. Very emotional as you might expect.

She, of course, moved on with her life and married a great guy, raised some great kids, lived up north on a lake, and then retired. About a week after she retired, she found her husband in the garage with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. PTSD is a terrible, awful mental illness which this vet hid successfully for many years.

She again has found a great partner after her husband's death, so I would just like to salute Brenda, her boyfriend, and her husband for all of the sacrifices she and the men in her life made-and continue to make by living with the horrors of war.

-- Lance Lindeman

(File photo via Getty Images)

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