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KAREN BARTA: Good morning. I'm Karen Barta with news from Minnesota Public Radio. Minneapolis Police are investigating the death of a seven-month-old baby as the city's record 64th homicide. Police say the baby died late last night of injuries allegedly inflicted by her stepfather, who was in custody.

Officials say this is a critical day in containing the forest fire in northeastern Minnesota and Canada. The fire has now spread across 7,000 acres. State officials say the straight line winds that knocked over millions of trees in northern Minnesota a month ago will hurt the timber industry for years to come. Economic projections suggest the more than $22 million lost timber value will result in a total economic loss of $1 billion. Barry Morse of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources says the most severe effects are in Becker and Clearwater counties in northwestern Minnesota.

BARRY MORSE: They blew down a lot of forest land that was not mature, trees that were due to be harvested in 10, 20, 30 years. As a result, it set the entire forest back to basically age zero. So you have to wait for those trees to grow to a mature size, and that's going to severely reduce the harvest for a period of time in that area.

KAREN BARTA: The DNR says most of the 129,000 acres of forest land in the area were damaged or destroyed. The state forecast today, showers and thunderstorms ending in the far southeast, clearing skies in the east, sunny to partly cloudy in the west. Highs today from the lower 70s in the northwest to the middle 80s in the southeast. For the Twin cities, mostly sunny, breezy, and less humid, with a high in the lower 80s.

Around the region this hour, it's mostly sunny in Duluth. The current temperature is 66 degrees. It's 73 in Rochester. In Saint Cloud, the temperature is 70. In the Twin Cities, it's 72. That's news from Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Karen Barta.

PAULA SCHROEDER: It's six minutes past 10 o'clock. This is Midmorning on the FM news station. I'm Paula Schroeder. Programming on Minnesota Public Radio is supported in part by the Community Partners Fund. Contributors include Malt-O-Meal Company, producers of cereals for over 75 years, and National Computer System, manufacturing and marketing computer software.

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Al Quie once got the attention of his college classmates by flying his military aircraft upside down past a Saint Olaf College dormitory. The daredevil episode illustrates Quie's self-confidence, but in politics, Quie is a moderate. Today on Voices of Minnesota, we hear from the former Republican congressman and Minnesota governor. Every Monday at this time, we bring you a conversation with a Minnesota resident who's had an impact on our state.

Al Quie's life as a farmer in southeastern Minnesota near Kenyon was his stepping stone to reach the goal he set for himself in college. He wanted to be the first district's representative in Congress. He was elected in 1958 and served 21 years, establishing a reputation as a friend of public education. He returned to Minnesota to win election as governor, defeating incumbent Rudy Perpich.

Quie lives in Minnetonka now and is a leading figure in the Prison Fellowship organization. The religious organization preaches Christianity to inmates and offers them a range of social services. Quie told the FM News Station's Mike Mulcahy he assumed he was destined to become a Lutheran preacher.

MIKE MULCAHY: Let's talk a little bit about that, because as I understand it, when you were in college, you were thinking about becoming a minister.

AL QUIE: My dad's sisters used to talk about someday I ought to be a minister, and a lot of the neighbors thought Saint Olaf College back then was a minister factory too, and so they thought probably I was going to, so they talked about that. So I was open. In fact, when I left college-- I tell people this story, when I left college, I was kind of ticked off at God because I never felt the call. And I figured I probably could understand Greek and learn how to talk. I didn't know what else ministers did.

But I was reading one of Martin Luther's work when I was back in the farm and Gretchen and I were married, and there he said that a farmer pitching manure or a maid on her knees scrubbing the floor to the glory of God is doing as a greater work as a monk, praying in the monastery.

And I realized then what the call to Jesus Christ was, was to serve him no matter what our occupation was. And it was a great, freeing moment that I could be a farmer and still witness to my faith and doing that by doing the best job I could as a farmer, and also being able to share my faith. And when I went into politics, I then felt the same way, that I could be in politics and serve the Lord at the same time.

MIKE MULCAHY: Well, you did have that different call into politics. How did that happen? How did you get started in politics?

AL QUIE: It was another freak. I was at Saint Olaf taking an extra heavy load so I could get through in three years. I was in a hurry to get my education behind me, and my brother and I exchanged doing work on the farm because my dad had lost his arm in a combine accident, and my brother and I also shared a dorm room at Saint Olaf. And one night when I was studying my chemistry, some guys came by the dorm room and said, let's go down to the Republican Club and beat the guy who was the chairman.

And so it sounded like the revolution and fun. And it was in September, so I hadn't really gotten into the groove of studying to the extent that one does a little later on. I said, OK, I'll go along. And on the way down, I said, who are you putting up against him? And they said, we never thought of that. Why don't you run?

And I thought it was a lark. OK. And to my amazement, I was elected, and then that moved into a realization that people did trust me, listened to me, and I then talked to the college president, Dr. Crascoe. That really bothered me, because I hadn't at that time thought of politics as any place to serve. In fact, I thought it had a little seamy nature to it.

And I remember him saying to me, Albert, there's no place we need Christians more than in politics. And it was like the voice of God to me. And I knew then that I would prepare myself, and I changed from a chemistry major to a political science major, and/or that I could prepare myself. I then looked at the way people got into politics, and I noticed that there were more people from rural Minnesota who went to Congress as farmers than in the other professions. So I decided I'd go back to the farm and use that as a base.

MIKE MULCAHY: Did you ever question whether you would be a Democrat or a Republican? You went to this Republican meeting. Was your family Republican?

AL QUIE: My family was a Republican. When I was in the first grade, I remember Herbert Hoover's picture on the chimney in our kitchen and the keen disappointment, emotional disappointment on my dad's part, when Roosevelt was elected. And I don't believe he ever became a Roosevelt supporter any time in his life. So that was my beginning.

But I also was an internationalist, and at that time, in my early years, Republicans weren't necessarily known as being internationalists. But a person who was studying law in Yale University worked for my folks when I was in high school and gave a book to them called Entitled Union Now by Clarence Strait about developing an Atlantic Union, and that really intrigued me. And it's fascinating that when I went to Congress, I worked with Clarence Strait on developing Atlantic Union at that time.

So I was very disappointed in college when the Evangelical Lutheran Church, which we belonged to, did not join the World Council of Churches. That upset me very much. And so I was an internationalist and a Republican, and I was a Republican most because I thought the government ought to stay as close to people as possible, and Democrats were pushing government farther and farther away, which I did not agree with.

MIKE MULCAHY: What was it about Congress that attracted you? Why did you want to be the Congressman from the 1st District?

AL QUIE: Setting federal policy was a keen interest. I had a real strong belief that the United States ought to be involved with the affairs of the world. That was one strong belief. And I, when I first went in, wanted to work on soil policies, because my interest in going into chemistry was to become a soil chemist, and I figured if I could understand how plants grew in the soil, you could move towards eliminating hunger in the world. And then I thought all those conservation practices I could be active in the legislative process. Those were my main interests. It wasn't until I came to the state legislature that I developed a keen interest in education and pursued that in Congress.

MIKE MULCAHY: So you were a fairly young man, I'm thinking at this point.

AL QUIE: Yes.

MIKE MULCAHY: How old?

AL QUIE: 35 when I went to Congress.

MIKE MULCAHY: What was it like? It must have been quite a switch to go to Washington from--

AL QUIE: It surely was. I told people that the only thing I knew by then about national issues, because I've been working on state issues, was what I read in US News and World Report, because I was subscribing to that magazine. However, I must admit, I also had been on the mailing list to receive the Congressional Record for a number of years. Still been thinking of that.

Sometimes it was hard to read the Congressional record when you're busy working on the farm, because I used to, in order to get my farm work done during the legislative session, as an example, would sleep one night and work all night the next night. So I didn't get much sleep in that time.

But the other interesting thing, when I went to Congress, that I wore a butch haircut. And I remember after I was sworn in the next day, I came, and I was stopped by the doormen. They didn't think I was a member of Congress. They thought I was--

MIKE MULCAHY: Some kid.

AL QUIE: Some kid who'd come there, because you looked younger back then if you had a butch haircut.

MIKE MULCAHY: Was the atmosphere highly partisan back then in Congress? Was it a big switch from what you were used to in Saint Paul?

AL QUIE: It was highly partisan in some parts of it. But Eisenhower was the president, and there's less partisanship when the minority party has the presidency, because the president has the power of the veto. And it was more partisan when Kennedy became the president than when Eisenhower was the president as viewed by Republicans.

MIKE MULCAHY: What about Hubert Humphrey? You must have gotten to know him pretty well.

AL QUIE: Got to know him well, and it was totally opposed to anything he stood for as a partisan person back here in Minnesota in the Republican Party and in the state legislature and hearing all the people's opposition to him, watching him, because he's a very political person, and I mean this in a good sense.

I remember before I even went into office and he was mayor of Minneapolis, and the United Nations friends had a meeting in Northfield at the high school auditorium, and everybody was waiting for Hubert to come. And then when he finally arrives, he comes down the center corridor, taking off his coat as he goes, and I watched him. I said, hey, this guy really knows how to work a crowd to get the feeling of anticipation when he's coming and all.

So there was both admiration for him as a politician, but opposed to his policies. Then when I got to know him, I saw how he really loved people. He really cared for the state, and he was open to good ideas, because I would take some of my ideas and how we ought to change the legislation. He was open to it, and we could discuss it, and he would be supportive of the way he-- when he came to agree, that's the way it ought to go.

And I admire people who aren't knee-jerk-- I would say liberals that are knee-jerk liberals or conservatives who are knee-jerk conservatives that don't think things through and try and improve, I don't have a great respect for them. But Hubert Humphrey had intellectual integrity and I admired him.

MIKE MULCAHY: Do you think that that's changed a lot? Because nowadays in Washington it just seems so partisan.

AL QUIE: Oh, it is terrible, the partisanship, but part of it is the system. There are too many committees, too many subcommittees, even though Newt Gingrich has helped that some in the House side. And so members can't be in the same place at the same-- different place at the same time.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Former Minnesota congressman and governor Al Quie talking with the FM news station's Mike Mulcahy. It's part of our interview series Voices of Minnesota heard every Monday at this time as part of Midmorning. I'm Paula Schroeder. It's 17 and a half minutes past 10 o'clock, and we are expecting less humid conditions and partly cloudy to mostly sunny skies across the state of Minnesota today. Right now, temperatures ranging from the upper 60s to low 70s.

Well, Al Quie's single term as governor in 1978 coincided with a sharp recession in the US economy. His defeat of incumbent governor Rudy Perpich was a huge political victory for the Republicans in Minnesota, but his party withdrew its support when he reacted to one state budget crisis after another. A huge state budget surplus evaporated, services were cut, and taxes raised to cope with the crisis. Quie told the FM News Station's Mike Mulcahy it was the most frustrating period of his life.

MIKE MULCAHY: Well, you must have been just euphoric then. You defeated an incumbent, you came back to your home state, and you've won the governor's race, and then I would imagine probably the four most frustrating years of your life.

AL QUIE: Well, the most frustrating year of my life was the third year as governor, because it was in August. Well, it was in June of the second year that I realized that something was wrong with the economy. And I wasn't willing to admit that it was really going-- in fact, nobody believed that the depression was going to hit Minnesota the way it did.

And the person who had been doing all the forecasting for our state finance department died of cancer, and so we didn't have the benefit of his services, and he'd been serving under the previous administrations. And so when you're missing that individual, it was harmful as well.

And then I really, in that election, wanted to save the members of the legislature from the pain of having to make the adjustments by calling a special session of the legislature. And I had it in my head that it wasn't good for re-election for a governor anyway to call special sessions of the legislature.

That was a big mistake on my part. I should have called a special session of the legislature and made the legislators, who were a part of the difficulty, to face the issue as well, and I think it would have turned out differently if I had done that. In fact, I tried to carry it all on my own shoulders for all of that next year, and a person should never do that. You ought to share the responsibility with other people.

MIKE MULCAHY: So you sort of had a triple whammy. The economy just going in the tank.

AL QUIE: It went South, yeah.

MIKE MULCAHY: Unreliable numbers in terms of the state forecasts. And plus, though, you had decided to give back the state surplus to the taxpayers. And then your own party sort of deserted you.

AL QUIE: That's right.

MIKE MULCAHY: How did that happen?

AL QUIE: Well, I should have known, because I'd watched desertion of people in the party so often before. I used to get ulcers in Congress on conference committees where some members of my own party would desert, because survival is so important. People do all kinds of things in order to survive, and politicians do the same way. I just wasn't smart enough to figure that out with the party and the people in the party that they would run for cover. But that does happen.

MIKE MULCAHY: After you left the governor's office, you became involved with the Prison Fellowship Ministries.

AL QUIE: Yes.

MIKE MULCAHY: How did that all come about?

AL QUIE: Well, I was involved in a small group prayer fellowship when I was in Congress, and there was a small group that-- I was involved with a number of them, but there was one where Harold Hughes of Iowa, former senator and governor of Iowa, who was about as liberal a Democrat as you could come, and Graham Purcell, who was about a moderate Democrat from Texas, and I was involved in this as an example. I won't mention anybody else.

And then that friend of Chuck Colson asked if we would disciple him, and so we got involved in that way. One of those whose names I don't mention, who was a Republican, refused to take part anymore because he didn't like Colson. Well, I didn't like Colson either at that time. That was my beginning in Prison Fellowship. It's a longer story than that, but you don't have enough time.

MIKE MULCAHY: Well, tell us a little bit about what the organization does.

AL QUIE: The organization started out and bringing people out of federal prisons to live in a Christian community a couple of weeks and then go back into the prison to provide leadership. And that's soon moved into what we call in prison seminars, and when Chuck Colson is out this week at Lino Lakes, he's coming out to Promise Keepers, he'll go up there to an in prison seminar and speak and go through the cell blocks.

The in prison seminar is a trained leader talks about how they can relate their life to Christ and how they relate their life to time outside and how they can get along in prison, and then volunteers come in and spend a half an hour discussing what the leader has done, and usually that's a three-day seminar.

We also have Bible studies within the prison, and then the third core program is what we call Angel Tree. Prisoners then give the names of their children who are under 16, 16 and under, and then presents are purchased in the name of the parent for the kids at Christmas time, and then you try and do some ministry during the year for them too and expand it to that.

Outside of that, we're involved in mentoring people when they come out of prison, and then finally, a group of prisoners coming together outside of prison, we're doing through Justice Fellowship an effort to lobby and push for restorative justice legislation to give victims more rights, as an example, and the Neighbors Who Care for people in churches to reach out to help victims after a crime has been committed. That's basically what it's about. We're in the 48 contiguous states of the United states, and there are 62 countries that are affiliated now with Prison Fellowship, called Prison Fellowship International, and we're having a convocation in for a week in August with them.

MIKE MULCAHY: There are some people, when Charles Colson got involved with the organization, who saw it as-- were cynical about it or skeptical and saying that, well, here's a guy who's a failed politician and a crook who's just trying to rebuild his image by putting the religion on his sleeve. Do you run into that? And how do you respond to people who say that this is just some sort of an effort for people to rehabilitate themselves somehow?

AL QUIE: I don't run into it much anymore, but when I was running for governor, there were more people who said, I agreed where you do-- what you do, but there's one thing you had the wool pulled over your eyes, and that was this guy Colson. And I can't blame them, because Chuck Colson had that reputation of being a ruthless politician for Nixon, and Nixon had a reputation too. It comes out of Watergate.

And I felt it myself. I didn't like Colson at all when he was in the White House and made certain that I never had anything to do with him. But I was involved enough in his conversion and the way he conducted his life. I've never seen a person completely turn himself over to his brothers for advice and mentoring as I saw Chuck do at that time.

And then through the years that he stays true to his faith, then after a while, you have to say, he's got to be real. You can't fake it with this long. And the fact that he went to prison and so forth. So I just know that he is a man of God and doing absolutely the best he knows how to try and now speak with a prophetic voice.

MIKE MULCAHY: There's been a lot written in recent years about the religious right or the rise of the so-called religious right, and these are people who don't separate the politics from religion or policy from religion. How do you feel about that movement, and have you ever been the same sort of way or have you tried to keep the two separate?

AL QUIE: No, I believe that one's religion, meaning one's faith, the religion one talks about God, ought to be a part of everything that you do. But the one ingredient that stands out more than anything else is what the Greeks called agape love, which is unconditional. And the only place where you see that really in evidence is when enemies care for each other. People who are at odds with each other care for each other, because it's filial, brotherly love, if we have the same politics or the same interests and so forth, and I think that's the key.

And so not only do I see nothing wrong with people promoting what they believe in through their politics, I think they should, because people who are atheists surely promote what they believe in through their politics. Everybody should be willing to do that. The separation ought to be from church and state. No organized church should be promoted by the state.

And I look at it from-- for those of us who are Christians, we ought to have the state operate so that if we were the smallest minority, we would be free to do whatever we want to do. And so when I meet with people who I see are way over on the right, I don't have the same opportunity to do it on the left, what I share with them is the reason why I am uncomfortable and other people are uncomfortable is that the love does not show forth.

And I share with them an experience that Gretchen and I had in Phoenix when we went to an Assemblies of God church, a large church, seats 6,000. They were going to march on the Capitol in opposition to abortion on that afternoon, and they went by with a banner. And the minister preached on that you ought to love pro-choice people, love gay people, love people whose faith that is different than your own, and I think that's the constant message that ought to come from the people on the right as well, and demonstrate how they love people who have totally different views, political views, than they have.

MIKE MULCAHY: So the tolerance doesn't always come out as much as it should?

AL QUIE: No, and tolerance is not indifference. Tolerance is to work in a caring relationship with people who think differently than yourself.

MIKE MULCAHY: I guess the other trend that we've seen in politics over the past few years is the sort of discontent and anger among the voters. How can that anger be channeled into positive ways? What do you think people who are just upset with the government and angry about the government should be doing?

AL QUIE: I think that people who are upset with the government and angry with the government ought to meet together and start doing something about it. I think more of them ought to go to the kind of activities and organization in which they can express themselves, find their way in nonprofit organizations in which they can express themselves, but also to study and think more as well, because you can get frustrated more by not knowing than by knowing.

And I recall one colleague who said to me, Al, I have to quit coming to the meetings. And I said, why is that? He said, you're starting to change my mind. And I said, that's good. He quit coming to the meetings.

So I would say to people, don't get locked in to one philosophy, where you won't think enough so you recognize that there's some good and some truths over in the other philosophy, because eventually we have to have a meeting of the minds, and that comes from conversation and communication with each other. You aren't going to force people into your thinking so that finally you get a majority over there and you put the other people out of business.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Former Minnesota congressman and governor Al Quie talking with the FM News Station's Mike Mulcahy. Our Voices of Minnesota interview series is heard every week at this time as part of Midmorning. Next week, we'll hear from civil rights activist Matthew little. Voices of Minnesota is also heard every Saturday afternoon as part of the week in review, which gets underway at 1:00. The producer for the series is Dan Olson, with research assistance from Dan Romeo.

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Coming up in the next half hour of Midmorning, remembering Fred Manfred with his daughter Freya. First, here's Karen Barta with the news.

KAREN BARTA: Good morning. Commercial airline flights into Bermuda have been canceled as the island chain prepares for Hurricane Felix. Meanwhile, forecasters are urging residents on the East Coast from North Carolina northward to monitor the storm. The UN says it deplores what it calls a well-organized effort by Serbs to force all other groups out of northern Bosnia. Officials say thousands of Croats and Muslims are being driven from their homes by Serbs.

Officials say this is a critical day in containing the forest fire in northeastern Minnesota and Canada. The fire has now spread across 7,000 acres. Some 300 people who were evacuated from the Gunflint Trail area are being allowed to return to their cabins at their own risk. Dan Kincaid, a US Forest Service fire information officer, says wind gusts are expected to hit 30 miles an hour, and the area remains dry. But, he says, the fire is unlikely to threaten cabins in Minnesota.

DAN KINCAID: It's split just about evenly half and half between Canada and the United States. If the fire does make a run today and increase in size, it's likely to do that on the Canadian side.

KAREN BARTA: Officials say they're investigating whether the fire was started by lightning or by an illegal campfire. The governors of Minnesota and Wisconsin will tour the upper Saint Croix River aboard a riverboat this afternoon. The tour aboard the Taylors Falls Princess is in celebration of the 100th birthday of the Minnesota Interstate Park and the 95th birthday of the Wisconsin Interstate Park.

The state forecast today, showers and thunderstorms ending in the southeast, clearing skies in the east, sunny to partly cloudy in the west. Highs today from the lower 70s in the northwest to the middle 80s in the southeast. For the Twin cities, mostly sunny, breezy, and less humid, and a high in the lower 80s.

Around the region is mostly sunny. In Saint Cloud, the current temperature is 70. It's 66 degrees in Duluth. In Rochester, it's 73, and at 72 in the Twin Cities. Paula, that's the news update from Minnesota Public Radio.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Thanks, Karen. 27 minutes now before 11 o'clock. Minnesota author Frederick Manfred died almost a year ago now. He's remembered as a gentle giant who left an enduring literary legacy. He wrote more than 30 books, and was about half finished with his latest effort when he died in Luverne. He lived most of his life near that southwestern Minnesota community on a hill overlooking what he called Sioux land.

Over the past year, Freya Manfred, his daughter, has lived and worked with her father's writing. It's inspired her to write several poems and essays about the influence her father had on her own work. But most of her attention has been devoted to honing her father's final work, Black Earth, and she compares that to taking over the reins of a speeding stagecoach after the driver had set the horses on their course.

FREYA MANFRED: It was easy in that he really had his story there. There's nothing to be added, nothing to be taken away. He always was a great storyteller, so that's all there. In the only sense which was-- the only part that was difficult was there was a period for about 75 pages near the end in which he's describing a trial. His father went on trial for something he supposedly did but didn't do. And during those scenes, many of the discussions between lawyers and judges and so on are confused. So there's a sense of reading it five or six times. I had to really compress and cut and hack away there quite a bit.

PAULA SCHROEDER: And get his brother to clean up some of the legalities.

FREYA MANFRED: And get my Uncle Henry, the lawyer, the youngest of the six brothers to-- yes, to help me with the legal matters.

PAULA SCHROEDER: And yet you've written a beautiful essay about what it was like growing up with your father, the writer, and certainly have a sense of how he worked and how much he enjoyed writing and how important it was to him. Tell us a little bit about that. When I first started to read the essay, it sounded like he was so passionate about his writing that he was almost angry at you children for being around. But as I continued to read the essay, I discovered, no, that was not the case at all. It's just that he needed to concentrate on that writing.

FREYA MANFRED: Yes, that's true. He would have an occasional very passionate outburst when we would interrupt his train of thought, and I think it would be natural for three kids of any ages to do that sooner or later, since his cabin happened to be in the backyard where we all played. So naturally, I'm sure there were moments where he probably would have liked to flatten us, because I know myself from being a writer, when you are going along with a good train of thought, it is so annoying to have it interrupted.

It's beyond annoying. It's flabbergasting. You just feel that you've come to the end of a train track and it's all dropped into the river or something. It's gone. But no, in the long run, no, I'm sure he wasn't at all angry to have us around, and liked having us around and enjoyed watching us grow.

PAULA SCHROEDER: He felt that writing was the most important thing he could possibly do, right?

FREYA MANFRED: Yes. I think at times he felt that writing was the most important thing that anybody could possibly do. He would occasionally say that musicians had it over writers because they had a universal language. But as he got older, he even began hacking away at that idea or whittling away, I mean, at that idea, so that writing was numero uno thing to do.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Yeah. Did you feel like he felt it was so important that he was almost driven in a way to write those stories, or were the stories there and just needed to come out? Because he was very disciplined about his writing.

FREYA MANFRED: Yes, very disciplined, because he knew you could get more done if you just do it every day. He did it the way he learned to farm. You have to do it every day. The seasons will change. Things are always going to happen. Accidents, damage, catastrophe, and strange things happen. So you just keep going a little every day, and that way at the end of the year, you've got a crop. You've got something in the basement to eat, something to work with.

PAULA SCHROEDER: You have a quote from your friend Carol Bly, who teaches your father's work and her writing classes, about him, and she says that he had such a springy attitude toward life. She said, "If I were God, I'd send Fred Manfred back to Earth to show everyone that cheer and curiosity are an act of will. Rather than moaning and groaning over things, he set his mind, his will to staying cheerful and curious about life."

FREYA MANFRED: Yes, she's suggesting there's another way to go and that maybe he could have gone that way.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Because you didn't have an easy life. He didn't.

FREYA MANFRED: No.

PAULA SCHROEDER: And growing up, you weren't wealthy at all.

FREYA MANFRED: No. We lived on a subsistence income, actually, which is really the lowest income you can get and still pay taxes.

PAULA SCHROEDER: We're talking with Freya Manfred, who is Fred Manfred's daughter. She is editing his final work called Black Earth. Fred Manfred died last year. When your father died, there were some who said that his writing was no longer contemporary. It didn't really reflect the current goings on of American life or whatever. that is was almost an old-fashioned kind of writing. Did that hurt you to hear those kinds of things?

FREYA MANFRED: Actually, I didn't hear anybody say that. I remember hearing Bill Holm talk about his farm novels in such a way that they sounded a little bit like they were already in the junk heap outside the back yard or something. No, it doesn't hurt me, but I just don't agree with it. I think it's mistaken to think that there's something uninteresting or uninvolving or not important about the farm novel.

Some great novels about farms are still to be written about farm life. Also, what about all the Buckskin Man tales? The way they deal so beautifully with man against the environment, man with the environment, the blood and guts and heart of what is a man, or what is a woman. But more particularly I think in those, what is a man?

I think my sons at 13 and at 14 and 15 and their friends are reading those books with a tremendous amount of energy and excitement and passion as young boys in this society, as young men in our society. We're all wild. There's a wildness in all of us, and he writes about wildness, and not in an old-fashioned way, but in a primal, eternal way.

PAULA SCHROEDER: You are a writer and a poet.

FREYA MANFRED: Yes.

PAULA SCHROEDER: And your father was very proud of your work. How did he influence that? Other than your powers of observation and watching him, how he worked, what kind of encouragement did he give you as a writer?

FREYA MANFRED: Well, there was no specific encouragement. There was no remark such as, well, you're going along the right road here, or this is a little more philosophical or meaningful or better than that. Nothing like that. It was always just, everything is wonderful. Everything you're doing is great. Keep on doing it. You're going to be really wonderful someday or great. That kind of thing.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Did you ever question any of it?

FREYA MANFRED: He read it and he enjoyed it. Oh, yes. I thought it was ridiculous. I at times said, isn't there some way that you can be a little more specific about which of these 10 poems is the best? And he would say, no, I really can't form a judgment about them. Maybe partly because you are my daughter, but I'm just enjoying them as a whole garden. A whole garden of work.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Oh, Wonderful You have some of that garden work with you today.

FREYA MANFRED: Yes, I brought some poems. I brought especially brought a few about Dad.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, can you read a couple to us?

FREYA MANFRED: I'd love to. This is a poem I wrote called "Floating in the Lake" during the period right after he had died.

Floating in the lake, my body cradled by water.

How is it possible I feel nothing about my father's death?

All afternoon, the lake lips my body with its tender mouth as if I were a stone.

When you are no one, nothing special, the lake enters you, and the dead one comes out in your tears.

And I'll have another little one I'd like to read since it involves the Mayo Clinic. Minnesotans all know about the Mayo Clinic.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Oh, yes.

FREYA MANFRED: My dad had a great time there. I call this one "Little Boy Dad". "The truth shall make you free." John 8:32.

He was so sweet, propped on pillows in the back seat of our Chevy station wagon.

Boy blue eyes wide open, hoping for a fried fish sandwich and maybe a piece of apple pie from McDonald's, where he said he'd never eaten in his life.

We were on our way back from the Mayo Clinic, where two world renowned doctors had just informed him he might live one year, and then told us secretly he'd be lucky to grab six months.

"Great guys. They told the truth," he said.

We watched the August corn glow, gold and black slowly in the setting-- and blacken slowly in the setting sun.

He could not sleep, and held my hand in his giant fingers as artlessly as if I were his mother, trusting me to love him as I did.

He was in good spirits, as if he'd been on a marvelous trip to a faraway place full of adventure and simple, everyday hope.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Those are beautiful. Yeah.

FREYA MANFRED: I have a lot of memories of him as he was dying. And, of course, of everything when he was living too. All the memories just come flowing through very fast right now because it's only been a year, and I think they're mingling together a lot with my presence having moved on to a lake recently. So my feelings about the lake and my feelings about him are mingling.

PAULA SCHROEDER: He was a very simple man.

FREYA MANFRED: Yeah, very simple, very sweet, and very dedicated to his job as a writer.

PAULA SCHROEDER: When do you think we'll see Black Earth on the bookshelves?

FREYA MANFRED: Oh, as soon as possible. Right now I have the agent looking it over, so I'm not sure when any publisher will definitely accept it. But I do think if people enjoyed Green Earth, and I still think that was his masterpiece, that this will be quite a lovely follow-up to it. It's more primordial, Black Earth, simpler, and a shorter book, only 350 pages.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, we'll look forward to it. Freya Manfred, thanks a lot for coming in today.

FREYA MANFRED: Thanks a lot.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Freya Manfred talking about her father, Fred Manfred. It's now coming up on 15 minutes before 11 o'clock. This is the FM News Station. Well, Fred Manfred's last work, Black Earth, is about his father's life. In it, Fred is the character Free, who has a particularly difficult time with his stepmother, a former housekeeper his father married, and with her daughter, his stepsister, [INAUDIBLE], who pestered him whenever he wanted to do anything other than work on the farm. Freya Manfred reads a story from that novel for us now.

FREYA MANFRED: In this one, Free is broke after college and comes home temporarily to work for his room and board at his father's new gas station. He finds his stepmother Zena up to her old tricks. She accuses Free of taking money from the till, and it turns out that she has taken it. And earlier, she's chased one of Free's younger brothers at the age of nine off the farm to work for a neighbor so that she can get the money.

In the midst of this unhappy family situation and heavy work day, Free's invited to play softball for just one night for his Uncle Sherman's team, the Home Brews, who are playing the Dutchmen. I find this scene, especially touching because I can see my father at the age of 80, those great big, gnarled hands at the keys of his typewriter writing this story, one of the most joyful memories of his youthful self and youthful body.

Sherm came by at 7:00. Free, had put on his baseball cap and had found a pair of heavy woolen socks for shoes. [INAUDIBLE] spotted him heading for Sherm's car. "Hey, where are you going, mister?"

"What?"

"Yeah, I mean, you, Free."

"I'm going with my uncle to play ball in Sioux Center."

"No, you're not, sir." [INAUDIBLE] suddenly became strident. "You darn men and your blame baseball. It's almost a sin, it is."

"Almost as much a sin as necking on the lawn?"

[INAUDIBLE] blushed. She tried to block Free's way. "You stay home. Pa's worked hard enough today."

Uncle Sherm rolled down his window all the way. "Oh, come on, toots. Let the poor boy have a little fun. He don't even date girls, he's so broke." Sherm smiled winningly at Jonesy. "I'll make sure he behaves himself and bring him home as pure as before."

"Ah," she said.

"Come on, Free. Let's get rolling. We're already late."

By the time they arrived at the lighted baseball field on the north end of town, the Home Brews had already finished their workout. "Shucks," Free said. "I was hoping I could have taken a couple of swings before the game and have you tell me what I'm doing wrong."

"Shucks is right." Sherm leaned toward Free, confidential. "Watching you the last game, I noticed that you swung under the fastball."

"I know. The way these softball pitchers wind up and let the ball come at you underhanded, the ball seems to pop out of the ground by the mound. It's always rising up in a slant over the plate, and the pitching mound isn't far enough away for gravity to take hold."

Sherm shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you."

The game started. There were a few cheers from the Sioux Center fans for their Dutchmen team. For four innings, nobody reached base. Cor DeBoer was hot for the Home Brews, burning in the rising fastballs, and Van Clitters was at his best for the Dutchmen.

The first time up, Free took the first two pitches for strikes and missed the third pitch. Even though he'd struck out, he'd been busy noting the flights of the three rising fastballs, and when he struck on the last pitch, he could see that he was exactly one width of the ball under the ball. He went back to the Home Brew bench.

"Tough luck," Sherm said.

"Yeah," Free nodded. "But I think I saw something."

"Good," Sherm said. "I know you'll figure it out."

The next time Free stepped into the batter's box, he decided to swing four inches higher than usual. That way, there was a good chance he'd smack the rising ball dead center. He'd counseled himself to make sure, absolutely sure he'd swing four inches higher, even though it would go against his instinct to swing above where he thought he saw the ball. He hoped his idea wasn't going to fail. It might be wild guesswork.

Van Clitters, toeing the pitcher's hole, smiled, cocksure that he'd strike free out again. He wound up counterclockwise several times, then reversed the windup and let fly. Free gritted his teeth. Four inches higher now. He squeezed his grip even harder, then he swung.

There was a shock to his arms and shoulders even before his brain recognized he'd connected. To his surprise, he saw the new white ball flatten for a second, and then jump off his bat and start a swift, rising arch above the shortstop. Free ran a few steps, then stopped to watch the white ball go. He'd really connected. The ball kept rising, and then, surprisingly, it rose out of the dome of illumination cast by the tall field lights.

Free started to run for first base, trying to find the flight of the ball in the high dark. He saw the center fielder turn and run a dozen steps, then slowly stop and watch something going by overhead. As he touched first base, Free stopped again, staring intently out toward left field. He was stunned to see the white ball sink into the farthest reaches of the dome of light, beyond the fence, across and beyond the great northern railroad tracks, and fall into a bright green pasture, and then roll on and on.

Free heard Sherm cry out loud. "Holy suffering Peter, did my Uncle Sayer ever lam into that one!"

As Free ran around second and third, he noticed how the infielders stood slightly bent in respectful silence. When he crossed home plate, the Dutchman catcher, still sitting on his heels, took off his mask, slowly shook his head and said, "What are you doing playing softball in these dinky little towns? You should be in the American League hitting a ball that far."

Abashed, still astonished himself, Free said slowly, "I wish that had been a hard ball."

"Thank god not."

It took several minutes for the left fielder to jump over two fences to get the ball.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Freya Manfred, reading from her father's final novel, Black Earth. Freya will be reading from Fred Manfred's final novel and from her own collection of poetry the evening of Saturday, August 26, at Blue Mound State Park, near Luverne, Minnesota, where Fred Manfred lived.

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It's eight minutes before 11 o'clock.

RAY SUAREZ: I'm Ray Suarez, the host of NPR's Talk of the Nation, and I wanted to let you know about our upcoming book club of the air. On August 17, we're discussing Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer. This is a great opportunity for the whole family to read a book together and to talk about its themes and influence on this country's literature with other families from coast to coast. So pick up a copy and join us on August 17 for the Talk of the Nation book club of the air.

PAULA SCHROEDER: That's this Thursday at 2:00 here on the FM News Station. It is a beautiful day all across our region today, with sunny skies, temperatures in the upper 60s to low 70s right now. The winds are going to be picking up, and that is of some concern in northeastern Minnesota, where about 7,000 acres of the Boundary Waters Canoe area wilderness are burning right now. They're hoping to get that fire under control today. We will have sunny to partly cloudy skies today, with highs from the lower 70s in the Northwest to the mid 80s in the southeast. Look for a high around 82 in the Twin Cities.

GARY EICHTEN: Today, August 14, marks the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. Today, on Midday, we'll commemorate that anniversary the same way people in 1945 marked the day, with a new drama written by the legendary Norman Corwin. Hello, this is Gary Eichten inviting you to join us for Midday on the FM News Station and Corwin's new version of his memorable August 14 broadcast. Midday begins at 11:00 this morning, with a rebroadcast at 9:00 this evening on the FM News Station, KNOW FM 91.1 in the Twin Cities.

PAULA SCHROEDER: And during the 11 o'clock hour of Midday, host Perry Finelli will talk with Star Tribune writer Peg Meyer, who claims she's alive today because of VJ Day celebrations 50 years ago. We'll also get the latest on the fires in Northeastern Minnesota's Gunflint Trail, and remember the contributions of former Minnesota Twin Kent Herbeck, whose number was retired in a pregame ceremony yesterday. But first, here's Garrison Keillor in The Writer's Almanac.

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GARRISON KEILLOR: And here is The Writer's Almanac for Monday. It's the 14th of August, 1995. It's VJ Day, a big day in 1945, when President Truman announced to the country that Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, and there were great celebrations all over the country.

It's the anniversary of the meeting of the first legislative assembly in this country in 1619, in Jamestown, the first colony of white people in this nation. They had secured charters from the crown, gotten a charter for self-government, and under the governor, Sir George Yeardley, the assembly met, and it passed laws against drinking and gambling. It's the birthday of Ernest Thompson Seton in Durham, England, in 1860, the writer and naturalist, an early practitioner of animal fiction writing, fiction from the point of view of the animal.

It's the birthday of Ernest Lawrence Thayer in 1863. He graduated from Harvard and went out West to write for the San Francisco Examiner, and he wrote a series of comic poems under a pseudonym for the paper, the last of which was "Casey at the Bat". It was picked up by a vaudeville actor in New York, DeWolfe Harper, who began reciting it, and recited it more than 10,000 times in his career, became famous for it. Ernest Lawrence Thayer called the attention that he got as the author of "Casey at the Bat" a nuisance, and he spent a good deal of the rest of his life tracking down all of the people who claimed to have written it themselves.

It's the birthday of the English novelist John Galsworthy in 1864, who wrote The Forsythe Saga, which began coming out in 1906. It was on this day in 1880 construction of the Cologne Cathedral in Germany was completed after 600 years of rebuilding after a fire in the year 1248. It's the birthday of two American humorists today. Russell Baker was born in 1925 in Loudoun County, Virginia. Wrote a book about it called Growing Up. And it's the birthday of Gary Larsson in 1950, who created the cartoon strip The Far Side.

The first car license plates came out in France on this day in 1893. The first scheduled TV programs in 1928, Station WRNI in New York. And it was on this day in 1969 the first British troops were sent to Northern Ireland to restore order. Here's a poem for today by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Don't let that horse eat that violin, cried Chagall's mother.

But he kept right on painting and became famous, and kept on painting the horse with violin in mouth.

And when he finally finished it, he jumped up upon the horse and rode away, waving the violin.

And then, with a low bow, gave it to the first naked nude he ran across, and there were no strings attached.

Poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti from A Coney Island of the Mind, published by New Directions Books and used by permission here on The Writer's Almanac, Monday, August 14, made possible by Coles Magazines, publishers of American History and other magazines. Be well, do good work and keep in touch.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, that's Midmorning for this Monday morning. We're going to be here throughout the rest of the week for you, so be sure to tune in between 9:00 and 11:00 every day. I'm Paula Schroeder. Thanks for joining us. Stay tuned. Midday is coming up next with all the latest news and weather. Also get to check on those fires in northeastern Minnesota. It's one minute now before 11 o'clock.

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SPEAKER 1: On Monday's All Things Considered, tomatoes and peppers in containers on the patio. Meet a state fair prize-winning vegetable grower. It's all things considered. Every day at 4:00 on the FM News Station, KNOW FM 91.1.

PAULA SCHROEDER: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. 71 degrees under sunny skies at the FM News Station, KNOW FM 91.1, Minneapolis, Saint Paul. It's going to be a beautiful day today, much less humid conditions than we've had for the past several days, and the high temperature getting up to around 82 degrees. Strong northwesterly winds, though.

PERRY FINELLI: Good morning. Welcome to Midday on the FM News Station. Gary Eichten is away this week. I'm Perry Finelli. In the news, the UN deplores what it calls a barbaric and well-organized effort by Serbs to force all other groups out of Northern Bosnia.

Commercial airline flights into Bermuda have been canceled as the island chain prepares for Hurricane Felix. Forecasters are also urging residents on the East Coast from North Carolina northward to monitor the storm. About 100 additional firefighters are on the scene today of a 7,000 acre forest fire in the Boundary Waters Canoe area wilderness that could expand because of windy conditions, and Minneapolis has recorded its record 64th homicide.

During the noon hour portion of the program today, we'll feature a drama documentary by writer Norman Corwin about the anniversary of the end of World War II. It's called 50 Years Later, 14 August. And then after that, we'll open up the phone lines to hear from listeners about any members memories you may have of VJ day.