Speaker 0 00:00:00 <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:02:00 You're listening to right on radio on cafe 90.3 FM and streaming live on the web at <inaudible> dot org on Josh Webber. And I'm Liz hulls tonight on right on radio. Dave will talk with Tom Weber, the author of Minneapolis and urban biography. Tom is an award winning writer, journalists and radio hosts, including a long time stiff on Minnesota public radio, where he hosted a public policy related program. He also the author of a hundred things to do in the twin cities before you die. And I'm Annie Harvey in the second part of our show. We're the hosts. We'll be talking about our experiences, working with cafe and asking for your support to keep the station going all of this and more. So stay tuned to write on radio.
Speaker 0 00:02:56 Hello, Dave, are you there, Josh?
Speaker 2 00:03:00 You are on the air. Josh. Thanks everyone. Hello, Tom. Hi, Dave, how are ya? Welcome to right on radio on KPI. We're thrilled to have you here tonight. It is pledge week. Very exciting. It's got to get your blood going a little bit. I would imagine old memories come back, right? So, uh, let's get started. We're really here to talk with you about your book, Minneapolis, urban biographies, and give us a little reading here to get started. I'll read from the very start of the book. Actually it starts off like this, that euphoria was still there on Friday, October 30th, 1987, five days earlier, the Minnesota twins had won baseball's world series a massive parade. The biggest sense of ticker tape parade for president Harry Truman in 1948, drew 200,000 Minneapolis. Then another 200,000 when it moved to st. Paul many fans and players waved their Homer hankies, which had debuted during the playoffs and were already becoming iconic memorabilia.
Speaker 2 00:04:00 After the dynastic, Minneapolis Lakers basketball teams affected to Los Angeles in 1960, the arrival in 1960, one of both baseball's twins and football's Vikings kept valid and even boosted. The region's claim is a big league market for professional sports. Hockey is North stars arrived in 1967, but unlike the Lakers of your, none of these teams had won a championship until now. But on that Friday morning, a very small group of people in the state were turning their focus away from the twins. They were thinking about a vigil that would happen that evening and a ceremony. The next morning, 125 years in the making in the winter of 1862, 63, about 1600 Dakota women, children and elders were held at a concentration camp near Fort Snelling to await expulsion. After the six week us Dakota war, hundreds of them died there mostly from measles and other diseases.
Speaker 2 00:04:59 The camp stood steps from the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers, which is a sacred place of creation for many of the Dakota who call it <inaudible>. These Dakota were imprisoned within sight of what they consider the center of the earth and of all things, their most revered spot on the planet. One of the, one of chris' Cavender's ancestors has a win or blueberry woman had been a prisoner. He spoke at the events, held on the same floodplain where the camp one stood a wooded area next to a parking lot in what was now a state park. As elders spoke the Fort move to top the nearby Ridge and planes passed overhead heading to and from the nearby international airport. The names of those held the camp were read aloud. Drummers closed with honor songs. The event was not universally heralded among Dakota people, unless there were reparations. What's the point as one descendant of the law of the leader, little Crow who did not attend, but for those who did it wasn't him. It was important. The state was acknowledging that this had happened tangible evidence Cavender said at the time that the Dakota were people, that they were human beings with feelings and dignity during the same week in October, 1987, two locations, fewer than 10 miles apart had hosted one of the area's brightest and most unifying events while also marking one of its darkest chapters.
Speaker 3 00:06:22 Thank you, Tom. That's Tom Weber, reading from his new book, Minneapolis and urban biography. That's a great place to start. And I would let the readers know that the book is full of, uh, great storytelling, anecdotes, uh, like that. Uh, so let's start there at the beginning. So I happen to live in downtown Minneapolis, Tom, which means I'm near st. Anthony falls. And I think if most people hear those words, if they think of anything, they think birthplace of Minneapolis, but it's much more than that. And you touched on that in your reading. So, uh, give us a little bit of the history and the context for this marvelous thing. They enjoy st. Anthony.
Speaker 2 00:06:58 Well, the falls are the reason for Minneapolis. That is, that is an accurate statement. There's, you know, once it's time for the, uh, the white people to come in, once it's time for the Europeans to come in and start finding places to colonize, there's very little reason to put a city where Minneapolis is today. If you don't have those falls, it's the only waterfall on the entire Mississippi river. Think of that from here down to new Orleans, there's only one waterfall in the entire river and the water gushing over the falls like that produces immense power, which, you know, people with thoughts of, uh, of starting businesses in their brains knew that that water could power mills. And it started with powering, um, timber mills, and then later flour mills. But the falls were also in and of themselves, very sacred places for the people who lived here, the indigenous people who lived here before there was a Minneapolis, um, that said, I would actually argue that the birthplace of Minneapolis could also center very easily around the Dota because it was such a sacred place.
Speaker 2 00:08:11 You know, the reason that white people came to colonize in this area was because of the river. And you had this great means to transport goods. Well, the same was actually quite true for the indigenous people. This was, you know, it's not a term that they would have used at the time, but this was, this was kind of a highway of its own for indigenous people. There was trading going up and down the river among, uh, different, uh, you know, indigenous people from, from different nations and the Lake. So this has always been a hub type area. Um, if you think about the power just of the water, and so, uh, really st. Anthony falls, you know, st. Anthony, if you ever walk in st. Anthony, you see signs that say the birthplace of Minnesota, and that's, that's playing with the history a little bit as well, but, um, um, but yeah, I mean, it is, it isn't, it isn't, I guess, would be the way to say it.
Speaker 2 00:09:03 You mentioned the sellers who came in largely at the time 19th century, I believe, uh, mostly what we would call Yankees, or they called Yankees at the time Northeastern then, you know, early States and colonies and that sort of thing, uh, kind of jumping ahead and having an answer, a big thing question you're at this point, what's your sense of how the, the type of settling we got your American suddenly we got here set the stage for what Minnesota became. Yeah, I think it's, I think it was actually quite important. There was a book that came out earlier in the 2010s that really, um, when you talk about when Europeans arrived and started colonizing this land, they really, um, separated themselves in this book. And I don't have a title in front of me, but really argues that it was really 11 different nations, uh, that this country was founded as yes, we were all under the label of the United States of America, but there's really 11 different distinct type of people and nations that were created within what started as the 13 colonies and then became the United States, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2 00:10:13 So we really had, because we had these settlers coming in with these Puritan, you know, Northeast values, you know, a lot of people from Massachusetts in the Northeast and things like that from what became Massachusetts, you really had, um, you know, a stock of people who believed in, you know, good education, right, for example, for their, for their children. And frankly, the idea that it's worth it taxes, right. To pay taxes, to pay for things like libraries as they became and, uh, and schools and things like that. So there really was this, it really was a different stock of people than, for example, who came in colonized Florida, or along the Eastern shore down in what became the Carolinas and things like that. And so it really does, it really does matter that, I mean, first of all, it very much matters who were the indigenous people here for those thousands of years.
Speaker 2 00:11:11 And it really does matter which people among the new Americans, right. With this new country, or what became this new country, which of these people came and settled the area or colonize the area. Really. Yeah. That's probably scribing then moving into the 20th century, of course. And you tell these stories very nicely. We're Northern Europeans and maybe some Eastern Europeans who had different sort of political ideas, then, you know, maybe a more conservative waspy sort of a religion or might have, and we get all kinds of wild up populist political type movements, which leads to all kinds of labor unrest and all kinds of things in Minneapolis becomes this sort of hotbed of progressivism in any
Speaker 3 00:11:54 Other, uh, you know, Islam you can think of for that.
Speaker 2 00:11:56 It really did. And, you know, you cannot really write the labor history of the United States without mentioning Minneapolis. Uh, what ended up happening is it was really interesting because, um, and, and again, these are the, these are points and stories that I have gleaned from many other sources. So I'm not the first person who's written, you know, these stories per se, but, you know, it's actually quite important to know when you, when you think of the time, since the founding, as we know it today of Minneapolis, st. Paul actually existed for about a decade before, uh, Minneapolis st. Paul was first and in the time that st Paul existed, but Minneapolis hadn't yet formally been created. There was a huge economic panic, frankly, something today we would call like another great recession or even a depression. And this panic really wiped out st. Paul. And it was only within the first few years of its existence, but so many other, a huge chunk of their businesses just went under, you know, they even lost some of their population.
Speaker 2 00:13:02 People just said, well, I'm done, I'm done here. I'm out. You know, in Minneapolis, for the most part did not have a lot to lose. Um, there were some losses over at what became the university of Minnesota and other places here in Minneapolis, but really there wasn't as much to lose because it wasn't as big of a, of a community. And so as st. Paul had to rebuild from that, they really, the, you know, as you read in some of these other books too, you really had to just act a little more together. Lee, if that's a word because, um, we were all in this together, et cetera, et cetera. Well, st. Paul also was the head of navigation. So st. Paul was the place where all the, the barges and the boats came up, but really couldn't go any farther. If you go past st.
Speaker 2 00:13:44 Paul towards Minneapolis on the river back then it was really not navigable. It's hard to get boats there. So everything ended at st. Paul. So st. Paul was the places where thus stuff came and was traded and then sent back out Minneapolis because of the falls became the place where stuff was made from whole cloth. It started its own industries. And as that happened, you had these elites from Northeast, from the Northeast who would come in and they were starting these timber industries. And then the flower industries, they became barons. They became really important to markets outside of Minneapolis and Saint Paul and Minnesota. They were national companies at the time, even international, and they just didn't want the unions at all. And so you had, you know, st. Paul at one point was basically a union town. Everybody who lived in, who works in st. Paul was part of the union. Well, at the same time, basically everybody, Minneapolis was not in a union because of all these efforts by the businesses to keep them out. So it's really, it's really an important chapter in all of that.
Speaker 3 00:14:44 Yeah. Yeah. Uh, we were speaking with Tom Weber, author of Minneapolis and urban biography. If we have time, I want to ask you that word biography, because I think it's a curious word. Uh, it's a book that, uh, it's, it's, it's not as long and deep and hard as you might think of a history book can be, uh, again, it's full of great stories and sidebars, and a lot of things that I think people will have kind of thought about it. And I want to jump into a big one, which is, uh, race and, um, how, uh, leaders of Minneapolis treated minorities throughout the years. I think a lot of people plugged into this issue might be thinking of current events. Of course your book was published prior to, uh, the murder of George Floyd and the unrest that followed. But if people didn't realize it before, you know, maybe you have a better idea of it, that Minneapolis has been a hotbed for the KKK, for redlining, for antisemitism, and of course, for, uh, various poor handling and treatment of native Americans. Uh, and you described these stories very well. Um, I, I have so many questions along this line, but how did it happen that the city sort of harbored all these sentiments? Where did it begin and why did it continue for so long and why are we still dealing with,
Speaker 2 00:15:58 Well, you know, I don't want to pretend that what happened in Minneapolis also wasn't in a vacuum, right. You know, we had, we, Minnesota came along right before the start of the civil war, right? So all of the, the debates about slavery were absolutely being had here when Manyette Minnesota was a territory, it was a territory before it was a state. Um, but we were really late. We actually, the first time Minnesota was a state and could vote in presidential elections was 1860 when Abraham Lincoln became president. And then a year later, Oh, Hey, we here's the civil war. And you know, that, I think there was this, this idea that because we were very abolitionist state, we supported Lincoln. We were the first state to send troops to the, to the union. Cause when the civil war started, because we were really on the right side of history in that one question of abolition and frankly, because our territorial government and then our state government did pass progressive civil rights laws that for example, ban discrimination in public accommodations like hotels, you know, black men could vote in Minnesota before they could nationally.
Speaker 2 00:17:16 We actually legalized it here before the, uh, the amendment was passed to make it national. So you're thinking, wow, you know, we're great. We're awesome. And it really covered up the, it really covered up the ability to, um, it made us look like we were doing the right thing and we were, I don't want to be little, the fact that those laws were passed, but at the same time, we also just, weren't living those values day today. And that's how it starts and really the big thing. And, and I really have to give a shout out here is there's a great project that exists called mapping prejudice, which if you just Google, you can find it. And it's really one of the most unique, um, projects for anywhere in the country for Metro areas. And what they're doing is they're going through all of the deeds of property in Hennepin County and seeing if they have this language and I'm called a covenant and around 1910 ish, 1910s private real estate agents started putting this language into the property deeds when they sold the house.
Speaker 2 00:18:15 So David, if you, if you bought a house, you would sign this deed that says, here's your house, et cetera, et cetera. But inside that clause would say, all right, David, when it's time for you to sell your house, you can't sell it to a black person. Or, you know, initially Jews were involved or included. I should say they actually, there was a law passed about religious discrimination there that took them out of there. But a lot of groups of people were kept from buying those houses and that kind of a contract, because it was a private deal between two people was upheld as a legal thing. So it is not at all. It's not at all a mistake. This is, and the thing to remember about covenants is that covenants existed before a red lining really came into what it's known as because red lining really gets its start in the new deal in that time period.
Speaker 2 00:19:05 It was happening before, but it was also happening before in terms of with, with these tools like, like let's define red line. Well, red lining actually has a very specific definition because when the federal government and the new deal. So the, so you have all these foreclosures in the new deal, right? The depression, I'm sorry, the depression happens. We don't want people to lose their houses. So for the first time ever, the federal government says, we're going to actually try to help people own houses, not own them, but by them. And how we're going to do that is that we're going to set up a federal mechanism to ensure the mortgages. So that banks aren't all on the hook when a mortgage is, if it, if it does go belly up, we will federally, um, insure mortgages, but we're going to send out our evaluators and our actuaries and all of our people to go through every plot of land.
Speaker 2 00:19:58 And you know, basically the whole country and map out which parts, which places houses are eligible for these loans. So what they did is when they saw that there was a high concentration of black people already living in the community, they would put a red line on the map around that neighborhood. And that meant that banks couldn't wouldn't, they still technically could have, but they really just would not because they didn't have the federal backing, they would not insure mortgages in those areas of the city, which meant that black families that wanted to buy homes inside those neighborhoods, frankly, where they already lived. In some cases they couldn't get those mortgages, which meant that they had to, there was some other ways of, of quote unquote kind of owning, but really it just became renting. So from the start, when we had this big move by the government to say, let's get people into home ownership.
Speaker 2 00:20:57 What we found is that home ownership then was a great way for a family to build wealth. And from the start from the word go, black people were not allowed frankly, to gather and accumulate that wealth. And that, that exp helps, helps to explain the inequities. You know, it's, it's, it's what Reverend Sharpton said when he was here for the funeral for George Floyd, he said we were perfectly El. He used the imagery, the horrible imagery of George Floyd, having his neck, uh, knelt on by the police officer. He said, that's been happening for generations. We wanted to build wealth. We wanted to own our own homes, but you all had your next, your knees on our necks. And that that's, that's a very important part of the history and mapping prejudice has done a fantastic job to help explain that history here in Minneapolis. So I relied on them a lot in this book,
Speaker 3 00:21:56 When you, you did a nice job, Tom, also making his point about the wealth that's passed down and handed down over generations about noting what a piece of property that an African American family for example, could not purchase or was forced out of what that is worth today. That's right. It's the constant reminder of all the wealth that's been stolen, frankly. So this idea of the importance of place and how it shaped many people's experience in the city, it goes a little further when we talk about urban renewal, Oh, you're going to put in the big highway, who's going to get shafted, right? You're going to put in a, you know, you're going to tear down the old stuff and put in some shiny new stuff or some of the parking lots, you know, you know the story. So tell us about urban renewal, the real bad things that we did and maybe somethings we got, right.
Speaker 2 00:22:43 Well, there's, there's actually two parts. When you talk about the interstates, that's, that's kind of part of urban renewal, but urban renewal had its own separate in the same time period. This is in the fifties and sixties, urban renewal was also an effort to say, we have parts of the cities that we, the white leadership considered bladed and not worth saving, frankly. And they were frankly referred to as ghettos in some cases, uh, in the, in that time. And they said, we're just going to come in and clear them and we're going to build fancy new buildings. And man, we're ready with that. We're going to have a new, uh, clean, you know, great, ready to go city. So that happened actually at the same time. And, and in many ways, one of the ways you did urban renewal was by bringing a highway through.
Speaker 2 00:23:27 So I don't want to say that those two were separate. You know, if you draw, if you draw the line, if you draw a line on a map from Minneapolis to st. Paul, just to just, just draw, just get a red marker out or a black marker, just draw the line, the highway that exists. <inaudible>, wouldn't go there. That's not the route, right? Because you had all of these houses that existed and there's actually, as you come out of Minneapolis and head towards st. Paul, there's actually a little turn that the highway takes around a prospect park, which is a very well to do pretty well to do neighborhood. And very much was so back in the forties and fifties. And we all know the story of Rondo over in st. Paul, which was a predominantly black neighborhood that was cleared out just, just totally raised so that they could build the highway.
Speaker 2 00:24:17 Well, the other end of that highway is here in Minneapolis where prospect parked was saved. You know, you could have easily drawn that line between Minneapolis and st. Paul to run right through prospect park, but guess where the mayor of Minneapolis was from at that time, guess what your neighborhood I'll give you one, right? I think you have a guest. There was also an, you know, there's also a neighborhood when you come South of downtown on 35, w you'll notice, and it's all under construction now, but it, it, there's a, there's a, uh, jut, it, it, you come out of downtown and you jut to the right. And then 35 w from about Lake street, South is just a straight shot all the way down to Richfield. Well, why do you need that kind of jutting over it's cause the neighborhood included there that neighborhood include media arts, Minneapolis Institute of arts, which is a great institution.
Speaker 2 00:25:12 It also included a neighborhood that frankly had a little more political power at the time. And a lot of, um, immigrant communities and black communities didn't have the power. Uh, and so that's, that's where you get that clearing. You also had the gateway district, which was a huge semblance of buildings that, that became, it became a pretty down downtrodden place because Minneapolis also had very arcane liquor laws that only allowed liquor to be sold in certain parts of the city. Like only like, like really like just a handful of parts. And this was one of them. And so what ended up, excuse me, what ended up happening was, excuse me, is that you, you had these places where liquor was sold. Well, the bar owners thought, well, at this point, we might as well pay off the officer's. We may as well pay off the cops and bring in a little illegal gambling and maybe there would be some commercial sex work.
Speaker 2 00:26:03 And back then it was known as prostitution, you know, maybe we'll just do it. And so this became known as kind of seedy area. So they said, let's just get rid of the gateway district. And they did, they flattened it. And they were hundreds of bills. It was the largest clearing of any number. It was the law. There were so many city blocks in Minneapolis, down by the gateway that were clear that no city did more clearing for one urban renewal project than Minneapolis. And a lot of those, what then became parking lots are just flat, lots sat empty. They did not immediately rebuild into something bigger and better or newer or better or whatever the city leaders at the time promised. So that's what happened, uh, you know, with, with all of that. So, so those two things were happening at the same time.
Speaker 3 00:26:49 We got something right along the way in terms of urban renewal or, I mean,
Speaker 2 00:26:55 We've done, we've done a lot of, so we've done, you know, we, we, or back on the river when general mills moved out and Pillsbury hung on for a few more decades. And then there was this point where, you know, you now know that area along the river as, um, you know, redeveloped housing. It is great. It's nice down there. It's great for a walk, but then again, I can't say it was all perfect because there wasn't a ton of affordable housing in that area as well. I think Fujiyama was a great thing that happened. Um, and just the history of Fujiyama is actually quite an interesting story that if the restaurant doesn't exist anymore, down there on the river, but you had this wonderful, you know, immigrant woman who built this restaurant that for the first time in decades finally turned our attention back to the river. We turned our back on the river for so long and Fujiyama comes along and has these grand windows that look out on the river. And she says, we're going to look at the river once again, because you know, she was, this is a, this is a woman who was born in Japan. And she says, in our culture, the water is everything. And frankly, the water is everything here. I don't know why we turned our back on the river here either.
Speaker 3 00:28:06 Right. And you know what that's becoming now that little park is yeah, yeah. Sean Sherman, the native American chef international fantasies that putting a restaurant in there, it's perfect. Closing the loop. If you will, you hinted at something which I didn't mention all these dirty little secrets in Minneapolis, and that is the mob and the mafia and all sorts of bad behavior for a long time. Uh, many people probably don't realize that, but that's a really rich history and a lot of, yeah, a lot of fun. I'll put the funny quotes.
Speaker 2 00:28:34 Well, and John, you know, John Dillinger steals all the attention for st. Paul, right? Everyone who thinks, you know, who, who has read a little bit of history of the twin cities says, well, st. Paul was the gangster city. Cause John Dillinger was there. And that is true. There's no, I'm not saying that's false, but we had some work. We had some organized crime here and Hennepin Avenue had some pretty shady places along what is now the entertainment district as well with some of that as well.
Speaker 3 00:28:58 And the infantry infiltrated local politics too. Right? I mean, it was a long time. City hall was a pretty cool,
Speaker 2 00:29:03 Sure. I mean, doc game's who became the mayor in 1900, just, I mean, literally has had his own book written about him, which I encourage people to go read. He the night he was inaugurated, he fired half the police force, half the police officers so that he could replace them with cronies and with saloon keepers and political allies. And because their job wasn't then public safety. I mean, Hey, we're having a big debate right now about public safety and policing in Minneapolis. And if you get nothing else out of the history it's to know that this is not the first at all chapter, this, and it goes back literally to the turn of the 20th century. When the mayor at the time made the police an extension of the organized crime he was overseeing. So police would actually work with the people who were trying to bring in illegal slot machines and things like that.
Speaker 2 00:29:58 Say, go put it there, we'll turn a blind eye. We'll take the cut. The cut goes all the way up to the mayor's office. Amazing Hubert Humphrey was instrumental in cleaning things up, starting to, I do not want to give the impression that everything was all clean and ready to go when he left office, but he really did come into it. He had built a coalition that included, um, businesses and communities of color. And he had a really unique, uh, political, um, uh, coalition that elected him that actually allowed him to try some of these things. And we actually had, um, you know, we had had these articles, these national articles written about us in the 19 hundreds. For example, we were the shame of the shame of Minneapolis, cause of all the corruption we were the most antisemitic city. We know the antisemitism Capitol of the country, according to another article in the 46.
Speaker 2 00:30:54 So Humphrey comes in and says, Whoa, we, we, you know, for all the good lists we appear on now, like for the good bar scene or the good beer scene and the bikes, you know, bike friendly and great park system. We were on a lot of bad lists early on in our history. We were, we replaced the, got a lot of national press, um, for bad reasons. Yeah. So they let us run a little long time, but we're so that's great. That's a credit to you in the, in your book, but we're out, we're getting close to the end here. Do you live in Minneapolis, Tom? No, I did. When I first moved here and then I lived in st. Paul, but now I'm right outside of Minneapolis or so let me ask you a question on my behalf and other Minneapolis residents then, should we be proud to be many politicians?
Speaker 2 00:31:34 Well, I think you should be PR yes. I mean, I think you should be proud to be many a politicians if you're still doing the work. I, I remember when I was in school, I grew up in the Chicago area and this is not a unique experience, but I, I feel like the way I learned stuff was that, you know, we had, for example, the civil rights movement in the sixties, and then those pieces of legislation were passed, like the civil rights act and the voting rights act. So we were good. We're good to go. Right. You know, I, I, I, it took me a long time, you know, as a, as a white person with the privilege of not having to experience this, uh, you know, I just not experienced the racism of the world growing up. It took me a long time to really get to a place of saying the work never stops.
Speaker 2 00:32:23 And I think, you know, the death of John Lewis here last week really showcases that. And it's, it's really profound. So we can be proud to be many a politicians if we're doing work that is uncomfortable. Right. You know, there is a, there is also this concept of, of white comfort. We only make these important moves as far as white people want to go and are comfortable. And, uh, we just have to push past that. And that's where we can feel. I think when we're feeling the most uncomfortable is when we can feel the proudest, uh, would be how I would answer your question. I got one more for you. Are you hopeful for us? Are we gonna make some change? How, I mean, well, actually, yes. I think that, um, I don't know what the changes are going to look like. And frankly, I don't, I don't offer the 10 point plan in the book.
Speaker 2 00:33:11 I just, I just produce the history, but you know, I do have to believe, I, you know, I'm just going to say what align that I think a lot of people consider cliche, how can you, not, what option is there other than being hopeful that we'll, we'll get some of this. Right. You know, we pass some important legislation yesterday at the Capitol about police reform, the people who supported it will be the first to tell you that it wasn't everything. And that was a first step. Um, and in the past, I think we've found a lot of examples where the first step was made and we celebrated it and then we didn't do the second step. So let's get the second step done and then let's get the third step. And then it's got the four, they'll say, Tom, what a pleasure to have you on our show? It's pledge week. We couldn't have anyone better. It's Tom Weber in his new book, Minneapolis and urban biography, go check it out. It's wonderful. Josh, I'm sending it back to you in the studio. Thanks Tom.
Speaker 4 00:34:00 And we're back and, and proud to be mini Napoleon's. That's right. That was a really good interview. And it was, we've had a lot of really fantastic things like that on lately. It reminded me of, um, when we had the, um, the author on about, uh, um, SU um, uh, last week about the, uh, windshield. Yeah. And, uh, that was a kind of historical breakdown of Minnesota and what happens here and nobody in town really does what we do in terms of bringing those kinds of books to new listeners. And we are here for, especially for Minnesota authors and have been here for a very long time. And, uh, it's, uh, essential that, uh, those same authors and their friends and family and all our listeners that, uh, maybe don't even right, but listen to us because they want to hear about the books that we provide on the show that they support us. We need that support. And, um, we would like you to pledge and you can pledge by going to <inaudible> dot org. Whereas the whole pledge system set up, I know in the past, you've been able to call in that because of COVID were not able to do that anymore, but now we're doing it online. So go to K F a i.org and pledge. That's right.
Speaker 5 00:35:32 It's a, an exciting time here at cafe. We have a new general manager starting, uh, next week, I
Speaker 1 00:35:38 Believe, or the week after. And, uh, he has a real background in radio and arts and, uh, literary work and activism, uh, social activism, social justice. And so it's really an exciting time. And we'd like to have you all support him in his, uh, new position. And that would also besides calling us and calling him and saying, hi, he can't come down here, but, um, cause of COVID, as Ian said, but, uh, it's, it's an exciting time for KFA when you bring in new leadership, you never know how it's going to go. Uh, but we are excited cause it's going to go good. We know that. And so we'd like you to pledge not, or, you know, become a member, not just for the station and for yourself, but also in honor of a new, uh, trip here at KFC I, a new part of the journey. It's very exciting. So go to cafe. I don't work. There's a button says, donate now, just hit that button. And then there's a form you fill out it's real easy. Bing bang, boom.
Speaker 4 00:36:47 That's simple. It's right. Www dot <inaudible> dot org. We're unique for a station. I think in the area itself. We're the only one where you can offer the kind of diversity we have here. I mean, I think we're, I think I taught this last week and about how we're not too many programs, like <inaudible> like us are out there that we'll have half hour conversations with authors or maybe an hour, like we did today with Tom Weber. If you want to keep that alive, you'd want to keep that going. You have to help donate to cafes to keep Ronald radio
[email protected]. That's right. And there, there are other shows his morning shows and you know, of course PBS does one, but even Kathy Webb was, or is a great fan of this show. And this she's been on it many times and she used to sometimes read the calendar, you know? So, uh, that's really the only other outlet in this town for, for authors and for stuff that's, uh, literary in nature. And, uh, you know, we supply a huge part of that and, uh, cause we're all volunteers here. That's the beauty of this, uh, organization. It's always been like that. And we're very, very proud of it. And we're proud that it's in Minneapolis, but we also love st. Paul.
Speaker 4 00:37:55 And if you're going to say something about your contributions here,
Speaker 1 00:37:59 Well, I don't really know what to say about my contributions here, but, um, I can definitely say that, um, I'm very excited to be here particularly because this is the first, um, I've worked in publishing, I've worked in bookselling. Um, and this is the first role that I've had in, uh, kind of in the books, fear that is not, um, a monetary exchange of ideas. Um, every book that I discussed on this show I discussed because, um, I came to it in some way, um, out of my own freedom,
Speaker 6 00:38:36 Really enjoyed the book, um, and had the opportunity to have an earnest and genuine conversation with the author translator about what's behind the book. I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to sell anything to anyone. I'm not trying to promote anything that anyone else has chosen. Um, I'm here to explore ideas and books that, um, I think can help people pursue, um, different conversations in the world with a new level of informedness or a new level of curiosity. Um, and that's what makes me most excited to be here. Um, KFA I is so generous and being able to give people on all of the shows, um, the level of creative freedom that they do. Um, for example, I've also been engineering on other programs, such as, uh, disability and progress and Somali link radio, um, and the way that people can really, um, bring their values and their interests into the booth, um, and less trying to promote ourselves something or a pursuit like that, and more just, um, really digging into an idea and discussing it in a community they care about to be listened to by a community they care about, um, is something that I'm proud to be part of.
Speaker 4 00:39:52 Well, it's very, very well put, I wish I'd say very well put indeed. I mean, I particularly like what you're just saying, it w the implication of what you're just saying is that w we, we managed to get the ego out of the way and focus on the music or the, or the book or, or whatever it is that we're working on. And, uh, I think that's very liberating as you just, as only just said, I love that about this place. And there's, I suppose there's other stations around the country that do that, but I don't know of them. And I don't really have time to listen to them. Cause I'm always listened to this. And, you know, when you think about, just leave this station on all day, you get a trip around the world and he, you get to look at just about everything and all them, the most valuable, uh, causes that, uh, those of us all on the liberal side, uh, agree with are, are going to be talked about every day on this radio station.
Speaker 4 00:40:50 And frequently every week on this show, you just heard conversation about what we still need to do in Paris, which is true. You know, we can't be too proud is a great city, but there's still a lot to do. And hopefully KFS contributes to that. And I think like what Tom Weber is saying, I think pushing through that realm of what's comfortable for us is something cafe I think is always striving for providing content and stuff. That's at the fringe of what we may be, or always feel like we're not prepared to talk about and speak about. And then we do, and we have that conversation. I like any way you said, they're talking about the piece about having a community. I know Mila are talking about for how cafe is unique in that it's not about raising our profile or raising our notoriety or who we are as individual radio, DJ personalities.
Speaker 4 00:41:39 It's about the community. It's about what we are doing here at cafe and trying to get attribute to that, to make it to a broader and bigger, bolder entity in the Metro area. And I think that's really something we all really want to come around and want to congregate around this, this piece here and have a part of it, and that we can give back to. I love being here for some of you should talk about briefly, as we're already running out of time is always a mantra at the end of the show that you should all have a quick talk about the most recent interview that you did that made you zing or made you made you think about it on your way home after the interview.
Speaker 1 00:42:22 Well, just a couple of weeks ago, I interviewed Mary Logue of about a, a novel called the <inaudible>, which is, uh, a murder mystery that takes place in Deadwood, South Dakota in the 1880s. And it was wonderful to talk to her about the kind of, um, research she has to do for a book like that. It's, uh, it's hours and hours of research for every hour of writing. And she talked a lot about, uh, uh, where she had gone and the libraries that she had gone to. And what is interesting to me about that? It says a kind of a history book. Some of the things she talked about were things that I could then use to go, not necessarily research a book, but if there's something I'm interested in, you know, she mentioned, I can't remember what it was, but she mentioned a library that I didn't know existed.
Speaker 1 00:43:12 And, uh, that's the kind of thing, you know, it it's, it's spreads, it's a broader than just talking about a book and it's broader than, you know, a 10 minute interview on Oprah where she hasn't read the book and, you know, uh, it's broader than that. It's not just trying to push a book or sell a book. We get these people to, because it's a half hour interview, uh, these folks can kind of expand what they talk about. And, uh, I know I've heard so many times that the, the officers really appreciate that half hour time slot because they don't get that very often. It's usually much briefer than that. And, uh, so that was one interview. Then the other view that I just really loved doing was the, uh, a guy who did an interview about the Voyager, uh, satellites. They got put into the air and the record, the special records that was on the satellites.
Speaker 1 00:44:03 And I was able to find the record and I prerecorded the interview so that, uh, I was able to intersperse his, talking about things with the actual music that went up on the record on the Voyager spacecraft. And I just really enjoyed doing that. It was really fun and it was really, I feel like it brought something extra to an interview besides just, you know, talking. And we do that sometimes. I mean, whenever there's an opportunity to do something like that, I think we do, uh, try to what we, what we do beyond just, uh, just a dry interview. Uh, so if you are liking that, and the other thing I want to say is, you know, about COVID, uh, I know people are having money problems. On the other hand, if you're stuck at home, you can listen to cafe all day long, and you can discover things about caffeine that you didn't know before, because you were stuck at work. So now you're at home, you can learn more about caffeine and after you've learned more about cafe, I hope that you will go to www.kfb.org and hit the donate now button. And, uh, in your favorite show area, you can always write right on it.
Speaker 4 00:45:12 We would, and no amount is too small. No widow's mite is just fine. Um, for my part, the Marylene FIPSE when she was on the she's a Haitian author that wrote house of fossils. And, uh, she came onto the show and just wowed us with her knowledge of the Caribbean and, and, uh, what happens in, in Haiti dreadful situation that Haiti is in and the just incredibly colorful world of voodoo and, um, her family and all the different things that were going on there. I, I, it's just absolutely a wonderful conversation. And that is a wonderful book. I was trying to think, I think the last interview that I should interview that happened, I think right around the call day season was something that I had with, with trepidation. I approached, but ended up being one of my, I think maybe one of my favorite, my favorite interview I've ever done here with the program was with Katie Camillo, who was a hero of mine when I was growing up, I had read because of Winn-Dixie and I've read tiger rising.
Speaker 4 00:46:15 I read the tail desperate. So here in this reading, this book, I was, this is like an icon of my life. And I had a conversation with a person from my childhood. I was able to live out to have this conversation with a person. This crater is so cool. And so it was really fun, but I think it was even more meaningful was I had taught her about my ideas about how I thought she might approach her work. And I was very curious. And one thing I've always known with authors is that they don't work as much as they want to be storytellers. They want to talk about their ideas. They're always very worried about how to do it because it has a special meaning for them. It means something very special to them. And they shared this down will feel like they're losing that charm there, that, that, that, or about it.
Speaker 4 00:46:51 I asked her about that. Cause she told me in the midst of interview that she doesn't always try to give away the details of her stories. She goes like, that's something special that that's, that belongs to her characters. It doesn't belong to herself. And I was very, that was interesting. I asked her, why is that? And I think that's, she said, that's just my commitment as an author. I think I have to pay tribute to the person that character in the work before myself and that's kind of my process. And that was a very, very insightful discussion I have with her. And I felt I just walked away from it. I had a broader, deeper impact on my appreciation of the craft of writing. And she's been a terrific friend of the show it's been on the show many times, feel really sorry for her Minnesota opera. We're calling to stage one of her young adults and, uh, COVID has completely shut it down, shut down that season. Um, you know, so wow. What a shame for Kate, if you're out there, Kate, sorry to hear that. Oh, I was looking forward to watching that show. Yeah.
Speaker 6 00:47:50 For my, and uh, this is Annie again. Um, I've loved every one of the interviews that I've done. Um, I love that I can have a conversation with someone who matches a work that I, or, um, other readers have read in isolation and can eliminate the story behind it for us. Um, again, in a way that's more engaged in curiosity and less engaged in the monetary side. Recently, I've been on a streak of, um, interviewing translators and that's been really fascinating because typically throughout the course of my life, um, I've primarily thought of, um, writing as, um, purely a creative or research based output, um, rather than as much of an interpretation output. And it's been really fascinating to talk to translators because I think that what they do is sometimes misunderstood and sometimes, um, maligned as being, um, twisting someone else's words of an original.
Speaker 6 00:48:51 Um, but from talking to translators and learning about the intimacy that you begin to have with someone else's story and characters and the conversations you have with the author, if they're alive or the, um, or the amount of research and intimacy that goes into dissecting the characters, uh, no matter what, I think that, um, it's been really exciting to be able to share that with people and actually someone I'm close to shared with me recently that she now understands translation as a concept a lot better, um, and why it needs to happen and why it's interesting. And, um, that was really exciting to me. Cause I think that's such a valuable opportunity to bring books from different continents here into the main conversation that we're having here in the United States. Um, as in our main conversations, of course, there's no main conversation in the world. Uh, there are things going on everywhere. Um, and it's fun to bring awareness to that.
Speaker 4 00:49:42 Oh, you're so right with that. I think translations are all important. We don't do enough. I think one of the lowest level countries in the world per capita, that's reading triple book and translation, and you're doing a great job with bringing those in and focusing on that. It's, that's a great idea. We should be doing more of it. And I think we're just about out of time. So you are listening to right on radio on cafe 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Josh Webber. I'd like to thank our guests tonight. Tom Weber was the best, last name in the world. Plus our listeners to make the show possible without your support and donations
Speaker 7 00:50:28 Cafe would not be possible. You can find out more news and info about right on radio at kfan.org/program/right on radio. Plus listen to recent episodes. Now stay tuned for <inaudible>
Speaker 0 00:50:41 Minnesota.
