By John Andrews
Our current issue mentions Marcia Dunsmore and Mollie O. Krafka, better known around Rapid City as the Shady Ladies. They make Black Hills history fun by staging humorous performances about various topics. The duo presented regularly at the Journey Museum through the winter, and we recently learned they are making themselves available to [...]
By Rebecca Johnson
Hello! I’m Rebecca and I am the new Editorial Assistant at South Dakota Magazine. I am a Yankton native and reside here with my husband, Jeremy, and our yellow lab, Tula. I’m excited to become more involved with the magazine as well as writing to you on our Editor’s Notebook.
Spring is finally here [...]
We are admirers of Valentine McGillycuddy, the physician and Pine Ridge Reservation agent who attended to Crazy Horse when the chief was on his deathbed, and who later became a key figure in the early days of Rapid City.
Thus we’ve also been interested in the preservation of his residence, which sits just off Mount Rushmore [...]
Thirty-two of South Dakota’s top artists have a 100-year-old muse this year; they are getting their inspiration from the bronze and marble and granite seat of government in South Dakota.
The Heritage Fund at the South Dakota State Historical Society has organized a special art show, and asked the artists to contribute photography, paintings or sculptures. [...]
By Bernie Hunhoff
Yes, a downtown Sioux Falls icon has fallen. Morning news report indicate that a motorist “under the influence” hit the Buck’s Mufflers’ mascot sometime Wednesday, knocking him to the ground. One Sioux Falls wit has already wondered why the drunk driver wasn’t available when the city was trying to topple the Zip Feed [...]
By John Andrews
We know that our larger towns like Sioux Falls, Rapid City and Huron have symphony orchestras, but we never thought about what their violin players do when their bows get shoddy. Turns out they probably seek the guidance of two experts in tiny Fulton.
Sisters Mary Wipf and Liz Soladay operate Con Brio Studio, [...]
We just learned from Pure Pierre Politics that distinguished Sioux Falls historian Art Huseboe died over the weekend. What a loss to all who love history, arts and education in South Dakota. The only good news is that Art’s lingering illness allowed many to express their affection for him over the last year. In June [...]
By John Andrews
Sad news from this week’s Hamlin County Herald Enterprise. The annual St. Urho’s Day celebration, a tradition for decades in Lake Norden, is cancelled. Organizers cite “uncontrollable circumstances,” which might mean that the town’s Norwegians have finally established dominance and put an end to the silly celebration.
All kidding aside, St. Urho’s Day was [...]
By John Andrews
Chances are Lloyd Cunningham has photographed you, or someone you know, in his nearly 40 years as a staff photographer at the Sioux Falls Argus Leader. This week, our dean of photojournalists is retiring.
We featured Cunningham in our September/October 2009 issue. We asked the obligatory “favorite photos” question that all writers must ask [...]
By John Andrews
2009 was a rough year for South Dakota beekeepers.
Numbers released by the Department of Agriculture’s Statistics Service show honey production in South Dakota in 2009 was down 17 percent to 17.8 million pounds. Still, that makes us the second highest honey-making state behind North Dakota (34.7 million pounds).
The honey business, like most agricultural [...]
By Bernie Hunhoff
During the legislative session, I get a daily chance to read the Pierre Capitol Journal. Though it is one of the smallest dailies in the West, the staff does an admirable job with day-to-day news.
And they do better than any South Dakota daily at news from long ago. Matthew Reitzel compiles a [...]
By John Andrews
Did you know that sculptor Gutzon Borglum’s eccentric social attitudes once drew the ire of Adolf Hitler? We didn’t either, until we read a column from the Twin Falls (Idaho) Times-News that a reader recently sent to us.
Much of the column was about Borglum’s ties to the Ku Klux Klan. He supposedly joined [...]
By John Andrews
History buffs in Minnehaha County will want to attend this month’s meeting at the Old Courthouse Museum March 18 at 7 p.m. Emma Abbott, a recent graduate of Augustana College, will talk about John Dillinger and his brazen robbery of the Security National Bank on March 6, 1934.
We wrote about the robbery in [...]
By John Andrews
From 1880 to the 1930s, you could find corn and grain palaces in 24 towns in eight cities across the Midwest. We know this because today we received a book by Rod Evans entitled Palaces of the Prairie. Evans, a scholar and playwright living in Aberdeen, researched and wrote about every one of [...]
By John Andrews
We’re finishing up a story on South Dakota filmmakers for our May/June issue. During the course of research we discovered that Chad Coppess, a photographer for the state’s tourism department and a frequent contributor to the magazine, is a film buff, especially when it comes to films produced in South Dakota. He also [...]