Archive Posts
-
Linkages Mentors Embody Servant Leadership
Spring: It’s the time of year we all wait for with anticipation after a long winter, with warm weather, budding trees and flowers. Spring also is a time when the campus becomes more alive with activity, and it marks the end of many things: classes, internships and club meetings. While many things seem to be…
-
Poetry Puts Soul in his Life
For almost 40 years, between 25 and 65, I rarely read a poem – except perhaps a verse or two I came across in The New Yorker. I’m not proud of that; in fact, I’m a little chagrined, but my life was busy with chasing stories, teaching classes, managing calendars and, well, feeling important. So… -
A Community That Knows how to Prime the Pump
The story is told about a man who was stranded in a desert. He was lost and dehydrated. As he crested another dune, he feared the old shack he saw was merely a mirage, but with his last energy, he stumbled to it. He looked around and saw a rusty, dirty water pump. He started… -
The Best Coach in the Game
Editor's note: Doug Hennes, vice president for university and government relations, submitted a guest column to The Scroll. Back in the mid-1980s, I was sitting around the St. Paul Pioneer Press newsroom one evening talking baseball with veteran sportswriter Mike Augustin, and I mentioned in passing that Cretin High School had won another state high… -
We Are Family
As a family studies scholar, I am usually quite particular about the use of the word “family.” I sit up and take note when the word is applied, sung, touted, disregarded, defined or bantered about. Are we advancing stereotypes? Are we being inclusive? Are we able to fully comprehend the emotions and connotations of this… -
Seniors and the Job Market: Focused and positive.
Jim Shoop, a former newspaper colleague and fishing buddy, and I were at breakfast the other day, sipping coffee and eating a heart-healthy bagel with low-fat cream cheese. We talked about whether our shrinking retirement annuities would last as long as we will. The only thing scarier, we agreed, is to be a graduating college… -
Parking lot Blues
Recently, I walked over to inspect the Anderson Parking Facility. It’s probably the most attractive parking ramp in St. Paul. If there were a beauty contest for parking ramps, believe me, no one would be saying ours has a great personality. When Lee Anderson so generously donated the money for the ramp (as well as… -
Uganda and its Students Continue to Impress
He wasn’t just blowing cigar smoke when Sir Winston Churchill declared Uganda to be the “Pearl of Africa.” It is truly one of the lushest and most beautiful countries I’ve ever seen (and I am not saying this because it ranks third – after India and the People’s Republic of China – in the numbers… -
Tommie Basketball=Teamwork
While listening to the radio, a frantic housewife called her elderly husband’s cell phone. She knew his regular route. When he answered from his car, the wife, with fear in her voice, told him that one person was driving the wrong way down Interstate 94. “Oh, Herman, be careful.” He responded, “One! There are hundreds…