Today was the official publication date of “Man Overboard: A Medical Lifeline for the Aging Male.” Published by Mayo Clinic Press, it is the literary debut of my good friend, Dr. Craig Bowron, who lives around the corner from my sister, Terri, in St. Paul. I know from some experience that when you are working on a book, the “pub …
The University of North Dakota men’s hockey team surrendered a five-goal lead to fall 6-2 to Quinnipiac University on Saturday night in Ralph Engelstad Arena. The No. 3 Fighting Hawks (2-1-1) led 2-1 after one period on goals by Riese Gaber and Jackson Blake, but the Bobcats (2-0-2) scored three goals in just over four minutes in the second period …
This is the second of a two-part feature about the intersection of agriculture, business and culture at a place called the Corn Palace in the southeast corner of South Dakota. It is a long way from a roadside attraction dedicated to corn in southeast South Dakota to the mucilage of a $47 billion corn industrial complex that makes maize barely …
I like dark chocolate. I played basketball in high school. Mostly I warmed the bench. Once I “made” a basket for the opposing team, Hettinger. At the time, I wondered why lots of people were cheering. Late in his life, my father, in a conversation with me, ruefully admitted, “Yeah, my kids were never great athletes.” My mother played basketball, …
ON Wednesday night at Texas Christian University, I will be inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame. I know. Go figure. I was happy to learn that the master or ceremonies of the Hall of Fame banquet will be June Naylor Harris, a close friend since the 1980s, when we were both cubs at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. To …
Although the Corn Palace began its long run with geometric designs, it soon took a thematic approach. The most frequent themes have celebrated the frontier, the homestead period, intrepid pioneers, the American West, plains flora and fauna, the coming of the railroad, and Native Americans, but there have also been years dedicated to Egyptian (1911), Dutch (1914) and even Turkish …
The change of season from summer to fall brings about an explosion of colors in the Northland as these Russ Hons images from Itasca State Park in northern Minnesota bear out. (Check out more photos from Russ Hons here.)
This is the first part of a two-part feature about the intersection of agriculture, business and culture at a place called the Corn Palace in the southeast corner of South Dakota. Plenty of people happen upon the World’s Only Corn Palace while traveling through South Dakota, perhaps on their way to Badlands National Park or Mount Rushmore. Or the annual Sturgis megamotorcycle rally. Not so many …
Gavin Hain has been a roll for the University of North Dakota men’s hockey team. The fifth-year senior scored twice and Ethan Frisch and Carson Albrecht each scored once as the Fighting Hawks defeated the College of the Holy Cross 4-1 to complete a weekend sweep of the Crusaders on Saturday night in Ralph Engelstad Arena. Hain has scored six …
“Fall Colors on the Red River” Sheila and I went out one evening this weekend and went along the Red River for a walk and to photograph the fall colors. It was a perfectly calm evening so the reflections were nice in the water, and with an interesting sky near sunset. We also had time to shoot this portrait along …
The University of North Dakota football team capped Homecoming Week with an impressive 48-31 win over Missouri State University in a Missouri Valley Conference matchup Saturday afternoon in the Alerus Center. The Fighting Hawks (3-2 overall, 2-1 MVFC) trailed 21-20 after the first half but outscored the No. 7-ranked Bears (2-3 overall, 0-2 MVFC) 38-10 in the second half to …
An evening stroll along the Red River provided Grand Forks photographer Michael Bogert an opportunity to capture the beauty of the night sky recently.
This article is reprinted from the October 2022 issue of Dakota Country magazine.) OK, I know, I know, I’m not supposed to speak ill of the dead. But I’m going to a little, this month, and then I’m going to offer some praise for the living. And no, it’s not dead critters or fish like you’ll read about elsewhere in …
President and first lady Biden attended the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II on Monday, Sept. 19, 2022. More than 500 heads of state and foreign dignitaries from all over the planet made their way to London to attend the funeral. Representatives from 167 countries of the 193 United Nations member states, including 18 monarchs, 55 presidents and 25 prime ministers were in …
Friends have been notified that Hal Simons, 73, died at his home this past week, after a long battle with cancer. A memorial service is being planned for late October. Hal was a longtime friend, dating back to our newspaper days in the 1970s. He was a member of a loose-knit group of friends who occasionally sat around a table …
A pilgrimage to Nashville, an intersection of culture, education, and craziness, such as it ever has been and ever shall be, where Jim and I attended Americanafest 2022 and reacquainted ourselves with A Big City. https:/Nashville Skyline was one of our many earworms We left City Winery to walk the neighborhood now called The Gulch (the railroad area of town) …
Stuffed cabbage rolls are likely a favorite of many who are fans of the cruciferous vegetable of the family Brassicaceae, which also includes cauliflower, kale, garden cress, bok choy, broccoli and Brussels sprouts. (The veggies get their name because their four-petaled flowers look like a crucifer, or cross.) The importance of the Brassica family of foods to our diet cannot be …
A few days ago, I was reading Alexander Keyssar’s outstanding “The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States.” In his introduction, Keyssar writes, “Americans do place a high value on democratic institutions, and white Americans, at least, have long thought of themselves as citizens of a democratic nation — indeed, not just any democratic nation, …
Queen Elizabeth’s death Sept. 8 hit me harder than I expected. As an American small “r” republican, I usually find America’s obsession with the British royals perplexing. But Elizabeth was much more than a monarch. She was the embodiment of Britain’s unique place in the world through a tumultuous century. The queen’s death after the longest reign in British history, …
There will be some chit-chat about Roger Maris this month at North Dakota coffee shops and saloons because Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees is chasing the slugger’s single-season home run record. North Dakotans still claim that Maris’ 61 homers in 1961 remain the legitimate, nonsteroid record. North Dakotans still claim Roger Maris as their own, even though he …
The last half century has been a period of great disillusionment. In the 1950s, the American people overwhelmingly trusted their government, their president, news sources, educational systems and basic American institutions from the Justice Department to the Department of Defense. Today, the American people are largely disaffected and cynical about those same institutions. A recent NBC News poll indicated that 74 percent of the American people believe …
Tommy Schuster completed 20 of 23 passes for 275 yards and two touchdowns to lead the University of North Dakota to a 29-27 Potato Bowl win over the No.-24 ranked University of Northern Iowa in Missouri Valley Conference football Saturday in the Alerus Center. The Fighting Hawks (1-1 overall, 1-0 MVC) clinched the seesaw game on Schuster’s 6-yard touchdown run …
There’s something almost magical about stepping onto the prairie and knowing that it’s possible — even likely — that you’re the first person who has ever put their foot down on that spot. Ever. One of the places you can do that is on the Long X Divide, near the extreme north end of the North Dakota Badlands. Long X …
On a warm summer evening in late August 1947, young Phyllis Maxine Boehmer Fuglie stood on the platform of a Chicago train station and kissed her husband, Whitey Fuglie, goodbye. Just 22 years old and heavy with child, she boarded a train for North Dakota, where her mother and his mother waited to help her with the birth of her …
Photographer Russ Hons traveled to Lincoln, Neb., this past weekend for the University of North Dakota football team’s season opener against the University of Nebraska. The Fighting Hawks gave the Cornhuskers a scare before falling 38-17 in a nonconference game. UND quarterback Tommy Schuster was 24-37 for 137 yards and one touchdown, a 1-yard strike to Adam Zavalney. Isaiah Smith …
“The earth belongs … to the living,” Thomas Jefferson famously wrote to James Madison in 1787, and “the dead have neither power nor rights over it.” Jefferson offered these words in support of his belief that succeeding generations of Americans had the right to develop their own constitutions. But Madison shot down Jefferson’s idea, arguing that “improvement made by the dead … form a debt …
On Wednesday, I wrote an article about Gary Berube, the fella who writes the right-wing stink letters to the editor to all our state’s papers pretty frequently. I wrote about the hypocrisy of him criticizing the proposal to forgive college loans in a recent letter to The Forum when he had taken a free $20,000 PPP loan forgiveness from the …
I’ll make this short and sweet. There’s a fellow over in Mandan, N.D., named Gary Berube who’s a stockbroker and a slumlord and a frequent right-wing contributor to the state’s newspaper editorial pages. If you read North Dakota’s newspapers, you’ve seen his rants. His most frequent one appeared in Tuesday’s online edition of The Forum. It read: Democrats Are Trying …
The memoir of my friendship with Fred Rogers, “I’m Proud of You,” was first published in 2006, followed by a second edition paperback in 2012. It recently dawned on me that was a full decade ago. Yet I continue to hear regularly from people who have found the book and found deep meaning in it. That is because Fred Rogers …
Sunsets over a lake often present some of the nicest outdoor viewing of the day, as these images from photographer Michael Bogert’s bear out.
Dave and his wife, Sheila, went out a few nights this past week to this sunflower field to capture some sunset images as the flowers were in full bloom. “I was lucky to have some nice cloud formations in the sky the times we were out there. Always enjoy shooting the sunflowers of North Dakota.
“The flame of the Enlightenment is waning,” a journalist said to Günter Gass. “But,” he replied, “there is no other source of light.” When I heard the news, my first reaction was, “Well, they finally got him.” Salman Rushdie has been a wanted man since Valentine’s Day 1989, when Iran’s dying supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini (1902-1989), issued a fatwa …
I arrived early to my 50th high school class reunion after hitting a bucket of golf balls with Dad’s clubs, the same clubs we used when I last hit a bucket of balls in 1989. It seems that range balls are no longer purchased after a stroll to the pro shop. A machine near the tees plops them into your …
Drew Wrigley: Case Closed As I write this Friday, it has been exactly 10 years and 27 days since four western North Dakota counties — Billings, Slope, McKenzie and Golden Valley — filed a lawsuit to try to get access to section line roads inside four parcels of land being protected by the U.S. Forest Service, the federal agency that …
Gingras Trading Post SHS Oak Lawn Church SHS Home to the garden and rain in the gauge.
The great American novelist John Steinbeck liked North Dakota well enough when he passed through with his poodle, Charley, in October 1960, but then he crossed the border at Beach, N.D., and Wibaux, Mont. At that juncture, he wrote, “I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love, …
A hint of autumn in the air, with the crickets singing, some cool evenings again, windows open, vegetables ripening, peak summer perennials waning, notices of hunting season openers, end-of-summer-chores and — again, again, again— a need for rain.
Good grief, it’s no wonder the world is in such a state! When I started out as a cub reporter at The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead in the early 1960s, I recall The Associated Press Stylebook was little more than a pamphlet of a few pages, 30 at most. I recently had cause to buy the latest copy, a 612-page tome, …
This all comes together, I promise. Something I heard my father say countless times: “Two heads are better than one even, when one is a goat head.” For a time in our Army life, we lived in El Paso, Texas, and when I heard this phrase, I thought my parents were talking about the thorny weed that was called “goathead” …
You are darned tootin’ I visited the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace when in Savannah, Ga., about 10 years ago. And the Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home nearby. The Pathe video of O’Connors’s chickens she trained to walk backward is a classic and you can watch it here. I also spotted some headstones in the Savannah cemeteries of my paternal ancestors. (Yup my paternal ancestors arrived from …
Saturday will mark the three-week anniversary of the day my friend, Darrell, fell through a hole in his deck. You’ll recall that I wrote about it a couple of days later. And in that story, I asked you to speculate on what Darrell’s last words were as he headed for the deck below. I had already asked Darrell if he …
There was a spot between the bullpen and the concession stand at the 17th Annual Ashley PRCA Rodeo last weekend where the wafting odors of manure and seared burgers competed, and somehow, strangely, to the olfactory of this child of the prairie, it was heaven. We pause, here in Ashley, N.D., the first weekend in August to just be, unabashedly, …
Vin Scully and I had a nice conversation one morning in the spring of 2019. “I’m carrying a little cup of coffee and walking down to my office and we’ll be able to chat for a little while,” he said. That voice. It was a little surreal to hear it coming through my cell phone. Growing up in Minnesota, I …
I’m home from the Badlands of North Dakota. Rain makes all the difference. In my lifetime, I’ve seen it this green, but not for a good long while. After these years of drought, the wildflowers are exploding. I don’t remember seeing so many scoria lilies (10-petal blazing star, aka Mentzelia Decapetala in the southern Badlands before). Oh and Lazuli Buntings everywhere.