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KAREN BARTA: Good morning. I'm Karen Barta with news from Minnesota Public Radio. The final day of the Minnesota State Fair will get some national attention.

Vice President Al Gore is scheduled to attend a 1 o'clock campaign rally this afternoon. Gore is also expected to attend a Saint Paul labor and trade association picnic. State fair spokesman Jerry Hammer says fair officials and the Secret Service have been discussing Gore's visit for several days.

PAULA SCHROEDER: It's hard to say. Our Saturday last year was something of an anomaly. We had a quarter of a million people on the fairgrounds that day. And I don't know how often we will hit a record like that. But we are pleased with what's been going on, on the grounds here.

KAREN BARTA: Al Gore's visit to the state fair could boost the crowd a bit, but Hammer says it's unlikely last year's attendance record will be broken this year. Police have arrested a fourth man in connection with the murder of a Two Harbors teenager in Duluth. The 24-year-old man was arrested last night after police conducted a 17-hour North Shore manhunt. Authorities are still looking for other suspects in the death of 17-year-old Paul Antonich.

A man has died after he fell from a cliff while rock climbing. The 39-year-old Crystal man died of head injuries after he fell at Interstate Park. The man's name has not been released.

The state forecast today scattered showers and thunderstorms over the southeastern half of the state, becoming mostly sunny in the northwest with highs from the middle 70s to lower 80s. And for the Twin Cities, variable clouds, a chance of showers, a high around 82. Around the region in Saint Cloud, thundershowers in 70 degrees.

It's partly sunny and 68 in Rochester, and in the Twin cities, partly sunny and 73. That's news from Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Karen Barta.

PAULA SCHROEDER: It's six minutes past 10 o'clock. This is Mid-Morning on Minnesota Public Radio.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Every day at her assembly line job, Mary Foster Rosenthal had to work faster until one day there was a blow up. The outcome made her a labor union advocate for life. Today, on our Voices of Minnesota interview, we'll hear Foster Rosenthal's story. 45-year-old Mary Foster Rosenthal is a political organizer for the Minneapolis central labor union council, AFL-CIO. Before that, she was the first woman to be elected president of the Duluth Central Labor Union Council.

She's worked as a reference librarian and a waitress. Foster Rosenthal told Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson, she became a union believer because of her work on a Ford Motor Company assembly line in California. Her job was bolting power steering pumps on Mustangs.

MARY FOSTER ROSENTHAL: We were some of the first women who were walking into that plant since World War II days. There were two or three women who were holdovers. And this is such a funny story to tell in retrospect, but it wasn't very funny at the time. I was using an air impact wrench that had 90 pounds torque on it. And at the time, I was only about 110, 115 pounds myself. So there were eight bolts that had to be tightened on this power steering pump so that's eight jolts from this, you know, this air impact wrench that would literally lift me off the ground eight times for every one of these-- every one of these power steering pumps.

And I have to say that nobody came and told me how it was that I ought to be doing it in a way that was easier on my body and somewhat less graceless to look at. It took me two and a half weeks before I could finally figure out how to hold this air impact wrench and let my body absorb it rather than my elbow, which would jerk me up. But after about three weeks, I had it down.

The man who did the job on the day shift was 6 foot 4 and weighed about 220 pounds. I was 5' 2" and weighed 115 at the time. But it was a little bit of testing probably that was going on, but I passed the test.

DAN OLSON: You were probably in your 20s at the time.

MARY FOSTER ROSENTHAL: Yeah. Yeah, I was in my early 20s at the time. The plant produced both Mustang IIs as well as Pintos. The Pinto engines, of course, didn't require a power steering pump. So the ratio of Mustangs to Pintos really determined what my job speed was going to be like.

Well, as the job went on, there started to be more and more orders for Mustang IIs that were coming in. And within a very short period of time, before my probationary period, which was 90 days, was even up, there were three times as many Mustangs that were coming down the line as there were Pintos that were coming down the line. And I was not being given any help at all.

And it really got to be the point that I could not keep up. There is an expression when you're working on an auto line, when you start working into somebody else's territory, you have about a minute to get your job done, and then you start working what we call in the hole. And I was in the hole constantly and sometimes not even able to get the pump on the engine.

And I remember my 91st day of work, I was just so incredibly frustrated that I couldn't keep up, that I took this power steering pump-- and I took-- I'm sorry, the air impact wrench, and I tried to throw it on the ground, forgetting, of course, that it was attached to all of these coils up above me. It bounced back down, and about five engines went by without power steering pumps being attached to them. Within a very short period of time, 15 minutes, I'd say, I had three levels of supervision and three levels of union hierarchy down trying to figure out what was going on. And I was explaining to them that I was working as hard as I could and I could not keep up. And what they were asking of me was unfair.

The next day I came into work and the union had fought on my behalf. And the next day I came to work, I had two people helping me with my job. What that told me was that probably for the previous three weeks I had been doing three people's work and only getting paid for one person's work. But it really reinforced to me what-- having tried to make that argument on my own without being in the union, I very easily could have gotten booted right out the door and somebody found to replace me on that job. But with the union fighting on my behalf and running interference with me, I not only had my job, but I had a job that was going to be done at a pace that was reasonable, a pace that was humane.

DAN OLSON: Did you grow up in a family that had union blood running in its veins? Does that explain your current life?

MARY FOSTER ROSENTHAL: I don't know. No, my father-- my father was a teacher. My mother worked for the federal government, for the Social Security Administration. But I will say that they were both Roosevelt Democrats. And they both had an extremely strong feeling about fairness, and about justice, and about treating people fairly that I think that they ingrained into all of their children a very, very strong moral fiber that I think got translated into their children as trying to do what's right and trying to make sure that people have a voice at the workplace and that have an equal voice at the workplace.

DAN OLSON: So what was dinner table conversation like? Was it sort of a political science lecture or was it really a little less romantic than that? It was more like dinner at the table with the family and there was some talk.

MARY FOSTER ROSENTHAL: No, we were a family that enjoyed talking about politics, that enjoyed having strong opinions. I always say that I come from a family that believes that not only are you supposed to have opinions, they're supposed to be strong opinions. And if they are, you're supposed to articulate them strongly and with good arguments to back them up.

That speaking out is a very important thing. That it's obligatory as being part of not just the Foster family, but part of a democracy. But we talked about a lot of other things besides politics, family matters, celebrations, good books, movies.

DAN OLSON: What did you think about work on the line and the experience of women on the line? There will be people who will hear the story of you and the pneumatic wrench and the impact bolts, and they'll say, well, if you'd had an extra 100 pounds and an extra 12 inches of height, you could have done the job. You wouldn't have been working in the hole.

MARY FOSTER ROSENTHAL: Well, actually, that wasn't the case because the man who was 6 foot 2 and weighed 220 pounds also got two people to help him on the line because he had been going into the hole as well. He just didn't feel quite as strongly about making the stink about it that I did. And so he actually came and talked to me the next day and thanked me for it because he ended up getting the same help that I did.

I don't think that-- I learned how to do the job. I learned how to do the job within about three weeks. I learned how to position my body.

I've talked to other women who have walked into jobs that have been traditionally considered male jobs. And what they find that they have to do is simply use their brains a little bit more to change how their bodies do the job. And sometimes find that men are actually very happy to get those kinds of tips because men have been suffering from back aches or aches in legs that they've been able to punish their bodies a little bit more doing these jobs than, actually, in the long run is good for them.

DAN OLSON: Did at any point on the line, you say, with a little more training, with a little more education, I could get off the line and I could go into those offices where those people are sitting by desks and do that kind of work?

MARY FOSTER ROSENTHAL: Actually, I came to that realization a little bit more slowly than I probably should have after working on the auto assembly line. I ended up out in New York working on a furniture assembly line, manufacturing dinette furniture for a couple of years represented by the United Auto Workers. My husband at that time was a steelworker working in a coke oven and had suffered an extremely, extremely bad industrial accident. He was burned very badly when a health and safety-- a door that was supposed to protect him from the steam that is generated when water is thrown on very hot coke, the door did not come down. And a huge cloud of steam enveloped him and burned him very badly.

I was pregnant at the time, five months pregnant with our first child. And I recall still the feeling that I had in my stomach when the doctor told me that they could not guarantee that my child's father was going to be able to pull through. And it was at that stage of the game that I started to realize that if I was going to be the sole support of a family, that working on an assembly line was much, much more strenuous work than I particularly wanted to engage in if I had a choice. Working on assembly lines, particularly if you're standing up 10, 11 hours a day, which you can, if there's forced overtime, does not leave you with a lot of energy to come home and take care of a young child. So it was at that stage of the game that I started to think about going back to school and getting a job that was easier, which I did when I became a librarian.

DAN OLSON: Did your husband at that time pull through?

MARY FOSTER ROSENTHAL: Yeah. Yeah. He pulled through after being in intensive care. He still has some scarring on him. But it was my first-- it was my first real look at a very dirty underside of how American business looks at its workers.

DAN OLSON: How do you characterize that? You mean that workers are expendable?

MARY FOSTER ROSENTHAL: That you're not much more than a hammer, or a screwdriver, or anything else to them. You are simply a link in the chain of the production process. He was in the hospital recovering from burns. Coke ovens, if people know them, are extraordinarily dirty places. Burns require extremely clean conditions in order to heal properly.

The workers' compensation law in New York at that stage of the game was that if somebody is out of work for three weeks or longer, it has to be reported with the result that insurance premiums can go up. I recall the personnel officer of Donner-Hanna Coke walking into the hospital and arguing with his doctors after two and a half weeks, that he should be let out and be allowed to come back to work, not because they particularly cared about him, but because they didn't want their premiums to go up. And I recall as the pregnant wife at that time of just this absolute outrage at their lack of feeling about what I was going through or what he was going through. And once again, it was the United Steelworkers at that time that took the personnel officer to task and fought that fight so that my former husband could get the care that he needed for as long as he needed it.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Labor union activist Mary Foster Rosenthal speaking with Dan Olson. You're listening to our Voices of Minnesota interview on Mid-Morning. Coming up in a few minutes, we'll bring you the best of our odd jobs series, taking a look at some of the more unusual jobs that people do to earn a living. It's 18 minutes past 10 o'clock. I'm Paula Schroeder.

The federal government says there are 110 million wage earners in the labor force and about 15% are union members. That's a big drop from 1960, when about a third of the people in the US workforce were union members. The unions are spending a lot of time and money this year trying to elect members to Congress who favor what the unions call the working people's agenda. Let's return to Dan Olson's conversation with Mary Foster Rosenthal.

DAN OLSON: You are a political organizer now for the Minneapolis Central Labor Union Council, AFL-CIO. What does that mean? What does a political organizer do?

MARY FOSTER ROSENTHAL: 1996 unions are approaching elections in a different way than they have before. We're really very, very issue oriented. We're really stressing what we call the working families agenda rather than the candidates.

We really want to go out and get our members a lot more politically engaged. We want them to take a look at the issues, make the connection between the issues of the candidates. We want them to go out and actively pressure candidates to vote in ways that are going to make working families' lives better. And we can't expect that to happen simply because we will it so. And so a lot of unions have hired on people like me at the national level, at the local level, at the regional level, to try to more actively go out and talk to union members and get them involved in practical activities leading up to the November elections.

DAN OLSON: Well, various people have defined this in different ways, but we're told the official unemployment rate is very low, at historic low levels. We are told, of course, that a lot of people are ready to jump to a better job immediately so that low unemployment rate masks that. But the unemployment rate is still very low. Apparently the labor picture is very good. The working picture is very good.

MARY FOSTER ROSENTHAL: The official statistics on the unemployment rate are very good. I think that jobs now in Minnesota did a very, very good study about six months ago on the underemployment rate, which I think is really what it is that we need to take a look at. The people who are employed in temporary jobs, the people who are employed part time, who would like to be working full time, the people who are employed at jobs that don't utilize the skills that would like to be able to move up but that aren't able to. And I think that-- because I think that this leads to an interesting phenomenon that's going on in this political year where a much brighter economic picture, a much rosier economic picture is being painted as a result of these official unemployment statistics that I think masks a real unease that I see that is going on, that people feel about job security. And I think that that's because the underemployment rate is so high.

DAN OLSON: Do you compare-- you're something of a student of history. You've had the opportunity to look into labor history. Do you compare this point of our economic history in the United States with anything else that's happened?

We live, some people would argue, in very stable times compared to past times. The depressions of the late 1870s and '80s when people were shot for striking, when there were all kinds of violent acts being committed. How do these times compare?

MARY FOSTER ROSENTHAL: I personally think that these times are incredibly unstable, both politically and economically. I think that with the trends in technology, with the globalization of the economy, with the amount of reskilling that people need to do, the fact that jobs are no longer guaranteed for 30 or 40 years for life, not just for blue collar workers, but for white collar workers and professionals have made things very, very unstable for people in a way that I don't think people could have predicted 15 or 20 years ago. Lester Thurow, the economist from MIT, was out here about two or three years-- two or three months ago and gave what I found to be a very interesting speech on how it is that capitalism is developing. And I think that probably the best indicator of this is what's happening to the income gap.

You are seeing this productivity increase, this increased profits, but you don't see the distribution of these profits in a way that is increasing the wealth of everybody, which used to happen up to about 1973, 1975. And the best economists in the world are not able to figure out exactly why that is that's going on. And the safety nets that used to exist to redistribute that wealth are being dismantled. And it's leaving people, I think, very, very uneasy about their futures but also about what the options that exist. Because the politicians don't seem to be able to present them in a way because I think a lot of them don't really know.

DAN OLSON: You, I think, if I read correctly, opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement and organized--

MARY FOSTER ROSENTHAL: Violently.

[LAUGHS]

DAN OLSON: --and organized to work against it. Then something happened that few could foresee, the recession in the Mexican economy, which some would argue really derailed some of the short-term positive effects of NAFTA. Well, apparently Mexico is recovering. Maybe NAFTA will get on track. Now, after having opposed it, have you changed your attitudes about the benefits, the proposed benefits of NAFTA for US workers?

MARY FOSTER ROSENTHAL: No, I haven't. I haven't seen anything that conclusively shows me, in a way that I can believe, that there have been an increase in good-paying jobs in the United States as a result of NAFTA or that the jobs that have flown to Mexico have meant an improvement in the standard of living of Mexican workers. It is impossible for me to believe with even my rudimentary understanding of economics, that if you talk about labor as a commodity that costs $10, $15, $20 an hour in the United States and $0.50 or $1 an hour in Mexico or in Brazil or $0.15 or $0.20 an hour in Singapore, what business, at what stage of the game, is not going to decide to go over there to improve its profits and that that is not going to result in a reduced standard of living for American workers as they have to compete with wages and working conditions internationally?

DAN OLSON: So what do employers and investors need to decide, in your opinion, that they will stay in the United States or in North America rather than going overseas, and what, pay a much lower rate of return to investors, charge somewhat higher consumer prices for the purpose of protecting American jobs?

MARY FOSTER ROSENTHAL: Well, this is where I think that government really needs to come in. I think that you put businesses in a very difficult position when they're competing against each other if they're all-- if they're all fighting from different positions in terms of what they consider their social responsibility to be. But I think that any employer who thinks about wanting to do business in the United States with an American working class that is watching its standard of living become further and further reduced, that has seen its wages stagnate for the last 20 years, that is getting more and more feisty and more and more restive, as nobody seems to be able to dig its way out of this problem is asking for trouble.

And I think that government, at some stage of the game, has to make its decision about, are we going to let the United States just pursue this kind of free market model where everybody is on their own, workers are on their own, businesses are on their own, and government is simply there to allow the efficiency of the market to determine who the winners and the losers are going to be and then pay that price. Because I can tell you, I don't think the losers are going to be particularly happy. And I don't think that they're going to take it-- that they're going to take it sitting down.

And I think that-- I think that that's where we get into this kind of polarization of wealth that's going on. And you start seeing pockets of communities where nobody has anything, and then pockets of communities where people have their own private police forces, and their own private schools, and their own private fire companies. And that's not the kind of America that I particularly wanted to live in or that I think that most people particularly want to live in.

But I think that unless government makes some sort of an intercession and starts thinking about how it is-- how it is that we have a country now that when the unemployment rate goes down so that workers are in a better situation to bargain their wages, Wall Street freaks out. And that when the unemployment rate starts going up, profits start soaring. When AT&T announces downsizing of 40,000 employees, their stock prices jumped by 262 the next day. I mean, somehow, rewards in this country are being parsed out on the basis of maybe market decisions, but not necessarily particularly moral decisions and not necessarily on the basis of what is good for society as a whole over the next 1, 2, 5, or 10 years.

DAN OLSON: Mary Foster Rosenthal, a pleasure talking to you. Thank you.

MARY FOSTER ROSENTHAL: Likewise and thank you very much.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Mary Foster Rosenthal is a political organizer with the Minneapolis Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO. Our Voices of Minnesota interview series is produced by Dan Olson and heard nearly every Monday as part of Mid-Morning.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

It's 29 minutes past 10 o'clock. You're listening to Mid-Morning on Minnesota Public Radio. Coming up, we'll have the best of our odd jobs series. In the weather today, we are expecting scattered showers and thunderstorms over the southeastern half of the state. That's what the forecast says. But of course, right now there's a thunderstorm in Duluth and otherwise no rain falling across our region.

Highs today will be in the middle 70s to lower 80s. We could see scattered showers continuing in the eastern part of the state early this evening. Lows will be in the low 50s in the northwest to the middle 60s in the far south. Tomorrow, mostly sunny in Northern Minnesota, partly sunny in the south with a chance of rain and a high in the upper 70s to the upper 80s across the state of Minnesota.

In the Twin Cities today, look for a high near 82 with a 40% chance of showers. The chance of rain is 30% tonight. And tomorrow, look for an overnight low near 63 and tomorrow's high around 85.

Now, it's 77 degrees in La Crosse, 72 in Sioux Falls. It's 70 in Fargo-Moorhead, 71 degrees in Saint Cloud, 63 degrees with a thunder shower in Duluth, 64 in Bemidji, and 66 degrees in Thief River Falls. In the Twin Cities, it is 73 degrees.

Well, Monday morning is the day many of us dread as we put on the same old work clothes and go do the same old things. But what would life be like if you had to spend much of your day in a rubber suit hooked to an airline under water while people stare at you? Would you want to spend the rest of your day mixing bizarre concoctions to feed 700 fish?

Well, that's exactly what John Prevost does as one of the marine biologists who runs the 80,000-gallon tropical reef aquarium at the Minnesota Zoo. He seems to quite enjoy it. Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr talked to Prevost as part of our odd job series. The tour began in a large and rather full freezer deep in the bowels of the zoo.

JOHN PREVOST: All of the frozen foods for the animals we have, the majority of the space is for the marine mammals. We have frozen fish. We also have for some of the tropics and Minnesota crew, a nice assortment of frozen rats, frozen mice.

EUAN KERR: You ever get peckish when you come in here? Hungry?

JOHN PREVOST: Hungry.

[LAUGHS]

No. Good morning and welcome to the Minnesota Zoo. My name is John. I'm your driver today. And I'll be feeding the almost 700 fish.

EUAN KERR: What's it like while you're in there feeding the fish and you're trying to relate to people who are-- they're only feet away, but in a way, they're an entire ecosystem away.

JOHN PREVOST: The first trick is to convince people that I am actually talking to them. The way the mask fits over our head, they can't see my mouth moving. So I'll usually find either a child that's up against the window and I'll put my hand up against her hand and try to let them realize how thick those windows really are.

Would you like to help me? Can you put your hands up on the window? Would you like to help me?

Uh-oh, we got some shy ones here. Would you like to help me? There we go. Both hands.

The closest analogy to our diet that we're making up right now is a 12-course meal that you put in a blender and set with Jell-O. Start with the fish meal. When we prepare the diets, you'll probably hear someone come in and groan. It smells a bit strong. It's like cat food.

[WATER SPLASHING]

Next one is our algae. Very green.

EUAN KERR: It looks a bit like AstroTurf.

JOHN PREVOST: We used to get the finely ground grade. We got away from that because when we turn on the beater, this green cloud would rise up and coat everything.

EUAN KERR: My mother used to make a spinach soup that looked very much like that.

JOHN PREVOST: Oh, but it smells better.

EUAN KERR: Indeed. It did, but I still didn't like it.

[LAUGHS]

So this is the gear.

JOHN PREVOST: This is the gear. We use surface-supplied air. I have two air hoses and a comm line, which is basically a rope with a phone line running through the center of it.

[BIRD SQUEAKING]

EUAN KERR: Are we annoying this bird?

JOHN PREVOST: I think the bird is annoying us. There's a volunteer in the back with a wireless microphone. If any of you have any questions, feel free to ask. You get to try and stump the diver.

It's fun. It is the fun part of the day, especially when we have children at the age group that's around us right now. They're just always amazed at what's going on.

EUAN KERR: I suppose it makes up for the smell of the preparation.

JOHN PREVOST: Yes, that it does. That it does.

[CROWD CHATTER]

PAULA SCHROEDER: John Prevost is a marine biologist who works in literally the tropical reef exhibit at the Minnesota Zoo. This labor day, we're listening to some of the best of our odd job series. Every Monday, we present an interview with a person whose job is a bit unusual in one way or another. It's 25 minutes before 11 o'clock. You're listening to Mid-Morning on Minnesota Public Radio.

Do you flee when you spy the tiniest creepy crawly thing on your kitchen floor? How would you like to spend your work day with insects, large and small? Minnesota Public Radio's Stephen Smith presents the story of a man and his bugs.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

KRAIG ANDERSON: My name is Kraig Anderson. I own a company called Spineless Wonders, which I'm the head consultant for. We work with institutions, museums, zoos, places like that on insect exhibitry, butterfly houses, different things like that.

Yeah, bug wrangling is another part of what Spineless Wonders does. What bug wrangling involves is if a company wants to do a commercial, whether it be in a magazine or on television, and it involves insects and they don't want to deal with the insects, they call Spineless Wonders. And we bring the insects in and do the wrangling, so to speak.

Easiest bug to wrangle is cockroaches, hissing cockroaches in general. I like the hissing cockroaches more than our Australian or American species because they're larger and very handle-able.

[HISSING]

The hissing sound is actually their defense if a bird or something is trying to attack this guy in the rainforest, he'll send that out, that hissing sound. And what it does is it makes the bird think that he is a snake. There's many different places to get the insects that we deal with. Some of them are actually ordered from people that that's all they do.

[PHONE RINGS]

BRYANT CAPIZ: Thanks for calling Arachnocentric. We're probably here right now but getting some work done, so leave a message after the beep.

KRAIG ANDERSON: Hi, Bryant Capiz. This is Kraig Anderson calling from Spineless Wonders in Minneapolis.

BRYANT CAPIZ: [INAUDIBLE]

KRAIG ANDERSON: How are you doing, Bryant? What's new in Chicago? What's new in the bug world? How about the big millipedes?

[CAMERA CLICKS]

A lot of the insects too that we use for magazine shoots and that are actually from my backyard or right outside of the city somewhere. This one is a curly-hair tarantula, just buried down into her little hide out there. They like to be covered by something. They don't like to be out in the open very often. She's one of my favorites. I've had her for about six or seven years.

STEPHEN SMITH: Is this a competitive business.

KRAIG ANDERSON: I think that there's two of us in the United States or three that I know of. There's one out in Hollywood that's done like Arachnophobia and a lot of the big movies like that. There's also one in Arizona who has a house in New York that flies back and forth and does insect things here and there. And then I'm trying to do the Midwest.

[RHYTHMIC MUSIC]

If all the ants are on one side of a scale, just the ants, and all the humans, the ants outweigh us by far. A lot more ant biomass than there is humans.

STEPHEN SMITH: So you're just trying to see that everybody gets along.

KRAIG ANDERSON: That's right. I just want you to understand insects and the whole arthropod thing.

[LAUGHS]

[BLUESIANA TRIANGLE, "SHOO FLY DON'T BOTHER ME"]

(SINGING) Shoo fly, don't bother me

Shoo fly, don't bother me

Well that one morning, 'bout a quarter to nine

Shoo fly, don't bother me

That funky old judge gave me my time

Shoo fly, don't bother me

I was a little-bitty boy and I did not care

Shoo fly, don't bother me

I had to leave New Orleans

PAULA SCHROEDER: Kraig Anderson runs a company called Spineless Wonders in Minneapolis. That masterful mixing job by Minnesota Public Radio's Stephen Smith. It's 21 minutes before 11 o'clock. We continue with our odd jobs series.

How do moviemakers get those lifelike figures of either famous dead people or monsters? Well, they hire makeup artists to make actors look like someone else. Today, we meet a Saint Paul man who has made replicas of Einstein and the devil in his basement.

CRIST BALLAS: My name is Crist Ballas and I am a special makeup effects artist. I was an odd kid. I was always interested in changing my appearance for some reason and it first started with glasses. And then as I started getting older, it was costumes and makeup. If you ever saw the movie Harold and Maude, I was very much like Harold minus the old lady.

[CAT STEVENS, "IF YOU WANT TO SING OUT, SING OUT"] Well, if you want to sing out, sing out

And if you want to be free, be free 'Cause there's a million things to be You know that there are

CRIST BALLAS: Little subtle things can even change the appearance, even just a little bit of makeup, or a contact or, subtle teeth work. When an actor comes to us, the normal part of the procedure is we will take a cast, a life cast of his face. You start sculpting with Roma clay, start blocking out and building up the face in the desired effect.

From this, we inject the latex, foam latex into the mold. The foam is put together into a mixmaster and then whipped up to the desired volume of the foam. Foam latex is just a-- as some people say, it's a voodoo science where it's almost ritualistic to do something to try to make it work.

Once we get a good foam skin out, we then start painting process. So each layer that you add has somewhat of a translucency quality, which skin has. So you want to start putting in veins, age spots, liver spots, moles, things like that, redness, capillaries around the nose, in the cheek area, sometimes the chin.

My favorite things to do are character makeups, old age and character things. Things that tend to be more realistic are much more challenging because you have to live up to the expectations of what a human eye sees. I've had to turn certain people away when some of the things sound a little fishy. As far as-- you don't know if these people are planning a bank heist or what, and they just want to look like somebody else.

I think one of the stranger things that I had to do was a third nipple on a woman for a film that was done here called Mallrats. This was a dummy, a full-bodied dummy that we had to construct for this Dracula Unleashed CD-ROM game. And they wanted this effect where a beam falls from the ceiling and impales him.

I don't know that the neighbors really know what's going on down here. They just see me as a quiet guy that keeps to himself.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Crist Ballas operates the company Metamorphosis from his basement in Saint Paul. That report was produced by Minnesota Public Radio's Kathleen Hallinan. Well, from makeup to mascot. Nowadays at many parades, public occasions and certainly major sporting events, there is likely to be a mascot, a large foam-fattened figure used to entertain, rally fans and spread goodwill.

The Timberwolves have Crunch, the U of M Goldy Gopher. And it's not unusual to run into the likes of the Pillsbury Doughboy, Snoopy, or any number of Disney characters as you're out and about. If you've ever wondered where costumes such as these are made or who's inside, you might ask Henry Gomez.

He's president of Mascots and Costumes in Minneapolis. He makes mascots and is also a fixture at Minnesota Vikings' games as the other purple dinosaur Vikadontis Rex. As part of our odd job series, Euan Kerr went along to learn some tricks of the trade.

HENRY GOMEZ: My father asked, well, what exactly do you do? And he didn't quite grasp the whole concept of mascots. And I said, well, it's kind of like a-- it's kind of like a big doll. He goes, oh, so you're a grown man making big dolls.

[CHUCKLES]

Yeah, dad, that's what I do.

[LAUGHS]

These bears actually go to country kitchen restaurants. And what they do is, they have them for a lot of kid days and kid meals and they incorporate that. And so he's really--

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BOB EDWARDS: Good morning. Hurricane Hortense hit Puerto Rico this morning and is heading northwest. I'm Bob Edwards. Today is Tuesday, September 10. And this is NPR's Morning Edition.

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Kurdish refugees are leaving Iraq for Iran. Britain and Ireland continue talks today on Northern Ireland. Irish prime minister John Bruton is in Washington today. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting New York. The UN General Assembly continues debate on the nuclear test ban treaty.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has begun a trip to Japan. Arnold Palmer is 67 today. And today is the birthday of Fay Wray. She's 89 years old. The news is next.

CARL KASELL: From National Public Radio News in Washington, I'm Carl Kasell. Hurricane Hortense is pounding Southwest Puerto Rico today, drenching the island nation with torrents of rain. Rivers are over their banks.

Trees are down. Power is out to thousands of residents. Flash floods have sprung up all over the island, including San Juan, the capital. Forecaster Martin Nelson with the National Hurricane Center in Miami says the storm went ashore near the city of Ponce.

MARTIN NELSON: Maximum sustained winds are still near about 80 miles an hour. However, the scene inside the center has moved west to Puerto Rico. That puts the entire east semicircle of it is just continuing to dump rain shower after rain shower and thunderstorm across all of Puerto Rico, the US and the British Virgin Islands. And they're going to be having some serious problems with flash flooding there throughout the day.

CARL KASELL: The Hurricane Center says Hortense could be 300 miles east of Palm Beach, Florida, by Thursday morning. It is not yet known how it would affect the Florida Coast. Ross Perot plans to announce the name of his running mate tonight. He will do so on a 30-minute paid-for campaign program on CBS. So far, Perot, the Reform Party presidential candidate, has managed to keep his choice a secret. Bob Dole.

SPEAKER 1 --thought of this stuff.

SPEAKER 2: Hey!

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PAULA SCHROEDER: Henry Gomez is president of Mascots and Costumes of Minneapolis. He can also be seen as Vikadontis Rex at Vikings football games. I am so sad to say goodbye to my favorite mascot. Mickey Moose is going to be heading to Winnipeg with the Minnesota Moose, the International Hockey League team. Mickey was fantastic.

It's 12 minutes before 11 o'clock. We're bringing you the best of our odd job series here on Mid-Morning today, this Labor Day. I'm Paula Schroeder.

And for today, when the King and Queen of Sweden arrive in Minnesota next week, they'll dine at the governor's residence in Saint Paul. In our odd jobs segment today, we meet Ken Grogg, who will help make the meal for the king and queen. Grogg is one of two chefs at the home of Minnesota's first family on Summit Avenue in Saint Paul.

Grogg began his culinary career 12 years ago, working in commercial restaurants and perfected his skills at Hotel Sofitel's cooking school in Bloomington. He told Minnesota Public Radio's Todd Moe, the highlight of his job came six years ago when he helped prepare a dinner at the governor's mansion for then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

KEN GROGG: That was something I had never experienced before, and it was just a great thing, a lot of activity. There we were. We had just enough china because they had-- once again, they had added on seven or eight people at the very last instance. And so we used every piece of china that we had that was matching. And this was a huge deal.

And the counter space was suddenly disappearing for us. And so we were really balancing all the plates on the center island and the other counters. And at that time, there were eight different chefs in the kitchen.

If we would have made one wrong move and bump one of those plates, it hits the floor and then I don't know what we were going to do. So we were moving around pretty delicately. It was like a ballet in there.

[KNIFE CHOPPING]

We can go from feeding the governor's family a simple meal, a simple dinner to feeding up to 350 people out of this kitchen. So it's very practical, and like I said, user friendly, too.

TODD MOE: What are some of the favorite dishes of the first family?

KEN GROGG: Well, certainly Swedish meatballs are right there. The governor likes to tease people with lutefisk. And unfortunately, I have to-- that duty falls to me to prepare it. But they eat very, very healthy as well.

And he's referred to Mrs. Carlson as the food cop because the governor like, like I said, all the old classics. And like most cultures, the older classic foods have more-- there's more fat in them and things like that. So we have to do that in moderation.

But the governor loves turkey and the family eats pretty much everything. When we first-- or when they first took office, we were asking him about his likes and dislikes. And he just basically said, don't feed me liver and that was it. So there's plenty of room to run with that.

TODD MOE: And you have lots of counter space here, lots of cabinet space.

KEN GROGG: Lots of counters, lots of cabinets. We have a pantry in there where we keep all the crystal, and china, and everything and the silver. At one time, we can plate probably 75 dinners right here. We've got the heat lamps underneath the cabinet there to keep things hot.

What I like best about the job, no question, is the creativity. We create the menus ourselves. We execute them.

The worst thing? I don't know. It's not really the worst, but probably the most challenging thing would be the surprise luncheons and dinners. Because we don't really have the capacity, like you would in a restaurant, to just run down to the big double-door freezer and pull out an extra rack of ribs or something. So we've had to scramble from time to time, that's for sure.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Ken Grogg is one of the chefs at the governor's mansion in Saint Paul. And that report was prepared by Minnesota Public Radio's Todd Moe.

GARY EICHTEN: Politics at the Minnesota State Fair, it's a grand tradition dating all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt and his carry a big stick speech. Hi, Gary Eichten here inviting you to join us for our Labor Day edition of Midday as we carry on that tradition.

We'll be out at the fair talking politics with analysts Tom Horner and Bob Meek. And hope you can stop by our Minnesota Public Radio booth or join us on the radio. Midday begins each weekday morning, at 11:00 on Minnesota Public Radio KNOW FM 91.1 in the Twin Cities.

PAULA SCHROEDER: In the 11 o'clock hour of Midday, we'll look at how young voters are feeling about this year's presidential election. We'll also talk to the superintendent of Edina Schools about the system's new start time this year. Also, a look at how the US Forest Service is reacting to the higher number of permits for the BWCA this year. That's all coming up on Midday at 11 o'clock. Time now for Garrison Keillor and the Writer's Almanac.

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GARRISON KEILLOR: And here is the Writer's Almanac for Monday. It's the 2nd of September, 1996. Today is Labor Day. It's the first Monday in September set aside in the US and Canada since 1886 to honor working men and women.

It's the first day of the 20th Annual September Fest at the Kittery Trading Post in Kittery, Maine today. The 53rd Annual Agricultural Fair takes place today at Guilford, Vermont. The Bangor Labor Day road race in Bangor, Maine, 5-mile foot race with six age categories.

On this day in 1945, also called V-J Day, World War II came to an end in Tokyo Bay on the deck of the aircraft carrier, the USS Missouri, where the Japanese foreign minister signed the unconditional surrender that had been announced by Emperor Hirohito the previous month. And on this day in 1945, in Hanoi, the nationalist leader, Ho Chi Minh, proclaimed the independence of Vietnam from all colonial powers, said the new nation would be called the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and declared himself its first president. It's the birthday of the American jazz pianist, and composer and bandleader Horace Silver, born in Norwalk, Connecticut, 1928.

It was on this night in 1916, England was raided by 13 German Zeppelin airships in World War I. Born on this day in 1850 was the American professional baseball player and sporting goods manufacturer Albert Goodwill Spalding. It's the birthday of the poet Eugene Field in Saint Louis, 1850, who wrote "Little Boy Blue" and many other poems for children, and including "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night, sailed off in a wooden shoe, sailed on a river of crystal light into a sea of dew."

It's the birthday in Honolulu in 1838 of the last Hawaiian sovereign to govern the islands before they were annexed by the United States in 1898, Queen Lili'uokalani. And it was on this day in 1189, Richard I was crowned in Westminster Cathedral, London. The crown came from his father, King Henry II, from whom Richard had forcibly taken it. And his first act as Richard the Lion-Hearted the new King, was to free his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, from the Tower of London.

Here's a poem for today by Edward Abbey entitled "Pommes de Terre." "The plow, the raw September earth, the massive-haunched and mighty-hoofed old bay clomping and farting down the furrow. Father holding the plow, my brother, the reins, and me with a sack following, gathering the fruits of the overturned soil, the earth apples.

Richly abundant, brown, fat potatoes, thick as stars, appearing like miracles. Out of the barren, weedy, stony patch, thousands of big, hefty, solid spuds, bushel after bushel, 100 bushels per acre. A massive treasure from the earth.

Our hands and eyes delighted in that harvest. How gladly we dragged our bulging gunny sacks to the wagon. A wagon full of potatoes, dark, crusted with dirt, soil, earth, cool to the touch, good to eat, even raw.

We plowed the shabby looking field and turned up nuggets plenty, abundance, more than enough to last through the winter. More than we needed. Riches unimagined.

A poem by Edward Abbey, "Pommes de Terre" from his collection, Earth Apples, published by St. Martin's Press and used by permission here on the Writer's Almanac for Monday, September 2. Made possible by Cole's History Group, publishers of World War 2 and other magazines. Be well, do good work and keep in touch.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, have a wonderful rest of your Labor Day. And then tomorrow, it's back to work, everybody, back to school, the nose to the grindstone. We are going to be talking about chemical weapons tomorrow. On Mid-Morning this month, the US Senate will vote whether to ratify an international treaty to ban chemical weapons. Our guests will argue the merits of the treaty.

We're also going to be talking about bankruptcy. Turns out that 1 in every 100 Americans is expected to file for personal bankruptcy this year. We'll find out more about the pros and cons of doing that tomorrow on Mid-Morning. I'm Paula Schroeder. Thanks a lot for joining us today.

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JOHN RABE: I'm John Rabe. On Monday's All Things Considered, getting Giants in the Earth to the silver screen.

SPEAKER 3: Stubborn Norwegian that I am, you say, they're not making them, but we will.

JOHN RABE: All Things Considered, weekdays at 3:00 on Minnesota Public Radio, KNOW FM 91.1.

PAULA SCHROEDER: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. 74 degrees at KNOW FM 91.1, Minneapolis, Saint Paul. We have a 40% chance of showers or thunderstorms this afternoon in the Twin Cities.

Look for a high near 82 degrees. And tonight it will be 65 for a low. Tomorrow, a 30% chance of rain getting up to 85 for a high.

PERRY FINELLI: Good morning. This is Midday on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Perry Fenelli. Gary Eichten is at NPR's booth at the Minnesota State Fair, where an hour from now, he'll be joined by Minnesota Public Radio political analyst Tom Horner and Bob Meek, for a discussion about politics on this Labor Day, the traditional start of the campaign season.

He'll also be talking about Vice President Al Gore's scheduled visit to the State Fair in a couple of hours. Gore will also attend a picnic sponsored by the Saint Paul Labor Trade Association on Harriet Island. Also on Midday today, the latest on the situation in Iraq, where troops have reportedly withdrawn from the city they entered over the weekend.

The Edina Public Schools become the first in the state to adopt later start times for senior high school students. And US Forest Service officials say Labor Day has become the most popular time of year for visits to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and that making early reservations is more important than ever. Stay with us. News headlines are next.