News Day

Get thee to a cemetery — it’s Decoration Day again. Whether you observe the federal holiday on Monday or the traditional date (Sunday, May 31), this is the week to take flowers to cemeteries, brush the grass clippings or dust from grave markers, and talk about the dead as you poke plastic flowers into the rain-softened earth. Continue reading →

Remember Professor Shannon Gibney at MCTC? She’s been officially un-reprimanded! Continue reading →

UPDATED 5/23 — see below:

Race in the news this week: long story from Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic, and shorter story from Nekima Levy-Pounds in the Strib, taking on White Privilege: The Elephant in Minnesota’s Living Room. Coates, in a tour de force, makes a case for reparations —”Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.” Continue reading →

Computers, wi fi, the internet — our schools are lagging far behind what they need in these tools for 21st century life and education. A series of articles from the Hechinger Report outline where we are falling short. Continue reading →

Guilty and charged, NPR’s devastating series on the criminal injustice system, describes the insanity of charging court fees to indigent defendants and then sending them to jail for failing to pay. Continue reading →

Jill Abramson, executive editor of the New York Times, was fired on May 9. Why? While neither Abramson nor publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr. gave much explanation, plenty of other people jumped in to offer explanations that centered on gender. Continue reading →

Giving unsolicited advice is silly, but just for today, I’m going to do it anyway. Graduates, especially, probably have much better things to do than reading my advice, such as finishing those final papers, basking in the sunshine, or enjoying free food at a succession of graduation parties. No matter. I’m going to unleash my hard-earned wisdom on the world whether anyone reads it or not. Continue reading →

With rental rates rising and transit-oriented development booming along the almost-ready-for-prime-time Central Corridor, what’s happening to poor people in the Twin Cities? Two recent articles sound distress signals, but there’s a ray of hope from the legislature. Continue reading →

Ron Meador — longtime and trusted environmental journalist — reported today on the latest study on honey bee die-offs, and the news is not good. The Harvard study adds to the evidence that neonicotinoid insecticides are the chief, and perhaps the only, factor in the die-offs known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Moreover, the neonicotinoids cause harm at a lower level than previously believed, and persist in soil and water for years. Continue reading →

UPDATED 5/22/2014 – A patriotic criminal, a fearful daughter, and a fraud preying on fear: three stories show three views of just how crazy our immigration system is. Continue reading →