U.S. Highway 85 is North Dakota’s deadliest highway. If you’re not familiar with it, it is the road that runs north and south along the western edge of the state, from our border with Canada to our border with South Dakota, through the North Dakota Bad Lands, some of the state’s most scenic and fragile … Continue reading Protecting Humans, Critters and the Little Missouri River Valley
The strange saga of Roger Lothspeich and the Elkhorn Ranch gravel pit has taken a bizarre turn. Lothspeich, you will recall, is the fellow who bought the “surface minerals” (gravel, scoria, coal and uranium) on a piece of land owned by the U.S. Forest Service directly across the Little Missouri River from Theodore Roosevelt’s ranch … Continue reading Giving Away A Gravel Mine
Sunday, January 10 update: As I predicted, look for much about Kevin Cramer in Rob Port's Sunday columns in the Forum Communications' newspapers. As I point out below, Rob owes much to Cramer's communications director Jason Stverak. So it's no surprise that Cramer is the hero of Rob's first Forum column today. Expect a regular diet. … Continue reading A Short (Well, Sort Of) Introduction To The Koch Brothers Influence In North Dakota
Here’s a question for some of you who spend a lot of time in the outdoors in the fall: How was your pheasant season? “Good enough, I guess,” would be my response. All of us who hunt pheasants in North Dakota are loathe to say anything gloomier than that, because saying “It wasn’t all that … Continue reading Whither The Meadowlark? A Message For North Dakotans Who Enjoy The Outdoors
Call it our own private little Christmas miracle, if you will. It happened. After weeks and weeks of what I call a “white sky” over Bismarck every night—a function of city lights bouncing off a completely overcast sky—we had given up hope of seeing the expected nearly-full moon on Christmas Eve. They say the real … Continue reading Reflections on a White Sky
Well, every year about this time, in past years, Lillian and I would get together and draft a “Christmas Letter,” which we would then take to the print shop, have it printed on fancy paper, buy a bunch of colored envelopes and a whole lot of stamps, spend hours addressing each envelope by hand and … Continue reading In Lieu Of A Christmas Letter
Sebastian Fabian Hoffner, 91, Bismarck, died Thursday, December 17, 2015, at St. Vincent’s Care Center in Bismarck. Mass of Christian burial will be said for him at 11 a.m. Tuesday, December 22, at St. Boniface Church, Esmond. The praying of a rosary will begin at 10:30 a.m. Burial will follow in the church cemetery. Nicknamed … Continue reading RIP, Buckshot Hoffner . . . One Of The Great Ones
And so the North Dakota Veterans Cemetery will remain dark at night. North Dakota’s Adjutant General, David Sprynczynatyk, whose command includes the Cemetery, made his decision at the end of a week of input from the public on the efficacy of a well-intentioned but poorly thought-out proposal to light the Cemetery at night. Thank you … Continue reading Honoring The Humility Of A Prairie Cemetery
Lillian had set the newspaper beside my coffee cup on the dining room table while I was at the Y the other morning. A big headline reading “Cemetery lighting project may seek $400,000” was circled and she had written across it in big black letters: “This is a bad idea.” She was right. The story … Continue reading A Resting Place of Reverence as the North Dakota Sky Grows Dark
Note: I posted this on my blog more than five years ago, in August of 2010, when immigration was in the news every day. It seems appropriate to repeat it now. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who, from all I can tell, is generally not a wacko, has joined forces, or actually taken leadership … Continue reading “He Is Already An American”
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