Minnesota transplant discovers he’s connected after all

As many readers of the paper know, I am not from Minnesota, and instead from Rhode Island, a state that takes the same time to go from one end of it to the other as it does from Rochester to Owatonna.
Combined with the fact that the state has approximately one million people in it, there were often times where people would say “what a small state” after running into a mutual acquaintance of somebody totally by accident.
Not being from here, it’s uncommon for this to happen to me in Minnesota.
But the last couple of weeks have reminded me of just how connected everyone really is, and how just a few degrees of separation really does connect us.
One of the first glimpses of this was a couple of weeks ago. My wife’s co-workers and significant others were going out to catch a band, so I tagged along.
Being that I am a reporter, I was the de facto “talk to strangers first and not talk about the weather” person.
I went up to the significant other of one of my wife’s co-workers and since I’m a Millennial I naturally asked something to the effect of “what do you do for work.”
He then proceeds to tell me what community he works for, a place I covered one year prior before the company I worked for shut down eight newspapers in the south metro.
I couldn’t believe this, what a small world. I just happened to run into someone who worked for a city with not that many staff members that I used to cover, considering I’ve only covered a relatively small percentage of the communities in this state.
Speaking of that, here comes the second part of recent discoveries of how small this state really is.
Between our two newspapers, the Dodge County Independent and Steele County Times, there are currently three superintendent searches going.
As of last week, before Byron picked their finalists, three of the semi-finalists are covered by friends of mine at their respective local media outlets.
Let’s just say, naturally there has been some comparing of notes, as I’ve asked them for some information about the different candidates.
One of my friends actually attended one of the interviews to do a story for his local paper which he kindly sent to us.
I wasn’t born here, didn’t go to kindergarten or school here, and have only lived about half my adult life here, but still, let it sink in, that I am much more connected than I thought a couple of weeks ago.