November 23, 1998 - The FBI reports serious crime has declined nationwide for the sixth consecutive year. The Bureau's figures, released over the weekend, aren't broken down by specific state or region, but as Minnesota Public Radio's Michael Khoo reports, Minnesota is in line with the national trend.
November 24, 1998 - MPR’s Kathryn Herzog presents a Mainstreet Radio report on the lack of crop diversity on many modern Minnesota farms. Some farmers and agronomists are looking for ways to bring the diversity back.
November 24, 1998 - St. Paul writer Patricia Hampl has received another big honor--She's won a Pushcart Prize for one of her short stories. Hampl is better known for her memoirs A Romantic Education and Virgin Time and her two volumes of poetry. In 1990 she received a McArthur Genius grant. The prize-winning story called "The Bill Collector's Vacation" originally appeared in the literary journal Ploughshares last fall. The Pushcart anthologies pull together the best stories, poems and essays published by small presses in a given year. Hampl says winning a Pushcart means a lot more people may actually read her story.
November 25, 1998 - Mainstreet Radio's Gretchen Lehmann profiles the Kensington Runestone…and the debate over the authenticity that has has waged on for one hundred years.
November 26, 1998 - Cuomo, former New York governor, speaking at Adath Jeshurun Congregation in Minnetonka about community involvement. After speech, program presents a report from MPR’s John Rabe on Eric Sevareid, CBS journalist and commentator on CBS Evening News. Sevareid was a North Dakota native and went to University of Minnesota. Program closes out with various individuals “giving thanks” for Thanksgiving.
November 27, 1998 - MPR’s Lynette Nyman reports on thousands of people gathering in St. Paul’s RiverCentre to celebrate the Hmong New Year. It's a time of cultural and commercial significance as people visit friends and family, browse Hmong merchandise, and watch performances of both traditional and modern dances. Nyman speaks with various participants at the event.
November 27, 1998 - MPR’s Eric Jansen reports on the unusually warm temperatures for this time of year, which brought Minnesotans out by the droves into the sunshine, enjoying weather some describe as more like spring than fall. People in Minneapolis were blading, biking, running and strolling around Lake Calhoun.
November 30, 1998 - MPR’s Dan Olson reports on the varied opinions on the war on drugs…no where is the difference more striking than on the front lines. There's a rising tide of voices saying we're not winning the war on drugs so we should legalize all or most of them.
November 30, 1998 - MPR’s Lynette Nyman reports that Khoua Her, a St. Paul woman accused of killing her six children, changed her original plea to guilty of six counts of second degree murder. Her now faces a fifty-year prison term.
December 3, 1998 - MPR's Brent Wolfe has this Mainstreet report on the study of tundra swans. The Upper Mississippi River between Wabasha and La Crosse is a temporary home to as many as 15,000 tundra swans, as they stop off here each winter enroute from their breeding grounds along Alaska's north slope to their wintering grounds on the Chesapeake Bay.