Le Fargo

From Graeme's blog, a web site with people in Fargo, speaking French.

Uncle Bob

Bob Dylan turned 67 on Saturday. Bob is from Hibbing, Minn., (also birthplace of Roger Maris), but Fargo can claim a small part of his legacy. He spent a teenage summer there playing piano for local rock n' roller Bobby Vee before getting fired and leaving for the U. of M.

Interviews with Bobby Vee and Fargo contemporary

Bob, 1963:

my country is the Minnesota-North Dakota territory that's where I was born an learned how t walk an it's where I was raised an went t school... my youth was spent wildly among the snowy hills an sky blue lakes, willow fields an abandoned open pit mines. contrary t rumors, I am very proud of
where I'm from an also of the many blood streams that run in my roots.

Chuck

Pop culture writer from Wyndmere, Chuck Klosterman, shows up on a podcast with ESPN guy Bill Simmons. Most of the podcast is a rambling thing about basketball, writing, German microwaves and nothing in particular, but halfway through, the conversation shifts to North Dakota. Anyone who has had to explain the state to someone only vaguely aware of its existence will find it familiar.

Also, Chuck has a novel coming out.

Baa

Sure there's the Web 2.0, iPods and 'tween pop stars, but what kids today really want to do is look after a flock of stupid, stinking animals.

NY Times: Seeking a Few Good Shepherds

The Legacy of Indian Schools

NPR did a two-part series on American Indian schools this week. Part one includes a mention of the Wahpeton Indian Boarding School, since renamed the Circle of Nations School.

NPR: American Indian Boarding Schools Haunt Many

Ed Sez:

Ethanol isn't to blame for food crisis. After all, who was using that corn, anyway?


Washington Times: Ethanol as cause of rood crisis "flat-out wrong."

More Erdrich

Another review of the new Louise Erdrich novel, set in fictional Pluto, N.D., which according to the reviewer, is "one of those places we read about now and then when big-city papers run features about the death of small-town America."

Ed Ascendent

U.S. News & World Report likes Ed Schafer. It's also the rare national publication to mention the ag secretary's association with Mr. Bubble and Junkyard Wars.

U.S. News: Like a Farmhand, Ag's Ed Schafer Does It All

Horses

Tomorrow is Kentucky Derby day, and, according to this article on Slate.com, some people will be placing bets through phone hubs in "exotic, loosely regulated locales like St. Kitts or North Dakota"

"Say you want to lay $1,000 on a horse running at Aqueduct. You call the hub in Fargo, then an operator takes your bet and relays it to New York, where the money is fed into the racetrack's pool."

Does this really go on in North Dakota, or is Fargo just writerly shorthand for the middle of nowhere?

New Erdrich

The New York Times reviews Louise Erdrich's new novel, A Plague of Doves, praising it for its Faulknerian approach to place and narrative voice, as well as its Garcia-Marquez-style of magical realism.

"A boy and a girl, who meet in a field during a plague of doves, run away from home and for six years find refuge with a mannish pig rustler and her notorious husband. That boy’s granddaughter develops a wild crush on the local troublemaker, who will one day steal her great uncle’s magical fiddle, which appeared to him in a dream. A man assembles a world-class stamp collection while living in the little town of Pluto, only to find that his obsession leads to his undoing. For years a judge carries on a passionate affair with an older woman, who ends up marrying a local developer, who buys the judge’s beloved house with the intention of stripping it bare. A charismatic boy becomes a dangerous cult leader, enslaving his wife, a snake handler, who plots to liberate herself and their children from his thrall."

Anyway, it's supposed to be good.

Wheat Waning

The Washington Post does up a big story about the declining acreage of wheat being grown now that many farmers are switching to more disease-resistant and profitable crops like corn and soybeans, even in places like Gascoyne, N.D., where wheat and barley used to be the only crop. This has caused prices to surge and people to go hungry in places that depend on cheap imports of U.S. grain.

Who knew that farming was so complicated?

Emptying the Breadbasket

(Where the hell is Gascoyne?)

Death Comes to the Poet (Almost)

The New York Times recently reviewed North Dakota poet laureate Larry Woiwode's new memoir, A Step from Death, inspired in part by a near-fatal tractor accident.

In literature, there are four kinds of conflicts:

• Man vs. man
• Man vs. nature
• Man vs. himself
• Man vs. tractor

I have a degree in English.

Miss N.D., WNBA

Carla Christofferson went from being Miss North Dakota (1985) to a legal bigwig to owner of the the L.A. Sparks Women's National Basketball Association team.

New Breed of Tycoon Brings Order to the Court

She also used to date Eddie Van Halen.

Cashing in the CPR

The New York Times goes to Denhoff, N.D., (I don't even know where that is) to report on farmers converting their Conservation Reserve land into fields and pasture to take advantage of booming food prices. Good news for people who like cheap food. Not so good news for ducks.

Hey! Candidates Pay Attention to North Dakota!

There's probably too many stories about what was apparently the most monmentous day in state history, so here's a sampling.

Washington Post: A North Dakota Evening to Remember
ABC News: Battleground North Dakota? You Betcha!
(This report was by a Grand Forks native, according to the GF Herald.)
Slate.com: The Wrong Dakota
Wall Street Journal political blog: A Hard Fight in North Dakota
Controversy! New York Times: McCain Called a 'Warmonger' at Obama Appearance

Obama didn't actually say "uff-da," did he?

Barack Obama is speaking in Grand Forks. Obama, a legitimate presidential contender, speaking in three-electoral-holding, red Republican North Dakota, this late in a heated nomination fight. That's almost historic. How can we make him feel welcome?

Maybe we shouldn't ask those NDSU kids.

L.A. Times blog picks up students' Obama skit

Didn't seem to deter Hillary, though.

Poetry, Economy, Bloggery

Various junk:

• The Garrison Kiellor public radio bit that interrupts your sleep every morning, "The Writer's Almanac," featured a poem Tuesday about sex and North Dakota. It was titled "Montana."
• The New York Times: Nobody knows how to regulate lenders, investment banks, financial services firms to keep this whole subprime thing, or some other thing that we haven't even thought of yet, from biting us on the ass again for another many, many billion dollars God knows when. Karen Tyler, North Dakota securities commisioner gets her two cents in, too. (Second page, half way down.)
• North Dakota bloggers get kudos in the Washington Post. Good work, folks.
  
  

Boom

North Dakota, contrarian that it is, enjoys nice economic growth while a looming recession is scaring the pants off of folks in the rest of the country. So reports the Christian Science Monitor.

Jon Hassler

Sure, he was a Minnesota author, but he went to UND.

Minnesota novelist Jon Hassler dies at 74

March 12

On this date in 1922, Jack Kerouac was born. In 1957, his novel On the Road was published.

From page 20:

I looked at the company. There were two young farmer boys from North Dakota
in red baseball caps, which is the standard North Dakota farmer-boy hat, and
they were headed for the harvests; their old men had given them leave to hit the road for a summer.

(March 12, is Kent Conrad's birthday, too. But how many books has he sold?)

Prairie Home Ron Paul

Probably half the state of North Dakota has seen this house on I-94 displaying its support for a certain oddball Republican and a general lack of structural integrity. Now readers of snarky political blog Wonkette have too, thanks to some guy named Ryan.

Also, I missed another recent N.D.-related Wonkette post about our stingy ways in presidential campaigns.

We Want Wheat

Lawton, N.D., gets a dateline in a front-page NY Times article about the global spike in food prices. Briefly, it's good for farmers, not so good for poor people.

(And as someone who grew up in the 1980s, it still seems weird that something good is happening to farmers, rather than a perpetual economic disaster.)

Honored

Master Sergeant Woody Keeble, a Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux and veteran of World War II and the Korean War, received a post-humous Congressional Medal of Honor for his valor in Korea.

CNN: First Sioux receives Medal of Honor

White House transcript of medal ceremony

1861

On March 2, 1861, the United States government organized the Dakota Territory. It was later split up into North Dakota and some other states.

By the Power of Grayskull

A somewhat odd reference to Bismarck at Cracked.com concerning Skeletor and teleportation.

Model

Today is the birthday of Grand Forks' Nicole Linkletter, winner of America's Next Top Model. She's 22.

Between her, the governor's daughter and that other one from the TV show, North Dakota has its share of models.

That is, three of them.

China = North Dakota

... for some reason having to do with railroads and interstates. According to this report on public radio's Marketplace. And Fargo is like Urumqi.

Homes

The New York Times looks at the parts of America where the housing market has not fallen victim to an insane mob mentality of price inflation and collapse, including Bismarck and Grand Forks. A UND professor gets a quote, too.

Some Cities Are Spared the Slide in Housing

All Election, All the Time

UK newspaper, the Telegraph, goes to Bismarck to cover Obama's efforts in a very red state. It also takes time to mention the Coen Brothers, 40 below and our least-visited status. Still, it's nice to have candidates pay attention.

Barack Obama targets rural US grassroots

$0.09

According to the New York Times, North Dakota trails every other state in donations to presidential campaigns. In this election, residents have given 9 cents per capita, or $57,613. Apparently, voters prefer personal contact with their politicians over monied media campaigns.

“Even for a statewide political campaign, you have to get to the lutefisk feed. ... Putting commercials on TV is not going to work."

In North Dakota, Forget Money. Politics Is Different.

Fiction Dept.

Louise Erdrich has a new short story in the New Yorker. It's long, so you might want to wait and read it at work.

The Reptile Garden

It's Cold

A newspaper columnist in North Carolina hears it's cold in North Dakota, investigates. Lloyd Omdahl provides details.

Asheville Citizen-Times.com

Red States Blues?

Red state Democrats like Barack Obama. Our own Kent Conrad has endorsed him. Noted smart guy George Will explains what that means (or at least what he thinks it means).

(On a related note, has anyone noticed that George Will sorta looks like Kent's dour, unfriendly brother?)

Plains Drain (Part II)

The Economist gets in on the obituaries for the Great Plains in an article about the depopulation of the American Middle, and Frank and Deborah Popper's not-much-beloved Buffalo Commons idea gets another airing. If you need a refresher on what that was about, try Anne Matthews' "Where the Buffalo Roam."

The Too Much Mistake

National Geographic goes to North Dakota for an article about all the people who aren't there anymore.

Basically, 100 some years ago, folks were overly optimistic about the number of people who would show up and how many would be able to make a living there.

Seems like a bit of a miscalculation.

National Geographic: The Emptied Prairie

Times Topics: Sugar Beets and the Pill

Vacation, computer problems, very few new posts. Here's some stuff that was in the New York Times recently.

Round 2 for Biotech Beets: Soon genetically modified sugar beets may be tumbling from trucks on DeMers Avenue.

Big Rise for Cost of Birth Control: Includes a UND senior whose pills have gotten too expense. (Let's hope Grandma didn't see the article before Thanksgiving dinner.)

Kent, Huck and the Nuge

Outdoor Life magazine made a list of 25 people it says have done the most for hunting and fishing interests. Conrad is one of them and the only politician listed besides Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. Naturally, Ted Nugent is up there, too.

I didn't know Conrad hunted.

NIMBY, or This Ethanol Stuff May Be Harder than We Thought

A New York Times article about how new ethanol plants are meeting opposition in some communities and, due to a glut on the market, scaling back in others, like Grafton.

In Farm Belt, Ethanol Plants Hit Resistance (Grafton mention on the second page.)

Fascinating

AP: North Dakota ranks ninth in personalized license plates.

Olio

There's been not much posting here lately. A brief round-up of what we've been missing:

Ozzy: Mad at Fargo sheriff for using a chance to party with the Oz as bait to catch suspected criminals.

Fox reports (you decide): Political correctness threatens UND mascot.

Sen. Kent: Conrad has been all over the news talking about the new $289 billion farm bill. Here he is in the Wall Street Journal.

Ed

Someone from North Dakota nominated for something important. Ed Schafer will cover our state in glory as did Mike Johanns, Ann Veneman and Dan Glickman for whatever places they were from.

Warren Christopher

Saturday is the birthday of former U.S. secretary of state Warren Christopher. He was born in Scranton, N.D., in 1925 and was awarded the state's Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award in 1998. He looks somewhat like an owl.

Caught

Richard McNair, convicted of murdering a man at a grain elevator in 1987, was captured by Mounties in New Brunswick on Thursday. He became notorious for multiple prison escapes since then, was the subject of a New Yorker magazine profile (not available online) and was even an internet phonomenon when a video of him outsmarting police in Louisiana was posted on YouTube.

Maybe they can hang on to him this time.

Profile in the National Post, Canada

Arrest account by the Canadian Press

Nuclear Fallout

Pentagon explains how some nukes accidentally got flown from Minot to Louisiana, then punishes some folks.

"The airmen replaced the schedule with their own informal" system, he said,
though he didn't say why they did that nor how long they had been doing it
their
own way."

AP: 70 Punished in Accidental B-52 Flight

Standing Up for Hemp

Environmental web site chides California's tough-guy governor for caving on hemp legislation, credits much less glamorous North Dakota for standing up to the feds.

California Governor Nixes Industrial Hemp While North Dakota Moves On

Mancur Olson

Monday's announcement of the Nobel winners in economics capped this year's awards. One of the discipline's prominent practitioners was Mancur Olson, a native of the Grand Forks area, NDSU alumnus and Rhodes scholar, who many believe was robbed of a likely Nobel by an early death. His work on the impact of collective action on the economic performance of nations had probably its greatest influence in the field of political science.

The Independent of London marked his passing in 1998.

Armstrong, Again

Another account of a young Grand Forks Herald reporter's scoop of a livid Louis Armstrong's reaction to the thwarted integration of Arkansas schools, this time in Editor & Publisher.

How Young Reporter Got That Famous 1957 Satchmo Scoop

Words

Ed Bok Lee of Seoul/North Dakota/Minnesota is a poet of some sort.

www.edboklee.com

Bismarck Cooks

Epicurious.com, a site run by Gourmet magazine, lauds Bismarck's Pirogue Grille for its tasty, and locally sourced, bison, beef, venison and walleye. Pity the poor vegetarian.