News

More on the Pig Manure Pollution Controversy, by Mark Erickson

The Chicago Tribune has printed a four-part series on a subject I wrote about last year: https://www.eastportlandblog.com/2015/09/22/the-pope-pig-manure-and-minnesota-water-quality-by-mark-erickson/ Here’s one Tribune article regarding pig polluters: http://digitaledition.chicagotribune.com/launch.aspx?pbid=3e7227b1-e3b7-4fac-aa07-5f943e58b4c5 As I read the article that landed on my doorstep today I recall the book The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, which exposed the production and sale of meat and the …

Rimkus Reflects on Prince

Believe it or not, I’ve been to two Prince concerts. Not out of a “hometown boy made good” support kind of thing but mostly because Mrs. Rimkus was always smitten by him. And liked his music I suppose. They were electrifying shows. Those who never had the pleasure… Back in Prince’s early days, we boring …

R.I.P. Garry Emmanuel Shandling, by Chuck Strom

Just saw that Garry Shandling passed away suddenly. I liked him. He made meta funny and accessible at once. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/03/24/471773637/actor-and-comedian-garry-shandling-dies-at-66 His appearance on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee wasn’t that long ago: http://comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com/garry-shandling-its-great-that-garry-shandling-is-still-alive Note the title of the segment. Replayed the episode. A lot of discussion of death, almost eerily so. At one point Shandling …

Cleveland Rocks! by Vino Knight-Trané

Norm Ornstein’s one of my favorite political writers, even though the think tank he belongs to, the American Enterprise Institute, leans right. His most recent piece in the Atlantic addresses the images of 1968 that are in a lot of people’s minds nowadays (bold type mine). http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/the-grim-reality-of-american-politics/474198/ I found this passage particularly interesting: “Some prominent …

Election 2016: The Path to Statesmanship, by Vino Knight-Trané

Recent coverage of the U.S. Presidential campaign has been interesting in its perspective. After a 5% loss in Nevada, all of the prognosticators suggest that Sanders is done–one article suggesting that he’ll be at a disadvantage because his twenty-something army will be on spring break during upcoming primaries. This seems very premature. On the Republican …