Wednesday, Apr 29, 2009

TTT#0917-PositiveAging: Living It Up to the End

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POSITIVE AGING: Living it Up to the End News reports and magazines are full of stories and warnings and worries over the approaching boomer bubble of boomers over 60 years of age, the puzzling spike in cases of dementias and disorders, i.e., Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and related disabling brain function. You'd think that any of us have half a chance to live out our lives with any sense of robust abandon and engaging work and play alike. Yes, almost all of us have had family members or friends afflicted with such disorders, but a major movement has been under way for years urging us to stop accepting our last 20, 30 years as death-in-waiting. Positive Aging takes in a wide swath of affirmative living, mental and physical engagement of everything life has to offer, including lifelong learning, satisfying sex, and a wide variety of active mental and physical contributions to our communities, our families, our children and grandchildren. TTT's ANDY DRISCOLL and LYNNELL MICKELSEN talk with authors, scholars, advocates and promoters Dr. Peter Whitehouse and Connie Goldman about staying alive all the way out. GUESTS: • CONNIE GOLDMAN - positive aging advocate, activist and author of The Ageless Spirit: Reflections on Living Life to the Fullest in Mid-life and the Years Beyond; Connie Goldman is a former MPR and NPR reporter/commentator, doyenne of arts and aging on All Things Considered. • DR. PETER WHITEHOUSE - geriatric neurologist, cognitive neuroscientist, and "global" bioethicist; author, The Myth of Alzheimer's. Dr. Whitehouse spoke at The Marsh Fitness Center in Minnetonka Wednesday and Thursday in Mayo Auditorium on the University of Minnesota Campus delivering the Center for Spirituality and Healing’s annual Ruth Stricker Mind-Body Lecture.

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Wednesday, Apr 22, 2009

TTT#0916-MINNEAPOLIS CHARTER AMENDMENTS: Changing City Governance

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After over 100 years, the Minneapolis Charter Commission is submitting a package of major revisions, which, if passed by city voters in November, will radically change the way Minneapolis would be governed from then on. While some proposed amendments update the overall language of the charter itself, three proposals promise significant changes in how the city would be run, including 1) the creation of the office of City Administrator (replacing the currently appointed Coordinator's position); 2) eliminating altogether the Minneapolis Park Board and 3) the Board of Estimate and Taxation, rolling all those responsibilities into the City Council and Mayor's offices. TTT's ANDY DRISCOLL and LYNNELL MICKELSEN talk with supporting and opposing officials about the history of those bodies, the impact of their creation/elimination, and what citizens might expect in the wake of such radial change: Accountability? Efficiencies? Autonomy? Focus? Tune in and talk with our guests. How would you vote on this today? GUESTS: • CAM GORDON – Minneapolis Ward 2 City Councilmember • PAUL OSTROW - Minneapolis Ward 1 City Councilmember • ANNIE YOUNG – Minneapolis At-Large Park Board Commissioner • CAROL BECKER – President, Mpls. Board of Estimate and Taxation (Elected Member) • JIM BERNSTEIN*, Chair, Minneapolis Charter Commission

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Wednesday, Apr 15, 2009

TTT April 15 CHARTER SCHOOLS:New Views and Choices

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With years of service behind them now, Minnesota's charter schools get mixed reviews and uneven results in their governance, curriculum and results. Supporters maintain their view that these schools, while public, provide competitive choices – alternatives to the regular public system – for Minnesota families. Detractors say both statistics and data show that achievement is no better in charter schools, and, worse, have become agents of resegregation, focused as they often are on serving common ground groups – racial, ethnic, economic, geographic and intellectual. TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and LYNNELL MICKELSEN talk with advocates and critics about the history, impact and operation of the state's charter schools and what policymakers are doing to adjust to the mixed record of charter school success. GUESTS: • EUGENE PICCOLO – Executive Director, Minnesota Association of Charter Schools • REP. LINDA SLOCUM – House K-12 Finance Committee, Author, Charter School reform bill • SCOTT CROONQUIST – Executive Director, Association of Metropolitan School Districts • TOM LUCE – Research Director, UofM's Institute on Race and Poverty

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Wednesday, Apr 08, 2009

TTT APRIL 8: MENTAL HEALTH CUTS and SOMALI AUTISM

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Mental health advocatesand service providers cringe at what budget cuts portend for their charges - as if the stigma of mental illness isn't enough to create political antipathy. Anyone who gets around these cities can see the fruits of mental illness in a wide variety of societal outcasts – rage, drug use, homelessness, and crimes for which their mental illness is no defense.

The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) released a lengthy study March 31 on the baffling and disproportionate rates of autism among Somali children in Minnesota. Can there be any doubt that environmental degradation throughout our life systems is ravaging the immune systems of our children. Asthma, autism, ADD and who knows what else are found in clusters across the Metro, but especially in core areas of our cities where immigrants are proving to be the clearest bellwether for the epidemic proportions of children's maladies. What is happening to these babies among Somali families?

GUESTS MENTAL HEALTH BUDGETS AND THEIR IMPACTS • STATE SEN. LINDA BERGLIN, Chair of the SenateHealth and Human Services Budget Division of Finance •SUE ABDERHOLDEN, Executive Director, NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness MN) •JOAN WHITE, Program Officer for PEOPLE INCORPORATED, a mental health delivery organization with homes and services provided to hundreds of mentally ill residents. SOMALI CHILDREN AND AUTISM •IDIL ABDULL- Parent Advocate and Co-founder, Somali-American Autism Foundation •ANNE HARRINGTON- Autism Consultant and Advocate; former Early Childhood teacher/evaluator, Minneapolis Public Schools; Mother of child with autism •SARAH THORSON, Supervisor, Minnesota Children with Special Health Needs, MINNESOTA DEPT. OF HEALTH •ABDI AYNTE- BBC America reporter; former Twin Cities reporter covering the Somali autism issue.

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Wednesday, Apr 01, 2009

TTT APRIL 1: HOWARD ZINN and "VOICES OF A PEOPLE'S HISTORY"

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APRIL 1: HOWARD ZINN and "VOICES OF A PEOPLE'S HISTORY"

The history of the United States as taught in our schools is only half the story - and almost always told from the perspective of the conqueror - in this case, European immigrants - with little if anything said about the conquered - the indigenous peoples of this hemisphere who found their peaceful existence interrupted, their people enslaved and murdered to extinction, their cultures exterminated. HOWARD ZINN's A People's History of the United States sought to correct such half-truths and to fill in the very large vacuum in our understanding of the events that led to our current government's founding, establishment and pervasive culture.

Voices of A People's History records the commentary and philosophy of those who sought and spoke truth to power in the centuries that followed. Co-authored with scholar Anthony Arnove, "Voices..." resurrects the seekers of justice from every walk - like that of Nez Perce Chief Joseph, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Eugene Debs, Frederick Douglass, and Columbus critic Bartolomé Las Casas, among other "Voices.." to be read and heard when Howard Zinn comes to town to oversee the dramatization of these historical characters at an event on behalf of the Nonviolent Peaceforce at St. Catherine's O'Shaughnessy Auditorium in St. Paul April 6th at 7:00PM. Co-sponsored by KFAI.
TTT's ANDY DRISCOLL and LYNNELL MICKELSEN talk with Howard Zinn and other guests about the role historical perspective plays in our self-perception and in the way we govern ourselves today. We'll hear a reading from scheduled performer** MICHAEL KIESOW MOORE and a song from Twin Cities' premier jazz vocalist PRUDENCE JOHNSON.
GUESTS: HOWARD ZINN, Historian/Author of People's History of the United States and Voices of A People's History; PROF. DOUG ROSSINOW - Historian and Professor of History Metropolitan State University/ Author, Visions of Progress: The Left-Liberal Tradition in America; PRUDENCE JOHNSON - Twin Cities Jazz Vocalist; MICHAEL KIESOW MOORE - Twin Cities Poet/Essayist/Fiction-Writer/Teacher and Peace Activist

• Performers will read/sing at Zinn's and Anthony Arnove's "VOICES OF A PEOPLE'S HISTORY" April 6th, St. Catherine

**KFAI's own ANDY DRISCOLL will also read April 6th

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