June 13, 2005 - MPR’s Bianca Vazquez Toness profiles La Loma, a commercial kitchen in Minneapolis that makes about 13,000 tamales a week. Toness interviews the owners about how they started and there goals for the future.
June 14, 2005 - Michael Cunningham's new novel has just been released. It's called "Specimen Days." Tonight Cunningham shares a stage with a woman he calls "an ideal reader", his friend, the poet Marie Howe, as part of the Literary Friendships series at Saint Paul's Fitzgerald Theater. His frist novel -- "The Hours" was a surprising success and it put Cunningham's work in the spotlight like never before. "The Hours" won the Pulitzer Prize, and inspired the 2002 film of the same name. The movie garnered 9 Academy Award nominations. Michael Cunningham says he truly enjoyed the big-screen version of his book "The Hours" despite the fact that the movie couldn't possibly contain all the details of the novel.
June 14, 2005 - Michael Cunningham is the author of four novels, including "The Hours," which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 and was made into a film starring Meryl Streep. His upcoming novel, "Specimen Days," is a journey into the past and future that centers around the American poet Walt Whitman. Howe is a Guggenheim-award-winning poet whose first book, "The Good Thief," was selected by Margaret Atwood as winner of the National Poetry Series. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. She is author most recently of "What the Living Do" and was co-editor of "In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic." Cunningham and Howe met through a mutual friend in Provincetown when both were just starting out in their careers. Together, they cared for that friend, who was diagnosed with and later died of AIDS. Cunningham and Howe consider one another "ideal readers;" they live in New York City and show each other everything they write.
June 17, 2005 - MPR’s Chris Roberts reports on the second annual Heliotrope Festival, a local underground music event. Roberts interviews co-founders Eric Wivinus and Rich Barlow about the festival creation and the unique acts that perform.
June 23, 2005 - It's hot and muggy in the Twin Cities, the kind of day when many people long for air conditioning…and that got us thinking. MPR went to one of the largest air-conditioned buildings in the state, the Metrodome, to see what Twins fans thought about the idea of an outdoor stadium on a very steamy Minnesota day.
June 24, 2005 - The Minnesota Twins broke a four game losing streak by defeating the Detroit Tigers 6-2 at the Metrodome. Pitcher Carlos Silva threw a complete game and didn't walk any Tiger batters. The Twins got ahead of the Tigers early with a four-run rally in the first inning, and unlike the last few games, they didn't let the Tigers come back.
June 28, 2005 - Minneapolis rocker Adam Levy of the Honeydogs says his favorite piece of classical music is the Prelude from J.S. Bach's Cello Suite #1 in G major.
July 1, 2005 - Mainstreet Radio's Tom Robertson reports that the Minnesota Legislature passed a $686 million dollar funding bill that averts a state park shutdown over the busy holiday weekend. Environmentalists are angry over one of the bill's provisions, which loosens restrictions on riding all-terrain vehicles in state forests north of Highway 2.
July 4, 2005 - There will be a big birthday bash later today... for the Minnesota State Capitol. There will be music, tours, and an ice cream social to celebrate the Capitol's 100th birthday. The building first opened in 1905 after nearly 12 years of planning and construction. Since then, it's been a hub of government and one of the state's most important public buildings. Leigh Roethke is completing her doctorate in art history at the University of Minnesota and is the author of a new book called "Minnesota's Captiol: A Centennial Story." She says when St. Paul architect Cass Gilbert was chosen to design the building, he had big ideas.
July 5, 2005 - Libby Larsen is one of Minnesota's best known composers. It turns out that for the last 10 years, Larsen has been listening to a lot of "electronica," including rave, turntable, and re-mix music.