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Wednesday, November 26, 2008

 

RP: Lecture 12

This was the second straight lecture where more media was used to explain the ideas behind the lecture. We watched some slide shows and even a video of a barn dance to see some examples of a community gathering together in some form or another. The main topics of this lecture were pointed out in three questions of "how did the settlers organize?", "what happened to those communities?" and "how are they organized today?". He also pointed out the idea of "Micropoli" on the Plains, a smaller town performing metropolis functions. This idea is based on Carl Kraenzel's vison through his book "Great Plains in Transition".

One of the things that I thought was very interesting was the "Goat Game", the basketball game between the Enderlin Eagles and the Lisbon Broncos. It includes the transfer of the trophy of a goat called "red knob", because he has a red reflective knob on his forehead. It didn't dawn on me until later on but I actually know someone from Enderlin. I had to fill her in on the fact that her home town is a topic in my history class and she loved it.

We spent a solid 30 minutes with her recapping the traditions and the relation between the two towns. She pointed out that although it is a trophy game, the towns are so close together in distance that most of them are friends and it isn't a big rivalry where the two towns hate each other. She also said that the sheet that the goat wears over its back is an important part of the tradition. She said that whichever team wins gets the goat, then the losing team's school name and colors are displayed on the sheet as a way of saying that the goat was taken by the winning team from the losing team.

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