(PNAN-ND) – Although we might not use it now, in our thoughts we have a plan for it in the future. Those who may open our drawers and see all this “stuff” – it appears to be excess junk, but they are treasures to us and we continue to pile and pile because we know there is something right about all we save. For 30 years, the North Dakota Council on the Arts has been doing the stuff-saving and the outcome has created a historical document, “Sundogs and Sunflowers: Folklore and Folk Art of the Northern Great Plains,” a 352 page, coffee-table-size, full color, hardcover volume features more than a thousand examples of folklore and folk art, as well as more than three hundred images.
The book is comprised of folk traditions that are unique about North Dakota and the Northern Great Plains, including writings about all of North Dakota’s fifty-three counties, as well as traditions from the prairies of South Dakota, western Minnesota, eastern Montana, northeastern Wyoming, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan.
The readings in “Sundogs and Sunflowers: Folklore and Folk Art of the Northern Great Plains,” from 2010 to times ago, tells of ghost stories and other strange tales, legends, blizzard stories, weatherlore, proverbs, folk expressions and folk speech, folk beliefs, folk medicine, holiday celebrations, hunting, fishing and trapping traditions, and folk art.
Published by the Council, it was compiled and edited by North Dakota State University Professor Emeritus Dr. Timothy J. Kloberdanz and NDCA folklorist Troyd A. Geist. For further information call the NDCA at 701.328.7590, or via email at comserv@nd.gov.