Main Street
Prairie Composting; Matt Olien's Movie Review; Dave Thompson & The News
Capital Shakespeare of Bismarck presents Hamlet, July 17th through the 21st of the Prairie Amphitheater located on the lawn, just south of the main entrance to the North Dakota Heritage Center. Follow the grieving Hamlet as he seeks to avenge his father's death and plummets the kingdom and the madness. Performance is starred at 6.30 p.m. and are free and open to the public with free will donations accepted. Limited concessions available, lawn chairs or blankets are encouraged. Capital Shakespeare's Hamlet, July 17th through the 21st in Bismarck. [Music] Welcome to Main Street on this Wednesday, the day before the 4th of July. We hope you have the fireworks primed, the barbecue ready to go, and we'll even ask Mother Nature to be a bit kinder to us than the weather folks are telling us for the 4th of July. In the second half of today's show, have you ever been to a movie where you found yourself looking at your watch instead of the big screen? That happened to Matt O'Lean and he'll share his not even lukewarm review of Kevin Costner's newest endeavor, Horizon and American Saga, Chapter 1. And Dave Thompson, who's been our news director here at Prairie Public for 42 years, will stop by, and he and I will review this week's news. We lead off today with a unique service that's now available. My co-host Ashley Thornberg visits with Prairie Composting Services. They provide households with a convenient and sustainable way to transform their food waste into valuable fertilizer. They work to help individuals contribute positively to our local community on a large scale. Starting route, proceed to Morrison Street, then turn right. That's a good question. So me and my business partner Hayden kind of wanted to address the problem in our city that is food waste that's just going straight to the landfill. And so we set up Prairie Compost Services, which is a subscription based service where people pay to have us come collect their food scraps basically from their homes. And then you turn it into compost and give them compost, right? Yes. For those of us who may not know exactly what is compost? So compost is basically breaking down organic material in the presence of oxygen through just a biological process where a bunch of different microbes, bacteria and fungi are consuming that material and multiplying within it and creating a bunch of heat. So the material breaks down and do a nice living soil that's a good amendment to use in gardens and lawns. What is the difference, Bridger, between dirt and soil? Soil is more of like the living components of dirt, I guess, so dirt would be sterile. Soil is, you know, like you could say a dirt, but it's living. It's got all kinds of, you know, little microscopic insects and bacteria that are working together in this little world to, you know, have their own little ecosystem and just a handful of soil. Okay. And this is something, correct me if I'm wrong here, that people used to do on a fairly regular basis, kind of one of those back in the day when people were living out of town or more. A greater percentage of people were farmers and it's something that has fallen a little bit of out of favor as we've moved more towards cities and suburbs and then especially things like apartment buildings. And what is the process of composting? I think that goes hand in hand with just like a little bit of a disconnect from kind of where your food comes from, where your waste goes. Back in the day, you know, you hear a lot of people that don't compost now, but when we talk to them about it, they say, oh, you know, I grew up on a farm or I grew up in the country and, you know, we had a bucket underneath the sink and we collected our food waste and, you know, fed it to our pigs or buried it in the garden. You know, both those things are ways you can kind of reuse that food waste, but the burying in the garden is a little bit closer to the composting process where you're taking the food waste, which is kind of a nitrogen heavy resource. You're mixing it with something like leaves or sawdust or wood chips, which is a carbon source, and then that's just making, like, the perfect environment for microbes to break it down into a soil. So I can't just throw a banana peel out in my garden and say, hey, look at me, I'm composting. Yeah, I mean, technically it's kind of composting, but yeah, and the more controlled way would be to, you know, mix it up with some sort of carbon amendment in a pile and monitor it a little bit to make sure you're getting high temperatures, and a good final result. Okay, what are some of the most common misconceptions about composting? As I will say that everyone at my office, when I told them what I was doing today, was like, do you need nose plugs? Yeah, that is probably the most common misconception is that composting is really smelly or that it attracts a lot of pests. If the composting process is working correctly, the smell that comes off smells like if you were to, you know, open up like a fresh bag of potting soil from Home Depot and just give it a sniff. It smells very like earthy and it's not a, you know, not a food scrap rotten smell, but, you know, a lot of people have bad experiences with composting where they set up a bit in their backyard and maybe didn't monitor it as much as they should have or had a weird ratio with their carbon levels, and then, you know, it can produce some pretty nasty smells. Temptation is on your right. All right. So we just pulled up to the spot. All right, so this is a house. So, all right, let's go. Ready. Hop out of the car here. So the process is very straightforward. So what, five gallon buckets in the back of your truck? Yep. And this one is empty. This one is empty. So empty and clean and throw a lid on it and then we just set up to the house. All right, and they have a five gallon bucket in their front yard here. Yep, so you're... And many lovely flowers, I'll point out. Many lovely flowers. This is just exactly, I mean, there's a cardboard box here that someone else has delivered. That's where you leave the mail, a package. You drop the bucket off at the door. Right on the doorstep and then we grab their food scrap bucket. Okay, and they've put a lid on it. Can I... Can we open the lid? Sure. All right, I just want to see what this is. Okay, so it looks like some potato chips and a banana peel and a tea bag and some coffee grounds and some salsa. This is exactly what my compost bucket is like, nachos and carrots and bananas and coffee. Yep, perfect recipe for some good compost. I love it. Does the food need to be organic to be good compost? No, we can take pretty much anything. Yeah, it definitely doesn't have to be organic. Okay, and now all you're doing is just throwing this in the bucket. Okay, so this is as easy as that. This is what you do, you drive around. Drive around, drop out buckets, and then usually I listen to a podcast. Okay, very nice. Now you didn't drop off compost at that house. You dropped off an empty bucket. I was expecting you to have a bunch of compost in your pickup. So we just started in February, so our compost is still a little bit young. We're hoping to be able to have it all finished within the next month. And then our system will kind of be continuously having finished compost. Okay, so these people have not yet received the finished product at all. Yep, so going forward we will be giving compost back early on in the growing season. But since this was kind of the first year, we let everyone know that it was going to be a little bit later. And we're giving them some worm castings instead that are ready to go. What are those? So worm castings are, they're like the best thing to put in the garden. Is it? Oh, okay. So they just call it castings. Yeah, I think it just sounds a little nicer. The worms, we've got some of the shop we can show you. We use red wiggler composting worms to add a little bit of value to our compost. So we feed them the finished compost or partially finished compost. And they work through good and they're actually eating microorganisms inside the compost. Okay. And then when they poop, they're pooping out and even more microorganism rich product. So it passes through the gut of the worm, picks up a bunch of microorganisms and that's spread into the soil. Okay, where does one go about getting worm castings? Well, you can get them from us. Fair. And online. Spoken like a business now. Yep. You can buy your own worms online and set up a, you know, a little worm bin and you could actually throw your food scraps right in there. Okay. You wouldn't want to put things like meat or dairy, but you can produce castings that way. Okay. And is that because it's not good for the compost or because it's not good for the worm, the no meat, no dairy? The way we do it is the, everything is coming through our kind of enclosed composter that gets up to a pretty high temp and that kills off any, any pathogens that might be on the food waste. And especially with meat and dairy, it's important to, you know, get it up to a really high temperature before you put it in the worms or else it will rot and smell. You know, just like if you were to leave a bowl of milk on the counter, it's never been heat treated, it's going to get kind of rotten. Okay. But if you compost it first and then give it to the worms, you want to have issues with that. How did you get into composting? I've always been interested in biology and kind of environmental science stuff and gardening recently. And composting was just, and also with that I kind of felt like it lacked a societal component and I worked on a lot of research stuff. But I wanted to do something that had a tie back into, you know, daily human lives. I'm finding a way to make a big impact on the environment without having to like change the way people are doing their daily activities and composting for me like it stuck out really, early on as a really powerful tool to show people about the values of being kind of environmentally conscious. Interesting phrase you just used without people really having to change their daily lives. Talk about this idea of meeting people where they're at when it comes to making doing stuff like this pretty accessible. Like not everyone can have a big compost pile in their yard, especially if they're an apartment dweller. I'm very pro environment and I want to make as many impacts as I can. But I know even for myself I can. You know, I don't know if I could have a compost pile in my backyard that would handle like all of our food waste. For sure in an apartment I had a worm bit in my apartment, but it was super limited for how much I could put in. And I was never able to manage all my own food waste within an apartment. And so the program is kind of set up in a way that makes this process really easy for somebody that you know doesn't have the space or just doesn't want to deal with the hassle of managing their own compost pile. How many subscribers do you have? We currently have 38 households and we have one office and one pre-school. Pre-school we got kind of lucky my business partner Hayden, his mom is a partner in this pre-school. So that was kind of our connection there. They subscribed to the service and then they actually wanted us to come in and teach the kids about composting. So that was really, really fun. So the kids get to have a little bit of like a hands-on role here. Yep, so we went in and you know kind of show it on me. This is what we're going to be doing. Told them a little bit about our composting machine and the worm poop. Oh my gosh. Wait, you told a pre-school? A pre-school full of kids? Did you use the word poop now that go for you? We use the word poop. Have you ever said poop around a preschooler? Yeah, I can. Every question from that point on is what is poop? Where does poop come from? That sort of thing. But they really, really have a fixation. Yeah, they get very attached to the word. So as the class, we did three classes and by the third class we decided, all right, we need to talk a little bit more about composting before we talk about worm poop because we're losing them after they've been. Well, but you know, you're getting them excited and at that age, you just need them to be excited as maybe what you're after, I don't know. Well, take a little bit about how it works for the businesses. I'm assuming this is just like people who are eating lunch at work. Yep, so we run it. This one's a pretty small office. So we run it exactly like the residential program. They're doing weekly pickups and it's just people eating their lunch. They can put their napkins in their coffee filters and coffee grounds from the break room. You know, leftovers from lunch, that sort of thing. Yeah. And usually this office fills up about one bucket a week. Sort of like a normal household would. So it's a very small office as you're saying. If we were doing a bigger office, we would need to figure out maybe a larger bin. Yeah, how do you scale this business right now? So currently it's like a little bit of a balance between wanting to take in as much as we can and making sure, you know, we're set up to handle it when we take it in. And so we're trying to build our infrastructure up a little bit so we can process the food on the back end. That's the biggest thing for us right now is we want to be able to take in. We have some restaurants and stuff that are reached out and they produce, you know, thousands of pounds a month. Right, yeah. And so we've got to be able to, if we're going to take a thousand pounds of food, we need to make sure we can handle it. You can process a thousand pounds of food. Yep. Yeah. So that's our biggest for right now is kind of increasing our capacity without, you know, overreaching and taking on a ton of debt. All right, so we are pulling up here to a shop condo just west of West Fargo in Mapleton here. We are looking at a couple dozen buckets here in a big warehouse. Yep. Are these full of worm castings? These ones are full of food scraps. Okay. So kind of throughout the week, we're doing a lot of the collections after work or school. So we bring them here and we kind of stockpile them for the week and then we do loading the machine. Usually on Fridays, all at one time, so we can just load it up once and do all of our cleaning at the same time. And how long does it take like once it's in the machine? So once it's a machine, in theory, should be about a month. Quite a bit of time. This machine looks like the worm in tremors. How do you just read this? The plastic piece is a big culvert. So people are familiar with a big culvert. It is a culvert. That's exactly what it looks like. It's kind of like a big plastic corrugated tube. Are you going to put anything in it? We'll see. In the sand, this is the freshest stuff, so it might be a little stinky. Nope. Not stinky. So this is where we load the stuff up. You can look down to the seed and light on the end of the tunnel. You know, it has a smell, but it's not as bad as you would expect a couple thousand pounds of food to smell. Yeah, definitely not at all. So do you kind of know what's in here? Like is it basically nachos and banana peels and carrots and tea bags? So every time a bucket is coming in, Hiddens showing us here, we throw it on the scale. So we know the total weight of all the food waste. Oh yeah, you're kind of a dad-a-dork, aren't you? I'm a dad-a-dork, yeah. So we want to know how much food waste is coming in, just for our records, but also so we know how much carbon material to add and to balance it out. Oh, okay. Yeah, because there really is a proper ratio for this. So we do, let's see if I can add it in here. Okay, so it's a little over a quarter of a pound of carbon material for every pound of food waste. So we've got four pounds of food here? About four pounds of food, and so we're going to add about a pound of sawdust there. So all you do then, Hayden would record, or one of us would record how much food waste is going in. Okay. Okay, so this is just like, this is egg peels, egg shells, carbon buckets, some shredded paper. Yeah, shredded paper. Oh, this is a great use of shredded paper. Yeah, that's a pretty good distribution of items. Yeah, you could be pitching a lot of businesses on this. Yeah, I mean, it's a good use of something that's just going in the trash. And then from there, we get a bunch of sawdust from some woodworking facilities. It's kind of a genius move here to use a bunch of waste products. Like you don't have much in the way of material cost. Exactly. Kind of the whole plan is to, I mean, divert as much stuff that's going to the landfill as possible. And, you know, the more obvious one is food waste, but we also have to do a lot of, a lot of material is some carbon amendments like a sawdust. So that's a little under what we need. We'll add a little more, but this will just get sprinkled in. And then just just sawdust. Do you have to do anything particular there? Like you can't use painted wood and stuff? Yeah, so all the sawdust we're getting is like pre-production. So it's all milled material, you know, no poly, no stains or paints. It's not a recipe. That's like mostly glue. Yep. Yeah. We don't want any plywood dust really, as well as like railroad ties, stuff we wouldn't want any of that. Okay. So this is all, you know, just cutting slabs and planning it down and then they're selling the boards. So it's pretty much just pure wood shading. So it's perfect for us. And I suppose it's kind of an advantage for the company. It's because now they don't have the cost of dealing with this waste. Yep. So we go, you know, we go pick it up for free so that they don't, you know, we get it for free too. Yeah. Then they don't have to deal with disposing it. Okay. So now what do you do from here? So you've layered existing compost with new food scraps with new sawdust. And then sawdust. And then usually we would do, you know, as much as we can get in the entryway before, you know, it starts piling up, we'd seal it back up. And then we would go and rotate this whole thing. Okay. Like manually. So we use a big powered winch here. You can kind of see it mount on the side. And that's how it's going today. Did you build this? Yeah. So this whole thing, Hayden and I and then my little brother and a couple other people helped us. But we built this whole thing from scratch. Did you follow like a YouTube video or are you just like one of those farm kids? Like my husband who just knows how to build things. I feel like we do know how to build a lot of stuff, but the inspiration came from the group is called ADK Action out of New York. It's a USDA grant funded group that was trying to build a more affordable real composter. Okay. And we cut some costs on that design, but it's based on that one. Okay. Well, speaking of things like the USDA, do you have regulations and code and certification to have to go through? Not in North Dakota. We're under, there's certain kind of like levels of volume that you're producing and we're well under the volumes for a commercial facility at this point. So you are sort of operating similarly to how like a backyard composting thing would operate or a community garden. Okay. And then after it has been rotated, do you just rotate it every time you add something fresh? Yep. Yeah. So every time we add something fresh, we want to mix it up really good and make sure that sawdust and that new food is getting mixed in. And then every time we come out here to drop off buckets, we're rotating it every day, you know, a couple of times to add air to the pile. Okay. And then you let it sit for a while and then what? You go to the other end and take that out and you'll start dropping that off, you know, maybe end of July. Yeah, that's kind of the plan. As soon as we can get finished compost on this end, that's looking, you know, kind of up to snuff, we want to get it out to the people. So there is a little bit of water that kind of comes out looking gross, but it's just an excess moisture. But you can see, you know, you put in food and the majority of what's coming out here is a pretty soil-like. Yeah, this doesn't smell very much at all. I mean, this smells really similar to if I stuck my nose in my own garden. Yep. Yeah, very earthy. I think they call it like pumic acid, I think is what kind of gives it the soil smell, but very soil-y. We've got this little bin over here. It's a little bit small currently. We had harvested some out, but... This is like twice the size of a pack-and-play that you'd throw a kid in. Okay. And basically the finished compost and then some a little bit more fresh food. Like you see some eggshells and stuff right in here. The worms like the calcium in the eggshells, so we put those directly in. Okay. But they are in here just working through this material. See how you can find a little patch of them. Okay. But... The worms are naturally quite good at breaking up the soil. Okay, yeah. So here's a patch. 18 inches down into the... So you can see like... Into this and there's a noticeable change in color. Like it's kind of brownish, bigger organic material on top and then now this looks like, you know, what you'd buy at a big buck store and there's a whole bunch of worms. And this would basically be pure castings at this point. This is, you've got a handful of worm poop and now I have a handful of worm poop. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. So, I mean, up top, you know, it's a little drier. And so we usually wet it down and they'll start to work a little bit higher up. But, you know, they're working... And this does not smell like anything. Yeah. Just a nice... A little dirt maybe. Really nice texture soil. It's super, you know, compared to like a mud. It's really easy to... Friable, I think, is what they call where it's kind of crumbly. It's really easy for plants to work their way through and grow nice, real systems. But, yeah. So they're, you know, they're down a little lower, but this will set up. We keep adding to it and the worms will just keep migrating this way. Mm-hmm. And once we get to a certain point where the castings are on the back end, we start harvesting that material out and the worms move this way. And then, okay. So we don't have to sift quite as many worms out of the finished product. Build us a castle in the sky here. What is your big dream? Be able to take in like all the food waste in FM area. You know, if we could scale to the point where we could... That's a lot. Yeah. I think that's always kind of the objective is, you know, trying to get as much as possible. So we just have to keep growing and expanding our capacity and try and get to a point where, you know, we can make it really affordable for businesses and, you know, larger producers that are, you know, producing thousands of pounds. That's co-host Ashley Thornberg at Prairie Compost Services. Up next on this July 3rd edition of Main Street, Dave Thompson reviews the week's news, and Matt Olien takes us to the movies. Spoiler alert. This is a movie Matt doesn't like. That's all coming after this. Support for Prairie Public is provided by Stage West, presenting Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Cats for 12 performances, June 30th through July 18th, at 730 p.m. at Ascension Health Plaza at the Lights West Fargo. Jellicle Cats, come one, come all. Tickets and information at westfargoevents.com. [Music] And with that walk up music, it's time for Dave Thompson. He and I will review this week's news here on Main Street. Dave, how are you? I'm doing fine, Craig. How are you? Doing really well, Dave. How are you going to spend the Fourth of July? Well, Fourth of July, some traditional things going to join some friends for a cookout. And I will tell you a little secret, Craig. I haven't shot any fireworks off since I was about 12 years old. Are you going to shoot any off this year, Dave? No, I'm not. Are you going to watch them, maybe? Maybe watch them. They have a big display at the Capitol, so we'll probably have that tonight. On one of our first trips to North Dakota, this is now a long time ago when my son was a student at Jamestown, we met as a family in Bismarck for the Fourth of July. He had some summer stuff that he was doing, and so he stayed up there, and we came over to Jamestown, and we had a great, great Fourth of July on the Capitol lawn. Oh, yes, you bet. That was really a lot of fun. All right, Dave, let's get after this week's news, if we could. Sure. Dave, North Dakota's economy is lagging your team is reporting. That's right, and this is Ernie Goss. He's a great university professor. He does something called the Mid-America Business Conditions Index. His index says, "If it's above 50, you're growing. If it's below 50, you're contracting." Well, two months ago it was 40 in North Dakota, and the concerns were about energy and about exports and what might happen to the agriculture economy. It has improved a bit to 45, but still below growth neutral, and he says that might get better as we're seeing more and more confidence in the agriculture industry. Boy, you look around at least this part of the state, and you see cranes, you see houses, you see lots of things happening, so this was a little bit of a surprise to me. Right, but again, he's a month behind, so a lot of these things are starting to pop up now. All right, Dave, some petitions have been submitted to the Secretary of State's Office, at least for one measure that we all expected. This is a question that will ask North Dakota voters whether to eliminate property taxes. Right, now they needed about 31,000 signatures and submitted more than 40,000 signatures. The Secretary of State's Office is currently going through and looking at the validity of signatures, and if they get enough valid signatures, it will be on the ballot this fall. There are of course groups that are now organizing an opposition to it. The Keep It Local group is talking about, hey, if you're thinking the best government is local government, let the local governments decide on property taxes, because that's how you fund schools, that's how you fund police and fire, that's how you fund streets. Did it surprise you that this group said it got over 40,000 signatures, and they only need 31,000. They wanted a cushion, of course, but boy, it seems like they have a good cushion. They do have a good cushion, and people do sign petitions. It's not necessarily a guarantee that they're going to vote for it, but they want to put it on the ballot. And there are some questions being raised about what the state's role is going to be in this, because it does say that the state will have to appropriate the amount to local subdivisions of what they raised in property taxes based on the 2024 baseline year. It doesn't talk about increases, gives the local districts, or basically local governments, a little leeway if they've got special projects, but they have to go to the voters to ask for them. Robbing Peter to pay Paul, perhaps? In a way, yes. Alright, Dave, so there may be another question on the ballot relative to marijuana, recreational marijuana being available in North Dakota. What's the latest there? Well, they're going to be turning in petitions on Monday afternoon, so we'll have to find out if they've got enough, and they needed over 15,000, and the backers of the measure have assured me they've got more than 15,000. Alright, Dave, let's move on. There was a story on NPR today on Wednesday about indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, and you also had this story that he was denied parole for his 1975 killings of two FBI agents. This is becoming quite an issue. It sure has become quite an issue, and I remember when they had the trial in Fargo, I was not yet working in the business, I was a college student, but I also remember when they had an appeal that was held, that they had in Fargo as well, and also an appeal in Bismarck to try to get him, you know, released early. It has been quite an issue because the Peltier people say they don't have the evidence, and I'm talking about the feds, don't have the evidence, that he actually shot any federal agents during the protest down there. And he has a lot of backers, Peltier has a lot of backers, and they're trying to come to his defense. Is this issue going away, Dave, now that he's been denied parole, is this something that can be appealed, or is this, he has to wait now until his next opportunity? That's the way I understand it, but there is a petition now before the Biden White House to commute his sentence. So we'll see if that goes anywhere. All right, Dave, the North Dakota State College of Science in Wapatin now will soon be offering an aircraft maintenance program. This is needed. Absolutely, there's major, well, we'll say major need in commercial airlines, because people who have been in aircraft maintenance are starting to retire, and they haven't had the pipeline to get people to replace them, but now FAA is investing into the North Dakota State College of Science program as well, and they're trying to get people to take these jobs because they're very well-paid jobs, and they have longevity. Now, what's interesting is that North Dakota College of Science is partnering with the Fargo Jet Center. The Fargo Jet Center is apparently going to be hosting some of the programs up there as well. Dave, the North Dakota Highway Patrol Superintendent is going to retire, but then he'll become the state's facility management director, so he's bouncing from one place to go to another. You know, I've known him for a long time as head of the highway patrol. And this is Brandon Solberg. Yep, and he came from the Fargo District if I'm remembering correctly, and he was appointed superintendent. He said, "Well, now it's time to get out of this because, you know, superintendent of the highway patrol can be kind of a rough position, lots of time and lots of stress." And he said, "Well, you know, when I worked in the highway patrol offices early, I dealt with leases. I dealt with facilities for the highway patrol." And he said it was a good fit when John Boyle, who had been at that position for more than 20 years, decided that he was going to retire. Solberg stepped up and did the same. He wanted to move into that position. That's not the first time a highway patrol person has moved into another administrative position. In Wyoming, we live next door to a former director of the Wyoming Highway Patrol. And boy, I have a tremendous respect for the work that he did, now a very good friend of mine. Oh, absolutely. That's hard work. If you're a patrolman or you're the superintendent of the highway patrol, that is hard work. And I take my hat off to them as well. Dave, the Bank of North Dakota has now approved a workforce housing pilot program for smaller communities. And again, all hands on deck to help with the housing issue. Right now, we've been talking about affordable housing, but this is not necessarily affordable housing. This is workforce housing, which could take many different forms, including individual houses or some kind of apartments or condos or something like that. In these communities that are seeing growth or potential growth because somebody wants to expand. For example, in Grafton, Marvin Windows is planning to expand. And of course, in Ellendale, where you've got that data center, they're going to be adding 50 permanent full-time jobs. So there's a need for housing in that area, too. Dave, there's a plea hearing that's now been set. And of course, I'm talking about disgraced former state lawmaker Ray Holmberg's child sex abuse case. We now have a date. Yeah, we do. And I think what's going to happen, at least what I've been told by federal sources, is that they will have a plea agreement to take a look at. And the plea agreement would basically, it would be traveling outside the borders of the United States to have sex with adolescents. And it is an intent plea, which is interesting. There's a lot of interesting works here. And they are talking about his age, which might say that he won't be incarcerated, but maybe on parole or maybe subject to home confinement or something like that. It'll be interesting to see what the judge actually comes up with. Dave, relative to President Biden's performance in the last debate, has our delegation talked about his performance and made any thoughts, I guess, known? Not publicly, at least at this point. I think they're too interested in their own re-elections. And we'll see what happens on that, because there's been a lot of national calls for President Biden's step down. Yet, there are other calls that say he shouldn't do that. And if I may, Craig, just for a second, if he decides he's going to step down, he's going to have to release his delegates that are going to go to the convention. And the convention might be a lot of fun for observers like us, but it may not be fun for the delegates. I hesitate to use the word "theater" because it's just so important for our country, but it'll be interesting to watch. Alright, Dave, what's your team working on? What's coming up here from the Prairie Public Newsroom? I can tell you about one story that I'm working on right now. And it's the renovation of the old NPD poll in downtown Bismarck, which was built in 1902, and stopped being a depot, meaning a place for passengers' trains to unload passengers in 1975. So we're going to go through the history of that, and we're talking about how they're doing updates on it. I think it'll be a pretty good story. Dave, we have just about a minute left or so. We kind of reflected with you yesterday on your history here at Prairie Public. I asked you what your first news story was. Of course, we were celebrating your 42nd anniversary. Have you reflected a little bit on your career this week, Dave? I've seen a lot in the career. I mean, when we started here at Prairie Public, we were doing real-to-real tape and tape cartridges, and they were not always the most reliable of things. Now we're digital. We have digital editing, and it's very reliable. But really, the main job really hasn't changed that much. The main job is to get the facts out, present them to people, and let the people decide. My grandson, Dave, had a t-shirt this week. He was over at the house, and we were having a lemonade out on the deck, and it had a cassette tape on it. And I asked him. I said, "Ellis, what is that?" I don't know. We do, though, don't we, Dave? We've reviewed the news this week with our news director, Dave Thompson. Gather around everybody, and go to hell, do a story. Dave, I hope you enjoy the Fourth of July. Thank you, Craig. Hope you do, too. Madeline has a movie review. It's coming. Stay with us. Support for Prairie Public is provided by Starry & Bank, determined to provide smart banking solutions with innovative checking accounts and personal banking tools that match your lifestyle. Starry & taking you farther. Learn more at StarryandBank.com And there's the fanfare. That means only one thing. It's time for us to go to the movies with our in-house movie reviewer, Madeline. Mad, welcome to Main Street. Thanks, Craig. Good to be here. You and I are standing guard on one of the last great open spaces. That looks like a promising place. The place I might be able to see myself. You just have to stay out of the river and you can see what the men and the women up there see. That's what drove us across the ocean to this country in the first place. Hope. And man, of course, that's a clip from the movie that you're going to review for us. Horizon American Saga, part one. Well, this is the vanity project. I'm just going to call it that of writer, producer, star, and co-screen writer, Kevin Costa. He is heavily, I'm going to get to the film in a minute, he is heavily influenced by a movie he saw as a boy called How the West Was Won, which came out in 1963. You might remember it, Craig. I saw it later when I was like tan on television, and it was this all-star mega western with Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Henry Fonda, George Papar, Debbie Reynolds. And it had all these linking stories of people heading west, moving westward from the Ohio River and places like that. It was shot in three strips in a ramma, which was kind of a new thing at the time. Now, if you see the movie on TV, it has kind of this goldfish, fishbowl effect, and it doesn't look very good. And I think Costner, even though this film had a big impact on him, I think he overrates this movie. And so what he's trying to do here with Horizon and American Saga, chapter one, is actually what it's called. Not part one, but you get the gist. This is part one, and there's more coming. It's kind of his testament, his tribute to the people that headed west at the expense, of course, of Native Americans, which is dealt with in this movie. But the film's a mess. It is a mess that needed screenplay work. It's part one of four. Part two will be out in August, and he's promised part three and four. So he's setting up a lot of things. I would call this a setting the table movie, kind of a table of contents movie. And there's a lot of characters, and it's confusing. I mean, there are about four different stories going on at once. Costner's in one of the stories. There's a Santa Fe Trail wagon train and another story. There's this in the middle of nowhere attempt to build a town called Horizon, where there's no cavalry protection, no army protection. This all starts in about 1859. And there's another story about this Montana crime family. Yes, I said that right. And that ties in as well, and that part is really confusing. So there's a lot of characters being thrown at the audience in the first 30 minutes, Craig, and it's hard to keep straight. Who's important? Who's not important? They come at you willy-nilly. And sometimes a character will say two things, and they're gone and dead. And you're not sure which character is going to be in the long run. You assume Sienna Miller will be because she's a key character in the setup of this town, which is invaded by a Native American raid early in the movie that's quite a well shot scene. So it's professionally done, but it's a mess. And you're not able to have any character development. When you have this many characters in a movie, Craig, character development, room for acting. It's just tricky. Costner's too old for his part. He shows up in this Wyoming mining town, and you're not really sure what his profession is. He's selling horses. Is he a miner? You're not really sure, but very quickly he gets involved in some trouble with this young hooker in town played by Abby Lee. And the story goes from there, but it's really confusing. And the side plot with this Montana crime family gets really confusing when they kind of send people to kidnap this woman who wants to get married. And as it has a mining claim, it's really confusing. I think he's got too many characters going at once. Maybe part two will make more sense once these characters kind of get out on their own. And the end of the film kind of previews part two. But by then you've sat through three hours at sometimes a very deadly lead and pace. Costner, his performance, you know, he's very taciturn. That's how he plays it, but he's too old for his part at 69 years old. I think he should have cast somebody else in the part of this Hayes Ellison character. But by the time the film wrapped up, I was like, do I want to go to part two in August? It's a mess. The reviews are bad. I give him credit for putting all his own money into this. He's put a lot of money into this kind of a tribute to how the West was won. But I think he overrates that movie. That movie in retrospect isn't a great movie, but it's clearly influenced him to the point of using his own money. I think he was hoping for a Yellowstone effect. You know, he had such a big hit with Yellowstone. The fans of that are going to go and the film feels like you're watching a TV show, Craig. And I think it would have been better served in like a four part TV show, maybe on Apple or Hulu or Netflix or something. But he wants it on the big screen. He loves movies and he wants it on the big screen. So we will see it made 11 million at the box office, which isn't bad for a three hour Western, but will the word of mouth now kill it next weekend? I was very disappointed in this movie. It's a mess. So I really enjoy dances with wolves and I came away from that feeling that it was likely historically accurate. At least it felt that way to me, even though I was pretty young when I first saw it. Is this movie not historically accurate or we just don't even know? It's a fictional story with fictional characters, okay? So yes, there's a Santa Fe trail part where this Kansas wagon train comes through. That's all true. But they're fictionalized characters, Craig, set in the founding of the West. Or founding is not the right word, of course, because the Native Americans in this movie, I would say are really side characters. They are in the movie, but I would say they're almost faceless and nameless. And I think that's going to get, I think that's going to get cost her into some trouble too. Unless they are fleshed out better in part two. I can see this as a 21st century criticism of this movie is that the Native Americans are, even though they're in it and they're sympathy to them, there are some horrific raids that they do and kill a bunch of settlers. So that could be something that he might face some criticism for unless he corrects that in part two. And I'm not here to criticize him for that. I'm here to criticize the movie, the structure of the movie, the screenplay. I think he needed fewer characters. He's got a good cast, Jenna Malone, Danny Houston. In that clip you played Craig, Danny Houston is this army officer. He gives the big speech about the frontier and the last open spaces. There's got to be that big speech in there about heading west. Let me also say in a strange bit of casting, Luke Wilson, who is Owen Wilson's brother, he is the leader of this tough leader of the wagon train heading west. I'm not sure I would have Luke Wilson play the tough leader of a wagon train. You have to expect Owen Wilson and Will Ferrell to show up. You know, let's have some laughs, comedic films. That's my point. Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, they're all kind of in these movies together. So Luke Wilson is essentially a comic actor leading this wagon train. But as I said, it's a table setting movie, but you know what's a good table setting movie? Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring. That was a movie that set the table for the next two movies, but Peter Jackson knew what he was doing. Tolkien wrote great books. And you got a sense of the characters in Fellowship of the Ring that you latched on to. Frodo and Gandalf and all of these characters. And in this movie, it's so scattershot. And it jumps around so quickly. And here's a character. Oh, that character's dead in two minutes. I just saw him. Am I supposed to latch onto that character? It's too scattershot to really have any character development. We'll see where part two goes in August. I'm not sure, but I did not like this movie at all. And it's a tough sit. It is, I don't mind leisurely paced movies, but some of the scenes go on way too long, way too long. So the beauty of the great mountains that I'm used to, Matt, that you used to live in at one part of your life, that doesn't even sell it to you, huh? They're in there. I mean, the beauty of the land is there, but you got to have story and character development and a better screenplay. And, you know, this could go down as this folly. Dances with Wolves is a good film, but this one isn't. Let's go to the trivia question. Of course, Kevin Costner won two Academy Awards for his work and Dances with Wolves, which categories did he win in? A director and best picture. We have more Main Street coming your way. Stay with us. This is Dakota Datebook for July 3rd. The Wild West was not nearly as wild as it is portrayed in books, movies and television. Life on the frontier was hard work, and that, in turn, created a need for entertainment. There was no shortage of ways for people to spend their time and money. Gambling was widespread and was taken so seriously that it could turn deadly. Some entertainment was informal, with cowboys challenging each other to write a difficult horse or rope a wild animal. Baseball caught on, with local teams playing opponents from neighboring towns. In the 1800s, the mining boom drew shows and entertainers to boom towns, where money and board miners were plentiful. Traveling shows were common, with circuses especially popular. They were designed to be taken down quickly, packed up and moved on to the next town. A visit from a circus provided plenty of excitement and diversion. Even smaller towns in North Dakota could attract talented performers and shows with impressive reputations. On this date, in 1894, the citizens of Oaks and the surrounding area were anticipating the arrival of the Lemon Brothers Circus for a performance on July 7th. It was the only circus scheduled in the area that year. Newspaper articles and ads increased the excitement. The show advertised a white sea line and the only boxing kangaroo in the Northwest. Raja, reputed to be the largest elephant in the world, was touted as being several inches taller and 3,000 pounds heavier than PT Barnum's jumbo. The circus was so large, it required two trains for transport. The circus parade would feature three bands, more horses than any other circus, and a $10,000 same calypy imported from France. Unfortunately for the residents of Oaks, the 1819 War Circus did not come off as planned. On July 6th, the day before the scheduled performance, the newspaper announced that a train strike had left the circus stranded in Fargo. The performance had to be canceled. Today's Dakota Daybook written by Dr. Carol Butcher, I'm Ann Alquist. The Dakota Daybook is produced in cooperation with the State Historical Society of North Dakota, with funding by Humanities North Dakota. North Dakota's largest lifelong learning community. Arts programming on Prairie Public is supported in part by the North Dakota Council on the Arts, a state agency developing, promoting, and supporting the arts in North Dakota. The Declaration of Independence marked a new beginning for this country. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant. We have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms. Among our unalienable rights is particularly the pursuit of happiness. What these words mean to Americans now, on the next Morning Edition from NPR News. 4AM Central to 9AM Central, here on Prairie Public. And that's a wrap for today's Main Street. Thank you so much for joining us. Tomorrow on the show, we'll have a special July 4th edition of Main Street. Unsung Heroes of the American Revolution is a documentary that commemorates the 4th of July holiday. It covers major events of the Revolutionary War and stories of the unsung heroes who were instrumental in winning the Patriot sovereignty over England. We'll bring that to you tomorrow. From all of us at Prairie Public, we hope you enjoy the 4th of July holiday and that you'll join us again tomorrow on Main Street. [Music]