Author: Jim Fuglie

When the summer weather gets so nice that you just can’t stand to be indoors, and when the garden is coming in like gangbusters, it’s hard to sit down at the typewriter and do a blog post. I said typewriter because I’m going to do a summer rerun of something that I first wrote on … Continue reading Summer rerun

Sometime late this week, some dedicated staff people at the North Dakota Game and Fish Department are going to decide whether or not it would be a good idea for an oil company to drill an oil well in the middle of a national wildlife refuge in western North Dakota. When they decide, they are … Continue reading An Oil Well On A National Wildlife Refuge?

Bought any salt and pepper shakers lately? Yeah, me neither. Maybe the last ones I bought were when I got my first college apartment in 1965. I guess salt and pepper shakers last so long that you don’t have to buy them very often. But I thought I’d buy some this weekend. Lillian and Chelsea … Continue reading Me and Jimmy Buffet: Searchin’ For That Lost Shaker . . .

Fracking. The technology that is bringing undreamed-of wealth to some and unrelenting heartbreak to others is threatening one of our most treasured spots, a place many say is the birthplace of America’s conservation movement. Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the only national park named for a President of the United States, covers about 70,000 acres in … Continue reading Threats To The Elkhorn Ranch: A Primer

When I last wrote about the Great Duane Sand Fundraising Scam, in April, I said I wasn’t going to waste any more time on him. For those of you who missed it, Duane, a perpetual candidate in North Dakota elections, was a candidate in the 2012 Primary election for the Republican nomination to the U.S. … Continue reading The Great Duane Sand Fundraising Scam, Vol. III

So, the short, interesting life of Hamid Shirvani as a North Dakotan is about to come to an end. Gee, everybody who is surprised about THAT raise your hand. I’m looking, but I don’t see any hands in the air. We’ve followed his antics, and that of his dysfunctional board, for a year or so … Continue reading Ham, We Hardly Knew Ye

OUT OF THE CLOSET Plains Talk, the newsletter of the State Historical Society of North Dakota, usually arrives in my mailbox about this time each year with a really comprehensive list of summer events related to the history and culture of North Dakota and the Great Plains. It arrived in time this year for me … Continue reading Weekenders

The announcement by Jack Dalrymple earlier this month that he and fellow Industrial Commission members are going to take a tour of the oil patch and develop a “list” of places where they probably shouldn’t be permitting oil development rankled some in the preservation community, and rightly so. That list pretty much already exists. Jack, … Continue reading Jack Dalrymple’s Makin’ A List. Yeah, Right.

I’m thinking of my mom on this Mother’s Day, as we all are. She’s been gone three and a half years now, but it seems like only yesterday I was making those semi-weekly trips to Hettinger to see her in the nursing home, each time stopping at the Albertson’s store in Dickinson to buy her … Continue reading Body and Soul

Let me say this about Jean Mason Guy, who buried her husband of 70 years today: I’ve known a few First Ladies of North Dakota, and of all of them, Jean is the one who could easily have filled the role of Governor rather than First Lady. Jean and Bill Guy were interchangeable. Bill Guy … Continue reading An Awesome Team