My wife’s many-years-long friend, also named Cathy, passed away last week. A few hours ago we attended her funeral, a small quiet occasion in the chapel of a St. Paul Church where her parents – both still alive and in attendance last night – became engaged to be married 70 years ago. Cathy was, the […]
This post is intended as an invitation to learn and to act. Yesterday, Congress recessed for approximately six weeks to go “home” to wherever. Each of it’s 435 members represents approximately 700,000 people living somewhere in the United States. We’re one of the few congressional districts which has, as permanent residents, two congresspeople: the former […]
This week I upgraded my anti-virus program to include more bells and whistles, including asking it to check up my back-up file – the separate “file cabinet” that keeps a digital “copy” of whatever comes into, or is generated by, my computer. I had no idea what to expect. After two days, at about 4 […]
Minnesota Orchestra and Osmo Vanska February 3, 2013, performing a portion of their Grammy nominated performance, here. July 23 and 24 I did two posts related to “Detroit” (see them here and here.) I put “Detroit” in quotes, since the word itself has become a useful hate word, a label: “look at THEM, failures…” The […]
Yes, comments are solicited. After writing the post on Detroit, yesterday, my friend, Michelle, a community activist in my town, wrote some comments which I felt were very pertinent, among which was the following, with an important beginning caveat: Michelle: I don’t want people to think I put blame at the feet of the African […]
MORE: See followup post July 24, 2013, here. For a long well-written summary of “Detroit” and (alternatively) “Pittsburgh”, check this. (I’ve been to Detroit several times between the 1960s and 1987; to Pittsburgh several times from the 1960s to 2011.) In yesterday’s e-mails came a long and hideous recitation of the problems in “Detroit”. It […]
A while ago I was researching answers to a 1957 North Dakota test for high school Juniors and Seniors about North Dakota History, Geography and Government. Reviewing a 1963 Geography text by Bernt L. Wills I found a number of poems about North Dakota outdoors written by Soren Kolstoe, a name familiar to me from […]
At the end of this post is the link to President Obama’s talk on the importance and implications of the Martin/Zimmerman case, and other links and comments. * July 6, enroute from Sykeston to Jamestown ND, I saw a huge American flag to the right, and a sign leading to Historic Ft. Seward just above […]
Anne M. Dunn is a long-time and wonderful friend, an Anishinabe-Ojibwe grandmother storyteller and published author. She makes her home in rural Deer River, MN, on the Leech Lake Reservation. She can be reached at twigfigsATyahooDOTcom. She has three previous posts at Outside the Walls. You can read them all here. If you have an […]
UPDATE: This post, reposted on the Woodbury Patch, has thus far attracted 29 comments pro and con. * For anyone interested in a much longer summary of news after the George Zimmerman verdict Saturday, here is an interesting recap of reactions entitled “Insufficient Justice”. Yesterday, my friend, Greg, a retired Prosecutor, asked me if I […]