The news snuck up on me, which is funny now that I work for a large newspaper. It was Saturday and we had plans to attend a graduation party and pick up groceries afterward. I saw rumblings on social media about a shooting in Brooklyn Park, but in America there are shootings. You still make the coffee.
Soon enough, my wife read between the lines of the early coverage that this was a big deal. Something about members of the legislature. I turned on my work phone, which revealed a massive news operation covering one of the most terrible events in state history.
Like many of you, I stayed glued to the news, trying to find out what happened, who was involved, and the whereabouts of the man who assassinated the top Democrat in the Minnesota House of Representatives and her husband, and who tried to kill others.
I went to the grad party. We bought groceries. I took the garbage to the dump and mowed the lawn. But the part of me that writes soothing columns to contextualize news, history, love and loss — that part of me was broken.
I tried to write a column on Monday, but threw it out. It was like when the printer’s on the fritz and spits out crumpled paper with words in all the wrong places.
Tuesday I woke up with a phrase running through my head: “There is no sickness like soul-sickness.” I sat. I wrote. It didn’t take long. The result is a column about all of this. Personal, but also about all of us together.
Read “We must fill the hole in our hearts with sweet resolve, not bitterness,” in the Wednesday, June 18, 2025 edition of the Minnesota Star Tribune.
Still broken. Still going.
Aaron J. Brown is a columnist and member of the editorial board for the Minnesota Star Tribune. His new book about Hibbing Mayor Victor Power and his momentous fight against the world’s largest corporation will be out soon.
