NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota
State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665
December 3, 1998
Plains Folk: Ten Ways to be History
Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University
©1998 Plains Folk
Recently I was called upon to talk to an economic development meeting. The title of my talk was "History as a Guide to the Future."
Maybe it's just the tenor of our times, but have you noticed that when people talk about the lessons of history, they always mean learning about mistakes made in the past and how to avoid the same errors? There was a time—as recent as my parents' generation—when we studied the past in order to emulate the good deeds of heroes. So much for heroes.
Anyway, I must be a creature of our times, because my thoughts ran to all the ways we like to shoot ourselves in the foot in this part of the country. What I write about in Plains Folk is the culture of the Great Plains—that is, the stuff mainly of anthropology. Anthropologists study living cultures. Up the hall are the archeologists, who study the fragmented material remains of dead cultures.
With that economic development meeting still fresh in my mind, I offer here what I call "The Top Ten Ways to Make a Town on the Great Plains the Subject of Archeologists":
No. 10—Don't sweat the small stuff. Go after the big payroll that will anchor the town's economy, and things like retail business and cultural life will take care of themselves.
No. 9—Concentrate on jobs and amenities for men, because after all, the men are the breadwinners, and if the men are working and happy, the women and families will come along with them.
No. 8—Proclaim loudly and publicly that the people we want to move into town are our kids, who went to Seattle years ago, but we're going to convince them to come back, and that will be wonderful, because they're nice people like us.
No. 7—Be careful not commit to community causes that require ongoing attention, because that might interfere with getting down on time to Sun City along with our good friends from Manitoba and Minnesota.
No. 6—Be on guard against people who want to spend our tax money foolishly on things like streets and schools, because we aren't going to need those things much longer anyway.
No. 5—Keep in mind that this is North Dakota, and we can't expect things to work out the way they do in other parts of the country.
No. 4—Admit that the experts know best. If the agricultural economists say our economy is going bust and the school administrators say our schools should be closed, they must know best.
No. 3—Find out who is responsible for any community problem and see that he is thoroughly shamed.
No. 2—Always remember that the world is full of devious and powerful interests in distant seats of authority, and they are plotting against us.
And, the No. 1 way to make our town a subject for archeologists: Keep talking about the way things were in 1960. Those high school kids just love to hear about it.
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Source: Tom Isern (701) 231-8339
Editor: Dean Hulse (701) 231-6136