(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to Prairie Pulse.

Coming up a little bit later in the show, we'll hear music from Aaron Tinjum and the Tangents.

But first, joining me now, is Maureen Kelly Jonason, the Executive Director, Director of the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County.

Maureen, thanks for joining us today.

- Hello.

Thanks for having me.

- As we get started, tell the folks a little bit about yourself and maybe your background maybe where you're originally from.

- Oh, well I'm born in Fargo, actually born in Moorhead at St. Ansgar's.

Grew up in Harvey, North Dakota for nine years of my childhood, and then came back here in the seventies.

So I'm a Fargo, North Dakota gal all my life, basically.

I do have, oh little things.

I have a PhD in higher education, teaching and learning.

I taught college writing and humanities for 20 years and then came to the museum in 2008.

- Well, that I was gonna say how long but you just answered that they can do the math, I guess.

Well, we're here today obviously to talk about your organization and the upcoming events for this year, but let's first start.

Tell us a little bit about the history of the organization.

- You know, my collections manager, Lisa Vedaa said once that the history of the Hjemkomst Center is a history of constant change, and it's really true.

The historical and cultural society of Clay County is the resulting organization of the merger between Clay County Historical Society and Heritage Hjemkomst Interpretive Center, which is the organization that used to run the museum at the Hjemkomst Center.

Those two merged in 2009, I shepherded through the merger and then was hired as the Executive Director.

Before that, the Red River Heritage Society, it was really the dominant group in getting the the Hjemkomst Center built.

Once they added the Viking ship to the picture, it was became a community favorite and got a lot of support.

So originally we were supposed to build a Red River Heritage Center, every few communities along the Red all the way up to Winnipeg, but once they got done with the Moorhead Center, everybody collapsed and, and it just, that idea went away, so.

- Well, the, the Hjemkomst Center you mentioned here closely affiliated, obviously.

Can you tell the folks what they would see if they came to the Hjemkomst Center?

- Oh, well of course the city of Moorhead owns the Hjemkomst Center, has owned it since 1998.

When they took that over, they doubled the size.

So there's an auditorium and meeting rooms the senior center's there there's a kitchen, park department offices are there, that sort of thing.

But on our half of the building, which is the museum, we have constantly changing exhibits.

It happens that this summer of 2022, we have the the Ihdago Manipi Clay County at 150 Exhibit that's gonna be up through December of 2023.

We have Dibaajimowin which is a wonderful exhibit of vintage portraits of Native Americans that have been digitally colorized by Katie Ferris.

We have stories of local black history which is often a surprise to people that we had a a very active black community at one time and have a resurgence today.

And then we're just finishing up with thrift style which is a traveling exhibit on how people used to make clothing out of feed sack fabrics.

So we're getting a new exhibit again, in the middle of June that's going to be up through most of October called Savages and Princesses: the Persistence of Native American Stereotypes.

That's really going to be very interesting to the public, I think.

- Yeah.

Well, with all that said, you kind of went over 'em real quick.

Maybe we could go back and talk about 'em just a little bit more.

That Clay County at 150, what does that entail?

- 2022 marks the 150th anniversary of the actual legal formation of Clay County, Minnesota.

So in 1872, a lot was going on in this community.

The railroad had just come in, Moorhead was born, there was a lot of saloon activity, a lot of disorder, if you will.

And so they had to form a county government fairly quickly in response to the illegal activities going on.

And so, you know, Comstock was the first county attorney.

There was a county sheriff appointed and pretty soon they had law and order in hand.

And so we are celebrating that period of transition from the dominant Native American tribes, which were the Anishinaabe and the Dakota going into white settlement and then the establishment of law and order.

- Hmm.

All right.

That sounds interesting.

COVID 19 in Moorhead, a community history project.

What will people see there if they come?

- We have an online portal linked to our website where you can register your stories.

We definitely want everyone's story that we can have.

We've had doctors provide information.

We've had poets, we've had all kinds of people willing to share their little part of the story.

We are literally making history right now with COVID and we've collected things like PPP and masks and the hearts that were in windows.

And we took a lot of photos throughout the county but it really it's the stories that are are going to be told a hundred years from now, when people of a hundred years from now look back they're going to wanna know what were the people actually going through?

And we can only do that through personal stories.

- And you mentioned local black history.

What do you have there for an exhibit?

- We have a wonderful exhibit that goes down the hallway down in the third floor and it profiles African American citizens of Fargo/Moorhead in the late 1800s to really, to the present.

We did some research in a newspaper called The Appeal, which was a St. Paul-based newspaper run by African Americans and they would publish columns from cities all over the country.

And they had a regular Fargo/Moorhead column where we learned a great deal about the local communities, black elite families the family of Felix Battles, who was a Civil War soldier who became a very famous barber here in town.

So famous that his obituary appeared in a white newspaper.

That's, that's pretty big.

And so we did the research and discovered who some of the big families were, did genealogy on those families, made some connections even to people still living today, and then brought the story forward with what is really a resurgence of people of African descent who have come to resettle in Fargo/Moorhead, and in Clay County today, including our short, short termed mayor, mayor Johnathan Judd who was the first African American mayor ever elected in Moorhead, so.

- Okay.

Obviously as we're taping this interview, June Nineteenth's already passed, but what kind of activities did you have for June Juneteenth?

- Juneteenth?

We were at a booth downtown at the at the Renaissance Hall Plaza and we also had some speakers come in on June 21st to talk about really the history of Juneteenth in Minnesota.

It's actually been going on for over 30 years and has a long history.

Our community has only kind of just gotten started working with Juneteenth and the the exhibit is going to be up through October 9th of 2022.

And so I think a lot of people are gonna get a chance to see it.

And we're hoping to have Juneteenth be a part of our regular programming every year now.

- Okay.

Well with all that and with with everything you've told us about up 'til now, how many employees do you have to make all this happen?

- We have eight full-time employees and a half-time position in the administrative assistant position but most of them are historians in some form or another, and they wear many hats, do many things, and are busy every single minute.

We were really thrilled that everyone was full-time employed during COVID.

And that's important because we do a lot of our planning, research, and writing years in advance of the exhibits actually coming to fruition.

- Yeah.

You say that during COVID.

So how, how long were y'all shut down during COVID?

- We had to be shut down by the governor of Minnesota order for 20 weeks, a period from March to, to June of 2020.

And then again in November until February of 2021.

So it was a lot of time to be away.

We had a really robust summer 2021.

People came back in droves and we're expecting another really great summer season this year.

- And with that said, shut down for those weeks.

How are you funded?

- We were fortunate in that we got a lot of state, local, and even federal funding.

We of course had the PPP loans that were forgiven that helped keep us employed.

Clay County had a Cares Act fund, City of Moorhead had funds, and then the state of Minnesota has also been very generous in terms of the Minnesota State Arts Board gave us several general operating grants for our arts programming and the Minnesota Humanities Commission has funded our history-oriented programming.

- Yeah, but you're talking about that sort of during COVID I think, but then throughout normal years you depend a little bit on admissions.

Don't you?

- We do, admissions are a big part of our exhibit which is why being closed for twenty weeks was really devastating financially for us.

We have diverse revenue streams in that we have admissions, we have gift shop revenue, donations, memberships.

We have a very generous membership and donor base.

And I write a lot of grants.

I love writing grants, and so I keep those projects fully funded as we go through each year.

- Yeah, well, we haven't even mentioned it, but can you talk about the history of the Viking ship?

- Oh, yeah.

And how it's cared for?

- The Hjemkomst.

The Hjemkomst was built in the seventies by Robert Asp, who was a Moorhead city counselor or I'm sorry, Moorhead school counselor.

He just became really enamored with the Viking history and thought, wouldn't it be fun to build a Viking ship?

Well, everybody thought he was crazy.

It ended up taking seven years.

He became ill with leukemia which a lot of people don't know but he was able to see the ship sail into Duluth Harbor in August of 1980, before passing away in December of 1980.

And then two years later his family made sure that they sailed it to Norway.

And there were four Asp children on the voyage during the whole thing.

So they pretty much made history made People Magazine, even published it but they were in newspapers all over the world.

We have scrapbooks galore on all the coverage worldwide.

So this year is the 40th anniversary of the voyage.

And to celebrate, we are having a brand new exciting exhibit that's opening July 23rd, 2022.

And it's going to be up for the next 10 years.

So people will have a great opportunity to see it and enjoy really hearing the old stories in a new way.

- But I had a little follow up there.

How's it cared for?

How's it taken care of?

- We, we work in partnership with the city.

We're actually under a professional service agreement with the city of Moorhead.

The city owns the building and they also own the ship and the church.

That's of their assets, but they don't want to run a museum so we take care of the ship and the church, we measure the cracks and we maintain the humidity, or we measure the humidity and temperature levels.

We provide the interpretation by having guided tours creating the videos, working with visitors, taking people out to the stave church, all of those services in exchange for our rent in exchange for storage and office and janitorial services and, and utilities, so.

- Yeah, you just mentioned the stave church.

Can you tell us a little bit about that and maybe how that came about, I guess with Guy Paulson?

- You bet, Guy Paulson, who's still alive and well today decided he wanted to build a stave church.

He chose the Hopperstad which is still in existence in Vik, Norway.

There are 28 wooden churches of the Scandinavian tradition still in Norway from the middle ages.

And he chose the Hopperstad 'cause it's closest to his own family's homeland.

And that was built in 1998.

It took about five years to do all the carving inside and outside of the church.

And people absolutely love it.

You can only see it with a guide.

We don't let people just wander in and out.

So it's also used for weddings in the summertime and we occasionally have some great concerts 'cause it has fabulous acoustics for voice and violin.

- Okay.

Yeah.

Will the Vikings days festival take place this summer?

- You know what?

The Nordic Culture Clubs is the organization that does the indoor festival while we did the Midwest Viking festival and due to changes in the building when the FMCT came in, the space was made smaller for the festivals.

And so Nordic Culture Clubs chose to find a different location for the festival this year.

And they informed us that they were no longer interested in being partners Without having admissions revenue, we would not be able to sustain the festival.

It's very expensive.

So the Midwest Viking festival is no more here in our community.

We have Viking connections, which is a grant funded project.

Tim Jorgensen is going to take the festival to Green Bay, Wisconsin, where there's a vibrant Viking community.

- Now you just mentioned FMCT moved into the building.

Can you tell us a little more about that?

- Well, interestingly in February of 2021, one of my staff said, you know, someone from FMCT was just in taking a look at the heritage hall, our our 7,000 square foot exhibit gallery.

They're thinking of putting the theater in here.

And that was the first that I ever heard of this possibility, Kant called and talked to Dan Mahli He told me it was in the infancy.

It was just an idea they were running through.

But by the end of March, it was a done deal.

And so we did give up our 7,000 square foot exhibit space that we've had since 1986.

And we moved our exhibits downstairs.

We lost the equivalent of one gallery.

And of course the big events there, the festivals, had to have to be tapered back quite a bit to make room for FMCT having two stages.

- Well, sure.

Talk about maybe in the, in the upcoming year, or years, what exhibits or events are you looking at having and doing?

- Well, our biggie this summer is going to be the grand opening of the new ship gallery exhibit and the new church exhibit.

And that's going to be July 23rd.

We will continue to have Pangaea, Cultivate Our Cultures, which is our annual multicultural festival.

It's really the only event in town that that celebrates all the different cultures that make up our, our community.

And that's gonna be November 19th this year, Saturday November 19th.

So we're excited about that going in person, once again it's been via Zoom the last two years.

- A lot of things have.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Why is Scandinavian culture?

You know, you know, so fascinating to so many people?

- You know, what's interesting is that 50% of the Red River valley still claims some Scandinavian heritage today.

That's why it's a big deal.

I always tell visitors, are you from here?

Do you, do you know why we're in a, what what sounds like a Scandinavian center?

We're not a Scandinavian museum.

We are a cultural heritage museum.

And so we, we really celebrate all the different heritages but that's why, because it is still a dominant culture in our Red River valley.

- Obviously your organization manages several interesting things, but can you talk more about that Comstock house?

- You bet.

- Comstock House?

You mentioned it.

the Minnesota Historical Society owns the Comstock house and we are the site managers.

So we are under contract with them.

They give us a grant every year to do all of the programming, to pay somebody to look after the property.

Emily Kulzer does a fabulous job.

She was in there cleaning and doing some inventory work on the items many of which are still original Comstock family items.

And it's open now for tours and Memorial Day to Labor Day, we're open Fridays and Saturdays 10 to 4 and by appointments.

So a lot of people love to come in.

They're doing a tour of the state of Minnesota at all their historic sites and they don't wanna miss the Comstock house.

- Sure.

And what about Mark Peihl?

Think he's been making a valuable impact for, for years.

- Mark is we call him a community treasure.

Certainly he gets called upon on a almost a daily basis to answer questions about the historical context of current events by the media.

He, you know, writes and researches the major exhibits.

He was the, a major contributor to the Ihdago Manipi exhibit and the stories exhibit, and anything that has a local component, Mark is there.

He also writes and research, researches and writes journal articles.

He's interviewed frequently.

He does up to 75 public programs a year.

I mean, he is busy every minute and he would say he loves coming to work every single day.

Now Mark is, Mark and I are both planning to retire in 2025.

And so we are, are slowly we're gonna make a, a nice, slow gentle transition for both of those changes, so, but he'll be around for years to come.

- Maureen, what's the best part of your job?

- Oh, the, I, I would say the variety, the tremendous variety.

You can have a plan on what you're going to do during the day, but that can be changed in an instant.

So we have lots and lots of things that we're we're all doing all day long.

So the variety is the, is the biggest thing.

And then I just love grant writing.

I love making money from writing.

So that's, that's what I'm planning to do after I retire.

- Well, obviously we've got a lot of information here but if people want to get more information, wanna learn more maybe before they come to your organization, where can they go?

Who can they contact?

- They definitely wanna take a look at our website hcscconline.org is the, is the URL hcscconline.org And that gives you all of our programming, all of our upcoming exhibits, and we also have videos.

We have our last two virtual Pangaeas recorded there, we've got James Condell recordings, we've got videos, all kinds of things available.

And of course our YouTube channel as well.

- Maureen, thanks you for joining us today.

- Thank you for having me.

- Stay tuned.

There's more to come.

(upbeat music) Aaron Tinjum and the Tangents started out as a folk rock project, but have since broadened their sound to include an American country feel.

Here's a look at this group of hard working musicians.

(upbeat folk music) (harmonica solo) ♪ Oh, when I light a cigarette to choke on the smoke ♪ ♪ My cough laughs so loudly but I'm broke like a joke ♪ ♪ The man in the tie keeps his dress pants clean ♪ ♪ But his wife doesn't know of the women he has seen ♪ ♪ He says now, "True love, it rarely shows."

♪ ♪ That you ain't never been on American Road ♪ ♪ Well, I keep on clappin' ♪ ♪ But I'm not quite sure what for ♪ ♪ I wipe and drag my feet only to find dirt on the floor ♪ ♪ Susie plays a waitress bottom wage at the bar ♪ ♪ She claims she's an actress ♪ ♪ and that dreams don't get you far ♪ ♪ She says, "Life, yeah, it's pretty cold."

♪ ♪ But you can find meaning on American road ♪ ♪ And I square dance down the street ♪ ♪ To the singing of some mime ♪ ♪ He's stuck in some French ice box ♪ ♪ And frozen for all time ♪ ♪ There's some hipsters hating hobos ♪ ♪ And beatniks blaming bums ♪ ♪ Until the NRA comes waltzin' down wavin' all the guns ♪ ♪ And Charlton Heston, he says, "Hello!

♪ ♪ Welcome, son, to American road."

♪ ♪ (piano solo) ♪ ♪ (guitar solo) ♪ ♪ And there's a presidential fool ♪ ♪ Preaching at the crowd ♪ ♪ But the congregation's deaf ♪ ♪ Because his ego's much too loud ♪ ♪ I walk a fine line and then the gypsies love to dance ♪ ♪ I read the Bible and they abide to Kerouac ♪ ♪ They say, "The rhetoric, it's getting bold!

♪ ♪ But the truth lies on American road."

♪ ♪ Well, the smoke begins to rise ♪ ♪ As my cigarette subsides ♪ ♪ It's the changing of the guard ♪ ♪ Or the rising of the tide ♪ ♪ It's some lazy revolution ♪ ♪ That'll probably never be ♪ ♪ They claim it's evolution or the creation story ♪ ♪ "Yeah, well, whatever it is it fits the mold ♪ ♪ But I'll keep on riding this American road.

♪ One more time!

(piano solo) (guitar solo) (drum solo) - Well, that's all we have on Prairie Post this week.

And as always, thanks for watching.

- Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of Prairie Public.