Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/author/mary-treacy/page/12/)
Please check out my blog at:http://marytreacy.wordpress.com One time librarian and former executive director of the Minnesota Coalition on Government Information I am currently a very happy independent consultant exploring untold options. My passion is to contribute the bit I am able to an informed and engaged community in which everyone's story can be told - and heard. This means using a dynamic array of media - newspapers, websites, television, radio, social media and whatever comes on line tomorrow. It means being willing to plumb the depths of a story - and it means having the courtesy, if not the intellectual curiosity, to learn from others. My sons are both enmeshed in the information maze. Rick Birmingham is the Manager of IT Services at MAP for Nonprofits. Steve Birmingham works his magic on the public access terminals in Hennepin County Library. Grandson Will Birmingham, 19 months, loves food, slides, puddles and books - in that order. A graduate of what was then the College of St. Catherine I went on to get a MS in Library Science. Truth to tell, I didn't work in real libraries that much, but I did work 18 years as Director of Metronet, a collaboration of nearly 600 public, academic, corporate, medical, school and other libraries and information services in the TC's. In recent years I've worked in a number of consulting positions, most notably the Sisters of St. Joseph Ministries Foundation. As a hapless volunteer I've worked with a host of nonprofits including the Minnesota Coalition on Government Information, Learning in Style, the DFL Education Foundation, the Village Farmers Market among others. I've also written several pieces for TCDP. In recent weeks I've been joined the throngs of scribe wannabes by launching my own little blog called Poking Around With Mary - because poking around is what I do a good deal of the time.
Charles Van Doren once observed that “Because the world is radically new, the ideal encyclopedia should be radical too.” MNopedia, the digital encyclopedia of all things Minnesota – significant people, places, and events – deserves the “radical” appellation on several scores. Continue Reading
When I first read Gordon Parks’ A Choice of Weapons I was working at the District of Columbia Teachers College, 13th and Harvard Northwest in Washington, DC, the epi-center of the DC riots of the late 60’s. His experience as a teen in St. Paul’s Rondo area was so near and yet so far. I had graduated from St. Joseph’s Academy, a five minute walk to Rondo (I know because we had to trek to the old Hallie Q. Brown for phy ed…) Though I knew where Rondo was, I didn’t know Rondo. I had no sense of what it meant to grow up there. Continue Reading
No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it. We must learn to see the world anew. -Albert Einstein Continue Reading
“With a smile and a profile!” – That’s how my bus driver greeted passengers at the start of his mid-day shift. Continue Reading
For several reasons, most notably the glorious days of an ideal Minnesota autumn, I’ve been walking a lot in recent weeks. Continue Reading
Thomas Maltman and Peter Geye have more than a little in common. Continue Reading
Nearly 25 years ago the fledgling Minnesota Coalition on Government Information adopted the mission to advocate for systemic change in policies and practices that support open government at the sta Continue Reading
It is a peculiar irony that the most famous of all the Mohawks – arguably the most well-known nation of the Rotinonhson:ni (Iroquois) Confederacy – is a 17th century woman who, by her v Continue Reading
Friday, August 3, marks the opening of a significant exhibit of contemporary Americna Indian artists. The exhibit “DED Unk’unpi — We Are Here” is part of the statewide commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862.