Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/category/opinion/voices/page/3/)
I’ve never been a member of a union. In fact, I was raised in an anti-union family. My father-in-law broke a union picket line as a management-level worker before I was married. My lens was always from the management side of the labor equation.
As a soldier who served in Iraq I appreciate any effort to tell the story of those who serve there, especially the truly brave souls who serve in Explosive Ordnance Disposal. The problem here is that it appears that the makers of the movie The Hurt Locker made no effort to portray what is really going on there. When a movie about a war is this inaccurate, it tells the military: “What you’re actually doing isn’t interesting enough to make a movie, but we’re cool with using people’s good will towards you to generate interest in our movie.”Here are just a few of the most glaring inaccuracies in this movie. The EOD team travels everywhere alone. No US military vehicle travels anywhere alone in Iraq. Continue Reading
by Steve Clemens | September 11, 2009 • It wasn’t the usual group of criminal defendants in Hennepin County’s Courtroom 14D this week where Judge Lloyd Zimmerman presided. Minnesota judges are used to facing defendants who have been charged with drunk driving, burglary, assault, and even murder. Continue Reading
Margaret Virum taught in the Minneapolis Public Schools nearly 50 years. She has been listed among the most prestigious alumni from the University of Minnesota’s College of Education and received many honors for her innovative teaching before her death one year ago. Rebecca Bauer is an English teacher at St. Paul Central High School
After becoming a teacher 16 years ago, I wrote Miss Virum a letter telling her how much it had meant to me to be a first and second grader in her class and the many ways in which her teaching had not only influenced me as a reader, writer and future teacher, but also how her classroom was a safe haven from a home that had often been in turmoil during those years. I recalled for her the many memories I had of her creative projects and the ways she blended experiential learning and individualized instruction so that each student had an opportunity to feel valued and visible in her classroom. Continue Reading
More and more it’s less the usual clients in homeless shelters—chronic ex-cons, shiftless drifters, drug dealers and such—added to this mix these days are legitimate folk, regular men and women—some may even have jobs—who lost their home because they just don’t pull down enough scratch to make end’s meet. After all, it’s hard to pay even affordable rents (considering what passes for affordable) much less electricity, a phone (which is no longer a luxury) and, even if you supplement with charity pantries and soup kitchens, that little, indispensable thing called food. So, there they are, flat on their behinds in somebody’s facility. What they are also in is an environment they don’t know and one that the veteran homeless know like the back of their hands, especially those who’ve opted to make homeless shelters a lifestyle, instead of a place from which to eventually rejoin the world. And in the Twin Cities, where there’s practically as many shelters as there are Dunn Bros. Continue Reading
A decline in fourth quarter manufactured exports from Minnesota announced this week should give state officials and lawmakers pause about what the state is doing to help business grow our way out of the current recession. Such reflection isn’t likely, however. State policymakers are preoccupied weighing how to use federal economic recovery money to cover state budget shortfalls. We’re patching potholes, not building roads to the future. That became obvious on Tuesday when the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) released fourth quarter export data. Continue Reading
Is This Thing Working? Is This Thing On? By Steve Clemens. Continue Reading
I am sitting here on President’s Day, a day off of school, feeling guilty for taking time to write this column I promised to Minnesota 2020 months ago, because I still have 30 packets of research note cards to review for my ninth grade students and 120 commentaries to evaluate for my honors-level seniors. Actually, I guess I’m in pretty good shape-relatively. Truth is that these days I don’t feel like a very good teacher. I don’t have time to be. A recent study found the obvious, that good teachers are the most important ingredient in the education of a child. Continue Reading
Editor’s note: While the following is a work of fiction, it could become reality if we continue to neglect our colleges & universities. The piece is a guest commentary from November 24, 2039. In it, the author recounts the effect of more than 30 years of insufficient maintenance of the University of Minnesota by the state of Minnesota. My 95 years gives me the ability, and perhaps the obligation, to take the long view on the events of my lifetime. More than 30 years ago the I-35 Bridge over the Mississippi collapsed into the Mississippi River. Continue Reading
Massive layoffs. Families losing their health care, others losing their homes. Parents wondering how to send their kids to college, and senior citizens putting off retirement. We can’t pick up the paper or turn on the TV these days without hearing another story about how bad the economy is. The economic freefall has affected thousands of Minnesota families. Continue Reading