Today I am 69. It is a meaningless birthday, in a world and time when numbers that don’t end in zero or five are of little consequence. But it is significant in that I am still here. Males in my family don’t generally live this long. I kind of wish I had planned a little better. But I am grateful to still …
Note: This story has been updated since it was originally posted Friday evening. Late Friday, North Dakota’s governor, Jack Dalrymple, declared that a state of emergency existed in south-central North Dakota, due to a large gathering, in temporary campgrounds, of opponents of the placement of the Dakota Access Pipeline under the Missouri River on the edge of the Standing Rock …
Here’s how Darrell Dorgan described the events on North Dakota Highway 1806 south of Mandan this afternoon: “One hundred and forty years ago, the Sioux took down Custer and the 7th Cavalry. Today, the Sioux took down the North Dakota Highway Patrol. But this time, the Highway Patrol was smart enough to get the hell out of there before anybody got killed. …
(NOTE: I started writing this story back in March, when I learned about former U.S. Senate candidate Duane Sand’s lawsuit against Job Service North Dakota. I finished writing about that lawsuit then — and posted the story — but never finished the financial end of the story of Duane’s campaign. Well, here it is. It’s pretty long, and I was going …
It’s not important whether you see a refinery stack from the highest point in Theodore Roosevelt National Park’s South Unit. What’s important is what comes out of that stack. Meridian Energy’s publicity stunt the other night, hoisting a weather balloon from the site of its proposed refinery just three miles from the park and proving that it couldn’t be seen from …
Dear Readers: I first wrote of James Henrikson in January 2014, not long after the murder for hire of Doug Carlile, a crime for which he was recently sentenced to life in prison. I summarized the entire 2½ years in an article for Dakota Country magazine, which should be in the mail and in stores today. For those of you …
By most measures, Dick Dobson should be about 150 years old. He’s got some hard miles on him, but at 81, he’s still got his memory and his health, and at that age, you can’t ask for much more. For those of you who don’t remember him, Dobson is the former editor and publisher of the Minot Daily News, and …
WTF? Nobody — not me, not you, not Doug Burgum — could have predicted that outcome. Some predicted a Burgum win. Not me, although I had this nagging feeling every time I saw Ed Schafer on TV that maybe, just maybe, it could happen. But too many times I have predicted an election outcome because I wanted that outcome, not because I …
Well, high praise from Pat Finken on Monday, in the form of an email from the Brighter Future Fund. Finken’s superpac, Brighter Future Fund (yeah, right) is a big supporter of Wayne Stenehjem. Finked created his superpac in 2012 with money from the North Dakota Republican Party and a bunch of big GOP donors like Jim Roers, Steve Scheel and Jim Arthaud …
It was late afternoon on an dreary late October day in 1990. I was stopped at the Fifth Street railroad crossing in downtown Bismarck, waiting for a train to go by on the tracks in front of me. I looked to my left and there, in the car beside me, was Ed Schafer. He spotted me about the same time. He …
This will be the shortest blog post I’ve ever written. (Cheering, clapping of hands!) So short you can probably read it at a stoplight on your way to work (but don’t comment — that would be illegal). Today is Tuesday, June 7, 2016, the day North Dakota Democrats will hold their presidential preference caucuses. I’ve already written about that here, back …
June, for me, marks the beginning of the end of “spring fishing season.” I’m mostly a Missouri River fisherman. My fishing buddy, Jeff, lives on the river just south of Bismarck and keeps his boat tied to the bank behind his house. It’s pretty easy to just jump in the boat and go, and we do — a lot. We’re going …
“Well, we have to go to Mass SOMEWHERE,” I replied when Lillian suggested we drive 50 miles to participate in the annual Feast of Corpus Christi Mass at St. Clement’s Church in the rural community of Haymarsh, N.D. And so yesterday, we stepped back in time, to 1937, or maybe 1887, and drove west on Interstate 94, then north on …
Two things about the article I wrote about campaign signs the other day: I’m going to make a half-assed apology to John Warford for saying he had an illegal campaign sign in his yard because, It turns out the Wayne Stenehjem campaign sign I wrote about wasn’t illegal. Warford in a minute. First the sign. Bismarck did indeed pass a city ordinance …
One of Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem’s favorite things is to challenge laws passed by other governmental bodies, especially the federal government (and now, it seems, local governments, too). One of Kathleen Wrigley’s favorite things is to see her picture in the paper. One of Odney Advertising’s favorite things is to collect nice commissions on ads placed on behalf of political …
Well, my wife was right. When I wrote a blog last week about this billionaire drug and sex king from California, Henry Nicholas, who’s financing the initiated measure called Marsy’s Law for North Dakota, spearheaded by Kathleen Wrigley, wife of North Dakota Lieutenant Gov. Drew Wrigley, my wife said, “You’re stirring up a hornet’s nest.” Boy, was she ever right. …
wow what a great birthday I am blessed to make it to ninety this morning a serenade by the musical cast cards flowers a dinner a hug from my two of my favorite young men I am so blessed Sheila That was the Facebook post from my friend — our friend — Sheila Schafer a year ago today. As many of …
If you came here looking for my blog post about billionaire sex and drug king Henry Nicholas and his unwitting (I think) North Dakota foil Kathleen Wrigley, wife of Lieutenant Gov. Drew Wrigley, who, together, are bringing you a North Dakota ballot measure called Marsy’s Law, well, you won’t find it here today. I wrote about the two of them last …
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know I get all agitated whenever somebody from somewhere else dumps a whole lot of money into a North Dakota political campaign. I just can’t stand not knowing who those people are and why they want to spend a bunch of money in North Dakota. So I got curious Wednesday …
I intended to start this story with the words “This is a story about some Really Stupid People.” I thought that was a bit harsh, so I changed it to “This is a story about People who did some Really Stupid Things.” I decided that was pretty lame. So I’ve come up with a new start. “This is a Really …
A couple of weeks ago, I posted an article here about the Little Missouri State Scenic River Commission and how important it had been to protecting the integrity of North Dakota’s only “State Scenic River” during our first oil boom in the 1970s and ’80s. If you missed it, you can go here to catch up. Well, we’ve had another boom …
They’re going to bury Jim Pomeroy today. Former State Sen. Jim Pomeroy. Jim was a lot of things in his life. A minister. A carpenter. A musician. A counselor to the aged, sick and infirm. A husband. A father. A grandfather. A volunteer. A loyal Democrat. A cousin to a U.S. congressman. He was those things on purpose. He was a …
Political parties exist for one primary purpose: to nominate candidates, generally of a like mind, for political office. Everything else political parties do is secondary to that. To be sure, there are other important secondary functions: to provide a platform on which those candidates base their campaigns, to provide a supporting organization and to provide money, or a means to …
I love the Little Missouri River. It is one of the longest, free-flowing rivers in America. In reality, I believe it IS the longest because the Yellowstone, which claims the honor, is full of low-head dams that create little pools and eddies all along its length, even though they don’t create giant reservoirs like the Big Missouri’s dams do. The …
SPEAKING OF NEW DRESSES Wednesday, I wrote a long story about lieutenant governors, mostly, and in it, I poked some fun at my friend, Jim Poolman. If you missed it, click here. But here’s another addition to the story, and it demonstrates why I like Jim Poolman. He has a sense of humor and a thick skin. Last night, I was sitting in …
WAIT A MINUTE OK, the story below about state Sen. Nicole Poolman is funny, but according to her husband, it is not quite true. Almost, but not quite. The real story is even funnier. Way at the very end of this blog, I repeated a story that’s been making the rounds in political circles these days. A story about state …
Every time I hear the phrase “return to the scene of the crime” I smile and chuckle a little inside. It goes back to an evening about 10 years ago when Lillian and I and her two teenage daughters were living on a small farmstead north of Dickinson, N.D. One early spring evening, just after dark, I was driving Chelsea to …
Super Tuesday. Republicans and Democrats all over America will line up tomorrow to cast their votes for their favorite presidential candidates. By the end of the night, we might have a pretty clear picture of who the two national party candidates will be, although 34 states and a handful of territories won’t have completed their processes yet. Including North Dakota. …
Most of you didn’t know Burt Calkins. Too bad. He was one of the most interesting men I ever knew. Not that I knew him well. Nobody did. He was one of those characters who just drifted in and out of your life, and each time it was an enjoyable experience. I guess I came to Burt about halfway through …
When a friend of mine asked me yesterday how fishing was going this winter, I replied with a smile, “I have enough perch in the freezer to get me through Lent.” Today is the first Sunday of Lent, Father reminded us at Mass. Time for a little Lenten primer, for you non-Catholics (and some of us Catholics, too — I …
Note: In Monday’s article, I discussed the North Dakota governor’s race, in light of the economic downturn the state is suffering. Today, one of the candidates for governor, Doug Burgum, discusses the state’s economic plight in an op-ed he e-mailed to the North Dakota media late Monday. — Jim Fuglie By Doug Burgum The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia for …
What’s a Democrat to do? Just when the North Dakota Republican Party appears more vulnerable than it has been in almost 25 years, the North Dakota Democratic-NPL Party has retrenched into a hole so deep that it’s unlikely Democrats here will be able to climb out of it in time to compete in an election about 280 days hence. The …
U.S. Highway 85 is North Dakota’s deadliest highway. If you’re not familiar with it, it is the road that runs north and south along the western edge of the state, from our border with Canada to our border with South Dakota, through the North Dakota Bad Lands, some of the state’s most scenic and fragile landscapes. Even though it passes …
The strange saga of Roger Lothspeich and the Elkhorn Ranch gravel pit has taken a bizarre turn. Lothspeich, you will recall, is the fellow who bought the “surface minerals” (gravel, scoria, coal and uranium) on a piece of land owned by the U.S. Forest Service directly across the Little Missouri River from Theodore Roosevelt’s ranch home, which is now part …
Sunday, Jan. 10 update: As I predicted, look for much about Kevin Cramer in Rob Port’s Sunday columns in the Forum Communications’ newspapers. As I point out below, Rob owes much to Cramer’s communications director Jason Stverak. So it’s no surprise that Cramer is the hero of Rob’s first Forum column today. Expect a regular diet. And while I have resisted …
Here’s a question for some of you who spend a lot of time in the outdoors in the fall: How was your pheasant season? “Good enough, I guess,” would be my response. All of us who hunt pheasants in North Dakota are loathe to say anything gloomier than that, because saying “It wasn’t all that great” might mean admitting: We …
Call it our own private little Christmas miracle, if you will. It happened. After weeks and weeks of what I call a “white sky” over Bismarck every night — a function of city lights bouncing off a completely overcast sky — we had given up hope of seeing the expected nearly full moon on Christmas Eve. They say the real …
Well, every year about this time, in past years, Lillian and I would get together and draft a “Christmas Letter,” which we would then take to the print shop, have it printed on fancy paper, buy a bunch of colored envelopes and a whole lot of stamps, spend hours addressing each envelope by hand and writing personal notes on the …
Sebastian Fabian Hoffner, 91, Bismarck, died Thursday, Dec. 17, 2015, at St. Vincent’s Care Center in Bismarck. Mass of Christian burial will be said for him at 11 a.m. Tuesday (Dec. 22) in St. Boniface Church, Esmond, N.D. The praying of a rosary will begin at 10:30 a.m. Burial will follow in the church cemetery. Nicknamed “Buckshot” from a young age, he was born …
And so the North Dakota Veterans Cemetery will remain dark at night. North Dakota’s adjutant general, David Sprynczynatyk, whose command includes the cemetery, made his decision at the end of a week of input from the public on the efficacy of a well-intentioned but poorly thought-out proposal to light the cemetery at night. Thank you to those who called the …
Lillian had set the newspaper beside my coffee cup on the dining room table while I was at the Y the other morning. A big headline reading “Cemetery lighting project may seek $400,000” was circled, and she had written across it in big black letters: “This is a bad idea.” She was right. The story said local boosters were requesting …
OK, here’s a true story about the beauty of living long enough to be a part of the technological revolution of the 21st century. Read: Facebook. Last week, Lillian became Facebook Friends with a mutual friend of ours from our separate earlier lives, Rick Watson. In a note to her, he mentioned an old story I had recounted to him …
Note: I posted this on my blog more than five years ago, in August 2010, when immigration was in the news every day. It seems appropriate to repeat it now. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who, from all I can tell, is generally not a wacko, has joined forces, or actually taken leadership of, a group of wackos who …
You might remember that memorable line, uttered by Dick the butcher, from perhaps the least memorable of Shakespeare’s plays, “Henry VI.” I thought of it today because I was thinking about lawyers. And governors. It’s been 30 years since North Dakota had a lawyer in the governor’s chair. That’s about to end. Because it looks like the race for governor …