A month or so ago, in an article I first wrote for Dakota Country magazine and posted later here on my blog, I talked a bit about my father and his love of North Dakota’s outdoors. If you missed that, you can read it here. I need to share a few more words about my father — and growing up in …
My buddy Rose Brunsvold and I once agreed that for us going to prison wouldn’t be the worst thing. At least we’d be able to catch up on our reading. In that regard, it seems to me that summer is the next best thing to prison, a good time to read. With the unofficial, official start of summer this weekend, …
Herbs have been used for cooking, medicine and pest control since pre-bibical times. And while not food, they do bring bring simple enjoyment to our lives in so many other ways. According to information provided by the North Dakota State University Extension Service, anyone can grow herbs. From a windowsill to a garden plot, you can grow many herbs in …
Perennial flowers have become the backbone of many yards today. Instead of fussing with annual seed and bedding plants, flowers such as peonies keep on giving each year with little or no effort. This switch to perennials from annual flowers doesn’t mean they are better but rather they require less work by the homeowner. Both should be included in any …
So, “Mad Men” has ended with a something of a whimper rather than a big bang. The series ends with the lives of most of the major characters taking somewhat uncharacteristically positive turns. The one exception was poor January Jones’ character, who continues to die (beautifully) of lung cancer. She also continues to smoke in her final scene, but what …
Rhubarb recipes are a dime a dozen, especially if you live in North Dakota or Minnesota, where this perennial vegetable is abundant and church funeral and wedding luncheons are never lacking for desserts made with it. Yes, rhubarb is a vegetable, which doesn’t seem right, since it’s mostly associated with sweet things. (If you’ve ever been to the annual spring Rhubarb …
The beauty of the Black Hills of South Dakota includes tons of wildlife, Crazy Horse and, of course, Mount Rushmore.
Day 6 of our recent travels took us back through the northern part of Yellowstone National Park, and after a family lunch in the old gold mining town of Cooke City, Mont., we said our goodbyes and headed to Cody, Wyo., and across northern Wyoming to Buffalo. More beautiful landscapes, and lots of wildlife, including elk right in town at …
We told our brown bear story matter of factly to Ken and Neil Marlow. Their reaction confirmed what we had suspected. In their words, we had a very dangerous experience with an Alaskan brown bear despite not having seen nor heard the bruin. But the odor of the bear itself, or the carcass of its main course, probably a moose, …
Sometimes it’s hard to get kids to eat vegetables. But potatoes generally aren’t one of them. Show me a kid who doesn’t like almost any kind of spuds, and I’ll show you one who is fussy about just about everything. One of our favorite ways to prepare potatoes are roasted, coated with a bit of butter and olive oil and seasoned …
Day 2 was another amazing day in Yellowstone National Park. More beautiful scenery and beautiful animals.
Day 1 at Yellowstone was amazing. Beautiful scenery, beautiful animals (even if they are shedding their winter coats and just starting to regrow antlers).
Too much — way too much — ink and airwaves have lately been consumed with salacious stories involving teachers and teenagers in the most unseemly situations. Consider two highly charged dramas unfolding before us. The first involves North Dakota’s Teacher of the Year, the West Fargo High School English instructor accused of an extended affair with a 17-year-old student five …
I like to play with scammers. You know, the ones who use Facebook messaging to do their “business.” I find their story lines to be fascinating, even if their command of the English language leaves something to be desired. Below is an actual scammer conversation I had today. Enjoy. Scammer: Hello, how are you doing? I am doing good and …
The beauty of annual flowers can last a lifetime in our memory. And there are lots of reasons to be enchanted with annuals. Annuals don’t do anything just halfway. They are easy to grow, can turn a bare patch of yard into a mass of flowers in just a short time and bloom their hearts out until Jack Frost comes in late …
Fred Rogers was fond of saying that the most profound and meaningful moments in life rarely happen in the spotlight, that they tended to occur off stage, in quiet moments between people. In 2002, in an elaborate ceremony in the White House, President George Bush hung the Presidential Medal of Freedom around Fred’s neck, but Mister Rogers later told me that his favorite …
One of the harbingers of summer is the blooming apple trees of spring. The sight of a fully blossomed-out apple tree with the morning sun shining upon it is one of the more spectacular and pleasant views in nature. I’ve been enjoying this experience daily on my two to three neighborhood walks with my dog, Sweetie, all the while wishing it …
I lied when I said my next blog would be On to The Daily News of Wahpeton-Breckenridge. Life happens. Like this past week spent in bed, not by choice mind you, with a wicked bacterial infection. Not functioning, I turned on the TV in a useless attempt to not feel sorry for myself in my pain and misery. I’ve missed my …
The beautiful scenery and the wildlife of the North Dakota Badlands around Medora and Theodore Roosevelt National Park make for some spectacular viewing.
My brother and I were waiting for a sign from God or someone to help us make one of the most important decisions of the year, not to mention our lives: to fish or not to fish Saturday’s May Opening Day in Minnesota. The five-day forecast for northeastern Minnesota where we fish calls for you name it: rain, maybe snow, …
B-17 bombers, Stearman biplanes, Hellcats, B-24s and many more vintage aircraft took part Friday in the Arsenal of Democracy flyover of Washington, D.C., which marked the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. Up to 5,000 people watched from on or near the National Mall, with thousands more on downtown rooftops.
Are you one of those people who finds it hard to resist making soup on a cold spring day? I am. And throwing together a pot of delicious vegetables with a little pasta is a great way to spend an early afternoon when the temperatures are on a slow descent to reach 50 and the wind is blowing a bit. …
A Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad train went off the tracks near the small village of Heimdal, N.D., just east of Harvey, N.D., about 7:30 this morning. That’s not news any more, since the train was pulling 109 tank cars of oil, and when six of them caught on fire, it made national news pretty quickly because it’s just the …
I gave myself a new nickname today. I kinda like it. The whole thing started when an acquaintance online made a gardening analogy to assert a belief that I was “looking for problems where there weren’t any” (an argument I’ve heard many times before) when discussing issues of race. Essentially what this person said was that worms were a reality …
It’s amazing what a little rain will do for spring flowers such as these in Alexandria, Va.
What started off as a remembrance of the Battle of Puebla, a national holiday in Mexico in honor of a military victory in 1862 over French forces of Napoleon III, Cinco de Mayo has become more of a celebration of food these days. That’s especially true in the United States. Many restaurants feature South-of-the-Border food, and more and more people …
Baby steps. Painful steps. Think baby steps. Take tiny steps and keep moving up, up, up these damnable mountains. My hiking boots step and stumble on some of the oldest rocks on the planet as we hike into the clouds of the Beartooth Mountains. We’ve already gained 7,000 feet in elevation, and the air isn’t exactly Gulf Coast thick and …
You don’t have to be Dutch to love tulips. These harbingers of spring are a delight as they poke through the mulch you probably placed over the flower bed this past autumn. Tulips originally came from eastern Turkey. The Dutch took those wild tulips and crossbred them, creating many varieties — early, midseason and late — that are found in …
North Dakota singing duo TigirLily performed at the Loading Dock in the University of North Dakota’s Memorial Union on Saturday. The concert was put on by the UND Association of Residence Halls.
The Lone Star Rodeo Company came to the Alerus Center in Grand Forks, N.D., on Friday and Saturday nights. There were plenty of thrills, lots of spills and great entertainment for the crowd. There was a calf roping, team roping, saddle bronc riding, barrell racing and the crowd favorite, bull riding. In between events, the rodeo clowns and stunt riders …
Southern Utah University handed the University of North Dakota women’s softball team an 8-3 loss April 25 at Apollo Complex in Grand Forks, ND. All three of UND’s runs were scored on solo home runs, one each by Shelby Hard, Maria Dendingber and Jackie Lilek. Hard’s home run gave her sole possession of UND’s single-season home run record, as she hit her 14th …
Grand Forks Red River traveled across the river to meet East Grand Forks Senior High in a high school baseball game Friday and came home with a 7-3 victory. Ty Straus picked up the win for the Roughriders, while Chance Borden was tagged with the loss. Straus also lead Red River at the plate going 2-4 with a double. Also …
Salmon is one of the most popular choices in the fine restaurants of the world when it comes to fish. And it’s no surprise that it’s also the favorite fish on American dinner plates. But did you know that you are much better off eating the wild-caught version as compared with those that are raised on fish farms? Wild-caught salmon …
The following was written at the request of WDAY alum Larry Gauper for his excellent Wordchipper.com blog. Larry has been instrumental in organizing monthly WDAY-WDAZ alumni lunches in Fargo. They are a blast. I always leave them laughing. Larry asked me to chip away at letting people know a little bit about my shady past and my current state of …
These are the three things I enjoy most about North Dakota’s outdoors: Wading across the Little Missouri River with my hiking shoes slung over my shoulder, on my way to a silent day hiking in the Bad Lands wilderness. Watching my dog lean into a patch of brush, just a glimpse of red feathers under her nose, her nostrils flaring …
North Dakota State University (12-26) scored the game’s only run in the sixth inning to hand the University of North Dakota (16-21) a 1-0 loss in a nonconference college baseball game Tuesday at Kraft Field in Grand Forks, N.D. NDSU swept the season series, also winning 4-2 last week in Fargo, N.D.
We’ve all got “stuff” that makes us passionate. Some of that “stuff” leads us to say (and do) horrible things to each other. There’s a lot of “stuff” going on out there in the world this week that has lots of people saying (and doing) lots of things. I don’t want to talk about any of the “stuff.” Not in …
Watching the images from Baltimore and remembering, and certainly not for the first time in these troubled last few years, a spring night in Tulsa, Okla., more than a decade ago, when Oklahoma State Rep. Don Ross and I shared dinner at a quiet Chinese restaurant. I was in Tulsa to research a newspaper story about the Tulsa Race Riot …
Whatever happened to “Rodham”? As the next president of the United States shapes her campaign messages, her brand seems to be wobbling a bit. From “Hillary Rodham Clinton” to “Hillary Clinton” to simply “Hillary,” media observers have begun to comment on what the Democratic front-runner calls herself these days … and her fellow triple-name females wonder, too. The crisp signature …
Have you ever seen a recipe that looks so good that you know you are just going to have to try it? But maybe with a spin of your own. I came across one of those the other day. It was for a meatball lasagna. Meatballs and lasagna are two of my favorite foods, but never before had I thought …
An aging population coupled with more people choosing apartment or condo living is resulting in a shift to container gardening. And that’s not surprising. Containers are easy to move about your deck or patio. And you can raise flowers, including houseplants, annuals or even vegetables. Containers can range from red pottery or terra cotta pots to wood, especially if you …
Anyone who grew up in the Midwest knows about hotdishes. And if you’re from Minnesota, you probably know that more than most. Perhaps, that’s the reason Democratic U.S. Sen. Al Franken started the Minnesota congressional “Hotdish Off” back in 2011. Wednesday, the Minnesota delegation took part in the fifth annual event in Washington, D.C. And this year, Rep. Betty McCollum …
On Earth Day, President Obama visited Everglades National Park. The president used the opportunity to talk about how climate change is affecting the 1.4 million acre park, which was created in 1947 to conserve the natural landscape and prevent further degradation of its land, plants, and animals. Known as the “River of Grass,” the Everglades fuel the region’s tourism economy and water …
It was on one of the last nights in January that their company commander, a captain named Richards, called the men together when they had gone to the rear for food. “Tomorrow is the first day of the end of the war,’’ Richards said. “At oh-two-thirty we move forward, and we’re not stopping until we get to Berlin. The Germans …