Violent clouds. That seems like an oxymoron if you have never suffered storm damage. But people who have suffered them understand the terminology.
Clouds are not always puffy and pretty. They’ve done unntold damage to people, property and trees, and last night southeast South Dakota was threatened once again.
Pictured here are the dark skies of [...]
Pulitizer prize winning writer Timothy Egan has a good commentary in today’s New York Times about the loss of wilderness on America’s great prairie. His piece doesn’t mention South Dakota, but it is relevant and some of the many interesting comments below his essay do reflect directly on the Dakotas.
This is an issue John [...]
Our magazine writers have focused a lot in recent years on locally-grown foods, and now other media are now picking up on the subject, especially with today’s rising food prices. So I thought we had recognized and established a trend in food writing until I received an email from our friend Ron Backer, a California [...]
Much was made last weekend — and appropriately so — of the great sacrifices made by our veterans of wars past and present.
By coincidence I was invited last week to attend the local Sons of Norway gathering. That is quite an honor for a Bohemian-American like myself and I enjoyed it immensely, the good company [...]
Turnabouts have long been popular in European cities like London and Paris, but South Dakota also has one that is very attractive. Guess where it is and you’ll win a free copy of John Front’s photo collection titled “South Dakota Farmscapes.”
The photo was taken by Dave Tunge of Dakota Aerials. You’ll like his Web site.
To [...]
We met photographer John Front in 2004. He was a quiet man, and unassuming. We met with him to see if he would consider working with us on a book of his photographs, and as we talked his passion for photography overcame his humble demeanor. The next year we published South Dakota Farmscapes, the photography [...]
Pierre native Eddie Welch has sent us a copy of an interesting magazine called Red Ink. Published by students and grad students at the University of Arizona, it publishes Native American art and writing. Very nicely done. Visit the magazine’s Web site for more information.
The Spring 2008 issue celebrates the 50th anniversary of Oscar [...]
You might say that Wild Bill Hickok gave his very life for South Dakota tourism. Not willingly, of course. But his death during a Deadwood poker game on August 2, 1876, has grown to become one of the signature events in our Old West culture.
Hickok surely would have preferred to live out his life [...]
This store window is on a small town main street in South Dakota. Be the first to guess the town and win an autographed copy of our book, South Dakota’s Best Stories.
There are no rules whatsoever for the What-Town-Izzit? Contest.
Enter by hitting “comments” below. Don’t worry if your guess doesn’t instantly appear. It will be [...]
When I was a kid, a teenager from our neighborhood spent his weekends and summers driving a “high boy” sprayer. It looked like a little tractor on stilts. He worked for a fellow who sprayed farmers’ fields and pastures with pesiticides.
When he was 19, the boy suddenly became ill and died within months. The villain [...]
This morning the likely Democratic nominee for president plans to talk farming in Watertown. Yesterday, his rival Hillary Clinton talked about the farm bill while visiting a farm near Bath. For older South Dakotans, their stops evoke memories of when John F. Kennedy, the same party’s 1960 nominee, came to the Corn Place in Mitchell [...]
Whenever Aberdonians hear Dorothy tell Toto “We’re not in Kansas anymore” they know that she never was in Kansas, and meant to say South Dakota — because they know that her character was inspired by writer Frank Baum’s years as a shopkeeper and journalist in the Hub City.
Today, Garrison Keillor’s daily “Writer’s Almanac” reminds [...]
A nicely-dressed crowd gathered at the foot of a hill in 1914 to pose for photographer F.W. Byerly. A beautiful gothic building stands behind them at the top of the hill. That’s all we really know.
The panoramaic picture — which is about 3 feet wide and a foot deep — came to our attention when [...]
Tumbleweeds are an icon of the West. And like most icons — coyotes or lutefisk, for example — a little is all you really need. A herd of the t’weeds rolling across a lonely prairie road is a sight that can cause even the most hardened Dakota sourpuss to pause and reflect on the vagaries [...]
We continue to send magazines free of charge to our men and women serving overseas in the military. If you have a relative or friend in Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere around the world, just email us his or her APO address and we’ll them the magazine for a few issues. Tell us if you know [...]