Recently I sifted through some memorabilia and found the above picture taken in 1965, when I was a senior at the University of North Dakota. With me in the photo that appeared in the Dacotah Annual were classmates Mike Schlax, sports editor of the Dakota Student newspaper, and Harriet Thorpe, who wrote editorials. My title was “news editor.” I had …
If you’re a gardener who grows a variety of vegetables, the classic Nicoise dish, ratatouille, should be right up your alley. The stewed vegetable entree consisting of eggplant, tomato, pepper, zucchini, onion and herbs has been has been a favorite in France for many, many years, but it wasn’t until about 10 years ago that ratatouille rose to the prominence it …
Here is the first chicken-of-the woods mushroom (above) that I have found all year. Big thrill. Once sauteed, or grilled, chickens are meaty and delicious. I am hoping those little ones off to the side grow into big ones. Chickens need to be harvested while still damp and cool to the touch. Once they dry out, they are past their …
Home now — to return to garden harvest — after a week in which we neglected it for some folks festival fun. I noticed that this is my first of garden notes for August, a sign that my flowers peaked earlier this season. There are just a few daylily blossoms here and there, and I await the emergence of the chrysanthemums. Meanwhile, …
I had such a riveting dream last night. I was at the Theodore Roosevelt Symposium, with Jim. A baby bison wandered into the crowd, and I picked it up in my arms, trying to figure out how to rescue it. Knowing that it would not survive without a mother on which to nurse, I was perplexed. I tried to find …
My sister, Susan Vorland Hanson, has returned from a two-week trip to Norway and after spending the night with us departed this morning to her home near Turtle Lake, N.D. Also in Bloomington were Sue’s daughter, Ondrea Miller, and granddaughter, Allison, who moved in to an apartment near the University of Minnesota campus where she will begin her sophomore year. …
Gentle reader, you might recall that we just attended the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival in Lyons, Colo., with some of our best chums. It was a fabulous sojourn, filled with the anticipation of the total solar eclipse. By and large, these festivals, particularly the ones hosted by Planet Bluegrass, are filled with blissful vibes and fascinating diversity — oh, and …
Alexandria, Va., photographer Jeff Olson was one of those fortunate souls who was able to view Monday’s total solar eclipse. Jeff, who works for the National Park Service and has been stationed this summer in Grand Canyon National Park, traveled to Homestead National Monument of America near Beatrice, Neb., to view the once-in-a-lifetime event. The national monument commemorates passage of the Homestead …
“It got to be pitch dark, at last, and the multitude groaned with horror to feel the cold uncanny night breezes through the place and see the stars come out and twinkle in the sky. At last the eclipse was total, and I was very glad of it, but everybody else was in misery. … Then I lifted up my …
With all of the violence occurring in this country, one has to ask: What can be done to address it? Too often, people are prosecuted after a crime has been committed. What is missing is the deterrent effect of a law that would prohibit or reduce the number of folks who create the problem. I’m not going to refer to …
These old eyes — they’ve seen a lot. Back in my younger days — let’s call them my 20-20s — they took in more than enough, both good and bad, to make me the wise old woman I am today. Make that the wise old “squinty” woman. While I can still claim to have some insight, I can’t seem to …
If you didn’t like Billy Kretschmar, the fault was not his. Billy was a fixture in the North Dakota House of Representatives from 1974 to 2016, with one lost election in between, and during that time, most politicians would have developed fierce enemies. If Billy had them, I don’t know who they are. When I deconstructed his career in a …
I love Tina Fey, and I laughed out loud when she poured her sorrows over the events at the alma mater, the University of Virginia, into stress eating a sheet cake on “Weekend Update” this past week. It was a brilliant segment. However, my fear is that her satire of feigned helpless is all too easily embraced. We laugh with …
One day recently, it occurred to me that I had not seen or spoken with my friend, Dick Lord, in more than a year. I found his number and planned to ring him up for a game of golf or another of our long breakfasts at Denny’s, but I heard the news before I could call. Dick had contracted the West …
I recently read that the National Retail Federation projects parents will pay on average $970 for back-to-school expenses. “Back to School” shopping is the second-largest retail shopping season next to Christmas. So if each family spends roughly $1,000 annually, we are up to $13,000 on average from kindergarten to 12th grade! Ouch! Want to save thousands of dollars in back-to-school …
It’s been said that variety is the spice of life. Follow Grand Forks photographer Russ Hons around for a couple of days, and you will understand the meaning of that old adage. The past few days, Russ captured these images of senior pictures by the lake; a rodeo in Detroit Lakes, Minn.; some star, northern lights and sunset shots at the lake; …
As a 72-year-old, I sure didn’t want to miss the once-in-a-lifetime Great American Solar Eclipse. So I went to our local library around the corner — Hennepin County Public Library on York in Edina — along with nearly 1,000 other like-minded Metro area people from infants in push chairs to seniors in wheelchairs. It was totally fun. Even the long …
While browsing through pictures of the racists who $#!* on Charlottesville, Va., and who misappropriated a perfectly innocent backyard implement for lighting ambiance and the repellent of some insects (for evil and poorly choreographed parading, which probably voided the damn warranty), I noticed a few things. This was the least superior gaggle of goose steppers that could have been scrounged up. …
Scott Pruitt, newly appointed EPA administrator, comes to North Dakota for the first time. He is accompanied by Sen. John Hoeven, Rep. Kevin Cramer and Gov. Doug Burgum. Meetings are held on the publicly owned campuses of North Dakota State University and the University of North Dakota, and the presidents of each institution are in attendance. In Fargo, the media …
So it begins. North Dakota has its first official candidate in the 2018 election. Given all the weird shit (read: Trump) that’s been going on over the past eight months or so, I’m eager for a fresh start, and my young friend, Ben Hanson, has provided that. Thank you, Ben. Ben sent me an e-mail shortly after midnight last night …
This is my father (right), who was in the U.S. Army during World War II, the Korean Conflict and the Vietnam War. As an 18-year-old, he got on the ship, the Queen Elizabeth, and shipped to England, where he fought against the Nazis and was on the beaches of Normandy. When I wonder if I have the courage to speak …
A few years ago, before the Fargo Forum’s Rob Port banned me from his brain cell-resistant Sayanything blog Facebook page, I found myself politely conversing, for my part, with a Grand Forks member of the III percent right-wing militia group. He cursed like a wet pirate with R-rated dagger wounds. I was soooo frightened, but I pulled myself together with …
Last week, in Virginia, the birthplace of more presidents than any other, a woman died protesting Nazis, mowed down by a white supremacist in a Dodge Charger. This new president’s reaction was to blame “many sides.” I blame Obama. And Chrysler Motors. Seven months into this sideshow (not exactly the phrase I would like to use), when will diehard Trump …
I said I wasn’t going to do it again. But once again, I purchased another stash of used books, this time at an estate sale in our neighborhood in Bloomington, Minn. I wish I had known the folks who owned this house. It was full of books on every conceivable subject, from great works of literature to volumes about home …
Here at Red Oak House, we’ve established a tradition, an annual mid-August BLT party with our good friends Bob and Jodi and Larry and Charlotte. Some years Clay attends if he is in town. We cook up the bacon from Crow Butte Mercantile and slice up a bunch of our home-grown tomatoes. We were pleased today because, usually, our garden …
The University of North Dakota women’s soccer team kicked off its 2017 season with a 1-0 exhibition win over Jamestown College on Saturday in Grand Forks. The two teams played three 30-minute periods. Freshman Mimi Eiden scored the game’s lone goal, assisted by Katie Moller. UND junior goalkeeper Olivia Swenson stopped only one shot, and backup goalie, sophomore Jacqueline Wells, did not …
In January, I spent two weeks in Uganda, working in refugee camps, doing trauma healing. There I came face to face with the victims of a brutal civil war in South Sudan. I heard stories of rape, murder and torture committed in the name of genocidal, tribal hatred. In April, I visited the Killing Fields of Cambodia. I saw the …
Today is my Daddy’s birthday. My job was to make his favorite German Chocolate Cake, from scratch. It is a nice continuation of the theme of “chocolate” from my last blog post. I made a run to the store the other day for ingredients. My husband gets pretty nostalgic when he sees the box of Pillsbury Softasilk cake flour, remembering …
Grand Forks photographer Michael Bogert gets around. Enjoy these shots from the latest Blues on the Red and North Dakota Museum of Arts concerts and bird antics in Minnesota lake country, among others.
“Only when we know little things do we know anything; doubt grows with knowledge.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe With the exception of my home, my favorite human-made place in the state is the North Dakota Heritage Center. I live a short distance from there and go very frequently, to view the exhibits, to eat lunch, to do research at the State …
Salads are for summertime — especially if you have a garden. There’s nothing like a bunch of fresh veggies from the garden — all tossed together in a bowl and seasoned with a homemade vinaigrette — to start off a meal. With a nice crop of lettuce and kale in our garden, we’ve been enjoying fresh salads for going on three months now. …
I met many bright students during my long career at the University of North Dakota. One of them was a kid named Chuck Klosterman, who had grown up near Wyndmere, N.D., and showed up as a freshman in 1990. I recall him as a slightly outrageous and very humorous writer for the Dakota Student newspaper. Klosterman’s first book was “Fargo …
When I was a little girl, Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman” was a big hit on AM radio. Somehow, because my father had been a lineman in Mississippi in the time period after World War II I got confused and for a little while and was pretty sure he and Glen Campbell were one and the same person. I eventually got …
The Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks rode the pitching of Tyler Alexander to a 5-0 win over the Kansas City T-Bones on Tuesday night at Newman Field in Fargo, and photographer Russ Hons was there. Alexander allowed just three baserunners (one hit and two walks) while striking out 13 batters in the American Association game. Third-baseman Josh Mazzola drove in three runs with a …
Every presidency ought to have a theme song. For POTUS 45 and his cohorts, it should be “I Beg Your Pardon.” There’s a lot of loose talk about what a president can and cannot do in the area of pardons, so I did a little research on the subject. My results are drawn from multiple sources, all qualified. If I …
If you’ve been following the saga of Jason Halek on my blog for the last four years, you know that on July 31 he was supposed to be sent off to jail for dumping 800,000 gallons of poisonous oilfield brine down an abandoned well south of Dickinson. I last wrote about him on April 13, the day he pleaded guilty …
“… all that we behold Is full of blessings” — William Wordsworth I spent some of the morning with my nonagenarian father, who teaches me each day about dignity and stoicism. When out in public, he almost always wears a hat, and these hats tell about his life. I think the fact that he was in the U.S. Army Security …
Bergeson Gardens, located southeast of Fertile, Minn., at Bergeson Nursery, is in full bloom and will be through early September. There will be an open house at the nursery Saturday, which will feature free coffee and donuts, food and ice cream for sale, music (11 a.m. and 3 p.m.) and garden tours (10 a.m. and 2 p.m.). All plants will …
After a long struggle with Alzheimers disease, Glen Campbell died this week at the age of 81. Of all the celebrity interviews I’ve done, the two I did with Glen Campbell are among my very favorite. For openers, it’s always as surprise that a star of his caliber was willing to talk with little, old me. For some reason, the …
Sunday morning I was listening to the “Ted Radio Hour” on Prairie Public Radio. The subject of the interview was talking about physics and the universe, and he said, “We should be grateful for what we know and humbled by what we don’t know.” Amen, say I. I have so much to be grateful for in my life. This weekend, I …
It’s been a tough few weeks for North Dakota media star Rob Port. He was outed as an unwitting copy machine (an HP, I think) for the DAPL propaganda team. Voldeport has absolutely no idea which words he published to advance Energy Transfer Partners, and his pal Kelcy Warren’s, interests, were true, and which were false, and probably doesn’t care. …
“A billion stars go spinning through the night, blazing high above your head. But in you is the presence that will be, when the stars are dead.” — Ranier Maria Rilke My daughter, Chelsea, and I packed up the car and headed for southwest North Dakota this past week. I know, it seems I’m always traveling, especially odd for a homebody …
A couple of months ago, I wrote about an oil well pad at the top of the Van Hook boat ramp on Lake Sakakawea. I’ve learned a few things about it since then. First, the basics. There’s a little blue-collar resort community at the top of the Van Hook Arm of Lake Sakakawea, a couple of hundred trailers and cabins …
It’s amazing what you can run into on a daily walk. Today on 32nd Avenue South in Grand Forks I encountered firsthand an anti-circumcision protest group called “Bloodstained Men and their Friends.” The core group is made up for four young men from places like Boston and California. They are criss-crossing the country on a 17-day mission to bring attention …