September 5 I footnoted the following suggestion in another post: Yesterday, came a link to a 1978 commencement speech at Harvard by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn . I printed out the 16 pages, read them, went to the “Reflections on Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard Address” from October 26, 2020, and also looked up Solzhenitsyn’s wiki-bio. This is not light […]
Friday I was at a meeting of the Roseville MN Optimists (Roseville Optimists ). I’m not a member, but came as a guest, interested because the program was a group of Ukraine students, here for a short visit under the auspices of YouLEAD (Youth Leadership Engagement and Development Program: YouLEAD. This was a large meeting […]
See important postnote #2 at the end of this post. The ‘meat’ of this post is the link in the next line. But see the postnotes as well. This link, Peace Race (1) (3), opens to a very interesting 8-page commentary on a very noteworthy citizen initiative through the 1960s calling attention to, and mobilizing […]
25 years ago – it was April 20, 1999, I was returning from a meeting and a bulletin came on the car radio about a school shooting in Littleton, Colorado. I paid attention: my son and family lived in Littleton. The day and week unfolded. The incident was at Columbine High School. I had no […]
POSTNOTE Sep 23: Final post related to November 5 here (Sep 20, 2024) Related: An excellent commentary from John Rash in Saturday Minnesota Star Tribune on “The facts on Afghanistan from a Minnesotan who was at the center of it all.” Here is the article in pdf: John Rash 8 31 24 STrib Afghan. Rash […]
“Never underestimate a public school teacher.” Tim Walz, acceptance speech at the DNC Convention 2024. Tuesday after Labor Day is the traditional start to the school year in Minnesota. While there are some deviations from that norm, most pre-K-12 kids will be back in school on Tuesday. This means approximately 50,000,000 youngsters. Another 5 million […]
A longtime friend of mine alerted me to the following very long article about the Mendota Tribe in the August 18, 2024 St. Paul Pioneer Press. I prefer to simply let the article speak for itself. The locus of this tribe, Mendota Mdewakonton Dakota Tribal Community, is not far from where I live, in the […]
Monday I went to the Minnesota State Fair. This has been an annual event for me for many years. Nothing fancy. In most years I’ve gone by pubic transportation, had a defined ‘circuit’, stayed maybe three hours, then back home. This day it was probably 80 by the time I arrived at the Fairgrounds about […]
“Do Something.” This phrase says it all about the next 70 or so days. NOTE to non-voters, independents et al at end of this post. First: 1) Voting information for any state: VOTE.GOV 2) A brief and very interesting history of political conventions comes from Heather Cox Richardson for August 22, 2024; and her August […]
Later today the Democratic Convention convenes in Chicago. At the end of this post are two links which seem appropriate to the Convention and coming days. * Early Sunday morning came a response to my “Political We” post from my long-time friend in England, SAK. The response, also at the aforementioned post, is at the […]