By John Andrews
It’s citywide rummage sale weekend in Yankton, so our plans are set. If you’re in town, stop by our magazine’s sale at 422 Broadway. We’re raising money for Relay for Life and have plenty of good merchandise, including furniture, an air hockey table, lots of small kitchen appliances and baby stuff.
Not everyone will [...]
By John Andrews
We got a note from Troy McQuillen today. He’s one of the organizers of the South Dakota Film Festival (Sept. 18-20 in Aberdeen). They are searching for a celebrity actor or filmmaker to attend their kick off event Friday, Sept. 18, and then participate in a seminar the following morning. Ideally the person [...]
By John Andrews
It’s tornado season, but so far the weather has been relatively quiet. That’s not to say it hasn’t been rainy, cold or windy. In fact not too long ago we got all of that in one day. But other than a handful of reports, no major tornadoes have spun across the South Dakota [...]
By John Andrews
A few weeks ago I wrote a blog about Lake Poinsett, which is featured in our May/June issue. As is usually the case during the spring, lake residents were worried about the low water levels and opened a flood gate, letting in flood water from the nearby Big Sioux River, much to the [...]
By John Andrews
Fern Kaufman of Vermillion stopped by our office earlier this month with a newspaper clipping from the old Castlewood Republican. When her aunt, Ethel Shaw, turned 90 in 1975, she wrote her memories of growing up in Hamlin County. Shaw’s father, Hugh Ching, emigrated from England in 1881 and homesteaded near Castlewood. The [...]
By John Andrews
Go ahead. Try to find an activity that doesn’t have a culminating event called its “Super Bowl.” There a Super Bowl of World Business Plan Competition, a Super Bowl of Indexing and a Super Bowl of Birdwatching.
Now we learn that the Super Bowl of retriever testing is coming to a field near Alexandria [...]
Three men in their early 60s are following the Lewis and Clark Trail by bicycle and blogging each leg of the trip. They are currently traveling through South Dakota – and according to their blog they might accept a ride if you offer – so keep your eyes on the road.
The men, from New [...]
By Bernie Hunhoff
In all my years of poking about in South Dakota, I’ve never seen a honey bee swarm. But our Circulation Director Jana Jonas Lane and her husband, Jim, photographed this huge one near their farm on the northern outskirts of Yankton. The bees swarm as part of their natural reproduction. A swarm is [...]
By John Andrews
I only knew “Mean Gene” Okerlund as the announcer of WWF. As a kid I watched him interview the wrestling stars my friends and I saw every week: Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, and my all-time favorite, Hacksaw Jim Duggan.
But before he became “Mean Gene,” he was Gene Carroll, from Sisseton, S.D., and [...]
By Bernie Hunhoff
Shortly after we started South Dakota Magazine in 1985, I drove out to Clyde Ice’s tiny cabin near the Spearfish airport to get some of the old barnstormer’s stories in his own words. He was in his late 90s, and spry and salty. Two attractive younger women were tending to his garden and [...]
By John Andrews
He’s not the cutest fish in the pond, but the pallid sturgeon is one of nine federally endangered species found in South Dakota. I’m working on a story about all our endangered critters for a later issue.
Probably the two most widely reported on are the sturgeon and black-footed ferret, although my story will [...]
Gardening season is here, and Savannah Cummings of the Rapid City Journal has a timely online article about a Black Hills family that “raises the water table” by heavily mulching with newspapers and manure (when I was a newspaper editor, the two words were often co-mingled by my readers).
Seriously, the article offers an interesting [...]
One of Rapid City’s most thoughtful characters just wrote a little piece on the Mount Blogmore political blog of the Rapid City Journal that you’ll want to read if you’re interested in the controvery over credit cards in America.
Of course, South Dakotans are at the epicenter of the debate because we eliminated our [...]
by Roger Holtzmann
If you were a Secret Service agent and you saved the president’s life, you’d probably be in line for some kind of reward, right? A medal, perhaps, or a cushy assignment somewhere warm and tropical. The very last thing you’d expect would be to get transferred to “windswept” South Dakota.
Wait. It gets worse. [...]
By John Andrews
Last year’s Fort Pierre to Deadwood Trail Ride was so successful the folks at the Verendrye Museum have a smaller sequel planned for this summer.
The Fort Bennett to Fort Pierre ride will take place Aug. 10-14, and will lead up to the grand opening of the Casey Tibbs South Dakota Rodeo Center, Aug. [...]