"Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence," Eddie Hentges recited during our phone interview last winter. I haven't been able to get this opening line of Desiderata out of my head lately. Maybe it's because when you edit podcasts, you listen to the same audio clip many times over! But I think there's more to it than that. There's been a lot of noise and haste around, so the reminder to slow down, reflect and find peace in silence has really resonated with me.
Eddie brought up Max Ehrmann's poem as analogy for a slower, often more contemplative way of country living. He envisioned a beautiful partnership between rural and urban, in which the flurry of information and access abundant in urban spaces, could be better processed and made sense of through an intentional rural way of thinking. I invite you to consider this wisdom, and to go placidly as you listen to Episode 3: Unearthing the Indigenous Narrative in Northeast Montana!
This episode is chock full of history about the ancestral Assiniboine land on which Eddie and I were both raised. In this story, we explore what it was like to work on the Williston Oil Basin during the height of the most recent boom. We talk about Eddie's experience teaching U.S. history on the Fort Peck Reservation and how he got his students excited about history and their place in it. I'm truly honored Eddie agreed to sit down with me and have this conversation. I have learned so much recently about the area's Sioux, Assiniboine and Chippewa tribes that I grew up near, but never knew enough about. There is still so much to learn, but I'm excited for the road ahead and to have you with me on this journey.
Yours,
Megan Torgerson
Reframing Rural Founder & Producer