March 15, 2001 - One of the world's best collections of Ancient Egyptian Art is coming to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The exhibit, on loan from the British Museum in London, contains objects spanning three and a half thousand years of history and includes objects ranging from large granite statues to tiny ornately carved pieces of jewelry. The collection is travelling to eight U-S cities arriving in Minneapolis in December 2002. MIA Curator Robert Jacobsen says he is particularly excited about one particular piece.
March 16, 2001 - On Word of Mouth, MPR’s Chris Roberts provides a radio guide to the local arts. This episode includes Yoko Ono, Peter Ostroushko, Popular Creeps, and an arts round-up.
March 19, 2001 - ********** LIVE INTRO AND BACK-ANNOUNCE ************ Driving by outdoor billboards, few of us see anything other than the advertisement. But Joni Johnson, an entrepreneur from Minneapolis, sees a raw material for her business. Her company, called Relan (ra-LON), recycles old billboards into colorful hand bags, and tote bags. Most billboards are made of vinyl. After their time as a billboard is over, the vinyl surface is dirty and wrinkled. For 2 years now, Joni's company has perfected the process of taking the material, and recycling it into fashionable bags. We joined Joni and her operations manager Jonathan Fitz at their warehouse where they cut the tennis-court-sized billboards into workable pieces. Joni says the HUGE images on a billboard make it difficult to describe her much smaller hand bags.
March 19, 2001 - Scott Carrier's quirky radio stories about sibling rivalry, swimming lessons and falling in love are familiar to many "All Things Considered" listeners AND fans of "This American Life." But the independent radio producer has also spent years writing about life and death struggles in lesser-known war zones from Cambodia to Kashmir to Chiapas. This seemingly disperate collection of stories is the basis for Carrier's book "Running After Antelope." And as the name implies, large horned animals also figure into the storyline. Carrier starts the book by looking back on a defining moment he shared with his slightly older brother:
March 21, 2001 - Nuala O'Faolain (Oh-FWAY-lawn) made a splash a couple of years back with her memoir "Are You Somebody?" The rave reviews and her regular Irish Times column, have actually made her somebody, in her native Ireland and here. Her new book, "My Dream of You," is a novel within a novel and it's not without its parallels to her own life, and Irish history. Its protagonist, Kathleen de Burca is an Irish travel writer based in London. She has kept her life "even and dry" for two decades, living in a London basement when she's not globetrotting. But after a friend dies, she heads back to Ireland and becomes obsessed by a centuries old scandal. O'Faolain told Minnesota Public Radio's Tom Crann she got the idea for the story as a result of a chance meeting during one of her own travels:
March 27, 2001 - Mark Broderson and a few other ice climbers built their own ice waterfall. It is 42-feet high and three telephone poles are supporting the structure. They are also able to control the safety of the ice structure.
March 27, 2001 - Elton John's latest musical hit -AIDA- opens its national tour in Minneapolis tonight. Based on a Verdi opera -the musical tells the story of a captain in the Egyptian Army who falls in love with a slave from the neighboring country of Nubia. Patrick Cassidy stars as the Egyptian Captian, named Radames (Rah-dah-mays). He told Minnesota Public Radio's Stephanie Curtis that he jumped at the chance to take on the role:
March 29, 2001 - Mainstreet Radio’s Chris Julin talks with Lee Murdock, a folk singer who sings about Lake Superior and the Great Lakes. Murdock has made his career singing songs of the Lakes, from 200-year-old sailors' work songs, to his own compositions based on Great Lakes folklore.
March 30, 2001 - A new way to fight Napster has been developed by the recording industry is through encoding, causing the disc to be invisible in the computer.
March 30, 2001 - A look at putting on a theater production and Minnesota theater composers. Creating music for the theater is a different kind of composing.