August 12, 1999 - St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman talks about his plans for a downtown ballpark, the city budget priorities, and other issues facing the city.
August 12, 1999 - Gun laws. Should we, or could we, ban guns? Carl Bogus, professor at Roger Williams School of Law in Rhode Island, discusses gun laws.
August 12, 1999 - The harsh reality and natural beauty of ranching life is at the center of Minnesota writer Jonis Agee's latest novel "The Weight of Dreams". The book's main character is Ty Bonte--a Nebraska teenager who learns from his alcoholic father that violence is a way of life. Ty and his friend beat up two teenagers from the nearby Rosebud Indian Reservation. He decides to flee his home and the law. The book then follows Ty as he tries to find redemption and a new way of life as a horse trader in Kansas. Author Jonis Agee says the book questions whether Ty can truly find peace.
August 13, 1999 - On this Midday program, Minneapolis Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton talks about her budget priorities, drop in crime, education, taxes, housing, ideas for a new ballpark, and other city matters. Sayles Belton also answers listener questions.
August 16, 1999 - North Dakota native and internationally known youth worker Trudi Able Peterson Hoefler, shares her firsthand experiences as a runaway street kid - what the life is like, what the kids are like, and what society should do to help them. She spoke at the Chautauqua Lecture Series in New York. She's the author of two books, "Children of the Evening" and "Children of the Street."
August 17, 1999 - Second District congressman David Minge and U of M Economist C. Ford Runge discuss proposals to help Minnesota farmers deal with their economic problems.
August 17, 1999 - A plutonium-powered NASA spacecraft is hurtling toward a close encounter with Earth tonight to use the planet's gravity to sling it toward Saturn. The Cassini probe is scheduled to fly within 725 miles of Earth. Anti-nuclear activists fear some kind of error could cause the spacecraft to plunge into the Earth's atmosphere and shower the planet with deadly radioactive debris. But NASA officials said there was only a 1-in-1.2 million chance of accidental re-entry. As a child growing up in Cocoa, Florida, Jesse Lee Kercheval experienced the shock of space experiments gone awry along with the intense national pride associated with the Apollo missions and lunar landing. In her memoir "SPACE", Kercheval recounts a time when all of America was riveted by rockets, astronauts and outer space.
August 18, 1999 - The Advertising Council is sponsoring a series of public service announcements this evening urging parents to talk with their children about violence. We speak with Mary Lewis Grow, national coordinator of the Student Pledge Against Gun Violence; and Judy Ladd, past president of the American Middle School Counselor Association and currently on the president's expert panel for violence prevention.
August 19, 1999 - We talk to two St. Paul citizens who were on the ball bark tour in Denver, former DFL lawmaker Ray Faricy and Marla Gamble, jewelry designer and painter and treasurer of the St. Paul Art Collective, plus Minnesota Public Radio reporter William Wilcoxen who join us from Denver.
August 19, 1999 - Governor Jesse Ventura's speech on the state’s role in dealing with the farm crisis, held at the Minnesota Rural Summit in Duluth.