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A letter to a whole bunch of really good friends. Dear Friends, The nightmare is over. My lawyer says I can talk about it now. Some of you know about it already. Most don’t. Here’s the short version. About a year and a half ago there was a knock on my front door. A kind … Continue reading Thank You

On New Year’s Eve, 1940, Paul Southworth Bliss, a veteran of the Great War in Europe and a Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, took his service revolver from its holster in his small apartment at the Kansas City, Missouri, YMCA, put the pistol to his head, and pulled the trigger. He was just 51 … Continue reading Where We’ve Been, What We’ve Been Doing, And Why.

I’m pretty sure these phone calls have already happened. Rrring! Rrring! “Hello, Governor’s Office, this is Doug Burgum.” “Hello, Governor, this is Bill Peterson over at the State Historical Society. They’re telling me I have to decide if I should sign off on letting the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad tear down their historic bridge … Continue reading ‘The Buck Stops Here’ (At The Governor’s Desk)

Do you know some young person, just starting, or just ready to start, a professional career in North Dakota? Someone who’s a good communicator (maybe a journalism degree), and is interested in the outdoors (especially North Dakota’s Bad Lands)? Well, I’ve got an idea for them. I’ve been a member of an organization for more … Continue reading How About A Job In The Bad Lands?

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about some bad bills in the North Dakota Legislature that attempt to ban books from our pubic libraries. One, SB 2123, was a goofy bill that just removed libraries from the list of places “dirty books” are allowed to be displayed. It was such a bad bill that … Continue reading A Letter From A Reader

Elections, as they say, have consequences. What’s been going on in Billings County, North Dakota, elections has been pretty consequential. Billings County is an important place. It's home to the Bad Lands, Medora and Theodore Roosevelt National Park. And the Little Missouri State Scenic River. More about elections in a minute. You’ve been reading here … Continue reading Here We Go Again. The ‘Bridge To Nowhere’ Is Back.

It started last weekend. I began receiving weird text messages from unknown phone numbers outside the 701 area code. I didn’t think about it much the first time, but then they kept on coming, sometimes three a day. I ignored them, like I had been told to when I got my first cellphone. By the … Continue reading Dn’t Rspnd To Thse Txts!

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a really bad bill in the North Dakoa Legislature, HB 1205, which starts banning books from our libraries. I've since learned there's another one, just as bad, SB 2123, which pretty much does the same kind of thing. One's in the House, the other in the Senate, … Continue reading Another Bad Book Banning Bill

Nothing in recent memory has stirred up as much emotion among Bad Lands enthusiasts as the goofy process now underway to rid Theodore Roosevelt National Park of its wild horse herd. The papers have been flooded with letters to the editor, and newspaper editors themselves have even published editorials telling the National Park Service to … Continue reading What To Do About The Wild Horses

I went to the North Dakota Department of Water Resources public hearing Friday on whether they should grant the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railroad permission to build a new bridge over the Missouri River between Bismarck and Mandan. To quote from the Department’s meeting notice, “The new bridge is intended to replace an existing … Continue reading How About A “Super Bridge?”