‘Commentary’ Archives
Transit: When Will Normalcy Return?
By JOHN CHARLES WILSON Note: This column was written between the times Governor Walz announced the lifting of the Stay at Home order and the change taking effect. Metro Transit has decided to continue running a Saturday schedule on weekdays and not running buses or light rail late at night, even after the Stay at Home order is lifted, and the restriction to “essential trips only” is still in place. Even though it will be legal to go out for any purpose, you are still not supposed to ride transit unless it is necessary. The only change is that wearing face masks will be required on Metro Transit as of 18 May. However, there will be no enforcement of this rule unless non-compliance becomes a major problem. It remains to be seen whether the schedule change which normally takes place in June will happen this year. With Metro Transit running a limited schedule anyways, they might decide there is no point to it.The transit situation everywhere is dire. It is [...]
Peace House Community”“A Place to Belong: Canadian Humor (which I spell “Humour”)
By MARTI MALTBY I decided that this month I wouldn”™t mention Coronavirus (it didn”™t take long for me to fail on that count, did it?) because it has dominated so much of the news that I wanted to give you a break from thinking about it. I hadn”™t fully grasped how pervasive Covid has become until I tried to come up with a topic for this column that didn”™t involve Coronavirus, and I failed. Every topic I thought of somehow came back to the pandemic. As I said, I wanted to give people a break from Coronavirus because of the negative effects the virus is having on our society. I was about to list some of them, but you are probably as aware of them as I am, and if I did list them I would fail even more spectacularly in my effort to give you a break from thinking about Coronavirus. The best I can do at this point is to offer an alternative to the bleak news, so below you will find links to videos of Canadian humor. I”™m [...]
Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery: Plenty Work to be done-Revive WPA
By SUE HUNTER WEIR 177th in a Series If you look closely at the east or west side of the Caretaker”™s Cottage, most of which was built in 1871, you will see a subtle difference between the back room and the two front rooms. That difference is how you can tell that the backroom is a fairly recent (only 80 years old rather than 149 years old) addition. The roofline is a little lower but that”™s not an age difference. The masonry is identical except for one thing: the top and bottom edges of the newer stones are perfectly straight while the stones on the older rooms are rough-cut. The new stones were cut using power tools while the old stones were cut by hand. Caretaker Cottage 1940 masonry straight-cut edges differ with 1871 hand-chiseled. One of five Phillips buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. Photo: TIM McCALL It”™s been a challenge to put a date on the “new” addition but the answer was hidden in the [...]
