June 26, 2007 - Stampeding bison, drunken ox cart drivers and a teen romance are all part of a new book by a St. Paul author. The book "Red River Girl" is fiction but the story is rich with historical fact from the mid 1840's. The story's heroine is a 13 year old girl forced to take on adult responsibility while coping with the trials and tribulations of being a teenager.
June 28, 2007 - MPR’s Dan Olson talks with Minneapolis musician Karen Torkelson Solgard, who has a love for the Hardanger fiddle, an ancient Norwegian instrument. Solgard works on preserving the musical form of instrument, while adding an American influence.
July 3, 2007 - Stephanie Hemphill reports on the U.S. Forest Service facing a lawsuit over its plan to log near Trout Lake, just outside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
July 9, 2007 - MPR's Tom Scheck reports on lead poisoning concerns in toys from China. Minnesota's Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar says the federal agency in charge of protecting consumers needs to get tougher on toy manufacturers. And to do that, it needs tougher laws and more money to hire inspectors. Klobuchar held a forum this morning in Minnetonka on unsafe toys imported from China.
July 10, 2007 - Hundreds of theater companies across the country are participating in a year-long floating theater festival. They're presenting short plays to the public as part of a project called "365 Days...365 Plays." It's an attempt to make theater easier to produce and more accessible to audiences. The Twin Cities company Nautilus Music-Theater is performing the plays that make up Week 35 of the project.
July 19, 2007 - MPR’s Roseanne Pereria reports that while farming runs deep in the Hmong culture, many Hmong farmers are isolated both by culture and language from the rest of U.S. agriculture. They often have difficulty getting resources and finding information. Pereria interviews one local grower who work towards changing that.
July 23, 2007 - Morning Edition presents listener recollections on their watery experiences during the “Storm of the Century” in July of 1987.
July 23, 2007 - Morning Edition’s Cathy Wurzer interviews meteorologist Bill Togstad about the science behind “The Storm of the Century” in Twin Cities on July 23, 1987. Togstad details how an unusual atmospheric condition brought massive amounts of moisture that lingered over the metro. He states there is nothing before or after that has matched this weather event for the Twin Cities.
July 23, 2007 - Midday examines the hype around the latest Harry Potter book, and discovers other young adult books that can hook kids into reading.
July 24, 2007 - Author Jonis Agee's new novel "The River Wife" actually tells the story of several wives, five generations of women who live on a piece of land on the Mississippi in southern Missouri. For each of them it's an uncertain life, buffeted by lawlessness on the river, the Civil War and then Prohibition. Agee now lives in Nebraska. But she grew up in Missouri, and later taught in Minnesota for two decades.