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PERRY FINELLI: Good morning from the Minnesota Public Radio newsroom. I'm Perry Finelli. State health officials say tuberculosis is on the rise in the largest metropolitan areas, especially among recent immigrants, the homeless, and people infected with HIV. Last year, more than 150 TB cases were reported in Minnesota, most of them in the Twin Cities. Sue Zuidema, Hennepin County's director of community health, says a decline in federal and state funding for TB programs has contributed to a nationwide increase in the disease.

SUE ZUIDEMA: We haven't really experienced a whole lot of reduction for funding in tuberculosis in Minnesota. We remain pretty vigilant, but we still do see cases coming from other parts of the United States.

PERRY FINELLI: Tuberculosis is curable, but takes nine to 12 months to treat and requires patients to be in daily contact with medical personnel.

Republican 1st District Congressman Gil Gutknecht of Rochester made it official today, announcing he will run for re-election in 1996. Gutknecht said his goal is to keep his campaign promises and change what he called the arrogance of lawmakers in Washington. Meanwhile, Mary Rieder, a Winona State University professor and financial consultant, is announcing her DFL candidacy for Gutknecht's seat today. Rieder ran, but lost, in the DFL primary two years ago.

And 3M announced today its new high-capacity computer diskette will come on the market on April 2.

There is a snow advisory for Central Minnesota today, including St. Cloud and Brainerd. 2 to 4 inches of snow will fall. Light snow elsewhere, with high temperatures from the teens across the north and the lower 30s in the south. For the Twin Cities, 1 to 2 inches of snow today and a high temperature of 27. Temperatures range from 26 degrees in Worthington to just 1 above in International Falls. In the Twin Cities, snow, 17 degrees, the wind chill 2 below. And that's the news from the Minnesota Public Radio newsroom. I'm Perry Finelli.

JOHN RABE: I'm John Rabe. Through Friday, as part of the National Film Registry tour, the light and the dark of American film.

ROBERT MITCHUM: It's a cinch to beat. You might not even have to do time.

JANE GREER: I'll say you killed him. They'll believe me.

JACK NICHOLSON: Well, that little girlfriend, she was pretty in a cheap sort of a way, of course. She's disappeared. Maybe they disappeared together.

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JOHN RABE: It's All Things Considered, weekdays at 3:00 on the FM News station, KNOW-FM 91.1 in the Twin Cities.

PAULA SCHROEDER: This is Midmorning at six and a half minutes past 10 o'clock. I'm Paula Schroeder.

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Transplant surgeon John Najarian is out of the courtroom and back in the operating room after a federal jury acquittal on criminal counts including fraud. Najarian's attorney Peter Thompson is winning wide praise for Najarian's defense. Today on Voices of Minnesota, we hear from Peter Thompson. Every Monday at this time, as part of Midmorning, we bring you an interview with a Minnesota resident who has an interesting life story.

51-year-old Peter Thompson is a Minneapolis native, a Washburn High School graduate, a star hockey player in college. It's a coincidence that he lives across Lake Harriet in South Minneapolis from John Najarian. Thompson says he didn't know Najarian before taking the case, though. He was referred by lawyer friends and took on Najarian's defense, Thompson says, because of the challenge.

Peter Thompson has been a federal prosecutor and a federal public defender. His private legal practice includes donating his time to write and deliver the indictment of people now on trial at The Hague for alleged war crimes in Bosnia. Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson talked with Thompson in the living room of his Minneapolis home.

DAN OLSON: One federal judge was not impressed with Dr. Najarian. Called him a revisionist, apparently. A defendant's personality can really affect-- or a judge's personality can really affect a proceeding, obviously.

PETER THOMPSON: Absolutely. I think he got off on a bad foot with Magistrate Erickson. I think it was obvious throughout that pretrial hearing, Erickson wasn't impressed by Najarian. And one of the reasons I brought that motion was to get a dry run for my client. To be a criminal defendant's different than all the press conferences he's given where he sparkles, to be sitting there and to be peppered with questions. And it paid off, because he was on for a few hours on that occasion, and by the time he got on in front of the jury he was a much, much better witness.

DAN OLSON: Is there a lot of-- besides all of the work of nailing down details of evidence and the incredible amount of detail that must be involved, is there also a fair amount of coaching involved in a criminal trial, where you pull the defendant up to you and say, all right, now listen, here's how it would really be advisable for you to act on the stand?

PETER THOMPSON: Absolutely. It's called sandpapering a witness. It's to take off the rough edges, and all good trial lawyers do it. And it needs to be done not only with your client, but with a lot of other witnesses in the case. And both sides do it, and that's the difference between good preparation and inadequate preparation.

DAN OLSON: As you point out, Dr. Najarian, is, I think, even by estimation of his enemies, whoever they may be, a charming person. What edges needed to be sandpapered when he entered the courtroom?

PETER THOMPSON: He is used to making broad-ranging statements and being the biggest expert in the room, because they're always asking about transplantation or medical issues. When you start talking about his tax returns, and you have Hank Shea, who's a detail person, getting ready to cross-examine, he can't afford to be a generalist. He can't afford to guess. He's got to be perfectly accurate. And so a lot of his style in terms of addressing issues had to be reined in.

DAN OLSON: So what are your reflections on people who are celebrities, whether it be a Dr. John Najarian, an OJ Simpson, or any other person who is put on the stand? How big an impact does that have on a juror or a judge?

PETER THOMPSON: We talked to the jurors afterwards, and they really didn't care. They were very focused. Judge Kyle ran a beautiful and fair trial in courtroom, and he had told them what was important. And they really cared about the facts in the case. They did not give a whit about the fact that he was internationally famous.

In fact, if anything, that maybe would have been held against him a little bit, because they didn't really care about the fact he's president of the International Transplantation Society. They wanted to find out why he billed two different institutions for travel, and they wanted to find out about if ALG was a safe drug or not, and those sorts of things.

DAN OLSON: After the trial, there's this extraordinary exchange between the federal district attorney, Mr. Lillehaug, and the judge, Judge Kyle, criticizing one another. And I'm wondering if you think Judge Kyle played a real important role in turning the case in favor of Dr. Najarian.

PETER THOMPSON: The judge always plays a very important role in the case, but what the judge did in this case was he played that role according to the law. In other words he found, for instance, that Dr. Najarian was not the sponsor of the ALG drug, and therefore the legal requirements that he was charged with in specific counts did not apply.

Mr. Lillehaug's comments never addressed substantive issues like that. They only addressed personality and character kinds of comments, and that's why they were so totally inappropriate. What the judge did is he looked at the government's case on the facts and the law and said that it didn't hold water. He has never been accused by Mr. Lillehaug or anyone else about misreading those facts. And in fact, he didn't. The government's case didn't hold water.

DAN OLSON: What did you think of Judge Kyle's performance in the case? He was, even before the trial began, typified in published reports as this no-nonsense guy who wanted things to move along. He wasn't going to let it dangle. Trial started. He ran true to form. I don't know if he cut folks off-- I wasn't there-- but he kept things moving. And so what do you think of his performance?

PETER THOMPSON: I thought it was exemplary. I thought it was an example for judges everywhere. He took a case that was probably going to last two months, and he sped it up to one month without cutting off any testimony. He just urged the prosecutors on. They weren't equipped to handle that. They should have been. All you have to do is adjust yourself to the situation, and that's what a good trial lawyer needs to do. And so his actions and his comments about the case, and his rulings, were no different than any other good judge should have done in the same situation.

DAN OLSON: I suppose there are people, including myself, looking at this and saying, well, Dr. Najarian got off in part, was acquitted in part because he had the good sense to hire a skilled attorney, and he had the money to hire a skilled attorney. We get the justice we can afford.

PETER THOMPSON: That's true. However, you've got to remember that I spend a third of my time taking cases for people that can't afford anything, because I believe in their cause. And one of my friends came up to me last week, and I've represented a few of his employees, all of whom are struggling minority people that are just trying to get out of the rut that they're in. And he said, I'm glad Dr. Najarian had the best representation, and I think everyone should get it. And I agree with that.

DAN OLSON: How big a payday was the Najarian case for Peter Thompson?

PETER THOMPSON: It was not the biggest case we've had. And it was a case, when I sat down with Dr. Najarian, I told him that I was embarrassed about the size of the fees that lawyers make. And so rather than charge him the full fee, even though he could afford it, we negotiated a fee, so it put a ceiling on what he personally was going to have to pay. So we probably charged him about half what our usual hourly rate is.

DAN OLSON: I think many of us know John Najarian only through press coverage of his celebrated transplantation work. He is a wealthy man? A very wealthy man?

PETER THOMPSON: Well, his personal financial situation would be privileged and confidential. However, the tax returns went into evidence, and he was reporting about $750,000 a year. And he could have made much more money than that had he just been out in the marketplace in private practice rather than at an academic university, which puts some limits on the amounts he would make. So at $750,000 a year, I would think most of your listeners would consider that to be wealthy.

DAN OLSON: I think some of the charges brought against Dr. John Najarian go back in time to a system that was established at the University of Minnesota where the university, knowing full well that it couldn't afford to pay surgeons like Dr. John Najarian what they were worth in the real world, developed a fairly lucrative formula where they could essentially do private practice at the university. Department of Surgery Associates evolved from that. And quite a sweet deal resulted, allowing the surgeons to practice.

And it worked out, some would argue, very well for the taxpayers of Minnesota too, because obviously transplantation made great strides and everyone was well-served. Well, that system has been reformed, theoretically, at the University of Minnesota. So was John Najarian badly served by the system in place at the university, or was he also right there at the front of the line willing to take advantage of the system, in your opinion?

PETER THOMPSON: In my opinion, overall, the University of Minnesota, during the course of the years, didn't adequately support the ALG program. They had very few accounting services, no legal services, basically, available, or other administrative services. And so I think that this whole affair never needed to occur.

DAN OLSON: By the way, we should wrap up one or two points. What do you think is going to happen to the production of ALG? That great big red brick building that was built over on the St. Paul campus to manufacture the stuff has apparently been turned over to other uses, I don't know what. Do you think ALG will be remanufactured by the U?

PETER THOMPSON: I don't. And I'm not the expert to hold forth on it, but to get it back online would be a huge job in terms of redevelopment of the product, relicensure by the FDA, all those sorts of things. So there are enough alternative drugs. Although ALG has its place, and all of the transplant surgeons we talk to would use it tomorrow, if it were available.

But there are-- see, back in the '70s when it started, ALG was about all there was. Now there's RS and there's DSG and there's ATGAM and there's OKT3 and there's FK506, and there's da, da, da, da, da. The alphabet soup goes on and on. So there are other options that they can fiddle with and mix in. And so I don't think there's the pressing need for it that there was in 1980.

DAN OLSON: I suppose people are also looking at the outcome of the acquittal of Dr. Najarian and thinking, well, the government must have gone on a fishing trip here. What do you think?

PETER THOMPSON: I think they went on a fishing trip. I think that's exactly what they did, and I think what they did is just like Judge Kyle said. When they saw that the fishing trip was going to end up with an empty stringer, they started piling on. And they went and looked at his taxes, and they charged someone with false filing of tax returns where he omitted 2.5% of his income. No case in the history of Minnesota has ever been filed on that basis.

That's like a person-- in other words, they were saying instead of $750,000, his return should have said $760,000. And they were saying $10,000 is a lot of money. That's like a person who's making $20,000 a year forgetting $500 on their return. You don't charge someone with a crime for that. The reason he got charged for a lot of these crimes is that he was Dr. Najarian, and the U was pushing hard for the prosecution.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Minneapolis attorney Peter Thompson talking with Dan Olson. You're listening to Voices of Minnesota on Midmorning here on the FM News station. I'm Paula Schroeder. We'll continue our conversation with Peter Thompson in just a moment.

But in relation to the bombing in Tel Aviv this morning, where there are at least 20 people dead in a suicide bomb attack, President Clinton has issued a statement. He said that there will be an afternoon meeting of his national security advisors to address the crisis and consider, quote, "ways we can assist the Israelis." Clinton said he found it truly ironic that both those who assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in January and the radical Arabs who claimed responsibility for the earlier bombings sought to disrupt Middle East peace negotiations.

It's 16 degrees in the Twin Cities right now with snow falling. We are expecting 1 to 2 inches of snow in the Twin Cities, 2 to 4 inches in Central Minnesota today, with high temperatures in the teens in the north to the lower 30s in the south.

Well, Minneapolis attorney Peter Thompson defended former University of Minnesota head of surgery John Najarian. Najarian was acquitted on all counts of alleged financial criminal wrongdoing while a professor at the university. A big part of Peter Thompson's legal practice is working on human rights cases for free. Let's return now to Dan Olson's conversation with Thompson.

DAN OLSON: Why did you want to practice law after dabbling with thinking about engineering?

PETER THOMPSON: When I was getting out I really wanted to go into medicine, and when I got out of engineering school I would have had to start over. And so law school looked like a much better option than going to get drafted into the Vietnam War.

DAN OLSON: Did your attitude towards the Vietnam War have anything to do with what would evolve into your interest in human rights?

PETER THOMPSON: I think so. And there was a very unusual thing that I'm very embarrassed about. Part of my job as a federal prosecutor was to send kids to federal prison for resisting the war, and it was a war I was not in favor of. And I followed my constitutional duty to continue to do that, but had I been a few years older, I probably would have refused to do that task myself. Because it was very painful for the judges and the prosecutors and everyone to see all these fine young college men coming through, having to go serve six months, or in the early years, two years, in federal prison for doing what their conscience compelled them to do.

DAN OLSON: These were people, if I recall the system correctly, who were coming before you because either they had been rejected along the way in seeking other status, or they had refused to even go along with the Selective Service System and as an act of conscience they were simply taking their licks.

PETER THOMPSON: Exactly. And actually, when I became a federal public defender, it was pretty easy then because the federal judges over a few years had become sensitized to this, and pretty much the sentences then were either you could go serve six months or you could do alternative service for a couple of years, as if you had received your CO status at the time. And so there weren't nearly as many of the tragic endings of those cases.

DAN OLSON: I want to talk about your interest in human rights. You're a member of Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, a local group, and a volunteer for that group. In fact, I think you should describe what it is that led to your interest in the Killing Fields, into the Khmer Rouge's-- their killing of apparently millions of people in Cambodia. What got you started in that?

PETER THOMPSON: Well, the Minnesota Advocates came to me to ask me to play a role in the mock trial, because I had been a prosecutor. And it was just a perfect convergence of a couple of interests. That is, that I was a prosecutor and was involved in human rights. So we had a mock trial over at the state senate where we put on trial the Khmer Rouge regime and Pol Pot specifically, just the sort of thing that the Cambodian community now is trying to do officially, for genocide.

And we had the testimony of the Cambodian people from Minneapolis and St. Paul who now live here, who had been victims of those policies, who had somehow miraculously lived through those policies. And I want to tell you, it was my toughest day in court because the entire afternoon, there wasn't a dry eye in the courtroom, including mine.

DAN OLSON: More recently, you wrote the indictment that you hand-delivered at The Hague regarding war crimes in Bosnia. What's that all about?

PETER THOMPSON: Again, Minnesota Advocates started a war crimes project. And we had hundreds of lawyers here participating in summarizing news articles through Nexis to try and identify defendants, identify specific war crimes. And in that process, I looked at a certain area around Omarska Detention Camp in Northwestern Bosnia, and certain individuals, and garnered enough facts so that I was able to draft, with the help of some others, an indictment specifically charging war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide against specific people in that region.

We sent that indictment to the prosecutor's office in The Hague, and last August I went there to deliver our entire database from the Minnesota Advocates. And Justice Goldstone is coming here to accept our annual honor from the Minnesota Advocates in June for his work at the tribunal.

DAN OLSON: Is there, in your judgment, any real hope that individuals from the former Yugoslavia will actually be not only brought to trial, but in the event that they are found guilty, punished for what happened?

PETER THOMPSON: There is a man in the dock right now, Tadic is his name, and there's no doubt in my mind that he will be fully prosecuted, and if convicted, will be punished. There are two others that may be in custody in Bosnia as we speak, and I'm not sure if they are indicted yet or not.

The real problem is not prosecuting them and punishing them. That will happen if they get to The Hague. The real problem is getting the jurisdiction over the people. That is, getting them arrested, getting their hands on them. And as things develop in Bosnia and things calm down, and as the Serbs stray over the borderlines or are kidnapped by people and brought over the border lines, I'm sure more and more of that's going to happen.

The only other question besides getting jurisdiction over them is the tribunal running out of funds. And so the United States really needs to pay their annual pledge to the United Nations, so that-- I mean, we're the most delinquent country in the world in terms of our financial contributions. And we need to make those contributions so these sorts of things can continue, such as the tribunal.

DAN OLSON: Or would it be more effective if the United States government made a so-called line item contribution, if you will, to the tribunal? I think the US federal government concern, as you know better than I, is that the United Nations is in great need of reform to slim down what some characterize as its bloated bureaucracy. I don't know if that's a realistic notion or not.

PETER THOMPSON: Sure. And there is-- the Clinton administration has sent both investigators and federal prosecutors over, and they are helping staff the tribunal offices. So that's a terrific way to make line item kinds of contributions, and they should be commended for that.

DAN OLSON: Why do people like you and the other folks involved in the process commit to this very plodding, very difficult process of weeks, months, more likely years later, trying to bring people to justice from a war that in many instances will disappear, might disappear from the front pages here fairly shortly?

PETER THOMPSON: Well, I think the real reason is that it'll never disappear from the memories of those families and victims of the various war crimes. And they're so heinous, and we all saw them unfold on the pages of the newspaper, that to not do something about it really makes a mockery of the whole concept that a rule of law will be enforced and that this should never happen again. The Nazis did it. And if we're really going to pay lip service to those sorts of concepts that it won't happen again, then each of us need to take some personal responsibility and participate in the process.

It can not only have the personal therapeutic effect for the victims, but I think there's also a deterrent effect. In other words, when these sorts of conflicts occur, people can very easily think they're above the law if in fact there is no government telling them they can't do this. And if a few of those people get life in prison in the Yugoslavian tribunal, others are going to think twice.

And so there is no one else to do it. The Serbs aren't going to prosecute those people themselves. And if someone doesn't do it, and they get off with those crimes with impunity, that's going to encourage others who are similarly situated to continue to act out. And it just can't be countenanced.

DAN OLSON: Well, with all this attention on war crimes and the proceedings of justice that are unfolding in The Hague, I suppose a lot of folks would say, well, Peter Thompson, there's plenty of justice that needs dispensing here in this country. You've already pointed out you devote a third of your practice to pro bono work or work for people who are disadvantaged in some way or another.

And I imagine people are thinking, but there is a great need not being met in the city's poorest neighborhoods, in rural areas where people in this country, they may not be suffering as victims of war crimes, but they need a better, more even field of justice administered to them.

PETER THOMPSON: You mean in terms of defendants or in terms of victims of crime?

DAN OLSON: Yeah, both, as a matter of fact.

PETER THOMPSON: The whole system needs some really fundamental addressing of issues. Building more prisons around the country is not the solution to ending crime. Having more vigorous prosecutions is one thing that needs to happen, but it's not the answer to stopping crime.

The US Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in a case where Black males in our country are prosecuted much more vigorously and much more harshly for selling cocaine than our whites. And the reason is that the cocaine that they have is designated under the statutes for about five times the penalties as the drug of choice of the white middle and upper class. And so those sorts of disparities also need to be addressed.

DAN OLSON: Well, here you've finished up arguably one of the biggest trials in your life and your professional career, rather, as an attorney. What's next on the horizon? What's the big case ahead for you?

PETER THOMPSON: I just talked to my client, Father Roy Bourgeois. He's been arrested for the third time down at Fort Benning. He does an annual protest against the training of Salvadoran soldiers on our soil with our taxpayer dollars. Those are the same soldiers that joined the death squads and murdered the six Jesuits in November of 1989 with training by our military people, both in their country as well as at Fort Benning.

And so he's been arrested for the third time. He's served two lengthy prison terms. And we go to trial on about April 1, for a third in front of the same federal judge. Last time the case ended up in the US Supreme Court, and we changed slightly the federal recusal law as a result of that case. But we're going back.

There's 13 defendants I'll be representing. There's a 83-year-old Ursuline nun. There are four Jesuits. There's Father Bourgeois, who's a Maryknoll priest. And there is a mother of eight from Indianapolis and various other people. And Judge Elliott, an 85-year-old judge in Columbus, Georgia, after they are convicted, which they most certainly will be, is going to have to decide whether to send these 13 people to federal prison.

DAN OLSON: You wanted this judge removed. Why?

PETER THOMPSON: He had distinguished himself in the two earlier trials as being biased against the defendants. The largest thing in Columbus, Georgia, is Fort Benning. Most of the people work there. Judge Elliott has only found for a defendant in a habeas corpus proceeding one time in all of his time on the federal bench, and that was Lieutenant Calley. He let him out of jail.

Everyone who comes in a conflict with the army, or any minority person who comes in conflict with the law, or the school desegregation case down in Columbus, Georgia, which has been pending for 17 years, he's never ruled for the defendant in a criminal case or the African-American in the desegregation case. And because of his conduct, which has been very passionate, and some would say outrageous, against the defendants in these protest cases, I think that he should not sit in the case. And I'm going to make another recusal motion when I go down next month to Georgia to have him remove himself from this case again.

DAN OLSON: Peter Thompson, thanks a lot. Pleasure talking to you.

PETER THOMPSON: It's a pleasure talking to you. Thank you.

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PAULA SCHROEDER: Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson talking with Peter Thompson, the defense attorney for surgeon John Najarian. Voices of Minnesota is heard every Monday at 10 o'clock here on Midmorning on the FM News station.

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It's 26 minutes before 11 o'clock. Programming on Minnesota Public Radio is supported by Bendix, a front-loading washer-dryer combination with water and energy conserving capabilities, new at independent appliance dealers.

Well, I think it's a little bit unfair, but did you know that in the southern parts of this country people are already starting to plant their gardens? Well, of course, here in the Midwest it's snowing, and safe to say that it probably won't be until May. Some of us brave people might get out in the gardens and in our lawns in April, but we really should wait until all the frost is gone to get those seeds and plants into the ground. Nevertheless, now is the time to plan your garden and determine what your lawn needs.

Here to help us today is America's master gardener, Jerry Baker, whose Lawns and Gardens series has been one of PBS's top shows since 1994. He did a four-hour extravaganza on Twin Cities public television yesterday. And by the way, that is going to be repeated on Saturday, March 9, and Saturday, March 16. So if you missed Jerry and all of his lawn and garden care tips then, you can tune in and catch it again the next couple of Saturdays. Jerry Baker, welcome.

JERRY BAKER: Hello. I don't know whether I'm welcome or not after what you just said. You said, wait till May. First of all, tomorrow will be one of the greatest days in the world to fertilize your lawn.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, I meant to plant the garden.

JERRY BAKER: Well, but there's another thing. You can go ahead, for instance, you could put down radish seed. Part the snow and put the radish seed down. Or you could have put it down yesterday and put a little bit of snow over it and it would have been fine. Tomorrow or sometime this next week would be a great time. Well, actually, yesterday would have been great to put down grass seed. But right now, one of the best things in the world is--

PAULA SCHROEDER: On top of the snow?

JERRY BAKER: Certainly. First of all, if you're going to put fertilizer down and grass seed, what's nice about the snow is you know that you're walking a straight line because you can see your footprints in the snow. We call it dormant feeding and dormant seeding. I have a home in Mount Dora, Florida, and I also have a home and yarden in Troy, Michigan.

When I left Troy, Michigan, on January the 4th, I had fertilized the day before, on January the 3rd, and now the snow went along. And I used a mixture of regular fertilizer, cheapest I could get my hands on, pound of sugar, pound of Epsom salts, and 2 cups of dry laundry soap. Went out across the yard-- there was just a little bit of snow, not much-- and I put that, and now I come away. My grass up north will be greener, faster, stronger, longer, and better.

And then you said down in the South, my home in Mount Dora is 26 miles north of Orlando, and when you see the videos you'll see all of my homes. But my yard-- everybody else's grass down there goes brown in Florida. Not mine. Mine looked like God said, let's paint Jerry's yard green down there. And I did. And all I do is I just happen to apply sugar in the fall of the year, very late fall of the year in Florida. And then I come back in, and I generally will spray it with 50% cola and 50% liquid Epsom salts, and it runs-- it's just absolutely great.

Now, those sound like kooky things. Actually, they're not magic. There is no magic motion, potion, or lotion. I'm just working with nature, making nature work for itself. And they're old wives' tales. And it's interesting because everybody believes-- uses old wives' tales. They don't believe in them, but they use them. And it doesn't matter. You know, it's just like-- I'm not superstitious. But if there's a black cat goes across, they go the other way. Or when somebody comes between you, you say cheese and crackers, or whatever it is.

Well, the thing is that what I talk about are 130 tips, tricks, and tonics that you can utilize to have the greenest grass, the prettiest flowers, the tastiest garden on your side of the fence. Not work for it, wait for it, or sweat for it, because you're the impatient gardener. And that's what it's really all about, because you can have all of those things. And though they sound strange, all you got to do is try them.

When I said to go out and buy the least expensive bag of fertilizer you can right now, and the only numbers that I want you to concern yourself with are the numbers on the price tag. Never mind the formula, because your grass can't read. Your yarden has never said, hey, would you buy me a little 23-7-7, Jer? I never heard it say that. And so I go out and buy the least expensive.

You have heard, if you've been around gardening at all-- and actually, you're a home yardener, not a home gardener. Big yard, little garden. You've heard them say, balanced diet. I want you to tell me how 23-7-7 is balanced. That's 23% nitrogen, and then 7% phosphorus and potash. That's not balanced. Balance is a 1-1-1 ratio. Equal numbers. Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potash.

PAULA SCHROEDER: But don't you have to assume that there is already something in the soil?

JERRY BAKER: No. Well, that something that's in the soil comes-- right now, you're getting frozen fertilizer. And that atmosphere, that snow is filled with 78-21-1. 78% is nitrogen, 21% is pollution, and 1% is just some old junk that just flew around out there. But God doesn't discriminate. He doesn't say to Mother Nature, 10-6-4 here, 23-7-7. He says, let her rip. She drops 78% nitrogen.

And I assume that it's there because I know it's there, but what happens is it never gets loose from the soil to feed the plants. We don't feed the plants. We feed the earth. The earth feeds the plants. And when you live in St. Paul or in Minneapolis or anywhere in Minnesota, every time you turn your sprinkler system on, or your garden hose, you kill the bacteria in the soil, 60% of it, with the chlorine that's in there that breaks down the food so it's palatable.

So what I want you to do is go out and buy a bag of 6-6-6, 8-8-8, 10-10-10, or 12-12-12. That's balance. Then I want you to put in a pound of Epsom salts, magnesium sulfate. Deepens the color, thickens the petal, increases root structure. Pound of sugar. Plants manufacture sugars and starches. Remember when we took Biology 101 the fourth time, and they said all plants manufacture sugar? I just gave it to them in a form that they can eat, take right up. Don't have to work for that chlorophyll.

But the sugar feeds the bacteria, which then begins to breed like crazy. As soon as the temperature gets over 40, man, you got a sex maniac out there right in the yard. And it-- blah, blah, blah, and it's going on. It breaks the food down that's locked in the soil so the plants can eat it. And the 2 cups of dry laundry soap, that's simple. I put that in there if I got dogs, or my neighbors got them, that they don't control. There's an enzyme in dry laundry soap that neutralizes the sodium salt damage in their urine so you don't have green spots.

PAULA SCHROEDER: So you just sprinkle some soap detergent on those spots?

JERRY BAKER: Dry laundry-- you want to remember, detergent only means one word. It means to cleanse. It has nothing to do with harshness. And yes, I do. I mix all that together, spread it at half the recommended rate on the bag. Or in the middle opening on a broadcast spreader, right out over the snow, under the snow. But you get it out as soon as you can. Then just relax until the temperature gets above 40, and then we'll start with something else.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, if you haven't guessed by now, Jerry Baker is the guy who uses all kinds of weird stuff-- [LAUGHS] or everyday household things, actually, to keep his lawns and gardens growing nicely. Tea is the one that you always recommend.

JERRY BAKER: Both. Just general tea, green or gray or black, is fine. That settles out their tummy. It also breaks dormancy in seeds. So if you want to speed up either grass seed or vegetable or flower seeds, just put them into a little-- I just put them in a piece of nylon stocking like a sachet, drop them in a weak solution of tea, put it in the refrigerator for 24 hours, bring them out, let it dry. And then I put them down and they germinate fast.

Two things. I put them in the refrigerator because the temperature in your refrigerator is 38 degrees. Temperature goes below 40, they go to sleep. When they wake up, they don't know whether they've been asleep two minutes, two hours, two years, or two weeks. They just know they got to grow like the dickens. Tannic acid breaks that dormancy faster than anything else.

I also use another tea, it's called chamomile tea. And chamomile tea is four tea bags and a cup of boiling water, and then let it steep all night. The next day, you will use a teaspoon to the quart, a tablespoon to the gallon, or a cup to 20 gallons. And I'll tell you outdoors, what you'd use it for. You spray your houseplants indoors in the soil to kill bacteria.

And because chamomile kills bacteria, it was the first bacteria stats that were used by man, and that was Dr. Lister, the man who Listerine is named after, in his formula. Not for gargle. He did not invent a gargle. He invented a solution that the then-beginning profession of surgery would use to sterilize their hands, and it contained chamomile. Those of you who are young mothers and have babies, if you will look at the medicated baby powder of Diaperene, you will notice back here about two years ago that all of a sudden it was gone then it came back. And when it comes back, it has chamomile in it.

And so for instance, if you want to keep a really good, clean yarden-- and that's a big yard, little garden-- if you take antiseptic mouthwash, chewing tobacco juice, liquid dish soap, chamomile tea, human urine, and 7 Up or Sprite, and you mix all that together, and it will be a teaspoon of each to the quarter, tablespoon to the gallon, cup to 20 gallons.

Every two weeks you spray your entire yarden, tree shrubs, evergreens, vegetables, fruits, everything. You spray it with that, odds are you will never, ever have a problem with insects or diseases or varmints. Varmints won't come around. That's where the urine comes in. And preferably when you use urine-- and human urine is the best because the varmints know it-- if it's about two weeks old, and it came from a drunk with a hangover and a bad temper, that's even better, man. They don't ever come back.

PAULA SCHROEDER: (LAUGHING) Jeez.

JERRY BAKER: We learned that from the Indians. And--

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, I'm going to ask, where did you learn all this stuff?

JOHN RABE: Well, for those who've been watching me or listening to me or reading my books since back in 1971, when I wrote the very first one of about 52, Plants Are Like People, and was with Dinah Shore, Dinah's Place, and on national radio with NBC's Monitor, you know that the story-- I literally was expelled from kindergarten in 1936. My folks got a pink slip. Said, take this little SOB out of this school. Stood for sweet old bakery, folks. It wasn't profanity. I was a hyper child. Today I would be called that DD syndrome or whatever.

PAULA SCHROEDER: ADD, yeah.

JERRY BAKER: Yeah. And I had to go live with my Grandma Putnam. She was a full-blooded Shoshone Indian midwife married to a Welsh horse trainer. What came out of that marriage is, somebody gave it to you, took it back, and kept it, man. They thought of us as cheap. We thought of ourselves as thrifty. Lived in her garden by her bible. 1936 in the throes of the Depression. But her background would allow her to use natural things anyhow, because that's all they knew.

So that's where my training started, because that was part of my therapy. She lived in the garden, so I was out there with her all the time. And she was a parablist. She told everything in parables. Now, don't pull on Gladys's leaves. How would you like Gladys to pull on your nose, or something like that. And she wanted to tell me there are girl plants and boy plants.

And then in 1942, February 17, 1942, I professionally broke into gardening on the corner of 63rd and Troost. My dad was transferred to Kansas City when the war first broke out, by General Motors. While they were moving furniture into the house, I was up on a ridge and there was a greenhouse down there. And I'm 11 years old, man. I picked up rocks, broke 19 panes of glass in the greenhouse. That's how I broke in.

And another Indian came in my life. His name was Sid Trueheart. He caught me. Had to work off the debt and stay with him for the whole five-- I mean, I worked for him, with him, part-time and after school and everything-- for five years. And again, the war years. Had to utilize what we had. That's where urine came in, really, where I understood it. First of all, we used 22 parts of water to one part urine. And we didn't use nitrogen. We had no nitrogen because it was using for explosives.

We grew tomatoes for the military, and that was part of it, the formula. And then also, we used beer. We used sugar, molasses. We used soap. We used ammonia, household ammonia. And those were pretty much the things-- we used apple juice on a regular basis when the tomatoes were just setting up. And we sprayed that on the fields. Every three weeks, the fields got sprayed with that. And we had tomatoes that looked great, tasted terrific, and never had a problem.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Is this ever taught in universities? Horticultural classes at schools?

JERRY BAKER: Yeah, actually, it is, to some extent. You want to remember that everything I'm telling you is already in every bag, box, bottle, and can of fertilizer. It's synergized. Synergization comes, and it's the synthetic manufacturing of a substitute. And the thing is that that's where the price-- and when the prices went up, the North American public in the US and in Canada spend $26 billion a year on home garden products, 2/3 of which they waste.

Synergizing-- it's kind of interesting. Synergizing actually began with man himself. And we again can go right back to the human and to the animal. The best synergizing machinery in the world is the human body. And it's funny, because we call it waste material. In an animal we call it urine or we call it their manure. Their manure is fertilizer in the true sense of the word. If you used 22 parts of water to one part dog urine, you wouldn't have to worry about the dog burning your yard. But chasing him with a Mason jar usually looks stupid and puts him out of business.

And also, there's-- I mean, we have the weirdest-- in the United States, we have the weirdest philosophy in the world. We think that the honey buckets of Asia and the rest of these things is wrong. They're right. We're wrong. We're the ones that are burning off the ozone, nobody else.

PAULA SCHROEDER: So you're the alternative doctor for--

JERRY BAKER: That's true.

PAULA SCHROEDER: --lawns and gardens.

JERRY BAKER: Yeah. And the thing is, I believe in natural methods. Organic is misunderstood. It means one word. It means carbon. For instance, if you don't want thatch to build up in your yard, you go get yourself about 5 pounds of coal in a coal yard, something none of us ever get anymore, and go put it in a bag and stick it in a bucket and just leave it there. And then you take and put equal parts of that old dumb coal water and Coca-Cola into a hose-end sprayer, and once a month, you spray. Tell me what coal is. What's the base of coal?

PAULA SCHROEDER: Um--

JERRY BAKER: What'd I say organic was?

PAULA SCHROEDER: (LAUGHING) Carbon.

JERRY BAKER: Yeah, that's what it is. And it's about a jillion years old. So if I take that carbon and put it with sugar, now I got a hot working material that'll just eat up compost and decompose your compost pile like nothing you ever saw before.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Yeah. We've only got a couple of minutes left here, Jerry. And by the way, we're talking with Jerry Baker, who is America's master gardener and uses all kinds of household products to keep his yarden growing. And some of the basic things, too, especially for lawn care. Now, you said that we can do some of the fertilizing early, but you say to wear golf shoes.

JERRY BAKER: Yeah, golf shoes mechanically penetrate the invisible barrier called surface tension. That's the thing that you wake up every morning, put moisturizing cream or soap on to get off your skin so your skin breathes. It's caused by wind and the changes of temperature outdoors. See where those little holes just punch that invisible barrier. Also, it punches far enough down in the grass clipping buildup to let the food and material down.

And there again, we're back to if you use a mulching mower-- and the only mulching mower that's worth a hoot is eight sheep to the acre, because you get fertilizer too-- is to go ahead and use 50% plain cola, it can't be diet, and ammonia and overspray. Every three weeks, you mix together a can of beer, a can of cola, a cup of apple juice, a cup of ammonia, a cup of soap, and a cup of any liquid lawn food. Overspray your yarden, tree shrubs, evergreens, vegetables, every three weeks. Dry, what I said in the spring. Dry in the fall. You will have the best-looking garden on your side of the fence.

And all of these formulas that I'm talking about, you can see me doing and using and everything on the specials, and also there's the YardenCare series. I have a newsletter that comes out eight times a year. It's called On the Garden Line Newsletter, and if your listeners would like it, it's $19.95 a year, and it's 1-800-419-6464. That's 1-800-419-6464. It's $19.95 a year, and they get two of those booklets with all the tonics and everything in it free.

PAULA SCHROEDER: OK. Because I think that people are just going to be madly writing down these recipes, and they probably can't get them all down right now.

JERRY BAKER: But the thing is, you have great yarden experts right here in town. Some of them yet, they need a Plexiglas tummy button so they can see where they're going, that's all.

PAULA SCHROEDER: [LAUGHS]

JERRY BAKER: You know, I don't know why people shy away from something that's tried and true and hundreds and thousands of year old. The Italians are the ones that taught us how to use sugar in the soil to feed the bacteria, and the Germans are the ones that taught us how to activate soil with beer and the findings of beer.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, they certainly-- yeah, they've got a lot of information about beer. We've got one minute left. How about some quick tips on flowers? How do you get nice, lush flowers?

JERRY BAKER: Oh, you mix equal parts of oatmeal, crushed-up dried dog or cat food, and human hair in equal amounts. Mix it up, put it into the soil where you're going to put your tomatoes or flowers, and then get out of the way, man. They're going right by Jack and the beanstalk. Hell, they'll have the goose and back and get the golden eggs before they even get out of the ground.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Jerry Baker, thank you so much for coming in. It's always so much fun to listen to you. By the way, the specials are going to be repeated on KTCA Channel 2 in the Twin Cities, Saturday, March 9 and March 16. And Jerry Baker's online-- what did you call that again?

JERRY BAKER: On the Garden Line Newsletter.

PAULA SCHROEDER: On the Garden Line Newsletter, 1-800-419-6464. Thanks a lot, Jerry.

JERRY BAKER: Thank you.

[CHEERFUL FLUTE MELODY]

PAULA SCHROEDER: It's seven minutes before 11 o'clock. You're listening to Midmorning on the FM News station. Hamas, the radical Palestinian group, has claimed responsibility for today's Tel Aviv bombing. At least 20 people are believed to be dead in the suicide bombing. We'll have details on that coming up on Midday.

GARY EICHTEN: Vice President Al Gore has been in charge of streamlining government to reinvent government, but critics say it's time for a more dramatic shift. They're calling for deep cuts in the federal government with authority moving to the states. Hi, Gary Eichten here inviting you to join us for Midday on the FM News station. Vice President Al Gore is speaking at the National Press Club on the role of the federal government. You can hear his speech live on Midday. Midday begins at 11:00 weekday mornings on the FM News station, KNOW-FM 91.1 in the Twin Cities.

PAULA SCHROEDER: And as I said, at 11 o'clock, all the latest news including a conversation with US Senator Paul Wellstone about the Hamas bombing in Tel Aviv today. First, here's Garrison Keillor.

[GENTLE PIANO MELODY]

GARRISON KEILLOR: And here is The Writer's Almanac for Monday. It's the 4th of March, 1996. The birthday of Antonio Vivaldi in 1678. The first US Congress convened on this day in New York City in 1789. March the 4th, in fact, was the date on which presidents were inaugurated from then all the way up through 1933, when the date was changed to January the 20th. Before then, March the 4th was the day.

And so it was on this day in 1801, Thomas Jefferson, the third president, was inaugurated. For the first time the event was held in Washington, a day on which Jefferson promised "equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political, peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none."

And it was on this day in 1861, Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as the 16th president as the nation teetered on the brink of civil war. And he said, "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I have the most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend it. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies." The war began soon thereafter.

It was on this day in 1917, a Republican from Montana, Jeannette Rankin, took her seat in the US House of Representatives. She was the first woman to serve in either house of Congress.

It's the birthday of the British author and playwright Alan Sillitoe, 1928 in Nottingham. He became a writer when he spent two years in the hospital with tuberculosis after he'd come home from serving in the Royal Air Force in Malaysia. He wrote Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.

Here's a poem for today by William Carlos Williams entitled, "The Botticellian Trees."

"The alphabet of the trees is fading in the song of the leaves. The crossing bars of the thin letters that spelled winter and the cold have been illumined with pointed green by the rain and sun. The strict, simple principles of straight branches are being modified by pinched-out ifs of color, devout conditions, the smiles of love-- until the stript sentences move as a woman's limbs under cloth, and praise from secrecy, quick with desire, love's ascendancy in summer. In summer, the song sings itself above the muffled words."

"The Botticellian Trees" by William Carlos Williams from his Selected Poems, published by New Directions and used by permission here on The Writer's Almanac. Monday, March the 4th, made possible by Cole's Magazines, publishers of Country Journal and other magazines. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, tomorrow, there are a lot of primaries going on across New England, for the most part. And then Thursday, it's the New York State primary. We could have a Republican presidential candidate by the end of the year wrapped up. And tomorrow on Midmorning we will be continuing our series, Campaign Connection, taking a look at some of the issues and the personalities involved in this year's campaign for president. That's coming up tomorrow on Midmorning. Thanks for joining us today. Stay tuned. Midday is next. I'm Paula Schroeder.

[CHEERFUL MUSIC]

JOHN RABE: All Things Considered is going to the movies.

JACK NICHOLSON: Nothing personal, Mrs. Mulwray.

FAYE DUNAWAY: It's very personal. It couldn't be more personal.

JOHN RABE: Film and its place in our lives, through Friday on All Things Considered on the FM News station, KNOW-FM 91.1.

PAULA SCHROEDER: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. 16 degrees at the FM News station, KNOW-FM 91.1, Minneapolis-St. Paul. We're expecting 1 to 2 inches of snow. That's what the National Weather Service is predicting, anyway, before it all ends this evening. The high temperature today around 27 degrees. Tomorrow, a 60% chance of snow and a high near 22.

[DRAMATIC MUSIC]

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, Israeli authorities now say at least 18 people were killed, another 80 injured in yet another suicide bomb attack in Israel.