May 11, 1998 - MPR’s Art Hughes reports on a highway dedication of James Wright’s poem “The Blessing.” It was written after a ride with his friend Robert Bly as they pulled their car off the road and encountered a pair of horses.
May 14, 1998 - Midday presents a broadcast of Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women's Sports Foundation, speaking at College of St. Catherine Forum on Women in Leadership. Lopiano’s speech is titled The Changing World of Women and Sport.
May 14, 1998 - MPR’s Tim Pugmire reports on the testing challenges of public schools in Minneapolis and St. Paul see more immigrants and refugees each year…with few speaking English. That makes passing exams, including the 8th grade basic skills tests in reading and math, extremely difficult. The state provides money to educate these students, but in many cases the immigration is outpacing the funding.
May 14, 1998 - MPR’s Perry Finelli looks at Minnesota cropland. While not an endangered commodity, some contend it's being lost too quickly in places where farming has been a way of life. The United States Agriculture Department says even though urban areas are growing, Minnesota's cropland has not been reduced. That's because the urban landscape is still only a tiny fraction of the state's total amount of land.
May 14, 1998 - MPR’s Euan Kerr talks with St. Paul guitarist Dean Magraw about his album “Seventh One.”
May 15, 1998 - The history center will be celebrating the life of one of Minnesota's most famous living artists this weekend--George Morrison. The Grand Portage native was born in a small Ojibwe community in 1919, and spent years living in New York, where he made a reputation for himself as an abstract expressionist and hung out with artists like Jackson Pollack and Willim DeKooning. Morrison moved back to Minnesota in the seventies and still lives and paints up on the North Shore of lake superior. His wood mosiacs and abstract totem poles are in galleries around the world and even in the White House sculpture garden. It was in Grand Marais that Morrison met St. Paul writer Margot Fortunato Galt. The two collaborated on a book just published by the Historical Society called "Turning the Feather Around: My Life in Art." Galt says other books have been written ABOUT Morrison, but this one is in his own words.
May 18, 1998 - In a surprise announcement, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra appointed a new acting concertmaster. The selection of the violinist to lead the musicians in any orchestra is a complex, mysterious, process. Insiders expected the SPCO selection committee to take a year to choose a successor to Romauld Tecco, but they found someone they really wanted…Denver-based Steven Copes playing and they hired him on the spot.
May 19, 1998 - Guns, gangs and violence. Not the usual picture when you think of a small northern Minnesota town. But residents in Cass Lake on the Leech Lake Reservation say they're under siege. As MPR's Tom Robertson reports, the area is also struggling with high unemployment, poverty, and longstanding racial divisions between the Leech Lake tribal government and city officials. BACKANNOUNCE: Tomorrow, Minnesota Public Radio's Amy Radil tells us how a recent State Supreme Court decision is resulting in some changes for law enforcement on the state's reservations.
May 19, 1998 - MPR’s Chris Roberts profiles Native American blues band, Indigenous.
May 19, 1998 - The reaction to news of a compromise on the BWCAW worked out between U.S. Representatives Jim Oberstar and Bruce Vento has been swift... and mixed. Oberstar's proposal to allow trucks on two wilderness portages has been entered into the transportation bill now under consideration by a Congressional Conference Committee. It has Vento's reluctant support after the addition of a provision removing some lakes from motor access.