September 15, 1997 - For almost twenty years, Leonard Maltin has been as important to the couch potato as a big bag of Fritos. As film critic for Entertainment Tonite and editor of the "Movie and Video Guide," Maltin may be one of the most influential critics around. He's out with the 1998 version of the "Movie and Video Guide," which concisely reviews more than 19,000 movies, and he was in town last week.
September 15, 1997 - "Useful" isn't a word most artists commonly hear when someone describes their work, but it's the ideal word to Wadena-based artist and designer Arthur Apissomian. He is the creator of a new material called PermaProse, a combination of glossy magazine paper and various adhesives tough enough to make furniture. With this new material, he turns what could be your average table or canister into an everyday work of art. Minnesota Public Radio's Gretchen Lehmann reports.
September 17, 1997 - The Twin Cities rock radio dial is shuffling again. In a week or so, X-105 will switch to something between the current hard rock format and the old alternative rock format of the former Rev-105. Meanwhile, 93-7 The Edge will get harder-edged, perhaps in a bid to compete with Rock-100, which starts with Howard Stern in the morning and plays hard rock the rest of the day. The Edge and 105 are owned by Cap Cities ABC, which also owns the giant KQRS. Chancellor Broadcasting recently bought Rock-100, which used to be BOB, the country station. Chancellor owns six other stations in the market. Robert Unmacht, editor of the M-Street Journal, a weekly broadcast trade newsletter, says while the reshuffling is possible because of the radio aglomeration in the Twin Cities, what's happening is the legacy of old FCC actions conflicting with the market's growth.
September 17, 1997 - Daniel Pinkwater has several fan clubs. Childless adults know him for his public radio commentaries. Parents know him as one of the nation's premiere kids' book writers. Kids know him becuase they eat up his books. But there's another audience, one Pinkwater is aiming at with a new compilation of his young adult novels: adults who read his young adult books when they were young adults but who still dip into them now and again. Pinkwater says he writes for the kid he was.
September 18, 1997 - Jane Kenyon was an essayist and poet who published several collections of work and contributed to the New Yorker and Atlantic magazines. Kenyon wrote about many things including her own battle with depression. MPR's Steven Smith talked with Kenyon in 1994 for his documentary "A Suffering Mind". During that interview, she read poem "Woodthrush."
September 18, 1997 - MPR’s Greta Cunningham talks with poet Donald Hall about his wife and fellow poet Jane Kenyon, who passed away in 1995. Hall reads Kenyon’s poem “The Needle.”
September 22, 1997 - It's yellow, has a hole punched in the upper left hand corner, and has been in continuous publication for more than two-hundred years. It's the Old Farmer's Almanac. The hole was for the nail in the outhouse wall, and a brief unscientific office poll discovered that the modern inside bathroom might be a frequent resting place for the modern Almanac.
September 23, 1997 - No representation of England would be complete without The Union Jack, horse racing, and soccer. And, fittingly, British artist Mark Wallinger's exhibit at the Fiterman Gallery in Minneapolis includes these symbols, but not exactly like you'd expect. The jockeys are faceless, the Union Jack has "Mum" scrawled across it, and a model soccer field sits atop a tomb. Another prominent symbol: a pantomime horse, which Wallinger says has its origins in children's holiday plays.
September 25, 1997 - MPR’s Chris Roberts interviews Bob Hest and Steve Kramer, two ex-members of the experimental group The Wallets. Hest and Kramer discuss their new career of merging music into advertising campaigns.
September 26, 1997 - The Hennepin History Museum is re-opening to the public this weekend. It's been closed for sixteen months, while board members scurried to secure a future and funding for the 39-year old museum. Susan Larsen-Fleming is one of the board members who rolled up her sleeves during those months and took care of the collection. She says the shutdown had one benefit.