Plains Folk

The Archives

Plains Folk, a commentary devoted to life on the great plains of North America, is now a special weekly feature on Hear It Now. 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.” You can hear Plains Folk once a week during Hear It Now, weekdays at 3 pm CT with a repeat at 7 pm CT.

To read more Plains Folk commentaries, click on the “archives” link.

Recent Shows

Prairie Plaster

Settlers of the Great Plains, as we commonly think, had to make do with what they had. This meant, in the absence of timber, building houses from the earth - from cut sod. Such homes were temporary, of course, until more proper building materials could be acquired.
Or maybe not. The more we find out about [...]
Prairie Plaster

Settlers of the Great Plains, as we commonly think, had to make do with what they had. This meant, in the absence of timber, building houses from the earth - from cut sod. Such homes were temporary, of course, until more proper building materials could be acquired.
Or maybe not. The more we find out about [...]
Soldier of Memory

A lone soldier towering above the intersection of Sixth Street and Belmont Avenue, Grand Forks, North Dakota, calls to memory the sacrifices of those who served in federal armies during the Civil War. The monument overall is 22 feet high. The granite soldier is 7 feet tall, but boyish in the face. This is one [...]
Arm of Liberty

“It was a Sunday in the fall of 1971 when fourteen-year-old Dick Woolf and friends, while walking through Island Park of Fargo, North Dakota, stumbled upon a dismembered limb.” I suppose that was the best opening line I ever read in a student history paper, and it came from one of my bright senior seminar [...]
Sage of Buxton

Budd Reeve ran a spectacular campaign for Congress in 1894, but he didn’t get many votes. Although a Democrat, he ran as an Independent, after the Democrats and the Populists got themselves into a bind over whether to fuse their parties to try to beat the Republicans. Reeve polled only 3 percent of the vote.
People [...]