August 22, 1997 - St. Paul Public Schools will have at least 227 new teachers in classrooms for the start of the school year, and the district is still filling vancancies. Some of the new teachers are recent college graduates, but the majority come to St, Paul with experience in other districts. District officials held an orientation this week for 200 teachers to better prepare them for challenges of urban classrooms. Minnesota Public Radio's Tim Pugmire reports.
August 22, 1997 - Dwight and Vance Opperman are buying a 12-and-a-half percent share of the Internet Broadcasting System of Edina. IBS runs the Channel 4000 online service in Minnesota. Minnesota Public Radio's Bob Collins reports this investment by the former owners of West Publishing company fuels an increasing dominance of new forms of media by those who made their fortunes in newspapers and magazines.
August 22, 1997 - One hundred years ago, the "Minnesota Hospital for Indigent Crippled and Deformed Children" opened in Saint Paul. The hospital was the brainchild of Doctor Arthur Gillette, an orthopaedic surgeon who believed the state had a duty to care for children with disabilities. Today, the hospital is privately owned and has a different name....Gillette Children's Specialty Health Care...but its mission remains the same. Minnesota Public Radio's Lorna Benson spoke recently with some people who spent literally years of their lives at Gillette. Their memories of pain, pleasure and personal triumph are still vivid.
August 22, 1997 - U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman is asking for a national strategy to save small farms. Glickman appointed a commission to take public testimony and issue recomendations. The commission was in Sioux Falls today and farmers want the government to assist in coming up with better ways to market and finance the products they grow. Minnesota Public Radio's Cara Hetland reports.
August 24, 1997 - MPR’s Dan Olson visits Minnesota State Fair bee exhibit superintendent Winnie Johnson in the horticulture building to discuss bees in our state. Johnson raises bees in Anoka County.
August 24, 1997 - Move over Shirley Temple, step aside Fred Astaire--several nationally acclaimed tap dancers are shuffeling into the Twin Cities this weekend for the Tappin' In the Twin Cities Festival. You're listenting to 18-year old St. Paul dance sensation Tyheesha Collins. She's a featured dancer in this weekend's festival. I met her between classes at the Hennepin Center for the Arts in Minneapolis . Tyheesha says she started tapping when she was two years old. Her six year old cousin was taking tap and little Tyheesha used to get in trouble for stealing her cousins tap shoes.
August 25, 1997 - One of the newer animal exhibits at the Minnesota State Fair is The Butterfly House. David Bohlken, of St. Paul, has set up a big see-through, tent-like enclosure the size of a double garage, which originator Bolhken says is a great scientific study.
August 25, 1997 - The Minnesota Department of Transportation is testing a new traffic control system that's a bit more sophisticated than your average ramp meter. The Guidestar Trilogy Project uses electronic sensors, global positioning satellites and dashboard computers to help drivers steer clear of traffic jams on Twin Cities highways. MnDOT is testing the system to work out bugs and to figure out how much people are willing to pay for it. Minnesota Public Radio's John Bischoff reports: (car door slam, ding dong) "When they installed this they put in a monitor and stand. Then in the trun
August 26, 1997 - Eddie Lyback is the president of the Mille Lacs Lake Advisory Association, a group of eighty fishing-related businesses. He says people he's talked with are extremely disappointed by the ruling.
August 27, 1997 - This weekend marks the real end of Hart's Record Store. Hart's was open in St. Paul until 1952, when owner Hart Callender closed the doors because of health problems. But he always planned to re-open it, and he held onto all his merchandise until he died last year, never letting that faint hope die. That merchandise, including 200,000 unopened records, but also some record players and radios, spent years in the Callendar basement and then in a warehouse, and no one knows how much it's worth to collectors. Pop music historian Arne Fogel got a sneak preview of the collection, which includes this old record of the music from the movie Pinnochio.