It’s a debatable proposition which is the great Western novel: The Virginian, by Owen Wister, or Shane, by Jack Schaefer. Both works deal with conflicts on the open range, specifically in Wyoming, and the heroes who resolved them.

Driving out to St. Mary’s of Dazey for the fall supper, I kept thinking about a great old friend from north Barnes County: George Amann, a lifelong farmer and devout Catholic with a strong sense of his place on earth and under heaven. George told me stories about the Corpus Christi procession at St. Mary’s and about life on Bald Hill Creek.

The physical appearance of the photograph is itself a metaphor. The Farm Security Administration photographer John Vachon took it, having stopped along the road in Morton County, North Dakota, in February 1942.

In April 1874 the Bismarck Tribune saw fit to remind residents of the territory of the provisions of a certain law that had been passed by the territorial legislature in Yankton in 1871: the “Dakota Herd Law.” In order to avoid misunderstandings and disputes, people needed to know that the law had repealed the practice of open range in Dakota Territory.

One of the great promoters of western settlement in mid-nineteenth century was William Gilpin of Missouri — military officer, western explorer, first territorial governor of Colorado. In 1857 Gilpin was distressed about the still-prevailing notion that the country east of the Rockies was a Great American Desert.

We live in a time of hyper-sensitivity in matters of contagion. Dr. Kelley and I are members of a rather conservative—actually, really conservative—Lutheran parish where some members still exercise the option of the common cup. On the other hand, we recently took part in a communion service where we were issued little sealed plastic packages, one compartment of which contained just a splash of wine, the other a dime-size gluten-free wafer.

When I wrote some weeks ago about drummers--traveling sales representatives--in the prairie communities of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I was also reporting on the currency in those days of a folklore genre — the fraternal prayer, you might call it. By which I mean, a declarative sort of prayer, recited publicly, on behalf of some self-conscious group, often one that felt itself misunderstood, and thus called on the Almighty for understanding and relief.

There is a lot of texture to historical life on the prairies that gets glossed in historical memory. As my old friend John Helgeland used to say, doing History is mainly a matter of leaving things out. That is how a historian, academic or popular, tries to get at the essentials and make a manageable, useful story.

When I say that Dr. Kelley and I are flying to Norway, people around here make assumptions. So let me clarify that although I am a card-carrying member of Kringen Lodge of the Sons of Norway, I have no Norwegian ancestry; I’m in it for the pie.

A farm boy in Burleigh County known as “Happy Mac” was not happy in July 1936. He had been doing his part for the family during hard times, herding their beef and milk cows wherever they might find forage. It was sparse.