News Cut Category Archive: Icons
The MPR News Hall of Fame
Posted at 2:42 PM on January 20, 2012
by Bob Collins
(5 Comments)
Filed under: Icons, Media
There are plenty of places on the website to catch the last show and various festivities of Gary Eichten Day (have you seen these pictures), so let's wrap things up with this nugget.
After today's final broadcast, the employees of MPR held a gathering in his honor in the UBS Forum. The employees -- the "little people" -- sent him and his wife to Hawaii. It was Cathy Wurzer's idea.
And then Eichten was presented with his softball jersey.
"We know you always wanted to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame," managing director of regional news Chris Worthington said.
"It doesn't look too good," Eichten said.
"It will hang on the wall of the MPR newsroom forever," Worthington said.
It's the MPR News Hall of Fame. It has one member.
A day of Gary
Posted at 3:25 PM on January 19, 2012
by Bob Collins
(4 Comments)
Filed under: Icons, Media
It's over, then.
Gary Eichten has hosted his last Midday call-in program, this one with guest Gov. Mark Dayton.
At the beginning of the Midday program, the governor presented Eichten with a proclamation, naming tomorrow Gary Eichten Day in Minnesota. "Holy cow!" Eichten said. "I'm deeply honored, but I'm a little worried we're going to have a blizzard." And that was that. Eichten went to his first question, and ran the governor right to one o'clock.
WHEREAS Minnesota Public Radio program host and producer, Gary Eichten has shared his talents with Minnesota for over forty-five years, serving in many capacities: news director, special events producer, and station manager, andWHEREAS Gary graduated from Saint John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, and began his career at Minnesota Public Radio as a student announcer at KSJR, Minnesota's first public radio station, in 1967, and
WHEREAS For the past twenty years, Gary has served as the host of "Midday." He is known for his election coverage, hosting MPR's election night broadcasts since 1976, GOP and DFL State Convention broadcasts since 1984, and political debates since 1992. Beginning in 1998, Gary has been on stage at the Fitzgerald Theatre to host the traditional "final debate" in statewide elections, and
WHEREAS Gary has received numerous awards throughout his illustrious career, including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting award for best local news programs and the prestigious Graven Award in 2011 for contribution to excellence in the journalism profession. He also assisted in the development of two Peabody award-winning documentaries, and in 2007, was inducted into the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting Hall of Fame, and
WHEREAS Gary's guiding principle has always been that for the American democracy to work, the people must be informed -- there is nothing more precious to a citizen than truth; and
WHEREAS Gary always saw himself as a proxy and advocate for his listeners, and never as an entertainer, pundit, or sage. Over the past forty-five years, Minnesotans have come to trust Gary and view him as one of the state's most diligent and fair-minded journalists. He is a broadcasting legend and the sound of his voice on radio nearly every day will be sorely missed
NOW, THEREFORE, I, MARK DAYTON, Governor of the great State of Minnesota , offer heartfelt congratulations to Gary Eichten on his forty-five wonderful years at Minnesota Public Radio and wish him luck in retirement by proclaiming Friday, January 20, 2012 as
GARY EICHTEN DAY in the State of Minnesota
There are lots of people with lots of awards who throw just one more up on the shelf, but -- and stop me if you've heard this before -- Eichten isn't that type of person.
There was no danger, of course, that Gary would get a big head about a day in his honor, but sometimes you just can't take the chance. "So that's why we don't have light rail out to Woodbury," I said to him. "How much did that cost?"
Minutes later, he was sitting in the daily 1:15 news meeting, where we go over what stories are coming up and what's going to be on the radio.
"A lot of you don't have the luxury of what I've experienced in the last few months and certainly in the last few days," he said. "But what we do really matters to people. The news is a big part of their lives. And I can remember when we'd call people up and say 'Minnesota Public Radio,' and they'd say 'Who?' We make a difference," he said.
At the end of our working days, don't we all dream of knowing that we mattered and made a difference? Thanks to the audience he treated with the respect it deserved, Eichten is living the dream, and things are as they should be.
So maybe it wasn't entirely coincidental that before starting his regular gig today, two of the songs he picked for The Current's Theft of the Dial series were about dreams.
The Kodak picture
Posted at 1:08 PM on January 19, 2012
by Bob Collins
(5 Comments)
Filed under: Economy, Icons
It was a Kodak moment today when the company filed for bankruptcy and there's a pretty good chance few people get the pun. It wasn't always that way, of course. Probably millions of homes have shoeboxes full of unsorted pictures, all taken with Kodak film and printed on Kodak paper.
The writing has been on the digital wall for years; it's hard to believe there was anyone still working at the company who didn't know they were on the good ship Titanic.
Nonetheless, its history alone documents the way the country once was, the same way its products preserved how our families once were. In the '20s, for example, the company started the Eastman Savings and Loan Association to help employees finance home purchases.
A look at some of the historic Kodak commercials not only tells the tale of the company, but how much a commercial product can influence the culture and lives we lead.
Take the '50s, for example, when Kodak offered "easy payment terms" on a camera that cost $29.95 ($230 in today's dollars). .
The '60s brought the concept of cartridge-loading film, which eliminated the need to manually load film through reels and sprockets. And it ended the era of fumbling for a flash bulb for every shot.
In 1975, Kodak engineer Steven Sasson invents the world's first digital camera. It recorded black-and-white images at .01 megapixels.
In the '70s, this jingle became so popular, it later became a pop radio hit:
In the '80s, however, popular music migrated from the radio to the commercials:
And, being the '80s, throwing cameras away became acceptable when Kodak introduced the Fling Camera.
By the 1990s, Kodak was trying to keep up with technology by getting into other businesses. It bought a pharmaceutical business. And it manufactured batteries.
It tried a digital makeover in 1994:
But by the mid-'90s, Kodak had a ton of debt, and began selling off its assets. It sold its office products division and non-imaging health divisions. In '99, the digital printer business was sold to a German firm.
Late in the '90s, the company joined with America Online to deliver processed film via your computer.
By the new millennium, the company was still embracing the idea that your pictures would be printed on paper:
But in 2004, Kodak was dropped from the Dow 30, it shed thousands of jobs, and its digital camera line was sold.
In 2010, it sued Apple, claiming the smartphone technology belonged to it.
In recent years, Kodak tried to be hip, the same way any person in decline tries to be hip. Embarrassingly.
Last year, the company tried to raise money by selling about ,100 digital-imaging patents. But a judge delayed decisions on the patents, and Kodak's shares dropped below $1. The stench of economic death was in the air.
The companies digital and printing technologies, which last year accounted for 75 percent of its revenue, may be one of the few specialties left if and when Kodak emerges from bankruptcy.
Death of a Code Talker
Posted at 4:08 PM on January 4, 2012
by Bob Collins
(1 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
Keith Little has died. He was 17 when he joined the Marines and became one of hundreds of Navajos trained as Code Talkers. They used a code based on the Navajo language, which was not written. They confounded the Japanese, helped win the war, then went unrecognized for their work until someone made a movie of their wartime lives.
"When I went into the Marine Corps ... I knew nothing about the Navajo code," he said in a 2009 interview. "It was really astonishing to me to get to Camp Pendleton and there were a bunch of Navajos there, and they were working with a Navajo code."
Working happy
Posted at 6:01 AM on December 26, 2011
by Bob Collins
(0 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
Most people, I imagine, have today off. But I know a lot of people who don't. So this is dedicated to you, especially those of you who love your jobs and aren't afraid to let it show.
Farewell to a Scrabble fan
Posted at 2:36 PM on December 20, 2011
by Bob Collins
(5 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
Ruth Anderson has died at 112, the Marshall Independent reports this afternoon. She was the oldest person in Minnesota. She's been profiled many times over the last few years, partly because of her love of Scrabble, the last game of which she reportedly played on Thursday.
According to the list of living supercentenarians, the oldest Minnesotan is now Anna Stoehr, who is just a little more than 111, and lives in Elgin.
Col. Potter's war
Posted at 11:00 AM on December 7, 2011
by Bob Collins
(5 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
Though it was about Korea, the TV series M*A*S*H did little to hide that it was a show with a message about Vietnam, a war that was raging during the series. It gave anti-war sentiment a popular cultural voice at a time of nasty public demonstrations against the war.
No moment in the highly decorated series was more powerful, perhaps, than this one:
Harry Morgan, the fine actor who played Col. Sherman Potter, died this morning. He was 96.
On Jeno Paulucci
Posted at 8:10 AM on November 25, 2011
by Bob Collins
(6 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
Jeno Paulucci died Thursday morning, just four days after his wife passed away. He was, as we like to say, quite a larger-than-life character.
"Once my mother passed, my father was determined to be with her," his daughter tells the Duluth News Tribune. "That was his wish, to be with Lois."
There isn't a lot of romance in most of the public stories about Mr. Paulucci. The Duluth paper details many of the stories about the jobs he brought to Duluth, but also the temper he had with people with whom he disagreed.
For a man described by one Duluth official as "the most important person in Duluth in the last 50 years, MPR provided very few stories about him. But the one it did -- a look at his plan to turn a Hibbing chopsticks factory into a pasta production facility -- gave us a memorable -- and, actually, enjoyable -- glimpse of his temper.
It was May 1996 -- the good times -- and MPR was detailing "The War Between the States" and the fight for businesses that had states throwing globs of money at anyone who'd move their businesses to the states. Paulucci wanted some of Minnesota's for the project.
"I think it's a great thing for government to be involved in areas where unemployment and welfare rolls are loaded with people who are deteriorating in character because they get give aways from welfare," he told MPR reporter Mark Zdechlik at the time. "As long as that company you are dealing with is going to create a base of steady employment."
Jim Gustafson, an economic development official for Minnesota, spent four years trying to make a deal with Paulucci.
"It has not been a pleasant deal," he said at the time.
The story carried a warning even back then from a Federal Reserve official who said Washington should step in to prevent so many situations where public money was being thrown at private businesses, urging that decisions be made on business fundamentals instead.
After the story, we heard from Paulucci almost every day. It wasn't, as Gustafson said, a "pleasant deal." But it wasn't boring and we don't run into that sort of fighter in Minnesota much anymore. Too bad.
Paulucci's story was the stuff of legend. The son of a poor immigrant family, he was simply good at peddling things. "My mother said of her neighbors: 'The Paulucci family was poor like the rest of us. Jeno just worked harder than everyone else,'" former congressman Jim Oberstar said in a pitch for a book about Paulucci some years ago.
"Repeating over and over again my new name with its distinctive spelling, I made a vow that 'Jeno' would show the world that the Paolucci's were better than the life they were forced to live. 'Jeno' would find a way out of this mess," Paulucci wrote in his book. And he did, obviously never forgetting his roots along the way.
His death -- and a look back at his life -- could easily rekindle a discussion about whether hard work and good ideas are still the pathway to the success he enjoyed and shared.
The Mourning Show
Posted at 1:56 PM on November 1, 2011
by Bob Collins
(1 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
While listening to MPR Midday's wonderful tribute to the late Tom Keith, this afternoon, I watched the e-mails coming in from listeners.
Here are some of the ones that came from people who gave us permission to share:
"My two boys grew up listening to the Morning Show on the way to school. They loved Dr. Kyle and his kooky variety of genetically altered products at the Genway store. Missy Hermes , Fergus Falls
"I am shocked by the death of Tom Keith. I knew him briefly while serving as the director of development for MPR during 1981-82, when I occasionally stopped up to watch the PHC morning show. He was a quiet, strong, serious, and, yet,irreverent presence in the control booth. After that,throughout the years, I watched and listened for Tom on A Prairie Home Companion and The Morning Show. There was comfort in his presence and his commentary on our lives and times, and the humor of it all. I felt I was in on a little secret about what makes us laugh. I took for granted that Tom would always be here in our lives. He and I "grew old together," even though I'm sure he would not even have remembered me. This is a sad, sad day." -- Wendy Andberg. Blaine
"I had the privilege of take part in a sound effects contest with Tom and another St. Paul man in Fall '91 on American Radio Company at the World. He was cordial and spent his offstage time with us helping to make us feel at home. He was a true gentleman and a rare talent, the likes of which will not come around again soon.He volunteered his time to assist with sound effects when the Norwegian Explorers when we performed some of Edith Meiser's Sherlock Holmes scripts. He was always gracious and willing to share his knowledge and made you feel very welcome and comfortable." -- Bill Teeple, St. Paul
"What a great talent he was. I was amazed, however, each year at the meatloaf and mashed potatoes kickoff of PHC, and the Loon Calling Contest. I though his loon call was passable, but mostly, only mediocre. Gives me an appreciation of how hard that call must be.
(I've known two young ladies who placed 2nd...must be a easier for that age and sex)
Always enjoyed watching him make magic. Miss him." -- Keith Miller, Shoreview
"So sad to hear about Tom Keith's death. I worked with him when I was a reporter at MPR in the early '80s. He was a talented and delightful man." -- Deborah Fisher, Bellevue Wa
The passing of Tom Keith
Posted at 11:07 AM on October 31, 2011
by Bob Collins
(21 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
There are a fair number of phonies in the media, possibly because there's a certain amount of acting involved. But Tom Keith was not one of them. Tom collapsed at home and died last night and could not be revived, according to a spokesman for Prairie Home Companion. The cause is still being determined.
If you were a fan of The Morning Show on Minnesota Public Radio for the decades it was on the air, you probably knew the real Tom (as Jim Ed Poole) as well as anybody. He'd also love the irony of that sentence.
Keith was Garrison Keillor's engineer when he did his early morning show in Saint Paul in the '70s. Keillor created Keith's character, Jim Ed Poole, and he continued it when Keillor left the program and Dale Connelly took over.
In October 2008, the two made their farewell announcement on The Current:
In an interview, along with Dale, on MPR's Midday just before his retirement, Tom said he was just finding out in the last weeks of the show -- people were sending letters -- how big a part of people's lives he had become.
Hundreds of people showed up at the Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul the day after that interview for The Morning Show's final performance. An overflow crowd fill the church down the street.
And then it was over...
I recall watching Tom in those last minutes, thinking, "man, he's a stone." He showed no particular emotion as the years of work ended, except when it was time to recognize other people, like producer Mike Pengra. Otherwise, it seemed like just another day at work for him.
I asked Mike for a memory to share today. "I'm not sure where to start. Except every one of them ends with a laugh. And that's a good thing, right?" he said. "He was such a pro. Dale would write a script in the studio while the Morning Show was on the air, and give it to Tom. Tom would then pre-read it...maybe once, quietly. He rarely had any questions, even when Dale had a 'new' character in mind. Tom assumed the role immediately. His face and body language would change with each role and his timing was spot on. He's the best in the business."
I've only seen him about once a year since that last show. Every year he'd show up for the annual fundraiser for the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Minnesota.
But just last week, Dale Connelly and Tom Keith were together for one last time, as it turned out, at St. Olaf. You can find video here.
This moment, from that last Morning Show program, is without equal at MPR -- at least in the nearly 20 years I've been here. It's an appropriate way to remember Tom Keith.
I wrote at the time:
Peter Ostroushko sang You Are My Sunshine, and a theater full of people in St. Paul, and -- I'm guessing -- hundreds of others in cars and kitchens throughout the country joined in.
It felt very much like people were comforting themselves and others, not only against the immediate sadness of the passing of a broadcast era, but against the steady drumbeat of bad news that we're forced to endure.
We don't have any information yet about services for Tom Keith. A memorial page will be set up at the Prairie Home Companion website later today. MPR's Euan Kerr will have an extensive report on this evening's All Things Considered.
Norman Corwin
Posted at 10:32 AM on October 19, 2011
by Bob Collins
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
Norman Corwin has died at 101. Public Radio fans may remember him from a series of radio programs he developed in the '90s, but his iconic status on the media landscape goes back to the Golden Age of Radio when he wrote and directed radio dramas.
His classic, On a Note of Triumph, marked the end of World War II.
NPR profiled Corwin in a 1995 segment of its Lost and Found sound. Emblematic of how changing technology is stripping us of our history, few people will be able to hear it here, since it's in the RealMedia format, the preferred online audio format of its day.
Ken Dahlberg, 1917-2011 (5x8 - 10/5/11)
Posted at 6:56 AM on October 5, 2011
by Bob Collins
(12 Comments)
Filed under: Five by 8, Icons
1) THE MAN WITH THE SMOKING GUN
There aren't a lot of people in the world who have been war heroes, created a high-flying business, and uttered the words that would bring down a presidency. Ken Dahlberg was one of them.
His obituary is tucked quietly in the Star Tribune today.
As a World War II fighter pilot (Barry Goldwater was one of his flight instructors) , Dahlberg was one of the war's "aces," with 14 1/2 "victories." He won the Distinguished Service Cross for leading a flight of 16 P-47 Thunderbolts against 70 German Messerschmitts, shooting down four of them. He was shot down three times and spent the last months of the war as a POW, returning to Minnesota to eventually start the Miracle Ear corporation.
The remnants of the P-47 from Dahlberg's last flight were recently unearthed by engineers inspecting a tract of farmland that was about to be developed.
Dahlberg was the Midwest finance chairman for the Committee to Re-elect the President during President Richard M. Nixon's 1972 campaign. A mysterious check, which later would be determined to be from the CEO of Archer Daniels Midland, was given to Dahlberg, who converted it to a cashier's check. It was money from the campaign, destined for the Watergate burglars.
When "Deep Throat" told reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein* to "follow the money," that was the money And when Woodward called Dahlberg to confirm he handled the check, Dahlberg didn't lie. It was the turning point in the Watergate investigation, the first proof that the Watergate burglars were financed by a money laundering scheme that was tied to the Oval Office.
It ended up a critical part of the movie All The President's Men.
Back then, it was all legal. People could make secret campaign donations and expenditures. You can't do that anymore and this is why.
It's still amazing his life didn't end up as a movie. Here's an interview I did with him a few years ago, when he released a book about his life, the proceeds of which went to the Minnesota Military Appreciation Fund.
(*There is some question about whether this phrase was actually uttered to Woodward and Bernstein by Mark Felt, who claimed to be "Deep Throat." Another reporter says, however, an assistant attorney general uttered the words to him.)
2) CUDDYER'S WORKPLACE
Michael Cuddyer, as I pointed out months ago, spent this season documenting the ballparks he visited. Cuddyer is quite a photographer. But Target Field was missing from his collection... until last evening, when he finally uploaded the behind-the-lens look at his workplace. He only has a few of places where fans can't go, however.
Cuddyer says he's like to know what you think about his work. Find him on Twitter.
3) SEARCHING FOR NORMAL
Sara Shourd took this picture of her fiance and his mother feeding horses up in Pine City. Shourd was one of the three hikers who spent time in an Iranian prison, Shane Bauer spent two years in prison before his release along with Josh Fattal.
Never having been in an Iranian prison, I don't know what I'd do once I'm back in a freer society again. But I think having a horse nibble out of my hand might be fairly high on the agenda, along with anything else that has the aroma of normalcy.
"His biggest task is not to get too overwhelmed with things to do, and trying to enjoy the simple fact that he's free," his mother told the Associated Press yesterday.
Maybe there'll be a time when he'll do the talk-show circuit, but in a way, it's refreshing to find a newsmaker who just wants to stay out of the spotlight and feed a horse in Minnesota.
Maybe this is the best place to be left alone.
4) WALK TO SCHOOL DAY
It's International Walk to School Day. We live two blocks from an elementary and junior high school where my kids went to school and, for the most part, they didn't walk to school that much. Why? Because it's not International Stop For People in the Crosswalk Day.
Sure, they've got kids with orange flags who stop cars at some intersections, but for the most part, anecdotal evidence suggests, Minnesota drivers consider crosswalks mere suggestions.
If you actually know state law and stop for a kid in a crosswalk, the odds are somebody in a car behind you will veer into another lane to go around you, and not see the kid in the crosswalk. This happened to me on Robert Street on St. Paul's west side the other day. I stopped for a kid walking his bike, and the car that veered around me almost killed him. By following the law, I almost got a boy killed.
No doubt today, there'll be some tsk-tsk'ing because people load their kids in the SUV and drop them off at school -- or put them on a bus - but that's the safest way to keep your kids alive and that's the primary responsibility of parents.
On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with a good walk and we are in the initial days of Walk Through The Leaves season.
5) UNDERSTANDING THE ECONOMIC CRISIS
"Fishing is hard. Investment banking is easy," author Michael Lewis said on Daily Show last night, one of the best explanations ever of the complicated events that have led to the worldwide financial crisis. If we're going down, we should at least understand why. These segments are well worth watching.
Pay particular attention to his description of the situation in Iceland in which he asserts that women have taken over because "men with money is a dangerous combination."
It's a far more informative segment than any economic lesson you'll hear in a campaign stump speech, or in any of the shallow coverage of the Occupy Wall St protests.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Exclusive - Michael Lewis Extended Interview Pt. 1 | ||||
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| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Exclusive - Michael Lewis Extended Interview Pt. 2 | ||||
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Bonus: I don't have a clue what this is, other than the fact it was uploaded yesterday and it features 'bridge bowling" in Minneapolis. I want to know more about this "activity. If you have knowledge, contact me:
TODAY'S QUESTION
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie insisted again on Tuesday that he will not run for president in this election cycle. So the eventual major party nominees are probably already on stage. Today's Question: Does your party have a presidential candidate you can get behind?
WHAT WE'RE DOING
Midmorning (9-11 a.m.) - First hour: Many students work to achieve high GPAs, but what about CPAs, or character point averages? Certain educators and psychologists say that character development in the classroom is the key to student success.
Second hour: Michelle Norris' Minneapolis Reads event .
Midday (11 a.m. - 1 p.m.) - First hour: TBA
Second hour: A new documentary from American RadioWorks: "Who Needs an English Major? The Future of Liberal Arts Education."
Talk of the Nation (1-3 p.m.) - First hour: Political chatter with the Political Junkie.
Second hour: It's 25 years since Art Spiegelman published his epic, Maus. The comic-book chronicle of his parents' experience during the Holocaust. And, he says he still gets the same questions: "Why comics? Why Mice? Why the Holocaust?" Now, he attempts to answer them. Art Spiegelman joins host Neal Conan to talk about, Metamaus,
The woman who could've been an original astronaut
Posted at 4:04 PM on September 1, 2011
by Bob Collins
(3 Comments)
Filed under: Aviation, Icons
There were seven original Mercury astronauts in this country. They dubbed this woman, gracing the cover of Look magazine in February 1960, "7 1/2."
Betty Skelton was the only woman to undergo all of the physical and psychological tests given to those astronauts at the start of the nation's space program.
But she'd already established her bona fides. She was one the first women aerobatic pilots. She had no other choice if she wanted to fly because neither the military nor commercial airlines would hire a woman pilot.
She became a test pilot and flew just about every kind of machine, then took up auto racing and set speed records for stock cars.
She was 85 when she died yesterday.
Gary Eichten retiring? Tell me another
Posted at 2:55 PM on August 22, 2011
by Eric Ringham
(4 Comments)
Filed under: Icons, Media
MPR photo/Jeffrey Thompson
Everybody's got a right to personal happiness and fulfillment, I guess, and if Gary Eichten wants to try life at a different pace, that may be up to him. We'll see. But I'll bet anybody one of Gary's famous Jacksons that he'll be more of a force as a retired person than most people are at the height of their careers.
Over on Facebook, we're inviting listeners to tell us their favorite Eichten stories. I don't have a story, exactly, but an observation: Gary's interviews with then-Gov. Jesse Ventura were a public service of the first order. Ventura thought the media were jackals, and he became more and more unwilling to explain himself to them. But somehow Ventura had a soft spot for Eichten, and Eichten capitalized on the opportunity. He'd grill the governor, and the governor would come back for more. I listened to those interviews from my desk at the Star Tribune with a mixture of admiration and envy.
Gary has done lots of great work besides that, and most recently picked up a Graven Award to prove it. The Premack judges who gave it to him cited "his commitment to public affairs journalism, excellent interviewing skills and deep knowledge of Minnesota politics." We'll all hear more about his career between now and January. But I'm still betting that we'll hear a lot from him after January as well. (To be clear, notice that I said I'll bet any body -- up to a maximum of one, that is -- "one of Gary's famous Jacksons." Not one of mine.)
More from the State Fair
Posted at 12:43 PM on August 22, 2011
by Eric Ringham
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Arts, Icons
I'm always the last one to spot a trend, so maybe this is news to no one but me. But the fairgrounds now have benches with messages of up to 14 characters -- often the names of people or organizations -- built into them. A visit to the State Fair Foundation's website reveals that the benches are a perq of membership at the $1,500 level. That puts the "recognition benches" in the middle range, between recognition bricks for $250 and recognition tables for $2,500. It amounts to selling the naming rights to infrastructure. For city managers in a struggling economy, I'd like to offer a thought: recognition manholes.
Meanwhile, the Public Insight Network here at MPR wants your help identifying cool, out-of-the-way spots on the fairgrounds. What's your favorite hidden highlight? I'm partial to Steichen's grocery Store and Deli, myself.
We'll feature a Fair Hound every day of the fair on All Things Considered, and in other ways on the Internets.
Ready ... set ...
Posted at 5:00 AM on August 22, 2011
by Eric Ringham
(6 Comments)
Filed under: Arts, Icons, Music
Not everybody loves the State Fair. There was even a time in my own life, I admit, when my attitude went like this: "Oh, my God, the fair is here again? The exhibits? The crowds? The noise? The food?"
Then I experienced a conversion, and now my attitude goes like this: "Oh, my God! The fair is here again! The exhibits, the crowds, the noise! The food!"
It's all in the punctuation.
Get ready. The State Fair starts Thursday.
Scott LeDoux, 1949-2011
Posted at 4:39 PM on August 11, 2011
by Bob Collins
(4 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
WCCO's Mark Rosen is reporting that Scott LeDoux, former boxer and Anoka County commissioner, has passed away after a long fight with ALS.
Death of a poet's poet
Posted at 12:12 PM on July 29, 2011
by Bob Collins
(0 Comments)
Filed under: Arts, Icons
Roy McBride, the Minneapolis "street poet," and subject of a local documentary not long ago called "A Poet's Poet," has died.
In January, Bao Phi, another local poet of note, wrote in the Star Tribune:
In the 70's, he was one of the few African American students writing poetry at Macalester (also my alma mater) back in the day, where he was introduced to touring poets like Amiri Baraka, Sonja Sanchez, and Etheridge Knight. But part of the reason why Roy is really special to me is that he has that Minneapolis flavor - soul poetry by the way of Powderhorn Park. The blues of Lake Street and the 21A. His work was amongst the first I encountered to really give the Twin Cities a lyrical flavor. I am not ashamed to tell you he is one of the few local poets who has ever beaten me at a Minnesota Grand Poetry Slam, and I was honored to lose to him. The right thing happened.
Roy Chester McBride is originally from Magnolia, Arkansas.
Leonard Parker, 90
Posted at 3:49 PM on July 25, 2011
by Bob Collins
(1 Comments)
Filed under: Arts, Icons
Word reached us today that Leonard Parker has died at age 90 after a long illness.
Parker, an architect, designed several iconic buildings including the Humphrey Center, the Minneapolis Convention Center, an addition to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Minnesota Judicial Center (an awesome combination of integrating the old with the new). He also worked on the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.
He could carry a tune, too, as this video from January showed:
The funeral will be held at Temple Israel at 12:30 on Wednesday.
Clara Luper stood up by sitting down
Posted at 3:06 PM on June 9, 2011
by Bob Collins
(0 Comments)
Filed under: Icons, Race
Clara Luper never attained the widespread fame of Rosa Parks in the civil rights movement. She never became the household word that Parks deservedly did.
But someone had to lead the first sit-in to protest the exclusion of blacks in public places. That someone was Clara Luper. In 1958, she and about a dozen others ordered cold drinks at a lunch counter in Oklahoma City.
Clara Luper has died.
Highlights of Harmon Killebrew's funeral
Posted at 1:30 PM on May 20, 2011
by Bob Collins
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Filed under: Icons
The life of Minnesota Twin great Harmon Killebrew is being celebrated in Arizona today. Killebrew died of cancer earlier this week.
Here are some of the audio highlights of today's service.
Country music legend Charlie Pride sings at the beginning of the service.
Eric Queathem, Harmon's grandson, will have you reaching for a Kleenex with his memories of his grandfather. Pay attention to the story of the time he was denied a golf cart in Oregon.
Harmon's daughter, Shawn Bair, told the story of seeing her dad after finding out he had been diagnosed with cancer.
Killebrew's grandson played one of his grandfather's favorite songs, "And I Love You So."
Killebrew's son, Cam, described what it was like growing up in Minnesota and what his father taught him about respect. "It's an honor to be his son," he said.
Twins broadcaster and former player Bert Blyleven:
Remarks from Pastor Don Wilson, a final hymn, and the benediction:
Harmon Killebrew and the Impossible Dream
Posted at 11:45 AM on May 17, 2011
by Bob Collins
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Icons, Sports
Harmon Killebrew's death obviously stings the many people who grew up watching him play for the Twins.
It also must be stinging New England and Red Sox Nation in particular today, because we grew up with him, too. For Baby Boomers in New England, the Impossible Dream year of 1967 -- when the Red Sox went from last to first before baseball was polluted by playoffs -- is the yardstick by which all of baseball is measured.
Carl Yastrzemski was the icon of 1967. And so was Harmon Killebrew, for entirely different reasons to us. Killebrew was the Killer and in 1967, he was having his way with American League pitchers. He was 31 years old and nearly single-handedly seemed to provide the Twins offense. Only two other Twins -- Bobby Allison and Tony Oliva -- had more than 9 homers that season.
With two games to go in the season, the Twins were in first place by one game, playing the Red Sox in the final two. On the last day of the season, any one of three teams -- the Twins, Red Sox, or Tigers -- could have won and gone to the World Series. The Red Sox swept the Twins and the dream was complete. In the next-to-last game, Yastrzemski hit his 44th homer in the 7th inning to give his team the lead. Killebrew hit his 44th in the 9th inning of a Twins comeback that fell short. In the final game, Killebrew reached base all four times he came up. But the Red Sox won and went to the World Series, losing in seven games to Bob Gibson and the Cardinals.
Yastrzemski finished first in voting for MVP; Killebrew finished second. It was not the best season of his career -- 1969 was -- but it was the season that made him a legend outside of Minnesota. As much as Yastrzemski gave Red Sox Nation a season they'll never forget, so did Killebrew.
Proof? Check out this comment on a recent Hardball Times article about Killebrew:
I have to admit. Growing up, I was not a big Harmon Killebrew fan. The Impossible Dream year of 1967 is still a pivotal year in my life. I was a kid - and a Red Sox fan. But that year turned me from just a fan into a diehard fan. The kind that is a foundation of Red Sox Nation. Now in '67, the Red Sox and Twins were rivals (you can add in the Tigers too). I will always remember the slugger Harmon Killebrew battling Carl Yastrzemski in AL HR race. Killebrew and Yaz ended up tying for home runs but the Triple Crown belonged to Yaz. Fast forward to a few years ago. I was at Spring Training in Ft. Myers. The Twins were on the road that day but I decided to go over to their park to watch minor leaguers. The main stadium's gates were open so I went in to walk around. And who is sitting in a chair next to the dugout - in full uniform - but Harmon Killebrew. Now picture - there is nothing happening on the field. But there's Harmon talking about baseball with a small audience of fans. You could feel how he just loved the game and talking about it. And that Harmon enjoyed conversing with fans who felt the same way. The conversation reminded me of how I became a life-long fan in the first place. From that day forward, I became a huge Harmon Killebrew fan.
There's something else about the 1967 Twins. An unusually high number of players died before their time.
Gerry Zimmerman -- Catcher. He was only 64 when he died in 1998.
Zoilo Versalles -- The shortstop from Cuba. He was 56 when he died in Bloomington in June 1995.
Bob Allison -- The leftfielder died of ataxia in 1995. He was 60.
Ted Uhlaender -- He was 68 and died from bone cancer in 2009. He was the centerfielder on the 1967 squad.
Cesar Tovar -- The utility player was 54 when he died from pancreatic cancer in July 1994.
Earl Battey -- Backup catcher, was 68 when cancer claimed him in 2003.
Walt Bond -- He died during the season, while serving in the Army. He had leukemia. He was 30.
Pat Kelly -- A young outfielder just beginning his career in 1967, he died of a heart attack in 2005 at age 61.
Ron Kline -- The relief pitcher was near the end of his career when he went 7-1 in 1967. He died at age 70 in 2002.
Jim Roland -- A young pitching prospect who appeared in 25 games. He died of cancer at 67 in 2010.
Requiem for a pig
Posted at 3:48 PM on April 1, 2011
by Bob Collins
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
Where was the blocks-long traffic jam on University Avenue in St. Paul trying to get to today?
Here....
It was almost as if Porky's, the long-time burger joint, was lying in state as people came to pay their last respects. It will close on Sunday.
Those who didn't want to wait in a long line of cars, waited in a long line of people instead.
(Photos by Cheryl Espinoza and Carolie Collins)
Icons: The vanishing general store
Posted at 12:54 PM on March 25, 2011
by Bob Collins
(6 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
It was nice this week to get a few suggestions from the News Cut faithful for small town cafes that are still operating in Minnesota. That came after a short blurb on 5x8 about the cafes that are closing in our region, thanks to -- mostly -- big chains and the tough economic times.
There's another "disappearing America" item, however, that reached the World Headquarters of News Cut today. The nation's oldest general store is closing.
It's located in the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts. The Monterey General Store, in a town of ex-hippies and New York hipsters and refugees, will close next month after 225 years. It is, err, was one of those places where you could stop in, pick up a bagel and some coffee, the local paper, a few supplies, oh, and a jam session.
All of which gives me more ideas for a News Cut road trip series. Point me in the direction of a similar locale in Minnesota.
Ruth Adams, polka icon, dies
Posted at 2:40 PM on March 18, 2011
by Bob Collins
(1 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
Ruth Adams, the longtime accordion player at Nye's, has passed away, the Star Tribune reports. She was one-third of the trio dubbed "the world's most dangerous polka band." She played at Nye's since 1975 and her death, coupled with the retirement last month of piano-bar host Lou Snider presents a double loss of Twin Cities icons.
The Barking Dog Polka will never quite be the same.
Edgar Hetteen
Posted at 11:25 AM on February 14, 2011
by Bob Collins
(1 Comments)
Filed under: Icons, Regional history
Edgar Hetteen has died, the Star Tribune reports.
He started a company that made newfangled machines called snowmobiles.
Here's a profile of the man that MPR News did in 2004.
Here's a piece Twin Cities Business Journal did on him a few years ago.
Photo: Original Polaris partners (l-r): David Johnson, Allan Hetteen and Edgar Hetteen. Source: Polaris
On a happy note
Posted at 1:18 PM on February 4, 2011
by Bob Collins
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Arts, Icons
It's taken us a little while today to dig into the crowded closet where we keep 44 years of history at Minnesota Public Radio. So I didn't have this in time for this morning's Five By Eight, lamenting the end of an era in Minneapolis with the retirement of Lou Snider of Nye's Polinaise Room.
But we've found a segment we did with her in 1996, for a series called "Odd Jobs," in which people describe what they do for a living:
By the way, Odd Jobs was tailor-made for News Cut, but it was ahead of its time. If you'd be interested in telling me about the unique job you have, contact me.
(h/t: Sylvia Mohn)
Death of a hero firefighter
Posted at 2:01 PM on January 10, 2011
by Bob Collins
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Filed under: Icons
Roy Chelsen has died of cancer at age 51.
Chelsen, a New York City firefighter, rushed into the north tower of the World Trade Center after the south tower collapsed. He told firefighters inside to get out. Many of them did.
"We ran out of the north tower because of him," his friend and fellow firefighter Kevin Murray told the New York Daily News. "He ran back through all the jumpers to grab us and rush us out." (A Time photo essay of another firefighter credited Chelsen for saving his life)
He needed a bone marrow transplant and his friends organized a drive on Facebook to find a match.
A few weeks before Christmas, he got his marrow transplant:
Last fall, Chelsen helped make a video to help promote a bone marrow registry drive in Minnesota:
After the towers collapsed, Chelsen spent weeks sifting through the wreckage. His friends say that's what caused the cancer that killed him last night.
Death of a doc
Posted at 10:14 AM on December 31, 2010
by Bob Collins
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Health, Icons
A few months ago on a segment of 5x8, I passed along this story of Dr. David Nichols, a doctor who "adopted" an island in the Chesapeake Bay and brought health care to those who needed it. Even after he retired, he continued to fly to the island. He said it was "a moral obligation."
Word comes today that Dr. Nichols died yesterday.
NBC's Nightly News did this segment on Dr. Nichols a few months ago. Here's a Kleenex.
Billy Taylor, 1921-2010
Posted at 4:00 PM on December 29, 2010
by Bob Collins
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
2010 has stolen another great in its last hours.
Billy Taylor has died at 89. The New York Times describes Dr. Taylor as "a living refutation of the stereotype of jazz musicians as unschooled, unsophisticated and inarticulate, an image that was prevalent when he began his career in the 1940s, and that he did as much as any other musician to erase."
Taylor provided an introduction to jazz for baby boomers (like me) when he was the musical director for the old David Frost show.
Like this:
More recently, he produced several hundred musical features for the CBS Sunday Morning program up until around 2000, when the once articulate and classy program became just another place to get Hollywood nonsense. Here's an example of the work he turned in.
For several years, he was the host of an NPR series, "Billy Taylor's Jazz at the Kennedy Center," and many people considered him the foremost jazz educator of his -- or any -- time, the Washington Post said.
MPR's Euan Kerr talked to Dr. Taylor when he visited Minnesota in 2009:
Six degrees of Monday Night Football
Posted at 10:50 AM on December 6, 2010
by Bob Collins
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Filed under: Icons
"Dandy" Don Meredith has died. The former NFL quarterback was better known as one of the original broadcasters on the iconic Monday Night Football.
Looking back at the first MNF broadcast is a good reminder that that was a heck of a long time ago, when broadcasters even passed one microphone to the other.
Monday Night Football may well be best known in history as the place where people found out 30 years ago Wednesday that John Lennon had been killed.
How did that historic broadcast come to be? Mere coincidence.
Bob Feller
Posted at 3:06 PM on November 29, 2010
by Bob Collins
(5 Comments)
Filed under: Icons, Sports
Bob Feller, shown above at a Cleveland Indians spring training game I attended in Arizona last spring, was admitted to a hospital today. He has pneumonia. He's 92.
His health took a nosedive not long after that picture. He has leukemia. He has heart problems. Now he's got pneumonia.
The chances are we'll never see the likes of a Bob Feller again. He's the only Chief Petty Officer in the U.S. Navy to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The day after Pearl Harbor, Feller gave up baseball and enlisted in the Navy.
When he came back to Major League Baseball in 1946, he won 26 games and had an ERA of 2.18. He spent his entire baseball career with one team.
History up in smoke
Posted at 3:54 PM on November 4, 2010
by Bob Collins
(1 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
(Photo: Melissa Neibacher Photography )
A little bit of history went up in smoke in Inver Grove Heights this afternoon when what's left of the Rock Island Swing Bridge burned. The bridge over the Mississippi was once owned by the old Rock Island Railroad. Railroad tracks were on the top of the bridge, cars were on the bottom.
For a time, it was a private toll road across the river until an inspector found it was unsafe. The owner didn't have the money to fix it, so it closed.
The definitive history of the bridge and tons of great pictures can be found at this site.
I took one of the last pictures of the bridge by air, shortly before demolition of it began in the spring of 2009.
Developers had hoped to turn the bridge into a pier over the river as part of a $2.4 million tourist attraction. In fact, ribbon-cutting was originally scheduled for this week, but it was delayed because of last month's flooding.
A baseball character dies
Posted at 2:39 PM on October 19, 2010
by Bob Collins
(0 Comments)
Filed under: Icons, Sports
I feel terrible about not noticing this until today. Freddy Schuman has died. He may be -- or was -- the only person who could make people outside of New York want to root for the Yankees.
Freddie's act would have gotten him kicked out of Target Field.
Death of a language cop
Posted at 10:39 AM on September 15, 2010
by Bob Collins
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
There was a time in the broadcast news business when an editor could earn a lot of respect by preventing a wayward reporter from splitting an infinitive. Those days are gone, so maybe even people in newsrooms won't know who Edwin Newman was.
Newman, a long-time NBC TV reporter, has died, NBC announced today. I admit I had no idea he was still alive, but I do remember that his post-broadcast career influenced those who hated the assault on the English language. He did it with one book, Strictly Speaking, which outed the torturers of English and adopted the premise that America will be the death of it.
Newman was entirely old school. He not only cared about proper use of English, he was a frumpled sort and he wasn't very pretty, a requirement to get on TV these days. He was a curmudgeon. He was NBC's drama critic in the '60s, but hated the plays because he said they were directed at younger people. He warned journalists that the day of the "talking head" was coming. He was right, of course.
He occasionally provided commentary and read the news at the same time. It wasn't entirely uncommon for TV anchors to do that then, although that, too, would come as a surprise to most people in newsrooms today.
A tree falls in Amsterdam
Posted at 11:38 AM on August 23, 2010
by Bob Collins
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Filed under: Icons
It's been a lousy week already for nature's icons. First the Tettegouche arch up on Lake Superior collapsed (See Five by Eight today). Now comes word that a chestnut tree in Amsterdam has fallen.
"Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs," she wrote on Feb. 23, 1944. "From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind."
Anne Frank wrote that. It was that chestnut tree.
Death of a conservative icon
Posted at 11:26 AM on August 16, 2010
by Bob Collins
(1 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
James J. Kilpatrick has died. He was one of the South's most prominent newspaper editors, although many Baby Boomers might better remember him as one half of the point/counterpoint team on 60 Minutes (with liberal commentator Shana Alexander).
In many ways, the two (along with Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr.) ushered in the era of theatrical political debate on TV.
Even more people might remember Kilpatrick by the classic line -- "Jane, you ignorant slut" -- spawned by a spoof of Kilpatrick's segment on Saturday Night Live.
Many years after 60 Minutes ditched the segment, it tried to revive it with Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. It didn't work. Bob Dole was no James J. Kilpatrick.
And now, a different kind of confirmation hearing
Posted at 11:00 AM on June 30, 2010
by Eric Ringham
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Filed under: Icons
Forty years later, Bruce Lee still outshines those who came after him.
Continue reading "And now, a different kind of confirmation hearing"
Wurzer's big day
Posted at 11:47 AM on June 21, 2010
by Bob Collins
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Filed under: Icons
MPR's Cathy Wurzer was the grand marshal of White Bear Lake's Manitou Days parade this weekend. Click the image for a larger view and check out the sign on the side of the boat to see who plays second banana in this famous media family.
(Picture: Lucas Kunach)
Manute Bol, saint
Posted at 1:22 PM on June 19, 2010
by Bob Collins
(0 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
Manute Bol, the former NBA basketball player has reportedly died. Despite being among the tallest people in the world, he never became the basketball force his height suggested he might be. And that's OK, because upon his death, we can define him by other yardsticks as the Kansas City Star's Sam Mellinger did recently.
The Heat once fined Bol $25,000. He missed two exhibition games, so the fine wasn't out of line, except this: he was in Washington D.C. for Congress-sponsored peace talks between rebel leaders from Sudan.
The team donated the money to Bol's charity, but he was still annoyed, hinting out loud that trying to bring peace to a war-torn country might be a decent excuse for missing a couple preseason games.
You could do worse than that for an anecdote of Bol's place in this world. According to reports, he made nearly $6 million in his career, and, aside from a few American comforts, spent it all trying to save lives and educate children back home. He has given so much and received little in comparison.
He was once lured back to his home country with the promise of a cabinet post, only to find out he would be required to convert to Islam. When he refused, he was stranded for nearly five years. His trust and good intentions have been abused so many times.
Even while playing, he went into war zones to help the Lost Boys and other refugees. Sometimes, those visits were interrupted by bombings from warlords who viewed Bol as a threat.
His family was wiped out by Darfurians, but when that country became victims, Bol was one of the first Sudanese to speak out in support. A Christian, he told his people that extremists were the enemy, not Muslims.
In the Sunday papers, you'll probably find his obituary on the back pages.
The greatest love story never told
Posted at 9:34 PM on June 4, 2010
by Bob Collins
(1 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
I posted this a few months ago, but it's appropriate for us to watch it again. John Wooden, who will be described mostly as a college coach , died today. It would, perhaps, be more fitting to note that he was married to the same woman for 53 years and that his last love, was his first love. She's been gone for more than 20 years, but he still wrote her love letters. She was a lucky woman.
Life's lesson in 10 minutes
Posted at 2:33 PM on April 17, 2010
by Bob Collins
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
If there was a more touching interview on public radio this week than the one this morning with Michael J. Fox on Weekend Edition, I'm certainly not aware of it. Fox, as you probably know, has Parkinson's Disease. Part way through the interview, he struggled to finish his sentences, recovering near the end, and using the moment to teach us a little more about the disease. By the end, it was fairly clear that host Scott Simon was , if not near tears, was at least awestruck.
Listen to how much wisdom can be crammed into 10 minutes. You won't regret the time spent.
"The eloquence of the words, and the halting of the speech, created such a contrast and complement all at once. Each completed the other to make the interview whole. The starling contrast awoke me. The humility and wisdom moved me. I was listening while driving, and had to pull over," a listener remarked on the NPR Web site.
That makes two of us.
(Find an excerpt of Michael J. Fox's book here. You can hear a reading from the book here.)
Women of the air
Posted at 10:56 AM on March 10, 2010
by Bob Collins
(0 Comments)
Filed under: Aviation, Icons
This week National Public Radio gave a little bit of airtime to a group of women who deserve a lot of it -- the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPSs).
Lillian Yonally was one of the first group of women service pilots and NPR produced this slideshow to accompany its story.
You can find more about Ms.Yonally here.
When the war ended, the women lost their flying careers. Until President Carter came along, they weren't even allowed benefits as veterans.
Last year, MPR's Madelene Baran and Nikki Tundel profiled some of the Minnesota WASPSs.
Bill Lawrence and tribal sovereignty
Posted at 12:35 PM on March 4, 2010
by Bob Collins
(1 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
As near as I've been able to tell, one of the few appearances Lawrence made on Minnesota Public Radio occurred during a Mainstreet Radio broadcast on treaty rights and tribal sovereignty in 1998.
Lawrence was opposed to tribal sovereignty and said people on the reservations were afraid to speak out about it. He wasn't. "It's a license for tribal leaders to steal," he said.
"He was a straight arrow," Pete Barthelemy, Lawrence's friend since childhood told the Bemidji Pioneer. "If he had you in his crosshairs, you'd better be careful. He was relentless."
Sully art
Posted at 12:18 PM on March 3, 2010
by Bob Collins
(1 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
One of America's greatest heroes stopped flying for a living today.
Chesley Sullenberger, 59, arrives in Charlotte around 2 p.m. on his last flight before retiring. True to his understated nature, there isn't going to be any great ceremony for his last flight, something that's pretty unheard of for professional pilots.
Sullenberger, as if I have to point out, was one of the pilots on the US Airways plane that ditched in the Hudson River last year.
Doreen Welsh, one of the flight attendants on the Hudson River flight, is also retiring today. She got one line in US Air's press release.
In January, Sullenberger inspired Phil Hansen of St. Paul, to making art...
Sullenberger is going to make more speeches, push his book, and fulfill his new role -- along with first officer Jeff Skiles -- as the chairman of the Experimental Aircraft Association's Young Eagles program, which offers free rides to kids in order to get them interested in aviation.
Update 5:14 p.m. -- A commenter below asks for more information on Ms. Welsh. Here she is telling her story.
Murtha dies at 77
Posted at 1:57 PM on February 8, 2010
by Bob Collins
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
Rep. John Murtha, D-Pennsylvania, has died. The Pennsylvania congressman wielded power the old-fashioned way at the Capitol, often with accusations of ethical lapses.
But he became a household name because of a particularly raucous session of the House in 2005 when Rep. Jean Schmidt of Ohio singled him out when saying "cowards cut and run."
Murtha was a decorated soldier and long-time automatic vote for defense spending.
Fresh Eye on the Radio: The 'sorry' state of love
Posted at 5:02 PM on January 19, 2010
by Bob Collins
(0 Comments)
Filed under: Arts, Icons
There were many things about the '70s that testify to its comparative weakness. Disco, obviously, but also guys trying to pretend to be sensitive and mushy to women who dressed like Ali McGraw in Love Story, and uttered gibberish like "Love means never having to say you're sorry." (Trivia time: In Ryan O'Neal's next movie -- What's Up, Doc? -- Barbra Streisand invokes the saying. O'Neal's character ponders that for a moment and then says, "that's the dumbest thing I ever heard." Lesson: Always go with your first instinct).
Yes, the movie undid everything Faye Dunaway taught us Baby Boomers about love.
Anyway, Erich Segal, who wrote the book upon which millions of doomed high-school romances were launched, died today.
We get to that in today's Fresh Eye on the Radio with Mary Lucia of the Current. I indicate on the 'cast, by the way, that Love Story also spawned the famous "Love" postage stamp and sculpture by Robert Indiana. That's incorrect (h/t: Emily Newman). There's no one to blame for that but Mr. Indiana.
You can also subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or by going here.
On Deborah Howell
Posted at 11:26 AM on January 2, 2010
by Bob Collins
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Icons, Media
I have, occasionally, accompanied a family member to someone's funeral, listened to the eulogy, and left thinking I missed an opportunity by not knowing the person. Today's online eulogies to former Pioneer Press editor Deborah Howell evoke the same feeling.
In the old "just the facts" style of "old media," the news stories of her passing in New Zealand do not allow us to know her, only her accomplishments.
That's where "new media" shines. Former colleague Katherine Lanpher, for example, tweeted me this wonderful description of Howell:
Typical Lanpher; a more beautiful tribute could not possibly be penned.
Former Twin Cities journalist David Carr tried:
Howell ended her career at the Washington Post. Today, the Comic Riffs blog remembers her love of comics, editorial cartoons, and the people who wrote them. Michael Cavna tells the Howell story of some editorial cartoonists who snuck into some parties at a political convention:
Which is why I took her advice. I called Luckovich, the great Atlanta Journal-Constitution cartoonist. Luckovich not only confirmed the story -- he also filled in colorful details. Bottom line: Even with the most casual anecdote, Deb had gotten the story right.
Now, all my sources check out again: Deb was a pioneering editor, a consummate dogged journalist, an enormous supporter of newspaper cartooning and cartoonists and as big as Texas in her generosity and friendship.
She was apparently a big fan of Opus. She had to explain once why this panel got rejected by the Post.
She held her fire until the last paragraph:
I think Post editors overreacted in killing the strips. Comics are meant to be artful, fun and provocative. The two strips were all of that and worth publishing. Let comics be comics.
P.S. Love that penguin!
Michael Calderone at Politico writes that Howell gave it as good as she got it:
As ombudsman, Howell wrote critically on the Post's journalism, and at times, found herself on the receiving end of criticism. For instance, after writing that the Jack Abramoff scandal also involved Democratic politicians, Howell drew fire from liberal watchdogs and bloggers, resulting in the Post's comments section briefly going down.
Still, Howell remained undeterred, writing after: "There is no more fervent believer in the First Amendment than I am, and I will fight for those e-mailers' right to call me a liar and Republican shill with salt for brains. But I am none of those."
Jeff Jarvis, writing at his Buzz Machine blog, suggested that Howell understood that in the new media landscape, the most informative tool is the one traditional journalists are most afraid of: their own voice:
I learned that Deborah had little fear of learning. I argue that we must all learn in public now -- which means making mistakes and finding lessons and moving on. We online need to be more generous with others as they learn our ways. There's no sense in replacing one orthodoxy with another. What we need instead is curiosity. That is what Deborah had.
More?
How about Steven A. Smith's sweet remembrance upon Howell's retirement just over a year ago:
Deborah has shown considerable courage herself through the years. I remember the fuss among readers and even advertisers when The Pioneer Press printed and then won a Pulitzer for "Aids in the Heartland," one of the first stories anywhere to show that Aids was not just an urban plague. Deborah's unflinching support of reporter Jacqui Banaszynski's project led to truly groundbreaking journalism.
But on a more personal level, I owe Deborah for the single most important management lesson I ever received.
I was a mid-level city desk editor at The Pioneer Press at the time. I had been assigned an intern for the summer, a young woman who was to join my small team of reporters. For any number of reasons, the intern and I did not mesh. It was an ugly relationship. I couldn't seem to get through to her, she legitimately disliked me. It happens. But at the time, I took it all personally.
Late one evening after a particularly contentious encounter, I threw up my hands. Impulsively, I typed out a note to Deborah telling her I was going to wash my hands of the problem, that I simply wasn't going to work with this young lady any longer and that I sincerely hoped some other sucker would have more luck.
And I slipped it under Deborah's office door.
In those days staffers would occasionally receive in their mail boxes so-called "blue notes," handwritten notes on blue paper generally critical of something we had done, a mistake we had made, etc. Complimentary notes were on white paper, so that glimpse of blue in the mailbox sent a shiver down many an editor's spine.
The morning after my temper tantrum, in response to my intemperate note, I found a Howell blue note in my box. "Take responsibility" is all it said.
By the way, it says something about the state of her former newspaper in the Twin Cities, that it gave her death only six weak paragraphs -- eight sentences -- of copy. I'd love to know what she'd think of that.
A news icon departs
Posted at 10:07 AM on December 18, 2009
by Bob Collins
(0 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
This is Charles Gibson's last day at ABC News. His exit as a nightly news anchor has been relatively unnoticed in comparison to the retirements of some of his contemporaries like Tom Brokaw. That's probably a good commentary on the declining influence of the the "Big Three" nightly newscast.
Still, his exit is worth noting. Gibson was one of the few national TV anchors who came out of his tent or trailer to talk to the locals regularly during his coverage of the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis. "Decent" is a good word to describe him in an ego-driven business.
His recollections of his career this week are also a reminder that it's a heck of a world out there...
Remembering Lennon
Posted at 11:33 AM on December 8, 2009
by Bob Collins
(1 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
"We're selling this peace thing like soap," John Lennon told an interviewer in this 1969 interview. It was 29 years ago today that the ex-Beatle was killed outside his New York apartment building.
Twenty-nine years later, does anyone still care on days other than the anniversary of Lennon's death? Apparently so. The New York Times profiles Gary dos Santos, who drifts in an out of homelessness as the self-appointed mayor of Strawberry Fields.
Coming soon: Internet birth
Posted at 3:12 PM on November 2, 2009
by Bob Collins
(9 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
A Minneapolis woman is planning to give birth live on the Internet.
"Lynsee" has been documenting her pregnancy on the MomsLikeMe.com Web site, a partner site of KARE 11.
As described in the Boston Globe:
"We wanted to document the pregnancy and create a one-of-a-kind memento for our baby to have forever," Lynsee told the website's partner KARE-TV 11, which is also following her pregnancy (she requested that I not publish her last name, for privacy reasons). "You'll be at some of the doctor's appointments... You'll be there in the delivery room, tastefully, but you will be there.''
One question. Why?
"Cindy Chapman (the site manager for MomsLikeMe.com) put up a post on the site asking if anyone was pregnant," she told the Globe. "I emailed her right away and she filled me in on the project, I talked with my husband and we were excited about it!"
This one's for couples who have kids. Would you broadcast it over the Internet?
Behind the scenes of A Prairie Home Companion
Posted at 10:46 AM on October 29, 2009
by Bob Collins
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CBS Early Show host Harry Smith was one of the guests on A Prairie Home Companion last Saturday and produced a nice piece for his show this morning on what it's like to be a guest, including the pitfalls of a last-minute Keillor re-write of a song Smith was scheduled to sing.
Here's an extended Smith interview with Keillor.
In his segment on TV today, Keillor offered this piece of advice to Smith: "Wherever you go in broadcasting, never take calls from the listeners.
Or as we like to say here in the newsroom: The public. At least in these cubicles, we love to hear from you.
On Norman Borlaug
Posted at 7:41 AM on September 13, 2009
by Bob Collins
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Norman Borlaug, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist from the University of Minnesota, has died at 95, and Penn Jillette -- yes, the entertainer -- had it right this morning on Twitter:
The greatest human in history. He is credited with saving 1 BILLION lives and he'll keep saving more and more.That's saying quite a bit but how do you argue with it?
It's not hyperbole. He is, in fact, credited with saving over a billion lives as President George Bush pointed out when he presented Borlaug with the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007. "No person has done more to rid the world of hunger," Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.
Borlaug is the father of the Green Revolution, which started with his work to create disease-resistant, high-yield wheat. The chances are pretty good that whatever you ate today had something to do with Norman Borlaug.
And these last words in a high-profile setting should be something everyone can agree on:
"We need better and more technology, for hunger and poverty and misery are very fertile soils into which to plant all kinds of 'isms,' including terrorism," he said.Leon Hesser worked with Borlaug and also wrote his biography. All Things Considered host Tom Crann talked with him in 2007.
As Mr. Hesser pointed out, not everyone agreed with Borlaug's approach of genetically altering food. That brings us back to Jillette's own biography of Borlaug in this TV episode. Caution: There's an occasional obscenity in this clip - and it ends with the F bomb. But you'll get an excellent idea of Borlaug's fight:
And here's a milder telling of the Borlaug story from a documentary on his life and work:
Comics make strange bedfellows
Posted at 1:12 PM on August 31, 2009
by Bob Collins
Filed under: Icons
Comic books are still a big deal. Somewhere.
In the biggest media deal of the day, Walt Disney Company today agreed to buy Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion. The deal adds Iron Man, Spider-Man, and the Fantastic Four to the Disney empire. But it's mostly a demographic play. The company of princesses and Snow White wants to attract more young men. Young men read comics and watch superhero movies, I guess, and favor action heroes over sleeping beauties.
There is, however, some concern over whether Marvel's "grittiness" will be compatible in Disney theme parks, where everyone plays nice.
Can the characters co-exist? Or is it M.O.D.O.K. vs. The Mouse?
Said one Marvel writer on Twitter today, "My main concern is that my checks still have Spider-man on them. The bank teller won't be so impressed with Mickey Mouse.
Death of an artist
Posted at 5:13 PM on August 30, 2009
by Bob Collins
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You may not know Joe Williams by name, but you may be familiar with some of his work.
Thousands of people who traveled through the Mall of America or state fairs in the Upper Midwest probably have a caricature drawn by Joe Williams stashed somewhere in their house. He was profiled by MPR's Nikki Tundel more than six years ago.
Williams was found dead last week by an artist colleague. They were attending the Central States Fair in Rapid City, South Dakota. Williams was a diabetic, apparently hadn't taken his insulin, and didn't tell anyone, his friend told me Sunday afternoon. "He was a prideful individual," he said.
Now, the search is on for any family members he may have. "He didn't talk about them much and with a name like Williams, it's pretty hard to track anyone down," he said. He had no address book nor cellphone with his personal effects when he was found. The coroner in South Dakota is planning to cremate his remains on Monday if family can't be located.
"I just like that atmosphere, that circus environment," Williams told Tundel in 2003. "I always wanted to run away to the circus when I was a kid, so here I am." He had a degree in fine arts, but found drawings were his way of talking about himself and others.
"Humor is a powerful element. It just kind of seeps in. It's not forceful. But if people are laughing about something, they accept it more. Caricature art is like therapy," he said.
(h/t: Kelly Hungaski)
Ted Kennedy, 1932-2009
Posted at 6:14 AM on August 26, 2009
by Bob Collins
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Ted Kennedy died overnight. I wrote about him last week so I won't repeat that.
A few interesting analysis pieces have been posted online that are worth mentioning.
Time Magazine says he was the Kennedy brother who mattered most.
So when Hubert Humphrey lost to Richard Nixon in the fall, Ted instantly became liberalism's last, best hope. There were people who thought he lacked Jack's intellect or Bobby's passion, that all his life he had merely trawled in their wake. But in his first speech after Bobby's death, he was already sounding the cry that would be the great theme of his political life: "Like my brothers before me, I pick up a fallen standard. Sustained by the memory of our priceless years together, I shall try to carry forward that special commitment to justice, to excellence, to courage, that distinguished their lives."
Cal Thomas, the conservative commentator, recalls his friendship despite ideological differences:
It began in 1983 when I received a call from a Washington Post reporter. I was working for the Moral Majority at the time and a computer had spit out a membership card for Sen. Kennedy and then inadvertently sent it to him. The reporter asked if I wanted the card back. "No," I said. "We don't believe anyone is beyond redemption. In fact, I hope Sen. Kennedy comes and speaks at Liberty Baptist College (now Liberty University)," the school founded by the late Jerry Falwell.
A few days later, I received a call from Kennedy's chief of staff. "The senator accepts your invitation." I was stunned and so was Falwell, but Kennedy came and was well received. He spoke on faith, truth and tolerance and his remarks are as relevant today as they were when he uttered them.
Here's that speech:
The PBS NewsHour Web site has put together a nice collection of video moments.
No doubt, the airwaves of Minnesota Public Radio will be filled today with such recollections.
The last days of Ted Kennedy
Posted at 11:12 AM on August 20, 2009
by Bob Collins
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If missing his sister's funeral wasn't an indication enough that Sen. Ted Kennedy's brain tumor is about to claim his life, today's letter to Massachusetts state officials is. In it, Kennedy asks the state to revise a 2004 law to allow a temporary appointee to fill his unexpired term.
The political analysts suggest the move is also an admission that health care reform itself is on its deathbed at the Capitol.
I prefer to use the occasion -- as a son of the Bay State -- to recall significant moments in Kennedy's life. Such moments, it seems, have to start with this one:
Never quite the orator that his brothers were, it only took two words to finish Kennedy's career as president-in-waiting: "I know."
His national "goodbye" came one year ago next Tuesday. :
Regardless of where you stand on Kennedy politically, you'll want to spend some time with the Boston Globe's seven-part series on him.
Return of the Red Tail
Posted at 8:25 PM on August 5, 2009
by Bob Collins
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As I mentioned in the Five at 8 post this morning, the red-tailed P-51 Mustang, which crashed in Red Wing, killing pilot Don Hinz years ago, returned to South St. Paul's Fleming Field today after years of restoration by the Red Tail Project. It's a traveling piece of history to educate people about the Tuskegee Airmen.
I didn't make it out to the ceremony this afternoon, but I happened to be standing by the runway Wednesday evening when it went out for its evening constitution with its hangar mate.
On Cronkite
Posted at 8:11 AM on July 18, 2009
by Bob Collins
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I've written -- twice -- about Walter Cronkite in the last month or so. You can click the "icons" category over there on the right and find them. So I won't go into his death too much. But I left out a couple of obvious videos that marked his career:
The death of Martin Luther King Jr.
And the moon landing:
A lot of people this weekend will lament that Cronkite was the last vestige of the "just the facts" newscast. And it's true, each story he introduced may have appeared to have no underlying message. But the dirty little secret of journalism -- one of them -- is that why a story is chosen to air is every bit as important as what a story says, and you can't make that decision without having an opinion about why a story matters enough to be told.
At the National Scholastic Press Association workshop at the University of Minnesota on Friday, a high school journalism teacher asked me how she could get her students to understand "objectivity" (a word I don't use, I prefer "fairness"). "Don't explain it to them" I suggested. "When they turn in a story, just ask them 'why?'." Why they pursued the story? Why they took a particular angle? Why one sentence appeared before another? Why they talked to the people they talked to? As they answer each question, the part of us -- the personal us -- that is part of the process, will be more clear.
Cronkite, it is said, influenced thousands of people to get into journalism. That's probably accurate. But I didn't find Cronkite to be the most inspiring journalist on the show. I found the person who was always at the end of his broadcast to be the most compelling:
News is supposed to be a snapshot of our world. He knew that a single note from a piano, for example, can still make us cry. And that 90 seconds of video of the world just being the world, can lead us to contemplate it far more than a babbling head. His stories were consistently the most memorable and I always wondered what it was -- and still is -- about journalism that kept them from leading the news.
I often wondered whether anyone asked Cronkite that question.
The part about us that's good, is every bit as newsworthy as the part about us that isn't.
The nature of heroes
Posted at 11:37 AM on July 16, 2009
by Bob Collins
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Maybe you received the e-mail last week berating the news media for providing so much coverage to Michael Jackson, while ignoring the death of Ed Freeman, who was one of 246 recipients of the Medal of Honor in the Vietnam War.
He was, in fact, a hero.
Back at base, Freeman and the other pilots received word that the GIs they had dropped off were taking heavy casualties and running low on supplies. In fact, the fighting was so fierce that medevac helicopters refused to pick up the wounded. When the commander of the helicopter unit asked for volunteers to fly into the battle zone, Freeman alone stepped forward. He was joined by his commander, and the two of them began several hours of flights into the contested area. Because their small emergency-landing zone was just one hundred yards away from the heaviest fighting, their unarmed and lightly armored helicopters took several hits. In all, Freeman carried out fourteen separate rescue missions, bringing in water and ammunition to the besieged soldiers and taking back dozens of wounded, some of whom wouldn't have survived if they hadn't been evacuated.
He did not, in fact, die the same day Michael Jackson did. Nor the same year. He died last year, the Washington Post's obituary blog reports.
As I began to investigate matters, I found out that Freeman's name had been invoked several times to berate the news media for its supposed lapses. Just as he hadn't died on June 25, he hadn't died last September and been neglected in favor of coverage of Paul Newman. He hadn't died in February, as a widely circulated e-mail claimed, and been buried in an avalanche of stories about "some Hip Hop Coward beating the crap out of his 'girlfriend.' " He hadn't died, as still other e-mailers wrote, on March 25, 2009.
As it turns out, though, neither of the national dailies carried his obituary when he did die, which is odd, especially since he had a Hollywood connection. He and his colleagues involved in the Ia Drang campaign in Vietnam "are immortalized in the Mel Gibson movie We Were Soldiers, says the Idaho Statesman.
On Sunday, President Barack Obama will sign a bill naming a post office in Mississippi in his honor.
Then, perhaps, the Internet will let him rest in peace.
Another e-mail is making its rounds this week, somewhat similar to the one above. This one recognizes Shifty Powers, made famous in Steve Ambrose's Band of Brothers. The e-mail says he died last month. He actually did.
By the way, the Web site The Living Medal of Honor Recipients reports there are now fewer than 100 living Medal of Honor recipients. One of them, Leo Thorsness, is a Minnesota native. He placed John McCain's name in nomination at last year's Republican National Convention in St. Paul.
(A longer conversation can be found here)
Robert McNamara's war
Posted at 9:27 AM on July 6, 2009
by Bob Collins
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For those of you who didn't live during the Vietnam War era, you might have a better sense of who former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was if I tell you he was the Donald Rumsfeld of the '60s.
McNamara, one of Washington's "The Best and the Brightest" has died at age 93.
He gave us Vietnam. Like Rumsfeld, he was reviled by the war's opponents. In his book, the late David Halberstam said McNamara "did not serve himself or his country well. He was, there is no kinder or gentler word for it, a fool."
"I don't object to its being called McNamara's war," he said in 1964. "I think it is a very important war, and I am pleased to be identified with it and do whatever I can to win it."
A memoir he wrote in the '90s revealed how much his soul was tortured by his war. He revealed that he had misgivings about the war as early as 1967, but continued to publicly support it anyway. That opened up a barely-scabbed-over sore. The U.S. suffered over 93,000 casualities -- dead and wounded -- from 1967 to the end of the war.
"We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of our country. But we were wrong. We were terribly wrong," McNamara told The Associated Press 15 years ago.
The truth about Cronkite
Posted at 3:44 PM on June 25, 2009
by Bob Collins
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If there's one person who would hate the way the condition of Walter Cronkite is being reported, it's Walter Cronkite.
To recap: Last Thursday it was reported Cronkite was "gravely ill."
Later in the day, his publicist declared the reports of Cronkite's near death exaggerated. "He has suffered no major health crisis. He is at home. He was recently ill, and he's home recuperating. He's not gravely ill."
This afternoon the family acknowledged the original story.
In order to dispel false rumors, Walter Cronkite's family wants it known that he has apparently suffered for some years with cerebrovascular disease and he is not expected to recuperate. He is resting comfortably at home with family, friends, and a wonderful medical team. We thank you for your prayers and good wishes."
It's been interesting to read comments from old-timers about Cronkite in the last week. "That was back when journalists just gave us the news," one said, a comment echoed by many others. They forget that it was Cronkite who basically said -- on a news broadcast -- that Vietnam was a mistake.
Cronkite's work also serves as a reminder that news doesn't have to be slick to be good.
Ed McMahon, 1923-2009
Posted at 10:36 AM on June 23, 2009
by Bob Collins
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"Who cares?" a follower on Twitter asked today, when the subject of the death of Ed McMahon came up.
I guess I don't have a great answer for it, although I do think there's value in remembering the icons of mass media when it was really mass media. Like McMahon, the Milton Berles and Dinah Shores poured the foundation for the influence of television.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
"Here's Johnny!" I wonder how many people think that's Jack Nicholson's line?
Long before people talked about what was on Daily Show last night, they talked about what was on Carson.
The Archive of American Television has a series of interviews with McMahon here.
McMahon also was the last of a breed. Like Ted Williams, he was a star who interrupted his career, to go fly planes in the war in Korea.
After Carson, McMahon went on to host a series of forgettable shows and commercials -- Cash for Gold -- which just made us old-timers feel sad for the guy.
Passing voices
Posted at 1:11 PM on April 13, 2009
by Bob Collins
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Harry Kalas died today. The long-time broadcaster for the Philadelphia Phillies passed out in the booth before this afternoon's game. He was to Philadelphia what Herb Carneal was to the Minnesota Twins. He also was the voice of NFL films.
Like Carneal before him, Kalas was one of the last great baseball broadcasters, the kind kids listened to on the fading-in-and-out AM radio after they were supposed to be asleep.
Kids don't listen much to baseball on the radio anymore, and they usually go up to bed after mom and dad, anyway. The connection between the radio play-by-play person has mostly been lost, and many of them are recycled players anyway, not the person who spent time crafting his/her skills (Yeah, I'm talking about you, Ken Harrelson).
Every baseball market had one. In the northeast, we had Curt Gowdy and Ned Martin. My cubicle mate, Chris Roberts, grew up with Ernie Harwell and George Kell.
West Coast fans still have a legend. Vin Scully is still calling games for the Dodgers.
Update 5:43 p.m. - Another icon in baseball passed today. Mark Fidrych, one of the great characters of the game, was found dead under his pickup truck in Massachusetts.
The day MLK died
Posted at 1:14 PM on April 3, 2009
by Bob Collins
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It was 41 years ago tomorrow that Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated. Today, Life magazine is providing images of the assassination scene that have never been published.
Keep trying, the server is often not able to keep up with the demand.
End of the icon
Posted at 12:48 PM on April 2, 2009
by Bob Collins
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This, apparently, is "end of the icon" week in America. Tonight, ER, which debuted -- Mrs. News Cut reminded me today -- when our oldest son was in 2nd grade (he's almost 23, now), has its final showing, ending -- officially -- the NBC dominated time period on Thursday night that started with Hill Street Blues, then L.A. Law, and then ER.
And it's been announced that "The Guiding LIght," will end in September.
The soap opera is disappearing almost as fast as the soap that spawned it.
Trivia question: What was in NBC's 9 p.m. (CT) time slot before Hill St. Blues launched the "Must See TV" tradition on the network? (No peeking or Googling)
On Bill Holm
Posted at 8:34 PM on March 8, 2009
by Bob Collins
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Filed under: Arts, Icons
They had a funeral for Bill Holm out in Minneota on Sunday.
Some touching memories of Holm were printed by the Marshall Independent over the weekend (Others who knew him posted some very touching comments to the News Cut post). One struck a chord for ye olde blogger:
My experiences in knowing Bill Holm while trying to assist him in his health care were likely more valuable to me than to Bill. Although a man of his own direction, he cared dearly for his family, friends, fellow poets, writers, and musicians. I found him to be a great wordsmith in describing his rural roots, thoughts, and experiences, especially those impressions concerning the ethos of Minneota and the prairies...and Iceland. His most recent comment to me was an insightful one: "The only good thing about a recession is that people might read more..."
MPR's Mark Steil is putting his Monday morning story together as I write this. Mark's got a great eye for stories and this image he sent along of the chair Holm sat in during church service is a great one. Note the copy of the Star Tribune on it, with Holm's picture on the front of the Opinon page.
I'm looking forward to Mark's story and the tributes contained therein (When it's done, it'll be at the top of this page).
I imagine they'll be like those of his cousin, Vivian Secrist, who shared this on billholm.com.
I had the privilege of being part of Bill's family since I was born. Bill was my cousin on both my mother's and father's side of the family. We attended Sunday school together at St. Paul's Icelandic Church when I was very young but, then a move by my family separated us for many years. I still would see him on occasion with visits to Minneota and after we both reached adulthood, our lives kept us apart for many years but, in the last twenty some years we were able to connect on many occasions for family celebrations and, of course, Boxelder Days in Minneota. Even tho I didn't get to visit as often as I would have liked, when we met again, it was like we had never been apart. He encouraged my youngest daughter to continue writing her poetry and I know that meant a great deal to her. Even tho she hasn't written anything for several years, I know it left a lasting impression on her and she thought very highly of him. I will so miss his wonderful hugs as we greeted each other on those special reunions and his great presence in our family. I have several of his books signed by him personally and I will treasure them and the stories for years to come. Good bye my precious cousin. You leave a huge void in all our lives. My heart goes out to Marci and all who feel the loss. May God Bless each and everyone of you. Say hello to Mom, Neva, Julian, Robert and all who have gone before you.
MPR is planning an event to honor Holm on April 7 at the Fitz.
Alice Rainville, 1928-2009
Posted at 5:01 PM on March 5, 2009
by Bob Collins
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Alice Rainville, who died on Thursday, was the first woman to serve as the Council president in Minneapolis and she loved the north and northwestern neighborhoods of the city.
The news of her passing sent me scurrying to the MPR digital archive in search of past interviews with her. I was not disappointed. I found an interview that MPR's Dan Olson did with her when she stepped down from the Council after 22 years.
"I had great respect for the taxpayer," she said in the interview, recorded when she left the Council. "I don't want any of my dollars spent frivolously and I always would tell the Council, 'You are the guardians of the public purse,' and I don't want to be the people's banker. I only want government to assess what the needs are and fund them, but not to have a comfort blanket over government so that we never have to have a stomach ache or headache about where the money is going to come from. I think that government should be quite lean, but not mean. I think government has to be very cautious in that role because it's easy when just by a vote you can increase the dollars people have to send to you."
Here's the interview which aired on January 2, 1998:
(h/t: Sylvia Mohn)
Things you don't see every day
Posted at 2:37 PM on February 24, 2009
by Bob Collins
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There are a lot of useless Post-It Note neurons floating around my head, but I'll be darned if one of them is about the last time someone testifying before Congress got a standing ovation.
The crew of US Airways Flight 1549 testified before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and pleaded for the reform of the airline industry. Their salaries have been cut and their pensions replaced.
Capt. Chesley Sullenberger said it has placed "pilots and their families in an untenable financial situation... I do not know a single professional airline pilot who wants his or her children to follow in their footsteps." And yet, as the flight schools from Mankato to North Dakota reveal, they do.
It might be a tough sell, as a drive through the neighborhoods of Eagan and Apple Valley might suggest. Airline pilots, generally speaking, do OK. The average senior captain earns $180,000, according to the Air Line Pilots Association. A first officer makes about $121,000.
If it's a situation the committee is interested in exploring, they might consider listening to the testimony of the non-major pilots and first officers or flight crews without seniority. Gross monthly starting pay at a regional carrier is around $1,500 a month.
For the first time, we also heard from Patrick Harten. He was the controller who was communicating with the US Airways' pilots on that January day when the plane ditched in the Hudson River.
"People do not survive landings on the Hudson River, and I thought it was his own death sentence.
"I believed at that moment," he added, "I was going to be the last person to talk to anyone on that plane alive."
Expect the crew to get another standing ovation tonight. They'll be in the gallery when President Obama speaks to a joint session of Congress.
(Photos: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
The power of images
Posted at 8:07 AM on January 26, 2009
by Bob Collins
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Recommended reading today: Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris' New York Times blog in which he interviews several White House photographers during the Bush administration. One comes up with this nugget after President Bush's farewell speech to the nation:
And I turned to one of my editors -- First I said, "Oh, my God." And he said, "What?" And I said, "You've got to see this picture of Bush. This is really stunning." And I flipped it over to him to process and his first reaction was, "Wow." And I said, "If he wasn't just back there behind that door crying, I don't know what that look on his face is." Because he just looks absolutely devastated as he comes through this door after essentially ending his eight year presidency. And it's just really striking. He just looks absolutely devastated.
(h/t: Nick Young)
Carl Pohlad, 1915-2009
Posted at 4:08 PM on January 5, 2009
by Bob Collins
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Filed under: Icons, Sports
Carl Pohlad, the owner of the Minnesota Twins, has died, Twins officials said today.
Pohlad became a lightning rod for controversy while trying -- and eventually succeeding -- to get taxpayers to pay for a new baseball stadium. He died a year before Target Field opens.
While Pohlad is best-known for his ownership of the Twins, he built his wealth through a diverse set of investments including Marquette Bank (which he sold to Wells Fargo for $1 billion). As president, he bought up 30 other banks before selling it to FirstBank (now USBank). He also owns or has owned a Pepsi bottling operation, United Properties, and Mesaba Airlines. He also owned Twin City Rapid Transit, the streetcar and bus service of St. Paul, which was acquired by Metro Transit in 1970.
According to Forbes Magazine, Pohlad was the 78th 102nd richest man in America, and the 245th richest man in the world. His net worth was estimated at $3.6 billion. He ranked as the third-wealthiest Minnesotan, trailing Whitney MacMillan and Cargill MacMillan Jr.
"I had no experience dealing with reporters, especially sports reporters," he told MPR's Mark Zdechlik in 2001 on the subject of criticism of Pohlad during his bid to get public financing for a new stadium. "I don't want to see the Twin Cities without a baseball team and I've proven I want to keep them here." Find the old interview here.
But the public never warmed to a Pohlad image of baseball savior. He served on the committee that voted to eliminate -- "contract" it was called at the time -- the Twins during the height of public debate over public financing of the Twins stadium at the Capitol. Eventually, lawmakers voted to tax Hennepin County residents for the stadium.
Pohlad contributed a fraction of the cost, calling it "fair and substantial". One of his last public appearances was the groundbreaking for the new stadium in 2007. Pohlad was also the richest owner in baseball.
Businessman Irwin Jacobs, a close friend of Pohlad's, said "when Carl was hurting, he didn't want anyone else to know his pain. When someone else was hurting, he wanted to know your pain." He said Pohlad "lost a literal fortune keeping the Twins here. I told him, 'Carl, get out of it, if people don't appreciate it, move on.' and he didn't and if it was me, I'd have done it. I wouldn't have put up with it." ( Listen to entire interview)
Pohlad came from a poor upbringing. He was one of eight children during the Depression years in Valley Junction, Iowa. He served in World War II in the U.S. infantry, before returning to Iowa and starting a career in banking.
"Carl never lost sight of the fact of his roots and where he came from, "Jacobs said. "How many people are losing their fortunes today because they'd forgotten where they'd come from. He always evaluated risk."
Pohlad was the finance director for Hubert Humphrey's last Senate campaign, but his politics was hard to pin down. In the latest election cycle, for example, Pohlad contributed to Barack Obama's presidential campaign and Norm Coleman's re-election campaign for Senate. He also financial supported DFLers Amy Klobuchar, Patty Wetterling, and Jim Oberestar and also Republicans Gil Gutknecht, Rod Grams, and George Bush.
His wife, Eloise, died in 2003. The couple had three children. They released a statement on their father's death this afternoon:
Carl was the leader of our family as well as the founder and leader of our family businesses. We've loved and respected him and are enormously proud of his accomplishments. And we will all miss him deeply.
We greatly appreciate the support and prayers of our friends, colleagues and the community. We especially appreciate the support of our employees throughout the Pohlad family of companies at this difficult time. We want to assure everyone that we will continue Dad's work and his legacy - just as he would have wanted and as he has prepared us to do.
On his last visit with Pohlad last week, Jacobs said Pohlad told him he was going to do "one more deal after the first of the year." He said there was no deal; he just loved the excitement of the possibility, Jacobs said. "I hope this community appreciates what Carl has done . They're such good people and they give so much. I just hope they treat the boys in the way they should be treated. This community should cherish the history of Carl Pohlad here," Jacobs said.
Quentin Aanenson, 1921-2008
Posted at 7:03 AM on December 30, 2008
by Bob Collins
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Filed under: Icons
There may never have been a son of Minnesota more eloquent than Quentin Aanenson. The Luverne native was the inspiration behind Ken Burns' fabulous PBS series, "The War." The series featured Aanenson and three other families around the country. Through 17 hours, it was impossible not to be confused by the calm of Aanenson's voice recalling the chaos of his experience.
Aanenson is on my very short list of people I wanted to meet. I never got the chance. Aanenson, 87, died on Sunday of cancer.
As the Washington Post obituary noted, he was a man haunted -- and changed -- by war:
But the war never entirely left him. He was haunted by the fear that he had once mistakenly fired on Allied troops. The first time he fired on a column of German soldiers along a roadside, the impact of his shells pitched their bodies into the air. He knew he was doing what he was trained to do, "but when I got back home to the base in Normandy and landed, I got sick. I had to think about what I had done. Now that didn't change my resolve for the next day. I went out and did it again. And again and again and again," he said.
"It's hard to understand why the guy next to you was blown apart and why you're able to go on to have a wonderful life," he said. "There's a sense of responsibility we assume, or should assume. I tried to make a contribution, to my family, to the business world, to live with high ethical standards . . . not to waste this life, to do something that counts in a positive way. . . . I tried to live with purpose."
Here's a roundtable of veterans -- including Aanenson -- on the Charlie Rose Show in 1994, on the 50th anniversary of D-Day, a day on which Aanenson said, "I had the best seat in the house."
After the war, he became a life insurance executive.
On his Web site, Aanenson writes his own epitaph:
I guess in one sense you can say we are an endangered species. But unlike the spotted owl or the whooping crane, there is no legislation that can be enacted to save us. We are rapidly disappearing off the radar screen, and soon all that will be left is what we have written, what we have recorded, and some old, fading photographs. Our voices will be forever silent, and the untold "first-hand accounts" of our experiences will remain untold.
We are the boys of World War II. We are dying off at the rate of 1,500 a day -- that's 45,000 a month. That number will steadily increase until the unyielding laws of mathematics give us an increasing rate of deaths, but a decreasing number of deaths -- the remaining pool will have become too small.
Taps is just one sunset away.
But in our lifetimes, we made a difference. We had the good fortune to live during a time when honor, patriotism, and character were important. We stepped up to defend freedom, and put our lives on the line for the "cause." It was a moment in history that may never occur again.
A note about Eartha Kitt
Posted at 6:51 PM on December 25, 2008
by Bob Collins
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
Eartha Kitt has died and it's funny the different things people think of immediately when mentioning her name. The sultry voice, Santa Baby, Catwoman on the Batman series, or -- in my case -- a huge (at the time) controversy over what she said to Lady Bird Johnson at a White House dinner.
As the Voice of America tells the story...
The president's wife, Mrs. Lyndon Johnson, had invited Eartha Kitt with a group of other women to discuss the problem of youth crime. When Mrs. Johnson asked her guests for their thoughts, Kitt raised her hand and spoke out against the war in Vietnam, where young black men were serving and dying in disproportionate numbers. Mrs. Johnson reacted with shock, blinking back tears, and the incident made headlines.
In retaliation, President Johnson ordered the FBI and CIA to investigate her and she became blacklisted.
America has often felt most threatened by its singers.
The final curtain
Posted at 6:00 AM on December 11, 2008
by Bob Collins
(15 Comments)
Filed under: Arts, Icons
From a news guy perspective, here's the thing about Dale and Jim Ed's (Tom's) show: The news stinks. Everyone knows the news stinks. Every morning we wake up and one of the first things we remember is times are tough and, oh yeah, the news stinks. Then you turn on the radio and someone is on stage singing "Getting to Know You," just as someone has been singing it since about 10,000 end-of-the-worlds ago. And suddenly you realize that just because the news stinks, life doesn't; it goes on and people sing and dance.
The cynics will call that denial -- that life is simply too crushing in its burden. I will deny that.
Long-time The Morning Show producer Mike Pengra signs "the wall" backstage at the Fitzgerald Theater. Performers and speakers at the Fitz sign their names to the bricks. "This is quite an honor," Mike said as he finished. "Don't worry, we'll paint over it," the theater manager joked.
Mischke
Posted at 6:00 PM on December 9, 2008
by Bob Collins
(11 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
I was out sick last week when KSTP Radio mysteriously canned Tommy Mischke, described in many quarters since as the last of the truly original radio types in the Twin Cities. Garrison Keillor called him his "hero" on a show a few years ago.
Area blogger Mitch Berg wrote what seems to be the definitive column on Mischke from his view as a call screener at KSTP before Mischke started working there.
... like a lot of genuine originals in any art form (and Mischke's radio was a sort of art form - and I say this while stressing that radio as a whole is a craft), the art depended on having a patron to shield the artist from the spikes and deadfalls of the open market.
That someone, so rumor always had it, was Ginny Morris, one of the granddaughters of Stanley Hubbard the Elder, the founder of Hubbard Broadcasting (and one of the great pioneers of American broadcasting in his own right) and the person who really pulls the strings on the radio side at Hubbard. Ms. Morris - so the rumors in the industry had it, at least when I was paying attention to them - kept Mischke on the payroll, and on the air, for many long years when there was no explicit market demand for a free-form, eccentric stream-of-consciousness show like his. As talk radio morphed into what it is today - a venue for partisan anger, humor and information - Mischke was an outlier who, I think it's fair to say, could only exist in the market with the aid of someone who really really wanted him to exist.
Here's the bit when Mischke joined Keillor on A Prairie Home Companion in 2006. Listen
So this month will be a tough one for long-time radio fans. Mischke is gone -- for now, anyway -- and Tom Keith retires from MPR's The Morning Show on Thursday. Julia Schrenkler and I will be live-blogging the event.
Icons come and icons go. But they always leave a little bit of themselves behind.
The man who revolutionized AM radio
Posted at 7:48 AM on December 2, 2008
by Bob Collins
(0 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
Bill Drake is dead and the New York Times left off an important sentence to his lengthy obituary today. "He was preceded in death by the industry he revolutionized."
Drake, 71, teamed with Gene Chenault to form a radio consulting firm that programmed -- and rescued -- some of the biggest AM radio stations in America. Those of us who grew up in the business spinning 45s on a turntable had a connection to Drake every time the boss would open the studio door and shout, "just shut up and play the music."
The Times obit put that a little nicer:
In the 1960s, Mr. Drake, an up-and-coming disc jockey and programmer from south Georgia, revolutionized radio when he and his partner, Lester Eugene Chenault (pronounced Sha-NAULT), decided that radio stations could make a lot more money and reach more listeners if they cut back on D.J. chatter, accelerated the pace of their programs and gave audiences more of what they presumably tuned in to hear: hit songs.
He and Mr. Chenault introduced a formula, eventually sold as a syndicated package with prerecorded music, that would revamp -- and homogenize -- radio stations across the United States.
Under the Drake-Chenault formula, jocks on radio would stop conversing about things in their community -- be it a sock-hop or a high school game -- and provide more insight, like "more hits more often," more often.
Drake's movement led to the consultant-heavy influence on radio. Eventually it led to the end of disc jockeys altogether in many radio stations, replaced by automation and large reel-to-reel tapes instead, all bearing the Drake-Chenault logo. Machines couldn't rebel the way disc jockeys could.
Funeral services are incomplete. But a fitting tribute would be a words-free service. Just play the music.
Farewell, Woolworth's
Posted at 1:46 PM on November 26, 2008
by Bob Collins
(7 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
No matter where they live in the country, anyone over the age of 50 can tell you what used to be in this building. It was an F.W. Woolworth five and dime. All the stores used the same weird brick color, few windows, except on the first floor, that housed a spectacle of consumer wants in its day. In my town, I grew up with a five-and-dime tri-fecta -- a Woolworth's, next to a W.T. Grant's, across the street from an S.S. Kresge (the forerunner of KMart). Of course, they're all gone now, along with the 10-cent hot dog and the fish department.
Why is this in the news? Woolworth's in downtown St. Paul closed in 1993. Because the big story in the UK today is Woolworth's is going under, and the big story on this side of the Atlantic is that people are finding out there still is a Woolworth's.
The British government today refused to intervene to prop up the retailer, which is a descendant of the F.W. Woolworth chain, but has been separate since 1982.
Still, the news brings back memories and prompted a stop at the Seventh Place location in St. Paul where I found the last remnants of the "get lost" spirit that the doomed retailer possessed in its latter days.
.
Miriam Makeba and the power of music
Posted at 12:18 PM on November 10, 2008
by Bob Collins
(0 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
NPR's All Things Considered tonight will air a tribute to Miriam Makeba. the South African singer and anti-apartheid activist who died this morning after a performance in Italy. She was 76.
Let's not wait for it.
True to her nature, she was at a concert against organized crime in Italy when she had a heart attack.
Says the Guardian:
As the first black South African to win international stardom, Makeba performed alongside the likes of Harry Belafonte, Nina Simone and Dizzy Gillespie in the US. Fusing township melodies with jazz ballads, she sang for world leaders from President John F Kennedy to Nelson Mandela, who led the tributes today, describing Makeba as "South Africa's first lady of song".
Here's a performance with Paul Simon:
Her music was banned in South Africa and she was forced into exile for three decades until Nelson Mandela, now 91, asked her to come home.
Her career was starting to take off in America until she married Stokeley Carmichael of the Black Panthers. "She was in immediate trouble with the FBI and all her American concerts and recording contracts were cancelled," according to the Times Online.
Like South Africa, the FBI realized the power of music. They couldn't stop it.
John W. Ripley, 1939-2008
Posted at 6:59 AM on November 4, 2008
by Bob Collins
(0 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
I had never heard of John W. Ripley until this morning. Apparently, I'm not alone.
"He's the most revered war hero no one's ever heard of," Fred Schultz, senior editor of Naval History Magazine, told the New York Times in Mr. Ripley's obituary today.
It was Easter 1972 when 20,000 North Vietnamese troops and 200 tanks were heading for the South. Only a bridge separated the force from Ripley and 600 South Vietnamese soldiers. So Ripley blew up the bridge in a fashion we weren't interested in reading about in 1972.
Going back and forth for three hours while under fire, Captain Ripley swung hand over hand along the steel I-beams beneath the bridge, securing himself between girders and placing crates holding a total of 500 pounds of TNT in a diagonal line from one side of the structure to the other. The I-beam wings were just wide enough to form pathways along which he could slide the boxes.
When the boxes were in place on the bridge, Captain Ripley attached blasting caps to detonate the TNT, then connected them with a timed-fuse cord that eventually extended hundreds of feet.
"He had to bite down on the blasting caps to attach them to the fuses," John Grider Miller, author of "The Bridge at Dong Ha," said on Monday. "If he bit too low on the blasting cap, it could come loose; if he bit too high, it could blow his head apart."
Captain Ripley bit safely, and the timed-fuse cord gave him about half an hour to clamber off the bridge. Moments later, his work paid off with a shock wave that tossed him into the air but otherwise left him unharmed.
Through the miracle of YouTube, we're left with Ripley's story from Ripley himself.
"Saigon would probably have been lost in 1972 but for Ripley," said retired Marine Corps Col. John Grider Miller, author of "The Bridge at Dong Ha", in today's Washington Post.
Studs Terkel. 1912-2008
Posted at 5:49 PM on October 31, 2008
by Bob Collins
(4 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
It was only two days ago that Mary Lucia and I were talking about her favorite interviews. Studs Terkel was #1 on her -- and lot of other people's -- list. He died on Friday.
We're luck enough here at MPR that he made a few visits. The format of the audio is RealAudio, but perhaps you'll enjoy a last listen to an American icon.
12/8/05 - Here's Mary's interview. "Who else could make falling down the stairs such a funny story," she told me.
8/11/05 - Tom Crann talked with Terkel about music. He was one of the people to recognize the genius of Bob Dylan early on.
2/10/06 - MPR's Midday presented this collection of interviews with Studs Terkel.
Have we seen the last of the Delta Queen?
Posted at 8:36 AM on October 22, 2008
by Bob Collins
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
The Delta Queen, the quintessential American fixture on the Mississippi River, dies at the end of the month when an exemption that allowed it to travel the river from St. Paul to New Orleans expires.
What's behind its demise? It's either a public safety issue -- the ship is made of wood -- or it's a payback to a union from an influential Minnesota congressman.
The New York Times tackles the issue today but doesn't answer the question as it documents the Delta Queen's last scheduled visit to Cincinnati on the Ohio River.
Rep. James Oberstar, who chairs the House Infrastructure and Transportation Committee, is refusing to allow a vote on an exemption allowing the steamboat to continue. Oberstar, the Times says, cites a Coast Guard evaluation that the ship is a "fire hazard."
But Capt. Erik Christensen, chief of the Coast Guard's office of vessel activity, denies that characterization.
The newspaper story suggests Oberstar is sinking the ship at the behest of the Seafarers International Union, which represented the boat crew until a new owner forced the union off the steamboat. The union is a campaign contributor to Oberstar's re-election.
The Queen's supporters have tried video to help save it, but it never "went viral."
Politics aside, here's a nice multimedia slideshow of the Delta Queen, produced last year.
End of an era
Posted at 8:18 AM on October 15, 2008
by Bob Collins
(10 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
The two announced today the last show will air on December 11. "It's part of the natural order of things," Dale announced on the air this morning.
"I checked my driver's license and found it was almost time to retire," Jim Ed said. And so he will.
Dale said he's "been offered the opportunity to find something else at MPR."
Gene Lourey
Posted at 9:31 AM on October 14, 2008
by Bob Collins
(3 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
The metro media gave pretty short shrift to the death of Gene Lourey, whose death I wrote about yesterday.
His was a life story waiting to be told, and today the Duluth News Tribune (registration possibly required) told it. It's as compelling a story as ever existed in Minnesota.
We newsies often think that the only stories are the big weighty world issue stories. Don't get me wrong, they're important. But people who raise a dozen kids, many of them adopted, become the "man behind the woman", and prove that you can run a successful business, provide a living wage for your employees, and give back to your small town community, is big news, too.
When I put out calls here for you to tell me about the interesting people you know living their lives, and leaving a mark, guys like Gene Lourey are the kind of people I'm talking about. I'm kicking myself today for not telling the story when I had the chance.
Update 10/14 10:42 a.m. - I very much appreciate Chuck Haga dropping me a note from Grand Forks, letting me know of a piece he wrote in the Star Tribune in 2006 about Gene Lourey.
The face of war
Posted at 12:51 PM on October 13, 2008
by Bob Collins
(3 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
The Bush administration's attempt to minimize photographs of the caskets of returning soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq has often made it difficult to capture the stark reality of war: People die and the hearts of loved ones ache.
No picture better captured this than the photograph MPR's Bob Kelleher took at the memorial service for Matt Lourey, a pilot who died in Iraq when his helicopter crashed near Baghdad in 2005.
Gene and Becky Lourey, a former state senator and candidate for governor, raised a dozen children in Finlayson, Minn. Gene Lourey died in his sleep over the weekend, according to John Blackshaw, the general counsel for Nemadji Research Corporation, the software and system analysis firm the Loureys own in Bruno, Minn.
He and his wife worked on the Humphrey presidential campaign in Minnesota, after they moved back to the state from Washington. Gene Lourey was a codebreaker for the National Security Agency, and then worked at the University of Minnesota.
Leroy Sievers, 1955-2008
Posted at 7:31 AM on August 18, 2008
by Bob Collins
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Health, Icons
Leroy Sievers died Friday of the cancer about which he's blogged for the last few years.
He made several appearance on MPR's Midmorning. This one in 2006, this one last November, and this one just last month, when he acknowledged his disease was gaining on him.
The last post on his blog came from his wife, Laurie Singer, last Thursday:
On any normal day, this would just be a really bad thunderstorm rumbling its way across the summer sky.
But it's not a normal day and the rumbling is more like the growl of a predator stalking its prey.
Leroy's cancer is making its move.
I guess we all knew this day would come. The day when his doctor would say the medicine needs to be stronger.
The day when I would need to be stronger still.
The thunderstorm has passed, but I can still hear the growl.
-- Laurie
Have you ever seen 954 (at last count) comments to a blog post before? Me neither.
Starbuck's closings
Posted at 2:24 PM on July 18, 2008
by Bob Collins
(9 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
For reasons I don't quite understand -- and which are probably an entire post of its own -- colleagues and friends have been sending me updates over the last few weeks whenever the whiff of a Starbuck's store closing is detected.
Operating under the assumption that they're more clued in than me on matters of popular culture, I'm pleased to pass along the official Starbuck's store closing list.
Twenty-six stores are closing in Minnesota. Ignore the fact the company spelled Minneapolis wrong.
The closings leaves Walgreen's as the most overbuilt chain now.
Goodbye, Bozo
Posted at 4:50 PM on July 3, 2008
by Bob Collins
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Filed under: Icons
The Associated Press must've realized today that there' simply no dignified way to write an obituary when the deceased is Bozo the Clown.
Take the last line of this paragraph, for example, in the obituary for Larry Harmon, who died today at 83:
Although not the first person to play Bozo, Harmon took on the famous clown's persona and, as an entrepreneur, he licensed the character to others, particularly TV stations. Those stations then recruited their own Bozos for local shows.
(The AP rewrote the last line for the morning papers.)
Still going
Posted at 1:52 PM on July 3, 2008
by Bob Collins
(15 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
It's the slowest news day in a traditionally slow news week, which allows me more time to think deep thoughts. Today's deep thought: How many things that you owned in 1977 are still working and still useful to you?
If you were born after 1977, then think back to the deepest recesses of your memory for a similar object.
I just moved a couch that I bought in 1983, out of my house and into my son's new apartment after convincing him that an orange-dominant, all-plaid couch never goes out of style. That's about as far back as I can go to find a useful object.
1983 is six years after this country launched two Voyager space probes, which originally were intended to fly past Jupiter and Saturn, but worked so well that their mission now is to reach interstellar space, which is the space in a galaxy that is not occupied by planets or stars.
In 1977, the picture of the year was Annie Hall. Hotel California was the top song, and the Oakland Raiders beat the Minnesota Vikings in the Super Bowl, 32-14.
Voyager II was launched the same year Apple Computer was incorporated, and the Apple II computer was unveiled. Tandy's TRS-80 made its debut, the Atari 2600 game system was first sold, and the Concorde made its first regularly scheduled flight from London to New York, and this baby was the Motor Trend Car of the Year:
All of those things are now, for practical purposes, junk. And yet, there is Voyager, still functioning. And this week it taught us that the bubble of solar wind surrounding the solar system is not round, but has a squashed shape. It's an impressive thing, even though we admit to having no idea what it means or what its significance is.
Meanwhile, back on terra firma in 2008, the average lifespan of a cellphone is 14 months.
It's Pat!
Posted at 10:14 AM on July 3, 2008
by Bob Collins
(4 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
News Cut is in a nostalgic mood. It happens every time I read another story about vinyl LPs making a comeback, especially if it's accompanied by a picture of a record rack featuring albums, every one of which -- I think -- is in the News Cut vault (i.e. an unopened cardboard box in the crawl space under the stairs from at least three moves ago).
But this item in this morning's Worthington Daily Globe sealed the deal:
Pat Boone will present holiday concerts at 3 and 7 p.m. Dec. 6 at the Business, Arts and Recreation Center (BARC), 1012 Fifth Ave., Windom.
Tickets for the event are now on sale with all seating reserved.
Boone hit national fame in 1955 with his recording version of "Ain't That A Shame." He hit the national spotlight via his first television appearance singing on the "Ted Mack Amateur Hour." Pat Boone sold more records in the 1950s than any other artist except Elvis Presley. He has sold more than 45 million records and has charted 60 songs, 18 of which hit the Top 10.
Pat Boone? Is he still alive? Yes, and he's on a 50 year anniversary tour (aren't we all?), according to his Web site, which automatically plays him singing "Tears of a Clown." and -- if that's not enough to make your day, reports that there's a petition drive to get Pat Boone into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame.
The prospect of an evening checking out Pat Boone fans in Windom on a December evening during his 50 Year Anniversary Tour cannot be ignored.
Now the only thing left to make it a perfect entry into the holiday weekend is to stumble onto a Hot Rod race for pink slips on the way into work.
The end
Posted at 8:22 AM on June 28, 2008
by Bob Collins
(12 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
As planned, they dynamited the Xcel High Bridge plant smokestack in St. Paul on Saturday morning (previous thoughts on this here). News Cut readers are sending images and video. Use this form to send images.
You know how I am by now, right? I like to turn the camera around and photograph the people photographing and watching. So if you've got one of those, feel free to send those along too.
Nathan Levine of St. Paul gets the award for being the first to send an image:
And Mark Jungmann, one of my colleagues, followed seconds behind with the first video:
It fell gracefully, almost beautifully. And in Mark's video above, the little puff of smoke coming out of the stack just before it crashed seemed its way of saying, "so long." That's the way I prefer to look at it, anyway.
Teresa Boardman of St. Paul Real Estate blog fame, has sent a series...
"Oh The dust! People ran," Teresa says.
"The earth trembled..."
.. and now they've got a mess to clean up.
From a different vantage point, Luke Albrecht says, "The shockwave was amazing from just across Shepard Road."
Tracy Anderson of St. Paul took a series of images. Click on the image to see them in all of their implosive glory.
I'm getting some e-mailed links to posted video.
A smokestack is just a smokestack?
Posted at 1:20 PM on June 27, 2008
by Bob Collins
(9 Comments)
Filed under: Icons, Surveys and trivia
Isn't that a gorgeous picture? Teresa Boardman of the St. Paul Real Estate blog took it (used by permission). As I mentioned the other day, Teresa is a supporter of the notion of preserving the smokestack at Xcel's High Bridge plant in St. Paul, the one they're going to blow up on Saturday morning.
"It's just a smokestack," someone said in the comments section to the above post. True, enough. To appreciate the High Bridge smokestack, you have to think of it as representing something other than what it was -- the dumping ground for pollution from a coal-burning power plant.
Smokestacks, though, represent industrialization, which used to be considered a good thing.
Cleveland, when it built Jacob's Field (I refuse to call it Progressive Field), understood that by designing the light towers to portray smokestacks.
The smokestacks in Cleveland fouled the air in a city where they still joke about the time the river caught on fire, and yet they symbolized something greater.
That, I presume, is what Teresa sees in the smokestack, which is in its final hours as one of the dominating features of the St. Paul skyline.
Which brings us to.... the St. Paul skyline.
A skyline should make a statement about the city to all those who are about to enter it. Absent a symbol of the city's past (along with a demolished brewery from some years ago), what statement will the St. Paul skyline make now?
On the way in from the eastern front today, I noticed the Capitol is now partly obscured from sections of I-94, by the addition to Regions Hospital. We have a bank building with the big red "1" still dominating the skyline. St. Paul: A good place to get sick and cash a check.
There is the Cathedral of St. Paul, of course. It's a gorgeous building, to be sure. But it somehow stands apart from the downtown skyline, as if it's in this city, but not of this city.
Tomorrow, by the way, News Cut will be accepting your pictures of the demolition of the smokestack. We'll be providing video from this end. Use this form to send me your favorite shot. And if you want to provide some prose about the stack, I'll be happy to include that, too.
Update Reader Sean Garrick has sent a photo he took Wednesday evening.
George Carlin, 1937-2008
Posted at 7:31 AM on June 23, 2008
by Bob Collins
(8 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
This is probably a generational thing on my part (As a colleague reminded me last week when we were discussing Steve Martin and she informed me he used to do stand-up played banjo), but I like to think you can grab any 5 people you run across today and talk for an hour about George Carlin, who died on Sunday at 71.
Entertainment Weekly said Carlin "emerged in the 1970s with a style much more reflective of the times, pushing into more sensitive areas of social observation and language, a favorite topic of his over the years. Most notably, his recorded routine 'Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television'' became the center of a landmark Supreme Court case.'
Carlin, it's fair to say, pushed the boundaries. Nothing was off-limits, as this rant on religion once showed:
The Divine Plan. Long time ago, God made a Divine Plan. Gave it a lot of thought, decided it was a good plan, put it into practice. And for billions and billions of years, the Divine Plan has been doing just fine. Now, you come along, and pray for something. Well suppose the thing you want isn't in God's Divine Plan? What do you want Him to do? Change His plan? Just for you? Doesn't it seem a little arrogant? It's a Divine Plan. What's the use of being God if every run-down shmuck with a two-dollar prayerbook can come along and **** up Your Plan?
For baby-boomers, though, Carlin was troubling to us in his age. It wasn't for anything he said -- or didn't -- it was for what he'd become: a elderly curmudgeon. As a young comedian, he was a refreshing poke in the eye to The Establishment. In his age, he'd become another cranky old man who wanted kids off his lawn. He was still funny, but when we were young, he seemed to be making fun of someone else -- The Man, perhaps. As we aged, he was making fun of us.
(Strong language warning in this video)
It was a heck of a run.
Here's a neat slideshow from the New York Times. As you watch it, you'll want to poke someone near you and tell them your favorite George Carlin bit. Feel free to share it below. (But keep it clean!)
Right stuff. Wrong gender
Posted at 5:00 PM on June 18, 2008
by Bob Collins
(4 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
Word comes today that Janet Christine Dietrich has died. She, and 12 other women, underwent -- and passed -- the same "physical and psychological assessments as the men who became immortalized as America's first astronauts," according to an article this afternoon in the San Francisco Chronicle.
While the women waited for the next phase of their program in July 1961, the testing was halted without warning or explanation.
It wasn't until Sally Ride went into space 20 years later that America learned what it could have learned 20 years earlier.
(h/t: Michael Wells)
Tim Russert, 1950-2008
Posted at 2:43 PM on June 13, 2008
by Bob Collins
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
Tim Russert, the host of NBC's Meet the Press, collapsed at work today and died.
Jim McKay, 1921-2008
Posted at 6:33 PM on June 7, 2008
by Bob Collins
Filed under: Icons
You want strange? I'll give you strange. Hours before Jim McKay died Saturday, I was listening to the Bob Costas show on a local radio station, with veteran CBS Sports host Jim Nance talking about Jim McKay. "I wonder if he's still alive," I said to myself. "There's a guy who deserves a great send-off when he goes."
An hour later, he went.
McKay was the voice of sports when there were only three TV stations to watch. He gave us, of course, ABC's Wide World of Sports and most people today can't begin to understand the world he opened up to us each Saturday. Never heard of that? How about "the agony of defeat"? He wrote it.
But McKay, at least in my mind, is best remembered for this line: "they're all gone." That's how we learned that the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, who were taken hostage by the Black September group, had not survived an attempt to rescue them. That day, McKay -- by himself it seems, although I'm sure he had more than a little help -- was our lone link to the unfolding tragedy. We sat and watched him on the edge of our seats for hours.
His work that day was every bit as memorable as Walter Cronkite taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes while telling us President Kennedy was dead.
There are a lot better writers than me to tell you about the life of Jim McKay. About all I can do is pass along that the United States lost one of its biggest legends.
There's some really great raw footage on YouTube available here. They are parts of an interview McKay (whose real name was McManus) did for Archives of American Television.
It says a lot about the ABC Network, for whom McKay toiled, that its Web site reveals "nothing found" when entering Jim McKay in the search field. He practically built the network.
Lowering the ceiling
Posted at 12:36 PM on May 27, 2008
by Bob Collins
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Icons
While patrolling for information on suburban home construction practices, I discovered the coming end to a suburban icon -- the high ceiling.
In today's edition, the San Jose Mercury News says the big homebuilders -- including a few that have created cities out of cornfields around here -- have given up on the design:
Major home builders including Pulte Homes, Toll Brothers and K. Hovnanian say more buyers are looking for the maximum number of rooms and square footage for their money, so they're opting to have a loft, bedroom or playroom built in the air space where the plans call for a double-height ceiling. "People don't want it anymore," says Ken Gancarczyk, head of builder services for KB Home. The big Los Angeles-based builder has stopped offering double-height great rooms in response to falling demand.
The article also introduces us to a new malady: "high ceiling fatigue."
Update 5:39 I alluded in a post yesterday to today's suburban home construction and how it can't stand up to a tornado. Suburban home construction isn't a matter of being shoddy, per se, but it is done more cheaply now than it was decades ago. Why? So we can afford them and so they can be built quickly. But the reason they go up so fast, is also the reason they come down so fast.
MPR's Tim Nelson takes a look at this question in a story that aired on All Things Considered tonight.
Darkness on the edge of the E Street Band
Posted at 10:33 AM on April 19, 2008
by Bob Collins
(3 Comments)
Filed under: Arts, Icons
"Danny sends his best," Hall of Fame rocker Bruce Springsteen said at the beginning of his concert in St. Paul last month, "and he hopes to be back with us later in the tour."
But you had the feeling it was a comment borne more of hope than reality.
And, mostly, it was. On Thursday, Danny Federici, 58, who goes as far back with Springsteen as a non-blood relative can, died of skin cancer.
Says the Times:
Mr. Federici and Mr. Lopez started their own band and invited Mr. Springsteen to become a member. "This skinny guy with long hair and a ratty T-shirt was an incredible guitar player and a good singer, so we asked him to join," Mr. Federici once said.
One of the most compelling tributes to Federici, was written by local blogger Mitch Berg, on his blog "Shot in the Dark."
I'm no music expert, to be sure, so I am fascinated by the reminder of the extent to which a note soars above a word.
Chris Phillips, editor of the North Carolina-based Backstreets, a Springsteen fanzine, said Federici added to the mystique of the band."I've been listening to the live version of "You're Missing,' " Phillips said, "and it's a fine example of Max (Weinberg) hits the snare and Bruce points it over to Danny. And it's not that anything jawbreakingly technical is going on, but those notes Danny plays say as much or more than the lyrics. Sometimes he would bring that Jersey Shore sunshine part of the song, or maybe even some circus tones, but his music also was haunting at times, bringing in a whole different color to a song.
A video of Federici's last appearance with Springsteen -- four days after the St. Paul concert -- is on the Springsteen Web site.
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