TV Guy Comes to Mott!

Small town is validated through visit by television personality.

Ron Mott comes to Mott

Sacred Cows

For the second week in a row, the New York Times food section visits the boonies, this time for the intersection between farming and religion.

We meet organic farmer nuns in New York State, an evangelical South Dakota farmer who raises kosher cattle for Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn, and buried toward the end, a Saudi Arabian businessman in New Rockford raising halal beef for Muslims.

Of Church and Steak

Musical Ambitions

A young music ensemble from Florida sends its leader to Grand Forks to pay the bills. Chung Park is a UND instructor, youth conductor for the Greater Grand Forks Symphony Orchestra and leader of the Project Copernicus, a group of musicians under 30 who specialize in contemporary composers.

According to the Miami Herald, they're beginning to get noticed.

Bison Burgers

An article about the tastiness of bison, but as usual, South Dakota hogs the spotlight. Don't you just hate that? NDSU gets a mention toward the end, though.

Home Again On the Kitchen Range

Get Out While You're Young

The blog has been on vacation. Apologies for the absence.

Not much in the news lately, so here's a review of Debra Marquart's 2006 memoir of her rebellious youth as a Napoleon farm girl with parents who sound like they were a bit of a bummer. Here's an Amazon.com link, too.

Important Scientific Breakthrough

Drinking wine from North Dakota may ruin your meal. Or more accurately, believing you are drinking wine from North Dakota can ruin your meal, according to a scientific study.

Researchers gave one group of diners wine labeled as a product of California and another group the same wine, but labeled as being from North Dakota. The result was that the group drinking the "North Dakota wine" gave their wine and meals lower marks than the other group. The explanation is that the expectation of getting an inferior experience becomes self-fulfilling.

Let's hope this is too discouraging to North Dakota vintners. But it's all in the mind, right? Or is it all the marketing?

Something Old

A 2003 New York Times article about the unusually long lives of rural North Dakotans:

North Dakota Town's Payoff For Hard Lives Is A Long Life

Three conclusions:

1. A dull life can be a very long life.
2. Old German farmers who lived through the Depression, drought, hunger could whip my office-job ass without raising their heart rates.
3. Canned sausage?

The Simpsons, a Good Show

TV: The capital of North Dakota is named after what German ruler?

Homer: Hitler!

Marge: Hitler, North Dakota?

Any fan of the Simpsons has seen the name Alf Clausen hundreds of times. He composes and directs the music on the show. And he grew up in Jamestown and graduated from NDSU.

Here's his home page. He's also been interviewed by Terry Gross.

(Also, go see the Simpsons movie. It's great.)

Bobcat

Bobcat is probably the only North Dakota-based corporate acquisition that can make international news, at least since Microsoft bought Great Plains Software. Reuters picks up the North Dakota angle.

Baseball, Again

The Twins are trying to keep their heads above .500, but here's an old ESPN SportsCenter commercial with Joe Mauer and a Fargo mention.

Hemp for America

Stephen Colbert covers the North Dakota hemp fight, then gets someone from a not-really-related cause to talk about it. Munchies jokes follow.

Comedy Central Colbert page

Link to the segment on VoteHemp.com. (Thanks to NorthDecoder.com.)

Trouble on the Reservation

NPR reports from Standing Rock on authorities' inability to respond to rape and other violent crimes. Blame goes to incompetence, indifference and underfunding. Whatever it is, it makes for a grim story.

National Public Radio: Rape Cases on Indian Lands Go Uninvestigated.

We're On the TV!

Things we can learn about North Dakota by searching YouTube:

• Hockey is popular.
• It's a nice place for driving around.
• It is frequented by UFOs.
• It is vigilant against the threat of emo.

Whatever the hell emo is.

Legalize It, Or: Don't Worry. We're Republicans.

More coverage of those unkempt young radicals and their quest to be hemp farmers.

NY Times: Sober North Dakotans Hope to Legalize Hemp

OK, but how do the stoned North Dakotans feel about it?

Kill Da Wabbit

Everyone from Fox News to the Chronicle of Higher Education is picking up the story about NDSU's aggressive anti-rabbit tactics.

Little Mosque on the Prairie

As seemingly unlikely as Satchel Paige pitching in Bismarck, Ross, N.D., is reported to have been the site of the first mosque in the United States. Voice of America produced an article on it in 2005. Sure, VOA is fairly propagandish and the message here is that "Muslims have long been accepted in America," but interesting nonetheless, especially the revelation that someone named Hassan Abdallah can look like your typical old North Dakota farmer.

North Dakota is Home to First U.S. Mosque

Talking Baseball (Still)

We're still in a baseball mood here.

It's not commonly known, but North Dakota in the 1930s was one of the first places where integrated baseball flourished, thanks in part to ambitious car dealer and team owner, Neil Churchill, who signed some of the best Negro League players of the time. Roger Maris isn't in the Hall of Fame, but Satchel Paige is.

Here's a long article on the state's baseball glory days.

Pronk!

Travis Hafner, AKA Pronk, Sykeston native and Cleveland Indians DH, re-signs for a giant crap-load of money -- $57 million, or 1,000 times the annual economic output of Sykeston. Good for Pronk.

I once tried to figure out an all-North Dakota baseball team. The Maris-Erstad-Hafner part seemed pretty good, but when I realized the starter would be Rick Helling, I kinda lost interest.

Roll Out.

This summer's biggest toy-related blockbuster aimed at 30-year-old men, Transformers, includes actor and Minot native Josh Duhamel. According to his entry on the Internet Movie Database, he owns a restaurant in Minot and is engaged to Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas. Not bad, as long as that damn "Humps" song doesn't drive him insane.

Bar-ry! Bar-ry!

Fargo man, Andrew Clapp, puts North Dakota on the map as home to hairy drunk dudes.

Fargo Man Greets Bonds on Field

Barry wasn't afraid, though. "I felt safe with him . . . he had no shoes on. If you come at me one-on-one, you'd better come with a lot, Jack. "