Tracy Briggs

Fargo

Community Culture Journalist at Forum Communications

Digital Content and Multimedia News Journalist at The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead

Articles

She created Mother’s Day - then got arrested trying to abolish it

1 week ago | inforum.com | Tracy Briggs

As the holiday nears, you can almost hear children (and maybe some panicked husbands) asking, “What do you want for Mother’s Day?” The typical reply from modest moms? “Don’t get me anything. I don't need anything."That answer would’ve made Anna Jarvis positively gleeful. Why? Because the woman who created Mother’s Day ended up despising it. She spent years trying to destroy it, got arrested protesting it and died regretting her role in bringing it to life.
The mystery of Bishop Shanley

1 week ago | grandforksherald.com | Tracy Briggs

FARGO — In the wake of Pope Francis’s recent passing, Catholics worldwide have turned their thoughts to the enduring legacies of the clergy, from the grandeur of the Vatican to the quiet corners of local parishes.
The mystery of Bishop Shanley

1 week ago | inforum.com | Tracy Briggs

FARGO — In the wake of Pope Francis’s recent passing, Catholics worldwide have turned their thoughts to the enduring legacies of the clergy, from the grandeur of the Vatican to the quiet corners of local parishes.
Former nonprofit housing head charged with embezzling over $200,000

1 week ago | inforum.com | Tracy Briggs

FARGO– A former executive director of a Fargo-based nonprofit is facing felony theft charges, accused of embezzling more than $200,000 over nearly five years. According to court documents, Cheri Gerken of Moorhead is charged in Cass County District Court with felony theft over $50,000, a crime punishable by a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $20,000 fine if convicted.
From Fargo to the big screen

1 week ago | inforum.com | Tracy Briggs

FARGO —The sun was shining brightly Tuesday morning as yellow school buses pulled up to West Acres Cinema. Fargo Shanley High School students in khaki shorts, plaid skirts and red sweaters filed off one by one. But this wasn’t a typical field trip. They weren’t there to catch the latest superhero flick or even the new Minecraft movie. They came to see themselves on the big screen — along with a teenage boy in sneakers soon to be a saint.
Pigs. Blankets. Let the debate begin

2 weeks ago | inforum.com | Tracy Briggs

Every year for the last several years, I’ve had a weird calendar hanging on my office wall. And by weird, I mean weird-holiday weird — the kind that tells you April 20 is National Cheddar Fries Day, Aug. 27 is Rock, Paper, Scissors Day, and Nov. 10 is National Accounting Day. I know National Accounting Day is hard to top, but you’ll have to wait until November for that level of celebration. More recently, I noticed that April 24 was National Pigs in a Blanket Day. Apologies for the late notice.
Turning old school supplies into small acts of joy

2 weeks ago | inforum.com | Tracy Briggs

FARGO — In the cozy community room of a south Fargo condominium, six women sit quietly at two round tables, busy with scissors, glue sticks and stacks of colorful paper. Just outside the windows, a construction crew clatters and clanks away on the patio, power tools humming and boots stomping. No matter. Inside, it’s all calm concentration and easy conversation — the kind that only decades of friendship can bring.
Beware the 'blue-eyed menace'! (Or so they said in 1921)

3 weeks ago | inforum.com | Tracy Briggs

North Dakota and Minnesota, we need to talk. Especially you blue-eyed folks. According to an alarming article from 1921, you might be a public menace. Buried in the pages of a San Francisco newspaper more than a century ago was a dire warning: blue-eyed people are dangerous. They desert their families, wreak emotional havoc and, if you're not careful, drag you into a cabaret and steal your wallet.
Magnifico! How downtown Fargo turned Italian for two weeks in 1971

3 weeks ago | wetheitalians.com | Tracy Briggs

BY: Tracy BriggsThe September 1971 local news in Fargo, North Dakota, had turned its attention to an Italian invasion downtown. A good one, of course (like the British one seven years earlier which brought the Beatles to our shores). This was a renaissance of art, music and food as members of an Italian trade delegation immersed themselves in Fargo to teach American Midwesterners what it meant to be Italian. From Sept. 17 to Oct.
Fargo mom stars in emotionally intense Netflix show

3 weeks ago | inforum.com | Tracy Briggs

FARGO — When a casting agent reached out to Lauren Trefethren about being on a Netflix reality show, she figured it was either a mistake or a scam. “It's such a North Dakota response,” the 35-year-old Fargo mom of three laughed. “I thought it was fake. I thought it was catfishing or something. Am I about to get kidnapped if I go to this location?” But the show was very real.