Three items on a snow day in Minnesota

1.  Robert Reich, on March 15, 2026, shared a remarkable column by Twin Cities native Tom Friedman about the example demonstrated by the citizens of Minneapolis particularly in recent troubled times.   I hope the column is accessible to all.  It is long and very worth reading, wherever you happen to be from.  It applies to everyone, everywhere. https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/sunday-thought-2-the-legacy-of-these?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email.

In the event the above link is not accessible, the Friedman column is from the New York Times for March 15, 2026.  Here is the NYT share link which may work.:

From The New York Times:

Why Minnesota Matters More Than Iran for America’s Future

Moms donating their breast milk to strangers, dads taking someone else’s kids to school: Minnesotans showed a basic human impulse to look out for their neighbors.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/15/opinion/columnists/minneapolis-ice-trump-neighbor.html?smid=em-share

2.  Paul Krugman is an authority on Economics, and his substack columns, mostly behind a paywall for subscribers only, have been great seminars on the reality of world energy policy.  They are invaluable to help understand the facts and the nuances behind the news,

3.  In yesterdays post I included two “snips” from the 1978 Encyclopedia Britannica about Iran’s people, and its oil resource. It you didn’t look at it, here is the same link: Iran 1978 Britannica.  As the article notes, Iran is a diverse society politically and multiple religions, though dominated by a single religious denomination.

It should be concerning to us that in our own country there is a substantial movement advocating  its brand of political domination “Christian nationalism”.  May it fail, miserably.  Of course, there are other similar examples with other faiths.  Power corrupts.