Karen Tolkkinen

5 days ago | startribune.com | Karen Tolkkinen

CLITHERALL, Minn. - I used to think of myself as a semi-sorta-OK country girl. I could split wood. I'd plucked chickens. Baked bread from our own wheat. Willa- a blend of breeds, floppy brown ears and a curly tail - was four months old when we adopted her from the Wadena County Humane Society in 2022. And let me tell you, she is disgusting. There's not a dead thing she won't roll in, a snake she won't thrash around in her mouth, deer droppings she won't gobble like candy.

6 days ago | startribune.com | Karen Tolkkinen

WINDOM, Minn. - His brown eyes stare directly at the viewer, not as a challenge, but as their equal. At a time when immigration stings are breaking apart families, sweeping innocent and guilty alike into their net, the young boy's gaze conveys a humanity that will not be denied. "I'm NOT illegal," he has written on the wooden back of his school desk. The crayons he used lie before him.

1 week ago | startribune.com | Karen Tolkkinen

SOUTHERN MINNESOTA - I was leaving a Rochester hotel one morning, heading to Winona, when the most unusual music I'd ever heard started playing on my car radio. A woman was singing a capella in what seemed to be a foreign language in simple, repetitive notes. It reminded me of when I was a kid living in Plymouth and we'd call what we thought was "outer space" on our rotary dial phone - a series of short tones played over and over. I was mesmerized.

1 week ago | startribune.com | Karen Tolkkinen

By Karen Tolkkinen The event, which was supposed to be about the Constitution, barely mentioned our founding document. The Minnesota Star Tribune Rick Green, founder of Texas-based Patriot Academy, urged listeners in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota to push public schools to hire Christian chaplains. (Karen Tolkkinen) Share Comment about the writer Karen TolkkinenColumnist Karen Tolkkinen is a columnist for the Minnesota Star Tribune, focused on the issues and people of greater Minnesota.

3 weeks ago | startribune.com | Karen Tolkkinen

FERGUS FALLS, Minn. - In his temporary office in a downtown office suite, Father Lucho Palomino let me try out my broken Spanish. "I want ... a ... green T-shirt," I told him, drawing from my recent DuoLingo lesson on shopping. He laughed, brown eyes crinkling. "Bueno español," he said. It took me a beat to understand so he repeated it in Spanish and then in English.