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History is

Local Columns

In case you don't know it, I am a history nerd. For a very long time, history has fascinated me. It reminds me that history made us, we make history, hopefully we leave a decent history for those to come. It's kind of like the ingredients in a bottle of wine — many ingredients and activities go into making the wine with the result of a special moment sipping it. When history comes to mine for me, it means we must preserve it, protect it and present it. In Minnesota, we preserve the history of wine by knowing that the first winery in the state began in 1973 and was the Alexis ...

The wonder of WPAs

Local Columns

From the rush of a buck moving under my perch in the low crook of a large tree along a vast slough, to a covey of sharptailed grouse rising on a grassy hillside, to the excitement of a flushing pheasant breaking its way out of the cane on a mid-December hunt, the countless opportunities ...

Uncovering war stories

Community Voices

The bulging white canvas bag arrived at my Nelson grandparents’ farmhouse in late February 1946. On one side is Grandpa’s address; on the other is scrawled “L.A. Nelson S1/c, U.S.S. Washington, 9th Div., FPO New York, NY.” Dad’s Navy uniforms had come home. My father, Leonard, ...

It's a cool name, but there's more to the story

Community Voices

I never got to meet Joe Cool before he died in 2018. I wish I had, because besides having a cool last name, he was … just a cool guy. Well, that’s my impression after hearing his son, Brad, talk about him. I also found a 2004 MPR news story on Joe Cool and his clothing store while ...

On the Porch

Local Columns

Sept. 11, 2026, marked the 25th anniversary of four terrorist attacks by Al-Qaeda, an Islamist extremist group, against the United States. The attacks began at 8:46 a.m. EST on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists crashed a hijacked commercial plane into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in ...