Minneapolis Paper Gets Five Stars

I spent 1.5 hours intently reading the Minneapolis StarTribune on a plane ride home from there on Sunday, July 13. A gentleman in the waiting area at the airport said I could glance at his, but he was taking it home to his wife. I saw so many stories that I wanted to read that I went and bought my own.

With no affinity towards Minneapolis, I was mesmerized and fascinated by many of the stories, first off, the upcoming All-Star game being played there and reading that Major League Baseball booked 14,000 rooms for the event.

A former LSU AgCenter employee and being from Shreveport where the Haynesville Shale has changed the area, I next read about the rail backups that have put Minnesota crops in jeopardy because of the North Dakota oil boom using the trains. Very pertinent information.

While my New Year's resolution was to do something caring every week, I studied the panhandling story. There is a website, www.giverealchange.org, that has tips on how to deal with aggressive solicitation. Minneapolis has a campaign for people to stop giving, instead writing a check to a nonprofit, which is dedicated to long-term solutions such as housing subsidies, job training (many panhandlers have just gotten out of prison) and mental health programs. Food for thought.

Device dangers was on the front page. One of every four crashes in Minnesota is caused by drivers not watching the road. The story showed victims and quoted that in two or three seconds, drivers travel hundreds of feet, so texting is like driving blindfolded. The article noted that you can get pulled over six times and get the same fine, unlike Driving While Intoxicated. Statistics show 2,189 drivers were cited for texting last year, up from 1,718. I harp on Don't Text and Drive.

Now an assistant to a state senator in Louisiana, it stuck out that Minnesota was one of the last to mandate seat belt laws and lower the blood alcohol limit. There doesn't appear to be a groundswell of public opinion that is pushing their Legislature toward banning cell phones in construction zones and other areas.

Then there was a Jesse Ventura update that insulted me. Ventura was appearing in court to sue the estate of a book's author for defamation. The author, who was later murdered, said Ventura was knocked out in a bar fight after making remarks about President Bush and dead Navy SEALs. The writer says, So the guy who sang Werewolves of London while wearing a boa thinks his reputation has been harmed? I had not known the former governor made reporters (I used to be one) wear nametags that said "media jackals." In his own book, Ventura once intimidated some people who had on "Harvard Sucks" T-shirts. He was teaching there, but how? He didn't complete junior college, the writer said.

I never thought about the Hamptons' gap between rich and poor until I read the story in the paper. Nannies, gardeners and pool maintenance people are out of work there in the winter. Forty percent of students are on a free or reduced lunch. Doctors and nurses share homes owned by the hospital because they can't afford their own. People commute three hours because they cannot afford to live there. Never thought about that.

Other stories were about curfews for youth, facial features might determine the length of your life, a travel story about airport cancellations and one on how to be nice to newcomers. Apparently, Minnesotans are a tight knit bunch.

But their stories drew this outsider in. I am so impressed with the StarTribune. But I did think its insert to try to get subscribers that featured mosquitoes all over the place was dumb. We don't like mosquitoes in Louisiana.