Plains Folk

By Prairie Public

What's Plains Folk about?

Plains Folk is a commentary devoted to life on the great plains of North Dakota. Written by Tom Isern of West Fargo, North Dakota, and read in newspapers across the region for years, Plains Folk venerates fall suppers and barn dances and reminds us that "more important to our thoughts than lines on a map are the essential characteristics of the region — the things that tell what the plains are, not just where they are."

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Potato Bugs and Paris Green

11.09.2019

Wrapping up the prairie gardening season of 2019, I bid farewell to some slimy companions. As I work in the beds, often barefoot, I welcome all the frogs, salamanders, and toads I touch with my toes. I like to see ...

Plains Folk episodes:

11.09.2019 Potato Bugs and Paris Green Wrapping up the prairie gardening season of 2019, I bid farewell to some slimy companions. As I work in the beds, often barefoot, I welcome all the frogs, salamanders, and toads I touch with my toes. I like to see ...
11.02.2019 The Cry of the Plover Well, I will not inquire if you did your homework. Last week I asked you to go to a Cornell University website and listen to the call of the upland sandpiper recorded at Long Lake in 1988. As recorded there ...
10.26.2019 Plover on Toast One night in March 1900, the Pennsylvania alumni of Yale University gathered in the genteel quarters of the Scranton Club to host a visit by Yale President Arthur T. Hadley. A sumptuous feast was served, including courses of salmon, chicken, ...
10.19.2019 Peace and Quiet in the Dairy Prairie folk of the late nineteenth century were accustomed to reading grim reports of deadly gorings inflicted by horned cattle--a catalog of grief and outrage chronicled in my previous essay. In March of 1888 a correspondent of the Emmons County ...
10.12.2019 A Horrible Sight and a Terrible Death In one of our family photo albums is a snapshot of me, age pre-school, sitting astride our prize polled Hereford bull. I’m pretty sure his name was Domino. I’m also pretty sure if such a photo were taken and viewed ...
10.05.2019 Real Things in Real Places “Spend less, see more” -- this has been the candid and standard advice dispensed for 25 years by Seth Kugel, author of “The Frugal Traveler” in the New York Times . Now, in book form -- under the title, Rediscovering ...
09.28.2019 Hunter’s Dilemma It is a yellow dawn on the northern plains as I settle into a sunny place for some reading. My head pivots frequently, from the hazy rays streaming through corn raised by farmers of perilous tenure and destined for markets ...
09.21.2019 Wolf Hunters Coyotes, known in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as “prairie wolves,” were considered merely a nuisance in the days of the overland trails. As agricultural settlement dug into prairies, however, farm folk redefined prairie wolves as a menace. Organized ...
09.14.2019 Prairie Wolves It can be confusing to read, in documents of early prairie settlement, references to “prairie wolves.” The creature of note is no more a wolf than a prairie dog is a dog or a prairie chicken is a chicken. Canis ...
09.07.2019 The Cows Came Home One day in October 1907, a herd of milk cows belonging to townspeople in Pembina broke into a pasture that belonged to a farmer named Jim Kneeshaw. “The town herd got into solitary confinement in Kneeshaw’s pasture on Wednesday,” the ...
08.31.2019 The Town Herd “The large amount of grain that has been seeded near town will necessitate the herding of stock now running at large,” announced the Dickinson Press in 1883. “Mr. S. Burnside proposes starting a town herd and will herd all stock ...
08.24.2019 Ice Age Climate change is a subject I hesitate to introduce, for fear of igniting disputes between political partisans debating anthropogenic climate change--that is, change caused by human actions--and what ought to be done about it. I am a historian, so that ...
08.17.2019 Gopher Tails in the Collection Plate A couple of weeks ago I detailed that scandalous episode in the history of the Flickertail State, the great gopher-tail fraud case of Ransom County, 1900, which had to be settled by the state supreme court. The court’s opinion hinged ...
08.10.2019 The Problem with a Colorful History The most prominent historian in the history of African Americans in the American West is Dr. Quintard Taylor, of the University of Washington. He is a revered--some might even say formidable--scholar. He is the empressario of the go-to website on ...
08.03.2019 Southern Dinners and Plantation Melodies The Second Baptist Church, Bismarck, North Dakota, organized in 1917 to serve the African-American residents of the city, some of whom previously had attended the predominantly white First Methodist Episcopal Church--now known as McCabe United Methodist Church.
08.01.2019 The Gopher-Bounty Frauds On October 17, 1900, the supreme court of North Dakota upheld the conviction of one Robert H. Stewart, a resident of Sargent County, for “having fraudulently obtained money from Sargent county by means of a false, forged, and fictitious instrument. ...
07.20.2019 The Food Cache Sean Sherman calls himself the Sioux Chef. That’s in the title of his book, The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen . S-i-o-u-x Sioux, as in Lakota, not sous chef, as in the hands-on guy who runs a kitchen operation and reports ...
07.15.2019 Great Plains Geology Great Plains Geology , by R. F. Diffendal Jr., is a recent volume in the Discover the Great Plains Series of handbooks organized out of the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska, and published by University of Nebraska ...
06.22.2019 Soothing Chamomile On a still summer evening, my retriever has her nose pressed against the screen door. Just outside, on the patio, a dehydrator is desiccating a load of chamomile blossoms. The aroma must be intoxicating to a sensitive nose. Come the ...
05.11.2019 Still If you’re like me, you’ve already filled up your calendar with events and expeditions for the summer. Make room for one more: 2pm Sunday afternoon, June 9, Rebecca Bender will booktalk her recent work, Still , at the Wild Rose ...
04.27.2019 Prairie in Your Freezer Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about northern pike. Other people in spring are thinking about walleye. Walleye, I like to say, is fish for people who don’t like fish. And they are wimpy fish, too, so there. With ice ...
04.20.2019 Heroes of German-Russian Country Here are a couple of things that seem far apart, but in my mind, there is a connection. We are recently returned from a research expedition to the high dry interior of New Zealand, where we spent time with people ...
03.23.2019 Heart of Dakota The Missouri River never had a Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, to pilot its historic steamboats into the literary canon. Steamboating on the Great Plains in general has been shortchanged by regional historians, beginning with the great one, Walter Prescott ...
03.16.2019 The Shame of Noah The name Bertha Rachael Palmer has an ambiguous resonance in our history on the northern plains. I have written in admiration of her 1928 book, Beauty Spots in North Dakota , indeed, have offered metaphorically to carry her bags for ...
03.09.2019 Fires of Hope This is not an attempt to rekindle an old controversy, but in my opinion, our state’s flagship university missed an opportunity when a few years ago it selected a new nickname for its sports teams. It seems to me the ...
03.02.2019 Learning from the Lindis About the time you hear this essay, Suzzanne and I will be jetting to New Zealand once again. We have scheduled our spring break in the Hocken Library, at the University of Otago, the southernmost university in the world. From ...
02.23.2019 A Book-Hungry Land The words you hear are composed in an exceedingly literary environment. An entire floor of our split-level house is devoted to office and library, as I am a writer and my wife is a publisher. She is always overhauling someone’s ...
02.09.2019 The Duck Stamp Guy Waterfowl hunters, check your wallet, and you will see that this year’s duck stamp - now known as a Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp, but who calls it that, anyway? - this year’s duck stamp features a pair of ...
02.02.2019 Malbec in Your Chili Deep winter is a time for serious culinary work, and we have a freezer full of venison. In a previous essay I made the case for a new code of the sportsman suited to the prairies--a code that partakes both ...
01.28.2019 River of Stories Notes from a winter diary. Awaiting rosy fingers on the eastern horizon, I make a prayer of thanks for the morning dark, the starry quiet, and the companionship of this interlude. Not a creature is stirring, not even Angie the ...
01.28.2019 Venison Chronicles Whitetail deer populations on the Great Plains, like so much of life in the region, are a boom-and-bust proposition. Not being a wildlife biologist, I speak from the experience of a long life connected to the land and its history ...
01.05.2019 Difficult Birds For us people of the plains, especially outdoor enthusiasts, the ringneck pheasant is a problem child - the difficult bird that, despite its demerits, we love all the more. Favorite of upland game hunters up and down the plains, the ...
12.22.2018 To Be an American Last week I began the reading of my remarks to 131 New Americans who took the oath of citizenship from Magistrate Judge Alice Senechal, at the Sanctuary Events Center, on 12 December 2018. Today I resume those remarks, hearkening back ...
12.15.2018 We Will Never See Each Other Again Early on a Wednesday morning I took care of some medical matters endemic to old guys. My attending physician was named Patel. I mention this, because, well, you’ll understand shortly. From there I drove over to the Sanctuary Events Center, ...
12.08.2018 Tiwakan A muggy day at the National Archives two years ago was the most disturbing day I ever spent in scholarly research. All day I plowed through correspondence of military authorities in the Department of the Missouri detailing actions, most of ...
12.01.2018 The Remembrancer My friend Ron Vossler, in Wishek, says some of his neighbors consider him a Judas. I think he is, rather, what is known historically as a remembrancer. “Remembrancer” was a formal title conferred on certain figures in British legal and ...
11.24.2018 Era Bell Thompson on my Doorstep It depends on whether you turn left or you turn right, but either way, you are driving right up to a fascinating, yet obscure, historic site. I’m talking about Exit 190 of Interstate 94, the Driscoll Exit. If you go ...
11.17.2018 Listening to Junk The Welk Homestead State Historic Site, near Strasburg, is known to the public mainly as it commemorates the origins and career of Lawrence Welk. It also is committed to interpreting German-Russian culture and pioneer agriculture, because Lawrence’s parents, Ludwig and ...
11.10.2018 Verbing the Plains Some friends of mine, who share a common cognizance of native affairs on the northern plains, got to talking about a particular usage of language, a case of verbing, that is, of converting a noun into a verb, for effect. ...
11.10.2018 Centennial of the Great War Over the past few years we have observed the centennial of the Great War, 1914-18. Now we approach the anniversary of the armistice that ended the fighting, which today we in America observe as Veteran’s Day. In my radio essays ...
11.03.2018 Print Culture Here are two images that may seem incongruous, but I’m about to link them. First, driving into Ellendale Sunday afternoon, we espy, at the corner of Main & 281, a sandwich sign on wheels - the kind they use for ...
11.03.2018 Texas Cattle on the Plains A couple of years ago I got a request for a reference from Kansas State University, in Manhattan. The university was evaluating the credentials of one of its scholars, James E. Sherow, for appointment to the rank of university distinguished ...
09.29.2018 Modern Sagas Attending the Deuce of August celebration in Mountain, whereat Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir charmed the North Dakota crowd, stirred my interest in our Icelandic immigrant heritage. I have written about Her Excellency’s joyous appearance in Mountain and about the courageous ...
09.22.2018 Weasel Punchers When was the last time you saw a weasel? No, not one of the fur-bearing species; we do see them occasionally, furtively. I’m talking about a machine called the Weasel, a rugged vehicle that played a historic role here on ...
09.15.2018 Rare and Glorious Days The nature of things on the northern plains is that September brings a quickening - a frantic race to get things done and into order before that night train of autumn comes smoking through the land. I am a great ...
08.28.2018 Farm on the Great Plains The past couple of months I have spent a great deal of time book touring, promoting my new book, Pacing Dakota , with North Dakota State University Press. Most of the book is about life on the northern plains, but ...
08.28.2018 Young Man's Butte Driving to Medora a few days ago, we paused just east of Richardton to examine, from various vantages, a significant but little-known historical landmark--Young Man’s Butte. Viewed with a foreground of ripening wheat, and with a striking golden tone due ...
08.08.2018 Gathering of Good Friends One of the nice things about North Dakota is that you can drive three hours across the state to see a parade in a town of less than 100 population, and when you get there, you find people you know ...
08.08.2018 Five Hundred Babies After enjoying a church-basement luncheon at Vikur Lutheran Church, during the August the Deuce celebration in Mountain, and before heading over to the community hall to hear Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir, we had a wander through the Vikur Lutheran Cemetery. ...
07.30.2018 The Brigadoon of North Dakota Over the years I have devoted quite a bit of attention to the idea of a Great Plains cuisine, toward defining and extending the foodways of our region. Often this has involved introducing more spice into regional life--Asian and Hispanic ...

Older episodes

Plains Folk

What's Plains Folk about?

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Plains Folk episodes:

Potato Bugs and Paris Green

The Cry of the Plover

Plover on Toast

Peace and Quiet in the Dairy

A Horrible Sight and a Terrible Death

Real Things in Real Places

Hunter’s Dilemma

Wolf Hunters

Prairie Wolves

The Cows Came Home

The Town Herd

Ice Age

Gopher Tails in the Collection Plate

The Problem with a Colorful History

Southern Dinners and Plantation Melodies

The Gopher-Bounty Frauds

The Food Cache

Great Plains Geology

Soothing Chamomile

Still

Prairie in Your Freezer

Heroes of German-Russian Country

Heart of Dakota

The Shame of Noah

Fires of Hope

Learning from the Lindis

A Book-Hungry Land

The Duck Stamp Guy

Malbec in Your Chili

River of Stories

Venison Chronicles

Difficult Birds

To Be an American

We Will Never See Each Other Again

Tiwakan

The Remembrancer

Era Bell Thompson on my Doorstep

Listening to Junk

Verbing the Plains

Centennial of the Great War

Print Culture

Texas Cattle on the Plains

Modern Sagas

Weasel Punchers

Rare and Glorious Days

Farm on the Great Plains

Young Man's Butte

Gathering of Good Friends

Five Hundred Babies

The Brigadoon of North Dakota

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