Sometime soon I will come to Prairie Public studios and record Plains Folk radio feature no. 1000. I am not winding down, but ramping up toward that recording, wherein I will, of course, offer some wise and witty remarks about life on the Great Plains of North America and the enterprise of telling their stories ..read more

To lovers of the outdoors, the legacy of Gunlog Bjarni “G. B.” Gunlogson is evident. Just visit Icelandic State Park, in Pembina County, established in 1964 following Gunlogson’s gift of a 200-acre nature preserve along the Tongue River to the state of North Dakota. See the homestead buildings of his Icelandic immigrant parents, Eggert and Rannveig, along with an assemblage of other historic buildings representing rural life. Hike the nature trails. Homesteading + country life + nature + conservation: it’s a simple legacy. Only, maybe not so much ..read more

Women and men and how they get along, or not, are not just matters for contemplation and commiseration in our personal lives. They are historical questions in the settlement and development of the Great Plains. The homesteading era often featured men going out alone to stake claims. Historically, however, the late nineteenth century in America saw the enshrinement of romantic love as the beau ideal of the full life. Marriage came to be considered a love match, not just an economic alliance. Thus all those bachelor homesteaders in their little old sod shanties on the claim, they longed for thei ..read more

In a previous essay, I left you in the lurch, having quoted, in closing a discussion of the early work of the Institute for Regional Studies at North Dakota Agricultural College, now NDSU, a poem by John R. Milton. This opening poem of The Loving Hawk, a chapbook published by the Institute, ranges from the fall of man to the endless issues of place and identity fostered by open horizons. Never fear, there is salvation in the same booklet, in the form of another poem, Dust Storm, which doesn't sound optimistic, but wait, listen ..read more

North Dakota Congressman, Hjalmar Nygaard, he knew his way around legislative corridors. A teacher and a businessman, his fellow citizens of Steele County had elected him to multiple terms in the state legislature, and then in 1961 he took office in the United States House of Representatives. One day in 1963, in the Capitol Building, Representative Nygaard felt a pain in his chest ..read more

A dry, wry farmer was hired to look after exhibits at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. A central figure in the exhibits was a female form composed of grasses and grains, a picture of fertility. The farmer was attending to business when a smart aleck Hoosier from Indiana came up and said, “I say, pardner, this ’ere show is great. You must have a rich country for grains out there in Dakota; but I don’t see no exhibit from your divorce courts ..read more

There are scores of local historical museums across North Dakota, nobody knows just how many — county museums, community museums, organizational museums, special-interest museums. Some people regard this as a problem, for how can they be maintained and their collections cared for ..read more

The hospitality was great when I took a gang of students to Ashley last spring to pilot the first cloud-cataloging project in a local museum in North Dakota ..read more

The last time we pulled into the Starlite in Fingal, we stumbled into a hotbed of community memory, as it was all-school reunion day. The Starlite still stands. Its rounded roof spans white stucco walls. Top front, above the entry, is the Starlite Garden sign, indescribably inviting. The building now opens for events and functions ..read more

In 1918 a farm boy from McLean County, Clell Gannon, entered the Art Institute of Chicago, full of hope. Two or three years later, disillusioned and debilitated by diphtheria and influenza, he was back in Bismarck. In 1924 he published (with a pay-to-play publisher, Gotham Press of Boston) his book of poems, Songs of the Bunch Grass Acres. Wherein he declares ..read more