August 3, 2001 - Kirby Puckett and Dave Winfield will be inducted into the Hall and Midday has a Baseball Hall of Fame extravaganza to preview the event with the recorded words of Kirby Puckett himself, sports analyst Howard Sinker live from Cooperstown, and comments from MPR listeners.
August 2, 2001 - MPR’s William Wilcoxen reports on St. Paul plan to turn a downtown parking lot into a park that will contain statues of the Peanuts cartoon characters made famous by one of the city's native sons, Charles Schulz. One of Schulz's daughters joined city officials in announcing plans for the new park.
July 10, 2001 - MPR’s Art Hughes reports that The Minneapolis City Council is struggling to figure out the city's next step in light of tax reform that substantially limits future money for a popular neighborhood development program, Neighborhood Revitalization Program. Neighborhood activists are also not sure whether to try for a referendum in November to make up the funding that was cut.
July 10, 2001 - MPR’s Andrew Haeg reports that the continuing decline of small agricultural communities in the Great Plains is fueling a search for ways to keep people from moving away. Increasingly, rather than looking to federal or state governments for aid, townspeople are trying to save themselves.
July 10, 2001 - MPR's Laura McCallum reports that Governor Ventura has emerged from a bruising legislative session with his approval ratings intact. In the first poll since a special session narrowly averted a government shutdown, Ventura's approval ratings have remained steady, and nearly half of those polled think he should run for a second term next year.
July 10, 2001 - The national convention of the Communications Workers of America wrapped up today in Minneapolis. The union's 2,300 delegates heard AFL-CIO president John Sweeney and others talk about the importance of expanding union membership in Minnesota and nationwide.
July 9, 2001 - MPR’s Elizabeth Stawicki presents report on attempts to save the Ojibwe language. Report includes various interviews, including Jim Northrup. At one time more than 300 American Indian languages were spoken in the U.S. But with each passing generation, many of the indigenous languages have died; others are on the verge of disappearing. With that in mind, tribes from northern Wisconsin and Minnesota are trying to keep their Ojibwe language from going silent and along the way gain new insight into how their ancestors viewed the world.
July 6, 2001 - MPR’s Laurel Druley reports on how state farmers are now trying to predict their crop yields. Typically farmers like to see corn hip-high by the fourth of July. But 2001 was not a typical year, with massive flood waters in the spring. At the start of July, Minnesota corn height averaged 21 inches. That's a foot shorter than the year before.
July 6, 2001 - Midday presents the American RadioWorks documentary “The Promise of Justice: Burning the Evidence,” which looks at war crimes in Kosovo. This is the story of a secret and grisly operation by Serbian security forces to destroy evidence of possible war crimes in an industrial furnace in northern Kosovo.
July 5, 2001 - Mainstreet Radio's Chris Julin visits Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center in Ashland, Wisconsin. The center turns tourists and school groups into voyageurs for a day, and takes them out on Superior in a huge, Montreal canoe.