This is another in an occasional series of articles by Clay Jenkinson on some of the less well-known presidents of the United States. Somehow, I feel sorriest for John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) of all the one-term presidents. He was the sixth president of the United States, son of the second, John Adams the revolutionary. It seems to me that JQ was …
Public respect for the U.S. Supreme Court has plummeted. A 2022 Pew Research poll indicates that only 39 percent of Republicans have a strongly favorable opinion of the court, and only 13 percent of Democrats. Independents give the court a 25 percent approval rating. In 1987, 80 percent of Republicans and 75 percent of Democrats had a high regard for the …
These signs of spring in Bemidji State Park caught the eye of Grand Forks photographer Michael Bogert this past week.
The Minnesota fishing opener is Saturday, and you can be sure there will be a lot of anglers bringing home some nice walleye fillets. Whether it’s pan-fried, deep-fried, poached or baked, most anglers will agree that walleye is one of the tastiest freshwater game fish. And just about everyone who fishes has a go-to recipe or two for walleye using …
Just at the end of April, Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China offered to help negotiate a peaceful end to the war Russia has been waging against Ukraine. This news put me into a bittersweet mood. I remembered that moment — in 1905 — when American President Theodore Roosevelt offered to mediate the Russo-Japanese War. The Russian Empire and the Empire …
About a month ago, I agreed to walk 100 miles in the month of April to raise awareness of cancer and the deadly toll it is taking on us and to raise money for the American Cancer Society. My goal: $250, to be donated by me and my friends. I had the help of a fine list of friends: Valerie …
This is another in an occasional series of articles by Clay Jenkinson on some of the less well-known presidents of the United States. Poor James Monroe (1758-1831). His greatest challenge was living in the shadow of his two illustrious predecessors, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Most people know that Jefferson and his frenemy, John Adams, died on the same day, the …
I love gadgetry. I have remotes to run my remote controls. It’s not perfect, though. I discovered that my Apple TV remote volume control triggers my new Chinese-made CD player. And everyone’s worried about TikTok. Yes, they still make CD players. I mean, what was I going to do with all those CDs I bought to replace all those vinyl …
This past Sunday, photographer Dave Bruner and his wife, Sheila, ventured out on a more than a 150-mile journey that began at 9:30 p.m. and ended at 2:30 a.m. Monday in search of the aurora borealis or Northern Lights, a phenomena that is the result of collisions between gaseous particles in the Earth’s atmosphere with charged particles released from the …
J. Robert Oppenheimer’s security clearance has been restored by the U.S. government, just 55 years after his death and 68 years after his clearance was stripped from him during the most hysterical period of the Cold War. U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said, “More evidence has come to light of the bias and unfairness of the process that Dr. Oppenheimer was …
As you’ve driven down Interstate 94 to Medora, N.D., for the past dozen or so years, you’ve seen a couple of yellow signs just inside the park boundary fence a few miles east of Medora that say, “Land for Sale.” Until I found out the story behind them, they gave me some pause. Hmmm. The park is selling off part …
So here we go, another American detained in Putin’s Russia. Evan Gershkovich of the Wall Street Journal has been incarcerated in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison. He is accused of spying. Gershkovich is not so high profile as Brittney Griner of the WNBA, but the charges against him are much more serious. It is likely that he will languish in prison for a considerable …
Snow. Snow since October or November. Blizzards. Drifts. Shoveling. Blowing. Ice dams. Water in my house. Snow melting now. Snow melting in Slope County. Snow melting in Stark County. Snow melting in Billings County. Snow melting in Burleigh County and Morton County. Snow melting on my husband’s garlic and strawberry and raspberry beds. Ice on our driveway. Rivulets. Walkers in …
Except for an unexpected overnight in the Cairo airport, my return to the U.S. was otherwise seamless. As I settle back into my routine, with no other big adventures imminent, I thought I would do one final reflection on travel to Egypt in general, in the event others are thinking of a similar pilgrimage. One of the most common …
We departed the ship at 6:45 a.m. to catch our flight to Cairo, which was seamless until the tarmac bus took us to the wrong place and we had airport officials screaming at us about being in the wrong place. Or at least that’s what it sounded like. Most folks don’t speak English, which is fine, but when being yelled …
On March 30, 2023, Pope Francis renounced the 550-year-old Doctrine of Discovery, which granted European nations the right to claim the new lands they discovered on behalf of Christendom. According to the statement issued by the Vatican, the Catholic Church formally “repudiates those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of Indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal …
After waking up at 3:30 a.m. to watch UConn win, the last full day on the cruise began with a visit to a place called the Unfinished Obelisk, and I have to admit, I wondered why anyone would want to see an unfinished work when there are so many finished obelisks around. I was wrong in questioning it. It actually …
I woke up early after a very good night’s sleep and had a chance to watch the sun rise over the Nile as we cruised down the river, one of those surreal experiences I will never forget. Our first stop of the day was Edfu Temple, but to get there we took horse carriages, which was an unexpected treat. Because …
After beginning the day, predawn, with the balloon ride that was truly spectacular, we headed out to see the places that we saw from the air on the ground. I have to say it was quite nice to have a perspective of what we were seeing and their mass of nature before we toured them. Our first very brief stop …
If you want to understand what a fall into authoritarianism looks like, a case in point is the vote to expel two representatives from the Tennessee state house who peacefully protested the Legislature’s failure to address gun violence after a school shooting that took six lives. Rather than tackle one of the most challenging issues we face as a society …
At about 9:15 Tuesday morning, in the Billings County Courthouse in Medora, N.D., Billings County commissioners voted to go into executive session and told the general public attending the meeting to leave the room. Well, two of the three commissioners — Steve Klym and Lester Iverson — voted to do that. A third, Dean Rodne, voted against the motion to …
We finished our time in Cairo today and flew to Luxor to begin our four-night cruise down the Nile River. Well, the cruise officially starts tomorrow as we are still docked in Luxor, but the boat is at least in the Nile. We are on a small boat with maybe 100 people or so on board. I’m not sure exactly …
Our last full day in Cairo promised to be full, with much on our agenda, but it began with a surprise. Since the start of this trip, I had been in search of a very unique Egyptian dish called Koshary, a mix of pasta, Egyptian fried rice, vermicelli and brown lentils, topped with a zesty tomato sauce, garlic vinegar and …
Today was one for the bucket list, but I am going to divide my posts up a bit because I think a picture is worth more than 1000 words. In the morning we were joined by Cindy’s friend, Ellen, who flew in from Los Angeles to join us for the last part of our time in Cairo and our cruise. …
Today we took a break from sightseeing. In the morning, Cindy caught up on some work and I traveled to visit the Evangelical Theological Seminary of Cairo. My good friends Karla and David Grafton, who helped profoundly with planning this trip, worked at the seminary when they lived here and it was an incredible chance for me to learn about …
We got to sleep in a little later this morning, heading out at 8:20 a.m. to our first site, the Mosque-Madrassa of Sultan Hassan. We try to get out a bit earlier because traffic in Cairo is absolutely insane and I’ve never heard so much beeping. So many cars, so many people. On our way to the mosque we passed …
A Florida charter school principal was forced to resign this past week after a photograph of Michelangelo’s David was shown in a sixth-grade art class. Hope Carrasquilla of the Tallahassee Classical School was forced out after several parents complained, one of whom called the famous 16th-century statue “pornographic.” Carrasquilla was not the teacher who showed the image to students without …
Today began very early, as we met our guide and driver at 6 a.m. to begin the journey to Alexandria. It was a 2½ hour drive on what it’s called the Desert Road between the lush oasis that is Cairo, which is fed by the Nile River, to Alexandria, located on the Mediterranean Sea. Alexandria was the capital of Egypt …
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 of unruly looking fellow, probably …
Every so often in life, you are dealt unexpected curveballs that seem unfair and moments of true serendipitous grace. For me, in the past year, I’ve had both. When I left my call at Emanuel, I lost a Lily Sabbatical Grant that would have provided an amazing experience for my family and me. And now I have begun a truly astonishing …
This is another in an occasional series of articles Governing is publishing this year by Clay Jenkinson on some of the less well-known presidents of the United States. It would be tempting to regard historically forgotten Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901) as one of the caretaker — as opposed to change maker — presidents, but that would be unfair. He was actually quite …
“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 years old. He left a …
A seemingly endless winter is always a good occasion to make soup. And if you have a pantry and freezer full of goodies from this past summer’s garden, all the better. I came across a soup recipe recently that did not require me to go to the supermarket. I had all the ingredients on hand and only a few tweaks …
In the movie “Dumb and Dumber,” Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels make a wrong turn at the Colorado border and, after driving through the night, wind up many hours later in a perfectly flat landscape in central Nebraska. Jim Carrey’s character, Lloyd, who mistakenly thinks they must now be in the fabled Rocky Mountains, looks around and quips, “That John …
The University of North Dakota men’s hockey team’s 2022-23 season came to an end Friday night as the Fighting Hawks dropped a 3-2 overtime decision to St. Cloud State University in the National Collegiate Hockey Conference semifinals in St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center. The Fighting Hawks (18-15-6) held leads of 1-0 and 2-1 over the Huskies (23-12-3) on goals by …
Singer and songwriter Tom Brosseau doesn’t need much of an introduction, especially around here in the Midwest. But other places as well. The Grand Forks native has performed in Australia, Japan and elsewhere around the world. In a few days, he’ll be back home, along an excellent group of performers, singing for a good cause. Tom has collaborated with the …
The firebrand Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene recently tweeted, “We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are done.” Although her tweet …
Today is International Women’s Day, so naturally my mind immediately begins to focus on the women I met in the Oula and Mungula Refugee Settlement Camps. While sharing with someone about my recent trip to Uganda, I told about my role in the Trauma Healing Training. I give leaders in the community the tools they need to assist them as …
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 its historic bridge over the Missouri River so …
Water. It’s something many people in the developed world take for granted. That what comes out of our faucets won’t kill us. However, having just recovered from what was most likely a water-borne infection, thanks to the wonders of modern antibiotics, I am incredibly aware of just how precious clean water is and just how deadly contaminated water can be. …
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 than 20 years …
The University of North Dakota men’s hockey team closed out its regular season in winning fashion with a 2-1 National Collegiate Hockey Conference win over the University of Nebraska-Omaha on Saturday night in Ralph Engelstad Arena. Ethan Frisch and Chris Jandric scored goals for the Fighting Hawks (16-13-6 overall, 10-10-4 NCHC), while Matt Miller scored the only goal for the …
This is another in an occasional series of articles Governing is publishing this year by Clay Jenkinson on some of the less well-known presidents of the United States. You can listen to the companion audio version of this and other essays in the series using the player below or on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or Audible Jimmy Carter and American Memory Jimmy Carter was …
