By John Andrews
Is there anything South Dakotans won’t race? We do all the mainstream stuff, like cars and horses. But people in Chamberlain race lawnmowers, and the residents of Volin race turtles. This weekend, the good citizens of Nemo will race outhouses.
Competitors build their own privy, mount it on something that will traverse snowpack well [...]
By John Andrews
It had to happen sooner or later. With all the snow and cold we’ve received, people are starting to compare the winter of 2009-10 to the doozy of 1996-97.
I get little sympathy around here when I talk about the winter of 1996-97. It’s clearly the worst winter I can remember. I recall snow [...]
By Bernie Hunhoff
Some of South Dakota’s best-known bloggers showed up in the State Capitol today to argue for and against a proposal by Rep. Noel Hamiel, a longtime South Dakota newspaperman, that sought ways to identify people who defame others anonymously on the Web.
Noel’s bill would have required bloggers and Web site publishers to main [...]
We received a note last week about the death of Frank Base in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Base was a South Dakotan and one of the last survivors of World War II’s hellish Bataan Death March.
Base grew up in Tyndall and worked as a clerk in a drug store. He enrolled at South Dakota State College [...]
Photos from celebrity weddings show up all over television and in newspapers and magazines, but there probably won’t be a single paparazzo in Redfield this weekend for the wedding of the century.
Congregants at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church are staging an interactive play called “Ole and Lena’s Wedding.” The play is an actual wedding ceremony with [...]
About a year ago we did a story on preserving the Lakota language. It was eye-opening to see how rapidly the language is being lost. According to 2000 census figures only 14 percent of Indians living on reservations in North Dakota and South Dakota could speak Lakota or Dakota. And indications are the number has [...]
We’re hearing more and more South Dakotans say this winter has gone on long enough. They are longing for summer, but spring will do. Even a temperature above freezing will satisfy some.
Today we thought we’d share a summertime poem sent to us from Denton Morrison in Florida. Morrison and his wife grew up in eastern [...]
Imagine reading a story in your daily paper about two legislative leaders duking it out over differences in school funding at the Hopscotch in Fort Pierre. Thankfully our lawmakers have devised more civilized ways to address differences since early territorial days. When a brawl like that happened [...]
My hometown is front-page news in this week’s Hamlin County Herald-Enterprise. That’s really no shock; something of note usually makes it’s way to the cover of our small weekly paper, but this is big news. The Obama stimulus package is finally trickling down to Lake Norden. The city recently found out it’s getting $581,000 from [...]
Yesterday in our ever-popular Trivia Tuesday contest on our Facebook page, we asked fans if they knew the South Dakota banker who openly defied President Franklin Roosevelt during the Bank Holiday and stayed open for business. The answer we sought was Alfred Anderson, whom we wrote about in our July/August 1994 issue.
Anderson was a staunch [...]
South Dakotans on either side of the Missouri River have enjoyed a friendly rivalry for well over a century. The characteristics of each side have been discussed at length: West River you find cowboy hats, big belt buckles, black coffee and Denver Broncos banners. East River is seed caps, bib overalls, coffee with cream and [...]
In our current issue we have a short article on the mystery that surrounds Harvey Dunn’s iconic prairie painting The Prairie is My Garden. Mary Lou Banner, of Roseville, Calif., wrote us to say she believes the characters in the painting are her aunt and two cousins on their farm near Isabel.
Since the issue appeared, [...]
Our thoughts were pleasantly vaulted to spring today when we received an advance copy of a new book about baseball.
We’re Gonna Win, Twins! tells the story of the first 50 years of Major League Baseball in the Twin Cities. A good chunk of South Dakota lies within “Twins Territory” (another of those abstract geographical regions [...]
It’s a bright and sunny day in Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania, which means that when Punxsutawney Phil emerged from his hole this morning and saw his shadow, we were all doomed to six more weeks of winter. I’m not sure how much stock I put in the prognostications of groundhogs, woodchucks, whistle-pigs or whatever you want [...]
By John Andrews
Yesterday’s Lincoln (Neb.) Journal Star carried a good article about the newest efforts to solve the problem of Whiteclay. Bruce BonFleur, who runs a Christian outreach group in the tiny village, wants to clean up the town and build businesses, including a recycling center.
Whiteclay and its liquor stores have long been a thorny [...]