September 6, 1999 - Labor Day always marks the end of the State Fair in Minnesota...and time to start tallying attendance which seems to grow every year. While the numbers are not in yet, because the fair is still underway through today, fair organizers say they're expecting to come close to last year's record-breaking attendance of one-million six-hundred and 89-thousand people. Jerry Hammer is the executive vice president of the fair. I asked him what this fair will be remembered for.
September 6, 1999 - Minnesotans at work will be the subject of a new photography exhibit at the pARTS gallery in Minneapolis next week. Minneapolis photographer Stephen Dahl spent 13 years capturing black-and-white images of Minnesotans on the job. He got access to many of the area's largest corporations and shot the people behind the scenes--hotel maids, baggage handlers and stockboys. Dahl, who's a social worker in the Hopkins school district, also captured dislocated auto workers in Wisconsin, and the dwindling number of commerical fishermen on Lake Superior. The project started in the mid-eighties, when Dahl began photographing farm families in Goodhue County.
September 6, 1999 - Technology industry giant IBM is making a play to attract younger, more productive workers by changing the company's retirement plan. The new system provides more portable benefits that younger employees can take away when they change jobs. The company's previous pension package rewarded long years of service. As a result, many veteran IBM employees are up in arms and some are claiming pension losses of as much as forty percent. IBM employees in Rochester are joining their counterparts across the country trying to get back what they say they've lost.
September 6, 1999 - Mainstreet Radio’s Leif Enger reports on digitally-mapped, electronically monitored, pushbutton GPS golf. The latest lure for the golf-obsessed is satellite technology, global positioning to be exact. But at least one golf purist is not impressed.
September 6, 1999 - Before all Minnesotan students return to school they have to make one last dash to the malls - shopping at the back to school sale. The reason for the frenzy? As Torsten Teichmann found out... it's Because for many students fashion and a displaying the right style is at least as important in school as to have a good teacher.
September 7, 1999 - Classes begin at the University of Minnesota today, two weeks earlier than the traditional start of the acacdemic year. This is the first time in 75 years the university has operated under a semester-based calendar. Planning for the conversion from quarters to semesters began four years ago and touched every aspect of the university.
September 7, 1999 - With summer officially over, Minnesota's public schools are starting Year Two of the controversial "Profile of Learning" curriculum standards. Last spring, opponents of the Profile had a big impact at the state capitol with protests and constituent phone calls, and they convinced the Minnesota House to vote to scrap the system altogether -- a move that ultimately failed in the Senate. Despite their near-success, opponents of the Profile say the news media have misrepresented their positions and portrayed them as kooks -- and they say the people of Minnesota don't really know what's at stake.
September 7, 1999 - Students went back to school today at the University of Minnesota, coping with parking problems and the change from academic quarters to a semester system. As if that wasn't enough excitement for one day, the Minneapolis grain giant Cargill announced it's donating 10 million dollars to the U. The grant will go to expand the University's research on the gene sequencing of plants and microbes.
September 7, 1999 - Jodi Carlson shed tears of joy last May as she watched the Minnesota Legislature overturn a gubernatorial veto for the first time in 17 years. It was a triumph for the Bemidji native, who has used a wheel chair ever since a 1995 accident. She spent weeks at the Capital convincing lawmakers to amend a law preventing her from suing a car manufacturer over an alleged defective seat-belt. But Carlson's legal battle is not over.
September 8, 1999 - Eleven Saint Paul schools have begun a new school year on academic probation. School board members last night approved a district accountability plan that turns up the heat on under-performing schools. Superintendent Pat Harvey is pushing tough new rules aimed at improving student test scores, and more reforms are on the way.