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KAREN BARTA: Good morning. I'm Karen Barta with news from Minnesota Public Radio. State lawmakers hold a hearing today on housing, education, and segregation in the Twin Cities. The hearing comes at a time when the state is being sued over the quality of education in the urban public schools. Today's hearing is being held at the state office building in Saint Paul.

Antismoking advocates are hoping new research will breathe new life into the effort to boost cigarette taxes. Several proposals exist with tax increases ranging from $0.10 to $0.50 a pack. The state already imposes a $0.48 tax on a pack of cigarettes. Judy Knapp, executive director of the Minnesota Smoke-Free 2000 Coalition says a new government study found that hiking taxes on cigarettes reduces smoking.

JUDY KNAPP: They've seen the rates of smoking go down, consumption go down among the general population and more specifically among young people. So in and of itself, the tax is an intervention to reduce smoking.

KAREN BARTA: The Tobacco Institute, an industry lobby group, criticizes the federal study as flawed and says the tax simply punishes smokers. Former Vice President Walter Mondale will return to Minnesota next month. Mondale served 3 and 1/2 years as US ambassador to Japan. Mondale says he's retiring for good.

The state forecast today, partly to mostly cloudy, with highs from 5 below in the far northwest to the lower 20s in the southeast. And for the Twin Cities, mostly cloudy with a high near 20 degrees. Around the region in Rochester, it's cloudy and 3 below zero. It's partly sunny and 5 above in Saint Cloud. In Duluth, it's cloudy and 1 below. And in the Twin Cities, it's partly sunny and 4 degrees. That's news from Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Karen Barta. It's 6 minutes past 10 o'clock. This is Midmorning on Minnesota Public Radio.

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PAULA SCHROEDER: Diane Glancy's Cherokee ancestors walked the Trail of Tears. Today on our Voices of Minnesota interview, we'll hear the Saint Paul resident talk about her new book that tells the story of the forced march. Macalester College English professor and author Diane Glancy's new book, Pushing the Bear, is her first novel. It tells about the Cherokee Trail of Tears from 1838 through 1839.

The US government uprooted 14,000 Cherokee from their homes in the southeastern United States and forced them to walk to Oklahoma. More than 4,000 people died on the march. Before we get to the interview, let's listen to Glancy read a passage about the crossing of the Mississippi River by the Cherokee on the way to Oklahoma. It's written from the perspective of Maritole, a Cherokee woman, the main character of the novel.

DIANE GLANCY: Suddenly, one day we came to a huge river. The people cried remembering the Ohio. The soldier told me it was the Mississippi. We would cross it into Missouri. We camped under the cover of brush and watched the ice chunks float by Green's ferry landing. The Earth and the sky were ghost white in the frozen air. Sometimes there was a wailing.

Look at the terrible outcropping of rock up river, a bluff the soldier called it. The hills were higher than they had been when we crossed the Ohio and the tree shorter, allowing the heavy sky to push down on us. Many more of us died waiting for the ice to pass. Knobowtee and the men sat spitting into the fire.

That bluff is where the Earth steps up to the sky world, Anna, [? Scoda ?] said. I felt my fear of the river grow. How can we cross that water, I cried in panic to Tanner one evening. We'll die. We'll drown like the others. Mark and [? Ephraim ?] heard me, and they cried to.

My father didn't say anything. His hair had grayed, and his eyes were dull and hollow in his head. Luthy held her voice, we'll make it the rest of the way. Look at it, Quaty Lewis said. It's a spirit river. I watched the ice pass for a few more days. Then one morning, I woke with a taste of peaches in my mouth. I heard the soldiers preparing to cross the river. We had always been toward the front of the line. We would be among the first ones to cross.

My heart pounded wildly. I held something in my hands but always I found they were empty. The bear camped before me as usual. I tried to push him away, but he did not move. I felt the stirring of his breath in the cold morning. Old bear, I cried to him, today we cross the river. I patted his hide. Move over. I go even if it's to the afterlife with mother and the baby.

The boys fretted as we waited for the raft that would take us across the river. They cried frantically when the soldiers herded us toward the landing. I felt a tightness in my chest. My arms hurt. Surely the land and the trail we walked would fold under the Earth with the sun.

I heard the trees mourning for us. We go, I told the boys. They would not hold still. Don't run, I told them again. Above us, the clouds were my grandmother's bone-carved hair pin. Grandmother, I called. She smiled. Her face was now gray and lovely above the wind that snarled upriver. I saw the spirits eating from my feather-edged dishes. I heard them in the wind.

They put down their knives and forks. They came and held the sides of the tossing raft as we stepped onto it, some of us falling, others crying out. The spirits wore bright tunics and turbans, and I couldn't see beyond them as we crossed the river. They held the raft steady as it jerked between large pieces of ice.

I spooned more cornbread to them, more squirrel meat and peach cobbler. I had cooked it just this morning in my dream. Hold on, hold on, I heard them say as we crossed the river, their ghost voices laughing to the freezing wind.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Saint Paul author and Macalester College English Professor Diane Glancy reading from her recent novel, Pushing the Bear. She talked with Minnesota Public Radio intern Brian Bull about her life, writings, and Native American heritage.

BRIAN BULL: You were born in a town called Kansas city, Missouri. What was that like?

DIANE GLANCY: I don't know. It was Middle America, I guess, like it would be anywhere. I don't remember anything specific other than an ordinary neighborhood. My father worked for the stockyards.

BRIAN BULL: What about your mother?

DIANE GLANCY: She was a housewife, as women were in those days. Her heritage was German and English, whereas my father was Cherokee. And they made a home, and we had quite an ordinary life. And often, when I write it, it is from that ordinariness of Middle America.

BRIAN BULL: When did you reach the point that you decided that you would be an author?

DIANE GLANCY: I remember once I had a little book and I wrote in it along the margins, and I remember my mother telling me not to. But I always had a need for words. And I did not speak a lot, but it was the written word as I would write. I just I felt a foundation. I felt something solid. And the written word was very important to me. It formed something that I needed in some way.

BRIAN BULL: Did you have anyone who inspired your writing style?

DIANE GLANCY: No, I would say it was just the opposite. I don't remember reading much of anything as I was growing up. My Indian grandmother was illiterate. There was not a great love of books. There was kind of a silence, I would say, about many things, many intellectual things, family history. And I wanted to know things. And I guess by writing, I felt that was one way to know things, to discover things, to find out things.

BRIAN BULL: Coming from a mixed background, was it very difficult to feel in touch with your heritage? Do the two cultures conflict in your household?

DIANE GLANCY: Yes, very definitely. My mother was very organized, and my father was not so much that way. But there was a freedom about him that I admired very much. And there was conflict because of these two different lifestyles. And even within the Native American heritage, it was also very confusing for a while because I would go to school, and we would make teepees and feather bonnets on Thanksgiving.

And then when we went down to see my father's Cherokee people, there were not feather headdresses, or teepees, or buffalo. And I thought, how can these two very different kinds of people be Indian? And, of course, the stereotypical or the plains Indians, which is really the normal Indian, I would say, was not what I saw at all in my Cherokee heritage, which is more sedentary. My grandmother had some pigs and a row of corn. Plains Indians don't do that at all.

And so I had to not only put the white and the Indian fragment together, but the fragments within the Indian heritage also was more complicated, I think, than I realized. So I still feel that division and feel that I walk in both worlds within the Indian tradition, and then both worlds within the Indian and white.

BRIAN BULL: Has been a professor at a college enabled you to share your culture, or do you feel sometimes challenged by what other people expect you to be?

DIANE GLANCY: Huh, that's a good question. And the answer actually is both. First of all, it's easy because I teach Native American literature. The students come into class to hear that very subject. But then on the other hand, there are expectations of what Indians should be, and it's very different not only when I share my life but when we get into the literature.

There is sort of a romantic idea of what the Native Americans should be like. And then we open up the books, House Made of Dawn, Winter in the Blood, Ceremony, Love Medicine, and the others. And there are the problems of alcoholism and purposelessness and poverty and rebuilding, again, a world that once was and no longer is and cannot really be rebuilt.

And there's a hopelessness in a lot of the literature and a struggling to reconnect with ceremony. And the students often think, this isn't what I expected. I just finished a new book called The Only Piece of Furniture in the House, which is entirely different from anything I've done. It was about a young girl in Texas who has a close relationship to her mother and then, through marriage has to leave her mother.

And her mother had been the only piece of furniture in the house, and now she faces emptiness, and she has to rebuild again. I just felt one of those old themes of mine emerge in which you make something from nothing.

BRIAN BULL: A lot of your poems carry a lot of very simple yet powerful imagery. Where do a lot of your inspirations for these images come from?

DIANE GLANCY: Some of them are internal. I think even during the night we work. And I wake up sometimes in the morning with an image or a thought or an emotion or something that I want to start from. Other times, it is from out coming in.

For instance, in my travels across the prairie many years working for the State Arts Council of Oklahoma and even these seven years up here in Minnesota, once in a while I just have to get in the car and drive because images and ideas come to me that would not otherwise if I just stayed in the room.

Often it comes from reading. I think literature is a long conversation. If you want to write, you have to read. People that I talk to, the crow I just heard out there, things I hear on the news, there's a lot of stimulus from many different sources.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Diane Glancy is our guest today on our Voices of Minnesota interview. This is Midmorning on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Paula Schroeder. It's 16 minutes past 10 o'clock. Programming on Minnesota Public Radio is supported by 3M, who generously matches more than 900 employee contributions to Minnesota Public Radio.

Diane Glancy moved from Oklahoma to teach at Saint Paul's Macalester College seven years ago. She talked with Brian Bull about her book, Pushing the Bear and how she tries to make Trail of Tears, a reality for her readers.

When you write your works, I notice that there is a shifting perspective inside of them, especially with your latest novel, Pushing the Bear, you write from the viewpoint of Maritole at one point, and then you write from the perspective of a white soldier, and then you write from another person's perspective. It's not just necessarily a single viewer describing the action. How did you come to use that shifting perspective technique?

DIANE GLANCY: Well, I think when you tell the story of a whole nation, it takes many voices because we see from many different viewpoints and to get that fullness, that many dimensional stance that I wanted in the book, because we do never really agree about anything.

I mean, truth in the Native American perspective, everybody goes someplace, for instance, a powwow, everybody comes home, you sit around the table, and everybody tells their version of the powwow. And in those movable opinions, that variable feast is actually the truth of what happened on many different levels, many different perspectives.

And as I wrote Pushing the Bear, which is the story of the forced removal of the Cherokee in 1838 to 1839 from the southeast to Oklahoma, which was Indian territory at the time, it seemed to resist a single narrator. It was interesting that when I began the book there seemed to be great spaces of silence because you don't really know what happened so long ago, and it happened in Cherokee. And how do you reconstruct in modern English what happened.

But after that initial silence, there was all this noise, all these voices not agreeing, fussing at one another sometimes. It was this way. No, it was that. And so to give each one of them a time to speak seemed to me over the years as I worked on this book, the way that it should go. You know, finally a book dictates to you how it will be written.

There were several history books about the Trail of Tears, George Foreman, John Ehle, more than just those. But they always seemed to deal a lot with the preliminary happenings, before the trail and then after the people had reached Indian territory. And there was always a sentence that said, "and they walked 900 miles." And I always wanted to say, whoa, what was that really like? To me, that's the whole story, and it was skimmed over by historian after historian.

And when I did my research, there were very few voices that I found. Remember, I mentioned the silence. It just was not written about. In fact, people in Oklahoma said, don't write about it because it was very sad. And you recreate when you write, you bring it back to life, and they did not want that to happen. And I would put the book away. But then after a while, I would begin to hear those voices again, not ever with my ear but in my imagination. And I would get it out and add another voice.

BRIAN BULL: Were there times where it was particularly emotional, even painful to write about the Trail of Tears?

DIANE GLANCY: Well, I always felt the heaviness of it from my very earliest research. The first thing I did was go back to New Echota, Georgia, which was the old Cherokee capital. They have a little museum built. And I stood there looking at the buttons and the shards and things that were left behind when the people left, and that's the first time I felt the heaviness.

And there are places in the book where the mother and baby die, the crossing of the Mississippi when the ancestors come and hold the rafts steady between the ice chunks in the river that I had to read several times before I could read it in public without my voice cracking from the very sadness of it. And I just I hated a book that went on one heavy step after another, and I tried to find some funny happenings, and I really could not. It's a very heavy book.

BRIAN BULL: Do you yourself have any ancestors who are on the Trail of Tears?

DIANE GLANCY: My great grandfather was born in 1843, in Sallisaw, Oklahoma. I know nothing before that. So the Trail ended in 1839, and he was born about four years later. So I assume that his parents crossed on the trail, although, there were other trails. There was also a trail by water earlier. Well, even 10 years before this final march, the government had tried to get people to volunteer to move and some of them did. All I know is that he was a full blood Cherokee, and they got to Oklahoma by walking the Trail.

BRIAN BULL: For a lot of people writing about Native American history is filled with tragedy. Are there other elements that you think that people should be paying attention to, though, that there are also some other aspects perhaps the humor, or the singing, the storytelling?

DIANE GLANCY: I think that's the new frontier in Native American writing. After all the grief and the loss and the anger and the hurt is out, I think-- and I already see a little of this coming, a more positive outlook as success comes through writing, through education, I guess even through casino money.

I just finished another collection of short stories, and the last story in it is called America's First Parade. That was a title that came to me during the writing of Pushing the Bear. That was a parade of 13,000 people across five or six states, whatever.

And I was going to write again about a woman, a contemporary woman in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, thinking of the different aspects of the trail and America's first parade looking at it over 150 years later. And she has a son, and he gets married, and she goes to the wedding. And she sees-- they have a backyard wedding, and there's ribbons hanging in a tree, and it's Cherokee ceremony.

And there is a positiveness. And all of a sudden it's like she is awake from her bitterness and from her regret and from her anger. And she sees that people, especially the new generation, are bringing together in very positive ways old Indian ceremonies. And there were Cherokee hymns sung at the wedding and the flute music. And she feels this new awakening of meaning.

PAULA SCHROEDER: You're listening to our Voices of Minnesota interview with Diane Glancy. This is Midmorning on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Paula Schroeder. It's 23 minutes past 10 o'clock. Diane Glancy moved to Minnesota seven years ago from Oklahoma to become a college professor. Let's return to our conversation now with Brian Bull.

BRIAN BULL: Was it a transition to go from Oklahoma to the flat fertile plains of Minnesota?

DIANE GLANCY: I do miss Oklahoma, the land, the openness of the prairie, the wind that could sound different each day. And I assume it can in Minnesota too, but I live in Saint Paul, right by Macalester College, very much in the city.

I mean, I went from the back roads of Oklahoma to a very Metropolitan and cultural area such as the Twin Cities with the Hungry Mind bookstore within three blocks of where I live, more books than I'd ever seen in my life, opportunities, readings all the time. Things going on and happenings and travels and conferences in my life just kept multiplying and multiplying. It's just been incredible.

BRIAN BULL: I remember you saying something to the effect that humor was difficult for you, and it was something that you were going to work on in the near future.

DIANE GLANCY: I think we all have a different role as we write. And I think mine has been maybe one of tribal mourner, and I hope to get over that now that I've gotten out all the writing that there is to mourn over, I guess. But we all have a way of approaching material, and mine has always been more serious. While the more humorous side, I've never really gotten that. I think it's very hard to write funny.

BRIAN BULL: They say there is a whole different feel or a whole different philosophy behind Indian humor and that not everyone necessarily understands or comprehends Indian humor. What do you have to say on that?

DIANE GLANCY: Well, because it's based sometimes on sarcasm, on bitterness, on wit, on puns and not the usual things that are immediately funny. Sometimes there is such a subtle wit in Indian humor, it's an hour later or a day later when you realize that was pretty funny.

[LAUGHTER]

You know what I'm talking about. I hear you laughing. It's based on a recognition of likeness. I would say something, and you would recognize the truth of it, or that you had a similar experience, or that you recognize the irony, or the subtle wit, or the sarcasm, or the poking fun at something in such a dry way.

BRIAN BULL: I have heard it said that Native American tragedy and Native American humor share two very common things, and that's irony and the art of understatement, would you agree with that?

DIANE GLANCY: Very definitely. Yes, understatement, especially. I had not thought of that word. That's a good word. Indian humor can also be what you do not say. There can be something that you have in mind and just one word will kind of poke it a little bit, and somebody else will get it so that it's that kind of indirect humor too. Although, I think in a lot of my short stories, there are some very funny things.

In Aunt Parnetta's Electric Blisters, they have this old refrigerator, and it dies. Philo, the husband, goes out and does a war dance to try and bring it back to life, and finally, shoots it with his gun. And as I say that, this is not very funny at all. But when you read it, it is. And I don't really know what I'm missing here. And I'm leaving something out that I can't remember right now. Anyway, I'm going to try and do that more because I think humor is vital, and I have missed it.

BRIAN BULL: You had mentioned earlier that Native American literature was experiencing a renaissance. Why is it experiencing a renaissance now do you think?

DIANE GLANCY: Simply because I think a lot of Native American people are being educated. They're beginning to read, which a lot of have not in the past and still don't. For instance, on reservations, I would say reading is at a minimal, in my own family it was. But now there are junior colleges, there are scholarships.

Native American students are learning a pride. I would say, though, I don't mean pride in the sense of pride but a sense of awareness of self and history and heritage and the value of one's voice and what has been erased and can be brought back. As I said, literature is a long conversation. They hear others speaking, and they want to speak. And there is a trust in that voice, in that self, even a fragmented self.

BRIAN BULL: I can remember in my hometown of Lewiston, Idaho, my father seeing signs in cafe windows that would say no dogs or Indians allowed. I think maybe another part that may have helped bring about a renaissance is perhaps people's perceptions of Native Americans have changed, maybe making them more receptive to the things we have to say and what we have to write about.

DIANE GLANCY: Yes, very definitely. There's always been issues of land, the importance of land. We are joined to the land. The land has words. It has a voice. The importance of our setting. There's also important issues of the importance of family, what you are is what you are in relationship to others. Your wealth is your family members.

There are spiritual values. There's much more beyond this material world that we need for our wholeness for our well-being. And even I think the sense of loss is important and how we have dealt with it because many people in America, in the world, for that matter, are facing cutbacks and loss and a diminishing of maybe former hopes.

I think the Native Americans have a great deal of insight, although it varies from tribe to tribe, from person to person, the traditionals, the mixed bloods, the acculturated. There is no agreement anywhere in Indian country, as you well know. And there's just a richness of that long, valuable heritage. The importance of story, of words, of communication, of knowledge, of wisdom, which gets beyond knowledge of a spiritual awareness of our meaning.

BRIAN BULL: What I'd like to have you do now is just find a few selections, a few of your poems that you would like to read.

DIANE GLANCY: This is called "Photo Frames, The Kansas City Stockyards." "I took the idea of a photo album and put words there instead of pictures so that, for instance, in frame one, it says, father, you were the leader of the animals in the stockyards. Finally, plant superintendent.

I hated you, loved you, father. I carry your anger like a cattle prod. What is it we could never settle? A pinhole camera I look into and find only parts of what must be whole. And then I reconstruct his history and some of my history and the history of the stockyards.

Frame number two. It was after the flood. You were transferred to packinghouses in several Midwestern towns. There was a terrific flood in Kansas City in 1951 that covered the stockyards. Many of the hogs and cattle died." And then I move on to my father's death, and how I got along with him afterwards.

The end of it says, "We should forget our bad times, relish the good with delight like pomegranates bursting from their seed and have it here in our album, so it is a pinhole back into the life we had. And one interval will not have to jump another the way a train track used to take cattle to the yards.

And we would drive down the viaduct in Kansas city where you will be again, father, when I arrive, your face smiling, your arms open wide." I do picture entry into the afterlife as that old 12th Street viaduct in Kansas City and my father there waiting."

PAULA SCHROEDER: Native American writer and Macalester College English Professor Diane Glancy talking with MPR intern Brian Bull. Our Voices of Minnesota interviews are heard nearly every Monday as part of Midmorning. The producer is Dan Olson.

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It's 28 minutes before 11:00 o'clock. Today's programming is sponsored in part by Identification Services of New Hope to wish employees and customers an enjoyable Thanksgiving. Well, hopefully it won't be quite as cold on Thanksgiving day as it is today. Looking around our region right now, we can see there are temperatures of 11 below 0 being reported in the Fargo-Moorhead area and in Thief River Falls.

In Bemidji, it's 6 below zero, Duluth, sunny and 0. It's the same thing in Brainerd. Saint cloud reports sunny skies and 7 degrees. It's 0 in Rochester, 1 degree above zero in Mankato. In Sioux falls, the temperature at 0.

And in the Twin cities, mostly sunny and 6 degrees. We are looking for partly to mostly cloudy skies across the state today, high temperatures reaching only 5 below in the far northwest around the Thief River Falls area to the lower 20s in the southeast. In the Twin Cities today, look for a high between 15 and 20 degrees.

The United States was the only nation to oppose a new five-year term for United Nation's Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali last week, saying the UN needs someone more amenable to reform. Fiercely independent and analytical, Boutros-Ghali has been known to defy the United States, even at the political expense of the UN.

But many observers of the relationship between the US and the UN say the opposition to the Ethiopian leader is based less on the numerous tiffs between the United States delegation and the Secretary General than on domestic politics. Members of Congress and others blame the UN for the deaths of 18 soldiers in Somalia and for the disorganized peacekeeping effort in Bosnia.

In his recent presidential campaign, Bob Dole was contemptuous of the UN, and President Clinton responded by publicly announcing the US intention not to support another term for Boutros-Ghali. The new president of the United Nations Association, the USA, says the US response is overblown.

Alvin Adams takes over as head of the nation's largest foreign policy organization after a long career in Foreign Service. He served as ambassador to Djibouti, Haiti, and Peru and was called a seasoned troubleshooter by Washington Post columnist Jack Anderson, a skill that may serve him well in his new role. He was in the Twin Cities this weekend and stopped in to our studios.

ALVIN ADAMS: In terms of groups that spring out of the country and the people that deal with foreign affairs, it's unique, I think, in having all those capabilities and all of them focused on our relationship with the United Nations, enhancing our leadership role, our appreciation for the UN, and not standing as some sort of a cheerleader beating the drum for the UN constantly. Obvious it's important the role the UN plays, but we believe very, very much so that reforms are in order. We believe many reforms in fact are now being taken.

PAULA SCHROEDER: The United States relation with the United Nations is strained right now. It was the only country to veto the re-election of Boutros Boutros-Ghali as Secretary General of the United Nations, and a lot of people, I think, don't really understand why, what is the objection to Boutros-Ghali?

ALVIN ADAMS: Well, it's a very good question. And now that I'm no longer an ambassador in the employ of the United states, I don't have to always support what the administration says, and in this case, I do not. Why?

The stated reason as put forward by the administration is that Boutros Boutros-Ghali has not been moving fast enough in the area of reform. I think if you look at the reforms that are now in train, the argument is a little pale. No doubt the situation is not perfect, but I'm not sure if it's fair to say that he's done nothing.

On the other hand, one can't forget the political context, the timing of that decision. We went several miles out of our way to announce in July, well in advance of the voting, which just now begins, that we would not be supporting Boutros Boutros-Ghali. One then, therefore, could conclude plausibly that the position enunciated by the administration had something to do with the timing of the election.

My role is not to point fingers at anybody. The important thing is that we get the difficulties behind us, that we restore and polish our relations with the UN, and that we resume rightfully a place of leadership there, which has been under great strain due not only to our veto of Boutros Boutros-Ghali but also our nonpayment of our-- or the accumulation of a very significant debt to the United Nations.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Yes. What specific kinds of reforms is the United States calling for? I think that we keep hearing that word thrown around that the UN has to be reformed but in what regard? What is the United States problem with the UN?

ALVIN ADAMS: Well, that's a very good question, particularly when you look at what they're already doing. And there's been 11% reduction in staff, if I heard it right, over the past year. There's a zero, absolute zero growth in budgets, not in real terms, in absolute terms. That budget is about $1.2 billion per year, which I think is what? 1/4 of what the budget is for the police department in New York City. It's a very, very modest thing.

I think we have now a very vigorous American Under Secretary of the United Nations for Administration Finance, Mr. Connor, who came out of a major US accounting firm. We have a number of other things going on such as the establishment of an Inspector General, which is a vigorous addition to the UN who has entree into all areas of the operation there.

And his mission is just like the mission is of an American Inspector General in the state department, for example, the Defense Department to go after, like, mean as a junkyard dog waste management and fraud. He saved $10, $12 million. Mind you that's not a heck of a lot, but I think if you set that figure beside what American Inspector Generals save the taxpayers in their own operations is probably not all that much different.

So the fact that you have an Inspector General, you have a straight line on the budget, you have reductions in staff, you have a Good American CEO Under Secretary, those are all things that cause us to give us a sense of confidence and the American people that things are beginning to change there.

It's not easy. It's a large organization. 50,000 people work throughout the system. About 5,000 work in New York. It's a bit like turning around a great floating object in the water. But our chances of doing that with speed and with wisdom are enhanced if we pay those dues, and we have the credibility attached to the arguments we make.

We don't pay our dues, other people say, well, hmm, they got away with it. Why not delay our own? And other people say, well, put your money where your mouth is. You want a reform, you put your money in the UN. So I think there's a wealth. There is a world, a universe of misunderstanding about what the United States is doing with respect to the UN.

PAULA SCHROEDER: So the reforms that are being called for are more or less bureaucratic reforms, budgetary kinds of reforms, not so much what is the role of the United Nations in the world?

ALVIN ADAMS: I don't think so, no. But you have the charter. The charter is basic and accepted by all the members. I don't think there's a major debate over the role. There are debates over specifics like peacekeeping. But I think it's mostly about the detail, the application. The devil is always the detail.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Yeah. Well, the reason I ask that is because, as you well know, there is a cadre of people in this country who think that the United Nations is a form of world government, that it is destroying American sovereignty by America being involved in the United Nations at all. What's your response to them?

ALVIN ADAMS: Well, my polite response is baloney. I think the United Nations exists as a community of nations. The emphasis is on nations. Nothing the United Nations does is not approved by nations. There's not a penny of the UN budget that's not approved by the United States.

The work of the United nations like the work of any community organization helps every member of that community to deal with problems that they themselves can't handle on their own. So, in one sense, the United Nations exists to help sustain sovereign states, help sovereign states with dealing with problems that affect their own citizens.

So I think it is a bum rap to say that the United Nations is some sort of super sovereign state. It acts very frequently by consensus. There are some matters in which the permanent five of the Security Council have vetoes. We are one of those. We are even doubly protected from any kind of intrusion on the part of the United Nations on the United States.

I simply can't understand where this myth arose, but there are some people who do believe it. There is no UN standing army. There is no capacity of the United nations by its own fiat and order to intervene in situations anywhere in the world. And certainly nothing happens there without our agreement.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Ambassador Alvin Adams is President of the United Nations Association of the United States. We're focusing on the relationship between the United States and the United Nations in this hour of Midmorning. I'm Paula Schroeder. It's 17 minutes before 11:00. o'clock.

The participation of US troops in UN peacekeeping forces is relatively recent and still makes many Americans uncomfortable. In his position as vice chairman of the United Nations Association, Michael Sonnenfeldt has visited most of the peacekeeping installations around the world.

MICHAEL SONNENFELDT: There are peacekeeping installations all around the world, 17 or 18 right now. When the Cold War ended, there was a growth in the peacekeeping industry because although nuclear or global conflicts seemed to go away in people's minds, regional conflicts grew rapidly. And there was a question of what the role of the United Nations would be.

During the Cold War, the only type of peacekeeping work was where both the United States and Russia would agree that the UN had to be invited in, so they had to be ready to have peacekeeping. After the Cold War, there was a whole new range of peacekeeping, peacemaking, peace enforcement. And so we created the first global citizens inspection team for peacekeeping forces.

And our team has been to Cambodia, Syria, Cyprus, El Salvador, Mozambique, Western Sahara, Somalia, South Africa, the Golan Heights in Israel, Sarajevo, Macedonia. et cetera. And we've been to all of these to try and understand, as the pendulum swung from one side of inactivity to the other side of over activity, where the balance would be and where the role could play.

Obviously, Somalia, for those who remember, the problems that we encountered was what I would call a bum rap for the United Nations, and I'd be happy to go into detail about that. But clearly, what most people know are the failures of peacekeeping, not the successes. That nobody looks at the fact that Cambodia is now basically back on the path to development and democracy, or Namibia and areas of other parts of Africa as well. So it's an interesting process.

PAULA SCHROEDER: The situation in Somalia, certainly, was not a good one for United States troops who were involved in that United Nations peacekeeping force. But when you say the United Nations got a bum rap, is it because of blame that was associated with the UN for the deaths of the 18 soldiers?

ALVIN ADAMS: It is people. People forget that the original mission was a humanitarian mission to distribute food to a population that was in crisis. What happened was that people are particularly concerned about what's called the chain of command when American troops go in.

Keep in mind that before the end of the Cold War, no American troops had ever participated in a peacekeeping mission because the philosophy was no Russians-- no then Soviet troops, no American troops because people didn't even want the possibility of a Russian or Soviet soldier being killed in an accident where an American soldier was nearby or vice versa.

But in Somalia what happened was that there were Army Rangers that were outside of the UN command, that were under the direct command of the US chain of command, and they unilaterally, without UN approval took on an action which resulted in the very unfortunate deaths of 18 Rangers. And at the time, Congress and the public media staged this as an action of the United Nations.

It was only subsequently that the president owned up because initially, it was easy to blame the United Nations. But months and years later, it's now become quite clear that the entire incident was completely outside of the UN control. It was completely unilaterally done by US command. And that doesn't justify it or not, it just says that it shouldn't be used as the example on which to disprove the validity of peacekeeping and the good things that it's done around the world.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, no doubt because of the history of the lack of participation in peacekeeping forces during the Cold War, many Americans still have a difficult time with US troops being involved in these kinds of peacekeeping forces. President Clinton recently announced that US troops will stay in Bosnia as part of the UN peacekeeping team there.

ALVIN ADAMS: Right. I think this is a very complicated problem. One example, I think, which Americans should be particularly proud is our team visited the Macedonian border, and on the Macedonian border between Serbia and Macedonia is the first preventative deployment of troops. There was no conflict. But by having troops deployed along the border that had international presence, it was believed that this was stopping a potential invasion.

This was a good use for American troops. We had 300 of our servicemen there. It is true that because of the unique role of America it is different when one of our servicemen is wearing an American flag on their uniform do they become an unnecessary target in a conflict do people use that to a different degree.

But we should distinguish between the role of UN peacekeeping and the unique circumstances of whether we should have American soldiers participating in those activities, one, I believe, is subject to a very different debate than the other.

PAULA SCHROEDER: As part of your missions to these various locations, I would imagine you speak to some of the soldiers--

ALVIN ADAMS: Absolutely.

PAULA SCHROEDER: --who were involved in those peacekeeping forces, particularly in Bosnia. What did they tell you about how they feel about being there?

ALVIN ADAMS: Well, I would like to distinguish two types of reactions that we've gotten. The one reaction is that almost universally in the better missions when we meet soldiers who are involved in peacekeeping, it is a matter of quite extraordinary pride that they are allowed as soldiers not simply to be fighting men and women, if you will, but to be part of the rebirth of nations, and the rebirth of economies, and people coming together after a conflict.

And that was surprising to me because I had a stereotype of what a service-- what an Army or Air Force guy or gal would be about. And it was a matter of great pride to think that the United States as an example in Cambodia, the first time in the rural areas of Cambodia, we found local teams out in the field. In that case, it was Russian and Americans working together to help the local people guard against incursions from the Khmer Rouge.

And there was a matter of extraordinary pride that we were at a point in time where Americans were working with Russians to try and stabilize the local community. But I think the more important thing is the UN is not a perfect institution, and there are limits to which peacekeeping can work. And like any tool, if I can say it that way, misapplied can create a problem.

And in the case of Bosnia, the original problem with Bosnia is there were so many conflicting resolutions, that we were subjecting the military personnel to risks that were perhaps quite inappropriate. I think that's the nature of the evolution of these things. Those mistakes gave rise to increasing the military competence of the peacekeeping department in the United Nations.

We now have American and other foreign senior military types acting as advisors so that they can grow up and know what it means. And that is why today there's fewer peacekeepers but arguably better organized with missions that are more structured and able to succeed than there have been in the past. We've gone from a period of inactivity to overactivity, and now we're somewhere in the balance.

PAULA SCHROEDER: OK. Do the US troops that take part in these UN peacekeeping forces take orders from US commanders, or how does that upper echelon of command work?

ALVIN ADAMS: Well, you have to distinguish in the chain of command, but they are under the ultimate command of the president as commander in chief, and nothing ever changes that. That's an important distinction. And a lot of people talk about this issue as if there's something unique.

We have our troops in NATO working in a similar fashion, and people remember the very successful Gulf War where we had American units that were commanded also by our allies as well. But the direct chain of command still rests, ultimately, with the President of the United States.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Michael Sonnenfeldt is vice chairman of the United Nations Association and runs a foundation that serves as a conduit between Congress and the Secretariat of the UN. It's 7 and a 1/2 minutes before 11:00 o'clock.

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GARY EICHTEN: Gordon Parks has been busy these last 84 years. After growing up here in Minnesota, he's been traveling the world, telling stories, and making art. On Midday, he'll reflect on that life. Gary Eichten here inviting you to join us. Photographer, author, composer, filmmaker, director, poet, artist, Gordon Parks spoke recently at the Westminster Town Hall Forum, and you can hear him coming up on Midday. Midday begins with the news each weekday morning at 11:00 on Minnesota Public Radio, KNOW-FM, 91.1 in the Twin Cities.

PAULA SCHROEDER: During the 11 o'clock hour of Midday, Gary Eichten will be talking to Norwest Bank's economist Larry Wipf about economic forecasts today, indicating that we're in for the longest run of steady economic growth since the Vietnam War. So that's some good news.

Maybe some not so good news is how cold it is across the state of Minnesota today with temperatures ranging from 11 below 0 in Thief River Falls and Fargo-Moorhead to about 7 above in Saint Cloud today. The overnight lowest temperature reported was 12 below 0 at Embarrass, of course, apparently not a record for this 25th day of November. It's 6 minutes before 11:00. Here's Garrison Keillor in the Writer's Almanac.

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GARRISON KEILLOR: And here is the Writer's Almanac for Monday. It's the 25th of November, 1996. It's Saint Catherine's Day. It's the day of the big onion market in Berne, Switzerland, when piles of onions are put in front of the federal palace.

It's the birthday of the English playwright Shelagh Delaney, 1939, who wrote "A Taste of Honey." Novelist Ella Leffland, born in Martinez, California, 1931. It's the birthday of Joseph Paul DiMaggio , the Yankee Clipper Joe DiMaggio born in Martinez, California, in 1914. In his book, The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway has his old fisherman say, I must have confidence, and I must be worthy of the great DiMaggio who does all things perfectly, even with the pain of the bone spur in his heel.

It's the birthday of physician and author Lewis Thomas, Flushing, New York, 1913. He began writing a column for The New England Journal of Medicine in 1971 called "Notes of a Biology Watcher" collected a few years later in The Lives of a Cell. It won the National Book Award.

It's the birthday of choreographer and composer Alwin Nikolais 1910, Southington, Connecticut. Composer Virgil Thomson in Kansas city, 1896. He collaborated with Gertrude Stein on two operas, Four Saints and Three Acts," and the "Mother of us All."

It's the birthday of novelist Helen Hooven Santmyer in Cincinnati, 1895. She had a bestseller when she was 86 years old-- And Ladies of the Club. Naturalist and writer Joseph Wood Krutch born in Knoxville, Tennessee on this day, 1893.

It's the birthday in 1890 in Bristol, England, poet Isaac Rosenberg. The writer and editor Leonard Woolf, born in London on this day in 1880. A key figure in the Bloomsbury Circle of Intellectuals, which included his wife, the novelist Virginia Woolf.

It's the birthday of temperance crusader Carry Nation. Carrie Amelia Moore Nation born in Garrard County, Kentucky, 1846. She went around the bar rooms of Kansas shouting passages from the Bible and smashing up the saloons with her hatchet. This made her a celebrity of her day, and she cashed in on it, touring on the nation's lecture circuit, selling her autobiography, and selling miniature hatchets engraved with her name. She, towards the end of her life, became a sideshow attraction at Coney Island.

It's the birthday in 1835, in Dunfermline, Scotland, of the American industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. And it's the birthday in 1787, in Unterweizburg, Austria, of composer Franz Gruber, who as an organist in a little church in Oberndorf, wrote the music for the famous song Stille Nacht, Silent Night.

Here's a poem for today by William Stafford entitled "Learning to Adjust." "At the store they gave me the wrong package, but I took it home and decided to live with it. Why complain? Why upset the clerk or the manager? Besides, this package might be more than I deserve. Look, it has a whole tangle of ribbons around it and many greetings and slogans, be happy, return to sender. Who is [? Chertsey ?] MacDonald? For you, pighead.

Your life already has enough puzzles, and returning anything just complicates the plot. A gift is a gift, just what you always wanted. A poem entitled "Learning to Adjust," by William Stafford from his collection, "Even in Quiet Places," published by Confluence Press and used by permission here on the Writer's Almanac for Monday, November 25th, made possible by Cole's History Group, publishers of Early American Homes and other magazines. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

PAULA SCHROEDER: That's Midmorning for today. We hope you can join us tomorrow when we talk with the founder of the Geek Squad. He'll tell you how to take care of your computers. I'm Paula Schroeder. Thanks for joining us today.

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JOHN GORDON: A fast new way to surf the internet. I'm John Gordon, and on the next Future Tense, new modem technology from a Saint Paul-based company. Future Tense in one half hour on Minnesota Public Radio. KNOW-FM, 91.1.

PAULA SCHROEDER: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. It's 6 degrees at KNOW-FM, 91.1, Minneapolis, Saint Paul. In the Twin Cities, we're expecting a high today between 15 and 20 degrees. Look for an overnight low around 4 below 0. And then tomorrow, partly cloudy, the high once again, 15 to 20 degrees. High in the 30s on Thanksgiving day.

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SPEAKER 1: Good morning.