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KAREN BARTA: Good morning. I'm Karen Barta with news from Minnesota Public Radio. President Clinton drops by Minneapolis this afternoon for a rally at Target Center to help the campaigns of Senator Paul Wellstone and congressional candidate Mary Reeder. After his speech, Clinton will attend a fundraiser at Target Center.

Several disability activists protested last night's Courage Center Awards. The center awarded actor Christopher Reeve its highest honor, but activist Rick Cardenas says Reeve and the Courage Center emphasized medical research at the expense of improving the daily lives of the disabled.

RICK CARDENAS: If public awareness is all we're looking for, then wonderful. Well, we help create this public awareness for both Courage Center and for our position. However, if Christopher Reeve's forces carry the day, then it's going to be damaging to people who already are disabled and people who need services of some sort or form.

KAREN BARTA: The Courage Center says Reeve is an effective, high profile voice for improving life for disabled people. A Korean-born Air Force Academy cadet is back home in Pine City for the first time since his bone marrow transplant in July. 22-year-old Brian Bauman's bout with the disease set off an international search for a bone marrow donor.

The state forecast today, mostly sunny highs ranging from the upper 40s in the northeast to the upper 50s in the Southwest, and for the twin cities, mostly sunny, with a high near 55. Tuesday, rain likely, with a high around 52. Sunny skies around the region this hour in Rochester. The current temperature is 35 degrees. It's 37 in Duluth, Saint Cloud reporting 35, and it's 37 in the Twin Cities.

That's news from Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Karen Barta.

PAULA SCHROEDER: I'm Paula Schroeder, and this is Midmorning on Minnesota Public Radio. Six minutes past 10 o'clock. Programming on Minnesota Public Radio is supported by Minnesota's Journal of Law and Politics, offering a timely service by locating voters, polling places, and candidate information at www.lawandpolitics.com.

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Esther Wattenberg is one of the nation's leading authorities on children, welfare, and poor families. She is director of the Center for Advanced Studies in child welfare at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute and a professor at the University's School of Social Work. We hear from her today in today's Voices of Minnesota interview. Esther Wattenberg has influenced public policy on welfare and child protection for decades, not only in Minnesota, but nationally and overseas.

She won't reveal her age, but she graduated from the University of Western Ontario in 1941. She's still teaching, writing, testifying before Congress, and thinking hard about how to improve the lives of poor and neglected children. Esther Wattenberg spoke with Minnesota Public Radio's John Biewen.

JOHN BIEWEN: You have been working on issues related to children and families for something like half a century.

ESTHER WATTENBERG: Well, I'm not sure. That's a very ominous-sounding time. I suppose in a broad sense, I've always been concerned about what's happening to women and children, but it's taken various forms. In many ways, I've been concerned about the economic status of single parent women.

I've been very concerned about the role of women in these transforming times. I've been very concerned about the politics of social questions and how they get resolved. But in a professional sense, I'm a social worker, and so, in a way, I've narrowed my interest now to child welfare.

JOHN BIEWEN: Now, at least to listen to the political rhetoric of the day, one would think say that those are hot issues today. It takes a village to raise a child, all the talk about family values. An exciting time for you in your work.

ESTHER WATTENBERG: Well, exciting in the sense that we've broken open all the molds. We have taken a 60-year program supporting single parent women on a program known as AFDC. We've now transformed it to something known as Temporary Assistance. Notice the word temporary. Assistance to families in need.

JOHN BIEWEN: Well, and let me ask you. Of course, you're referring to the historic welfare reform bill that Congress passed, President Clinton signed, that does away with the federal guarantee of aid to all poor people if they meet certain requirements, replacing it with a block grant to the states to run their own poverty programs. What do you think the effect is going to be?

ESTHER WATTENBERG: I think, generally, Minnesota's going to be all right. Minnesota's going to rely on its historic and well-developed sense of a state's responsibility not to allow families and children to sink into destitution without some help. I have confidence that that ethic will prevail. I'm less sure how other states will respond.

The federal government entered the picture in 1935 because states could not or would not meet the challenge of how to respond to families in need. Our next couple of years are firmly anchored in the expectation that states know how to do it, can do it, and will assume the fiscal responsibilities for doing it. Well, we'll see.

One area of special interest of yours and of special expertise is child neglect. How do you define-- what do you count as neglect?

ESTHER WATTENBERG: Well, the definition, of course, is now in statute in our Minnesota's law. It is really neglecting to provide basic human needs for children. The parents have failed in one way or another to provide an environment in which children can thrive, and we have not yet arrived at a firm, clear response to this growing number.

JOHN BIEWEN: You say growing number. Do you believe it is growing, and if you believe it is, why would that be happening?

ESTHER WATTENBERG: Well, our data does say that of all the children that are removed and placed in out-of-home care, almost 60% to 65% are children of neglect, and that number has gone up over the last 15 to 20 years. We're not quite sure why it has continued to grow, because we have several programs that we've invented to intervene.

One is that more of these children are coming to our attention through mandatory reporting, which is now part of our child welfare system. Some believe it is the advent of the drug culture amongst young families which has brought it. Some believe it's a feature of urbanization of American life, that we have more and more young families crowded together into inhospitable environments, and that the family networks are not there to help these families maintain even minimal standards of care.

The basic question, which is troublesome, is do we know enough to know when a family can rouse itself to change, to use services that help it to change, to become nurturing, warm, protective, all those things one expects of parents, and do we know enough to know that some families cannot mobilize themselves for that? We don't know. Human behavior is a mystery.

JOHN BIEWEN: One of your colleagues here at the University of Minnesota looks at those difficulties and those mysteries of human nature and parenting and says, let's have a system of licensing parents. Have some requirements. You've got to be married. You've got to have a job. I don't remember what they all are, but a few simple things. I think maybe you need to be of a certain age. What do you think of that approach?

ESTHER WATTENBERG: Well, I never know whether he's serious or not, of course. I think it is, in fact, a rather silly notion, simply because, one, we wouldn't even know the technology of not allowing men and women to have babies. I think the chastity belt probably works for women. I don't know what it is for men, unless we do drastic kinds of things. So even on a basic sense, it's not a workable plan.

But more importantly, it's against the ethos of this society to exert that kind of control. We're very wary of the do's and don'ts of what a government can do, should do, et cetera. I think on this issue, it's absolutely off limits.

JOHN BIEWEN: It seems like a lot of the debates that we're having in the country now over welfare, crime, race, poverty, they seem to turn on one question that people come and people disagree profoundly on it, and that is, does poverty cause self-destructive behavior or is it the other way around? And somebody who takes the latter position would say, and many people do say this, why should I pay for somebody's mistakes? How do you answer that?

ESTHER WATTENBERG: Well, it's a question about what is our common responsibility toward each other on this very frail planet that's hurtling its way through the universe. Well, what is our responsibility toward each other? I'm not so sure that the question of race hasn't created a mean-spirited response to all of that. I have very little patience with the common phrase, it's my money and the government has no right to take it for those people. A very common, almost banal set of observations.

Well, it's not our money or your money. You only got it because all kinds of people cooperated in making that job available to you, only because the university has a lot of people who are bringing the ideas that drive the economy to produce those jobs. In other words, we're all very interdependent, and this notion that we have people who are the lone rangers living in a cave with no other help is just sheer nonsense.

The naivety of it, I must say, just appalls me that no one has taken on that silly phrase. It's my money. Not at all. But it's a very popular way to rouse fear, anxiety, animosity, and the awful poison of estrangement that is used now to separate groups of people from each other. It's an appalling feature of the current political debate.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Esther Wattenberg, director of the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute and a professor of social work, or a professor, rather, at the University School of Social Work. She speaks with Minnesota Public Radio's John Biewen. You're listening to Voices of Minnesota on Midmorning on Minnesota Public Radio. We'll be back with more of Esther Wattenberg in just a moment.

It's coming up now on 18 minutes past 10 o'clock, and programming on Minnesota Public Radio is supported by 3M, who generously matched more than 900 employee contributions to Minnesota Public Radio. Checking the weather for the next couple of days, it's going to be mostly sunny today, with highs from the upper 40s in the northeast to the upper 50s in the southwest. Rain and scattered thunderstorms are likely in southern Minnesota tomorrow, and a chance of rain in the north by the afternoon.

Highs in the upper 40s to mid 50s, with a chance of snow statewide on Wednesday. Look for a high near 55 in the Twin Cities today, with rain likely tomorrow. A high near 52, snow mixed with rain by Wednesday.

We continue now with our conversation with Esther Wattenberg, who has been a professor of social work at the University of Minnesota for more than 40 years. She is a native of Canada, educated at the University of Western Ontario, Toronto University, the University of Chicago, and the London School of Economics. As she told John Biewen, she grew up in the 1920s and '30s near the small town of London, Ontario.

ESTHER WATTENBERG: I grew up as the youngest of five children in a Jewish family, a small part of a Jewish community in these Western Ontario towns, with relatives who lived in lots of little Western Ontario towns and very close. I grew up, actually, in a very cheerful environment, hard hit by the depression, extraordinarily hard hit. That has remained actually a shaping experience for me and my life.

I grew up in an intensely antisemitic environment, as was common, I think, in those days, but in a very, very close family with high expectations that children would do well, would go as far as they could, both the girls and boys in our family. And that was how it was done in those days.

We all suffered, I think, from a depression, but being educated was the core, because my father was an immigrant from Russia in a very early part of the century, actually, and my mother was a very strong, capable community activist. And I don't know whether I've inherited some of that genetic strain or not, but I had a cheerful childhood, but a lot of expectations placed on doing well.

JOHN BIEWEN: When you say that the depression was a shaping experience, certainly that was a time when people, through no fault of their own, were in trouble and needed help.

ESTHER WATTENBERG: Yes.

JOHN BIEWEN: Is that what you mean?

ESTHER WATTENBERG: Yes, yes. But in desperate trouble. And, of course, there were not at the time really any safety nets. I always tell my own children that men abandoned their families in droves. They hit the rails when they couldn't provide for their families, and then leaving women and children really destitute, living on almost nothing. And neighborhoods gathered around and churches became very active. There was some very modest help in private agencies, but one had to jump through lots of hoops to get it.

JOHN BIEWEN: Do you remember when you decided to go into social work leading to this career, this life that you've now spent working with families and children?

ESTHER WATTENBERG: Well, I can't remember quite precisely, but an opportunity arose, which crystallized it in a way. I was chosen to be a Commonwealth fellow. These were awarded to Canadians. All Commonwealth countries had a certain number of scholarships they would provide, but the attributes of this was could go abroad or wherever you chose to go, but it had to be in a professional opportunity that your own country did not afford.

And it wasn't that Canada didn't have schools of social work, but I became very interested along the way in policy issues. I'm not quite sure how that came about, but I was interested in a broader sense how things worked, and I, I was doing some work at the time with someone who was very prominent in one of the Canadian cabinets dealing with social security, and he recommended that I go to the University of Chicago for this kind of work. That's how I happened to go there, and that began a train of things that happened.

JOHN BIEWEN: When and how did you come to Minnesota?

ESTHER WATTENBERG: Love. A passing friendship grew into love.

JOHN BIEWEN: Best way to come here?

ESTHER WATTENBERG: Do you think so? I was staying at International House at the University of Chicago, and I met the chap who was going to be my husband eventually, and he proposed to me on the day that I was planning to return to Canada. My exit visa was about to elapse in another month, and I'll spare you all the details of that.

JOHN BIEWEN: But he must have been a Minnesotan.

ESTHER WATTENBERG: No, actually, he was a New Yorker who had been working on radiology studies associated with the Atomic Energy Commission, and one of his mentors was Dr. Samuel Schwartz, who belonged to the Department of Medicine, and Dr. Cecil Watson, a very renowned chairman of the department, and they urged him to come to Minnesota for his medical training. He had decided after his basic science to go back and get his medical degree.

And so I arrived here saying, well, I certainly am not going to stay here longer than the three or four years it takes. I didn't grow up in a small town to come to another small town. I want a big city. Well, several decades later, we're still here.

JOHN BIEWEN: When was that?

ESTHER WATTENBERG: And glad to be here.

JOHN BIEWEN: That was when?

ESTHER WATTENBERG: That was in the early 1950s. It's been a very hospitable and, I must say, wonderful city, and I think a great state.

JOHN BIEWEN: Through all these years of the work that you've done, what are some highlights for you, things that stand out as the most valuable things you've done?

ESTHER WATTENBERG: Well, some time ago I prepared a document for the DFL called Present But Powerless. It was a document that threw on the table all the ways in which women had been the invisible partners of successful men in politics. It was at the height of the beginning consciousness of the women's movement, and I think that that got traded around. And I was helped in lots of ways to prepare it, but it became a tract, as it were, one of those sort of tracks that one hurled on the table at moments. And I'm glad I did that.

JOHN BIEWEN: When was that?

ESTHER WATTENBERG: I think that was maybe in the late '60s, early '70s. I've lost it, and I don't have a copy of it anymore. And somebody said, oh, it's at the DFL office, but I've never tried to track it down. I think in a professional sense, I worked very hard in the war on poverty with a program called New Careers, and I'm very, very proud of having been associated with that. That was the movement of taking people who had not had a chance for a college education, not had a chance to become involved in very important ways of helping their families and children into new careers.

And it was a paraprofessional movement that brought into place a lot of people to help in the school system and the social service system and the public health system, and I now, over the years, have seen them, and almost everybody in that program really did marvelous things with that opportunity which existed at the time. That's why I'm so really fond of the war on poverty. It did quite remarkable things.

JOHN BIEWEN: Now, you could be in a cabin by the lake, taking walks and reading and having a proper retirement. But you seem as busy and as urgent about your work as ever. Why? Why don't you--

ESTHER WATTENBERG: Well, first of all, I take issue with that phrase, proper retirement. What in the world is that?

JOHN BIEWEN: It was in quotes.

ESTHER WATTENBERG: Oh, I'm glad to hear that. I've been very lucky. I think if one wants to work and if one has a passion for the work one does, to have the opportunity to work is just a glorious gift. I suppose I'm one of these people for whom the kind of work I do as part of life itself. Even if I had the chance, I will tell you, to go to a cottage in a lake and read, which I'm very fond of, and I read a lot because I grew up in a family that read a lot, and I still do, I would not choose that. I would choose a big, hurly burly city where street life and life itself was constantly in movement.

I don't know. I met somebody not long ago who thought I had an overdose of something called the hedonic capacity, which, as you know, is the energy that's derived from doing. I don't know. I feel very, very lucky to have the opportunity to be working, to be surrounded by quite marvelous colleagues, and to be interacting with a lot of people that bring me their stories, their issues. And, of course, meeting students, because I still teach, is absolutely the most reviving thing that one can possibly imagine. They're very remarkable, and they're life giving. So why not go on?

JOHN BIEWEN: How hopeful are you about the future of America's children? Are we getting better at supporting them or worse?

ESTHER WATTENBERG: I think we're going to be OK, actually. I think there is a generosity of spirit, which for the moment has been subdued, but I think not for long. I'm extraordinarily hopeful, even sometimes very optimistic that we may know how to do it, and how to do it with a sense of pride that a very rich country that sets the standards, interestingly, for other countries will have done it right. I think we'll do it.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Esther Wattenberg, director of the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute and a professor at the University's School of Social Work. She spoke with Minnesota Public Radio's John Biewen. Our Voices of Minnesota interview series is heard most Mondays at this time as part of Midmorning. The producer is Dan Olson.

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SPEAKER 1: While healthcare may not be the number one election issue, it's still on the minds of many Americans. The US Census Bureau says more than 40 million of us lack health insurance, and those with coverage are paying more and more to keep themselves and their families insured. This week, as part of our continuing election coverage, Minnesota Public Radio is concentrating on the issue of healthcare. Is there a healthcare crisis? Be a part of the debate on KNOW FM 91.1 in the Twin Cities.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Today's programming is made possible in part by the advocates-- or, excuse me, by financial contributions from the more than 86,000 members of Minnesota Public Radio. In the weather today, we are expecting mostly sunny skies, with highs from the upper 40s in northeastern Minnesota to the upper 50s in the southwest. But look out, because we've got some clouds moving in overnight tonight. Rain is likely tomorrow, and then snow statewide by Wednesday.

High temperatures tomorrow in the upper 40s to mid 50s in the Twin Cities. Look for a high today near 55. Tomorrow it should get up get up to around 52. It's 28 minutes before 11 o'clock. You're listening to Midmorning on Minnesota Public Radio.

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- (SINGING) She looks as an African queen

She eating 12 chapatis and cream

She taste as Mongolian lamb

She coming from Aldebaran

What a shame Mary Jane had a pain--

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, I sure recognize that voice, but I don't recognize the song. Reason might be that it's never been released before. Beatles Anthology 3 is coming out sometime this week, I think Arne Fogel is here to tell us about it and what's on it. We've got a sneak preview today. Hi, Arne.

ARNE FOGEL: Hello there, Paula.

PAULA SCHROEDER: That song, of course, John Lennon singing.

ARNE FOGEL: And George Harrison helping out in some of the effects, and Yoko Ono, who was relatively new in John Lennon's life at the time, in 1968. And the chorus, which goes, "What a shame Mary Jane had a pain at the party," is not all that untypical John Lennon wordplay, if you've ever read any of his books or listened to him in interviews and things like that, but not the type of thing that you often heard in his songs.

And the name of the song is "What the New Mary Jane?", and it's one of two totally unreleased-- never before released Beatles songs on this brand new Anthology 3. The other is called "Not Guilty", which actually has been released as a George Harrison song. About 10 years later, Harrison revived it and put it on one of his solo albums. But the Beatles version has never been released until tomorrow, when this set comes out.

PAULA SCHROEDER: It is coming out tomorrow? Because we had varying dates given to us, that it had been delayed for a while, and--

ARNE FOGEL: It was supposed to come out-- the last I had heard was October 22, but then, at the very last minute, it got bumped, bumped a week. But we have clever little ways of locating some of these recordings.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Especially if you're an insider like you are. First of all, I just want to give you-- I want you to give your credentials as a Beatles fan and expert. You go way back.

ARNE FOGEL: Well, anybody my age, I think, has to call themselves-- would call oneself something of an expert because you were there when-- speaking myself now, I was there when they first came out and I was watching them on TV and buying all of their records when they were brand new.

But beyond that, I guess it's just-- once again, it just the way I am is if I'm interested in the music, I want to know all about it. And before long, I found myself collecting and reading and studying and seeking out things in the nooks and crannies. And just part of my general interest in music is this interest in the Beatles and their incredible career.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Did you know that they had as much unreleased material as they seem to have? Because there was unreleased material that came out on the Beatles anthologies one and two, as well as this one.

ARNE FOGEL: Well, officially, when you're looking at this thing song for song, there's not that much that's been unheard. There really aren't that many Beatles recordings in the can, as it were, or before this came out that were unknown songs. And there's a trickle of them in each of these two sets. But what fills most of the sets. And what I personally find more interesting is working versions of songs that we know.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Right.

ARNE FOGEL: And that is true not only of the CD sets, but also the video set which just came out. There's an awful lot of interview material based on information that we already have, but it's interesting to hear them cast a new light on it. There are films that we've seen before, but we see outtake versions of some of the things.

We see scenes from Help or scenes from Magical Mystery Tour that are re-edited. We see the Strawberry Fields Forever promo film in a new way, re-edited with some working versions or home movie footage taken at the scene. It's just a whole new way of looking at older, earlier material.

PAULA SCHROEDER: So are these new videos coming out along with the new collection of CDs?

ARNE FOGEL: Yes. The Beatles anthology video set, Many of us saw the ABC television version about a year ago this time. Well, this version is twice as long. Instead of being 5 hours long, it's 10 hours long on eight tapes. And one of the more fascinating things, I find, is that they've managed to find a way to take studio chatter, outtakes from the recording studios while they're doing some of these songs, and through the use of very artfully edited photographs from studios, from the studio, plus film taken in the studio, much as the way it may have been set up at the time that the records were originally made, they add life and a visualization of some of this audio studio chatter on the Beatles video.

SPEAKER 2: Here we go.

SPEAKER 3: You're on.

JOHN LENNON: Get this bloody little mic out of the way.

SPEAKER 4: Don't be nervous, John.

JOHN LENNON: I'm not nervous.

SPEAKER 4: Don't be nervous.

[THE BEATLES, "THIS BOY"]

SPEAKER 5: (SINGING) That boy took my love away

He'll regret it someday

This boy wants you back again

That boy

That boy

[STUDIO CHATTER]

PAULA SCHROEDER: What are they doing? It's so incredible to me that they can create such beautiful harmonies, and they're just-- and then they make a little mistake and they're just goofing around.

ARNE FOGEL: That's because what's been sort of codified throughout-- that recording is over 30 years old now, that moment that we just heard, and it was a classic almost from the instant it first came out, and now all these years later, it seems mythical. And to hear something like that reminds us of the fact that it's just four guys who, at the time that was recorded, the first flush of success, and they're having a good time and they're in the studio. And if you've ever worked in a recording studio or a radio station or all these places where we've all worked--

PAULA SCHROEDER: It doesn't all happen right now.

ARNE FOGEL: No. And you have a few laughs when something goes wrong or-- it's just they're very human. And that's what the Beatles anthology-- in a way, the Beatles anthology project demystifies the Beatles to a great extent. And the videos are full of moments like what we've just heard. This opportunity to realize that these guys were very human and this story unfolded in such a way as to make us realize it could happen to anybody, provided they were talented and in the right place at the right time.

PAULA SCHROEDER: The most talented people in the second half of the 20th century.

ARNE FOGEL: Yeah, small, small consideration.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Right, right. Well, what else have we got here? Do we have some of the later music that the Beatles did as well?

ARNE FOGEL: Yes, on the brand new CD anthology, volume three, it leans most heavily on the last two years, '68 and '69. And what that means, once again, if you are a big collector of what are known as the Beatles bootleg recordings, the things that-- some of the unreleased materials that have been trickled out, so to speak, in a not necessarily legal fashion, you are familiar with a lot of the things, a lot of the things that were in the Let It Be film, for instance.

There's a multitude of performances that went into the creation of that project. The Beatles sat down day after day for a couple of weeks and just played and argued and doodled away on their instruments, and cameras, movie cameras were filming and recording throughout this period. And as a result, there's a huge amount of material that went unreleased and continues to trickle out all these years later, and there's some of that on the new-- on the new set. But an awful lot of things that featured into the Beatles' White album, which is officially called the Beatles--

PAULA SCHROEDER: The White album, yeah.

ARNE FOGEL: Working versions of some of those things. And in many cases, they're very revealing. In some cases, they're not all that revealing. But probably the most sought after piece of material from the whole-- from all of these White album outtakes, as it were, actually has become somewhat mythical in and of itself, is George Harrison's solo demo of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", which is a totally different notion of what that song could be and can be, and I personally prefer it to the final Beatles version.

[THE BEATLES, "WHILE MY GUITAR GENTLY WEEPS"]

GEORGE HARRISON: (SINGING) I look at you all, see the lover that's sleeping

While my guitar gently weeps

I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping

Still my guitar gently weeps.

I don't know why nobody told you

How to unfold you love.

I don't know how someone controlled you

They bought and sold you

PAULA SCHROEDER: It's pretty.

ARNE FOGEL: It's very pretty. Ethereal sort of a piece, and that's the way Harrison originally intended the song to sound, obviously, because this is an earlier recording than the final version. And they made something quite a bit heavier out of it, and Harrison himself brought his friend Eric Clapton in to the session. And Eric Clapton plays the guitar solo on the Beatles record of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".

But obviously here, his original intention for the song was a soft, sweet, moody little piece, and it survives in much better sound quality on the version that's going to be coming out tomorrow, incidentally, than what we've just heard. But it's a beautiful little rendering from Harrison.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, it sounds to me like it could have been another "Yesterday" if they'd left it like that.

ARNE FOGEL: I guess they decided that-- either they decided that the times weren't right for that kind of thing by late 1968, or perhaps the Harrison's position in the band was such that he didn't quite have the clout to be able to appear on a major release like that solo, totally solo, totally alone. Although there are a couple of Beatles tracks that he does appear on alone. "Within You, Without You" doesn't feature any of the other group, any other members of the group. Who knows?

PAULA SCHROEDER: Right. Now, we know that this is coming out again tomorrow, and I heard there was a projection that there would be, like, 20 million sales.

ARNE FOGEL: Well, we do know this. We do know this.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Incredible.

ARNE FOGEL: We do know that the Beatles, financially and statistically, the entity trademark known as the Beatles have enjoyed-- they have enjoyed their most successful year of any since their existence, and that includes the 1960s, during which there actually was a Beatles.

PAULA SCHROEDER: And here it's 30 years later.

ARNE FOGEL: Right. And I saw a chart not more than two or three weeks ago that lists the most successful show business performers, acts, entities, whatever you want to call them, of the year. And I can't recall who numbers one and two were, but number three--

PAULA SCHROEDER: I think Oprah's up there at the top.

ARNE FOGEL: Probably, or one or two anyway. Number three was the Beatles. The Beatles, this group that hasn't existed for 26 years, the key member of which is no longer living, is the third most successful performer of 1996.

PAULA SCHROEDER: It says a lot about fans, doesn't it?

ARNE FOGEL: Yes. It says that the music is timeless. Here's a very interesting thing that's also on the set coming out is the Beatles'-- Paul McCartney's working version of "Come and Get It", a song that he wrote for a group called Badfinger.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Yeah, that's right.

ARNE FOGEL: And you can hear how Badfinger imitated Paul McCartney when you hear the demo that they learned this from.

PAULA SCHROEDER: OK.

[THE BEATLES, "COME AND GET IT"]

PAUL MCCARTNEY: (SINGING) If you want it, here it is

Come and get it

Make your mind up fast

If you want it, Any time I can give it

But you better hurry, because it may not last

Did I hear you say that there must be a catch?

Will you walk away from a fool and his money?

If you want it--

PAULA SCHROEDER: I always thought this was the Beatles doing this song. It was Badfinger.

ARNE FOGEL: Badfinger sounds an awful lot like the Beatles, and obviously in this one, because they were really trying to sound like the boss man, Paul McCartney, who was running the record company, Apple, that they were recording for.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Just a few seconds left here, and I know that we want to talk about "Free As a Bird".

ARNE FOGEL: "Free As a Bird."

PAULA SCHROEDER: It's been out for a year.

ARNE FOGEL: Yeah, but it also is the very last thing that you see, a beautifully created video on the volume, the video volumes. And one thing that people should know is the fact that those people who saw the ABC TV version of a Beatles anthology, even though this one is twice as long, this one does not have the video of "Real Love", and the ABC TV one did, and I don't know why that was taken off of this otherwise much more elaborate video presentation. I have a feeling it's going to come out with something else later on. They're not quite done milking us, and I'm very thankful that they're not, because I kind of like having the Beatles back again.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Thank you, Arne Fogel. Me too.

SPEAKER 6: (SINGING) Free as a bird

Home and dry

Like a homing bird I'll fly

As a bird on wings

PAULA SCHROEDER: I could listen to him 24 hours a day. Arne Fogel, of course, stops by every once in a while to tell us about some of the latest entertainment news. It's 11 minutes before 11 o'clock.

Of course, Halloween coming up this week, and if you have ghosts in your house, Minneapolis psychic Echo Bodine is the person to call. Bodine will identify your ghosts and try to talk them into leaving. If the ghosts don't feel like leaving, she also helps homeowners understand their ghosts and learn to live with them. For this Halloween edition of our odd job series, reporter Mary Lozier went out with Bodine on one of her ghost busting jobs at an ordinary house in the suburbs, where most of the ghosts were out in the backyard.

ECHO BODINE: Now, is this all flatland? I can't see in the dark.

MARY LOZIER: Oh.

ECHO BODINE: Yeah?

MARY LOZIER: I'm sorry.

ECHO BODINE: It's OK. It's OK. I'm just-- I've got night blindness really bad. OK, there we go. OK. There's definitely energy back here. Wow.

There's a lot of spirits back here. There's a female spirit over there by the windows. There's a male spirit that just walked down there.

MARY LOZIER: They're kind of transparent, you said, and white? White, kind of white outline?

ECHO BODINE: Yeah. It's OK, honey. It's OK. It's all right. OK, there's another one right over by that tree there. It's a male. He's standing right there up against a tree watching us to see what we're doing. OK All right, wait. There's a voice here.

OK, there's a female spirit. Again, another one here who says-- OK, she says that as far as they're concerned, this is their house as well as the people who live here, that different people in the family call us into the home, want us in the home, want us to be a part of their family. She says that we have an agreement with them that we will live here with them.

MARY LOZIER: So now the next step is to decide what to do with the ghosts?

ECHO BODINE: Yeah, we go in the house, tell them what we got, and see what they want to do. My guess is that they'll probably say that the people can stay just because that's the kind of people that they are. They'll just say, yeah, no problem. As long as they're not going to hurt us or the baby, then they can stay and we'll all be one big happy family.

[CLOCK CHIMING]

What do you want to do as a family?

SPEAKER 7: Keep them.

MARY LOZIER: Keep them.

SPEAKER 8: I've been saying from day one, keep them. They aren't harming us.

ECHO BODINE: So we'll decide--

SPEAKER 7: They seem like very nice ghosts. So we'll keep them.

ECHO BODINE: Thank you again. Nice to meet you.

SPEAKER 8: Nice meeting you too.

SPEAKER 7: See you. Bye, bye.

ECHO BODINE: Bye.

SPEAKER 7: Be careful, though, when you go up that hill.

MARY LOZIER: Do you ever get tired of living in a world with all these other beings?

ECHO BODINE: Mm-hmm. I sure do. Yeah, you know what, part of it, though, Mary is I'm so used to it. And then I'll sit down and, like, I'll have a conversation with my friend David tonight, and he is so of this world that it's like, oh my god, that's how people live and that's how they think, and they don't think about ghosts all the time. They don't think about aliens.

They're not even conscious of this stuff, and it's so much a part of my life. So I don't know. Most of the time, or not most of the time, but a lot of the time I think the way that I think is real normal and everybody thinks this way, until like I said, I sit down and have a conversation with somebody and realize, oh my god, this is unusual stuff.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Our odd jobs profile of Echo Bodine was produced by NPR's Mary Lozier. It's seven minutes before 11 o'clock.

GARY EICHTEN: The US Senate race here in Minnesota is drawing nationwide attention, and the polls show that the race is still very close. Hi, this is Gary Eichten inviting you to join us for Midday. The candidates for Senate will be here in the studio to discuss the issues among themselves and also to take your questions, and I hope you can tune in and call in. Meet the candidates for the US Senate coming up on Midday. Midday begins at 11:00 each weekday morning on Minnesota Public Radio, KNOW FM 91.1 in the Twin Cities.

PAULA SCHROEDER: President Clinton is coming to the Twin Cities today, and at 11 o'clock during Midday, Gary Eichten will be talking to U of M historian Hy Berman about other presidential visits to Minnesota. First, here's Garrison Keillor.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

GARRISON KEILLOR: And here is the Writer's Almanac for Monday. It's the 28th of October, 1996. Harvard University was founded on this day in 1636 when the Massachusetts General Court voted to spend 400 pounds to establish a college. Two years later, it got about twice that much from John Harvard, the assistant pastor of the First Church of Charleston, South Carolina.

It's the birthday of painter Henry Inman on this day, 1801, in Utica, New York, a leading portrait painter in America. It's the birthday of the French chef Auguste Escoffier, born 1846, an innovator in the kitchen who compiled several cookbooks, including A Guide to Modern Cookery.

It's the birthday in 1875 in Constantinople of Gilbert Grosvenor, who joined the National Geographic Society and soon became editor in chief of their magazine, which had been an irregularly published pamphlet with a circulation under 1,000. He combined pictures and stories about adventurous subjects and built its circulation to 2 million.

The Statue of Liberty was dedicated on this day in 1886 on Bedloe's Island in New York Harbor, a gift from the people of France. It's the birthday of the American composer and music educator Howard Hanson, 1896, in Wahoo, Nebraska. In 1924, he became director of the Eastman School of Music, where he remained for 40 years.

It's the birthday of the English novelist Evelyn Waugh, 1903, in London. Author of Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, A Handful of Dust, Brideshead Revisited, and other books. The artist Francis Bacon born in Dublin on this day in 1909, a descendant of the Elizabethan statesman of the same name. It's the birthday of medical researcher and physician Jonas Salk in New York City, 1914, who developed the first safe and effective polio vaccine.

It was on this day in 1919, the Senate passed the Volstead Prohibition Enforcement Act, which outlawed alcoholic beverages in the United States. It's the birthday in 1955 in Seattle of William Henry Gates III, Bill Gates, whose high school bought a training terminal linked to a nearby computer company. He and several friends became hooked on it. He dropped out of Harvard at the age of 19, founded the Microsoft Corporation with his high school friend Paul Allen, and soon licensed an operating system to IBM called MS-DOS, which quickly became the major operating system for personal computers.

Here's a poem for today by Denise Levertov, whose birthday last week we noted. A poem by Denise Levertov entitled "O Taste and See".

The world

Is not with us enough

O taste and see

The subway Bible poster said,

Meaning the Lord, meaning

If anything all that lives

To the imagination's tongue

Grief, mercy, language,

Tangerine, weather, to

Breathe them, bite

Savor, chew, swallow, transform

Into our flesh our

Deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,

Living in the orchard and being

Hungry, and plucking the fruit

A poem by Denise Levertov, "O Taste and See" from her Poems 1962 to 1967, published by New Directions, and used by permission here on the Writer's Almanac, Monday, October 28. Made possible by Cole's History Group, publishers of aviation history and other magazines. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, that's Midmorning for this Monday morning. Thanks so much for joining us today. Tomorrow, we're going to have celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck into our studios, along with his wife and partner, Barbara Lazaroff. They've really transformed some of the restaurants in California and around the country, not only with the food, but with the decor, and we'll find out more about trends in restaurants from Wolfgang Puck and Barbara Lazaroff.

Well, I'm Paula Schroeder. I want to thank you so much for joining us today, and stay tuned for Midday, which is coming up next. And time now is about one minute before 11 o'clock. You'll be able to hear Paul Wellstone and Dean Barkley at noon today on Midday.

SPEAKER 9: On Monday's All Things Considered, a federal judge who advocates legalizing drugs.

SPEAKER 10: There's a tendency for us to demonize drugs, to say that drugs are the problem, not that we're the problem.

SPEAKER 9: All things considered. Weekdays at three.

PAULA SCHROEDER: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. 44 degrees under cloudy skies at KNOW FM 91.1. Minneapolis, Saint Paul. In the Twin Cities today, it will be mostly sunny with a high near 55 degrees. I said it was cloudy earlier. It's sunny. Rain is likely after midnight tonight and during the afternoon tomorrow. Tomorrow's high around 52 degrees, the overnight low near 38.

GARY EICHTEN: Good morning. It's 11 o'clock, and this is Midday on Minnesota Public Radio with monitor radio's David Brown. I'm Gary Eichten. In the news this morning, President Clinton is campaigning in Minneapolis this afternoon. Clinton is speaking at the Target Center today, trying to rally support for Minnesota Democrats Paul Wellstone and Mary Reeder. Bob Dole, meanwhile, is campaigning in California, saying the White House has turned into the Animal House.

Israeli-Palestinian talks have broken down. The talks were supposed to resolve the dispute over the Israeli troop withdrawal from Hebron. Former Olympic bombing suspect Richard Jewell is no longer a suspect, but he says the investigation and media coverage into his life have left him with a non-healing scar, as he puts it. And the Metropolitan Airports Commission is voting today on whether to significantly expand the max noise insulation program around Twin Cities International.

These are some of the stories in the news today. Over the noon hour, we'll be talking with two of the candidates for the US Senate here in Minnesota, Paul Wellstone and Dean Barkley. Our phone lines will be open.