January 7, 1997 - Grammy nominations came out today, but a record producer -- not a singer or band -- got the most nominations. Kenneth Baby Face Edmonds, who produced the soundtrack for "Waiting to Exhale", got an even dozen. Music critic Jim DeRogatis is not a fan of the Grammies, and he was not surprised by the list unveiled today. No big Minnesota names are nominated for pop music Grammys this year -- no Bob Dylan, Prince, or Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. But Garrison Keillor is nominated in the spoken word or nonmusical album, for "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn;" and former "Saturday Night Live" funnyman Al Franken, a Twin Cities native, is up for a Grammy.
December 31, 1996 - The metal grates were already down this morning on a few restaurants in the basement of Town Square in downtown Saint Paul. The basement of the mall will be made over into state offices, part of a 2-and-a-half year, forty-million dollar makeover of Town Square and The World Trade Center. The Town Square basement wasn't a very glamorous lunchroom, but it was always busy around noon, and provided more than a few livelihoods.
December 26, 1996 - A new study suggests defibrillators implanted in the chests of heart attack patients could save as many as nine-thousand lives over two years. The battery-powered devices fire automatically whenever they detect dangerously abnormal heartbeats. The report in the "New England Journal of Medicine" indicates they could cut the risk of death in half for the 65-thousand Americans who survive heart attacks every year. Critics say the study was financed by the defibrillator manufacturer -- St. Paul-based CPI/Guidant Corporation -- and that the device should be used only in survivors with the highest risk of death by cardiac arrest. In a moment, we'll talk about the ethics, but first we'll hear from someone who implants defibrillators.
December 26, 1996 - Birdwatchers across North and South America are out in numbers again this week and next, taking the annual bird census. It's a tradition that started in 1900 as a way to protest a different kind of tradition ... teams of hunters would compete to see how many bird and small animal species they could kill. The 97th annual count, sponsored by the National Audubon Society, began December 20th and runs through January Fifth, involves 45-thousand birders, and continues a valuable research tradition, allowing experts to trace bird populations and the condition of the environment in general. I called a few birdwatchers involved in the annual count, starting with Jim Pasch, who lives on the northern edge of the Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge. He and his fellow birdwatchers went out Saturday.
December 17, 1996 -
December 16, 1996 - Last week, Governor Carlson unveiled a plan that could nearly double the state's spending on the arts. In an effort to underscore how the arts have become a billion-dollar industry in Minnesota Carlson proposed a 12-million dollar initiative. But commentator Randall Davidson says the Governor is interested in boosting a different industry ... one that currently plays under the Metrodome. He says the Governor's pitch is really about two things: the proposed new Twins stadium and a finesse of public arts policy that will have profound impact in the short- and long-term.
December 11, 1996 - The first part of this story is directed at kids ... Kids, if your mom or dad is talking about buying a computer for Christmas, make sure you get them to promise to take care of it. You should make it clear that owning a computer is a big responsibility, and you know they're going to be asking you to show them how to work it. Now, for the adults in our audiences ... I asked Jon Gordon, host of Minnesota Public Radio's Future Tense, the best way to go about buying computer stuff during the holidays.
December 11, 1996 - Twin Cities playwright Kevin Kling takes to the stage of the Jungle Theatre in Uptown Minneapolis tomorrow night for the annual seasonal run of sacred and possibly heretical Christmas stories. It was a Freudian slip, I swear, when I asked Kevin to explain the show, and I referred to it as Fear and LOATHING in Minneapolis.
December 6, 1996 - Negotiations in the federal mediation of the Boundary Waters issue are taking some time off after 14 non-consecutive days of negotiations. After months of discussion it seems there are still large disagreements over basic issues. In fact, one of the participants, Bill Hansen, a second generation canoe outfitter, has proposed just sticking with the status quo.
December 5, 1996 - In Scadinavia, Knut Hamsun is a conflicted figure. He is one of the most revered Norwegian novelists, yet he supported the Nazi's. Hamsun was born in Norway in 1859, and died there in 1952 at the age of 93. In between, he travelled twice to the United States, lectured in Minneapolis , wrote plays, short stories, essays, and 21 novels, won the Nobel prize, and eulogized Hitler. More of his novels have been made into movies than any other Norwegian's, from Growth of the Soil in 1921 to last year's Pan. And this year saw the premiere of a biographical film, starring Max Von Sydow as the author. The U Film Society in Minneapolis is showing a bunch of the movies this month and next, so we asked Bill Mishler, professsor in the U of M Scandinavian Studies department, for a primer on Hamsun, starting with 1890's Hunger.