Search results for

Tuesday, October 4, 2022 - While The Windmill Watched: A Slice of Rural America in the 1950s is a memoir from sisters Jackie Pfeiffer McGregor and Janine Pfeiffer Knop about growing up in Menoken, ND. It’s now being made into a movie from Bismarck’s Daniel Bielinski of Canticle Productions. ~~~ Chuck Lura shares a Natural North Dakota essay on the fall bird migration. ~~~ The annual LGBTQ+ Summit will be held in Mandan this month. Here to discuss why such a gathering is helpful are two of the organizers, Mattie Bogard and Cindy Roholt.

No doubt many of you are familiar with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Published in 1962 the book warned that continued widespread and indiscriminate use of pesticides could result in extensive ecological damage, including the death of songbirds, resulting in a “silent spring” when no songbirds would be heard. It is hard to imagine such a thing. But it looks as if we may be experiencing quieter springs.

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.

In 1899, revised laws in North Dakota stated that no two townships could have the same name. However, most townships didn’t act on the change. Pembina’s Pioneer Express opined, it was a law “in existence, but … in innocuous desuetude”—which was a fancy way of saying a harmless state of disuse.

The Genie in the Bottle

A creepy one!

Thursday, September 15, 2022 - A recent report from the C.D.C. says the life expectancy nationally for Native Americans dropped by nearly 7 years from 2019 to 2021. While Covid was largely to blame, other factors are present. Here to discuss the problem and how North Dakota’s indigenous community is faring is Dr. Donald Warne of the Department of Indigenous Health at the UND School of Medicine & Health Sciences at UND. ~~~ Historian Tom Isern has this week’s Plains Folk essay, “The Dakota Herd Law.” ~~~ Sue Balcom is discussing ways to preserve your harvest as she joins us for Main Street Eats.

Yikes. Matt does not recommend this one.

Tips for safely saving food for winter.

By September 1943, residents in the Red River Valley and across North Dakota had become accustomed to their lives during wartime. The Fargo Forum newspaper featured a daily reminder of the costs of WWII battles as well as activities on and off the war front.