Stirrings from the empty nest

I've been working on a few Flash-related projects lately. I'm not particularly proficient at Flash, although I'm better than I w...

I made this for a piece that ran this morning on MPR. You'll need at least Flash 8 to see it. Click on the image. Baseball season is com...

OK, so it's Thanksgiving and the Collins family is getting a taste of its own medicine. We won't have the whole family for dinner t...

I've been to two funerals in the last week. I go to more funerals now than I do weddings or baptisms. Such is life... and death. Yesterd...

As I remember it, my mother came into my room on the day -- or pretty near the day -- I turned 16. Since I was a teen, I was sleeping late. ...

I've been working on covering the campaign of 2006 since January of 2005. I'm glad it's over. It's taken a lot of work, 7 da...

For a large part of my adult life, I have offered wondered where people get the time to do the things that people do. You know, stuff aside ...

My son, Sean, turned 21 a few days ago. I don't know how it happened, but it happened and it beats the alternative of not happenning, wh...

My oldest son, Sean, turned 21 today. So today I celebrate his ascension to adulthood and mourn the loss of a damned good tax break. I wish ...

This is my mother, you met her some months ago -- July 4th, to be exact -- a day she considers the last day of summer. She's sitting, I ...

This is one of those fall days in Minnesota where you begin to realize what a man feels when taking his dying breath. The sun is warm, the t...

When my kids were growing up, I didn't really dream of them becoming president of the United States, or changing the world with Nobel pr...

I can't really say I'm a big fan of organized religion anymore. I haven't been to church in a few years, pretty much since my wi...

A week or so ago, Minnesota Public Radio hired a fine photographer to snap some "publicity" photos of people who are on the air. S...

I've always been interested in the space program. When I was a kid, my folks gave me a Panasonic reel-to-reel recorder and I'd stay ...

How many churches do Islamists have to firebomb in order to make their point that the Pope was wrong to have quoted 14th century Byzantine ...

Today was my wife's birthday. She needs a break; bad things tend to happen on her birthday. In 1986, my grandmother died on her birthda...

I come from a long line of worriers. Or maybe it's a short line. And maybe it's not "worrying," per se. Maybe it's jus...

Click for a larger image. Patrick and I played what is probably our last golf game of the summer. And perhaps one of the reasons why I'm...

One of Carolie and my favorite pasttimes is taking pictures of people who might not be in their most -- shall we say -- positive light. One ...