Unheralded

PAULA MEHMEL: Shoot the Rapids — Oh, Lord It’s Hard To Be Humble

When I interviewed with the Emanuel Call Committee, I was completely honest with them. I told them if the wanted a perfect pastor, who was always put together, they should not call me. However, if they wanted someone who was flawed and broken, limping through life, relying on the grace of God, then I might be the right choice. Today …


Unheralded

RUSS HONS: Photo Gallery — University Of North Dakota Vs. Western Michigan University

Despite outshooting Western Michigan University 31-19, the University of North Dakota men’s hockey team fell 2-0 to the Broncos on Friday night in National Collegiate Hockey Conference play in Ralph Engelstad Arena. The two teams played scoreless hockey for two periods before Josh Passolt and Colt Conrad (empty net) tallied in the third period to give WMU the win. Goalie …


CHEF JEFF: One Byte At A Time — Barbecued Pheasant

Fall is perhaps my favorite season of the year. The reason for my fondness is that I get to combine three of my favorite pastimes — gardening, hunting and cooking. The past couple of months have been especially satisfying. I finished my gardening, which started last March when tomato, kale and pepper seeds were planted indoors; canned more than a …

RUSS HONS: Photo Gallery — University Of North Dakota Vs. University Of Kentucky

The University of Kentucky handed the University of North Dakota men’s basketball team its first loss of the season Thursday night in Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky., by a score of 96-58. PJ Washington scored a game-high 25 points and added seven rebounds to help the No. 10 Wildcats (2-1) over the Fighting Hawks (2-1). North Dakota was led by …

TOM COYNE: Back In Circulation — The Fresh Rinse of Bull Air

Jimmy Butler earned his basketball bravado playing for the Chicago Bulls. Unfortunately when he joined the Minnesota Timberwolves, he was mostly just full of bull. Oh, there’s no doubt Butler is a baller. But sometimes there’s addition by subtraction. When the disgruntled dribbler was finally traded to the Philadelphia 76ers on Saturday, along with injured rookie Justin Patton, the Wolves …

RON SCHALOW: Does North Dakota Really Need Rob Port?

“Does North Dakota Really Need Democrats?” read Rob Port’s headline on the Fargo Forum’s Sayanythingblog. At first, I hoped he didn’t waste a lot of time coming up with that stupid question. Then I realized the Port is probably one of those stable geniuses who ask stupid questions. A game-changer. Let’s discuss this. First of all, is it Democrats like …

JIM THIELMAN: In Our Family, Even The Bigamist Was A Veteran

This blog was originally posted on Unheralded.fish’s Facebook page Monday. Ah, Veterans Day. It did not exist by that name the day I was born. But has every day since. That’s my slim contribution. Along with being a No. 19 draft choice in the Vietnam lottery. The closest I have come to winning a lottery. Then the Paris Peace Accord …

RON SCHALOW: Politics Of Race And Fear Gave Cramer The Win

There were plenty of reasons that would provoke a normal North Dakotan to vote for the bigoted puffy suit of peacock feathers known as Kevin Cramer over the impossibly more competent, intelligent and productive Heidi Heitkamp. Mainly it was the letter behind Heitkamp’s name that was a provocation. Cramer had no record, so he relied on the letter “T” for …

LILLIAN CROOK: WildDakotaWoman — Homage To Col. Paul Southworth Bliss On The 100th Anniversary Of Armistice Day

By Lillian Crook and Jim Fuglie As many of you know, Jim and I have a fascination with a North Dakota poet named Paul Southworth Bliss, and we are writing his biography. For the 100th Anniversary of Armistice Day, we wrote an accounting of his military service, from my research. Joining the legions of Americans sent to France to join the …

JIM FUGLIE: View From The Prairie — John Wishek, ‘Father of McIntosh County,’ Charged With Espionage

This story in our World War I Centennial series is written by Dr. Gordon L. Iseminger, who teaches European history at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. His recent research is on the German-Russians of North Dakota’s McIntosh County during World War I. By Gordon Iseminger Known first as the Great War, World War I broke out in 1914. …

RON SCHALOW: Blogger Without A Cause

“If Heidi Heitkamp loses, what is Forum columnist Rob Port going to write about over the next six years?” — Jim Shaw It’s always the kids who suffer the most unless they’re surrounded by metal chain-link fencing which is as insufferable as it gets according to senator to be Kevin Cramer an expert on child confinement for some reason. After six …

JIM FUGLIE: View From The Prairie — Money Can’t Buy Me Love

As the Beatles sang in their 1964 hit, “Money Can’t Buy Me Love,” Sen. Heidi Heitkamp’s millions of dollars collected in the wake of her vote against Trump Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh weren’t enough to sway North Dakota’s Republican bias, and she took areal thumping in her race against Congressman Kevin Cramer for the U.S. Senate. Midterm elections are notorious …

CLAY JENKINSON: The Midterm Election Of 2018

So what did the midterm election of 2018 tell us? I’m going to try to make sense of it from a purely analytical view. If, as President Trump said repeatedly, he was on the ballot in 2018, the results are mixed. The election was certainly not a ringing endorsement of his character, behavior, policies and the first two years of …

TIM MADIGAN: Anything Mentionable — One Of Life’s Greatest Challenges: Befriending The One In The Mirror

Last year, grief therapist Patrick O’Malley and I published “Getting Grief Right: Finding Your Story of Love in the Sorrow of Loss.” We suggest in the book that there is no right or wrong way to grieve, that each person’s experience of mourning is as unique as a fingerprint and that, therefore, there are no reliable models, no steps and stages …

JIM FUGLIE: View From The Prairie — Dr. Quain: A Hero To Nurses And Savior Of Soldiers

This story in our World War I Centennial series is written by Joseph T. Stuart, Ph.D., associate professor of history at the University of Mary in Bismarck. By Joseph T. Stuart Although the U.S. did not enter the Great War until 1917, a number of Bismarck residents left to serve in the conflict before then, fighting alongside British troops or as …

TONY J BENDER: That’s Life — A Car Ride For Life

Bob and I sat, our motorcycles idle, among a quiet group of veterans, waiting for stragglers. But no one came late. Most of us had been there early enough to stretch our legs. A few of us smoked. The veil of fog faded away from the black and green hues of the Black Hills. It looked like rain. Hell, it …

JIM FUGLIE: View From The Prairie — ‘The Specter’ Doughboy: Thomas Rogers

This story in our World War I Centennial series is written by Carole Barrett, PhD, professor emerita of American Indian Studies at the University of Mary in Bismarck. Calvin Grinnell is a historian for the Mandan Hidatsa and Arikara Nation in North Dakotya. He is a member and past president of the board of the State Historical Society of North Dakota. …

JIM FUGLIE: View From The Prairie — North Dakota Soldiers Were First-Generation Americans

This story in our World War I Centennial series is written by Joseph Jastrzembski, professor of History at Minot State University. By Joseph Jastrzembski When the great powers of Europe went to war in 1914, they drew not only on their own populations but those of their subject colonies around the globe. This meant that the armies of Europe represented …

LILLIAN CROOK: WildDakotaWoman — Helmer Hovick: My Family Link To World War I

On this 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, the remembrance of my family link to the war takes me back in time. My Grandma Lilly’s brother, Helmer Hovick, a true Norwegian bachelor farmer who lived in the Dakotas in the years before the war, was a World War I doughboy. He served as a courier. When he …

JIM FUGLIE: View From The Prairie — North Dakota Nurses In The Great War

This story in our World War I Centennial series is written by Barbara Handy-Marchello, Ph.D., is a historian and writer for North Dakota Studies who taught Women’s History and the American West at the University of North Dakota for 15 years. By Barbara Handy-Marchello Sarah Sand of Grand Forks was one of nearly 300 nurses from North Dakota who volunteered …

JIM FUGLIE: View From The Prairie — Great War Witnesses Startling Birth Of New Deities

This story in our World War I Centennial series is written by Joseph T. Stuart, Ph.D., who is associate professor of history at the University of Mary in Bismarck. By Joseph T. Stuart It desecularized the state and, instead of religion, made politics the highest expression of human values. The mobilization of entire societies during the Great War dramatically increased expectations …

LILLIAN CROOK: WildDakotaWoman — More Notes From My Wild Life: Owls

Late in October, my daughter and I traveled to Theodore Roosevelt National Park, where magic happens for us no matter what see or do. We go there whenever we can. This time, we were there to join in with a research project that has taken place there for several years — banding Northern Saw-whet Owls. I assisted with this project …

JIM FUGLIE: View From The Prairie — North Dakota Rhodes Scholar Was An Eyewitness To History

Today’s story in our World War I Centennial series is written by Tracy Potter, Bismarck, who travels widely with Laura Anhalt and writes in retirement from a career in heritage tourism. He is author of “Sheheke: Mandan Indian Diplomat” and “Steamboats in Dakota Territory.” By Tracy Potter North Dakota’s sixth Rhodes Scholar was David Nelson of Mayville, who went off …

TONY J BENDER: That’s Life — Glad When It’s Over

I’m writing this before the election, so I don’t know what happened, which, come to think of it, is pretty much the norm for me, anyway. If the Democrats won big nationally, as an avowed enemy of the people, I may be under the sheets, contentedly smoking a post-election cigarette. Any celebration will be short-lived, however. Even if Nancy Pelosi …

RUSS HONS: Photo Gallery — University Of North Dakota Vs. University Of Wisconsin

Jacob Bernard-Docker’s second goal of the weekend gave the University of North Dakota men’s hockey team a 3-2 overtime win over the University of Wisconsin on Saturday night in Ralph Engelstad Arena and a sweep of the weekend series. The Fighting Hawks ( 4-2-1) shut out the Badgers 5-0 Friday night. Bernard-Docker also scored in the Friday night win over the …

JIM FUGLIE: View From The Prairie — The War That No One Wanted And Everyone Started: The Origins Of World War I

Today’s story in our World War I Centennial series is written by Albert I. Berger, professor of history at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. By Albert I. Berger Europe in 1914 had been at peace, more or less, for most of a century. That was remarkable. Europe had been an arena of war since the destruction of …

RUSS HONS: Photo Gallery — University Of North Dakota Vs. University Of Wisconsin

Captain Rhett Gardner scored three goals on a night that honored another University of North Dakota captain to lead the Fighting Hawks men’s hockey team ( 4-2-1) to a 5-0 win over the University of Wisconsin on Friday night in Ralph Engelstad Arena. Before the game, North Dakota honored former team captain Jim Archibald (1981-85) who was recognized during the pregame introductions as …

RUSS HONS: Photo Gallery — University Of North Dakota Women’s Vs. Purdue University Fort Wayne

The University of North Dakota women’s volleyball team closed out its home schedule Saturday, falling 3-0 (25-22, 25-21, 25-23), to Purdue Fort Wayne in Betty Engelstad Sioux Center. The Fighting Hawks (14-16 overall, 6-8 in the Summit League) have just one match remaining the regular season, holding the sixth-and-final spot that qualifies them for the conference’s postseason tournament entering the …

TERRY DULLUM: The Dullum File — Ghosts Of An Election Past

The first election I ever voted in was by absentee ballot in October 1970. I was home on leave from the Army.  Sen. Quentin Burdick, a longtime member of North Dakota’s Democratic NPL Party, was running for re-election against Republican Congressman Thomas Kleppe. At the explicit request of President Richard Nixon, Kleppe was risking a safe House seat, hoping for …

JIM FUGLIE: View From The Prairie — Here’s What The Democrats Meant To Say, I Think

You might have seen, or heard reference to, a goofy little ad North Dakota Democrats ran on Facebook the other day about hunters. I think it was only up on Facebook a few hours because the wording was a little unclear, and it was generally misunderstood by those who read it, and the party got a little heat from some …

JIM FUGLIE: View From The Prairie — World War I Centennial Remembers The Forgotten War

Today’s story in our World War I Centennial series is written by Darrell Dorgan, a documentary film producer from Bismarck who is an Emmy-nominated and award-winning journalist and chairs the North Dakota World War I Centennial Commission. By Darrell Dorgan When I was a youngster growing up in Regent, N.D., there was an elderly World War I veteran who, weather …

RON SCHALOW: Cramer Approves All Trump Messages Or What A Fool Believes 

“A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.” — Alexander Hamilton Years ago, when walking down Main Street in Minot — it’s really on an incline — I regularly saw an unfortunate man with baggy gray pants and suspenders who angrily yelled at parked cars. Had I promised to support anything the short old man said or did, …

JIM FUGLIE: View From The Prairie — The Centennial Of ‘The War To End All Wars’

In 2017, the National World War I Centennial Commission asked North Dakota to establish a State World War I Centennial Commission here. All but two of the 50 states had functioning commissions, but North Dakota and South Dakota did not. Darrell Dorgan, a member of the American Battle Monuments Commission, was asked to serve as coordinator. As a member of the …

TIM MADIGAN: Anything Mentionable — A Memory Of Squirrel Hill: Mister Rogers And The Woman In Church

By now you’ve probably heard that Saturday’s synagogue slaughter took place in the same Pittsburgh neighborhood, Squirrel Hill, where Fred Rogers lived and worshipped himself. His spirit is now often invoked as the heartbroken city struggles to heal. The grim news for me brought back a much different memory of that place, from another autumn morning 23 years ago. I …

RUSS HONS: Photo Gallery — University Of North Dakota Vs. University Of Minnesota-Crookston

Five players scored in double figures to lead the University of North Dakota women’s basketball team to a 74-58 exhibition win over visiting University of Minnesota-Crookston on Tuesday night in Betty Engelstad Sioux Center. Faith Dooley led the way for the Fighting Hawks with 13 points, followed by Melissa Dailey (11), Lexi Klabo (10), Jill Morton (10) and Bailey Strand …

LILLIAN CROOK: WildDakotaWoman — Autumn Wrap-up At Red Oak House: Garden Notes No. 50

On Sunday, a sunny, pleasant, blue-sky day, we wrapped up things in the yard at Red Oak House. The eponymous tree and the others in the yard put out millions of leaves and most have now fallen. Sadly, odd weather this year caused most to turn an odd, brittle green and fall from the trees without regaling us with color. …

TONY BENDER: “Badass Grandmas’ Take Measure 1 Fight On The Road

The “Badass Grandmas” toured south-central North Dakota on Oct. 23, with stops in Napoleon, Wishek, Ashley, Hague, Strasburg and Linton. Dina Butcher, a former Republican candidate for North Dakota ag commissioner, and Ellen Chaffee, a Democrat and former president of Valley City State College and Mayville State College, are the grandmas who represent North Dakotans for Public Integrity, a coalition …

RON SCHALOW: Heidi Kicks Kevin’s Butt

Executive Summary: Heidi Heitkamp walked over Kevin Cramer like an Irish setter wearing spiked golf shoes Friday eve. But all you get when that happens is a deflated, puffed-up bantam rooster, which makes for little more than a lumpy throw rug with a weak mind and sweaty palms. “Smirky” claimed to be for civility in politics, while his roly-poly role …

RUSS HONS: Photo Gallery — University Of North Dakota Vs. University Of Minnesota

Colton Poolman scored two goals, including the game-winner, to lead the University of North Dakota men’s hockey team to a 3-1 victory over archrival University of Minnesota in the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame Game on Saturday night in sold-out Orleans Arena in Las Vegas. Poolman’s first goal, his first of the season, tied the game in the second period …

JIM FUGLIE: View From The Prairie — The Last Hunt

I just learned this morning of the death last April of an old friend, a fellow named Tim Williams, from Ohio. I say “friend” even though I only knew him a little. His dad, Tommy Williams, also from Ohio, and my dad, “Doc” Fuglie from Hettinger, N.D., were friends and occasional hunting buddies. Tommy loved to hunt pheasants and ducks …

RON SCHALOW: Super Crump Bred To Scare Gullible White People Out Of Their Bejeebers

And some of their money. Bejeebers can be had for a small bag of low-quality spring garage sand. No dust will be accepted until further notice. GEORGE SOROS BUYS MONTANA!!! Kevin Cramer has sold himself as the thrift-sized Donald Trump. He has also taken the Cult45 oath and gently handed the rose to a forever blushing Donnie T. So there …

JIM FUGLIE: View From The Prairie — Sen. Heitkamp? Congressman Schneider? Maybe …

OK, against my better judgment, again, I’m going to weigh in on the 2018 election, just more than a week hence. Here goes. I told Democratic-NPL Congressional candidate Mac Schneider on Thursday that if Heidi Heitkamp wins re-election to the U.S. Senate on Nov. 6, he can expect to head to Washington, D.C., with her, as our next U.S. congressman. …