April 2, 2009 - As the Minnesota Twins study who will be on the roster when the regular season begins, one hoping to make the club is relief pitcher R.A. Dickey, who was acquired in the off-season. The Twins believe that Dickey's signature pitch, the knuckleball, will be particularly effective inside the Metrodome.
April 3, 2009 - Four years ago Canadian novelist Joseph Boyden burst onto the literary scene with "Three Day Road," a tale of two Canadian Cree Indians who volunteer as snipers during World War One. Boyden is all about dichotomies. He is part Ojibwe and part Scots-Irish. He splits his time between New Orleans where he teaches and James Bay in Northern Ontario where he fishes and hunts on the reservation. His new novel "Through Black Spruce" has two narrators. The first is Will Bird, a hard drinking former bush pilot who is in a coma on a Cree reservation. The second is his niece Annie. She also lives on the reservation, but leaves to work as a model, while trying to find her sister who has disappeared. The book just won Canada's top literary award, the Giller prize. Boyden told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr he chose the characters because he wanted to write about the extremes of modern native life.
April 6, 2009 - Many private colleges are admitting more students in 2009 fearing that fewer students will be able to pay tuition to attend their school. MPR’s Kerri Miller finds out what this means to students applying for either a "reach" school or a "safety" school.
April 7, 2009 - MPR’s Brandt Williams attends the last home opener at the Metronome for the Minnesota Twins. While many fans and Twins officials are excited to play in the new ballpark starting in 2010, some are appreciative of the quirky venue that has been home to two Major League Baseball World Series championship teams.
April 13, 2009 - Governor Tim Pawlenty joins Gary Eichten in the MPR studio to answer questions about the state's $4.6 billion budget shortfall, and other key issues being debated in the 2009 legislative session.
April 14, 2009 - Margaret Anderson Kelliher, speaker of the Minnesota House; and Larry Pogemiller, the Minnesota Senate majority leader, discuss the $4.6 billion budget shortfall and other key issues being negotiated in the final five weeks of the 2009 Legislative session.
April 15, 2009 - Ahmed Samatar, dean of the Institute for Global Citizenship at Macalester College in St. Paul; and Hussein Samatar, founder and executive director of the African Development Center in Minneapolis, discuss the major concerns of Somalis living in Minnesota, including whether young men are being recruited to fight with terrorists. The two Somali men who are longtime Minnesota residents and U.S. citizens.
April 16, 2009 - MPR’s Marianne Combs reports on the University of Minnesota three-day international conference celebrating the work of Minnesota poet Robert Bly.
April 17, 2009 - MPR’s Tim Post reports on application numbers going up at the University of Minnesota and state colleges and universities; however, application numbers are down somewhat at private colleges in the state for fall 2009.
April 21, 2009 - Two girls, Sabina Zimering and Lucy Smith, hid from the Nazis in Poland during World War II. They survived the Holocaust and live in Minnesota today. Zimering wrote her story in the book, "Hiding in the Open." Both women were interviewed by MPR's Dan Olson for the Voices of Minnesota series.