Kevin Duchschere

1 week ago | startribune.com | Kevin Duchschere

Samuel Langhorne Clemens may well have led a happier life if he had remained a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi. But then he never would have become Mark Twain - with all the heartache, frustration and dadgum bother (as he might put it) that job entailed. It's that dark side, usually cloaked beneath Twain's legend, that dominates Ron Chernow's massive new biography.

Feb 7, 2025 | startribune.com | Kevin Duchschere

The loon’s surprisingly difficult path to becoming Minnesota’s state birdLawmakers considered the goldfinch. Kids liked the scarlet tanager best. The whole thing took more than three decades. Loons that nest in Minnesota return to their breeding lakes as soon as the ice melts in the early spring. This pair swims in a Canyon, Minn., lake.

Nov 24, 2024 | startribune.com | Kevin Duchschere

One man dead, another injured in head-on collision on Hwy. 12 in IndependenceHighway safety advocates have long sought improvements to the stretch they call the “Corridor of Death.”A man from Montrose, Minn., was killed late Friday when his sedan collided head-on with a westbound SUV on Hwy. 12 in Independence, a stretch of road that highway safety advocates have dubbed the “Corridor of Death” for its accidents.

Aug 19, 2024 | startribune.com | James Walsh |Kevin Duchschere

(Rpa - Minneapolis Star Tribune/The Minnesota Star Tribune)The “epitome of what a mayor should be”Latimer was born June 23, 1935, in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and grew up in Schenectady, N.Y., where his father William ran a grocery store. He graduated from St. Michael's College near Burlington, Vt., and married Nancy Moore in 1959. When Latimer took a job as a law clerk in St. Paul in the summer of 1962, the couple fell in love with the city, he told the Star Tribune.