Main Street
America's New Citizen Johan Van Aarde; W. Scott Olsen's 6/7 Project
(upbeat music) - Welcome to Main Street on this Monday. Here in North Dakota, I'm your host Craig Blumenchine. Coming up later in today's show, we'll meet photographer W. Scott Olson. He likes to wake up early with his camera and my former colleague, Ashley Thornberg, will bring you his story. We'll also hear poetry from Studio 47. Today's poem, written by Sarah Henning, is titled "Through a Glass Darkly" and the poem delves into the discovery of hidden family secrets following her father's passing. And egg workers frequently face challenges in securing affordable adequate housing. However, Harvest Public Media reports the housing is becoming increasingly inaccessible for the very workers it aims to assist. We begin today's show by introducing you to Johann Finadre, who journeyed from South Africa to North Dakota over a decade ago. He shares his compelling story, detailing his decision to renounce his South African citizenship and take the oath to become an American citizen. Johann guides us through this transformative chapter of his life. Johann Finadre, welcome to Main Street. - Oh, thank you for having me. - Johann, you and I met in a park in West Fargo and you started telling me your story. And I just really, really wanted to learn more. You're a brand new American citizen. Congratulations about that. - Oh, thank you very much. Pretty excited. - And we're gonna talk more about that in a little bit, but I wanna go way back to your childhood. You told me you grew up in South Africa. - That's correct, yep. - Tell me about your life as a little one. - Well, I was born in pretty much raised up to the age of 19 in South Africa. Grew up in a lot of small town called Para Alfred along the coastal. That's where I pretty much spent most of my life. I was very active in sports. My mom and dad were both in a police force at that time. I had two younger brothers. We kind of terrorized each other a lot, quite a bit. I was saying, we had a challenging childhood life, but pretty much, I think most people go through some challenges at that age. - Was it a time in your life, I guess, that you felt that you needed to leave or what caused you to think that, man, maybe I should leave the country. - Well, at that age, I would say when I graduated in '07, my dad was working abroad already in the US. I had no interest of going at all, to be honest. He had a good opportunity for me. I didn't have enough grades. I should say to go to college. Oh, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do in my life at that time. And so, he told me pretty much gave me opportunity to come over. I came over, this is very overwhelming. At first, for me, I don't know anything about farming, came over to work on a farm. - Where was the farm? - My first farm was in Munich, North Dakota, small town, pretty much just close to Canadian border. And that's where I worked at first. - What did you do? - Worked pretty much on a small grain farm. We come by, we harvest it. It was mostly wheat and some soybeans, but that's pretty much all we did is, so at my main job was driving truck pretty much in the beginning. I didn't have much experience around those big equipment, but that took some time and, over time, I gained quite a bit of experience. - What were your first thoughts of North Dakota when you came here? Was it similar in some ways to where you lived or just wholly different? - It was way different than what I expected. When I come from, it's just mountains and beach and everything. And then when I come over, yeah, it's just flat and country land and pretty much, yeah, it was not what I expected at all. - Did you enjoy it, though? Or were you having second thoughts, maybe? - As a kid, when I was like, I was like 19, yeah, 19, 20. I think it was just too overwhelmed from how everything was just so big. And I felt like I was out of place pretty much. So, and I was just concerned about doing the right thing and not disappointing anybody at that age. So, that's the way I was sitting at that time. - What was your dad doing here in the United States? What line of work was he in here? - He was in the same line of work, also working on a farm, different farm, a few miles away. And that's when he retired out of the police force. And so he came over here to make more money, to set himself up for our time and do a little bit better. - Did you have a chance to see your dad been quite regularly during the weeks and months? - Depending on the time of the season, it's harvesting, probably we didn't see each other much. But during the summertime, leading up to a harvest, we made time for each other. And my brother, my younger brothers, were we had to go, one was going to school with my same town as where my dad was. So, we made it time for each other the one we could. - So, your brothers came with you also? - My brothers came with my dad, yes. So, I came with my dad, but I lived in a different town. We all came together as a family and then split up with them. - So, then you moved to Jamestown, was that next? - Just south of Jamestown, that's correct. There's a small town called Menango. And I have an opportunity to go to the farm over there. And I've worked for the farm for David Thingsler for about 12 years, I would say, pretty close to 12 years. - And you started to learn more and more about not only North Dakota, but our country as well. Did you start to feel more comfortable here or were you still missing the mountains, missing the beach, missing home? - It did slowly become like home, especially when I moved down south to Jamestown. I just felt, I felt more comfortable, I felt more secure, it was more in one place. I started to get to know the community, started to fit in and make more friends. So, I started to feel like it was a place where I could have fun and enjoy myself. - Now, tell me about the immigration portion of this journey. You had to do what in order to work on a farm in North Dakota? What did you have to do? - You go through a visa program, it's called an eight, but back then when I was on it, it was an H2A. So, you apply through this visa program and you go through the whole process and once you get accepted, you can work on the farm as a seasonal worker. So, that will start in the spring till late fall when harvest is done pretty much November around about that. And then you get to go back home for about three months, three, four months. - And is that what you did in your first years here in North Dakota, you would work the season and then go back to South Africa and then come back to the United States again next year? - That is correct, yes. So, I did that for about three years, I would say. - All right, so you continue on with your life in Jamestown and you started meeting people. Tell me about some of the folks that you met. - Well, I should say that I met my wife that I'm currently married to right now and have three beautiful kids together. I can vouch for that, when I was at the park, I got to see both your wife and your children and certainly congratulations about that. - Well, thank you very much. And I made some good friends along here that I chose. There's a guy, like I said, the farmer I work, used to work for David Kinzler. He's like a father figure to me. He's been there and supported me through a lot of my decisions till today. - When you were in North Dakota, did you ever feel that some folks didn't want you here because you were from somewhere else or did you not feel like that at all? - No, to be honest, I felt very welcomed and people were very interested to know my background where I'm from and why am I here. So I always felt welcome. So I never had that feeling at all. - So there came a time then, then you moved a bit east over to the Fargo area. - Yep, I had an opportunity to come over here and we grabbed it and we haven't looked back getting me pretty happy with that. - What are you doing now, Johan? - I worked for a company called Cortico Fills Improping and one of our main projects right now is we supply fuel for the diversion project just on the West side of Fargo. My role is operation supervisor. So I make sure we get fuel to the equipment and then make sure the operation runs smooth on our end. - And this is now, this is certainly a year round position for you. - Yes, that's correct. It's full-time position and it doesn't slow down. - And your wife, if I recall, is studying to become a dental hygienist, is that correct? - Yeah, that's correct. She started the program the summer and then she... So she's got two years to go, I guess. - You're working full-time. She's a student pursuing something rather serious and you have three little ones. How do you manage your life? - It's interesting, that's for sure. It keeps us busy, all three kids keeps us busy and we try to make time for each other when we can but otherwise we kind of like the chaos a little bit. - Enjoying my conversation with Johann Finadre. He is a new American citizen and he's been in North Dakota. Johann, about, I guess, a little more than a decade now. Is that right? - Yes, that is correct since 2008. - Now you're here and you had to make a decision, I think, and maybe you made this one a little bit earlier that you wanted to become an American citizen. Why was that important to you? - I would say to secure, making sure I don't go back home and be with my family 'cause both my wife and my three kids are citizens and I was a permanent resident and so I applied that step so I can just be around them and I would feel safe and confident I won't be able to leave the country. - When you're a permanent resident, does that mean you can stay here forever or are there limitations with that? - There is limitations, so my, when you get your first permanent resident card, I was valid for five years. Then after that five years expires, you have to go through the process of getting interviewed and going through the whole process and the next second one is 10 years. Then after that, you have to keep every 10 years, they have to keep reapplying. So my 10 year one was nearly coming to an end so I made sure I do it the right way don't have to do that process again. - Are you a tool citizen? Do you still have citizenship in South Africa? - No, I do not. I, that's one I have to give up. So I am just, I have an American citizen that's about it. - You decided to apply to become an American citizen. What's involved with that? - Well, pretty much I had the same, the same rights as permanent resident card. I had the same rights, but I couldn't vote and when I became a citizen, I have the right to vote and pretty much give up my rights as being a South African anymore and now I have to be a citizen, I would say, and defend the country when it's called for and stuff. So I had to give up all my South African rights. - You had to take a test. - That is correct. - Tell me about that. - Well, it's a test to know the history of our country and pretty much how the US became independent, I used to say, and the whole process of all the walls that you guys that we have been through. So that's pretty much just mostly the history of the country. - Did any of our history really surprise you or did you know it? Did you know some of it already? - To be honest, I did not know much of it at all, but it was very intriguing to me and I was interested to me, I would say, and it made me feel proud actually to be part of it, I should say. - Your father and two other brothers, two younger brothers, also citizens, are they still permanent residents? - So my father is not a permanent, he was in the visa program, and he was back home right now in his country, and my one brother is a permanent resident and he is residing in Wisconsin at the moment. - Here we go. There was a moment that you learned that you were going to become an American citizen. What happened? - There's a very overwhelming and exciting experience for me and my family. I would say it kind of lost the words and it just feels like it's, "Can this be true?" - How did you learn that this was going to happen? - Well, I went for my interview, though they go through a process of good character, I would say, and went through that process and got an interview by a U.S. embassy's officer, and after that interview, they pretty much said, "Congratulations, you passed," and I'm like, "What?" And I'm like, "This is real, right?" And she said, "Yep, you passed, so the next step is getting all thin." And I'm like, "Wow." So it was a surreal moment for me. - Then you learned that you were going to get to take the oath, and then last Thursday night you took the oath to become an American citizen. How long of time was between those two things? - It was a couple of weeks after they went really fast. It was, I would say, about a couple of weeks. I was surprised how fast the process went, so, but I was happy about it, too. - You went to an FM Red Hawks baseball game. You were told to be there a little bit early, walk me through the day. - So we got checked in, and we had a hand in over our green cards and passports, everything that, from our country documentation, that is needed at the ballpark. - Yep, so that got handed all in. There was a judge that was a judge. They also, they, that swore us in. So she explained the whole process to us what's going to happen and how we're going to proceed about things. - After all, we handed in our paperwork, we went downstairs in, by the locker rooms, and they called us out to the field, and we had a stand up between first and second base on the line, and then we got oath in, in front of the crowd, which was very overwhelming, and being in front of the crowd, that was, that was a really good experience, and our family in the crowd, too, going crazy yelling at us for us and cheering on. And then after that, we had to turn around, look at the screen, big screen, and there was a personal recorded message from President Biden walking us as US citizens. We listened to that, and we sang our national anthem after that, and we, we got cheered off, and then we had to go back and cheer off the crowd, and we could join our family and watch the game. - What were you thinking? - We honest, I had a lot of emotions going through me, 'cause that day pretty much I was American citizen and gave up my South African right, so it was very overwhelming, happy, and sad at the same time, but I know where I'm heading to and what I want to be part of, and I was happy about my choice, I mean. - What did your wife tell you when she first saw you after you had taken the oath? - She was very proud of me. That was the first one, she was very proud of me, and gave me a big hug. - What do you think you'll miss most about South Africa, and the fact that you're no longer a South African citizen? - The culture, I would say. I'd say that's the most thing, and my family back home, but I feel, I got my wife's family with me, and I feel just as welcome, and I enjoy the culture just here, too, so I feel like American already for being here this long anyways, so. - Johan, was your family supportive of you? Do they understand why you wanted to do this? - They were very supportive with me, and they were very supportive, I should say. - What's on your mind now that you're just an American citizen with everything that you have in front of you? - Well, my first goal is to set myself, me, my family up, just to give them the best experience what they can, and trying to excel in my career, and just support my wife's through school. I would say, just take a day by day, but set goals for us, that's what we can do, I guess. - What advice would you give to somebody who's in your shoes in a different country thinking about, boy, maybe I should come to America? What would you tell them? - I would say, for sure, do not give up hope, and the hard work in the long run pays off. Never give up, it's a process, it took me since 2008 to all now, but I would say never give up and keep working at it. - You had told me once, I think, that he had started this process a little bit earlier, but COVID interrupted things, is that right? - Kind of put a, it seemed like it put a hole on it. Yes, that's what, that's correct. - It just kind of just, it was paperwork needs to be done, and the whole COVID thing happened, and in my end, I didn't continue, it just took so long, such a big stretch over things. - Were you ever worried then that, oh my goodness, I might have missed this opportunity? - To be honest, I don't know if I was too worried till I saw my, I got two years on my green card left, and then I started getting worried this spring. It's like, I better get on top of this, 'cause if it drags it out, long like the other time, I might have to go back home. So, I was getting a little nervous this time. - Last Thursday, you saw your very first baseball game. What do you think of baseball? - It's pretty cool, I enjoyed it. (laughing) It reminds me a lot about cricket, so I played that as, but it was a fun spot to watch, I would say, it's pretty cool. Just, I'm just happy for the opportunity I got, and I'm grateful for my family for supporting me through this process, and I would say if you, there's people out there in the similar boat, just don't give up and just push through, it eventually all will pay itself. - Last Thursday, Johan Vanandre celebrated two major milestones at Newman Field. He became an American citizen in a special ceremony held at the ballpark and then watched his first ever baseball game as the FM Red Hawks faced off against the Sioux Falls canaries. Johan, it's been a pleasure, and I hope I run into you at a local park again soon. - Well, thank you very much for having me in. That was really nice to meet you. - Support for Pray Public is provided by Dr. Julie Peterman Bryant of the Bryant Clinic of Chiropractic and Acupuncture in Bismarck. Naturally working with people to feel better, be healthy and live well at all ages. - Welcome back to Main Street. Patrick Hicks brings us poetry from Studio 47 featuring the work of Sarah Henning. Henning's roots trace back to the Midwest, shaping her perspective and voice. The original poem that Patrick Reads for us contains language that has been modified for this broadcast with Henning's approval and for the unedited version, visit the Poetry from Studio 47 website. (gentle music) - This is Poetry from Studio 47, welcome. Today's poet is Sarah Henning. Henning was born on August 11th, 1980 in Savannah, Georgia. She grew up in Athens. Her immediate family though, were almost all Midwestern transplants. As Henning has said in a recent interview, she grew up on unsweet tea and hot dish. As a child, she began to write in secret, as so many of us do. When asked why she became a writer, she had this to say. I excelled in science and was on my path to becoming a medical doctor when I decided to change my major to English. My choice to pursue the humanities came in spite of my upbringing, not because of it. And that difference, rebellion, was something that drew me in. I found metaphysical questions, questions related to the human condition which could not be answered by the scientific method, intoxicating, lovely in a way that empiricism couldn't always capture. After graduating from high school, she attended the University of Georgia where she received her BA. This was followed by an MFA from George Mason University in Virginia. She then went to the University of South Dakota where she received her PhD in literary studies. Her books include "To Speak of Delilah's," "A Sweeter Water," and "View from True North." Henning has won the Crab Orchard Poetry Prize, the Crazy Horse Linda Hull Memorial Prize, and she has won fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, as well as the Sundress Academy for the Arts. She teaches at Stephen F. Austin State University, where she is the poetry editor of their University Press. She lives in Texas. Our poem for today is "Through a Glass Darkly." Among many other things, it's a poem about family secrets and how those secrets can shape families. When Henning's father passed away, a locksmith was needed to open a file cabinet in his office. Hidden in the back were a number of journals, journals that no one knew anything about. Sometimes the best words to describe unexpected things are hard and blunt. Swearing, after all, conveys raw emotion. This is one of those poems where the swearing contained within it is necessarily shocking. I've changed the language of this poem a little bit with Henning's approval, so that it can be broadcast on the air. In other words, I've made it FCC-friendly. This is "Through a Glass Darkly" by Sarah Henning. (clears throat) Before Glaucoma forced him to surrender his license, my grandfather threw the key to his office filing cabinet into a gully off a state highway, idled until he saw it land in a patch of wild violets and never looked back. After his death and a locksmith, my mother cataloging papers to throw away or shred, she found a black leather journal bursting with his small, insistent cursive in the drawer striped with masking tape. Miscellaneous, scrawled in obtrusive red letters. Behind it, 20 more journals shoved against metal and file folder, arranged by year. When she struggled to disengage them, the drawer hinged toward her, journals plunging to the carpet, journals limp beside garbage bags stuffed with tax returns and expired depository receipts. Every man keeps a journal, even if he never writes a word. To find a journal as one thing, a moment of graphite pencils cruele liaison with paper, a moment of leather warming in my mother's hand. To hold an artifact, another. What she found, Polaroids glued on back leaves, naked men posed over beds. Their hard members stretched on their bellies like sunning garter snakes, barely legal standing a kimbo, underwear cupping their scrotums, entries itemizing names, price paid in U.S. dollars, dimensions of each organ limp and aroused, the positions in which he had them. Another entry, happy birthday to me, 40, I'm telling her. But the pictures whisper their own rap truths. 17, Air Force, World War II, how he sewed them into pocket linings of his uniform with a needle he'd hide in his shoe. When he decoupage them, creased and torn at the joints of folding, how he must have trusted that pain was the proof of survival. 27, Korea, men dressed as UN Madams and juicy girls, busty pose, alleyways, twist after twist, city guys lacquered with tight pants, junkies so skinny their members looked like pythons, hard up good time boys. I don't want to ask him, why did you marry my grandmother? I don't want to ask him, what did it take for you to put yourself inside of her? Instead, I'm writing on the first blank page I can find. You should have loved who you wanted. I'm writing to save you would have meant the end of both of us. Poetry from Studio 47 is hosted and curated by Patrick Hicks. This episode was recorded at Augustana University and produced by Peter Folleard. Thank you for listening. - Welcome back to Main Street on Prairie Public. I'm Craig Blumenshine. In just a moment, we'll hear a report from Harvest Public Media on a federal program that's trying to find affordable housing for egg workers, but it may be missing the mark. Next, we'll hear from my former colleague, Ashley Thornberg. It's her conversation with W. Scott Olson. He likes to give up early, grab his camera and capture captivating views in the early morning hours. - Scott, thanks for joining us today. - My pleasure as always. - Why do you like 6 a.m.? - I am an early riser. I have been for many, many, many years and it strikes me that the hour between 6 a.m. and 7 in the morning is a transitional hour. It's one of those times where we are doing something in order to be doing something else. We're getting up and getting ready to go to work or we are ending third shift and we're getting ready to go to bed. It is rarely looked at as a time of day in and of itself. I'm up that time. I love that time of the day because so many things are going on and the city is actually wide awake and quite vibrant at a time most people think it's still asleep. - How do you describe the feel of that hour? - It's dreamy, it's out of focus. It's energetic at the same time. Again, because for most of us, it is the beginning of a day and we are getting informed, we're getting cleaned up, we're getting fed. So there's a lot of aboutness to it and that to me is really-- - You mean like about too? - About to happen. And that to me is just endlessly fascinating because it's not quite in focus. It's one of those times of the day where we are preparing for something else so our mind is actually an hour in front of us during that hour. Our bodies are in six to seven, our mind is in nine o'clock, eight o'clock. - We need to do this so that I can perform at. - And that kind of disconnect, that kind of sideways appreciation of being in the moment is believe it or not visually interesting, the way people move through that hour because they're not quite aware of being in that hour is fascinating. - Scott, I've talked to you several times and I distinctly remember that you often use the word disconnect when talking about how you pick your subjects and how you frame your photos. Why are you so drawn to disconnection, disharmony? - We love unity, we love things that are together. But if you've got a shirt where the seams don't match, you can't help but look at that point and part of us wants to resolve it, he wants to fix it. But for me, that disconnect is a story. There's a reason why these things don't work together well. One of the images in the project, for example, is simply, it's out at the Amazon warehouse, a stop sign in the parking lot that's been knocked over. And it's not being prepared to be put up, it's clearly been run into. And so it's just a stop sign on its side, but there's a story there. This is not the way it should. - Who did that? - Who did that, why did they do it? What was going on? And because it's out of place, it is interesting. If you think about it, one of our earliest lessons from children's television is one of these things is not like the other. Okay, and then the implication there is why? What does that mean? How do I react to this? - We love the process of trying to figure out a disconnect. And so it's not so much the disconnectness itself that I'm interested in, but our response to it. Why is it this isn't the way I would want it to be? - You know what's really fascinating to me about this, Scott, is I think of you as a photographer who masquerades as an English professor. Your day job, that you are retiring out of in phases here is with words. Your picture books never have any words in them, not even the caption. What is the deal with that, especially in your answer to that, was all about the story behind the image. And you don't include that. - My first book was a collection of short stories. I have many, many books after that that are all nonfiction, but they're narrative nonfiction. They're stories, they're travel pieces. I, we live for stories. I think it is our earliest form of communication is a narrative, something as basic as where's the food? How do I avoid being eaten, this kind of stuff. Story is the thing that survives everything else. We're still reading stories from the Greek and Roman days. We're still reading stories from the ancient Far East. We're not studying plumbing from the 16th century anymore. We're not studying economics from the 18th century, but stories persist. So in everything I do, story is at the foundation. With the photographic work that I do, what I value most, inside the individual image, inside a single frozen moment in time, there is a narrative, there's a story. And that's what drives me. - I love the ending of the six, seven project of that turkey crossing the street. Because you don't have to spend more than 24 seconds driving around this area before you see who's kind of really in charge of the traffic around you. And that is the turkey population here. Talk a little bit about the balance in the project of the people, but also the environment, the nature that is at that hour of day. Especially because in the summer, there might be a little bit of light, but in the winter, that's pitch black still. - Six to seven at our latitude is a really dynamic time. On June 21st, longest day of the year, you can read a book outside at 10 o'clock at night. In the middle of the winter, it's dark by four. - Yeah, you can't do that, December 20th. - No, it is radically different. And the light changes every single day. That was one of the appeals of the hour, that I would, knowing that this was going to be a year long documentary project, that I was gonna go out two or three times every month to go hunting for images. One of the appeals was knowing I would get a wide range of light, of subject, of how we're responding to the weather. It's really a highly dramatic time of the day, looking at it as a year. - And you put the book and the photo show together, asynchronous seasonally, but in order of the hour here, why did you want to do that? I mean, it's gonna, it's a little bit jarring to go from, you know, 602-33, and it's full summer to 603-04, and it's the dead of winter. - The subject of the show is the hour. And I did think about organizing it in other ways, but I kept coming back to, no, it's gotta be time. It's, when you walk through the show, you're gonna walk through it, guess what, clockwise. And it'll begin with six o'clock, and you will experience the hour throughout the year as you walk the circle to get back to the beginning. There was no other way I felt to negotiate the seasonal transitions and make it make sense as a show. It does not tell you what day of the year any of the images are. - The only caption to these images is the timestamp. - Mm-hmm, how much do you think about time? - All the time and not at all. I'm not somebody who worries about time, but I'm aware, you know, the oak was shaping present in the moment is a goal that I have for myself. And so I'm aware of what time it is, what season it is, what day it is, this kind of stuff. But as far as the passage of time, or aging, or not, or whatever, that doesn't concern me. Probably, maybe it should, but it doesn't really concern me at all. (laughing) - You captured this project with the whole go lens. - Yes. - Talk about this. It's so bad, it's good, photography lens here. - A lot of my work is documentary work, it's landscape work, it's photojournalism, but this hour has a different feel to it. And when I saw that the whole go lens was available for my camera, I had to jump at it. Because the whole go is, well, first of all, it was a camera, and it's a very cheap, all plastic camera that has lightning-- - You know what's well made when the parts are plastic. - Yeah, but it's famous for light leaks, for blurriness, the lens is never in focus. And it's, yeah, okay, seldom in focus. - What were they trying to design? (laughing) - I have no clue. But there is a whole world of photography now called Lomo Photography, which is decidedly and intentionally poor quality, which has become a favorite and a darling of fine art photographers. It's a special effect. The whole go lens is now available for Nikon, for Canon, for other brands as well. And so I said, this is it. This is what I want for this project, because that hour of the day is slightly out of focus, filled with leaks from all other times of the day. It just, what I'm really focusing is not the city, I'm focusing a mood. I'm focusing an emotional response to that hour. And it just struck me that the high art problems that the whole go lens gives you was exactly right, for what I wanted to say. - High art problems. - Yes. - So all of the technical, it has none of the technical finesse. - No. - But all of the mood. - It is intentionally bad, but as you said, it's so bad, it becomes something else. - Right, there is a moodiness to it. Like I see an image on a whole other camera, and I feel like almost invariably, wherever that image was taken in the world, it just reminds me of Paris. - Okay. - Like of a rainy day in Paris when you see the classic, you know, black and white photo of someone in love, like this is what everybody goes to Paris to photograph. It's very evocative in love. - It should be there, or it should be the Scottish Highlands, or it should be, you know-- - Some where foggy, some where rainy. - Or the North Pole. I mean, it's just one of those weird lenses that, like so many things, you look at an image and you think, either this is genius or that's horrible. For me, it was, I'd said, this is genius. This is, I gotta have one. - What do you think would have happened to the whole good company if they had just tried to make a good camera? Like, they would have just gone bankrupt, right? - Yeah, I have no clue. - Like if people hadn't adopted this as that nudist aesthetic. - And you know, photography has a couple very interesting things going on right now. The Polaroid style camera is becoming popular again of the little instant pictures. - Oh, and the little camp snaps too? Man, those were flying off the show. - They are, and believe it or not, I forget which manufacturer. Somebody just came out with a brand new film camera. So, I mean, those of us that still should film occasionally have been doing it with old gear. Now you can buy fresh off the shelf, brand new film gear again. So, who knows? - Is this gonna be like vinyl? Like, you know, CDs came and went, cassettes came and went, but vinyl stuck around. - Well, film is never gonna go away. It'll be like vinyl. And a lot of people gravitate towards film because it requires a different approach to photography. I can with my digital camera, you know, rip off 85 pictures without a thought to how much it's gonna cost me, or to that kind of stuff, whereas film, you are very intentional with every press of the shutter is. - Well, in those little campsnaps, there's kind of a middle ground there of, you can take as many as you want because it's digital, but you can't see them right away. So, you still have that patience of, what did I catch? - And we have, you know, we are over inundated with images from Instagram and TikTok and everything else. That's become a crochet now that there are way too many images. But there are other ripple effects. I've been to a couple weddings now where the guest book, you didn't sign it. Somebody took your picture with one of these little instant cameras, and they slid that picture into the guest book. So, people are thinking of new ways to have a relationship with photography. That is fine art, that is vernacular, that is whatever. It's really exciting. - Yeah, are you still developing your own film? - No, I have not developed my own role of film since high school. - Oh, okay. - And, we just had a show here in town a while back, about a half dozen of us called Shot On Film, and we were all digital photographers that still had our old film cameras. So, we got together and we decided we were gonna do a show of returning to film. And my contribution, the five images that I had there, were all mistakes. And I have no idea why the image turned out the way it did. We limited ourselves to one role each. So, we all shot 24 images or 36, whatever, and we can select five. And I didn't do the actual developing of that, which is why I can say I haven't developed since high school. But the whole relationship to taking a picture changed. - Talk a little bit more about constraints when it comes to artistic endeavors, because what you just had limited yourself to one role of film, and going back to the six, seven project, like you couldn't do 5.59 a.m., you couldn't do 7.01 a.m., you had a strictly defined boundary. But it feels like you're using boundaries and constraints as a way to find freedom. And a lot of other people would see that as a way to be limited. - Yeah, and boundaries and constraints are not really that, for me, they're organizing principles. I can go out and say today, I'm gonna go work on street photography, okay? But then I'll see somebody, and I'll do a portrait. I'm not gonna stop and say no, I won't take your portrait because I'm doing street photography today, but I won't include that in the organization that comes later of the street work. So it's more a matter of, okay, I've got all of these elements, you know, what am I gonna do with them? How am I going to put them together? I do believe, and this comes out of being a writer and an editor, form allows you an extra layer of meaning. If you think about poetry, a sonnet, you know, is a certain thing, a haiku is a certain thing. You can certainly break that, you can write something else, but it's no longer a sonnet or a haiku. If you set out to work within that form, the form is its own sense of beauty, the form is its own sense of added content and appreciation. So I don't see them as constraints, I see them as ways to organize and give shape to what is otherwise a, you know, random set of data. - Thank you so much for joining us today. As always, my pleasure. - Support for Pray Public is provided by North Dakota Living, celebrating 70 years of featuring the great people in places of North Dakota and proudly serving the members of North Dakota's electric cooperatives. - This is Main Street on Prairie Public. I'm Craig Blumenchine. Agricultural workers often struggle to find adequate, affordable places to live. That's why the US Department of Agriculture has a program to help fund affordable off-farm worker housing across the country, but as Ray Solomon reports for Harvest Public Media and the Midwest Newsroom, housing is increasingly out of reach for the very people it's intended to help. - A tidy apartment complex sits on the industrial edge of rural Fort Morgan, Colorado. There are solar panels on the roof, a couple of playgrounds for the kids, and a sign out front welcoming you to Solna Ciente, an agricultural labor housing community. It looks like a perfect place for Abdul Aziz Diallo, who's originally from the West African country of Mauritania. Diallo, who speaks several languages, including French, says he's been looking for a place to live since last spring. That's when he moved to Fort Morgan for a job at the local meat packing plant. But when he approached Solna Ciente about an open unit, they said he might be an ag worker, but his income was too high. He says apart from Solna Ciente, housing here is in short supply and too expensive. So he's been bouncing around, staying with different friends and acquaintances. And according to Arturo Alvarado, head of the Community Resources Housing and Development Corporation, the nonprofit that developed and manages Solna Ciente, Diallo's experience is a common one. What we're finding in the Fort Morgan area, where Solna Ciente is, is that a lot of the agriculture workers are making overly income that qualifies to live in the properties. Solna Ciente was built with federal support in 2016. It's part of the USDA's off farm labor housing program that funds affordable rentals for very low to moderate income ag workers. That means the federal government dictates who can live there. Tenants have to work in agriculture. They need documentation. And there are strict caps on household income. Alvarado says that's the problem. In practice, those restrictions disqualify most of the local ag workforce, the program is designed to help. The income restrictions are making it hard for us to fill all the units. It's also hard for local employers. The lack of workforce housing keeps open positions perpetually unfilled. Many have sweetened the deal by raising wages. Farm wages are definitely rising across the nation. Michigan State University ag economist Zach Rutledge says off farm labor housing projects like Solna Ciente are starting to have problems because federal income caps haven't kept up. All of the indications point to wages continuing to go up. I don't think that trend's gonna slow down. The USDA did not respond to our inquiries, but we found other off farm labor housing properties in Colorado and Minnesota that have the same issue. Marty Miller is executive director of the nonprofit office of rural and farm worker housing in Washington state. He says ag workers in Washington, Oregon, California and Texas are also affected. They make too much for the low income housing, but they still can't afford market rate housing. He says the federal income caps mean housing providers can't fill their empty ag worker units. When we're in the middle of a housing crisis, people can't afford places to live and there can be good quality available units, but they have a hard time finding someone eligible to live there. Miller wants to see the USDA raise income caps for farm labor housing. Instead, last fall, the ag department gave Solna Ciente a waiver to accept non farm worker tenants who do meet the income restrictions. That solved their vacancy problem, but it didn't help ag worker Abdul Diallo, who never managed to find a home in Fort Morgan. Diallo says the months of short term ad hoc housing have been stressful and he's hit a breaking point, so he's leaving Fort Morgan, quitting the agricultural workforce for a restaurant job in Denver. It won't pay as well as the meat packing gig, but at least he'll be able to find a home. For Harvest Public Media, I'm Ray Solomon. This story comes from a collaboration between Harvest Public Media and the Midwest Newsroom. Dakota Daybook is next. (birds chirping) North Dakota, Native American essential understanding, number two, is about learning and storytelling. It states, traditional teaching and the passing on of knowledge and wisdom was done through storytelling, song, ceremony, and daily way of life, often incorporating specific gender and age specific responsibilities. These continue to be some of the best modes for learning for both native and non-native learners. In this episode of Dakota Daybook, we'll be listening to Leander Russ McDonald, enrolled member of Spirit Lake Nation, in part two of storytelling and humor. So I think these are in regard to the storytelling pieces. I remember when I was young and they didn't, we used to go stay up in my grandma's house and she would tell these stories about Johnny Skunk. And Johnny Skunk was always getting into trouble, so maybe that's what I related to in life, I don't know. But Johnny Skunk was always getting into trouble and stuff, but she would tell me these stories. And there was no running water. They didn't have running water. They had kerosene lamps and they had a house and out there toilet, but they were happy. And I don't think anybody knew they were poor or anything like that, that's just the way it was. In regard to storytelling, there was always some moral to the story and what happened with this was Johnny. And how he cheated his relatives. So you hear that and that's on my head outside across. And then on my dad's, I hear about Tony and him, he's always trying to trip you into stuff. So you hear these different stories along those lines and the importance of listening to these things. And I think that it happens at all levels, because I still hear stories every once in a minute now, once again, from different ones and presentations. And they just do an excellent job of doing that and tying it in these traditional stories with what's happening in today's society. - I'm Scott Simpson. - If you'd like to learn more about the North Dakota Native American essential understandings and to listen to more indigenous elder interviews, visit www.teachingsofourelders.org. Dakota Dayed Book is produced in cooperation with the State Historical Society of North Dakota. Funding for this series is from Humanities N.D. and the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction. And that's a wrap for today's Main Street. We are deeply grateful that you have spent time with us today. Tomorrow on the show, we'll visit with Austin Heeb, the University of Jamestown Director of Athletics. UJ is making the leap to MCW-8 Division II Athletics from the NAIA. We'll learn what it means to area athlete and what it means to the school. And we'll look forward to having you join us again tomorrow right here on Main Street. (upbeat music)