Minnesota Experience

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage fund, and the friends of Minnesota experience.

- [Announcer] The following program is intended for an adult audience.

It deals with a subject and contains language which may offend some viewers.

(upbeat music) - I see the world out there and I it's, it's just like it's saying, take me and try it.

(Upbeat Music) - During that time, I kept hearing the words over and over, I want you to start a Christian television station.

(Upbeat Music) - I mean, they are making the decision in spite of what the people think.

(Upbeat Music) - Hello, I'm Michael Boyle, welcoming you to another addition of Electronicle.

And if you're an adult, inviting you to return for a moment to those golden days of yester year.

What do you think of when you hear the word Minnesota?

What images, what mythologies are in the minds of people in distant places.

We'll travel to that startling crossroads, where fear and hope intersect.

That moment of shared human experience, that reminds us how alike we all are.

(Upbeat Music) - [TV Announcer] Our story opens today in the typical American community of Frostbite Falls, Minnesota.

Like all small American towns, Frostbite Falls has a city hall, a church, a bowling alley and a movie house.

The only difference is that in Frostbite Falls, they're all in the same building.

- Frostbite Falls, Minnesota.

Is that how the rest of the country sees us?

It was then that I decided to find the real myth of Minnesota.

The one myth, that sums up who we really are.

- Minnesota Vikings, football, snow.

Nice, nice place to go.

A nice place to live.

- Scandinavians, uh, liberal Democrats.

- I think of Mary Tyler Moore, who gave me much happiness.

- It's tremendous fishing.

But as soon as that weather changes, well, forget it all because it really gets cold.

- God.

I don't know.

I've never been there.

- Not much unemployment.

Lot of industry, happy people.

People live long lives.

- Most of them are blonde, but I don't hold it against them.

- Lots of lakes and dairy products.

That's Minnesota.

- So I just reached.

- I was four years old when this show came out.

I had never heard of the show.

The kids who were making the show, or the 20 something things who were making the show, had a distinct point of view.

That kind of rebellious feeling is infused in Electronicle.

Even though there are kids who are dutifully, trying to report on some problems in our society, it's public television.

They're trying to make things that are good for you.

Right?

They're still kind of disappointed in the authority figures that had preceded them.

Hi, I'm Steve Marsh, and I'm a writer from Minneapolis.

I'm a print journalist.

Remember those?

So, I'm not all that used to being on television, but here I am doing a new show about an old show.

(upbeat music) - When you deal in public policy, the people is a, in a sense a meaningless term.

- [Steve] Back in the day, stations like Twin Cities, PBS got all their programming from the national PBS network.

Sometime in the late 1970's TBT decided it would start producing its own content.

Years before anybody even used the word content.

- Public TV was known as educational TV.

And that meant literally blackboards and chalk.

- And I remember that name preceding almost everybody.

We had no idea what it meant, but we knew that we were, someplace in our future, there was a show called Electronicle.

- Hello, I'm Michael Boyle welcoming you to the first in a series of weekly programs called Electronicle.

A word we coin to describe our goal.

A chronicle of human events, using an electronic form, television, a magazine to be watched.

- It was a struggle at the station to get us to come into the 1970's, more popular masterpiece theater kind of appealing program.

- So that was still good for you, but it was actually enjoyable.

- Yeah, a little bit more interesting than chalk marks on a blackboard.

- [Steve] One woman from the Robbinsdale class of 1960, now runs a combination, Indian art and clothing store in downtown Minneapolis.

Her name is Judy Stern.

- [Judy] Late 1950's, we got outta high school and got married, you know.

So it was okay, until I started watching my husband get one degree after another.

And I had one baby after another.

- KTCA didn't own a field camera 'til the year before we did Electronicle.

No field cameras at all.

And the year before that, when I arrived, they were still cutting film.

I mean, they were still splicing together film from a kinetoscope.

- Amos Haynes owns Convergence Systems Incorporated.

Started in 1979, Convergence Systems does most of its business with controlled data.

Designing and modifying computer programs for the Plato learning system.

- We had a period of 20 years, that Electronicle was the beginning of.

Where, very directly, the management of the company basically said, break the rules.

- In April of 1978, National attention was focused on one of the Twin Cities.

When voters in St. Paul approved overwhelmingly the withdrawal of the so-called, gay rights section, from the city charter human rights amendment.

- If 10 to 12% of the little kids growing up now are gonna be gays and are gonna be lesbians, I don't want them to grow up with what we had to grow up with, being called faggot and dike and fairy and queer and freak.

I'm out to save our children.

- I don't remember many times of ever having to go and say, is this gonna be okay?

Can we do this?

- The word eclectic, I don't know that I'd ever heard it before I got to KTCA, but it became applied to everything, including the staff.

People with backgrounds that I frankly didn't understand.

Theater and the arts, people who just wanted to express themselves in various ways.

- All young, all really energetic, interesting people.

- This group of interesting people who were living through one of the most tumultuous times in American history, - Right.

- like the Vietnam war.

Maybe some of them had even had peers who had served or had served themselves.

- Yeah.

- Nixon had resigned, Woodward and Bernstein became folk heroes as newspaper guys, which doesn't necessarily happen anymore.

A really chaotic, violent time in American history where we'd stopped trusting the authorities.

- When you're living through those times, your perspective is different from what the perspective will be 30, or 40 in this case, years later.

And it was chaotic, not unlike now.

Maybe the irreverence, - Right.

- was as a result of what we were living through.

It was the totality of it and the feeling like grownups were really screwing up.

- Yeah.

- At that stage, just to be different, just to basically put at a flag in the ground and say, Channel Two is now different than it was two years ago and we're gonna bring you different things.

- She's not the only one that's got problems in this world.

A lot of kids have a lot of worse problems than she does.

- 'Cause you still have to make restitution for the, that burglary charge.

Plus the fact that you run away so many times.

- [Young Girl] How many times have I run away?

- Six.

- [Young Girl] How do you know?

- 'Cause I've been keeping track.

- Um, there's a lot of times that I feel like I should be running away from home too.

- What does it mean to be a KTCA show?

This established lane for TPT, but it's very proto TPT, I would say.

Saturday Night Live had just debuted in '75, which was five years before this.

And there's parts of the show where you guys are doing sketch comedy.

So you guys got weird.

- We did, yeah.

- Yeah, it got weird.

- Yeah.

- This is for you.

(engine revving) (metal crashing) (distant scream) (thudding) - Oh, oh.

Where am I?

What happened?

It's moving.

What is it?

- Ah, there we go.

Ah, Julius Scott, please to meet you.

- Cynthia Trumble, KTCA.

- [TV Announcer] Even now, in the neighborhood where you live, a battle rages.

Store wars, a sizzling discount ray, shatters the peace of a community.

The death stores have struck again.

Store Wars, follow young Lunk Slyshopper, in his quest for convenience and good prices.

Grill to his longer drive, to the local warehouse outlet.

Store Wars, unparalleled destruction as shoppers, sensing disaster, flee the corner grocery, moments before the death stores render it obsolete.

Now playing on corners everywhere.

- What were the marching orders, so to speak, before you guys went out and found stories to tell.

- You know, you would think there would be marching orders, wouldn't you?

What I remember were themes.

- [Georgianna] More in depth pieces, often on a single subject, but taken from a variety of different angles.

- The myth of the sedentary, elderly whiling away all the empty hours with memories and soap operas, is giving way.

There is a new awareness that many in the over 65 set, are still quite socially and sexually active.

Still energetic participants in the dance of life.

(upbeat Jazz music) - Well, I've been coming here for 35 years, I guess.

Why?

Well, I think it's mostly to meet someone and I think there's, some of them, and then I think there's others, that just like to dance.

(happy Jazz music) - If they tore this place down, these people would be desolate without dancing and joy in their lives.

They wouldn't, who cares to go on living if they don't have fun?

I haven't seen any old people.

All the people here are young.

I don't care how many years they've lived.

Dancing has kept them young.

(upbeat music) - All I wanna do is come here and dance, hug 'em and leave 'em.

I don't want no bed partner or no husband.

I've got plenty, all the dancing partners I want.

- When you get too old to enjoy going out and dancing, or going out and enjoying yourself, why then, I think you're getting old.

- When people get older, they're more, a lot of times, they're more interested in the companionship than younger ones are.

(energetic music) (upbeat music) - [Michael] Stagnant circulation and rising energy costs are provoking serious thought about the way newspapers are packaged and delivered.

National circulation figures haven't changed much since about 1965, but there are more people today, living in more households.

Which means that a greater proportion of Americans don't read a daily paper.

Afternoon papers in large cities have been hardest hit.

Suffering disastrous losses in circulation.

The Minneapolis Star, for example, has lost 66,000 readers since 1959.

11,000 of those were lost in just one year, between 1978 and 1979.

(upbeat music) Competition is an obvious reason.

- [Michael] But another reason is that people themselves have changed.

More of us hold office jobs, and get home from work later.

And more of us are younger and single.

Newspapers are also doing more in depth reporting, designed to provide something television can't.

But the problems don't end with making the product appealing.

It has to get to your doorstep.

Rising energy prices, plague us all.

For newspapers, the dilemma is monumental, in terms of gasoline and newsprint.

And then there is the challenge of making the complex delivery system work.

Right down to that 11 year old carrier.

These concerns along with the emergence of new communications technology, have led to increasing speculation about the newspaper of the future.

Joel Barker is a futurist with a special interest in communications.

- But the basic premise is, why can't I get my news, my information, over TV screen printed on the screen, not, not a CBS or an NBC or an ABC news show, but, but rather a, a print medium in a sense.

Right now, the Wright brothers are flying, in the electronic newspaper.

It's called the source.

And you dial a local number.

You call it up through your home computer, onto a screen, and then you process that information.

And you can say, hey, get me the sports.

Hey, get me the, the features to stories today on, on whatever.

By 1985, '86, that system can be full color, four colors.

Animated graphics, very powerful and interesting graphics to support the story.

Printing that's extremely readable.

The big question is can we get it set up well enough so people can visually be comfortable with it, and will you walk away from your easy chair, right?

To go to the screen, to read it.

(keyboard tapping) - Michael in, in the eyes of many lovers of newspapers, that prospect, that gruesome prospect, calls, not just for one beer, but for a six pack.

For at least the next 10 years., they will not be a sufficient trend, in a mass way, among people, away from the newspaper and towards sitting down, as we've seen in front of the set and glomming the information that can be called up to, to make a material change.

The big question apparently is, at what point will a sufficient number of advertisers be lured away by the prospect of that electronic delivery, to make the survival of the daily newspaper even further in, in question.

(ominous music) - Despite our belief in democracy and equality of opportunity, we all like to think of ourselves as special in some way.

- Michael was completely separate from the team.

I don't remember having a single conversation with him, ever.

I mean, I probably did.

- [Steve] Michael Boyle.

- Boyle, yeah.

- [Steve] Okay.

So the host.

- Yeah.

- [Steve] Michael Boyle.

- Right?

- [Steve] Um.

- Was the talent in the classic sense.

He was, as I recall, perfectly nice guy.

- [Steve] He was a button down, stand in, for the patriarchy in a way.

- No.

- So you realize you had to have something that the audience would be familiar with and it turned out to be this guy.

- Yes.

- [Steve] Where where'd you find him?

- Uh, I don't know where, where Michael Boyle came from.

People would know how to watch him.

They'd know how to accept this guy - [Steve] Yeah.

- in a jacket.

- [Steve] Right.

- And you know, he's gonna walk across the set and everybody knows what'll happen next.

At a certain point, it was, always in direct contrast.

(upbeat music) - The major problem that crime visits upon a community, is fear.

Fear of it happening to you.

- For most of us, crime exists as a neatly packaged fiction.

(ominous music) (shrill screaming) (sirens wailing) (tires squealing) (gunshots) - Polly.

- Spread eagle on the floor.

- Here is the reality.

Real crime happens every day, is a part of our lives now more than ever.

On October 18th, Minneapolis patrolman, Myron Rongley lay in serious condition at Hennepin County Medical Center.

He had been shot, while apprehending a drunken man, who was firing indiscriminately at pedestrians.

And at the station house, patrolman Rongley's fellow cops, prepared for duty.

- Well, you just can't let it be uppermost in your mind.

You got other things to think about too.

Guy go nuts if he drove around thinking about he's gonna get shot every night.

- Oh, sure, you sure you think about that stuff, when you get, when somebody gets shot, you think about it.

You know, anybody be a liar if they said, well, it don't bother me.

You think about it, it's there.

- We didn't always know what we wanted, until we let them talk for a half an hour or an hour.

- Right - Many times, your story would come back out of the field completely different than the story you pitched.

- [Michael] Meet Riley Gilchrest, sixth precinct cop, and his family.

- [Riley] When I leave for work, I try to leave for work 45 minutes, to a half hour earlier, so that I can get to work, relax, take my time getting dressed and I don't have to rush, rush, rush.

So when I go to work, I pull this shield up and I got this shield.

So I'm protected between me and you.

Don't tell her I'll see you tomorrow morning.

- Okay.

- [Riley's Wife] I'm sure when we first got married, I would rather have had him, I'm sure I said to myself, I wish she was back Red Owl or you know, or anything but being a policeman.

But now, hey, you know, I guess I resigned myself to the fact that he's a policeman.

He is gonna be a policeman.

So, I either stay married to him or I walk out the door and find something else.

- [Riley] I try not to think about it.

I used to have a partner that used to irritate me.

And every time we'd get done working, he says, well, another eight hours And we cheated death.

And to me, that would go right through me because I know that I could have been killed out there at any time or any moment.

I don't know how I really, how I really accept it.

I just go out and do my, try to do my job.

I don't even think about when I leave the house.

I don't even think about whether I'm, I may not come home, but I may go out to work and be killed within an hour after I get to work.

Last Friday and Saturday night was one hell of a busy night.

All of our cars were tied up.

It depends really, upon the moon.

It depends upon the weather.

We could have a double homicide.

They could really tie you up all night long.

On the other hand, you could have nothing.

You could drive around the street all night long and not see a thing.

- [Radio Announcer] Seventeen to the Lake at Pizza Shack, only one on the H and R. - [Riley's Wife] I have a police radio, but I don't listen to it and I don't feel, I really need to.

There's too many things to worry about and I don't have to worry about him getting shot before it would happen.

Yeah, I used to be afraid.

In the first, maybe the first three or four years we were married.

But it got to the point where, you know, where you drink too much, okay?

Put it that way.

So I quit drinking, to avoid the problem later on.

And that's been four years ago since I've had a drink.

(indistinct voices) - [Policeman] Take it out of there!

- [Riley] The kind of crime we're coming across now, I think we're coming across more robberies, more, more assaults upon people, more rapes, more, more of the violent crimes.

- Hey, don't be threatening people, man.

- [Woman] You heard it.

- [Riley] Lose a lot of friends because of your working hour, because of your schedule, because of what you have to do.

- Two lane.

- [Man] Yeah, it is.

- [Policeman] Come on partner.

Put your hands up on the car here.

- Let me see your keys guy.

- [Riley] If I had to be a policeman, start all over again, I would not be married.

I'd be a policeman, but I would not be married.

Yeah, she worries about me.

She really does, but she's not gonna let other people know it.

And she's not gonna let herself know it.

When we first got married, it was real, real big problem on her.

We had, we had a conflict there.

She really wanted her mind.

She wanted me to change jobs, but I was set in this job, and I really liked it.

- I mean, you just don't put yourself in a position where a guy is pointing a gun at you and say, you're never afraid.

And now that to me, is not for real, you know, for anybody.

- [Riley] I've been called pig, I've been called cop.

I've been called police officer.

Sometimes it feels like no ones on your side, everybody's against you.

You're out there as a lone pawn, and you got Kings and Queens moving you out of the way.

- [Michael] I carry my keys like a weapon, their points bunched together and held outwards in the palm.

For a step too close behind me, as I approached the subway through the dark, drunks are swaying against walls.

Popped up men are leaning over and dancing together crazily and clapping hands; their faces twitching.

Quiet ones, lounge against the wall watching.

They look for the weakness in a man, where they can jump him.

And my keys are a sure sign.

I walk as I always do, quickly.

My face set straight ahead, as I pretend not to see or hear.

Busy, on a mission to nowhere.

How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people Now that you know who you are What do you want to be?

- Well, I'd like to be skinny.

- I want to lose about 20 pounds.

- I can lose about 20 pounds.

Does it feel to be One of the beautiful people How often have you been mad?

Often enough to know - I'm in school and I work evenings, I've lost 15 pounds.

I feel super.

How does it feel to be - We Americans probably spend as much time worrying about our weight as we do about any other aspect of our lives.

- You know, a lot of people think that I'm into drugs, 'cause I'm a comedian.

(audience laughter) Well I'm not, I'm into food.

Like a lot of people snort cocaine.

I snort food.

- I met Louie Anderson.

I met Louie through Nick Swardson.

- You know, I mentioned the weight thing because, um, it's been around a while.

I mean, when I was born, I weighed 80 pounds.

(humorous laughter) - At his Beverly Hills mansion, in like, a white terry cloth bathrobe, with little chihuahuas and a pool boy around.

I didn't meet like the east St. Paul, Louie Anderson.

I met the Beverly Hills version.

High school dating.

You know, everybody gets a blind date.

Mine was blind.

That's not the sad part.

She thought she was with three guys.

(humorous laughter) Listen, without anymore trouble, I better get the hell outta here.

I'll tell you.

(audience clapping) - Comedian, Louie Anderson, makes fun of his obesity.

But many overweight people, don't find being fat, at all funny.

- Eating out can be a pleasurable, pleasurable experience when you're thin.

But if you're heavy and you don't feel well about yourself, then it's going to be an uncomfortable experience.

So, it's obviously one that you're going to avoid.

Social life is practically nonexistent.

Looking through the closet can be a really harrowing experience when you realize you have somewhere to go and nothing to wear.

And this would be beautiful, but it doesn't fit.

And most of the dresses in here are like that.

And then you take the one dress that does fit and you really don't wanna go.

It's difficult to buy clothes that fit right now.

I make most of my clothes because the situation of being in a dressing room and having picked out six things that you would really like to wear and having none of them fit, is not one that I like to encounter too often.

- Celine, this picture of you and your family was taken about two years ago.

And in this picture, you weighed about 140 pounds.

What happened in those two years?

- Well, I first knew that something was different when I was very little, when I was in the first grade, when I could read better than anybody else in my room.

But that didn't necessarily make me feel good.

That made me feel bad because it was a funny feeling.

I wasn't like everybody else.

And I felt very lonesome.

Giftedness is a disability.

It's a disability to fit in.

And in our society, we punish people who don't fit in.

- [Narrator] The MacIntyre Learning Center in St. Paul is the only school of its kind in Minnesota.

A private institution, geared specifically for gifted minority students.

Surprisingly though, the MacIntyre Center does base its interest requirements on standardized achievement and IQ tests.

Despite the long held notion, that many of the questions on those tests are culturally biased.

- Basically, you know, it seems like I'm hypocritical, but I feel that testing is unfair.

You know, like to children, to black children.

And so on the one hand I was saying that testing was unfair.

But then on the other hand, you're like, all these people were over here saying, well, who are you?

You know?

I mean, you know, who are you to these kids are gifted?

What methods are you using?

- Last week we journeyed to Montgomery, Alabama to talk with two men whose efforts in the last three presidential elections made a profound impact on American politics.

It was the first time former, Minnesota, Senator Eugene McCarthy and former Alabama Governor George Wallace had ever appeared together in an interview situation.

- You need a combination, I think of issue and maybe a number of issues.

And then a person who's been recognized, whether for good reasons or bad, to say, that's somebody we know, you know, you could take Walter Cronkite I guess, and give him an issue.

But to take someone who's unknown, it's very, to difficult to get people's attention.

This is one of the problems in this country.

You know, people live in a state of distraction.

That's why campaigning is so expensive now, George.

You gotta, you gotta get attention.

You have to buy time.

- [George] That's correct.

- They covered you, but then they said you were just a spoiler.

The media, in my judgment, operated against a third party effort.

The same time they were building you up, they were also knocking you down with the same effort, by saying that he doesn't have a chance.

No third party movement has ever been successful.

He's a single issue candidate.

And all of those things.

Oh, oh Freezin' It was freezin' cold - It's an unfolding panorama.

The thing is, that the weather gives us a show.

And especially in a place like this, where we get snow, we get tornadoes, we get thunderstorms, we get sunshine.

We get windstorms.

It gives life some.

How would you put it?

A little bit of flavor.

It's not monotonous.

(engine revving) That they would freak out in Minnesota - Hello.

- Hi.

Do you know how I get to Lake Wobegon?

- [Hitchhiker] Lake Wobegon?

That's a myth.

- Oh, well that's okay.

I'm looking for the myth of Minnesota.

- [Steve] Now again, we're interrogating who we think we are.

There's kind of a crisis of confidence that Minnesotans are going through right now and, and for good reason.

This idea of unpacking or interrogating a myth, it's something that we have to keep doing.

- [Interviewer] I dropped off the hitchhiker and set out to find the 91 year old Dakota Indian he had told me about.

She told me a story about a young Indian widow, whose parents had promised her to a man she didn't like.

rather than marry him, she took her son in a canoe and went over Minnehaha Falls.

- She told her little boy that were going to go boating and go down the falls and go on through the other side of the falls.

But when they went through and went with the falls down there, then there was no more of her and the body here.

So after then, the family had a feast at the falls for her memory.

- [Interviewer] What a difference from the Paul bunion story.

On the one hand, conquering nature.

On the other, becoming part of it.

- Figuring out who we are, who we really are, is just as important now, as it was back in 1980.

- [Interviewer] Then I saw him.

You must know the myth of Minnesota.

- Myth of Minnesota?

(speaking foreign language) - This is where we have to be very careful and I think this is where weather can play part in economics, is that a lot of industries have been built here in Minnesota, on the very heavy snowfall, since it has occurred in the last 30 years, since 1950.

And if people expect this is going to continue, they can be in for some hard times, economically.

(upbeat music) Bad girls Talking 'bout bad girls, yeah See them out on the streets at night Walkin' Picking up all kinds of strangers If the price is right You can score If your pocket's nice You're bad girl, you're sad girl You're such a dirty bad girl - The producers gained such trust.

I look at that prostitution show now, and I just, I cannot believe what those women were willing to talk about in front of our cameras.

- I remember we were coming right out of the women's movement of the 1970s.

So there was a really heightened sensitivity about making sure that those stories were well represented.

We were stretching out against the TV format.

The prostitute story was a particularly good one where this was not about being judgmental, it was about really understanding.

I remember at the time thinking, this is truly unusual because these women are talking in a way that I have never heard women talk about.

- [Prostitute] Cause like when I'm out in public, you know, I still have a problem with being everybody but myself, you know.

- You know, put up a front again.

(laughter) - So no one will know, you walk real hard and walk real fast and no one will know you been a prostitute.

- Yeah.

- And you got a little sign on your head.

(Laughter) - Guess what I did.

(laughter) - Cause every time a car honks, it comes all back.

(horn beeping) - And you come in here and you find out, they're just people.

- The group is for women who are in prostitution or have been into prostitution.

I'm one of the facilitators of the group.

- Once you're out there, you detach your feelings.

I mean, it's like you can't, you have to completely let go of all your emotions.

Or sometimes I used dope to help detach my feelings.

- [Facilitator] That's your biggest thing.

- That was my biggest thing too, was the dope.

- Dope is total unreality anyway.

If you could stay high enough, you know, you don't know what you you're doing anyway.

- [Woman] Anyone who stayed higher than you?

- Oh, I, I don't, I'm sure there are several people who stayed higher than me, but I definitely tried to be right up there with them.

(laughter) I'm a 38 year old woman.

I'm a student, I'm in my third year of college.

I've been out of the behavior of prostitution for about five years now.

It was about 20 years ago when all this started, when I started in the life of prostitution.

Started walking the streets up and down Hennepin Avenue, Plymouth Avenue.

That was great, in those days.

I remember one night in particular, my boyfriend was in jail and he needed a hundred dollars to get out on bail.

And don't, you know, I went downtown and turned 10, $10 tricks.

Neither one of us had a job.

We needed money.

I never thought about, I tell him, hey, you know, why me?

Why not you?

I married my boyfriend.

It was real hard for me to continue working and think of myself as a married woman.

At night, I would go out and turn the tricks.

So that tomorrow, I could go to the store and put food in the house.

I would leave the house and get into my car and just point it in the direction of where I needed to go.

I would just let go of the steering wheel, just let the car drive itself.

And I'd be off someplace and up in the cloud someplace.

I'd be so blitz on drugs that it didn't make any difference.

I, I didn't want to, I didn't want to live the kind of a life that I was living and I didn't know what else I could do.

To have to go in that room and smell that body.

To have, to put my body next to that body, to have to touch him, to have, to put my mouth on him, to have to take my clothes off.

- We do a lot of complaining that you're worthwhile.

You can do it.

- My mentor.

My mentor sitting right over there - At first, they had to really get to the point where they cared enough for each other and, you know, cared for themselves, built up that they were worthwhile.

Had support, had a sense of their own worth, and then start dealing with the pain.

- Well, when they're joking around about how high they were getting - Yes.

- To kind of dissociate from what they were doing and the way they're, they're talking about it is like, so cavalier and joking that you, that feels honest.

This is the kind of matter of fact approach to, to pain and suffering.

- Yes.

- In a way that like, it wasn't maudlin.

It wasn't like trying to play a little tiny violin to get me to cry.

It was just kind of like they're joking around about some really harsh stuff.

- But it's, what you only get when you've been in there for three or four hours with 'em.

I mean, 'cause they've gotta get used to the camera.

- They gotta get used to the lights, if there are lights.

They gotta get used to the mics.

Most shows just don't have that much time to let you, let people relax.

And we knew we'd have more time on the air to let them get an entire thought across.

- Part of the reason for my getting involved in prostitution definitely was political.

And I guess working as a prostitute, partly as a way of asserting that I'm gonna demand the same sexual freedom.

And at the time I'm gonna demand the same respectability from the world that men have always had both.

And I want both and I will have both.

(bell dings) - Relaxa Lounge.

May I help you?

The total charge for an hour, full service encounter is $70.

The average prostitute makes in one day what the average working woman makes in a week.

I would propose that it would no longer be a crime.

It would be totally removed from the criminal law.

Not involve the criminal law any longer.

That instead some form of regulation designed to address the problems that surround prostitution be implemented instead.

- No!

It's a definite no.

Simple out and out.

No, don't say it's all right to exploit yourself.

- You can make a case that a person who works in a nuclear power plant is being exploited.

A person who is getting black lung disease in a coal mine is being exploited.

Now, whether you should therefore make that miner a criminal because he's destroying his own lungs.

That doesn't make sense to me.

We have a half hour session where you can explore the sense of touch with your attendant and the sense of taste with your attendant and all of these are mutual participation.

- I challenge anyone to show me how I've been harmed by it.

- [Interviewer] Are there class differences between the various types?

- Yeah, there certainly are.

There certainly are.

And the, the bottom class gets most of the attention because it's more exciting for the media to look at.

- Oh, we've certainly got room for you.

Thanks for calling.

Bye bye.

- It'll exist for the same reason McDonald's exist.

Not because it's the best hamburger you can get, but because it's there when you want it, in a hurry.

(whooshing wind) - [Paul] Although you can't see it on any map, Southwestern Minnesota is an island.

There was never a time when we weren't out of the way.

There were places on the map you had to set out for deliberately.

The places you would never happen upon.

It is not the kind of thing we like to admit to company.

But there are advantages in islands.

The prairie is like a daydream.

It is one of the few plainly visible things, which you can't photograph.

No camera lens can take in a big enough piece of it.

The prairie landscape embraces the whole of the sky.

The prairie can't be appreciated anymore.

It is too subtle, too vast, too intimate.

It isn't accessible by automobile.

You've got to get down on your knees to see some of its best features.

And even in churches, people don't get down on their knees anymore.

To live on the prairie, is to daydream.

It is the only conceivable response to such immensity.

It is when we are smallest, that our daydreams come quickest.

- [Michael] We're becoming a plastic money society.

- [Steve] I think most people, maybe kind of suffer under the, the indignity of thinking that like, nobody really cares about what I do or who I am, or what's important to me.

(smooth jazz music) People are often willing to talk about, if you ask them what they care about, they will pour their heart out to you.

- [Georgianna] Right?

- [Steve] They wanted to tell you what they were feeling, - [Georgianna] Right.

- Because you cared enough to ask.

- Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

- Dream house?

Oh, place in the country, away from the city.

Nice and peaceful.

Relaxing.

Our house Is a very, very, very fine house - Born in the basement.

- Two story living room.

A modern kitchen with a butcher block.

- Glass roof in the bedroom, three bedroom house, triple stairways.

You know, the curl kind?

And that's about it, nothing very fancy.

Sunshine through the fiery gems for you - A Bavarian castle.

A multi-story has lots of rooms, a round turret, and sits on a hill.

- A mansion with about three Cadillacs, a swimming pool in the backyard.

I'll light the fire While you placed the flowers in the vase That you bought today - [Narrator] You probably couldn't find a more typical young American family than the Jorvies of north suburban of New Brighton.

- [Eric] Pay attention to your plate.

- [Narrator] Because of conflicting work schedules, Sunday is just about their only time together.

Eric, 24, trained as a journalist while in the army, now works nights as a male clerk in St. Paul.

Better money, he says.

Audrey works days as a secretary and worries about not being able to spend more time with the children.

Together Eric and Audrey Jorvie earn an annual income in the upper twenties and together they share the dream of owning their own home.

- Oh, you're right.

I'd love to own my own home.

I don't like living in apartments.

I don't like being crowded in with 50,000 other people in a complex.

- Now is really the time when we either have to get into a house or remain apartment dwellers for the remainder of our lives.

Listen to this.

Historic Summit Avenue, history of old St. Paul original Queen Anne mansion with carriage house built in 1886 asking 300,000.

Oh man, I wish we had 300,000.

- [Narrator] While they may long for a Victorian mansion on Summit Avenue, Eric and Audrey Jorvie know they'll have to settle for less.

But how much less?

With the average home, now priced in the seventies.

Middle income couples like Eric and Audrey would already seem to have been priced out of the market.

But once they've definitely decided to take the plunge, how high dare they go?

- You don't have the kind of income and you don't have the kind of down payment that is gonna allow you to buy that $80,000 house.

It isn't that you shouldn't have it, and it isn't that I don't want you to have it, but you can't afford it.

- [Narrator] So the biggest question facing first time home buyers like Eric and Audrey, is not whether to buy, but how much to buy and how to face the fact that there isn't always a perfect balance between dreams and dollars.

- Well, I suppose he's not kidding himself if he wants to buy a house that fits his dreams and the realtor is right, that he can't afford the house of his dreams.

Eric is sort of typical of, of people whose expectations have been raised because it used to be easy to buy a house several years ago when there was lots of money around.

And he's looking for the house of his dreams, the house his parents had.

Right at the end, first time off the blocks.

- But they didn't spend $90,000 for that house, to begin with.

Did they?

- No, and they weren't 24 years old when they bought their first house either.

- Are you suggesting that the single family house in an area like this, which is very energy dependent, especially in the wintertime, maybe a thing of the past.

- I don't think it's the thing of the past.

It's still going to be the most preferred form of housing and we're gonna produce an awful lot of it.

But for the Eric's I think it is.

I think that larger home, that 12, 13, 1400 square foot home its initial cost and its cost of ownership, maintenance and what have you, probably is the thing of the past for these young startup families.

- Cal, do you think that the young startup family like Eric and Audrey's family are go gonna have to be convinced that they need and they should have less?

That somebody's gonna have to actually convince them of that?

- [Cal] It's really a selfish proposition, is what it is.

You're hoping, that you can get in and that hoping that other people will continue to suffer so that your dream comes true.

- I've been discriminated be because of my income.

I've been discriminated because I'm a single, unmarried parent.

They don't want my child around.

You know, everybody has a reason not to rent to me.

I'm 23 years old.

I'm on AFDC.

I've got one son that's three and a half years old.

I'm going to the university because I wanna become a lawyer.

I go to the U now, three nights week.

And in January, I'll be going every day.

I'm forced to live here because they will take children.

And every other apartment closer in town that takes kids, there's either full or for whatever reason, I didn't get rented.

It's just been a very hectic year.

We don't have any furniture.

Now, money is a problem.

Last year, we've lived in eight different places trying to find a place that we were comfortable with.

My son is afraid every time I make a move that I'm going to leave him.

He will not get trained.

He will not use the bathroom.

He sometimes has nightmares.

He doesn't know what to call home.

There are a lot of children in this building and normally, you know, he likes to play with children, but now he's gotten to the point from all the moving and everything he wants to hang right with me.

- [Narrator] Little Canada has about 7,000 people.

Half of them are renters, living mostly in apartment complexes like this one, or like this one used to be.

Canterbury Square was called Grand Pre-West Apartments, before it was converted into condominiums.

Nancie O'Brien can't afford to buy her apartment.

So she's moving, out of the building and out of Little Canada.

She doesn't want to leave.

- Well, I'm sad.

I'm sad for everybody involved.

I'm sad for the continual pressure that it implies in my life.

I'm hoping, somewhere along the line that I can qualify for some kind of loan and buy a piece of property and stay put for a while.

But that's not feasible now and I don't know when it's going to be.

- [Narrator] Condominium conversion is big in Little Canada.

Since 1977, one-third of the apartments out here, more than 400 units, have been converted.

That means more ownership in town.

It also means, some people have to start over.

- In April of '78, Beth and I moved out and separated from my husband and moved to an apartment in Moundsview that accepted children.

Then I started looking for another apartment, trying to get closer to work, which is downtown St. Paul and found the Grand Pre-West Apartments.

And then in end of August, got the notice of these apartments were going to be sold as condominiums.

And I cannot buy, I don't have the money for down payment for anything right now.

- [Narrator] Ted Glasrud is a builder and developer.

He owns Grand Pre-West Apartments, now Canterbury Square Condominiums.

- We're converting our market rate apartment units that were aimed at the middle market or the middle class individual.

And the reason we are converting is that we cannot make them show a profit.

We've been losing money every year.

Our costs are going up faster than our rent increases and as a result, we have to subsidize it ourself and, and our present situation, we can no longer afford to subsidize these units.

And we're putting 'em on the market as condominiums.

- What is that?

- [Narrator] There's another thing happening here.

Grand Pre-West allowed tenants with children, but when the rental market tightens up, landlords can afford to be selective and families with kids are often excluded.

- Here, I found a place that I really like.

I mean, I have nothing bad to say about this particular apartment in this location.

I just love it.

And my anger is that I will have to relocate and move to another area.

I do have a lot of concern and a lot of hurt for this little one here.

In that we have moved and she's lost a lot of friends and the other friends are moving out.

And my basic philosophy is that a child can do very well in a single parent setting.

If there is stability, if there are friends around and best friends are, you know, she makes them and six months later, they're gone.

- I suppose you have compassion but if you look at the building and the cost, we have to do it to handle children and children are a problem.

And any, any building that has children in, cost substantially more to operate.

So how much compassion do you have?

I've had it for six years.

- I don't know a lot about economics and I that he has lost money.

I certainly can go along with that.

And if this was the only building he owned, I would have a great deal of sympathy, but it's not.

And there is such thing as tax right off, and I know that he's making a profit.

- How much compassion she's got for me?

I don't know.

People don't have any compassion.

I mean, they feel that the landlord is greedy and making all kinds of money and he's taking things out of their pocket and they don't understand what the economics are.

And if they understood what the economics were, they probably wouldn't let the children destroy the properties.

And it's a constant painting wall, decorating service, lighting fires, tear up, dumping garbage.

I mean, that's all the problems of the family housing unit.

(crowd cheering) - I attended the public hearing on the ordinance to ban kid discrimination and renting units.

I was asked to testify and I did.

And if you wanna know what the problem is, I'm going to tell you.

My son and I have lived in eight places this year, every place we go tells me they want infants or kids under four.

Since my kid is three and a half, he'll be four, too soon to stay there.

I had a whole speech prepared and I stood there and I thought about all the problems I had in finding housing.

And I looked at these people faces and knew that every night they went home to their warm houses and I could not do the speech I prepared.

Since I have been told to be brief.

If you don't pass this ordinance, my child was one of the kids that came in here with a sign.

If you don't pass it, you go down there and you explain to my child while he does not have a decent, safe place to live.

That's all I have to say.

(crowd cheering) - Officials, they can't sympathize with you.

They don't care because they aren't going through it.

They have probably never gone through it.

And it's just one of a million sob stories to them.

- Hello, I'm Michael Boyle.

Welcome to Electronicle and welcome to the end.

The end of habits, things, people, places, ideas, and of this season of Electronicle.

- I, I would've been shocked, had it stayed at that.

It needed to either go away or grow into something.

It basically morphed into a thing called Night Times, which was a four night a week program that had two magazine elements and a sports element and music.

So that was a logical extension of what was learned in Electronicle.

- [TV Announcer] In the imagery of endings.

The swan and its song are enduring motifs.

Here then, is a swan song of sorts to the enduring music of Tchaikovsky.

- This was for this show endings.

The last show that we did, and it was the last piece.

A lot of times we had some really creative pieces by the two videographers, Peter Brownscombe and Tom Adair.

- Don't fall into the old traps, do things that are different.

Don't do what people are expecting.

And certainly don't do what other public television stations are doing.

Try to put some weird twist on things and don't let anybody tell you, no you can't.

(swan music) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota arts and cultural heritage fund, The Katherine B. Andersen fund of the St. Paul and Minnesota foundation, Darby and Jerry Nelson and other friends of Minnesota experience.

(gentle music)