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 …
When the Little Missouri Scenic River Commission meets Wednesday in Dickinson, N.D., it could have a cake with 10 candles on it to celebrate. It will have been just 20 days shy of 10 years since the Commission last met — Aug. 29, 2007. The newly formed commission, put together hastily this summer to comply with strict orders from Gov. Doug Burgum, …
Like my father, I’ve been subject to enthusiasms. Playing tournament chess, which he didn’t do. Photography, which he did, along with other pastimes. I was introduced to downhill skiing while I was a University of North Dakota student. A classmate (call her “Violet”) invited me to ski with her at the Huff Hills near Mandan, N.D. I overnighted at her …
The other day, I met a very nice young man who is immigrating to the U.S. Let’s just call him Ernesto. Because that’s his name. I’ve run into him at least a dozen times on the Greenway this summer. We’ve struck up a couple of nice conversations. He’s getting a little bored. He’s been waiting for his green card so …
I’m not so sure about this whole family reunion deal. For one thing, it’s kind of a voluntary admission that I’m related to these people. That’s borderline masochism. And I was raised Lutheran. Sure, I’ll take one for the team and show up for the funeral if one of the Benders tips over. There’s actually a perverse sense of relief …
I’ve just reread Ernest Hemingway’s first novel, “The Sun Also Rises,” written when he was in his 20s and living in Paris. The book is presented in the first person by the character Jake Barnes, a newspaper reporter who like Hemingway had been injured in the World War I. I’ve always liked the novel’s first sentence, “Robert Cohen was once …
The lure was Fort Abercrombie, but no contest, the highlight for me on our latest blue highway North Dakota road trip was getting to ride the combine. Not just any old combine but a great big John Deere with GPS steering, driven by, of all things, a farm worker from Slope County, someone who’d grown up about 15 miles from my …
Item: When top computer hackers got their hands on the voting hardware that dozens of states use to tabulate the vote, it took them just 90 minutes to infiltrate the brain of the first device. In the next few hours, they cracked every single one of the voting machines. We’re not talking about nefarious cybercrime here — not sophisticated campaigns …
By this time last week, I had assembled a lot of research on presidential pardons and what a president can and cannot do. Then I left it all on the computer beside my desk and happily jaunted off to the lake for some R&R. Perhaps my creator didn’t want me to post that blog. On Sunday morning, I awoke to …
The dog days of August have arrived and our favorite baseball team is apparently “rebuilding” again. For the better part of four months, the Minnesota Twins teased local fans with a brand of ball just good enough to make us believe there was hope. In fact, as recently as July 20, the Twins were within a half-game of first place …
Crenelated landscape. That’s where we’re home from. The Bad Lands of North Dakota, where we gathered for one of Badlands Conservation Alliance‘s summer outings. Driving there, we listened to the excellent radio segment “Natural North Dakota.” We’re members of Prairie Public Radio and partial to the vast majority of their programming, mostly listening in the car. Jim drove while I also …
The 2017 season of the Grand Forks Blues ended Friday with a heartbreaking 3-2 loss to Casselton in the North Dakota Class A American Legion Tournament at Kraft Memorial Field in Grand Forks. The Blue trailed 3-0 going into the seventh and scored two runs before leaving the bases loaded in the loser-out game. Parker Monette had three hits for the Blues, …
“Well I’ll be damned, here comes your ghost again …” — Joan Baez “Diamonds and Rust” I am now going to write about one of the most painful chapters of my long life. I am going to remember David. David Ohm. Dead these 40 years now. I can hardly believe that when I write it. And write this story I shall, …
It was 1956, and the world seemed simple. Our big, boxy Emerson TV, with its puny convex picture tube, streamed all kinds of benign pleasures into our little house on the prairie: “Make Room for Daddy,” “The Milton Berle Show,” “Hopalong Cassidy” and — the high point of that entire year for me — the moment when Captain Jim Rohn …
Sunday was another North Dakota road trip for us, the destination being Edmore, N.D., and the occasion being the visit of Jim’s California cousin to her mother and hometown. After a breakfast of sausage and pancakes with the last of the summer raspberries, we packed up a cooler and the Sunday Bismarck Tribune — for road reading — and headed …
I’m not sure how many days since Rob Port, famed columnist, political pundit and radio personality was featured on the Forum’s front page, but I’m still blind in my left eye. Seriously, I was a little startled to see Port’s mug on the front page of the Fargo Forum, for more reasons than one. Port’s visage always makes me jump, …
This year, I resolved to try new things in life. After years of my husband urging me to write more, I started my blog. It has been surprisingly gratifying. I spent a lifetime writing newsletters, press releases, letters, memos, emails and the Stoxen Library blog, and one does get better at writing by, well, writing. Reading thousands of books by …
How often have you heard someone say about a particular food, “It’s an acquired taste”? If you cook with nutrition in mind or raise a diverse garden like me, I would bet it’s more often than not. That’s not an indictment of mine or your tastes, but if it is, I plead guilty. It’s more of an acknowledgment that we are on the right track …
The Second Annual Island Lake Rodeo was held Friday and Saturday, and Grand Forks photographer Russ Hons was there, catching images of roping and riding events and much more. Island Lake is located in Mahnomen County near Lengby, Minn., (Check out more photos from Russ Hons here.)