April 27, 2001 - NASA's effort to deal with a projected 4 billion dollar cost overrun, plus Millionaire Dennis Tito's scheduled 20 million dollar trip to the International Space Station, plus Tito's promise to pay for anything he might break while he's aboard, got commentator Dale Connelly thinking about possible entries in a tourist's space diary.
April 16, 2001 - The focus of flood fighting moved south today as the Mississippi River crests near Wabasha. The rising water forced officials to close the bridge between Wabasha and Nelson, Wisconsin. River watchers in La Crosse saw the Mississippi rise to 16 feet, with predictions it will rise another foot before it crests. It flooded rail lines, forcing Amtrak to bus Chicago to Seattle passengers around the water. Meanwhile Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Joe Albaugh toured the Devil's Lake area, and the Red River Valley. While communities along the Red are cautiously confident they will hold the waters at bay, they are concerned about the cost of the flood prevention effort. Many hope the federal government will come through with disaster aid, and the FEMA director's visit could play a major part in that.
April 13, 2001 - Dylan Skybrook's "A Thousand Ways" focuses on how we grow as individuals. Persephone is Greek drama that uses puppetry, video, live music, and dance. House of Mercy Baptist congregation hosts an art show that features five artists' vision of The Confessional.
April 13, 2001 - Cell phones and performance arts do not mix. Horror stories are told by performers about audience members on their cell phones. Savage Aural Haunt Band explores music through fear.
April 10, 2001 - Flood fighters across Minnesota are watching the river, and the skies. With a lot of rain in the forecast, river crest projections have been raised across the region. Along the Red River in the north, devastated by the flood of 1997, officials say they are confident they can handle the higher water levels, although some will add a couple more feet to their dikes. Along the Minnesota River and the Mississippi, where communities had problems in 97, but on a lesser scale, there's now greater concern. National Weather Service Hydrologist Gary McDevitt says taking projected rainfall over the next few days into account, there could be record water levels.
April 9, 2001 - Like many writers, Australian author Richard Flanagan wanted to write about what he knew and loved. His experiences, though, are a little out of the ordinary. He grew in Tasmania, the island a couple of hundred miles off the Australian coast, and worked as a river guide on the Franklin River which rages through the wilderness. As a result his novel "Death of a River Guide" is a little out of the ordinary too. It tells the story of a man with his head jammed between two rocks underwater who is slowly drowning. He told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr he wasn't sure how to write a book but knew he wanted to...as he puts it... "sing his world into being."
March 21, 2001 - Nuala O'Faolain (Oh-FWAY-lawn) made a splash a couple of years back with her memoir "Are You Somebody?" The rave reviews and her regular Irish Times column, have actually made her somebody, in her native Ireland and here. Her new book, "My Dream of You," is a novel within a novel and it's not without its parallels to her own life, and Irish history. Its protagonist, Kathleen de Burca is an Irish travel writer based in London. She has kept her life "even and dry" for two decades, living in a London basement when she's not globetrotting. But after a friend dies, she heads back to Ireland and becomes obsessed by a centuries old scandal. O'Faolain told Minnesota Public Radio's Tom Crann she got the idea for the story as a result of a chance meeting during one of her own travels:
March 16, 2001 - On Word of Mouth, MPR’s Chris Roberts provides a radio guide to the local arts. This episode includes Yoko Ono, Peter Ostroushko, Popular Creeps, and an arts round-up.
February 28, 2001 - In the four years Deborah Copaken Kogan worked as a press photographer, she travelled in Afghanistan with rebel fighters, visited drug dens in Amsterdam, uncovered the horrors of the Romanian orphanages, and dodged bullets during the Moscow coup in 1991. She tells her story in "Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War", a book which has drawn both praise and criticism for its frank descriptions of her love life. Kogan told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr she was drawn to photography when she realised a camera could be a passport to many places. But it wasn't the only factor that led her to become a war photographer.
February 27, 2001 - VENTURA Governor Jesse Ventura met with Minnesota lawmakers in Washington today as he wrapped up a three-day trip to talk with his fellow governors ... and court the new Bush administration as well. Judith Smelser has the story.