“History: 1) an account of what has happened; narrative; story; tale.” Websters New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 1979 edition July 8, about 6 p.m., I arrived at Bismarck ND, where I was to attend a French in America conference. My father was 100% French-Canadian, and I’d just completed a 500 page book on his family’s history, […]
Monday, July 12, was the six month anniversary of the catastrophic earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and area in Haiti. That same day, I spent a few hours helping my Uncle and Aunt, out at their now-empty North Dakota farm. (They’ve lived in a nearby town for several years – an option they don’t like, but […]
Mr. Bigelow lives in border country Texas and grew up in rural Colorado. He responds, here, to one of those ubiquitous basically anti-immigrant – if you’re not “white like me” rants that whiz around the internet – anonymous hate speech. “Yes, I have some different thoughts on immigration than those in the letter you sent. […]
We had just settled in along the July 4 Parade Route in Afton MN, but I decided to walk back to the car to get rainwear, just in case. It was a short walk up the street, going up hill, and I was on the left side of the street when I noticed something very, […]
Dr. Johan van Parys is Director of Liturgy at Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, and the lead article in the Sunday June 27 church bulletin was this powerful commentary. Thoughts on Forgiveness Paris is one of those magical cities. No matter what time of year one visits, the city has a way of capturing […]
Monday of this week I delivered a 500 page family history to the printer. The history is of my Dad’s French-Canadian family, in North America since the early 1600s. That’s a lot of history. The 500 pages can only be a summary. The last photo I selected and inserted was the one below, the dedication […]
Overnight came a bulletin from the Minnesota Nurses Association, announcing a tentative agreement between Twin Cities Nurses and the Hospitals which employ them. The vote is next week, on the same day the strike was to begin. It is very good news, for everyone involved. Having spent a long career as a teachers union representative […]
A recent e-mail conversation on my own e-list has been focusing on the general question: “poll [the others on the list] and see which branch of the War Party they belong to: the Republicans or Democrats…?” So, I asked the question, and got a range of responses. If only things were so simple as labeling […]
After publishing #202, a long-time friend, a liberal Democrat, wrote with her comment on the post: “Maybe Republican was written too many times [some readers] don’t want to hear it.” The comment caused me to use my word search function at the blog, to see in how many posts, of over 200, the words “Democrat/Democrats” […]
Thursday afternoon a friend stopped by to visit. He’d been to a wake at a nearby mortuary, paying respects to a long-time colleague who, he said, had few friends and almost no family. A kindly gesture. We visited. Jim is a fairly recent retiree from a career position in state government. I suppose somebody could […]