September 4, 1997 - MPR's Martin Kaste reports that Minnesota Indian tribes are reacting skeptically to suggestions they use their casino revenues to help pay for a new Twins stadium. The co-chairman of the Legislature's special stadium finance task force met with the chief executive of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe in an attempt to get Indian money for a possible stadium financing package... but at least one Indian official in St. Paul says state politicians are "crazy" to think they can convince tribes to pay for the stadium when Minnesota taxpayers won't.
September 6, 1997 - Midday presents two segments about helping the homeless. In the first half hour, a rebroadcast of reporter Dan Olson's Voices of Minnesota interview with the head of Catholic Charities of Minnesota, Rev. Jerome Boxleitner. In the second half hour a rebroadcast of the MPR documentary Loaves and Fishes, about a Duluth Catholic facility for helping the homeless.
September 10, 1997 - Midday guests St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman and his challenger State Senator Sandy Pappas visit the Minnesota Public Radio studios to talk about issues facing the city and to answer questions from MPR listeners. Topics include partisanship, city development, housing, and downtown revitalization.
September 16, 1997 - Mainstreet Radio’s Mark Steil reports on workers at Oak Hills Living Center, a New Ulm nursing home in southwest Minnesota, who unionized several years ago and currently are locked in a bitter strike with management. They want higher pay, but government Medicaid policies and other regulations make that a difficult goal to reach.
September 17, 1997 - MPR’s Martin Kaste reports on a persistent rumor suggesting North Carolina-based NationsBank might be interested in buying the Minnesota Twins and moving team to Charlotte. Kaste looks at how it could impact legislative action at the Minnesota Capitol regarding a stadium bill.
September 18, 1997 - Just a few months after flooding irreversibly changed thousands of peoples' lives in the Red River Valley...some are telling their stories for posterity. MPR's Hope Deutscher spoke with two people who are gathering individual stories of struggle, despair and recovery...for very different reasons.
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 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 - Gay-themed movies and T-V shows generally address the most broad themes of gay life, like the difficulty of coming out. Edmund White's latest book, "The Farewell Symphony," digs deeper into the trials and tribulations faced by homosexuals in American society today. Yet, taking a mentor's advice, White keeps you at a little distance, letting you draw your own conclusions. "The Farewell Symphony" is an autobiographical novel about White's repressive Midwest childhood and his life as a usually struggling writer in New York and Europe, during which time he had sex with thousands of men. In the title, White may be saying farewell to Brice, his lover of five years, who died of AIDS in 1994. This was White's first reciprocated love affair and you'd think he'd be more prominent in the book, but Brice makes only cameo appearances in "The Farewell Symphony." We learn why he's mostly quiet about Brice when White is reunited with an old flame.
September 30, 1997 - Student Aishah Jackson, external president of the Black Liberation Affairs Committee at Macalester College, comments on Macalester administration's reaction to racial incident on campus.