Hi all. Part of me hopes you’re still checking back and that your interest in our summer project hasn’t waned. Part of me hopes you haven’t checked in awhile because I’m a little (a lot) embarrassed at my failure as a consistent blogger. This is Taryn. I’m back in Minneapolis because my job at the [...]

On more than one occasion throughout this project, people have instinctively corrected Kendra and I when we refer to their “town” rather than their “community.” We interviewed a family in western ND whose ranch straddles an invisible line between Watford City and New Town. Another family chose to send their kids to school in Watford, [...]

We started our adventure in Underwood, N.D. where we followed around a young resident who introduced us to what its like to know everyone you walk by and have stories for every part of town. Every time he started a sentence with “You don’t understand Underwood until…” or “I remember when…”, we knew we picked [...]

Let me start by saying this: I did think through what it would take to spend multiple days traveling and interviewing. I imagined the exhaustiion of spending hours in the car, getting out to meet various new people and talk with them for an unspecified amount of time, eating on the road, sleeping on couches [...]

I’m sorry to say you haven’t missed anything since we last posted. We’ve had two weddings each of the last two weekends and I think we were asking too much of ourselves when it came to pre-planning. But tomorrow is the big day. We’re headed out tomorrow afternoon after we pack up the car and [...]