Opinion

Last week’s edition of the Advocate Tribune had a big error, that led to many a message left. Somehow all five of us that look over the pages before printing somehow missed that a story from Page one was missing the jump on the inside pages. I can’t explain how all of us missed that, but we did. Human error happens. Our deepest apologies for that.

In the last two weeks, a number of discussions in public meetings had to do with the potential transfer of land from the State of Minnesota to the Upper Sioux Community. Specifically the land at Upper Sioux State Park. While this is an opinion column, I am not here to express my own opinion on the topic. However, what I am here to express is the handling of how some of the discussion on the topic went - specifically in two different ways.

Question: I customized the front of my truck. Is it legal in Minnesota? Answer: There are two violations with your customized front end.

It was a pleasant weekend for the Easter Weekend as temperatures soared into the 70s across parts of the state. Fairmont, Marshall, and Windom all hit 70 degrees on Saturday. Much of the Twin Cities area rose into the mid 60s.

When you look at the body camera video of Nashville cops, guns drawn, dashing into the school, throwing doors open, shouting, “Shots fired, shots fired, move!” and a line of cops moving swiftly down the hall and up the stairs and shooting the attacker, you see men doing as they were trained to do, pursue a killer and take the killer out. From first call to completion of mission: 14 minutes.

This column was written in the gently-cat-chewed shade of a small but blooming collection of branches from my yard. Thanks to local plant expert Nicole Zempel’s Facebook post, I remembered that this is a thing you can do: collect bare branches, stick them in water, and then enjoy leaves a little ahead of schedule.

Typically Minnesota ranks high on all sorts of charts, whether it’s for US Census participation or quality of life. So I was a little disappointed when I read we are ranked 39th in SNAP Access.

At least once in your long and delicious life you owe it to yourself to go hear Olivier Messiaen’s “Turangalîla-symphonie” and don’t wait until you’re 80 as I did but finally last week went to hear the New York Philharmonic take us on this wild 90-minute roller- coaster ride in which Catholics are kidnapped and Baptists go Buddhist and you think in French and fly in a formation of geese and get a taste of molecular physics as horses go galloping down the aisles, and in the gorgeous slow passage “Garden of Sleeping Love” you will fall in love forever with the person next to you so be very careful where you sit. I sat next to my sweetheart and after years of thinking I was averse to modern music, here was a hymn to joy and time, movement, rhythm, life and death, with big Wagnerian chords, delicate intervals, a dozen percussionists, a genius pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and we’ve been happily married ever since.