Public Affairs

Edward Moody lived and worked as a TV reporter and news anchor in the Twin Ports - and the Twin Cities - for much of the 2000s. Now he's living in Georgia, an hour away from where Ahmaud Aubery's death came to light two weeks ago. In the wake of George Floyd's death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer this week, Edward is sharing his perspective on what it's like, as a black man, to live through these times.

Dr. Richard Buckalew of UMD is a mathematics professor at UMD, so unless you're pretty math-savvy yourself, things can veer off into the weeds pretty quickly.

But in addition to providing some infographics to help you better understand the math behind social distancing, he's got a lot of interesting things to say about the big differences small changes can make, and how to evaluate the news and claims crowding your social media feeds these days.

Animal Allies Humane Society is temporarily closed to visitors. Interested adopters are encouraged to make an appointment to visit the pet of their interest if they would like to adopt.

Amos

The new neighbor in the Lincoln Park business is pretty much guaranteed a warm welcome.

The North Shore Federal Credit Union is using their grand-opening-celebration money to make mini-grants to neighboring businesses.

Chances are no one planned to buy masks, hand sanitizer, directional signs, and stickers for the floor to help customers stay six feet apart.  So the mini-grants are designed to help offset reopening costs after the mandated closures.

Quarantining at home may be one of the most effective ways to stop the spread of COVID-19, but it also means more people are staying home - alone - with their abusers.

And it's no accident, either, that isolating the victim from their support system and other people is one of the first tools an abuser uses to control their partner.

Animal Allies Humane Society is temporarily closed to visitors. Interested adopters are encouraged to make an appointment to visit the pet of their interest if they would like to adopt.

Agnes

  And when finally the bottom fell out
I became withdrawn
The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin' on
Like a bird that flew
Tangled up in blue ......

The Duluth Dylan Fest was indeed blue back in March when they decided to cancel this year's celebration of the iconic singer-songwriter -- for about a minute.

We've come a long way from the days when Walter Cronkite, the anchorman of the CBS Evening News, was widely hailed as the "most trusted man in America."

Whether you blame the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, the proliferation of the internet, or the shift from "journalists" to "content creators," separating truth from fiction - even as it pertains to those reporting or presenting "the news" has become impossibly complicated.

And at the same time, the most important work, that of local newspapers, radio and television, is disappearing bit by bit.

Animal Allies Humane Society is temporarily closed to visitors. Interested adopters are encouraged to make an appointment to visit the pet of their interest if they would like to adopt.

Dafne

Dafne is a beautiful, 10 year old cat looking for her forever home.

Gerald

Maybe you can't hoard eggs.  But they're - pardon the expression - flying off store shelves as more and more people are cooking and baking.

So even though they're busy selling all the eggs they can produce, Jason and Lucie Amundsen of Locally Laid Egg Company hit on another idea to help local folks interested in urban agriculture.

The news that a pair of cats in New York came down with with COVID-19 and a pug in North Carolina did, too, has animal-lovers worried for the safety of our dogs and cats.

The bad news: if they're going to get it, chances are, they will get it from us.

The good news: they're probably not going to get it.

An article in Forbes magazine this week was titled "Security Researchers Say The Reopen America Campaign Is Being Astroturfed."

It laid out in detail how cybersecurity researchers determined that, far from being spontaneous and organic (grassroots, if you will) the protests "can be linked to domains associated with gun advocacy groups, lobbyists, and other conservative organisations."

Animal Allies Humane Society is temporarily closed to visitors. Interested adopters are encouraged to make an appointment to visit the pet of their interest if they would like to adopt.

Cocoa

People interpret the information about COVID-19 and/or the economy depending on how these things affect them.

  Is there any way to get close to an objective method to weigh these two competing interests?  How should we be thinking about this?  How should we be parsing the information we get about both issues?

Dr. Glenn Simmons Jr. has an analogy about the COVID-19 pandemic and organ donation.

But it's not the stretch it might seem.

There are laws against selling your own organs, he explains, because the people most likely to do so are already the people with the fewest resources.

Minnesota's Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan said last week, “I think we’ve heard some say that COVID-19 is the great equalizer, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. What this crisis has done is lay bare the inequities that already existed within our state.”