On the afternoon of November 4, 1995 – it was a Saturday – I was on the way to afternoon Mass at my then-Parish, St. Peter Claver in St. Paul MN. Nearing the church, an announcement came over the car radio: Israel Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had been shot. I passed the word along to […]
Likely since Garrison Keillor’s fertile imagination invented Lake Wobegon in the 1970s, he’s had the mantra: “where all the women are strong, the men are good looking and the children are above-average.” On has to wonder where those “above average” children end up…. Today’s paper reveals that my local Congresswoman, Michele Bachmann, is to be […]
This is the third post of three on this topic. The previous posts are Sep 26 and 28. Sometimes there are valuable lessons to be learned from unexpected persons or from groups that have,deservedly or not, been labelled in a negative manner. I thought of such a possibility on Saturday. The first thing I noticed, […]
This is the second of three posts on this topic. The others are Sep 26 and 29, 2009. In #93, Saturday, September 26, I commented on an impressive gathering I had just attended. In the room there was great energy and interest. I’ve been to such meetings in the past. People are all charged up, […]
This is the first of three posts on this topic. The others are Sep 28 and 29, 2009. This past summer I met a young organizer who made a presentation on health care policy. She did an impressive job, I felt, and we shared e-mail addresses. Time passed by, and a few weeks ago she […]
From Moderator: Peter Barus is a great friend, going back a half dozen years or so. When first I knew him, he was an out-east big city guy, a computer specialist, an excellent trainer and all around good guy. Two or three years ago or so he and his spouse moved into the very rural […]
Years ago, in some unremembered periodical, I recall seeing two seemingly identical black and white photos. Both were of some stern looking Communists during Stalin’s time: all men wearing suits. The casual observer would have seen no difference in the photos. But the caption pointed the reader to a particular place in the photo. In […]
Note responses section at end of this post. Yesterday afternoon I was sitting in a clinic waiting room while one of my kids was having an eye appointment. I happened to pick up the latest issue of Time magazine (Sep 17, 09), whose cover story is the right-wing flamethrower (he and his large following would […]
This morning, at the State Capitol Rotunda in St. Paul, I’m honored to read two brief tributes to WWII veterans which appear in the 2009 edition of the MN Blue Book, being released today. I saw a flier on “Vote in Honor of a Veteran” in the summer of 2008, and wrote the two tributes […]
See comment at end of post Annelee Woodstrom is 83 years young today, and what a remarkable 83 years it has been. She’s one of my role models. What a life. What an example. We saw her reading from her book “War Child, Growing Up in Adolf Hitler’s Germany” one week ago today. We were […]