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WILLIAM WILCOXEN: Good morning with news from Minnesota Public Radio. I'm William Wilcoxen. Mudslides and water are blocking some of the roads in the Mankato area this morning. The southbound lane of Highway 169 between St. Peter and Mankato is among the roads closed due to the flooding. Maintenance engineer Wes Jovic of the state transportation department says crews are closing roads while they worked to clear them.

WES JOVIC: We can handle it. We've got equipment, but it's not regular maintenance.

WILLIAM WILCOXEN: A flash flood watch remains in effect for Southeastern Minnesota until 7 o'clock this evening. Trout anglers are awaiting the outcome of work by private and public conservationists, trying to determine if an influx of warm water is harming the Kinnickinnic River in Western Wisconsin. It's one of the most popular trout streams in the Twin Cities area.

The project is part of a larger conservation effort throughout the Kinnickinnic's watershed. It focuses on the run-off of warm storm water from River Falls, the only city on the river. The thermal pollution, as scientists call it, could be affecting the river's aquatic life.

Charges are expected to be filed today against a 36-year-old former University of Minnesota employee who's been arrested in connection with a shooting incident in the university president's office. Police won't discuss any potential motive of the woman who was arrested yesterday. She worked for the university from 1981 to 1991. Staff directories indicate she last worked as a secretary in the chemistry department.

Showers and a few thunderstorms in Southeastern Minnesota today, partly sunny in Northern and Western Minnesota. Highs today from around 70 near Duluth to the lower 80s in the Red River Valley. Tonight, more showers near Rochester and Winona, partly cloudy in the Arrowhead. For the Twin Cities today, occasional showers, a high around 70, and scattered showers continuing through the evening.

Currently in Rochester, fog in 64. And Fargo at sunny and 67. And in the Twin Cities, cloudy, 65 degrees. And that's news from Minnesota Public Radio. I'm William Wilcoxen.

RACHEL REABE: This is Midmorning. I'm Rachel Reabe.

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There have been important advances in understanding AIDS. But so far, people with HIV know their condition is fatal. No one is more aware of this than Greg White, one of the first Minnesotans diagnosed with HIV. Today on our Voices of Minnesota interview, we hear from Greg White, the 43-year-old St. Paul native tested positive for HIV 12 years ago. He is development director for the gay and lesbian community action council in Minneapolis.

White is also a founder of the Philanthrofund. The foundation was created to advance gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexual issues. Greg White talked recently with Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr. He recalled how he first learned of his infection.

GREG WHITE: Way back at a meeting of the Northland Business Association, which was the first gay and lesbian chamber of commerce for Minnesota way back in 1983, Dr. Michael Osterholm, who is and was the state epidemiologist, asked the attendees to voluntarily take a blood test. And I knew Michael casually, and still do casually. And I said, sure, I'll take the test. And the test was anonymous. And people couldn't really be sure who was what.

But I ran into Michael some time later, a month later or so. And so I'm sure here in Minnesota, everybody came back negative for this new test. He said, well, no, Greg, they really didn't. There are three or four who came back positive. And if I were you, I'd go get another test. Now, I don't know for sure that he meant that he knew my results or that he just wanted me, as a concerned friend, to go get results.

But I went and got tested shortly thereafter and ended up being, to my knowledge, one of the first HIV positive people in Minnesota.

EUAN KERR: What was the buzz on the streets at the time about HIV? I mean, what did people know? What were they talking about?

GREG WHITE: First of all, the name HIV hadn't been brought up yet. In those days, they were still calling it GRID, which was Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. And then it was broadened from gay men into Haitians, as you may recall way back then, and then into other groups. And obviously, they realized that it was not gay related at all. And they called it AIDS, Autoimmune Deficiency Syndrome. And HIV is the name of the virus itself.

And of course, it wasn't until the Pasteur Institute came up with the virus itself that the term HIV came into being, which was sometime later. The buzz on the street was it was scary. People presumed that perhaps it most likely was a sexually transmitted disease of some form, but nobody knew how or where. Nobody knew why at that time it was affecting gay men more than others.

And it had very strange manifestations in that people got ill in so many different ways that it was clear that the illness itself was not what was happening, but was these opportunistic old persons' diseases that were affecting people from KS, Kaposi sarcoma, to various forms of pneumonia and all sorts of odd diseases, not all of which Latin names I can even pronounce. But that was what was killing young men and even younger than myself at that time. And it was very scary. Very scary.

EUAN KERR: When you got the test-- and this is an awful question that we should never ask, but how did you feel?

GREG WHITE: Well, I got the results back on the day before Thanksgiving. I was painting my room at the time. I'll never forget it. And my doctor called, who was a good friend. And he said, Greg, if you were an ordinary patient, I wouldn't tell you this over the phone, but you're a close friend. And I think you need to know this. You're positive. And in those days, they kind of told you to kiss your ass goodbye pretty quickly.

The estimated life expectancy at that time was two years. And I was advised of that very guardedly, very cautiously. Not that coldly. But I was appraised of it that right now, our experience is two years life expectancy. And you need to do something about it. I was stunned. I was shocked. I couldn't believe me. For a variety of reasons, I didn't believe it would be me. But it was. It was a weird Thanksgiving.

I did not inform my family at that time and didn't for some time afterwards. It was a scary deal. Very scary deal. I did tell one of my closest friends. And he helped me emotionally get through it. Kind of expected that the world was going to fall apart and that I expected to kind of play the role of Camille for the next 24 months and languish on the settee or something. But it never happened, of course.

By the end of Christmas and New Year's, I made a bet with myself, not being a particularly religious person. It was with myself, not with anyone else, that if I could run two marathons in one summer, I could live to be 40. And by golly, there is no incentive for training like making a bet like that with yourself. And I started training in about January 15th, running at the St. Paul Athletic Club's indoor gym.

Then when spring came, ran a lot more and ran grandmas. And then the following fall, ran Twin Cities. And I ran my two marathons in one summer. And I felt I'd made a deal. It was a deal. It was a good deal. But then I expected at age 40, literally within two weeks of my 40th birthday, at least in my vision back then, was that life would change immediately after my 40th birthday party, which was nearly four years ago. And not much has changed at this point, for which I'm happy to say.

And I can only address what's happening in the gay community. I can't address what's happening in other affected communities. As young gay men sometimes sadly discover that they're positive, I think some of them take a very hysterical response. You've seen articles in the press about some of them zoom off to South Beach and live a decadent life for a few months, expecting to fade away quickly.

And of course, they don't. They don't fade away quickly. They do go off to South Beach. But I've met people who are just absolutely frightened of tomorrow. I mean, just hysterical that they're going to die immediately or something's going to happen to them. My observation is, these days, with all the prophylactic drugs and drug combinations and what all going on, that very few people die that quickly. Some do at the very end. But other than that, no, that doesn't happen that much anymore.

EUAN KERR: But there did seem to be this period though, I remember. And perhaps, it was because I was working at a radio station and in the news operation and so saw this stuff. But I heard people talking in all seriousness about the gay plague. I heard people saying, well, if you're in a room with someone who's got this and they sneeze, you're dead.

GREG WHITE: Yeah. Today, it's funny to look back at those things. And I think certainly there's hysteria in the country from people refusing to shake hands with gay people, from people being stupid enough to this January wearing rubber gloves at a Radisson Resort where there happened to be gay people in the room, unknown whether or not any of those gay people were HIV positive or not. But just because they're gay, they're going to wear rubber gloves. This is Minnesota in 1996. That's a remarkable thing. The hysteria continues.

I remember my first friend who had AIDS going into the hospital. And not none, but a lot of the staff, especially the less qualified medical staff, like room cleaners, et cetera, would wear suits just to come in the room and sweep the floors for fear of catching AIDS just by being in the room with someone. We know that's silly and it's impossible to catch AIDS that way. But it still happens some places that way.

My friend Jeffrey, who died in January three years ago, experienced that at the University of Minnesota hospital about five years ago. It still is an issue that happens. And we have to be careful. Back in those days, there was such incredible anti-gay hysteria going on, which has fed a lot of the right-wingers and still continues today.

EUAN KERR: I recently saw a movie, Kids. Have you?

GREG WHITE: I've not seen it.

EUAN KERR: One of the plot lines is about a youngster who's 15 or so who is carrying the virus. And he's cutting a swath through his friends. And it was horrifying. It was utterly horrifying in part because no one really seemed to care that much about the whole thing. But perhaps deep down, to me, what was horrifying was the fact that even now, something like that could be seen as happening, that the education perhaps has not gone through. Or perhaps the reason is people don't care.

GREG WHITE: But how could this 15-year-old be educated in today's environment? We still can't talk directly to 15-year-olds about the use of condoms because we all know, according to the Christian right, that 15-year-olds never have sex. We all know that 15-year-olds are innocent and therefore can't have HIV. We all know that that's not part of their lives. And of course, it's a huge part of their lives. And it has to be. 15 is way too old for a youngster to learn about the use of a condom.

Just last year in the Minnesota House of Representatives, there was a huge uproar because of a sex education pamphlet directed primarily to college students. It actually gave instructions on how to put a condom on. Oh, my goodness. How terrible. Not only might they own a condom, but they might even put it on. This is just terrible. I mean, the logic against this stuff is silly.

When you deny a 15-year-old a condom, you are putting a gun to the kid's head and pulling the trigger Russian roulette style. I'm sorry that some people are offended that 15-year-olds are having sex. It may or may not be the best thing in the world. But the fact of the matter is it's happening. And 15-year-olds who are having sex without condoms, straight or gay or any other way, are really putting their lives in danger. And it's tragic. We can lose a generation that way.

But it should be noted that HIV is being spread most rapidly amongst under 21-year-olds. It's a very scary place for it to be because it's so hard to educate them and get to them. I know when I was 15, I thought I was immortal. Nothing could ever affect me. Nothing would ever bother me. I'm sure it's true of 15-year-olds today.

RACHEL REABE: Greg White, who 12 years ago tested positive for HIV. He's development director of the gay and lesbian community action council in Minneapolis. You're listening to our Voices of Minnesota interview on Midmorning. I'm Rachel Reabe. White is a founder of the Philanthrofund, a foundation to advance gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender causes. Let's return to White's conversation with Euan Kerr.

GREG WHITE: When I realized that mortality was an issue for me-- and I realized that I was blessed by having some small amount of personal wealth and had at the time a lover who had a small amount of personal wealth that I wanted to make sure that-- and I also had a fairly significant life insurance policy, which I was blessed to get in at a young age, which would be really the bulk of my wealth.

I wanted to make sure that the monies I left behind me would do some good for my community, my area. And some people who feel their community's Minneapolis might leave money to the Minneapolis Foundation. Or those who feel that their community is their church may leave it to their church or synagogue. My case, I wanted to leave it to the gay/lesbian community.

And I realized that there was no way for a gay person who was to die in 1984 to leave money to the gay/lesbian community. Not only just in Minnesota, but anywhere in the country. To my knowledge, and I think I'm correct in saying this, there was no foundation that would take care of the gay/lesbian community in 1984. I called a buddy of mine who is and was a lawyer and called two other buddies of mine who had much bigger checkbooks than myself and said, guys, we need to make a foundation here. Let's get this thing put together.

And over lunch at a restaurant in Minneapolis called Fagres at the time, a great restaurant. Sad to see it gone. We molded the thing and we kept stumbling over the name. And I suggested the name Philanthrofund. A philanthropist is a person who loves mankind, phil for love, anthro for mankind. And Philanthrofund is a fund for loving mankind. I think it's a great I happen to like the name still. And it's a good foundation.

Twin Cities are one of five Metropolitan areas in the country that have a foundation dedicated to serving the gay/lesbian community. It's pretty amazing that of the five community foundations in the country dedicated to this, three of them are in Minnesota or Wisconsin. We're blessed to have Philanthrofund. Lord knows I don't have enough money to say that that's my money over there. But it's a lot of people.

I mean, literally thousands of people have given $10 and $5 and $100 checks to make that fund into a wonderful endowment that will be here serving the gay and lesbian community in Minnesota long after I'm dead and long after anyone left alive on Earth will be around. It'll be it's a great institution. I'm very pleased with it and very proud of it. And that was my way of reacting to knowing that I had HIV.

EUAN KERR: What does it mean to the local community to have that there?

GREG WHITE: It does all sorts of things. We've heard time and time again from groups. Philanthrofund has heard time and time again from groups that have received grants from Philanthrofund that even though they received a relatively small grant from Philanthrofund, inasmuch as that it has a fairly small endowment, that it has worked as a good housekeeping seal of approval for that organization. So that a mainstream foundation that is not aware of the specific needs of the gay and lesbian community has looked at that grant from Philanthrofund and said, oh, OK, well, the gay lesbian community.

And their fund thinks it's OK, then we can give them a check. And the Philanthrofund check for $1,000 becomes $5,000 because another $4,000 check comes from another fund. From that point of view, it has worked very hard. It's worked very successfully to legitimatize small emerging gay/lesbian organizations and gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender organizations in Minnesota.

I mean, it's still a small endowment. It's less than $250,000 today. But what it does mean is that there will be a permanent funding source for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender community organizations permanently, forever. Gays and lesbians who are looking at their estates have a place to think about and where they can leave. God forbid they die soon. But when they leave this earth, they have a place that they can leave their monies and keep it permanently helping the community.

EUAN KERR: Let's go back to your story again.

GREG WHITE: OK.

EUAN KERR: Fast forward a few years. We've gone through the period of at least the early stages of the hysteria. And nowadays, looking at your situation, the situation of the gay and lesbian community, perhaps the world is a little more educated. But deep down, have things changed a great deal, do you think?

GREG WHITE: Well, we've gone through phases. And I've had a lot of friends die. For a while, there's going to a funeral about every six weeks. And that was when I was in my thirties. And that's too often for anybody to go to a funeral. And the world has changed. There's a lot more hope for HIV positive people. The pariah status is changing, but it's become more subtle as opposed to disappearing.

I went back to this as I mentioned. Again, this first friend of mine who passed away a long time ago. Boy, he was a pariah even inside the hospital. People didn't know how to handle him. When my partner passed away eight and half, nine years ago-- when he went in the hospital-- and he was a physician. It was his hospital, the hospital which he admitted. I think he was treated much better than most people were. Nobody expected him to die at that point in time.

Sunday night, he was relatively healthy. Going to be chucked out in the morning. And no monitors, no anything, because he was so healthy. And that Monday morning, when the nurse went in to wake him up, he was dead. Very quick. Easy-- some people may say way to go. But even then, that was a little weird. The hospital's a little unusual and a little uncomfortable.

Nowadays, you have Clinic 42 at Abbott Northwestern, and there's an AIDS clinic down at Hennepin County. One is no longer treated like an outcast within the medical system. But within society, there's still issues. There's still problems, I think even within the gay community. I think if Joe Blow loses a bunch of weight, suddenly people get a little suspicious. Is he OK? How's his health? And you see people back away from a little bit.

Maybe when they would have given him a kiss on the cheek when they saw him, this time they shake hands. Or maybe if they would give him a hug, and this time they don't. A very close friend of mine now is in the middle to latter stages. And he just says friends have just disappeared on him. They just kind of go away. On the other hand, other people and other friends come forward and say, whatever you need. You want a ride? We'll get it to you. You need groceries, don't shop for it. We'll get it for you.

So some people react poorly to it. Some people react heroically to it. Some people are living Florence Nightingale's and just taking care of their friends. And they're strangers. And it's a wonderful situation. But some people still are very, very afraid within and without of the gay/lesbian community.

EUAN KERR: I'd like to ask you about how you see the situation in America as opposed to elsewhere.

GREG WHITE: Well, I think the US, because of our economic size, we are world leader. On the other hand, we are lagging behind some other countries. I think we are behind other countries in certain ways about acceptance of gays and lesbians. On the other hand, I think the gay/lesbian movement is much further ahead here in America, partially because I think the oppression of America has been so much greater than it has been in Europe.

I was reared both in America and in Sweden. I've taught Swedish for 20 years here in Minneapolis. I'm very familiar with the Swedish culture. I think urban Stockholm gayness is somewhat akin to brown-eyedness. It's just a fact of life. OK, next. In rural Sweden, of course it isn't as accepted, same as in America. And again, I can only address Sweden with some knowledge.

The gay/lesbian movement in Sweden is I think behind us. It's lagging behind us chronologically. It's about four or five years behind us. On the other hand, the largest gay/lesbian center in the world is in downtown Stockholm, built with county money right in one of the main drags. It's a huge complex. And the state is very glad to support it. Domestic partnership isn't even a question.

In Sweden, of course, you have domestic partnership for same sex partners or for unmarried partners. On the other hand, domestic partnership regulations have been around in Sweden for decades. So it's not new news to them. What is not accepted in Sweden very well is HIV positivity. That is a scary, scary concept for them. And they see that as a foreign American invasion. And they're not comfortable with it at all.

Maybe they're getting better. But their reaction historically has not been as good as it should have been. They still have forced confinement of HIV positive people who continue to have unsafe sex, which has primarily been applied to prostitutes. But it has been applied to some irresponsible gay men as well.

EUAN KERR: In terms of the gay/lesbian community, is Minnesota any different? Are there special little quirks?

GREG WHITE: Well, Minnesota nice, of course, is everywhere. Having lived both partially in New York and here, as well as abroad, I think the gay/lesbian committee here in Minnesota remains and always has been one of the most integrated gay/lesbian communities in the country. We don't have a gay ghetto here because we don't need one. Maybe because it's the lack of size of the gay/lesbian community or maybe because the lack of need.

The gay/lesbian community has always had comfort walking into this bar or that restaurant, sitting down and enjoying dinner. Two men at a table, two women at a table. And no one blinks and no one cares. It's just accepted. If we're doing our own thing, for the most part, we're accepted here. Yeah, there are some idiots who drive down Hennepin Avenue and scream epithets out their car window. And they did it in the '70s and they did it in the '60s. And it just happened to me the other night.

And it's usually some 18-year-old who's-- the Beatles going to high and beer is going to low. And I'm not excusing it, but I'm saying it's going to happen forever. Well, I feel that the intolerance and lack of acceptance occurs. Perhaps, it's not here in the cities. We're in Minneapolis right now, but perhaps in outstate Minnesota and in suburban Minnesota. Maybe it's more difficult out there. But at least here in the city, I think it's pretty darn comfortable to be gay/lesbian. People really just don't give a damn. And that's just fine.

EUAN KERR: We're sitting here in a beautiful, early summer afternoon. As you sit here, what's your feeling for the future?

GREG WHITE: My future is happy and productive and positive, but short. From a community's point of view, I think that we ain't seen nothing yet. I think that there's going to be a very strong polarization in American society, not just here in Minnesota, not just here in Minneapolis, on issues of sexual identity. And I think it's more important than what-- it goes beyond the homosexual, heterosexual issue.

It's the whole sexual identity issue that we as a society will, through much internal pain and suffering and confrontation and soul searching, realize that people live on a continuum of sexual identity. I think people were hoping that the race issue would be settled with the Civil Rights Act of '64. And the Lord knows, that issue is not resolved and will not be resolved for another 50 or 60 or 70 years.

But my biggest hope is-- my biggest observation is-- and it's true both in race and in the sexual identity issues. The younger generation working where I work, I encounter fairly often, has such a different attitude than I do and such a different attitude than I did at their age. So many of the young people I encountered just really don't see it. They don't care that their body is black, white, yellow, pink or blue, straight, or gay. It's just that's my body. And that's all they really care about. And it's a wonderful sight to see.

At the outfront conference that GLCIC sponsored-- GLCIC is where I work-- last January, there were quite a few college students there. And these young people, they didn't even see the cliques that I saw when I went to college of the Black guys here and the white girls there and the Asian guys over here. It was like everybody was melted together. Nobody paid any attention to what-- and this was a primarily gay/lesbian conference, what their sexual orientation was.

I was very interested to hear a couple of people stand up and say, I have not yet declared my sexual orientation yet. So I refuse to be called straight or gay. I thought, that's good for you. You're young. You don't know where you're at, but more power to you. When you're ready, make your decision or do what you want. It was wonderful to see. I think a lot of these strong hot points that are so hot for us 40-year-olds today are going to be water over the dam for today's 18 and 22 and 25-year-olds.

And they'll be looking at something much more exciting/important to them. I'm not sure what it will be, whether it be world economy or world peace or oak wilt. I don't know what their issues are going to be, but they will deal with something. And good for them. It's a beautiful sight to see.

RACHEL REABE: Greg White, talking with Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr. White tested positive for HIV 12 years ago. He's development director of the gay and lesbian community action council in Minneapolis. Our Voices of Minnesota series is produced by Dan Olson. Members of Minnesota Public Radio hear their membership dollars at work every day on MPR.

To renew your membership or to become a member, call 1-800-228-7123, or mail your contribution to Minnesota Public Radio, St. Paul, Minnesota, 55101. Thank you for your membership support. The time now, 31 minutes past 10 o'clock. It's 66 degrees in the Twin Cities. You're listening to Midmorning. I'm Rachel Reabe. Summer in our region means mosquitoes. This morning in our odd jobs segment, we'll meet Joel Young. It's his job to monitor and control mosquitoes in Fargo, North Dakota.

To do that, he runs a mosquito trap line. Young says when the mosquito count reaches a hundred, it's time to consider spraying. At 200, he knows irate residents will be calling. Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Gunderson accompanied Young as he checked his mosquito traps.

JOEL YOUNG: What we've got is a network of about 15 to 20 light traps that we hang out during the season in the Metropolitan area. And what we do is they run from 8 o'clock at night till 7 o'clock in the morning. And we'll go out every day, six days a week, and collect those traps, bring them in, separate out the males from the females. And then we'll identify the female population to see what type of mosquito base that we have to work with that particular time of the season.

DAN GUNDERSON: So if you're looking at 200 or so in the traps, does that mean that people are having to swat pretty good? And it's the kind of thing where you really can't be out in the yard late in the evening.

JOEL YOUNG: I would say at 200, it's going to be noticeable and the people are going to have some frustration with it. I think, at least in my own experience, somewhere in the 300 is when it gets to the point where people don't really want to go out. Again, the sensitivity to the mosquito population is kind of an individual thing.

DAN GUNDERSON: Now, when the mosquitoes are really bad in the summer and you're fighting them like everybody else, do you get a little tired of dealing with the mosquitoes, picking up these traps and looking at mosquitoes all day?

JOEL YOUNG: Actually, I've been at this since 1970. And I think I went through the wall, as they say, many years ago.

DAN GUNDERSON: So how do you determine the placement for these?

JOEL YOUNG: That's one of those things. It's almost a hit or miss. This particular house here is a home of one of the people that works for me. And we used to be able to place these things without a problem. But nowadays, it's a little bit of a struggle even to find somebody who's willing to put one in the backyard. They're afraid it's going to draw a lot of mosquitoes.

DAN GUNDERSON: Explain for me how a mosquito trap works.

JOEL YOUNG: This will trip it on and that's what'll happen. Got some maintenance work to do on this one, I think. Basically, it's a machine that has a 25-watt light bulb. That is the attractant. The mosquito is drawn into it through the light, then it is sucked down into what we call a kill jar through a fan.

DAN GUNDERSON: So what did you get out of this trap?

JOEL YOUNG: That's a male mosquito right there.

DAN GUNDERSON: How do you tell?

JOEL YOUNG: We always say they have whiskers. On a normal mosquito, you won't see the fuzziness around the proboscis area.

DAN GUNDERSON: OK, I see. Sure.

JOEL YOUNG: We try to get a count on how many males are in the trap, along with the females. The males will precede females into a light trap by about two to three days. So that gives us an early indication of what the population increase may be like. The female is the only one that really causes any problem for anybody. They're the one that bites.

DAN GUNDERSON: How much of a science really is this trapping mosquitoes and determining the population and so on with the traps?

JOEL YOUNG: I guess most people would consider the science of it to be nonexistent. They're only concerned about the mosquito that just bit them. I'm more interested in what the makeup is. If we're running a high Culex tarsalis, we wouldn't know that without these light traps. And the Culex tarsalis mosquito is the one that spreads the Western equine encephalitis. And that's a big concern of ours. And if that elevates, we immediately take some action to see number one, what's causing that problem. And once we determine what's causing it, make the proper treatment on that problem.

RACHEL REABE: Today's programming is sponsored in part by membership contributions from listeners like you. Thank you for your membership support of Minnesota Public Radio. 24 minutes now before 11 o'clock. I'm Rachel Reabe. And you're listening to Midmorning. For those of you who had nothing to say at your 20-year high school reunion, take comfort. Writer Brendan Gill has profiled an entire book of famous people who didn't hit their stride until middle age or even later. The book is appropriately titled Late Bloomers. Welcome, Mr. Gill.

BRENDAN GILL: All right.

RACHEL REABE: Were you a late bloomer? Is that why you wrote this book?

BRENDAN GILL: Well, actually, my vanity is such that I have to pretend or I claim to have been blooming from the cradle. But there isn't a word of truth in that. Only my family would consent to listen to such nonsense. But in point of fact, I've been working at The New Yorker magazine for the last 60 years, which is where I began work the moment I got out of college. So I haven't altered my life. You could say I was a man without a history. And therefore, early or late doesn't seem to count very much in my case.

But other people have chosen ill at the beginning of their careers, have gone into the wrong line of work, or have found themselves imprisoned in something that was distasteful to them, or have wanted to make a change at 50 or 60 or 70. Other people, of course, are forcibly retired at a comparatively early age.

We live so long nowadays. So that if you retire at 60, you have 20 years in which you simply cannot be idle and in which you must fulfill some suitable intellectual or emotional destiny. So there are lots of people who are or ought to be late bloomers from now on. And among the aging baby boomers, that will certainly be the case.

RACHEL REABE: Colonel Sanders, Mother Theresa, Boris Karloff, Julia Child, they all found fame later in life. They are among the 75 people profiled in your book. Should we be encouraged by that? If we feel like we have not made our mark, if we have not hit our stride, is this a book of encouragement?

BRENDAN GILL: Yes, it's certainly a book of encouragement on that very simple level of people who went on and on and on, struggled against the adversity of an apparent failure. And then other people were simply trying to fulfill themselves, finding themselves over a long period of time without regard to the world's approval or disapproval. And then by chance, by an accident of timing of one kind or another, they were discovered, as if they were an unknown continent of some kind.

And so gained fame at the very end of their lives, as Cezanne did, for example. Or in late years as a friend of mine, Louise Nevelson, the sculptor, did because she chose the form of her art to be somewhat different from what it had been in the past. Or another living sculptor, Louise Bourgeois, who now is in her 80s, has gained an international fame for which she must have been working all her life long, but without regard to seeking fame. Fame has imposed itself on her in her old age. And it's a very attractive thing to have happen.

RACHEL REABE: Let's talk about Harry Truman. How did he get going once he finally got going? Here is a hat salesman from Kansas City.

BRENDAN GILL: You see, the accident of a necessity had nothing to do with him, which was that Roosevelt was given the advice in the campaign that he couldn't afford to have as his fellow candidate for the vice presidency, Henry Wallace, who was regarded as a radical, which he was not. But in any event, so regarded. And so Roosevelt dropped his vice president, Wallace.

And casting about really quite desperately for a substitute hit upon Senator Truman, then Senator Harry Truman of Missouri, who was there to be made use of in this sense, but who had no particular fame, whatever, or any particular fitness for doing any other job than that which he had done as more or less a creature of the Pendergast machine in Kansas City. Otherwise, in his earlier life, he had been at several different jobs, haberdashery among them a failure.

And now, of course, Roosevelt didn't expect to die. Nobody expected Truman to become president. And then to everybody's astonishment, he became a very strong and able and learned president because he had spent much of his life not preparing himself for the presidency, but becoming a great American. He learned history. He knew what this country was about. And he proved to be a splendid president.

RACHEL REABE: So it doesn't mean necessarily that late bloomers bloom late because they discover some new talent within themselves. It's oftentimes that the people or the environment around us might discover what's always been there.

BRENDAN GILL: Circumstances. Julia Child loved cooking and was a very good cook, but she would never have gained worldwide fame, much less economic success, except for the accident of television. Television didn't exist, of course, when she was born. And her timing was perfect. She went on television. It was an instant success. And so a certain invention may help you to gain success and fame, or a certain accident like Roosevelt's death will do that.

There are dozens of ways in which it can happen. The important kind of late blooming is, however, that kind of late blooming where you find yourself and fulfill yourself. Yeats says in one of his poems, know at last that the soul is self-delighting. Well, that's the critical thing, to find out about yourself, that you delight yourself, that you fulfill yourself. And your late blooming can lead to fame, but it need not lead to fame. You have already succeeded if you are self-delighting.

And that's what the great writers and artists of the world have always been able to do. But the ordinary folk, people who are not geniuses, require self-fulfillment in the same sense in order to have had a life worth the living.

RACHEL REABE: So it's determining your gifts or your giftedness, and then using those gifts.

BRENDAN GILL: Finding out at last who you are may come to you like a blow in the face at one particular moment. Or you may just earn that self-knowledge over many years. Henry James said wonderfully-- it is a precept that I try to live by. He said of himself when somebody asked him about personal immortality after death-- and he said, I don't know anything about a thing like that. He said, that sounds like nonsense to me.

But he said, I do know that with every passing year, I feel an increased fitness to live. What a wonderful thing that is as a test of oneself. Nobody, of course, could hope that with every passing year of one's life, one would feel an increased fitness to live. But the test can be made. And the answer must be honestly given.

RACHEL REABE: John Bly talks about in his popular new book that we are becoming increasingly a nation of adolescents, that none of us are really growing up, that we are stuck in this self-centered, self-gratifying mode that we come to associate with adolescents. Are you afraid that is going to push late blooming even farther off in the future for these people? Do they need to get through their adolescence before they can begin to bloom?

BRENDAN GILL: I would agree with Bly that everything in our culture leads us to lead adolescent lives, lives of instant self-gratification. And some of the people who acted as gurus for the generation growing up in the '70s and '80s, people like Joseph Campbell who said to young people, follow your bliss.

Well, what nonsense, follow your bliss. That has nothing to do with having a real life. That might as well be drinking chocolate milkshakes or to be on drugs and following your bliss. It isn't that. And so adolescence is a period, of course, to get through what Yeats again calls the ignominy of youth. The ignominy of youth.

RACHEL REABE: So move through it. Get on with it.

BRENDAN GILL: Yes.

RACHEL REABE: Do any of the late bloomers that you profiled in your book, sir-- is there a certain bitterness that it took the world so long to wake up and say, wow?

BRENDAN GILL: No. I think Cezanne has said, why has it taken me so long? And why have I had to work so painfully to attain this? But that was a cry from the heart of a man who was at 70 still had received no recognition. But I don't think that means necessarily that he was embittered. Again, you can achieve a kind of sweetness in old age if you have found yourself. What have you lost? It may have cost you a great deal, but you have lost nothing. Everything is on the plus side.

And I think bitterness is for disappointed people who in the end haven't found themselves and yet have lived to a great age, and who then say, of course, the things used to be better in the old days. Things were never better in the old days. That is the idiot cry of the senile mind.

RACHEL REABE: Do you feel like today's baby boomers are having a much more difficult time finding themselves? Have things come too easily? Do they not have to work as hard to try to find their place in this world?

BRENDAN GILL: I think when they are children, they have a tendency perhaps to be pampered. Certainly, the middle class and the upper middle class are pampered to that degree. But no. As far as I can tell, looking back, not only do I believe that things were not better in the old days, but I also believe that they are much harder for people to struggle to achieve a career worthy of them in these days. Life is so expensive and so difficult.

People in New York City, where I work and have been working all these 60 years, live in shoeboxes. If they're in the arts, if they're creative, if they're attempting to be creative, they don't have anything like the douceur de vivre that was possible for me when I was young on $3,000 or $4,000 a year. All that is gone. So the struggle has grown harder and the temptation to give up the struggle is greater than it used to be.

But I don't want young people who are creative to give up for that reason. Therefore, they sacrifice much more than I ever had to sacrifice when I was young. I had it easy. And I was growing up in the Depression. But the Depression was easier to live in than prosperity is to live in today.

RACHEL REABE: Is there a danger in blooming too early? Those friends that had instant popularity in high school, the homecoming queen, the captain of the football team, the person who got perfect scores on their ACTs and went off to a dream life in college and storybook marriage. Can you bloom too early and then be like a bright star that is burned out by the time you're entering your 60s, 70s, 80s?

BRENDAN GILL: I don't think that there is a danger to early blooming except in the case where it depends upon physical beauty, something of that kind. Or of course with athletes, athletic prowess is something that you're not going to demonstrate very successfully in your 70s. So then all you have is memories. So it's very hard to be an athlete. For that reason, it's very hard also to have been a beautiful young person and deceased to be a beautiful young person.

There are other careers in physics, for example. Physicists lose their know-how at a very early age. They have to go into another line of work. There are those career accidents that take place. But in point of fact, if you're Mozart, you might as well be Mozart composing at 6, at 7, famous all over Europe at 8 or 9. And there are people like that. You wouldn't want to have taken that away from them for any particular reason.

And speaking for myself in the humblest way possible, I myself have always done what I wanted to do, as far as I can tell, all the way back to the cradle. And you can say, well, the world didn't happen to notice very much that you were blooming, Gill. And that's true. But in my own view, I was blooming and having a good time. And I've had a good time now for 81 years. Very few people have been as spoiled as I have been.

RACHEL REABE: Do we too often equate blooming with financial success?

BRENDAN GILL: Well, not in the world that I live in, because mostly I live among people who are artists and writers and composers. And the contrary is the case. Very few people can make money in the arts. A tiny handful of people, the famous people, actors in Hollywood make $20 million for a single movie. That kind of thing.

But all of my children are in the arts. And they're all more or less starving. And now, I have an army of grandchildren coming along. And they too are in the arts. And they too are starving. I'm an indispensable factor in their lives because I am the one in the family who can earn a living.

RACHEL REABE: So you continue to encourage them?

BRENDAN GILL: Oh, indeed I do. And I continue to put them through school, in college. I see myself at the century mark still tottering under the happy burden of educating who knows which of my descendants.

RACHEL REABE: Which of the profiled people in the book is closest to your heart?

BRENDAN GILL: Well, there's one writer that I adore. Laurence Sterne, who wrote a great novel on Tristram Shandy. And he was an English parson who made good and was a very attractive figure. He's an adorable figure. I admire Cezanne for the struggle that he endured with good spirit for so long. There's two wonderful women, both of whom I knew.

Edith Hamilton, who was the great Greek scholar, and her sister, Alice Hamilton, who was the first industrial physician in the United States. And they were tremendous figures who had long, fruitful lives. And I look up to them always. And then I have odd characters whom I-- there are people that I don't admire who simply had worldly success like Colonel Sanders. One is required to put him in The Old Scoundrel, but I had no respect for him for having invented a means of selling Southern fried chicken. That is not my ideal.

RACHEL REABE: Why did you write the book?

BRENDAN GILL: For fun, and also as a challenge. The idea that it's a book in which these biographies of 75 people are contained in one page apiece. And the idea of trying to write about very great people, Michel de Montaigne, for example, in 287 words was a wonderful challenge.

RACHEL REABE: The book again, a small book. A perfect 40th birthday gift, 50th birthday gift when you're--

BRENDAN GILL: 60, 70, 80.

RACHEL REABE: --casting about trying to encourage your friends as they move into their golden years, whatever those might be. You're going to be signing your book, Late Bloomers, tonight. That will be at the Hungry Mind Bookstore at 1648 Grand Avenue in St. Paul. That begins tonight at 7:30, Brendan Gill at the Hungry Mind bookstore. Sir, thank you for joining me.

BRENDAN GILL: Great pleasure.

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PERRY FINELLI: I'm Perry Finelli. On the next midday, we'll examine the results of Sunday's Russian election with Hamline University history professor and Russian expert, Nick Hayes. Hayes has been in the country the past few days making observations of the process. And he'll join us live from Moscow for a full hour. We'll open up the phone lines as well for your questions and comments. Midday begins at 11 o'clock with the latest news and weather. Nick Hayes at noon on KNOW-FM 91.1 in the Twin Cities.

RACHEL REABE: In the 11 o'clock hour of Midday, Gary Eichten will be talking to Ambassador Burton Levin about the settlement in the China trade dispute, and McAlester economic professor Gary Krueger about the implications of Sunday's presidential election for Russia's economy. Minnesota weather today. We're looking for showers and a few thunderstorms in the Southeast, becoming partly sunny in the North and West. Highs from around 70 in the East to the lower 80s in the Northwest.

Tonight, showers likely in the Southeast, mainly in the evening. Partly cloudy in the Northeast and fair elsewhere in the state. And by Tuesday, we may see these clouds begin to roll out and some sunshine developing in the state. Time now, we have six minutes before 11 o'clock. Twin Cities, 66 degrees under cloudy skies. Time now for Writer's Almanac and Garrison Keillor.

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GARRISON KEILLOR: And here is the Writer's Almanac for Monday, the 17th of June, 1996. It was on this day in 1579, Sir Francis Drake anchored his ship, the Golden Hind, just north of what would one day be San Francisco Bay and named the area New Albion. It's the birthday of John Wesley, born in Lincolnshire in 1703, the 15th child of Samuel and Susanna Wesley, who grew up to be the founder of the Methodist societies.

The second battle of the American Revolution was fought just before dawn today in 1775 at Bunker Hill just north of Boston. The British took the hill after three attacks, but the moral victory belonged to the Americans who stood their ground and fought. It's the birthday of James Weldon Johnson, the poet and diplomat and anthologist of Black culture. Born in Jacksonville in 1871.

It's the birthday of John Hersey, born in Tianjin, China, 1914. His father worked for the YMCA there. John Hersey, who wrote A Bell for Adano, Hiroshima, The Wall, The War Lover, and many other works of fiction and nonfiction. And it was on this day in 1972, at 2:30 in the morning, Washington police arrested five men at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex, where they were adjusting electronic equipment that they had installed there. One of them was James McCord, a security coordinator for the committee for the re-election of the president.

Here are some lines from Walt Whitman from Leaves of Grass, Song of Myself. With music strong, I come with my coordinates and my drums. I play not marches for accepted victors only. I play marches for conquered and slain persons. Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall. Battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.

Vivas to those who have failed and to those whose war vessels sank in the sea and to those themselves who sank in the sea, and to all generals that lost engagements and all overcome heroes, and the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known. This is the meal equally set. This the meat for natural hunger. It is for the wicked, just the same as the righteous. I make appointments with all.

I will not have a single person slighted or left away. The kept woman, sponger thief, are hereby invited. The heavy lipped slave is invited. The venereal is invited. There shall be no difference between them and the rest. Who goes there hankering, gross, mystical, nude? What is a man, anyhow? What am I? What are you? I do not snivel that snivel the world over, that months are vacuums in the ground but wallow in filth. I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out.

Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counseled with doctors and calculated close, I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones. In all people, I see myself none more and not one a barleycorn less. And the good or bad I say of myself, I say of them. I exist as I am. That is enough. If no other in the world be aware, I sit content. And if each and all be aware, I sit content.

One world is aware and by far the largest to me. And that is myself. And whether I come to my own today or in 10,000 or 10 million years, I can cheerfully take it now or with equal cheerfulness I can wait. From Song of Myself by Walt Whitman, the 1891 edition of Leaves of Grass. That's the Writer's Almanac for Monday, June 17. Made possible by Cowles Enthusiast Media, publishers of Civil War Art and other magazines. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

RACHEL REABE: That's our Midmorning program for today. Tomorrow on Midmorning, we'll be talking about domestic violence. Three women in Central Minnesota in the last six weeks have died at the hands of their estranged husbands. Louise Seliski of the Brainerd women's shelter will join us, as well as women's advocate Sheila Wellstone. All that coming up tomorrow on Midmorning. I'm Rachel Reabe.

SPEAKER: The experts agree. All Things Considered is better than playing under the sprinkler. It's All Things Considered, weekdays at 3:00 on Minnesota Public Radio, KNOW-FM 91.1.

RACHEL REABE: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. It's 66 degrees at KNOW-FM 91.1, Minneapolis, St. Paul. We have cloudy skies in the Twin Cities. It is clearing in the north. And that clearing should move into the Twin Cities area by tomorrow at this time. Again, current temperature, 66 degrees, cloudy skies in the Twin Cities.

GARY EICHTEN: Good morning. It's 11 o'clock and this is Midday on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Gary Eichten. In the news this morning, two more church buildings have been burned down in the southern part of the United States. A church in North Carolina and a church office in Georgia were burned overnight, the latest in a series of fires throughout the South. Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov have survived the first round of the Russian presidential election. They'll now meet in a runoff.