July 11, 2003 - Mainstreet Radio’s Bob Kelleher reports that Minnesota's premier hiking trail is finally complete - it's taken fifteen years. A missing eight-mile stretch of the Superior Hiking Trail has been cleared through northeast Minnesota forest and the trail now runs, without break, 235 miles from Two Harbors to the Canadian border. The trail features wind swept views of the world's biggest lake, challenging hills, beavers, bears, moose, and mosquitoes.
July 14, 2003 - MPR’s Stephanie Hemphill interviews Young-Nam Kim, artistic director of the Northern Lights Chamber Music Institute, which is sponsored by the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota. The first institute was held at the YMCA's Camp du Nord near Ely in 2002. Kim reminisces about the camp experience and the fantastic audience of campers, families, and children.
July 14, 2003 - For lots of young people, summer means time to go to camp. There are different kinds of camps - hockey camp, language camp, Girl Scout camp. An increasingly popular option for talented young instrumentalists is music camp. MPR's Stephanie Hemphill visits Madeline Island out on Lake Superior, where young people from around the Midwest spend four weeks playing classical music.
July 17, 2003 - Dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov will perform at the Historic Pantages Theater in downtown Minneapolis for a sold-out performance entitled "Solos with Piano or Not…" It features the 55-year-old Baryshnikov dancing on stage alone. He'll be accompanied though, by pianist Koji Attwood, a student at the Juilliard School in New York.
July 17, 2003 - MPR's Marianne Combs profiles painter and sculptor John Snyder, and his Circus of the Night exhibit at Weinstein Gallery in Minneapolis. The presentation features gigantic paintings reminiscent of Italian works of the 14th century. Snyder details his inspiration behind the paintings.
July 22, 2003 - Mainstreet Radio's Erin Galbally visits Andrea Een, a hardanger fiddler extraordinaire and a well-known music professor at St. Olaf College. To the untrained eye the Hardanger fiddle, Norway's national instrument, looks much like the violin. But the nine-string fiddle produces its own distinctive sound. That sound and the instrument will be celebrated at St. Olaf College in Northfield, where more than 300 hundred enthusiasts of the violin sibling are expected to attend.
August 1, 2003 - As peacekeeping troops wait to enter Liberia, there's another, less visible group, waiting in the wings in the United States. As MPR’s Rob Schmitz reports, many young Liberians are in school receiving training, and developing skills that they hope they can use to rebuild their homeland.
August 15, 2003 - Mainstreet Radio’s Chris Julin reports on rocks of the Great Lakes. Thousands of tourists visit the beaches of Lake Superior's North Shore to enjoy it’s rocky shoreline…and many will be throwing those rocks into the lake.
August 18, 2003 - MPR’s Jayne Solinger talks with Tom Brown, with the U-S Coast Guard in Duluth, about high waves that caused unusually strong currents in Lake Superior. The dangerous conditions prompted the closing of beaches in Minnesota and Wisconsin for the day.
September 5, 2003 - Mainstreet Radio's Cara Hetland presents a profile of Bill Janklow's political career. He's been South Dakota’s attorney general, governor and now the state's sole U.S. representative. To some he's a hero: a champion for the underdog, and a great leader in the face of fires, floods and tornadoes. But to others he's a bully, who doesn't just beat his opponents, he obliterates them.