The Fourth Annual Wojo’s Island Lake Rodeo is taking place this weekend in Lengby, Minn. Photographer Russ Hons took in Day One of the event Friday, which concludes today. The rodeo is sponsored by LePier Oil. (Check out more photos from Russ Hons here.)
I want to take a moment to lament the passing of one of the finest scholar-biographers of our time Edmund Morris. The great biographer of Ronald Reagan and Theodore Roosevelt died May 24. He was 78 years old. Morris was born in Kenya on May 27, 1940, to South African parents. He moved to Britain in 1964. Without a college …
On June 13, the Fargo Forum reported that the North Dakota Women’s Network had chosen Rep. Ruth Buffalo to be their 2019 “Woman of the Year.” How dare any of that happen! Immediately, a Forum blogger, Rob “Bill Barr” Port, aka “Baghdad Rob” became irate, hungry and a bit peckish. So, after a snack, the self-proclaimed “journalist” grabbed a keyboard …
These are panic-stricken days. Each win by one of baseball’s better teams, the Minnesota Twins, brings the boys closer to disaster. The team’s World Series prospects flicker with each home run that is launched through precisely calculated launch angle. The victory cigars grind to ash with each strikeout notched through optimum spin rate. After too many dreary seasons to count, …
Sometimes, things can be just too painful to read. I had that feeling as I was reading “Lilac Girls,” the work of historical fiction by Martha Hall Kelly that tells the real life story of New York sociality Caroline Ferriday, who championed a group of women known as “The Rabbits” who survived the horrors of Ravensbruck, a Nazi concentration camp …
(I wrote this five years ago, on the 30th anniversary of my father’s death. It’s worth reprinting on Father’s Day.) The United States entered World War II shortly after the bombing at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Just a few months later, in the spring of 1942, at the close of the Devils Lake Junior College school year, a handful …
Whatever you might have thought about Marrakech, it is. At least in the market at Jama al Fna square. There are actually two markets. One, during the day, is busy, but somewhat laid-back. People wander though the huge square on their way to the covered souks, stopping to buy a smoothie from the many carts lined up end to end, …
To whom or what are you loyal? That really is the core question we are grappling with as a nation. Where do your core loyalties lie? Are you more concerned with power or loyalty to a person or are you loyal to a higher ideal? As a person of faith, I know my first loyalty is always to God, and …
Well, here are my preliminary thoughts. My rig is the smallest, most pitiful in the whole KOA complex. I’ve walked around once — several more to come as the night lights up here at Weedpatch Camp! Some of the RVs are so luxurious and massive that the pickup-like vehicle that pulls them is more like the cab of an 18-wheeler …
Sometime today, Thursday, June 13, 2019, I expect to receive some of the worst news I’ve had in many years. I expect to receive an e-mail from a friendly fellow at the North Dakota Department of Transportation who’s just doing his job, who means no ill will, who doesn’t want to be the bearer of what I will receive as …
To all of you who are following my little journey in search of America (or a bit of it), I am having a splendid evening. I arrived at this remote and understated camp, not far from Leadville, Colo., about 2 p.m. I did the minimum to set up camp. Only one other couple is here. They have a pickup on …
I’m deeply grateful to my friend, Sid Ansbacher, for restoring this memory of my brother, Steve, and my friend, Fred Rogers. I hadn’t read this or thought of it for years until Sid recently shared it with a friend on Facebook. It is from the fall of 1998, when Steve was diagnosed with lung cancer that would take his life …
A weird child tells Piers Morgan the darndest things about his just-funny-to-him meeting with Prince Charles: “I think I was yeah, we had a great conversation and it was about you would call it climate change but yeah I think we had a very very good conversation.” — Donald J. Trump We “all” call it climate change, Fonzie. Global warming is …
UNDER TWIN PEAKS, NEAR ASPEN, Colo. — What would each of my characters think of this trip? Starting with John Steinbeck: He would be amazed at how much more comfortable pickup trucks are now, with tilting steering wheels, heated seats, air conditioning, better shocks, tinted glass, etc. And how much more convenient a truck camper is. The one I stepped into the other day …
The future of Morocco may look a lot like Fatima. This 28-year-old dynamo took on the Fez establishment — the “all-male” Fez establishment — to fulfill her latest goal. She opened her five-room inn inside the medina last July and is already looking to do bigger things. Fatima (she uses only her first name), got a degree in hotel and …
ASPEN, Colo — Last night, I camped about a dozen miles from Aspen, but you would not have known that billions, even hundreds of billions, of dollars were spending themselves nearby. This morning, I drove in to check my email and post this report, but I will leave soon. I wanted a Starbucks because I knew there would be free WiFi. But, …
Sundays always remind me of my father, Charles Everett Jenkinson. He has been dead for a quarter of a century now, but Sundays, I often miss him acutely. But he would never come on such a trip, not for all the money in the world. He thought camping was very silly: Why jettison 10,000 years of improvements in comfort to …
The cemetery in the old Jewish Quarter of Fez, Morocco, is sunny and serene. And it’s entirely what you would not expect in today’s environment of news about conflicts between Muslims and Jews. The cemetery is like none I’ve seen. The area is all concrete, the graves marked by low, long mounds or larger monuments depending on the wealth of …
No internet last night, which is mostly good. But it is amazing how wired in we are and “helpless” when we are off that grid. Starbucks in Silverthorne, Colo. I thought of staying two nights at the Blue River campsite, but part of this experiment is trying a variety of experiences. I am even determined to do time in a …
GRANBLY, Colo. — So I survived the first night in the Steinbeck rig. Lots of little rituals are required. You scout your camp site. Almost nobody accepts the first option, so you circle the campground a couple of times. Later, when you have chosen the best available site or what in your panic you think is the best available site, …
Lake Bemidji State Park offers a variety of things to do for people in search of outdoor adventure. Located on the north end of Lake Bemidji in northwestern Minnesota, the park touts a sandy beach; hiking and biking trails; boat, canoe and kayak rental; a children’s playground; volleyball court and year-round naturalist programs as well as wildlife viewing and marvelous …
All the news is D-Day. The late Stephen Ambrose would be elderly now, had he lived, but he would have been part of this last great celebration of that historic day. I did not get to Sand Creek. I ran out of day. Eventually, I got to Denver — Brighton and then Aurora — and stayed in a dismal motel, …
I made a false start, but only by a couple of miles, doubled back to gather a few items, then drove south from Mandan, N.D. No destination in mind, but I reckoned I might get as far as Nebraska, certainly southern South Dakota. The great luxury of this sort of travel is that you don’t have to barrel through. I …
Moroccans are fond of saying it was the first country to recognize the fledgling United States of America. It wasn’t. That was erroneously stated in some article back in the 1950s. The first country to recognize the U.S. was France, which it probably did just to rankle the much-despised British, who, of course, had just lost their colonies. But what …
Grand Forks photographer Russ Hons has an affinity for photographing bald eagles, and there is no shortage of them in the northern Red River Valley. (Check out more photos from Russ Hons here.)
I wrote this a year ago today. I wish I could take my father-in-law, Garland Crook, fishing today. Unfortunately, his age caught up with him in the past year, and he’s now a resident of Miller Pointe Nursing home in Mandan, N.D., where at 6:30 tonight we’ll have a special program, with music and speeches and remembrances, to celebrate the …
I’m trying to imagine a dinner party hosted by Thomas Jefferson. Perfect food, cooked in the avant-garde French fashion, and a flight of fine wines. And Jefferson presiding, a man of perfect manners who seems to have no discernible ego. He does not hold forth about anything. There is nothing boisterous about him. He never calls attention to himself. In …
Morocco is the home of Casablanca, the largest city in the country, and the setting for the greatest movie of all time (not one frame of which was actually shot there because the world was having a war at the time). It is a Muslim-majority country with pockets of Christians and an ever-dwindling population of Jews. It is a kingdom …
The American League Central standings have barely shifted since the Cleveland Indians fell from a first-place tie with the Minnesota Twins on April 21. The turbulent April weather that could have crinkled a pitching staff has been forgotten. The Twins lead their division by 11.5 games. It could become a Mardi Gras season. This franchise has reached 100 wins just …
In the last decade or so, I’ve become an admirer of Jeff Daniels, the actor who came to prominence as the goofball character (with Jim Carrey) in the 1994 movie “Dumb and Dumber.” But it’s been his later work, hardly of the goofball variety, that I’ve found so compelling. Daniels was the brooding anchorman in HBO’s “The Newsroom”; the womanizing FBI …
Digging in the dirt is my therapy, and we have been doing plenty of digging these past few weeks at Red Oak House. Jim has planted 25 of his heirloom tomatoes he started by seed in March and given away his remaining seedlings. He reports that the peas and potatoes have sprouted with the long-awaited arrival of sunny weather, and …
Adam Zavalney’s 4-for-4 performance led Park River/Fordville-Lankin to it third straight North Dakota Class B state high school baseball championship, a 9-8 win over Thompson on Saturday in Fargo. Zavalney, who had two doubles and three RBI, scored the winning run on Bryce Wood’s sacrifice fly for the walkoff win. Wood was 3-4 with two doubles and three RBI. Thompson …
Wojo’s Rodeo of Greenbush, Minn., which has been hosting rodeos for more than 13 years in northern Minnesota, performed Friday and Saturday in Erskine, Minn., as part of the city’s 64th Annual Water Carnival. American Legion Post 596 of Erskine sponsored the rodeo. (Check out more photos from Russ Hons here.)
Wherever I go to talk about the Lewis and Clark Expedition, someone tries to talk me out of the idea that Meriwether Lewis committed suicide. The other day, I was in Phoenix, and someone mansplained to me that Lewis could not have done it because how do you first shoot yourself in the head and then in the gut? Everywhere …
Hi everyone. There is a little over a week left for you to send a message to my Pa to thank him for his service on Omaha Beach on D-Day. He has been touched by the letters he has received to date. We are going to read selections from these at the D-Day 75th Anniversary program. If putting a stamp …
Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., has been doing a splendid job in his efforts to help his sociopathic low IQ pagan idol, President Trump, with tariff boy’s coverup, and there is a good reason why. He’s practiced. Cramer has put in the work for whoever puts the sparkle in the eye of his inner hyena. A year ago, Kevin was proudly …
East Grand Forks Senior High took its opening game in the Minnesota Section 8AA high school baseball tournament with a 10-0 victory over Crookston on Tuesday at Stauss Park in East Grand Forks. The Pirates had advanced after defeating Bagley in a play-in game earlier in the day. The Green Wave scored seven runs in the second inning to blow …
As I walked my dog by the Catholic cemetery that borders my condo Monday morning, I heard echoes of Taps ring through the air and reflected on the dead who were being honored this past Memorial Day Weekend — men and women who gave their lives in service to our country and its highest ideals. How do we honor the …
Who would think stark realizations about shrewd capitalism and insight to human nature could come from watching nine innings of pantomime baseball? Not this little black duck, as Daffy would say during cartoons in which Bugs Bunny was the smart one and Daffy was, well, daffy. Because the Minnesota Twins have had more bad seasons than good since moving into …
Senate Bill 2001, passed by the 2019 North Dakota Legislature, is the appropriations bill for the North Dakota governor’s office. It’s eight sections long and contains an appropriation of about $4.5 million to pay the governor and lieutenant governor and their staff, their travel expenses and their office supplies. It has a line item with the governor’s salary and a …
Leo Pina to hit a walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the ninth inning to lift the F-M RedHawks to a 6-2 American Association baseball win over the Texas Airhogs on Sunday at Newman Outdoor Field in Fargo. With the win, the RedHawks improved to 6-4 while the Airhogs fell to 2-8. (Check out more photos from Russ Hons here.)
Marinara sauce can be thick and chunky or smooth and silky. Either way suits me, but if I had my druthers, the former rather than the latter would be my preference. Hardly any two of my marinara sauces are the same. But assuredly, they all contain tomatoes, garlic, some fresh basil, onion and seasoning. And they can be used on anything from …
The Panama Canal had long disappeared. The wackiest ship in the Navy had no land in sight when Ellsworth Gregor Buechel of Pittsburgh sat down for a haircut at sea. He didn’t call the vessel he was on by its rightful name, the APL-14. He called it “The Ritz Carlton”: A football-field long, unpowered ship, four decks high, towed by …
Congratulations are due Reps. Jason Dockter, Craig Headland, Michael Howe and Todd Porter and Sen. Dwight Cook, who all had the hindsight to propose a tax incentive bill that might draw companies to the Bakken to buy all of our gases — the ones cooked into our sweet luscious crude. To buy less than 100 percent of it would be rude. …