Penance Playlist 2025 Mother Maybelle Carter. Nanci Griffith (everything she ever wrote and sang and recorded and performed). Sara Watkins. Lucinda Williams. Brandi Carlisle. Gillian Welch. Phoebe Snow. Carly Simon. Tanya Savory. Joni Mitchell. Patty Loveless. Katie Lee. Celeste Krenz. Lucy Kaplansky. Sarah Jarosz. Janis Ian. Tanya Tucker. Billie Holiday. Loretta Lynn. Tish Hinojosa. Iris DeMent. Shawn Colvin. Dolly Parton. …
Although the Grandma for whom I’m named was Norwegian, I love to make these Swedish meatballs. Swedish Meatballs Meatballs: Two large leeks (the white portion, grated) 2 teaspoons of butter (I use good butter, preferably Irish butter) ⅔ cup of milk 4 to 5 slices of bread, crusts removed (I use a grain bread when I have it on hand.) …
“The Moon Comes Walking On with Me,” by Colonel Paul Southworth Bliss,December 21, 1931. Original woodcuts by Harold J. Matthews. From an inscribed copy of “The Arch of Spring.” And some Christmas memories of my own. While I watch the neighborhood kids sledding today in the sunshine, I was taken back to a thousand memories of sledding and skiing and …
The Journey of the Magi by T.S. Eliot A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.’ And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory, Lying down in the melting snow. There were times we regretted The …
My December 2024 Letter to the Editors of North Dakota newspapers Yes, the president can designate a national monument with the stroke of a pen, using the Antiquities Act. Thank you, Theodore Roosevelt, for creating that act. Famously, TR arrived on a train and lived and ranched in the North Dakota Badlands. (Later his wife, Edith, and his sister would …
Enter the North Dakota Librarian by Gary Gildner Paris Review Spring 2002 whose eyes are a fair, spiky green I only see on my hands and knees at spring’s initial offerings, how can she help me? I say I seek the bloom clarity achieves fending off confusion’s weedy waylays upon rich indirection, I hope I won’t be much trouble. Her lips forming …
“Winter Rainbow,” by Paul Southworth Bliss, from his book of poetry Cirrus From the West published in 1935. Out of the oakland, Out of the pineland, Near the time of sunset, I came to the un-treed plains. On the frost-struck air There lay two segments Of a mighty wheel, Sunk to the sun-hub In the glistening prairie. The inner ring …
On this date 44 years ago, I cast my first vote for president of the United States. I had eagerly awaited this date, having listened to discussions about civic duties within my own family and extended families, having read newspapers and Life magazines and more while growing up — I was an “early reader” — having listened to my elders …
TR Birthday Shenanigans: I Wander the Northern Badlands Solo
The autumn migration is on here in North Dakota. I also have migrated my writing hobby to another platform as I streamline my life.
During the heat of the Thursday afternoon, I unearthered my late Mother’s needles and embroidery thread and got creative.
Some people read. Some people talk about reading. Some people write books. Some people edit books. Some people buy books they never get around to reading. Some people talk about hair. Some people don’t care about hair. Some people get their hair cut now and then. Some people clean. Some people don’t. Some people empty the garbage. Some people recyle. …
I have written many essays about the Little Missouri River area, including The Crooked Little Missouri River and Its Headwaters. Today I have in mind current sources of information on this sweet river such as gage height and weather forecast. Marmarth https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/06335500 Medora https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/06336000/ Watford City https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/06337000 Also interesting and useful links from NOAA for forecasts & more Marmarth https://water.noaa.gov/gauges/mthn8 Medora https://water.noaa.gov/gauges/mdan8 …
Today I am reminded that I was raised by women who did not have the right to vote!
“… the certainty of countless miles of empty country and open sky and wind and night on every side of me. It’s the happiest feeling I ever have. And when I am most enjoying the loveliest things the world is full of, it’s then I am most homesick for just that emptiness and that untainted air.” — Willa Cather
The vibe, the music, the food and the company was mighty fine. Home to harvest.
“Campaigning with Crook,” by Capt. Charles King, (excerpts), Harper and Brothers, 1890 “At 2 p.m. we bivouac again, and begin to growl at this will-o’-wisp business. The night, for August (1876), is bitter cold. Ice forms on the shallow pools … and the thermometer was zero at daybreak. “The grandest country in the world for Indian and buffalo now … …
Red-headed Woodpecker (nesting) in a dead cottonwood at the Theodore Roosevelt National Park North Unit group site. Bull snake spotted slithering down the tree, no doubt having made an attempt to eat eggs or fledglings. House Wren. Bobolink. Common Yellowthroat. Field Sparrow. Sprague’s Pipit. Prairie Falcon. Rock Wren. Spotted Towhee. Lazuli Bunting. Yellow-breasted Chat. Red-eyed Vireo. American Robin. Grasshopper Sparrow. …
Lark Buntings and Meadowlark everywhere. Scarcely a vehicle. Power River. Power River bridge
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 …
Although I can no longer untangle when I decided to learn more about Ruth and Clell Goebel Gannon, I credit my friend, Ken Rogers of Mandan, N.D., for piquing my interest to the point at which I started collecting their books and admiring their prose and poetry. Ken and the inimitable Kevin Carvell of Mott, N.D., who quite possibly has …
“Some of the old shepherds or men in the villages carve ornate sheep or sheepdog heads … to decorate their crooks, thought the best of these are never used for work but are simply for show. I will wave my crook to get the tup’s attention in the sale ring, and tickle it gently under its nose to get it …
Again my Mother comes to me in a dream: My hair is long, down to my waist long. I wake up and my hair is long, but not down to my waist, which it has never been, which is silly. Hers as a young girl was. When I was a little girl, mine was thin and my older sister’s hair …
It took me almost 60 years to return to Hawaii, but I finally can say I have. Home from a 31-day trip to Hawaii, California, New Mexico and Arizona, we’ve spent the better part of two days unpacking and catching up on mail. After four states, 10 flights, four rental cars and a whole bunch of hotel rooms, I don’t …
“The Badlands Call” By Clell Gannon Land of a thousand voices Beckoning unto me, Land of the zigzag valleys Shadowed in history. Land of a thousand coulees, Pastures without the bars, Land of a weird beauty Under a million stars. WildDakotaWoman will be on hiatus until sometime in 2023.
“The other morning, when the scorching sun had shot the mercury up to the hundred mark, we got to reminiscing with one of Minot’s real old-timers, and gleaned some interesting old-time stories that we will now pass on to our readers. We got to talking about ‘pigs’. Thirty or 40 years ago, Minot had a lot of pigs, but many …
When I was a kid in Slope County, North Dakota, the rattlesnakes on our place were abundant. The snakes slithered their way from the den on the rocky hills surrounding our place to Deep Creek, back and forth, on a route that frequently took them through our yard. My late mother could kill rattlesnakes with the best of them. Mother …
I don’t even need a map. Just point me west. It wasn’t until the next day, after I was home again, that I realized that — serendipitously — my retreat had taken place on President Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday. What I knew was that I needed to go. Go. Go. Go. Away to the Badlands. So I went. To the northern …
The following from “Prairie Mosaic: An Ethnic Atlas of Rural North Dakota,” William C. Sherman, 2nd edition: “A number of Jewish individuals, at least fifteen, filed on homestead lands about ten miles north of Flasher between 1902 and 1906. Assisted by a Jewish ‘back to the land’ organization, these early settlers located in DeVault Township in Morton County. … Within …
(Posted with the permission of my sister-in-law, Jill, a mostly Norwegian North Dakotan.) No recipe. Hutterite chicken first and foremost. Cook for hours to create chicken stock. Remove chicken. Add chopped celery, onion and carrots. I then add cubes of raw potatoes … then cream. Lots of it. After the potatoes have cooked. Mix knoephla noodle recipe as follows: 6 …
Having been inspired by Laura Anhalt a few years ago, I have slowly been acquiring old metal coolers for outside storage of seeds for my bird feeders. This in my attempt to foil the squirrels who have for all the years we’ve lived at Red Oak House busily chewed through every other container, mostly tubs made of thick rubber. Yes, …
I like dark chocolate. I played basketball in high school. Mostly I warmed the bench. Once I “made” a basket for the opposing team, Hettinger. At the time, I wondered why lots of people were cheering. Late in his life, my father, in a conversation with me, ruefully admitted, “Yeah, my kids were never great athletes.” My mother played basketball, …
A pilgrimage to Nashville, an intersection of culture, education, and craziness, such as it ever has been and ever shall be, where Jim and I attended Americanafest 2022 and reacquainted ourselves with A Big City. https:/Nashville Skyline was one of our many earworms We left City Winery to walk the neighborhood now called The Gulch (the railroad area of town) …
Gingras Trading Post SHS Oak Lawn Church SHS Home to the garden and rain in the gauge.
A hint of autumn in the air, with the crickets singing, some cool evenings again, windows open, vegetables ripening, peak summer perennials waning, notices of hunting season openers, end-of-summer-chores and — again, again, again— a need for rain.
This all comes together, I promise. Something I heard my father say countless times: “Two heads are better than one even, when one is a goat head.” For a time in our Army life, we lived in El Paso, Texas, and when I heard this phrase, I thought my parents were talking about the thorny weed that was called “goathead” …
You are darned tootin’ I visited the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace when in Savannah, Ga., about 10 years ago. And the Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home nearby. The Pathe video of O’Connors’s chickens she trained to walk backward is a classic and you can watch it here. I also spotted some headstones in the Savannah cemeteries of my paternal ancestors. (Yup my paternal ancestors arrived from …
I’m home from the Badlands of North Dakota. Rain makes all the difference. In my lifetime, I’ve seen it this green, but not for a good long while. After these years of drought, the wildflowers are exploding. I don’t remember seeing so many scoria lilies (10-petal blazing star, aka Mentzelia Decapetala in the southern Badlands before). Oh and Lazuli Buntings everywhere.
On Friday, I received postcards in the mail that my Mother and I had written decades ago to my grandparents at P.O. Box 172 Slope County, N.D. My Mother’s was in her Copperplate handwriting, addressed to her parents. Mine was in the handwriting of a little girl, addressed to my grandparents. My cousins are going through my aunt’s stuff and …
