Prairie Public

Plains Folk

Society EN ↓ 27 episodes

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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Author

Prairie Public

Episodes

Fish Fries 07.03.2026 4:30

In a lovely book of 2008, America Eats, author Pat Willard puts fish fries into her subtitle, but hardly mentions them in her book-length discussion of food events in American culture. Examining the custom in our own region, I have figured out why. Willard relies heavily on WPA interview transcripts from the 1930s. And fish fries, it turns out, are a more recently evolved custom than that. I mean...

The Knights of Leisure 28.02.2026 4:10

In Bottineau during the late 1880s, there emerged an association of men “on the ragged edge of civilization,” as one of them said, in a boom town on the Manitoba Railroad. They determined to have some fun poking fun at the booster spirit and the fraternal lodges that dominated the social scene. They gathered and wrote a constitution for the Ancient Order of Sit Stills and declared themselves the K...