I’ve got a problem. I need to write a column that is going to be kind of critical of three people I like, and I’m trying to figure out how to do it without making them all angry at me. Their names are Sara, Doug and Marvin. They’re all kind of half-ass friends of mine. And I’m not sure I …
My husband and I took off this week from our duties at Red Oak House for a quirky blue highways trip. We zigzagged across the area between Bismarck and Grand Forks and had a thoroughly wonderful time, on a cerulean-sky-puffy-cloud kind of day. We departed from Red Oak House on Wednesday morning and headed north to Wilton and then east. …
My wife, Lillian, and I just did a quick two-day trip on (almost) all two-lane roads — you can’t get out of or into Bismarck without going on a four-lane, but our exit and entrance was our only concession to four lanes) — around the northeast quadrant of North Dakota. It was wonderful. That is all I am going to say …
Back in simpler times, when I worked with Tourism Director Joe Satrom in Bismarck, one of our main objectives for bringing tourist dollars into North Dakota was to persuade the media to write about North Dakota, that “large, rectangular blank spot in the nation’s mind,” as native Eric Sevareid memorably put it. To write about North Dakota, that is, without …