It's a mark of how small the world has become that a catastrophe in the Caribbean can so directly impact so many people in the Great Northwest. The Daily Glean tracked down a number of tales Thursday about Minnesota's response to the earthquake in Haiti. Over the course of the day, more stories came out, and they became increasingly specific to locals — evidenced by a Shakopee newspaper publishing story on how to find loved ones in Haiti. There are about 400 people of Haitian descent in Minnesota, according to MinnPost's own Joe Kimball, but the number of Minnesotans with links to Haiti are even larger, including 8th District Rep. Jim Oberstar, who spent three years in Haiti teaching English to military cadets, and has maintained long relationships in the country — enough so that he would speak Creole to President Obama, as Politico reports, and enough that we should probably take him seriously when he warns that "the political turmoil will be unimaginable," as MinnPost's Derek Wallbank reported.

Perhaps the most unhappily detailed of the local stories to come out of Haiti comes from a 24-year-old Fergus Falls native named Rhyan Buettner, who has worked with a Haitian orphanage for the past three years and who has been sharing her experiences of the earthquake on her blog, as well as pleading for help. A sample paragraph: "Buildings in heaps, bodies too. In some places the blood runs like water out of buildings and down the sides of the road. People are in a daze. Everyone is just wandering, or frantically clawing with their hands at huge slabs of concrete. We need help! It's pouring in but we need more! We need food and water up at our houses and we are running out of fuel to run our generator."

Minnesotans are also traveling to Haiti to help in relief efforts. Minnesota Public Radio broadcast an interview with Monte Achenbach of the American Refugee Committee, which is based in the Twin Cities and which sent a team to Haiti on Thursday. FOX9 also offers information about the organization. Elizabeth Dunbar of Minnesota Public Radio offers a list of additional Minnesota organizations that are at work on relief efforts, which includes this heartening remark from the president of World Wide Village, a St. Paul-based nonprofit: "In many of our offices the phones are ringing off the hook with people who desire to help."

In the meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that Target is donating $500,000 to the American Red Cross to be used for relief in Haiti.

As Bob Von Sternberg of the Star Tribune reports, the earthquake also seems likely to have claimed one Minnesota victim: Ben Larson of Duluth, the son of two ministers, who was on a mission trip to Haiti to teach lay ministers. James Schugel of WCCO interviews several other Minnesota missionaries who are in Haiti, and they describe scenes of terrifying destruction: "It is unreal. Now with this devastation and semblance of what already looks like a landfill is pretty overwhelming to see," says one.

There's no way to transition easily from stories about so enormous a humanitarian crisis to the everyday stories of politics and news in Minnesota, so let's offer up  an interstitial photograph to signify the shift: The marvelous Stuff About Minneapolis blog offers an old picture of the restaurant counter at Snyders drug store on 27th and Lake Street, including a series of personalized coffee mugs for the drug store's "breakfast club." We at Daily Glean are most impressed by what we assume to be hand-painted signage; we don't know what "Malt-A-Plenty" was, but if it comes with grilled cheese, it looks irresistible.

And now, on to Tim Pawlenty, who also sounds like he's looking pretty good, if you believe the U.K.-based Telegraph, who put him at No. 10 on their list of most influential American conservative politicians. The magazine references Pawlenty being passed over by Sarah Palin for the VP nod, but says that he "is viewed by many GOP leaders as the better long-term bet"; nonetheless, the paper ranks him lower in influence than Palin or, for that matter, muckraker Matt Drudge or professional weeper Glenn Beck.

He's way ahead of Michele Bachmann, though, who comes in at No. 80; they dryly note that "[s]enior party officials view her as a loose cannon." The metaphor for a loose cannon is that, presumably, you can't be sure exactly what they're going to hit when they fire, but in Bachmann's case, it seems to be more that she has actually become loosened from her casing on a desperately listing and tilting ship. She rolls aft and fore, and just keeps rolling, if you'll excuse the extended nautical metaphor. Here's her latest roll:

For some reason, Bachmann was signatory to a lawsuit to force the District of Columbia to put gay marriage to a vote; while Congress is ultimately in charge of lawmaking in D.C., I'm not so sure Minnesotans would be happy if, say, Eleanor Holmes Norton were pushing for changes to Minnesota laws. Well, no matter: As Andy Birkey of the Minnesota Independent explains, that lawsuit was dismissed. Birkey also discusses Bachmann's recent appearance on Pat Robertson's CBN news show (with video), where Bachmann (whose law degree is from Robertson’s Regent University) described the current administration in this way: "We have the most left-leaning, radical president we’ve ever had in the history of the United States. The most radical, left-leaning speaker of the House than we’ve ever had in the history of the United States and one of the most radical, left-leaning majority leaders in the Senate." As far as we at the Daily Glean can tell, neither Bachmann nor Robertson discussed Robertson's contention that Haiti is cursed because one of its founding fathers made a pact with the devil.

Bachmann also criticized the Obama administration from the House floor on Wednesday, suggesting that Obama or his representatives somehow talked Khalid Sheikh Mohammed out of what sounds like a desperate desire to confess and get executed for his participation in the 9/11 attacks. City Pages has the video, and transcribes Bachmann as saying, "Why would we do that? Because all we will be saying. All the message we will be sending to future terrorists will be, 'You too can have a show trial in the city of your choice if you come to America.'"

In sports: Michael Russo of the Star Tribune showers the Wild's Josh Harding with laurels for making 36 saves in the game against the St. Louis Blues, and then showers the remainder of the team with brickbats for losing the game anyway: "The Wild brought flatness to a whole new level as its four-game winning streak skidded to a slothful end."