February 8, 1999 - The owners of Canterbury Park Race Track in Shakopee are trying to revive a plan for casino gambling. A year and a half ago lawmakers rejected a casino proposal that was linked to a new Twins stadium. This time backers are NOT talking about a stadium. Instead they say most of the revenue could be used for anything from reducing taxes to increasing spending on education. The governor says he's open to the idea.
February 10, 1999 - High school students from Minneapolis and St. Paul are getting a crash course in African-American musical history this week at the Ordway Music Theater. About 100 teenagers who are probably more familiar with rap and hip hop spent a day learning about spirituals, civil rights songs, rhythm and blues, and singing songs that have played a central role in African-American experience.
February 10, 1999 - It's been two months since a Minneapolis Police van accelerated out of control into a crowd of Holidazzle parade watchers killing two people and injuring several others. Investigators found nothing wrong with the van. Minnesota Public Radio has learned tests conclusively showed the driver had NO alcohol in his blood at the time of the accident. Other tests apparantly found traces of medicine, but not enough to impair the police officer.
February 15, 1999 - Novelist T.C. Boyle, author of "The Road to Wellville" and "Riven Rock" amongst other books, had a strange experience recently. His high-school aged son, who he describes as a 'tech-head who doesn't read much and who came out of the womb connected to a modem', was assigned two of his books for English class. Boyle found out when he caught his son sneaking a copy of "Tortilla Flats" out of the house. Luckily for the younger Boyle, he doesn't have to read his dad's new volume simply called "Stories". It's a seven-hundred page doorstep of a book... which collects many of Boyle's short stories from the last quarter century. Boyle told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr the wide range of subjects for his story shouldn't really come as a surprise.
February 16, 1999 - Instant reality is the theme of an exhibition of photographs on display in Northeast Minneapolis . It's called "The Moment Seized," and the only criteria for the hundreds of pictures adorning the walls of the Acme Visual Arts gallery is that they be shot with a polaroid camera.
February 18, 1999 - As Eric reported Artspace, the organization that's adopted the Shubert theater must raise twenty to thirty million dollars to re-open the theatre. If they can't do it, the theater will be torn down. Wendy Holmes-Nelson of Artspace says the heavy-duty fundraising will start this spring.
February 18, 1999 - The desire for artistic expression is inherent in every human being. That's the view at the Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts which is opening a new play this weekend. Interact is the only place of it's kind in the country, offering people with mental and physical disabilities a chance to become artists. A Mind in Flames" is about mental illness written and performed by artists who know first hand what it's like to live with schizophrenia, depression, and paranoia.
February 18, 1999 - The Shubert Theatre in downtown Minneapolis is finally inching toward its new home. Moving the 90-year-old building is a costly project fraught with delays, so arts supporters and city officials are relieved it's finally on its way.
February 19, 1999 - MPR’s Katherine Lanpher talks with poets Robert Bly and William Duffy about their adventures in poetry - both then and now.
February 19, 1999 - Since the early 1960s the Vermont-based Bread and Puppet Theater has been taking it to the streets. Considered at the forefront of the theater of social protest... the company uses hand-made puppets which are deceptively simple-- created from common materials but with powerful artistic results. This week and next Bread and Puppet -- with it's founder Peter Schumann -- are in the Twin Cities performing some of their classic work and and adding new creations with the help of Macalester college students and children from area schools.