Prairie Mosaic 502

(woman) "Prairie Mosaic" is funded by-- the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on Nov. 4th, 2008; the North Dakota Humanities Council, a nonprofit independent state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities; the North Dakota Council on the Arts, and by the members of Prairie Public. (woman) Welcome to "Prairie Mosaic," a patchwork of stories about the people and places that contribute to the arts, culture, and history in our region. Hi, I'm Bob Dambach, and I'm Barb gravel On this edition of "Prairie Mosaic," we'll listen to poetry read by a state competition finalist, learn about the craft of making maple syrup, and enjoy the mellow sounds of a blues band who have been together for almost 30 years. The rolling plains of Sauk Centre, Minnesota became the launching pad of the most popular American writer of the Jazz Age, Sinclair Lewis. In 1920, America was rocked by the publication of "Main Street," a satirical novel ridiculing middle-class values and American smugness. He was called "the conscience of his generation," and his novels, which horrified the literary and political establishments went on to become required reading in English classes for decades. [piano plays in ragtime rhythm] (man) Sinclair Lewis was the first American to receive the Nobel Prize, some people feel because Europe disliked America, and here was a guy who was making fun of America. Whatsa matter, you wanted for ***? Worse than that. Worse than ***? It's a woman. Well... He is the most noted Minnesota writer, certainly one of the most noted American writers, the first Nobel Prize winner. And for a while, probably the most popular writer in this country in the early part of the 20th century. He's essentially a storyteller and a very good storyteller. In the early part of the 20th century, everyone knew who Sinclair Lewis was because he wrote so eloquently about what was going on in American society at the time, rising middle class, American culture, all of the foibles. He was truly, I think, a visionary. Oh alright, I always say business is business, that's the American way. (Mark Vinz) He had his finger on the pulse of the culture. He knew everything that was going on, mostly to satirize it. But also to, people liked reading about what was going on and Lewis certainly knew what was going on in this country. When I told my pals I was coming to Jesus, they laughed. (Mark Vinz) My favorite book is "Elmer Gantry," and I just love the book. Maybe it's because of the movie with Burt Lancaster. I'm gonna give you all the hell of the Bible, and if you don't like it, you better fix it up with the Lord, because the Lord put it there. To me it was the historical reference, the impact of the evangelists of the time like Amy Semple McPherson. Who is this uh, this Elmer Gantry? (Mark Vinz) And the fact that he looked at that movement and found the human side to it, the fact that these religious reformers like years later, the televangelists had feet of clay. In 1917, Mr. Gantry was expelled from a theological seminary in Kansas for seducing the deacon's daughter in the church where he had that day delivered a Christmas sermon. (Mark Vinz) "Babbitt" the same thing. When the city buys a property, they gotta buy from us. Well that doesn't sound exactly honest. I don't see why women can't understand the simplest business deal. (Mark Vinz) "Babbitt," which I take as truly a visionary work, Lewis looking at what was happening to American culture because of the automobile. Your wife wouldn't grudge me our friendship; that would be too mean. Women are funny that way. (Mark Vinz) What effect cars would have, what effect mass culture would have on this country. I think that in 1922 when "Babbitt" was published, Sinclair Lewis really saw far into the future of the effects of this new invention, and not just the car, but the radio, the phonograph, and everything else that was happening in that age to so transform it from what was essentially the Victorian Era, pushing up until the first World War. Certainly the book that all Minnesota school children read for many years was "Main Street," and it remains his most famous and well-known book. And that was an attack on the provincialism of small-town America, especially small-town Minnesota. Then you think as they do. No Darling, don't get me wrong. See, they're rather a conservative crowd. They're swell people, but just don't ever give 'em a chance to criticize you. Sauk Centre, his hometown where he grew up, which he called in his writing, Gopher Prairie, the narrow-mindedness of the people, the total boredom of living in a place like that, the way that all culture seemed reduced to the lowest possible common denominator, all those things were certainly present in that book. Well I guess it's you they resent. For what reason? Say, plenty of 'em-- in the first place you grabbed off the best bachelor in town; the second place you're a stranger, and they were just waitin' for something to crack down on; and did you lead with your chin! Sinclair Lewis was, for a while, one of the best-known writers in this country and one of the most popular. His satire especially was what gave him stature. Don't you believe in goodness and decency? Holding people together? No. No, I only believe in love. (Mark Vinz) I think a great deal of what he wrote about was tied to the '20s and '30s. This thing just about scares me to death. Every time this toaster jumps, I gets me a new gray hair. I never can understand these newfangled gadgets. [laughing] When I had to teach "Main Street" it was one of the hardest things I ever had to do as a teacher, because the students were almost in open rebellion because they just did not like the book because of all of the, getting bogged down in all this material from the '20s that they didn't understand. Lewis has really tended to fall out of the canon. He's no longer there with Fitzgerald and Hemingway and Faulkner, and my thought of that is simply because he was just too, too limited to the '20s, a great writer of the '20s, but still unable to transcend it in important ways. Poetry Out Loud is a contest that encourages the nation's youth to learn about great poetry. This program helps students master public speaking skills, build self-confidence, and learn about their literary heritage. Reed Wagner of Bismarck High School was a finalist in North Dakota's 2013 State Poetry Out Loud Contest. Throughout the competition, he came to appreciate poetry and enjoyed expressing himself through poems he felt connected to. [guitar plays in bright rhythm] ♫ Poetry Out Loud is a poetry competition where it starts out in classrooms and then the whole school, and then it'll eventually go to state and then nationals, and kids from all these areas get together, they choose poems. It starts out with just two poems and they have to memorize it and then interpret it and they have to recite it. You can't move a whole lot; it's almost all your voice. You can move a little bit, but the more you move, the less likely you are to win. Poetry Out Loud makes a list of poems and you can go on their website to find the poems. And there actually are requirements for the poems you choose. One of them has to be 25 lines or less, and another one has to be from an author from the pre-20th century. It's a little overwhelming because they have a lot of poems. There's a huge database, but you just kinda have to go through it and look at the ones you find you're interested in. It's important to understand what your poem is about and that's actually a big process we went through. We had to read into them and think about what they meant, and not just to the author, but to us. And it really shows when you can connect to your poem. When I first started reading poetry, I was pretty confused by it, but as I looked more into it and I looked at the words, I could see what the author was trying to get across. "I felt a funeral in my brain And mourners to and fro Kept treading, treading, Till it seemed that sense was breaking through. And when they all were seated, A service like a drum Kept beating, beating, Till I thought my mind was going numb. I decided to enter because I thought it'd be a good experience for me to actually compete and try at something, because normally I'm not a very competitive person. I wanted to see how far I could go with it and I thought some competition would do me good-- and it did! I won the classroom competition, I won the school competition, and then I went on to get third place in the state competition. (woman) Congratulations, our third place winner is Reed Wagner from Bismarck High School; come on up here Reed. [applause] (Reed) I was extremely nervous, even in the classroom and school competitions. When I went up there, my heart was beating so hard that I could hear it in my head. During the state competition, I had such a hard time keeping my cool, 'cause I was one of the first people up and then I'd have to wait for everyone else to do their poem. While I was performing, I did my best to put it out of my head. I just thought, give people the chance to hear another story. I am very happy I did Poetry Out Loud. I think I gained confidence from it. I put myself through something I can do really well. I accomplished something and my family was so proud of me. "Through that window All else being extinct except itself and me, I saw the struggle of darkness against darkness. Within the room, it turned and turned, Dived downward. Then I saw how order might, if chaos wished, become And saw the darkness crush upon itself." I've just learned to appreciate poetry more and that no matter how short or long it is, it always has something unique for every person. You can look at it in so many different ways. It's just really beautiful in a sense, how simple they can be, and then how in depth and how meaningful they can also be. My third poem was "Actaeon" by A.E. Stallings. And I chose this one because it's a little more funny than my previous two poems, which are a little more dark. This one's more just about getting back at someone. Actaeon made fun of Artemus, the goddess of hunting. She decided to put a curse on him that would turn him into a stag. This is the Bismarck State Capitol grounds, and I chose this area because it's about hunting and nature, and as you can see, there's plenty of nature around here. "Actaeon," by A.E. Stallings. "The hounds, you know them all by name. You fostered them from purblind whelps At their dam's teats, and you have to come to know The music of their yelps: High-strung Anthee, the brindled ***, The blue-tick coated Philomel, And freckled Chloe, Who would fetch a pretty price if you would sell-- All fleet of foot, and swift to scent, Inexorable once on the track, Like angry words you might have meant, But do not mean, and can't take back. There was a time when you would brag Of how they would bay and rend apart The hopeless belling from a stag. You falter now for the foundered heart. Desires you nursed of a winter night-- Did you know then why you bred them-- Whose needling milk-teeth used to bite The master's hand that leashed and fed them?" Harvesting maple syrup has a long history in Minnesota, dating back to the 1500s when Native Americans transformed sap into maple sugar. Today, Jerry Jacobson of Vergas, Minnesota has perfected his method of making maple syrup by realizing that winter weather conditions have a direct effect on his harvest in the spring. My name is Jerry Jacobson, we're in Vergas, Minnesota, Jake's Syrups and Natural Products is the name of our company. So do you get this one here? I actually retired in '94. you know, I thought well, now what am I gonna do? Do I want to just hunt and fish? Do I just want to watch TV or do I want to have a hobby that gets me outside? I thought well, maple syrup would be a good thing to do. So we started out with a couple hundred trees. A lot of people liked the syrup, and so next year we did 300 trees and now we're up to about 2,000. Watchin' that one. Generally, our season starts about March 9th, and it takes us about 2 weeks to tap the 2,000 maples that we are getting sap from. And each tap that you put in a tree, generally will give you 10 to 12 gallons of maple sap. It takes 40 gallons of maple sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. Of course, maple syrup only runs in the spring, when the temperatures are above freezing and you have freezing nights. So you have a very small window of opportunity to get the maple sap from the trees. It's about 3 weeks in Minnesota. Out east they have 5- or 6-week-seasons. Pure maple syrup is only made in North America, and there are only 19 states in the United States and 4 Canadian provinces that make maple syrup. And Minnesota is the furthest west state to produce maple syrup commercially. The people that first started making maple syrup in North America were the Native Americans. They didn't make syrup; they made maple candy or sugar, because it was easier to carry around. When the Europeans came, they learned how to make maple syrup from the Indians. Well, the Europeans came with their metal pots and they could boil the sap in metal pots. What do the Native Americans use? They didn't have metal pots. What they did is, they would take hollowed-out logs, and they would take stones and heat them in a fire. When the stones were hot, they'd take it and they'd put it in the maple sap, and it would heat up the sap and cause evaporation. They'd take the stones out and heat 'em again. And of course, after they were introduced to the metal pots and stuff, then of course, they would use 'em too. Before we had a reverse osmosis system, we had to boil every bit of maple sap to get a gallon of syrup. And as I mentioned before, it takes, on average, 40 gallons of maple sap to make one gallon of syrup. The reverse osmosis will take out about 75% of the water from the maple sap before it hits the evaporator. So when it hits the evaporator, instead of 40 gallons, now all it takes is about 10 gallons of concentrate coming in to make a gallon of syrup. To me that's kinda nice just to think about the fact that you're not going to have to spend all day boiling. Once we have time to actually bottle, we have to take it all in here and finish it. Now, syrup coming off the evaporator has a lot of, they call it niter, or sugar sand, in it. It's very thick mineral deposits that stays with all the syrup. So you have to get that off the syrup in order to bottle it, so that when you display your bottle, it's nice and clear. So what we do is, we take all that syrup that we've made off the evaporator, we put it in this pan. And we have to heat it up to 211 degrees. If it's too thick, then we have to add a little distilled water to it. If it's too thin, we have to boil it a little bit longer. Then, once we're sure that we have the right density on our syrup, we run it through a filter press. In order to get the syrup through this particular material, you have to add diatomaceous earth to the syrup. It's crushed ancient sea creatures-- it's shells. It coats the paper so that the molecules of the maple syrup will pass through them. It's kinda like water on gravel. When you bottle, the minimum temperature in order to kill any bacteria in your bottle and to seal it is 180 degrees. So generally if we bottle it at 200 or so, it's probably 190 when we actually cap it, so we're gonna get a good seal and you know, there won't be a problem with spoilage. So it takes us oh about 4 days of bottling to complete 400 gallons of syrup. This is considered Grade A dark syrup. I can show you a contrast of what that looks like compared to something that's either a light or a medium syrup. And we sell a lot of different containers-- fancy bottles, different shaped bottles. We do it in glass and plastic, so. Nothing like pure maple syrup, you know, if you've never had it, it's a real treat. The Deb Jenkins Band started almost 30 years ago and has sustained only a few member changes. The heart of the band is rhythm and blues with a little bit of jazz to keep things interesting. Sit back and enjoy the mellow, yet strong sounds of the Deb Jenkins Band. One, two, three. [playing a blues beat] ♫ ♫ You say your party's jumpin' ♫ ♫ And everybody's havin' a good time ♫ ♫ And you know what's goin' through my mind ♫ ♫ Do you mind if I get comfortable ♫ ♫ And slip on these shoes ♫ ♫ ♫ While you're fixin' me a drink ♫ ♫ Let me hear some of that down home blues ♫ ♫ ♫ You see I don't get on the town much anymore ♫ ♫ And I'm trying to cut out all this runnin' around ♫ ♫ All week long ♫ ♫ I been keepin' life cool ♫ All right. ♫ Oh but tonight I'm gonna let my hair down ♫ ♫ And give me some of that down home blues ♫ Alright boys, here we go. ♫ Down home down home blues ♫ ♫ Down home down home blues ♫ ♫ All I really want is some ♫ ♫ Down home blues all night long ♫ ♫ Every other record or two ♫ ♫ I said take off those spicy records ♫ ♫ Play me some of that down home blues yeah ♫ ♫ [guitar solo] ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ You know my ol' man ♫ ♫ Gonna wanna fight ♫ ♫ 'Cause I'll be out playing all night ♫ ♫ Oh I don't care ♫ ♫ Tonight I'm gonna do as I choose ♫ ♫ ♫ I'm gonna let my hair down ♫ ♫ And get me some of that down home blues ♫ ♫ ♫ Down home blues down home blues ♫ ♫ Down home blues down home blues ♫ ♫ All I wanted to hear was them ♫ ♫ Down home blues all night long ♫ ♫ Every other record or two ♫ ♫ ♫ I said take off those spicy records ♫ ♫ Play me some of that down home blues ♫ ♫ One more time ♫ ♫ Down home blues down home blues♫ ♫ Down home blues down home blues ♫ ♫ All I wanted to hear was some down home blues ♫ ♫ All night long ♫ ♫ Every other record or two ♫ ♫ I said take off those spicy records ♫ ♫ Play me some of that down home blues ♫ ♫ [keyboard solo] ♫ If you know of an artist, a topic, or an organization in our region that you think might make for an interesting segment, please contact us at... I'm Bob Dambach. And I'm Barb Gravel. Thank you for joining us for this edition of "Prairie Mosaic." ♫ (woman) "Prairie Mosaic" is funded by-- the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on Nov. 4th, 2008; the North Dakota Humanities Council, a nonprofit independent state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities; the North Dakota Council on the Arts, and by the members of Prairie Public.