November 27, 2002 - Mainstreet Radio's Stephanie Hemphill reports on The Peshtigo Fire, which wiped out the booming mill town of Peshtigo Wisconsin, just north of Green Bay. About two thousand people died.
November 27, 2002 - MPR’s Cathy Wurzer interviews Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak about Tyesha Edwards shooting. Two men, ages 21 and 23, are in custody in connection with the shooting.
November 28, 2002 - Matthew Fox plays guitar, and mandolin. But until now he has been playing in bands, either in ensembles, or backing someone else. Now, this relatively recent Twin Cities transplant is stepping into the limelight with his own album "Pilgrim." MPR’s Euan Kerr talks with the artist about album.
November 29, 2002 - An excerpt from an August 2002 interview with Minneapolis folk-blues legend Dave Ray, who died on 11/28/2002. Ray talks with MPR’s Dale Connelly about how hearing classical guitarist Andre Segovia perform changed his life.
December 2, 2002 - MPR's William Wilcoxen reports on how a trial can be affected by the fame of the defendant. Kirby Puckett faces a February 2003 trial on charges that he dragged a woman into a restaurant bathroom and groped her there. The trial will draw public scrutiny mostly because of Puckett's celebrity status as a Hall of Fame baseball player.
December 2, 2002 - MPR’s Greta Cunningham interviews Met Council Frank Hornstein about meeting to reconsider which languages will appear on ticket vending machines for the Hiawatha light rail line. Under the current proposal, the machines will operate in English, Spanish and Hmong- the three most widely used languages in the Twin Cities. But Somali advocates are protesting the plan because so many Somali citizens live along the Hiawatha route. It would cost more than $100,000 to add a fourth language to the vending machines.
December 3, 2002 - For the first time in its 24 year history, the Sundance Film Festival will screen a Minnesota-made movie.
December 6, 2002 - December is a busy month for Minneapolis humorist Kevin Kling. He just released a new compact disc of his National Public Radio commentaries called "Wonderlure" -- a few weeks from now he'll reprise his role of Joseph in what's now become an annual holiday pageant at the Southern Theater -- and this Monday, Kling returns to the Guthrie Theater to spin more wacky childhood yarns in "Tales From the Charred Underbelly of the Yulelog." Kling says the Guthrie show takes a somewhat jaded look at the holidays.
December 10, 2002 - MPR’s Lorna Benson interviews Jen Randolph Reise, co-director of Women Against Military Madness, on group’s efforts to find peace solutions as an Iraqi War possibility looms. Reise says WAMM's most visible activities has been its weekly protests on the Lake Street Bridge in Minneapolis.
December 10, 2002 - MPR’s Cathy Wurzer interviews W. Harry Davis, prominent local civil rights activist and educator, about his autobiography, entitled "Overcoming." In it, he describes growing up in poverty, helping found the Minneapolis Urban Coalition, running a local Golden Gloves Boxing organization and serving on the Minneapolis School Board for 20 years.