The BlogDog signs off

Somewhere around 2009, we were ready for a new dog following the untimely death of Otter the Wonder Dog (whom my wife thinks was poisoned by a neighbor).

We went to a pet adoption day to see if  a dog we saw on a website would be into us. She (he?) wasn't. We took her for a walk behind the store and the dog had zero interest in us.

Somewhat dejected, we returned the dog to the store and started to leave. That's when a paw reached out of the kennel and stopped us.

It was Lucie, then known as "Star".

Lucie had been adopted once before and taken to Kansas with her new family where at some point she knocked a toddler down, the story goes. And so the family - helicopter parents who denied their kid the joy of growing up with a great dog - put her up for sale on Craigslist.

That's against the rules of adoption and, fortunately, someone in the Twin Cities saw the listing, and Lucie was retrieved from the home and brought back for another try.

So she decided in that store that we were the right humans for her.

Every dog is a perfect dog in its way and Lucie checked all the boxes.  An Australian shepherd mix, she kept track of us. She was the first dog that wanted to be with me. And every morning, I'd wake up early to write the blog for Minnesota Public Radio, but not until "the BlogDog" got her walk.  Lucie was never interested in hearing an excuse for passing on a walk; we were going. Period. Snow? Rain? Doesn't matter. We were going or she would nag you until nightfall. 

Not that I didn't try to get out of it, mind you. But you can't write a blog while a good dog is using her superpower to command you to action.

That routine continued for another 15 years.

She'd greet me every evening when I returned home, a "Tigger" stuffed animal in her jaws to be thrown and retrieved.

Lucie was the perfect traveler, joyfully sticking her head out the window for a treat from the tollbooth collector. Her only flaw was a general disdain for the ocean.

She loved the Woodbury dog park and would begin howling a mile away once she realized the destination. It is there we'll spread her ashes.

Lightning fast, she was a champion rabbit hunter although her career stats for catching squirrels are not impressive. She failed at every one, and on our recent walks, she'd make a threatening step or two when she saw one, possibly remembering the joy of the chase, but no longer able to do much more.

Lucie had some quirks. She disdained Carolie's cough but would find mine acceptable. Weird.  (Video link)

At certain times if you sat down in a room in which she was sprawled, she'd get up and go to another room.  She valued her "alone time."

Carolie reminded me today that her main trick was sprawling on her back and sticking out her tongue if you'd say, "show me a dead dog." We didn't teach her that so maybe her time in Kansas wasn't a complete waste.

She was - as all dogs are - a good dog; the best we've ever had.

In recent years, time took away a lot of the Lucie we'd come to know. She went deaf a couple of years ago.  She mostly just slept, though she would become a puppy again for a few minutes when she realized that I was about to take her for a walk. But otherwise, there was a sadness in her eyes that was disconcerting. 

In the past, I'd walk at my pace and Lucie would follow. But now, the walks were long as I allowed that it was her walk, not mine. No blade of grass went unsniffed along the route. Her hind legs no longer worked quite right but she was not given to complaining. She was outdoors and in her happy place.

I'm not a believer in God or Heaven but I'm open to the possibility of a dimension where dogs live long lives and catch the squirrels they chase and where they sleep on the furniture and dream of the humans they once raised, content that theirs is the best life a dog ever had.

MPR is wilting but it's got company

 I had lunch with a long-time best friend colleague during my working years yesterday. She came out to the hangar for a picnic.

She left MPR a few months ago, which surprised me because she was an indefatigable supporter of the place; one could easily make the argument that she was the foundation. I've never asked the circumstances of her exit but one thing she said to me revealed a lot. "I rarely listen anymore," she said.

She said this after I learned that Mike Reszler, probably the smartest digital news person I've ever known, was shoved out last year in what remains of Minnesota Public Radio's expertise:  reorganization. The deck chairs are moved around every few years, and the Board of Trustees is none the wiser that they end up being moved back to where they were a few years earlier.

Reszler's exit - and my friend's - was but the latest release of talent from an organization that has a dwindling amount of it.  The two newspaper people who fled their own dying industry years ago and now run MPR, are trying the same strategy for saving it that they used in their previous industry: shed talent , move the deck chairs, and see what happens.

To be sure, there are still amazingly talented people working at MPR, although I know very few of them anymore. But like the Pioneer Press, which still has a handful of hardworking journalists putting out a paper every day, it's not enough to grow; it's only enough not to die quickly.

This, of course, is not unique to MPR.  

Yesterday, WGBH in Boston announced it's cutting 30 people and canceling shows

“We made these hard choices only after implementing a range of other cost-saving measures and operating efficiencies,” wrote Susan Goldberg, GBH chief executive in an email to staff. “The basic reason for these reductions is simple: revenues are flat and the cost of doing business has gone up. A lot.”

“Susan [Goldberg] has repeatedly assured newsroom staff in multiple meetings that local news is of utmost importance to her,”  Zoe Mathews, a steward and senior radio producer at GBH, tells the Boston Globe. “Today’s layoffs are in direct contradiction of her statements about and directly to the newsroom. ... [What] happened today — and the way it happened — is a disgrace to an organization that holds itself up to the public as a vital source of community news, transparency, and accountability.”

There's a lot of that going around.

A newsroom member said she had no idea of the financial condition of WGBH up to that point, which is odd, given the wildfire of public media's collapse should not be escaping notice of any newsroom.

Just up Commonwealth Avenue, WBUR axed employees last month, including my college best friend. The upper crust of public radio - KQED,  Chicago Public Radio, NPR - are all presently following the same path.

Each organization president utters the same thing. They'll turn to more digital offerings. MPR did that 10 years ago under Chris Worthington and - wait for it - Mike Reszler. It was glorious before their bosses decided to slash the newsroom digital operation and send more money to Marketplace in California and set up a podcast operation.

Worthington is gone. Reszler is gone. Most of the podcast operation has shut down.

"If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there," the late senator, Dave Durenberger, quoting Lewis Carroll, said about U.S. economic policy.

And that's where public broadcasting is: desperately trying one road, then another, with no idea, no vision, no strategy, no innovation in mind and no acknowledgement of the reality that a dead end is just around the corner.

Finn

 I don't do much writing anymore. Once writing was a joy, before Minnesota Public Radio basically beat it out of me thanks to writing 17,000 blog posts there over the years. That's work. Writing shouldn't be work.

Even so, it was a surprise to note today that I haven't written since 2020, a year after I retired. So there's nothing in this journal about Finn, my second-born grandson, born July 23, 2022. More accurately: Finley Robert Collins, his parents honoring me and an uncle.

Like Dex before him, Finley got an autographed baseball to mark the occasion.

With any luck, the ball will survive enough for Finn to appreciate his grandfather's gift. Not so much for Dex, whose ball disappeared into the clutches of the amazing Reggie the Wonder Dog. No matter, Dex is none the wiser at his age.

Anyway, I dig the grandfather scene. We're fortunate to be nearby both kids, having decided a long time ago we weren't about to flee to the disgusting South, leaving our family behind, so we can survive a Minnesota winter. Frankly, I wonder what snowbirds are thinking.  But maybe they just don't love their kids and grandkids as much as we do.

This is a great age for kids. They're cute. They still love you, and they're not shy about telling you.

That, of course, will all change in the teenage years.

The other night I read a tweet from an online acquaintance who was divorced a year or so ago, but still maintains a good relationship with the father of their son. Still, she's hurt that at the moment, he prefers Dad over her.

This, of course, is not unusual. The teenage years are a time when kids realize they're going to be leaving someday and they have a way of starting the process a little too early. We've all done it. You can argue that Mom bearing the brunt of that process is actually a sign that the son is closer to Mom than Dad, which, by the way, is the first thing any new father should accept.

Parenthood can be non-stop heartbreak at times.

Your time with your kids is a bank account. The "cute years" are deposits that you withdraw to get through the teenage years.

But, eventually, they "come back" as pretty neat and interesting adults. And sometimes they give you pretty neat grandchildren.

My brother Bill

 

This guy has been my friend longer than anyone else on the planet -- my twin brother, shown here at my oldest son's wedding with his incredible spouse, Felice.

He may not tell you how he feels about you but he'll show you, and God help you if you're not paying attention.

We were having coffee one day in Afton MN when he visited in 1997 and I casually mentioned I hoped to fly one day. He already had his pilot certificate.

He went back home and a few days later on our birthday, he called and said, "Happy Birthday, you start flight lessons tomorrow in St. Paul "

He prepaid them.

Flying changed my life for the better. He did that.

2011 photo

I marveled, during that coffee stop, at his easy way at making small talk with perfect strangers. I vowed to be better at it and, as a result, I became a writer known for telling stories of people whom I'd randomly meet. I made a good living and told good stories.

He did that, too.

Here's a little great radio history

Just a few months before I left the Berkshires and moved to Minnesota, a freak October snowstorm hit The Great Northwest and Minnesotans haven't shut up about it since.

I guess I can relate a little bit. It was was October 1986 when a blizzard unexpectedly hit the Berkshires, knocking out power and stranding people for days.

Somehow, with no emergency generator, WSBS in Great Barrington was the only radio station to stay on the air for the duration.  We were a daytimer then with authority to broadcast at a ridiculous 3.9 watts at night, which would usually carry the signal all the way to the KMart across the street.

But when all the power was out, it carried quite a distance.

From about 7 in the morning on Sunday to about midnight or 1 a.m. on Monday, we stayed on the air to talk about it.

And, for the most part, unlike Minnesotans, that was the end of it.

Until today when I was processing some old reel-to-reel tapes that I had digitized and, to my surprise, one hour of the broadcast was one of the files that came back.

This was probably around noon or so, and includes the segment where NBC's Gene Shalit, stuck at his second home in Stockbridge, called.

Behold,   radio the way it once was. Live reports of the end of the town locust tree, and details of the winner of the person to correctly predict the first freeze of the year.

God, it was great!

Bob Collins 3 · WSBS Blizzard Coverage 1986

I wrote more about this some years ago.

My family -- Carolie and two-year old Sean (Carolie had yet to give birth to Patrick) -- were somewhere, but I didn't know where. Carolie is the daughter of a radio guy; she knew I had a job to do and she'd figure out how to survive. They huddled with some neighbors who had a wood stove.

It was 10 or 11 O'clock at night and the Berkshires were scared. And then, a power company truck came by the state highway out front, then another, and another, and another. They kept coming. The rest of Massachusetts had sent us some help. So I told southern Berkshire County that help was here.

As midnight approached, people were still calling. When they weren't, I pulled out the Old Farmer's Almanac and began reading stories. Finally, around 1 a.m., the Berkshires were asleep, and I signed the station off the air.

I miss radio. But I also miss the evidence that we were all once there. Finding this archive was a treasure. 

Dex

 Dexter Michael Collins arrived on October 2, 2020 late in the evening, accomplishing what no one else has on Planet Earth: he made me a grandfather.

The arrival of a new human in the age of a pandemic is alternately uplifting and frightening, particularly sprinkled with the realities of life ahead from climate change and the turn to a more authoritarian country. What will Dex's role in it be? How will he change the world for the better?

Those are all questions that will wait for he is like his father: slow to arrive and demanding once here. But, of course, it's not him. Babies change our routines and our priorities, but they also give us a new perspective on ourselves. Things about our upbringing that didn't make sense, suddenly start to make sense.

I'm here for all of it, as long as I can be, however.

We are not the type of people to push for our children to make us grandparents; we're happy with whatever decision people make with what works for them. So when we found out in the spring that Dex was coming, we were surprised.

Parenthood is hard to define. It is both joyous and heartbreaking as we watch our children navigate through the world and, inevitably, fly out of the nest and into it. 

Dex has the luxury of two parents who'll put him first, will make the mistakes most parents make, question their ability to raise a kid, and one day watch the person that 6 pound 13 ounce baby becomes with a mixture of pride in him and satisfaction in themselves.

Just as we did with ours.

Who is 'Postcard Underground'?

(Originally published May 23, 2019)

I occasionally get mail looking for help finding someone or wanting some information from a NewsCut post 10 or so years ago. And over the last 12 years, we've been able to solve mysteries and make connections using the power of the internet for good.

I first started chasing the question of Postcard Underground in 2012, when postcards for Gary Eichten , longtime Minnesota Public Radio legend, started showing up. I wrote the following on a blog, at that time the morning roundup of all things strange in the news.

My colleague, Alana, has presented us with a mystery that only the power of the Internet can solve.

It appears that for the last week or so, at least two postcards a day arrive for the recently retired Gary Eichten, all bearing the mark of the "Postcard Underground."

Today's postcards were from the same person: "Sue."



A Google search reveals no certain answers, although the blog of a woman in New England indicates she once received the postcards. Check the signature on the top card:





There are other websites all reporting the same thing: Postcards show up from someone who obviously is paying attention to the specifics of what's being lauded. And "Sue" is obviously behind them:




Somebody in the InterTubes knows who Sue is. Come forward!

Sue came forward. Sort of. She sent me a postcard about two months later. But she didn't reveal that much information.

We never were able to make much progress in uncovering the brains behind the Postcard Underground after Gary Eichten's retirement in January, when anonymous (except for first name) postcards started showing up every day.

We have found more examples, however. The Joint Religious Legislative Coalition, for example, got inundated last March. The organization, A Peace of My Mind, got them last summer.

The fact that the postcards arrive in bunches indicate an organized structure but how do they communicate and keep it such a secret?

"Sue" shared no secrets in her postcard which arrived today in response to a NewsCut post last month.




They are clever, these postcarders.

And I let the mystery go. Until Thursday's email got me to revisit Postcard Underground, and I found out it's still out there. Somewhere.

Architect Grace Kim gave a Ted Talk on co-housing in 2017. Then started getting postcards, each bearing the red "Postcard Underground" stamp.

Other than finding out Postcard Underground was real, she didn't have any more luck than I did.

In March 2017, Imesh Samarakoon appeared on a talk show on KPCC, the MPR sister organization in California, to talk about his effort to start an economic crisis team at UCLA for students in financial distress.

A month later, he started getting postcards. Tracking the mailing locations didn't reveal much.

But one of them was from Sue. Sue from St. Paul.



He made a logical deduction. Postcard Underground is based in St. Paul.

Based on the high concentration of Postcard Underground members in Minneapolis/Saint Paul, it seems like the organization is loosely based there. But since they have members all over the nation, they often send messages to projects all over the place.

But he struck out on the other, more obvious question: who are they? Along with how do they organize? Who makes the decision to bombard someone with nice postcards?

So he looked at the type of organizations that get the postcards.

Postcard Underground seems to be an environmentally minded group of individuals. I also suspect that the members in Minnesota are a part of Audubon Minnesota, since one of their postcards is from the Audubon, and many of the members are interested in birds (so many bird stamps!).

So I’ve taken a small step towards identifying the members of Postcard Underground. But I really wanted to nail the identity of at least one member.

He wrote that he thinks he was able to identify one member: "David" a Lutheran in Gilroy, Calif. But there the trail stopped. He never wrote another post.

"Clearly, there’s a Minnesota nice connection," Philadelphia Daily News columnist Helen Ubiñas determined in February when she became the latest person to try to solve the mystery.

Like those before me, I tried to figure out how the writers connect and communicate.

I noticed one sender from Minneapolis had included, inadvertently I think, her first and last name. I won’t out the kind writer, but her name was unique enough to turn me into a detective for about a week, leaving messages for at least half a dozen Minnesotans who are probably wondering just what’s in the Philadelphia water.

(If I did stumble on the right person, I’d love to hear from you. Maybe you’d consider letting me join the group — because who doesn’t want to be part of a secret society of kindness that cuts through the noise, especially when these days noise seems to be the country’s official language.)

And that's where the trail ends, near the end of this blog. An unanswered mystery that allows the act to speak for itself.

NewsCut: Good night and good news

I'm reprinting some of my favorite NewsCut posts. This one is from May 31, 2019





I actually thought I had nothing left to say.

And then you all gave me the greatest day of my life on Thursday with the exceptions of the day I married a woman whom I can't wait to run home to every day, and the day the two greatest kids in the world were born.

For many years, on days I would struggle with things, I watched this -- one of the greatest moments in the history of television.



And I always thought, wouldn't it be nice to go out with such love?

And then, at 4:29 p.m. on Thursday, I did.

It would be my preference you listen to the extended interview and then all 2 1/2 hours, but if you want to cut to the chase, then scroll on No. 3 to 29:40 and  you'll pretty well get the picture. Let the love wash over you. And take note of the song that plays after.

After that, I got a chance to cry my way through my goodbyes to the staff of The Current, providing a wobbly  bookend to the day, which started with a poor attempt to get through my remarks to the newsroom.

As I told my colleagues later, "this  is what happens when you wait 27 years to tell people how much you love them."

Then it was a session with Jana Shortal and Carly Danek. And, again with the crying.



And then Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan read a proclamation declaring Friday Bob Collins Day in Minnesota.

Tomorrow is Bob Collins Day here in Minnesota. Lt. Gov ⁦⁦@peggyflanagan⁩ presents the proclamation in the newsroom. Bob: “I dedicate this to all the bosses who tried to fire me!” pic.twitter.com/sOwTg1Bnwi

— Tom Crann, MPR News (@TomCrann) May 30, 2019

All that and two lengthy pieces from both Morning Edition and All Things Considered too.

It's going to take awhile for me to process what happened and at some point I'll write something meaningful, probably at my old blog, Stirrings From the Empty Nest.

Though I've made my living in the last 21 years online, I will always be a "radio person."

I don't read scripts when I'm on the radio (one of the reasons, I think, I was banned years ago from membership drives at MPR) and I never let show hosts tell me what questions they're going to ask, because I always figured if I can't tell the story off the top of my head with the words from my heart, then I'm not ready to tell the story at all, especially on a medium that should be nothing more than a conversation.

I wasn't sure how this radio career would end at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday. I trusted Mary -- as I've always trusted Mary -- to get us to the moment we needed to get to, and allow you to share it with us, just as radio intended.

And so it gives me a great satisfaction that the last words I'll ever utter on a radio station -- and the last words I'll write on this blog are the same:  "I love you..."