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KAREN BARTA: Good morning. I'm Karen Barta with news from Minnesota Public Radio. The federal trial of Dr. John Najarian enters its second week this morning. The former University of Minnesota surgery department chairman is charged with fraud, embezzlement, tax evasion, and obstruction of justice.

An Owatonna high school teacher is taking over the effort to implement minimum graduation standards for public school students. Michael Tillman, who has served as a project advisor, replaces Iris McGinnis. She resigned recently amidst criticism that the development of standards and tests is taking too long and costing too much. Michael Tillman says that's not true.

MICHAEL TILLMAN: When you look at the total cost, it's been less than 1% of the total education budget consistently. This kind of change that's going to require results, orientation of students, is a great improvement. And we believe we've been, if anything, very cost effective about it.

KAREN BARTA: Tillman says the standards have always been scheduled to begin taking effect this fall, and he says they will. A House Transportation Committee will take up the issue of raising speed limits. The state's Public Safety and Transportation Commissioners support raising limits from 55 to 65 on urban interstates. They recommend two-lane, two-way rule road stay at 55.

The state forecast-- mostly sunny and cold in the north, a few flurries in central and southern Minnesota. Otherwise, partly to mostly cloudy. Highs from 10 below in the far northwest to near 30 in the southeast. For the Twin Cities today, partly cloudy, little change in temperature with a high around 20 degrees. For Tuesday, partly sunny with a high in the teens.

Around the region, in Rochester, it's cloudy and 17 degrees. It's sunny and 5 below in Duluth. In Saint Cloud, it's clear and 1 below. And in the Twin cities, it's partly sunny. The wind chill is minus 21 and is 9 degrees. That's news. I'm Karen Barta.

PAULA SCHROEDER: It's "Midmorning" on Minnesota Public Radio.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

PAULA SCHROEDER: Studying the behavior of birds is the lifelong passion of Walter Breckenridge. Today, on our "Voices of Minnesota" interview, we hear Breckenridge talk about his work. Nearly every Monday as part of "Midmorning" at this time, we bring you a conversation with the Minnesota resident who has an interesting life story.

Walter Breckenridge is a native of Iowa and Director Emeritus of the Bell Museum of Natural History at the University of Minnesota. He's known to a much wider audience for his notes and original artwork in The Birds of Minnesota, a definitive work describing the state's bird population. It was written by Breckenridge's mentor, Dr. Thomas Roberts.

92-year-old Walter Breckenridge lives in Brooklyn Park on the Bank of the Mississippi River. Not surprisingly, the backyard of his spacious riverfront lot is filled with bird feeders. A few weeks ago, before the arrival of snow and the cold temperatures, Minnesota Public Radio reporter Dan Olson visited Walter Breckenridge in the studio next to his home, where he still paints.

DAN OLSON: We're honored to be in your studio because this is the inner sanctum, is it not? This is where the actual work is done.

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Well, that's right. Well, since I retired back in 1970, my hobby has been wildlife painting. And this is my studio.

DAN OLSON: In fact, it looks as though just by your shoulder here, we have a work underway. Maybe you should just take a second to describe what that piece is.

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Well, yes, this one here that's on the easel now is a painting of a towhee, or chewink, sometimes called a ground robin. It's in a wooded setting with a little snow trillium blooming in the foreground. We saw this towhee just a few weeks ago right here in the yard. And it was a beautiful male in spring plumage, which was a bit unusual. And it really impressed me on seeing such a beautiful bird. I haven't seen but very, very few towhees in this situation.

DAN OLSON: We have been hearing a lot over the last decade, maybe even the last two decades, about the songbird population, about the population of birds generally. And one of the big themes is that the population is way down among some members of the songbird population. What have you been seeing?

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Well, we are experiencing a drop off in bird populations here at our feeders for-- oh, we've been feeding birds ever since we came out here 40, 50 years ago. And there are fewer birds here now than there were three or four years ago.

DAN OLSON: One of the reasons offered is the destruction of habitat for the birds. Is that what you think is responsible, or is it a cyclic effect?

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Well, it's very hard to give a real quick answer to it. You're right. It is habitat, I think, that is causing most of the reduction, although some species have increased, like the house finch, which is coming in right now.

DAN OLSON: Let's see, I seem to recall that you are an Iowa native. A farm boy or a city kid?

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Well, my dad ran a hardware store in a small town, Brooklyn, Iowa. I lived on the outskirts of that little town of 1,200 people. Yeah, I got my interest in nature then.

Near there was a big clover field that I used to hike around in when I was just a kid in grade school. And I noticed a lot of butterflies there. And their color and pattern and all attracted me. And I began collecting butterflies. And that started me out in nature.

DAN OLSON: But when a youngster with your curiosity was interested in actually looking up the names of things, what kind of a resource did you have in a town of 1,200? Or did you have to wait until you got to a bigger town?

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Well, I had no cooperative help at all around home. I did it all myself. In fact, my dad, as a hardware merchant, one of his customers brought in a prairie chicken one day that had hit a power wire and killed. And he brought it in. He apparently knew that Dad had a son who was interested in birds, so he brought it in to him, and he brought it home.

And I looked at it. And I said, we can't just pick this bird and eat it. I'd like to preserve it, but I'd have no idea how to do it. So I showed it to a neighbor boy, and the two of us pooled our very meager resources. And we took a course in the Northwestern School of Taxidermy by mail. And I learned how to skin birds and how to mount birds. I started mounting birds in a collection. And by the time I graduated from high school, I had quite a museum of my own.

DAN OLSON: I gather even the prairie chicken has been saved, more or less, at least in small numbers in parts of Minnesota.

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Well, yes, the Nature Conservancy and the DNR both have a program of preserving wild areas. And on those large areas where they have been preserving the natural areas, we still have some dancing of the prairie chickens and the sharptail. I took movies of prairie chickens booming out where Radisson South is now.

So around the city here, we used to have these birds, but no longer. We used to take our classes out to Carlos Avery Refuge north of town where there was a group of prairie chickens living. And we would watch them and have the students watch them. They're not there anymore.

DAN OLSON: Carlos Avery, that really is a wild area, though. I wonder why the prairie chickens wouldn't be able to stay there. What happened to the habitat?

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Well, that's another something of a question. Why the disturbance? Just too many people, I guess, circulating around and interfering with their operations. And it takes a fairly large bed of habitat for prairie chickens to establish themselves. It means a square mile or several square miles, not just a little patch of wild woods or wild prairie. And it takes a large chunk of habitat to make them feel satisfied.

DAN OLSON: It's hard to be optimistic in light of that. I mean, let's face it, we are a lightly populated state, only 4.3 million people or so. But obviously, development and farming is increasingly intensive. It does look very much as though we'll lose even more species then of birds.

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Oh, yes. Now, that, of course, gets it up to one of my hobbies right now is writing articles about world population. I have a definite feeling that the world is far over populated.

DAN OLSON: It's difficult to imagine that the environment is under stress because of the very pretty natural setting. Yet as you look at your feeders, I don't know how many feeders you are-- maybe a bit later we can peek out the window and see how many you have. As you look at your feeders, what changes do you notice over the years in terms of who's coming to the feeders?

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: The winter birds right now are not arriving. We don't know why. The pine siskins and redpolls and purple finches that have usually been here in some numbers, we see practically none of them now. Why? Maybe they're just delayed this year. We don't know for sure. But within the last two or three years, this has been happening quite regularly. We simply don't see as many as we did have five or 10 years ago.

DAN OLSON: Are there a lot of trees that have been grubbed out in adjacent areas here? I notice there are townhomes sprouting like dandelions and all kinds of other developments. Does that affect birds?

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Oh, yes. Some birds can put up with living around human habitations and others who do not. There is just a character of the bird. The house finch, for instance, is coming in, is very successful in surviving around in homes or near homes. And that's a species that's doing well.

DAN OLSON: Now, I noticed that my feeder and when I say my feeder, you must understand that I spend almost no time or effort feeding birds in my backyard. We have a couple of feeders. But it's the most rudimentary kind of system. It's almost embarrassing.

But I see naturally tens of thousands of what I call "rats with wings," the sparrows. And then I see the occasional cardinal and the occasional blue jay, and that's about it. How does that correspond with the population that we might see if we put a little more time and attention to it?

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Well, I've asked people how many birds they thought we would see in their yard. And they would say 12 or 15. Well, we have-- I keep a record each year of my bird populations that I see right here. It usually runs around 100 species. So you've got a lot of seeing to do and a lot of learning to identify all these birds.

DAN OLSON: Probably many more are there than I realize. I just don't know what they look like.

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Oh, yeah. There are a good many of them are quite similar. Until you start studying them in detail and realize what characters to look for to distinguish closely related species, you wouldn't realize how many different ones you have.

DAN OLSON: Are the sparrows and some of the other birds pushing out some of the so-called more desirable species of birds from the feeders?

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Well, yes, the English sparrow. Of course, you may be surprised to know the English sparrow is not a sparrow. It's a weaver finch, imported here from Africa. And it got the name English sparrow or house sparrow, just because it looked a good deal like some of our sparrows.

Our sparrows, of which we have 12 or 15 different species, are very valuable species of birds, insect and seed eating birds. The English sparrow is a very belligerent bird that drives out a good many of our native birds that we would much prefer to have in larger numbers.

DAN OLSON: I'm very happy to hear this news about the sparrows. Now, I'm very ashamed that I called them rats with wings because they're useful.

[LAUGHING]

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Well, yes, I have shot a good many sparrows simply trying to keep the population down. Although, strangely enough, right here we are not bothered by sparrows. We even see so few English sparrows that we will sometimes comment on an English sparrow was at the feeder. Why that is, I'm not real sure.

Sparrows used to live around farms a great deal. And the presence of farm animals, horses, which are practically nonexistent now around here, and the English sparrow population is less than it used to be because of that. And there are no farms near us now, active farms.

PAULA SCHROEDER: 92-year-old Walter Breckenridge talking with Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson. This is our "Voices of Minnesota" interview, heard almost every Monday at this time as part of "Midmorning." I'm Paula Schroeder. And it's 17 minutes past 10 o'clock.

Walter Breckenridge is also the author of a definitive work on reptiles in Minnesota. But his first interest is birds. His lot on the Mississippi River attracts a lot of birds and, not surprisingly, a fair number of cats. Breckenridge says Brooklyn Park's cat restraint law is widely ignored. Let's return to our conversation now between Dan Olson and Walter Breckenridge.

We'll have that in just a moment. But first, let me tell you what the weather situation is going to be today. No severe weather in particular, although it's very cold still in the northern part of Minnesota. Mostly sunny skies expected today. And highs are only going to get up to around 10 below 0 in the Thief River Falls area, getting up to around 30 in Winona and Rochester. In the Twin Cities, our high temperatures should be right around 20 degrees today.

Clear and very cold in the north tonight with partly cloudy skies and central Minnesota, mostly cloudy in the far South. Overnight lows from 20 to 30 below 0 in the far north to 0 to 10 above in the far south. Mostly sunny tomorrow, and partly to mostly cloudy in the south. There is a chance of flurries in the far southern part of Minnesota. And highs will range from the single digits in the north to the teens in the south.

It's going to be pretty cold for the rest of the week as well, with high temperatures from 10 below to 5 above in the north to 0 to 15 above in the south. So remember to keep bundled up and keep those hats and mittens nearby because you're going to be needing them for the rest of this week. All right, now we have our interview with Walter Breckenridge and Dan Olson ready to go.

DAN OLSON: So I just want to be clear, finally, on this sparrow issue, we have what you call the sparrow, and we have a number of species of those. Then we have this finch, which we mistakenly call the English sparrow, and that's a belligerent bird, you say. So how would we identify the English sparrow? The finch?

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Well, we hardly can get at describing the details of plumage. But the black throat on the male, of course, is quite distinctive. The female looks very much like a good many of our other sparrows. And you have to start really picking out fine details before you would be able to recognize them.

As a matter of fact, the house finch and the purple finch are very similar. The house finch has a more brilliant red on that color. It's a little more brilliant, but just a little more brilliant. It's not too terribly distinctive. And many people have been seeing house finches the last few years and thought they were seeing purple finches.

DAN OLSON: Lately, in the last year or two, what's been your biggest birdwatching surprise in terms of who's been coming to the feeder?

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Sometimes we'll have a species from the West Coast suddenly appear here. I've seen a few warblers here in our woods.

DAN OLSON: What are they doing in these parts?

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Well, they just wander away from their normal range. Why they happen to come over here, we're not quite sure. But whether they just make a mistake or whether they're aggressive individuals that are actually exploring, we aren't quite sure.

Changes in bird ranges are occurring, particularly the cardinal. It used to be quite rare here. Now, it is a really, really common. And, of course, there are a year-round permanent resident. And they've been extending their range northward to-- now, they even have records up in Winnipeg, in Canada, which is many, many miles beyond the normal range of the bird in early years.

DAN OLSON: Why is that happening, do you suppose?

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: That we don't know. They're just an aggressive species that wherever they're-- well, of course, partly what man is doing to the habitat for some birds is favorable. Farming and gardening, lawns and all make a habitat which is favorable for cardinals. They'll nest right up against your house. A lot of other birds that would never think of nesting anywhere near a house.

DAN OLSON: Just as you were talking about that, I flashed on a memory of a family of cardinals nesting close to our house. And I have a feeling some roaming cat got them. I don't know that for sure. Now, I suppose since I've had that recollection, I do have to stop and ask you about your feelings about cats and birds. We know that there's a lot of effect that human activity has on birds, but I'm led to believe that cats have a terribly destructive impact on birds.

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Well, you're correct. They do. Cats are very damaging to birds. They're natural hunters. They stalk birds around your feeders.

DAN OLSON: And so here in Brooklyn Park, you have a very set attitude towards cats, roaming cats.

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Yes. Yes. They're very destructive predator, of course, and have a good deal to do with the populations-- if feral cats become too abundant, they would have a real definite effect on the populations.

DAN OLSON: Do people observe the ordinance? Or do folks just say, ah, to heck with it, I'm just going to let my cat roam?

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: They don't pay much attention to it, I think.

DAN OLSON: On your wall of the studio are your prints, I gather.

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: These are all originals.

DAN OLSON: These are exquisite. And these are all things that you have seen. And as I walked into her studio, the one that absolutely stopped me is one of the hawks exchanging the frog. Maybe you should explain that one.

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Yeah, well, when I came to Minnesota, I went ahead with my graduate degrees. And in my master's thesis, I chose the northern harrier, or what we used to call the marsh hawk, to make a careful study of that. I found them fairly common out north in the Blaine area, north of Minneapolis.

And in studying them, I found that the male did almost all the hunting during the nesting period. And he would bring in prey and call to the female that was attending the nest. She would fly up beneath him several feet, and he would drop the mouse or, in this case, a frog. And the female would reach out and grab it in mid-air. It was an aerial transfer, aerial fueling, in other words.

And that I have seen many, many times. I often say at least 50 or 60 times I've seen that happen. In fact, I saw once when he dropped two mice, and it confused the female. She made quick-- made a barrel roll and dived down and grabbed one of them before it hit the ground.

So it was very good practice for the aerial ability of young birds. When they start feeding, sometimes they would drop food to the young. And the young would learn to try to grab it in mid-air. But that's a common practice with this particular bird.

DAN OLSON: What a tremendous sight. What a thrill that must have been for you to see that.

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Yeah, it was very interesting to watch that happen.

DAN OLSON: Next door to that print is one that I-- I don't know my birds, you understand. It looks like a red tailed hawk or something. Anyway, it's looking at a raccoon sitting in a hole in the tree?

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Oh, yes, he's just a little bit surprised to see a raccoon looking out of a hole in the tree. That was just a painting that I did of something that very well could have happened around here. The other painting over there is one of a wood duck, female wood ducks, on the ground with young around it. And up above is the house.

The wood duck, of course, used to nest in hollow trees. And it now is willing to take a man-made house as a substitute for a hollow tree. And the young hatch, and the very next day, after they hatch, the female drops down to the ground and calls and waits. And the little fellows climb up into the doorway and jump out.

They're just little downy young. They cannot fly, of course. And they simply drop to the ground. And she waits until the last one comes out, or hopes it's the last one.

And she gathers her family together. And, of course, they never come back because there's no way to get back into the house.

DAN OLSON: That's it. The day after hatching.

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Just one day after hatching. It's rather surprising. And it's a very interesting performance. I keep very good track of what's going on in the nest. And I usually can predict when those little birds are going to be jumping, in the early morning usually.

We'll invite a few of our friends out for breakfast. And we have a coming out party. My wife did a little checking the other day. And she found that we have had over 200 people out here for breakfast to watch little baby wood ducks jumping out of the house and watching the female wait there and pick them up and take them down to the river.

DAN OLSON: The wood duck print is, I suppose, in a way, a recognition of a success story of a species that has been saved in a sense.

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Yes. The wood duck is a bird that has responded very successfully to the building of houses. So many people are interested in wood ducks. It's such a beautiful bird, that is the male bird. And they have been putting up literally hundreds of houses.

DAN OLSON: I see this-- I'm sorry.

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: It has actually affected the population. The population was small enough a few years back that there were limited-- the hunters were not permitted to take any wood ducks. But now, they actually are next to the mallard, I think, in the take of ducks at hunting.

DAN OLSON: I had no idea. I also see the bluebird houses popping up now with a lot of frequency around the state and often a couple of houses next door. What do you think is happening to the bluebird population?

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Well, that another is a success story. Enough people are interested in bluebirds that they've been putting up bluebird trails. That is a number of houses scattered along roads. And they like to live in rather open woods or savannahs, as they call them, where they're just scattered trees in prairie areas. And they have built up the population of bluebirds quite markedly within the state.

DAN OLSON: So those houses really work? It's no question that that's been a beneficial thing.

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Oh, yes. Yes, they take houses. In that they compete with the tree swallow considerably because the tree swallow does nest in houses too, the same type of house that the bluebird takes. And now, they've developed a technique which works very successfully. They put the bluebird houses up in pairs only, only just a few yards apart.

And if they do put that in, no two bluebird families will be raised in those two houses. But the tree swallow will nest in one and will protect the other one from having another tree swallow nest. But it does not prevent the bluebird from nesting. So you get a bluebird and a tree swallow in the pair of houses, which is very successful.

DAN OLSON: This takes us back to birds for just a moment. But you were talking about some of the insect eating capabilities of birds. And this has been a long standing discussion, I think, about the beneficial effects of certain kinds of birds when it comes to eating mosquitoes. And I don't think there's any more political discussion in Minnesota or the Twin Cities specifically than eating mosquitoes. So what's right? Do birds, like martins, really play a big role in controlling mosquitoes, or are the swarms of mosquitoes just so huge that the effect of birds eating them is marginal?

WALTER BRECKENRIDGE: Now, insects, of course, reproduce in such tremendous numbers that a bird species or several species have a very minor effect on the total population of insects. Probably the mosquito problem is another case where interrelations come up. We find that baby ducks, ducklings, feed almost entirely on insects, which they get in the marshes around here. And when the mosquitoes control program eliminates the mosquitoes, they eliminate also a good many other species of insects. And some of the lakes that are heavily doped with mosquito control materials are not raising ducks now. The ducks will wander off to other lakes where they can find insects. So it's just another case where man's activities are beginning to interfere with nature's productivity.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

PAULA SCHROEDER: 92-year-old Walter Breckenridge, Director Emeritus of the Bell Museum of Natural History at the University of Minnesota. Our "Voices of Minnesota" interview series is heard every Monday at this time. The producer is Dan Olson with assistance from intern Marci Tveit.

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PAULA SCHROEDER: It's 29 minutes before 11 o'clock. You're listening to "Midmorning" on the FM news station. Coming up, we're going to find out about the creative abilities of the developmentally disabled and how a couple of professionals here in the Twin Cities are using those to help create some new opportunities for the developmentally disabled. First, we'll get an update on the news with Karen Barta. And, Karen, the oil barge on the East Coast is still the rescue attempting to go on.

KAREN BARTA: Paula, the Coast Guard is battling stormy seas as it tries to empty a barge leaking heating oil off Rhode Island. Officials plan to bring in a coastal freighter to maneuver in the 6 foot waves and transfer the oil to a barge farther out to sea.

This just in, First lady Hillary Clinton has offered to answer the Senate's Whitewater questions in writing. The Federal Emergency Management chief says 19 more Pennsylvania counties have been declared federal disaster areas. That's after beginning a survey of the state's flood damage today. Meanwhile, the flooding death toll in the East is nearing 50.

Competing offers from San Francisco-based Wells Fargo and Minneapolis First Bank Systems for First Interstate Bank Corps are the subject of hearings today. The Federal Reserve opens the hearings in Los Angeles. The fight is over which is better suited to take over the Los Angeles-based bank.

A public hearing tonight will focus on a proposed toll road in the northwestern Twin Cities suburbs. The highway would link interstate 35W and I-94 between Blaine and Maple Grove. Planners estimate the cost at $0.10 per mile. The project is one of three toll road projects being floated by a group of private companies, known as the Minnesota Transportation Group. Chairman Bob Zauner says the state legislature will not make the final decision on whether to proceed.

BOB ZAUNER: When the legislation was passed, they were looking at dealing on this with the local levels and with the DOT. Any project that is proposed has to be approved by the Commissioner of Transportation.

KAREN BARTA: Tonight's hearing will be held at Mounds View City Hall beginning at 7 o'clock. The state forecast today, mostly sunny and cold in the north, a few flurries in central and southern Minnesota, then partly to mostly cloudy. Highs from 10 below in the northwest to near 30 in the southeast. For the Twin cities, partly cloudy, little change in temperature, a high around 20.

Around the region, in Rochester, it's cloudy and 17. It's clear and 1 below in Saint Cloud. In Duluth, sunny and 5 below. And in the Twin Cities, it's partly sunny. The wind chill is minus 21, and the current temperature 9 degrees. Paula, that's a news update from Minnesota Public Radio.

PAULA SCHROEDER: OK, thanks a lot, Karen. 26 minutes now before 11:00. I'm Paula Schroeder. And we're going to be talking about programs for the developmentally disabled in the next few minutes.

In 1948, a national medical study determined that developmentally disabled, or as they were known then, mentally retarded people, were capable only of doing repetitive, menial work. Well, that philosophy has guided educational and training programs for the developmentally disabled since that time. You're most likely to see them doing simple assembly or dishwashing.

But one group in the Twin Cities is challenging that long-held assumption. The Interact Theater brings together artists with and without disabilities to put on plays addressing issues affecting us all. It's the belief of founders Jeanne Calvit and Dr. Howard Miller that people with disabilities have talents in all the artistic fields that are unique, rare, fresh and original, and that they can teach us all something about the arts.

Part of their philosophy can be attributed to the work of Oliver Sacks, the psychiatrist portrayed in the movie, The Awakening, and the author of the book, The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. In that book, he writes, "People with disabilities are treated and programmed according to functional level. These levels are typically based on a person's ability to take care of their basic needs. What they do not measure are the more unique aspects of an individual talents, divergent thought, aesthetic sense and spirituality. This focus on assessments of lower order skills would not be so critical were it not for the fact that people's lives are essentially dictated by their results."

Well, next week marks the grand opening of the Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts, where artists of all persuasions can develop and display their talents. It will be licensed as an adult daycare so that people with disabilities can receive services and utilize the facility. Well, joining us today to tell us more about this innovative approach to working with the developmentally disabled are Jeanne Calvit and Dr. Howard Miller. Thanks a lot for coming in today.

HOWARD MILLER: Nice to be here.

JEANNE CALVIT: Yes.

PAULA SCHROEDER: How did this theater get started, you know? And, Dr. Howard Miller, I would have to believe that there is some-- that you have been doing some work with developmentally disabled people and found something lacking in the traditional programs for them.

HOWARD MILLER: Yeah, well, actually, I've been working with people with developmental disabilities for about 20 years. But before I got my doctorate in educational psychology, I had a master's degree in theater. So I guess it was just kind of utility to combine the two.

But interestingly enough, in 1983, Jeanne and I began a program called SWAN, in which people with developmental disabilities who were working would come back to a center in the afternoon and do drama. And what we found then, quite serendipitously, was that people actually-- their social behavior improved so much because of the drama, the work in drama, that it had ramifications in all the other aspects of their lives.

Their parents would see differences. Their friends would see differences. Their job coaches would see differences. And so that was kind of what got the ball rolling.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Jeanne, I know that you have very strong feelings about this and that we look at developmentally disabled people as a category unto themselves, that they are this group of people who are "others" in our society. And yet, I know it's your feeling that they can certainly be integrated into the society as a whole.

JEANNE CALVIT: Yes. And it's not only the developmentally disabled, but all of the disabled, you know, is the "other." And the whole system right now that we have set up is really based on people's limitations. When a person has a developmental disability or some other disability, psychologists are brought in at an early age. And they're tested on all of their limitations. And they're then channeled into special programs.

But they're not assessed on any of their creative skills. And we found in our 15 years of working with this population, doing theater art, music, that there's a very high percentage of people with extraordinary creativity. In fact, autism has 1,000 times more incidence of extreme giftedness than the population at large. And yet, this is totally left out of their sphere of influence.

And we feel that this is the area that they have not only to explore their own creativity, but to teach us as human beings and as fellow artists. Their perceptions are so unique and so fresh that they can actually enrich the art world by being included in it.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Now, Interact Theater has been around for a few years now. And you have actors who are, quote unquote, "normal" and developmentally disabled. You know, how do they interact, you know? And at what level?

HOWARD MILLER: Well, actually, the, quote, "developmentally disabled," unquote actors are probably better than the normal actors in terms of just in terms of the business aspects of acting, knowing when your cues are, memorizing your lines. Their attitudes are much more professional we've discovered.

And I guess this was an area that was very eye opening for me because, as I said, I've worked with this population for many, many years. And it was always my understanding that they weren't able to memorize, that they weren't able to do something in one situation and then do the same thing in a different situation, what we call generalization. They aren't supposed to be able to do all of these things.

And yet, we found that people were doing all these things. And it was kind of-- it's kind of an eye opener. And unfortunately, as Jeanne says, because people don't get a chance to work in the arts, we don't really know that they have these capabilities. So it's just like you have a population and all of their strengths are hidden away from us because we keep trying to get them to tell us the difference between the men's and women's bathroom and how to count from 1 to 10.

JEANNE CALVIT: Yeah.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Those very basic kinds of issues.

JEANNE CALVIT: They have goals in their lives that are set up, like this person will put cream on their hands three times a day. And this is like the goal-- you know, people sit down and make their goals for the year. And this is the kind of goals they have. Or this person will go buy donuts and get the right change. Well, that just isn't a very inspiring goal to have for your life, you know, to have a goal like that, putting hand cream on. And we try to set little loftier goals for the people.

But as a director of people with and without disabilities, I would say that Howard's right. They seem to be much more disciplined. It may take them a little longer to learn their lines. But when they learn their lines, they are written in stone. And if we-- we will come back after six months of not rehearsing a scene. And I will have to ask disabled actors, now what was the line right there? And who came in on this cue? And they will remember.

And the non-disabled actors won't have a clue. They'll be looking at their scripts. And so, you know, we learn a lot from them. It's not only, you know, it's enriching their lives. We have learned so much. And really the disability label has just pretty much vanished.

PAULA SCHROEDER: We're talking with Jeanne Calvit, who's the artistic director of Interact Theater, and with Dr. Howard Miller, who-- I don't know what your title is with the theater, but [LAUGHING] you're one of the actors, too, right?

HOWARD MILLER: I'm an administrative consultant/actor/ everything else.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Right. And an educational psychologist as well.

HOWARD MILLER: Well, right.

PAULA SCHROEDER: It's interesting to me that you work with adults because a lot of people, I think, have the perception that, OK, if you start with a young person who is developmentally disabled and offer him or her a lot of different opportunities, you can probably allow those talents and abilities to be developed. But I know that you have one member of your company who spent many, many years in an institution. And how is her development coming along through this?

JEANNE CALVIT: Well, we actually have one member of our group who is in her 70s. We don't even know how old she is because she doesn't know it. It doesn't seem to matter, really. But she had her first premiere on the stage-- I think she was probably in her middle 70s. This was five years ago.

And we didn't-- I didn't know at the time if she was going to be able to carry this off. But she since-- she knows everybody's line in the entire play. And she remembers them forever. And we always joke, because she'll sit down with me and she really wants to be a director. And she starts telling people what to do, and you come in on this cue and, no, you forgot your line.

And so she, at the age of probably about 75, has just absolutely blossomed. And she actually has more energy and spunk than just about anyone in the group. We'll be having an 8-hour rehearsal. And she will say at the end of the rehearsal, well, are we going to go out for a beer?

[LAUGHTER]

PAULA SCHROEDER: You know, I do want to mention, too, that tonight on Twin Cities Public Television, KTCA, there is a program called Tapes Rolling. And Interact Theater is featured on that program tonight. That's at 7:30 on Channel 2. So if you want to see a little bit more about the theater company itself, tune in to see that.

And that program does show, because I saw a preview of it, going out for beers after a play. [LAUGHING] There's a belly dancer. There's, you know-- and I'm sure a lot of activity that a lot of people would raise their eyebrows and say, my goodness, you know, should these people be doing this? There's a wedding.

HOWARD MILLER: Well, it's interesting because we want-- we claim to want people to be normal. That was the big watchword in the field a couple of years ago.

JEANNE CALVIT: Normalization.

HOWARD MILLER: Normalization.

JEANNE CALVIT: Normalization. And yet what we tried to do was to make the normal by teaching them one discrete behavior at a time-- putting hand cream on, brushing your teeth. That's not the way people learn. People learn because they think of themselves as functioning, capable people, and then they teach themselves.

And why the arts works with people-- and this includes anybody who feels just a minority, kind of people who aren't really that accepted by mainstream society-- is that it makes them feel better about themselves, you know, the vaunted self-esteem. And if you feel better about yourself, and you have your self intact, then it motivates you to learn. It motivates you to develop.

And that's why we see people change really literally overnight. People who've been in programs for 20 years, who've managed to put hand cream on after three or four years, or have managed to brush all their teeth, are-- now able, you know-- in three months have stopped looking down at the ground, have started to speak to strangers, have started to talk confidently to people in a matter of months. So--

PAULA SCHROEDER: The plays that you put on, too, are not just about being developmentally disabled. They're about issues that affect all of us. There's a song that I know that you do about the oppression of the white male. And-- [LAUGHTER] and how, you know, even people with disabilities are getting all the attention, you know, to the detriment of white males. And, of course, the white man in this particular scene is a man who's developmentally disabled, but he's also a white male.

JEANNE CALVIT: Yeah.

HOWARD MILLER: Balding, middle aged. [LAUGHTER]

PAULA SCHROEDER: Yeah, that's right.

HOWARD MILLER: Yeah, that was Bubba. And Bubba was actually our first full-length commercial play. And it was very successful, critically and everything like that. But you're right, it didn't have anything to do with disabilities. It was a satire.

JEANNE CALVIT: And we did that on purpose because that's another misconception is that you'll mention while I do theater with people with developmental disabilities and they'll say, well, isn't that nice. And, well, so do you do things about how important it is to relate better to people with disabilities? And immediately, you're put in a certain category that you're doing this very politically correct didactic theater.

And so we said, no, we do not want to do this. This is a disability blind casting. You know, there was-- the reason that Eric, the main character, got the role was because he was the best at this particular role. And that's the reason he got the role.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Yeah. Well, as I said, you can see more about it tonight on Channel 2 here in the Twin Cities. And for people who want information about the program, Jeanne, the phone number?

JEANNE CALVIT: Yes, for people who want information about either the theater group or the center that we will be starting, you could call 872-0037. And I will get back to you with any information.

PAULA SCHROEDER: 872-0037. And there will be classes for people with and without disabilities at Interact Center for the Arts. Thanks to both of you for coming in today.

HOWARD MILLER: Thank you.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Good luck to you.

JEANNE CALVIT: Thanks.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Jeanne Calvit and Dr. Howard Miller.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

PAULA SCHROEDER: It's 12 minutes now before 11 o'clock. This is "Midmorning" on the FM News Station. Thanks a lot for joining us today.

Very, very cold in northern Minnesota with temperatures in the 30 to 50 below range, for wind chills anyway. And in the southern part of the state, a little bit nicer, 17 degrees in Rochester, 9 above in the Twin Cities.

Well, call a piano tuner these days, and chances are someone will show up at your door with an electronic gizmo which mathematically decides when a string is in or out of tune. A piano tuner from George, Iowa, though, says the modern route is not always the best way. He'll show up at your door, carrying little more than a tuning fork, relying on his ears to decide when the piano is in key. Mark Steil of Main Street Radio reports.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

My name is Ron Klimes, K-L-I-M-E-S. And I'm a graduate of Augustana College. And my major is voice.

And I got into this because when I started teaching, I was too finicky, I guess, after the piano technicians had been there. It seemed like I always wanted to touch it up. So my first attempt was with a socket wrench [LAUGHS] and trying to move tuning pins. And that, of course, didn't work. So I went to Sioux Falls at that time and bought a tuning hammer and started fiddling.

[MUSIC INTERVALS PLAYING]

So I'm satisfied that I'm going to leave it right there for now. I'm still always going to go back and double check everything. I've got to make the whole thing work. I can't just tune one interval and say that interval is exactly right and then never go back to it because it's all-- we got to consider the piano as a total unit.

The reason that I tune by ear is that, number one, every piano is unique to itself. I feel that the tuning that you get is, number one, to someone who doesn't know anything about music, who would probably just sound warmer, more mellow. There's an instrument called a stroboscope, where we have a flashing light and a disk that spins. And I don't know exactly how that works.

But when they play a pitch, it flashes at a certain frequency. They dial up C, and tune C. Dial C-sharp. Tune it.

But the thing that I'm saying that's missed is you can't mathematically define what's happening to every piano. And if we tune that piano and did it mathematically, the piano would basically sound very, very sterile and not warm and friendly. And the reason that happens is that the fundamentals that are produced are kind of the same, but the overtones or the partials that are produced change according to the brittleness of the string.

[MUSIC INTERVALS PLAYING]

Oh, we're getting near. I move my lower F, so I'm going to go back and retune this top octave. I so enjoy listening to someone play. And when I can be a part of that, when I can get that piano tuned and have it so well in tune that it actually enhances that person who's playing, and I feel like I've made a contribution.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

It's Bach's Prelude in C. I can kind of tell when I play it that I've got the fundamental building blocks of the piano set up right, so that it sounds right, and it's easy. [LAUGHS] I can play it.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

GARY EICHTEN: "Amos and Andy" was one of the most popular Black radio programs in history. But Amos and Andy and the Kingfish were white people. Hi, this is Gary Eichten inviting you to join us for "Midday" on the FM News Station. We'll begin a new series called Black radio, "Telling It Like It Was." It's a history of African-Americans in radio, featuring a rich sampling of old programs and their impact on America. Hope you can join us. "Midday" begins weekdays at 11:00 on the FM News Station, KNOW FM 91.1 in the Twin Cities.

PAULA SCHROEDER: And during the 11 o'clock hour of "Midday," Gary will be talking with Representative Myron Orfield about his proposal to put-- spend more state money to keep tuition down. It would still be about 10% above the national average, though. That and more, including all the updates on the weather. But first, here's Garrison Keillor.

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GARRION KEILLOR: And here is the "Writer's Almanac" for Monday. It's the 22nd of January, 1996. It's the feast day of Saint Vincent, the patron saint of winegrowers, the birthday in 1561 in London of Francis Bacon, the essayist, the man whom some people think was the true writer of Shakespeare's works. But I don't think Bacon thought he was, nor did Shakespeare. Bacon said, "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion."

It's the birthday of the French physicist André-Marie Ampere, born on this day in Lyon, 1775. He founded the science of electrodynamics. And we get the name amp from his name Ampere. He was an inspired physicist who, when he found out that a Danish physicist by the name of Hans Christian Orsted had discovered that a magnetic needle is deflected when the current of a nearby wire changes, Ampere prepared within one week the first of several papers showing the connection between electricity and magnetism.

It's the birthday of the romantic poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, in London, 1788, the Swedish playwright Johan August Strindberg in Stockholm, 1849, who gave us Miss Julie, and A Dream Play, The Father. Robert Brookings in Cecil County, Maryland, 1850, made his money in the lumber business and founded the Brookings Institution. The film director, DW Griffith, in Floyds Fork, Kentucky, 1875. Franz Alexander in Budapest, 1891, the father of psychosomatic medicine.

The first commercial television station west of the Mississippi began operating on this day in 1947, station KTLA. And it's the 23rd anniversary of the Roe versus Wade decision by the Supreme Court in 1973. And today is the birthday of poet Howard Moss in New York city, 1922, poetry editor of The New Yorker magazine for almost 40 years. Here's a poem by Howard Moss on his birthday, entitled "Tourists."

Cramped like sardines on the Queens, and sedated,

The sittings all first, the roommates mismated.

Three nuns at the table, the waiter, a barber,

Then dumped with their luggage at some frumpish harbor.

Veering through rapids in a vapid rapido,

To view the new moon from a ruin on the Lido.

Or a sundown in London from a rundown Mercedes,

Then high born to Glyndebourne for Orfeo and Hades.

Embarrassed in Paris in Harris tweed,

Dying to get to the next museum piece that they're flying to.

Finding in Frankfurt that one indigestible comestible makes them too ill for the festival.

Footloose in Lucerne or taking a pub in in Stratford or Glasgow,

Or Maudlin in Dublin, insensitive, garrulous, querulous, audible,

Drunk in the Dolomites, tuning a portable.

Homesick in Stockholm or dressed to toboggan at the wrong time of year in too dear Copenhagen.

Generally being too genial or hostile, too grand at the grand.

Too old at the hostel, humdrum conundrums,

What's to become of them?

Most will come home.

But there will be some of them,

Subsiding like Lawrence in Florence,

Or crazily ending up tending shop up in Fiesole.

"Tourists" by Howard Moss from his collection A Swim off the Rocks, published by Athenaeum and used by permission here on "The Writer's Almanac," Monday, January 22. Made possible by Cowles magazines, publishers of Aviation History and other magazines.

Be well. Do good work. And keep in touch.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

PAULA SCHROEDER: Thanks so much for joining us on "Midmorning" today here on the FM News Station. Stay tuned. "Midday" is coming up next. Tomorrow, on "Midmorning" at 9 o'clock, we're going to be talking with Rod Nerdal from the Minneapolis Planetarium. Hasn't it been astonishing all the news that's come out about space and what's out there in the universe? We'll find out about all the news we've learned about this past year and what else we might expect to see. That's coming up tomorrow at 9 o'clock.

And then at 10 o'clock, we'll talk to a cookbook collector, see how recipes have changed over the years. That's all coming up tomorrow on "Midmorning."

[MUSIC PLAYING]

ANDREI CODRESCU: I'm Andrei Codrescu. Join me, John Rabe and the Washington crew for the news and long looks into the human soul.

JOHN RABE: It's "All Things Considered," everyday at 3:00 on the FM News Station, KNOW FM 91.1.

PAULA SCHROEDER: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. 9 degrees with a wind chill of 21 below at the FM news station, KNOW FM 91.1, Minneapolis-Saint Paul. We're expecting temperatures to get up to around 20 degrees today with diminishing winds, partly to mostly cloudy skies. A little bit cooler tomorrow.

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GARY EICHTEN: Good morning. It's 11 o'clock. And this is midday on the FM News Station. I'm Gary Eichten.

In the news this morning, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton has agreed to answer written questions from the Senate Whitewater committee. There are reports today that more mass graves have been found in Bosnia. The Bosnian Serbs are denying the charges.

Rallies are being held in Washington and around the country today to mark the 23rd anniversary of the Roe versus Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. The US Supreme Court has refused to intervene in a Minnesota case against four Christian Scientists. Another effort is underway at the State Capitol to raise the state minimum wage in Minnesota. And hearings begin today in California on Minneapolis-based First Bank's plan to take over First Interstate. San Francisco-based Wells Fargo is also bidding for First Interstate.

Those are some of the stories in the news today. Coming up over the noon hour, we'll present the first in a series of programs on the history of Black radio in America. Today, we're going to take a look at the early days of radio. That's coming up at noon.