May 30, 2002 - New York City marked the end of the clean-up of the World Trade Center site this morning, with a service that paid tribute the the victims of the 9-11 attack. The day was also a chance for the workers and volunteers at the site to say their goodbyes. Lisa Poseley has volunteered at a ground zero canteen nearly every day since September 11th. She grew up in Minnesota but has lived and worked in New York for the last four years. She was at her apartment just 12 blocks north of the World Trade Center on the morning of the attacks. We spoke with Lisa about her experience volunteering at ground zero in early January. Today, we caught up with her on her cell phone from the site. She says the ceremony this morning was bittersweet:
May 30, 2002 - After the attacks on September 11th, the Minnesota Department of Trade amd Economic Development applied for special federal funds to help airline workers who lost their jobs as a result of the tragedy. The U-S Department of Labor responded with an eight (M)million dollar grant. But since that money became available, only two-thousand dislocated airline workers have applied for the money, about one-fifth of what the department originally anticipated. Last week, the state received permission to re-direct the money to dislocated Fingerhut workers. Trade and Economic Development Commissioner Rebecca Yanisch says her original estimates were based on information available from the airlines at that time:
May 23, 2002 - An All Things Considered/Mainstreet Radio profile of author and poet BIll Holm, his small home town Minneota, and literary history of nearby Marshall. Program includes interview with Holm, various readings performed by MPR staff, and musical elements.
May 23, 2002 - A sprawling prairie restoration project is underway in Minnesota and Iowa. The first remnant is near Luverne, the southwestern Minnesota hometown of photographer Jim Brandenburg. Brandenburg is famous for pictures of wolves and other images published on the pages of National Geographic magazine. As often as he can he returns to Luverne where he has a gallery and a pet project. Brandenburg is working with the federal government to help reclaim the first piece of Northern Tallgrass Prairie Project in an area called the Blue Mounds. Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson reports.
May 13, 2002 - Rich Cohen says he set out to write the 80's suburban epic. What he ended up with was a book called "Lake Effect." It's a memoir of his life growing up in a suburb north of Chicago along Lake Michigan. His high school was the setting for a number of popular teen movies in the those years. But Cohen says nobody has written about his generation from an adult perspective in a way that isn't ironic or embarrassed. Cohen told Minnesota Public Radio's Tom Crann the book centers around his close friendship with a kid called Jamie, who was seen as so cool even teachers wanted to imitate him.
May 8, 2002 - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced today he's terminating the Army's $11 (B) billion dollar Crusader weapon project. The Crusader is a 40-ton, self-propelled, rapid-fire cannon that was to have entered service by 2008. The system was designed in Fridley, where United Defense Industries employs about 18-hundred people - 800 of them on the Crusader project. The Crusader system would have been manufactured in Oklahoma. Democratic Senator Mark Dayton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is in committee meetings today to finalize the defense spending authorization bill for 2003. He says the Rumsfeld's decision contradicts what he, along with the joint chiefs of staff and army commanders, have already told the Armed Services Committee:
May 2, 2002 - All Things Considered’s Lorna Benson talks with Midori Gotō, one of the world's most accomplished violinists. She says she is looking forward to performing Barber's violin concerto with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.
April 29, 2002 - 100 years ago, scientists captured the last live sample of a Rocky Mountain locust. Huge swarms of the insects devastated farms in Minnesota and much of the western half of the country throughout the 1800's. They ate everything in their path- from wheat fields and apple trees to fence posts and even laundry hanging out to dry. In 1875, a swarm 1,800 miles long and 110 miles wide moved across the country - the largest ever recorded. But the species vanished just a few decades later. Wyoming University entomologist Jeff Lockwood says the Rocky Mountain locust is the only pest species humans have driven to extinction:
April 26, 2002 - The Minneapolis based Loft Literary Center announced today its launching a new bi-monthly national magazine. Speakeasy, will publish literary commentary, book reviews and original fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Loft Literary director Bart Schneider says it doesn't bother him that there are plenty of literary magazines already being published in the Twin Cities.
April 26, 2002 - April's ever-changing weather resembles anything but a BROKEN record. Records, however, have been broken this month at both ends of the thermometer. On April 15th, Waseca hit a record high of 93 degrees -- four degrees warmer than it was in Winona on the same day 48 years ago. This morning, we went the opposite direction when the thermometer in Embarrass, Minnesota registered eight degrees -- a new all time low for today's date. Meteorologist Bruce Watson says it's all a matter of which way the wind is blowing: