The location is both a church and a designated polling place for the next-day election.

A row of parked cars indicated a meeting in progress. When we wandered past later, the meeting had broken up. Cooler and wiser heads must have prevailed, since the sign had disappeared.

When we were fighting Communism, no one imagined that we would win by mixing more religion into our politics. The Communists repressed all religions with ecumenical zeal, and we took pride in our ecumenical tolerance. On the other hand, Communists preached (without practice) that all races were equal as workers of the world. No doubt this helped shame our country into embracing equal rights in the 1960s.

Now that we’re fighting religious extremists, weak-hearted people think Al Qaeda must be right: religious extremism is the path to strength. So political activities worm their way into religious venues.

I assume this was a last-gasp attempt to boost circulation at the end of the big Back-To-School advertising season. I’ve received this sort of offer from them in years past.

This morning my wife fielded a call from the Pioneer Press disavowing the offer. I also received an invoice in the mail TODAY, instead of receiving it in six weeks. Thus, my free offer has been aborted about five weeks early.

This is no huge loss for our household. We get the Hastings Star-Gazette on Thursdays, the New York Times on weekends, and we go on-line for the rest of our news.

In past years, when the Pioneer Press offered us a free 6 weeks, we usually said “No,” especially if we were already receiving the Minneapolis Strib. We accepted maybe one of those, and canceled after weeks of excessive recycling.

I have to wonder what sort of back-room shouting and recriminations led to this reversal at the Pioneer Press. I suspect someone got fired over this.

The design cost came out about $100 MILLION lower than the MNDOT estimate. I suspect this is because the arch isn’t quite as huge as we might have expected. I think the proposed appearance looks fine.

Clearly this is a recent change. The site has a FAQ section that shows just how much trouble customers are having. So it’s not just me.

I suppose they thought people would be more likely to log in if they could use their Facebook account. Maybe, but it doesn’t work when I try it.  Once you log in, it just keeps returning you to the login page. It never lets you read any articles. Not sure what is wrong, but something is broken.

I get the impression that this is a side-effect of some management overhaul by the owning company. The Star Gazette was part of a conglomerate of small papers in and around the St. Croix valley. The map for the owner “Forum Communications,” now shows posessions all across the upper midwest.

I don’t know if this is a local attempt to make the web site pay its way, or if this is a corporate web site shell that the Star Gazette fills with stories. If it’s a local thing, I hope they can get their act together. If it’s a corporate thing, I hope they change whatever policy decision led to breaking local newspaper web sites all across the region. In either case, the site is too broken for me to use.

When I look at Google News, what I most often see are 1,200 copies of locally-published articles that are in fact Associated Press stories. These are classic “straight news” reports: announcements by officials describing crimes, legislation, accidents, celebrity activities, and so on. It is in fact rare for Google News, or any other news source, to produce the sort of in-depth reporting that might vie for a Pulitzer.

Yes, the traditional funding sources of such things are drying up. Yes, they play an essential role in self-government. But somehow we’ll find a way to pay for these things. Maybe Google will trip over a new business model as they blunder about, or maybe someone else will.

The Atlantic article makes several observations I agree with:

• Newspapers are in huge trouble.
• It’s silly to blame Google News for the free-fall of newspaper income.
• If anything, Google drives traffic to these news sites, instead of stealing their content.
• We need a new business model to fund Pulitzer-deserving coverage.

Neither the Atlantic, nor the other articles I’ve read, have singled out Pulitzer-appropriate coverage as the sort of reportage that’s in trouble. But that’s how I see it. Most news reporting pretty much consists of repackaging news releases. War correspondents sit around in military-managed press pools waiting for a colonel to give them the daily briefing. Ditto with the White House press corps. Yes, some reporters take the time and trouble to seek out individual newsmakers and get interviews, but a lot of stuff is just recycled announcements.

It’s the journalists who make the extra effort who will be the ones we want to keep. The others can be replaced by simply delivering the press releases directly to the Associated Press or the general public instead of filtering them through reporters.

This suggests the death of national news organizations embedded in local news outlets – why should the Minneapolis Strib repackage AP stories if everyone can get them directly from the AP? At present, the local news outlets simply provide a ‘voting’ function – if an AP story is interesting enough to republish, that increases the story’s perceived importance in Google News. If the Houston paper’s republication of the AP story finds itself atop Google’s news listing, then they get the most hits, but it’s a lottery.

Two additional riverfront projects emerged while planning this bridge: 1) moving the electrical substation that blights the riverfront landscape, and 2) building a pedestrian ‘spiral’ – homage to the long-gone Hastings Spiral Bridge – to connect downtown and the pedestrian walkway on the bridge deck.

Neither of these will be part of the bridge project.

I contacted MNDOT via the Hastings Bridge web page and asked about these projects. Steve Kordosky of MNDOT took the time to write me a detailed reply, the bottom line of which is that none of this is part of the “transportation project.”

Well, actually, some of the electrical stuff will happen. There are two giant power transmission lines that bracket the current bridge, carrying power to the unsightly substation. One is smack in the path of the bridge and has to be moved Xcel Energy. The other is being replaced under some element of the bridge project for improving the aesthetics of the bridge. However, Xcel estimates that it will cost $25M to move the substation, and I guess that’s too expensive for the aesthetics to matter.

Regarding the spiral, it appears that MNDOT at least gave it serious thought and did some preliminary design and analysis. The spiral would in fact be huge: the ‘inside diameter’ of the walkway will be about 100 feet wide, which is as wide as the new bridge itself. And surprisingly, the spiral would not shorten the walk for pedestrians. The spiral would be about as long as walking up to 3rd Street to pick up the new bridge’s sidewalk. Moreover, some folks felt that the 100′ spiral would be too much to add to the riverfront. And MNDOT doesn’t want to spend bridge money on it.

However, MNDOT hasn’t ruled out the spiral entirely. We could add it ourselves using city or county money (fat chance of that, but you never know). In any case, there is work left to be done on the Point Douglas Trail system, and it might make sense to delay the pedestrian spiral until then. So it’s not a ‘now or never’ project.

There is an honest-to-gosh snow drift in the driveway. Next door, I hear Mark running his snowblower. No doubt that’s my exercise for today.

It’s impossible to 100% prevent such incidents, just as it’s impossible to prevent death and injury during scouting events. Scouts are specifically taught how to identify and deal with potential abuse situations. Leaders are taught to avoid situations that might enable abuse. For example, individual leaders are never supposed to be alone with individual scouts. We call this “two deep leadership.”

Kent York published a statement by the Northern Star Council about the incident. Kent provides the Official Word, of course. My own comments are as an individual volunteer.

The Boy Scouts of America takes the threat of abuse very, very seriously. The BSA established a whole suite of training to protect scouts against abuse. Scouts receive training on how to identify potential abusive situations and how to deal with inappropriate behavior. Leaders are taught how to deliver the scouting program without putting kids at risk. Leaders are supposed to retake the “Youth Protection” training every other year. If all leaders follow the rules, then kids are never at risk.

Here’s the problem: it’s sometimes inconvenient or annoying to follow the rules. As a merit badge counselor, I meet with individual scouts. The venue is always at a public event, like a troop meeting. You never need to meet privately with a scout. On the other hand, scouts occasionally request a private meeting at a different time. For example, a scout might be coming close to a deadline, and need to finish things before the next meeting.

When I was a kid, it was routine to go to a counselor’s house to do a merit badge. Today, a scout must bring a buddy to such a meeting, and/or we need another adult present. That’s harder to arrange, but it’s the rule.

Some people routinely bend the rules. If the leader is a family friend, then it seems OK to meet privately with a scout. Or, if you’re a friend of a friend. Or, if the leader seems to be a “really great guy.” And so on. Once you start bending the rules, where do you stop?

When the “good guys” allow the rules to bend, we enable the bad guys.

The BSA has put a lot of effort into the youth protection training. Like any sensible security training, it starts by describing the threat: the process by which abusers attack children. Then it explains the rules for leaders, and how those rules interfere with the abuse process.

The good news in this horrible bit of reportage is that such abuse is rare in Scouting. The bad news is that the youth protection training failed those three Scouts.

We had a salad like this at the St. Paul Hotel many years ago, and Lesley created her own version at home. She has substituted fat free Rasberry dressing nicely.

• 1 package fresh spinach – washed, stemmed
• 1 quart strawberries,  stemmed, washed and halved
• 1 wedge brie cheese (approx 4 inch wide)  ? 8 oz. cut into 3/4 inch pieces

Raspberry vinaigrette:

• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1 cup rasberry vinegar
• 1 T dijon mustard
• 1 clove garlic,  minced
• black pepper to taste
• 1 T. poppyseeds
• 2 T. raspberry jam

Whisk ingredients of vinaigrette together.

Mix the salad ingredients and toss with the dressing.

Mix ingredients for salad toss with dressing.

This work by Lesley Atwood is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

This originated with our friend Joanne Luciano. We’ve modified it a bit over the years and it’s now one of Lesley’s signature dishes.

• 1 frying chicken cut up (1.5 lbs.) boiled, skinned, and meat off bone and shredded(hacked)

Marinade:

• • 4 T soy sauce(at least)
  • 1 tsp minced ginger
  • 1 T minced garlic
  • 2 T crunchy peanut butter (or more)
  • 1 T Hot red pepper oil (or Chili paste with garlic)
  • 2 T vinegar(at least)
  • 1/2 tsp bl pepper
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1 T sesame oil (chinese dark sesame oil)

• 1 large bunch scallions cut 2″ pieces, then shredded to match the chicken

Mix marinade and adjust the taste – it will taste hotter (spicier) than it tastes when mixed with the chicken.

Arrange the scallions on plate, arrange the chicken atop the scallions, and pour sauce over the chicken.

Note:  Sliced cucumber is also good with this. I have made this a holiday pot luck dish by putting the scallions in a tree or wreath shape and  decorating with pieces of red bell pepper etc.