Anyone who has raised a garden or grew up in a family that had one knows that nothing beats fresh veggies. The same be true of fruit. Picking an apple off a tree or raspberries from the canes and then eating them are one of life’s true pleasures. Now I know that not everyone can be as lucky as we …
When our twins, Ashley and Patrick, were born over 30 years ago, my wife and I often got curious looks as our double stroller rolled through the neighborhood. “Are they identical?” some would ask. That is, until they noticed the pink and blue pajamas and were told their names. This year’s version of the Minnesota Twins would appear to be …
Fifty years ago almost to the day, I rode my bike from our neighborhood, down the hill, past the courthouse to the only record store in Crookston, Minnesota, population 8,000. I had just been paid for my summer job, hoeing sugar beets, and would use my very modest salary, (a dollar for a mile-long row, as I recall) to buy …
What a difference rain makes. Dawn, July 10, 2022.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade and the striking down of a longstanding New York City gun law have received most of the attention at the close of this year’s U.S. Supreme Court, but many court watchers are equally focused on recent decisions about the separation of church and state in America. On June 27, 2022, in the case Kennedy v. Bremerton School …
Some good birding and not a single photo taken at Lake Metigoshe State Park.
I love my country. Despite many missteps — slavery and Indian genocide being the two main stains on our record — America remains a bastion of freedom. But not necessarily common sense. This is a space I typically reserve for human-interest columns, the fun, foibles, idiosyncrasies and beauty of life. If you want my take on current events, that’s available …
Here It Is July at Red Oak House, and 2.75 inches of rain in two nights! And a few days ago, I dug up a shrub rose in an area that has to be re-worked and gifted it to my dear friend, Christine. She has planted it. Moved the clock and touched up the paint, and life goes on. Time …
The latest guilty pleasure at our house — not that we need another one — is a BBC sitcom called “Mrs. Brown’s Boys.” It can be found on Britbox, a nice break from all those British murder mystery series. Actor/writer Brendan O’Carrol plays the foul-mouthed but kind-hearted head of a Irish household. In drag. Sort of Archie Bunker meets Dame Edna, …
The late Stephen Ambrose liked to begin his lectures on the Lewis and Clark Expedition by saying that the men (and one woman) of the Corps of Volunteers for Northwestern Discovery traveled “from sea to shining sea.” And yet typically, accounts of the journey begin with Lewis and Clark leaving St. Charles, Mo., on May 14, 1804, with three heavily laden boats, a couple of horses, …
On my first trip to the grocery store, or to anywhere besides the recliner in my living room, after a 10-day hospital stay and 10 days of home confinement for treatment of a badly infected leg, I bought four peaches. California peaches, it said on the little label, not Georgia or Washington, the ones we prefer. But they were the …
I was gone for two weeks traveling and return to a country very different than the one I left, thanks to U.S. Supreme Court rulings that question privacy, bodily autonomy, the ability to regulate weapons of war, the separation of church and state, rights of Indigenous people and the welfare of our planet, with the ability to conduct free and …
Grand Forks photographer Dave Bruner and his wife, Sheila, went out to the Badlands in western North Dakota this past week to hike around the area, take in the Medora Musical and do some photography. “The area was so nice and green due to the timely rains this year. The wildflowers were out in full bloom and gave the landscape …
During the COVID years, my preoccupations have included, a) trying to learn to play the guitar and sing, b) confronting the lingering vestiges of old demons and c) becoming more familiar with the divine spark that I believe lives inside of me and every human being. The jury is still very much out when it comes to the guitar playing …
Today would have been my 30th wedding anniversary. When I got married, I never imagined losing Steve twice to the same disease — first when our marriage ended and then when he died. I am the kind of person who uses anniversaries to reflect, and I can honestly say I will never regret my marriage. First, because I loved Steve …
The surge in migrants attempting to illegally cross into the U.S. along its southern border reached an all-time high in May. The 239,416 reported arrests surpassed the previous record, set just two months earlier, by almost 20,000 people. This chaos at the border isn’t going away, says Alex Nowrasteh, director of economic and social policy at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, …
In the past few years, I’ve taken a deep dive into the issue of climate change, reading scores of news accounts, scholarly articles and books on the topic. What I learned frankly terrified me. What was true and what was hyperbole? I recently asked one of the world’s leading climate scientists, Camille Parmesan, to help me separate one from the …
I’ve always been a fan of baked beans. One of my favorite renditions was my late Uncle Curt’s. He used to make them on Christmas Eve and other holidays. And, of course, he made them the traditional way, soaking his beans overnight before putting the dish together the next day. Baked beans are a staple of summer outdoor dining events …
Inch and a quarter of rain in a quick burst and another branch of the neighbors’ tree comes down. We slept through it all.
Father’s Day 2022. Made a quick visit to my Pa’s grave (quick being a relative term considering the amount of road construction between my house and the North Dakota Veterans Cemetery this time of year). Where it is hot and I can see the hay bales across the road, and the hot prairie wind is blowing, but I can hear …
It looks as if the United States is going to begin to come to terms with the dark legacy of the Indian boarding schools. On May 11, 2022, the U.S. Department of the Interior released volume one of an investigative report on the history and legacy of these schools, which existed to force Native American children to break with their Native communities and …
0.75 inches of rain in our gauge. Amazing what rain and patience and hope will do.
The House of Representatives Jan. 6 select committee began what is billed as up to six televised hearings this past week, some of them in prime time, hoping that it can convince the American people of the gravity of the conspiracy that led to the storming of the U.S. Capitol weeks after the 2020 election and just 15 days before …
The loons were out on Maple Lake near Mentor, Minn., this past weekend, and Grand Forks photographer Russ Hons caught up with them on the water. (Check out more photos from Russ Hons here.)
The spring migration of birds is well underway, and many of them have recently caught the eye of Grand Forks photographer Michael Bogert.
Digging in the dirt is my therapy.
And so here we are again. Another school shooting. The American slaughter of innocents. Shattered lives, shattered communities. The massacres pile up — Columbine, Blacksburg, Roseburg, Sandy Hook, Parkland, Uvalde and literally hundreds more. Aurora, Las Vegas, Orlando, El Paso, Fort Hood, San Bernardino, Sutherland Springs, Boulder. And so we ask: When’s it going to stop? What can we do? …
Grand Forks photographer Dave Bruner recently returned from a trip to the Tar Heel state, where waterfalls, old cabins and the flora and fauna of the Appalachian Trail, the Blue Ridge Mountains and the surrounding area provided a variety of photo opportunities.
I know, I’ve written about this legal battle in this space before, but it’s such good news — for now, at least — that I just can’t quit sharing it. Below is an article that appears in the June issue of Dakota Country magazine, on the newstands and in the mail right now. By the way, if you aren’t a …
It’s Primary season in America, with all the chaos, expense and bombast that phenomenon has come to represent in our national political life. The major media now give more attention to off-year primary elections in half a dozen battleground states than they gave to the quadrennial general national election a generation ago. As if they were interpreting the tarot or …
It’s the same response every time. “We need to arm teachers. We need more police at school. We need to focus on mental illness,” which stigmatizes mental illness, as opposed to focusing on the real issues. It’s never “Maybe there is no reason to EVER have an AR-15 that isn’t about personal pleasure” or “18-year-old kids shouldn’t be able to buy guns” or …
Grand Forks photographer Michael Bogert made a jaunt into northwestern Minnesota recently, and one of his stops was Itasca State, home of the Mississippi River headwaters and destination’s namesake lake as well many other small bodies of water.
Bullion Butte: The Mother Ship (at least it is to me) Where do I start, I ask myself? How do I not make this dry and unreadable? How do I sort through my lifetime of memories of Bullion Butte and the files in our house? But start I will. I’ve written before about the buttes of southwest North Dakota and …
With the war in Ukraine entering its fourth month, the 27-nation European Union is working toward what would be its sixth round of sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s Russia since Feb. 24. While outside of Governing’s usual coverage areas, the war in Ukraine has impacted domestic policy discussions here in the United States. To better understand the ongoing struggle, Governing Editor-at-Large Clay Jenkinson recently …
Home now from Mom’s funeral weekend in Slope and Bowman counties, where there were tears and laughter and the opportunity to visit in person with Mom’s immediate family who were able to be in attendance and with the folks of my childhood home ground, including several who are older than my Mom. Back to gardening and camping and hiking and …
The best vendors at the ballpark snapped out quips and nonsense, thick as mustard on a hot dog. They poured a beer, handed over a soft pretzel and spun out a story about a mother-in-law they didn’t have or a fish they never caught. Those nearby leaned in to listen. Vendors made fans part of the game, like foul balls …
Those who stayed up late Sunday night were in for a treat. The first total lunar eclipse of the year was visible to people from the Americas, Europe and Africa. The Flower Moon, the May full moon, named as it coincides with the spring blooming season in America, was also a supermoon, making it the Super Flower Blood Moon of …
We take annual conferences of the National Governors Association for granted, but nobody had ever thought of bringing America’s governors together until Theodore Roosevelt galloped onto the national stage in 1901, ascending to the presidency after the assassination of William McKinley in Buffalo, N.Y., on Sept. 14 of that year. It’s not hard to imagine Roosevelt, a strong Hamiltonian nationalist who essentially invented the modern presidency, calling the …
My friend Jack McDonald received an award at the North Dakota Newspaper Association convention last Friday for his tireless legal defense of freedom of the press. Our freedom. Your freedom. We listened in the great ballroom, elbows on white tablecloths among the cake crumbs and carcasses of Chicken Cordon Bleu. In his speech, Jack pondered the “what if’s” in life. …
Spring was a late arrival in the Northland his year, but now things are starting to take shape, as these images from Grand Forks photographer Michael Bogert will attest.
My wife, Lillian, is an Anglophile. For at least as long as I’ve known her, she’s been fascinated by anything involving England or Great Britain, especially royalty, especially female royalty. Also British history. Our library is full of books about England. So a few summers ago, she took a dream trip, a three-week tour of England and the British Isles, …
