Read This Book!

By Hannah O’Neill & Carissa Hansen

Welcome back to U of M Radio on Your Historic Dial!

In addition to our day to day work, there are always a number of fascinating projects underway in the University of Minnesota Libraries Archives and Special Collections. One of them, formally known as  “Preservation of Minnesota’s Radio History,” is the Radio KUOM project that produces this podcast. In this program, we will hear about another project based in the University’s Upper Midwest Literary Archives, with a focus on the poet Margaret Hasse.

You can listen to the episode here in the browser and read the script below.

Episode 12: Of Poets and Podcasts

Hello! This is Hannah over in University Archives, and this U of M Radio on Your Historic Dial, Episode 12: Of Poets and Podcasts. You’ve likely noticed the outro that accompanies the end of each podcast episode, which states that funding for this project comes from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund administered by the Minnesota Historical Society. This grant has enabled numerous projects here at University Archives and within the University of Minnesota Libraries Archives and Special Collections, as well as at other Minnesota cultural institutions.

While there is always regular staff to carry out day to day operations related to the collection, maintenance, and promotion of our materials, grant funded projects allow us to focus on one collection or area in particular, singling it out for detailed processing and description, as well as unique promotional activities such as this podcast. The project featured in this episode focuses on Minnesota’s literary heritage, embodied in the personal collections of poets Robert Bly, Bill Holm, and Margaret Hasse, as well as the papers of Milkweed Editions. Now I’m going to pass the mic to the project manager, Carissa Hansen.

Hi, this is Carissa from the Upper Midwest Literary Archives. Thanks to Hannah for inviting me to join her for this podcast! Margaret Hasse is one of three Minnesota poets’ collections I am working with as part of a grant project titled “Prairie Poets and Press: Literary Lives of the Upper Midwest.”

Margaret Hasse was born in Aberdeen, South Dakota in 1950, and has spent much of her adult life in Minneapolis. She’s well-known for being a poet, but Hasse is also a teacher, arts administrator, and arts consultant.

This installment of the KUOM program Minnesota Issues features Hasse in her role as Executive Director for the Minnesota Alliance for Arts in Education. The year was 1984 and plans were underway for the establishment of an arts high school in Minnesota. Governor Rudy Perpich had implemented a task force to conduct a feasibility study for the establishment of the school.

Can you guess what school this would become? That’s right, Minnesota was already laying the groundwork for the Perpich Center for Arts Education that operates today in Golden Valley. Not everyone was in favor of establishing a school that would centralize funding for arts education in the state. Margaret Hasse and the Minnesota Alliance for Arts in Education had concerns about the establishment of the school.

There was a great need for more arts education of all kinds in schools across the state of Minnesota. The establishment of an arts high school was certainly an exciting proposition, and one that would represent a commitment to the arts and youth in the state, but the question of proper disbursement of funding remained. Should the state’s resources be focused on one school, or should they be spread out, encompassing more grade levels and areas of Minnesota? And would the school’s mission overlap with the arts magnet schools in St. Paul and Minneapolis?

The new school was to operate with an independent board and an independent school district. The task force estimated that operating the school would cost between 5 and 10 million dollars per year,

Nordic cookbooks was the subject of this installment of Read This Book! from the University of Minnesota Libraries, hosted by Lisa Von Drasek and featuring Megan Kocher.

By Hannah O'Neill

Welcome back to U of M Radio on Your Historic Dial!

One of the best things about researching and writing the U of M Radio on Your Historic Dial podcast is discovering anew the fragments of history that have made Minnesota what it is today. We’ve delved into science, education, and the performing arts, among other topics, and have strived to focus on Minnesotan experiences and perspectives. Today you’re going to hear about an explosive week on the University of Minnesota campus, occurring during an era of global tension, when the political felt intensely personal, especially to students and other young people.

You can listen to the episode here in the browser and read the script below.

Episode 11: Eight Days in May

Hello, this is Hannah over at University Archives, and this is episode 11 of the U of M Radio on Your Historic Dial podcast, “Eight Days in May.” Forty-five years ago this month, anti-war protests in and around the University of Minnesota boiled over as angry demonstrators and police clashed in the streets.

The audio we are going to hear on this program appeared on The Hour, a weekly program written and produced by students. This episode of The Hour aired directly after a week of protests on the U of M campus in the wake of President Nixon’s announcement on May 8th, 1972 that the United States would mine North Vietnamese ports, further escalating the conflict in Vietnam.

At first, those angered by President Nixon’s statement looked to Governor Wendell Andersen to enact measures in protest of the war’s escalation. Andersen did not do so, but was sympathetic, saying that the president’s decision was “some of the saddest news we’ve had in our lifetimes”. The first major protest began at a new housing development in Cedar-Riverside on May 9th. Two groups of demonstrators, one protesting the gentrification of the area as evidenced by the new high-rise, and the other an anti-war group, converged into a crowd of thousands. Some property damage occurred and several arrests, but this was only a prelude to the violence that would ensue the next day.

On Wednesday, the protests moved to Dinkytown, many heading to the armory, in protest of the ROTC having a presence on campus. Listeners can hear protesters chanting “USA out of Asia, Air Force out of Dinkytown” and “1-2-3-4 Vietnam’s a bosses war/ 5-6-7-8 nothing to negotiate”.

Police wearing gas masks walk through campus, attempting to disperse the crowds. University of Minnesota Archives Photograph Collection. Available at http://purl.umn.edu/71641

In what is the most unnerving segment of the broadcast, the host of the program and reporter on the ground, Larry Davenport, who graduated from the School of Journalism and Mass Communications in 1973, witnesses the tense standoff between the police and the demonstrators, giving a minute-by-minute report of the escalation of violence between the two sides. Davenport starts out near the armory, where demonstrators have constructed a barricade. The police arrive, and it soon becomes apparent that they intend to use tear gas to clear the area. The demonstrators are either resisting, throwing eggs and other small projectiles, or they are attending to wounded students. As he is running from the tear gas, Davenport reports that some protesters are throwing the gas canisters back at the police. At one point, listeners can hear Davenport coughing from gas inhalation.

By midnight, the barricade still stood, and protesters and police had come to a standstill. In considerably more peaceful surroundings,

In this episode of U of M Radio On Your Historic Dial, you’re going to hear about an explosive week on the University of Minnesota campus, which occurred during an era of global tension, when the political felt intensely personal, especially to students and other young people. Forty-five years ago this month, anti-war protests in and around the University of Minnesota boiled over as angry demonstrators and police clashed in the streets.

By Hannah O'Neill

Welcome back to U of M Radio on Your Historic Dial!

May 7 marked the anniversary of the Guthrie Theater’s first ever performance in 1963, a production of Hamlet starring George Grizzard and Jessica Tandy.

Founder, Sir Tyrone Guthrie, was one of the most acclaimed theatrical directors of his time. Over breakfast, in March 1959, he and two colleagues, producer Oliver Rea and stage manager Peter Zeisler, resolved that they would create a new theater far from the exhausting commercial demands of Broadway. They knew that in order to make their vision have national relevance, and in the process alter the character of American theater, they had to be as far from New York City, both geographically and mentally, as they could get.

After determining that a Midwestern city would be ideal, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis were the decided frontrunners. In May 1960 Minneapolis was announced as the chosen home for their project, due in part to the enthusiastic cooperation of the University of Minnesota’s theater department. The decision was commemorated by a telegram that succinctly states, “Min definite”.

In today’s episode, we’ll hear Sir Tyrone Guthrie explain his vision of the future of American theater in his own words, followed by interviews with the Guthrie staff from ten years later.

You can listen to the episode here in the browser and read the script below.

Episode 10: An Englishman in Minneapolis

Hello! This is Hannah over in University Archives, and this U of M Radio on Your Historic Dial, episode 10: An Englishman in Minneapolis.

Tyrone Guthrie stands in the Guthrie Theater auditorium while it is mid-construction. Photographer unidentified. Image courtesy of the Guthrie Theater Records, Performing Arts Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries.

If you have ever been to a play at the Tyrone Guthrie Theater, these trumpets are a familiar herald, as they signal the beginning of a performance at the 54-year-old Minneapolis institution. Conceived in 1959 by acclaimed British director Sir Tyrone Guthrie along with his colleagues Peter Zeisler and Oliver Rea, the Guthrie Theater was intended to address what its founders viewed as the creative stagnation they saw in New York City theater. Writers, actors, and designers flocked to Broadway, leading to a surplus of professionals in one place, and a shortage everywhere else in the country. Guthrie wanted to establish a theater somewhere it would have a chance to thrive, introducing audiences to the great dramatic classics he felt they had been deprived of for so long.

Guthrie viewed the United States as too young to have produced any “classics.” He anticipated an audience unused to professional theatre and the classics, essentially, a clean slate. He wanted to create an intellectually demanding audience by not serving them mass-derived “pap,” and teach people to cultivate good taste.

When building the theater that would bear his name, Guthrie insisted that it be a repertory theater, meaning the same actors would perform in different plays each season. In addition to building a strong ensemble who would carry the productions, he believed that repertory was better for the individual actors, as they would avoid being typecast. He also avoided casting the occasional big name, saying in the New York Times, “One of the most boring things about Broadway is knowing from the moment you read a name on the program precisely the performance you may expect."

Now we’ll jump forward 10 years to 1973, when KUOM produced Guthrie Greenroom, a program that gave listeners a thorough look behind the scenes through interviews with different members of...

May 7 marked the anniversary of the Guthrie Theater’s first ever performance in 1963, a production of Hamlet starring George Grizzard and Jessica Tandy. In this episode of "U of M Radio On Your Historic Dial," we’ll hear Sir Tyrone Guthrie explain his vision of the future of American theater in his own words, followed by interviews with the Guthrie staff from ten years later.

Alan Page has had an extraordinary career trajectory. Discover his motivations and passions in this conversation with Gary Eichten, known and revered for his many years as an MPR host and news editor.

The discussion took place May 9, 2017 at the University of Minnesota's McNamara Alumni Center as part of the Friends of the University of Minnesota Libraries annual celebration.

Books about journalism, media bias, and fact checking were reviewed in this episode of Read This Book! from the University of Minnesota Libraries, with hose Lisa Von Drasek and librarian Van Houlson.

Books discussed

* Getting It Wrong by W. Joseph Campbell

* From University of Minnesota Libraries

* From Hennepin County Library

* Skewed by Larry Atkins

* From University of Minnesota Libraries

* From Hennepin County Library

* Deciding What's True by Lucas Graves

* From University of Minnesota Libraries

About Lisa Von Drasek and Van Houlson

Lisa Von Drasek is the Curator of the Children’s Literature Research Collections at the University of Minnesota Libraries. Van Houlson is the Journalism and Communication Studies Librarian at the University of Minnesota Libraries. 

About Read This Book!

Read This Book! is a video podcast produced by the University of Minnesota Libraries. It is available on YouTube and iTunes.

By Hannah O'Neill

Welcome back to U of M Radio on Your Historic Dial! Science is at the forefront of our program for this podcast. We interact with scientific innovation every day, and the term STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) is likely one you’ve been hearing for a while. In the late 1980s, there was a growing consensus that within 20 years, we would see a dearth of graduates in science-based fields, an issue that spurred the creation of today’s featured program, Science Lives: Women and Minorities in the Sciences.

You can listen to the episode here in the browser and read the script below.

Episode 09: Science Lives

Hello! This is Hannah at University Archives. In this episode, I wanted to highlight one of the KUOM collection’s most contemporary programs, Science Lives: Women and Minorities in the Sciences.

In the late 1980s, research pointed towards a significant drop in students seeking Bachelor’s degrees in the sciences, with one estimate stating that by the year 2000, the United States would be facing a shortage of 430,000 degreed students in those fields.

In 1989, spurred on by faculty in the University of Minnesota College of Biological Sciences and Institute of Technology, KUOM Program Developer Marion Watson wrote an extensive grant seeking funding for a program that would address this deficit of scientists, and offer a solution: specifically appeal to and aid minorities and women in the sciences, who had historically been underrepresented. The grant states, "If changes do not occur and the nation experiences a significant drop in its pool of scientists, then not only will the fields of science be adversely affected, but so will the myriad issues before the nation -- AIDS, energy, national security...which have a scientific base." This point is expanded on in the first episode of Science Lives.

Brochure advertising Science Lives: Women and Minorities in the Sciences, encouraging schools to order the cassette package, undated.

Brochure advertising Science Lives: Women and Minorities in the Sciences, detailing the contents of each program, undated.

It was clear that educational institutions needed to reach a more diverse base of students in their earliest years. Science education was not yet given the spotlight it has today, and, as you will hear, some educators failed to spark any curiosity towards science, or they underestimated their students. The interviewees in the first episode explain from their own experiences how early education has a huge impact on future scientists, and how a student’s individual circumstances affect the kind of education they receive. In the following clips, one interviewee explains the challenges facing the children of migrant families, and how his perception of himself as a scientist changed once he gained access to a laboratory.

Dwight Gourneau, an IBM engineer who grew up on a Chippewa reservation in North Dakota explains that despite the lack of encouragement Native American students can receive, he relied on his heritage of scientific achievements to drive himself forward.

One of the main goals of Science Lives was to provide nascent scientists still in the early stages of schooling with role models, who could both provide a successful example and take on the hard work of blazing a trail for future generations.The women interviewed next point out that while it is crucial to be competitive and ambitious in one’s work, female and minority students are often tasked with proving themselves to a greater degree than their counterpa...