Joe White Mountain and his granddaughter, Tabitha Keller, who introduced us. Teaser: Joe reports first hand from an elder who was at Custer's Last Stand: the history books are wrong about how Custer died! If two families have a dispute of any kind, the older people would put on a feed and they [...]
Somewhere on this Sunday morning, church bells ring to call the faithful to kneel before a stained glass reprieve. There ain't nothin' short of dyin'Half as lonesome as the soundOn the sleepin' city sidewalksSunday mornin' comin' down Kris Kristofferson My God, the hues and textures of autumn grassy plains tipped by low morning sunlight, [...]
The real core of our lives is simplicity. There is almost zero chance that anyone who reads this blog got to experience what I did. I don't know many other things in life I can say that about. If a batch of still-warm chocolate chip cookies became sentient and knew how they were welcomed by [...]
I had multiple people say to me, ‘I have never voted for a Democrat in my life. You will be the first one I vote for'. The young redhead in a funky multi-colored jacket that looked like it might have been sewn for a theater wardrobe greeted me at the door of the equally funky [...]
East-central South Dakota is a poster of American farmland; corn, soybeans, cattle, and silos, out to every horizon, punctuated by tiny hamlets with populations that rarely exceed two digits, and a few larger towns with a gas station, a truck repair shop, a few stoplights, churches, and a school. Over the decades, the quintessential small [...]
The things that break us are not the not the core stuff. It's the ancillary stuff. An order of Benedictine nuns came to Yankton, South Dakota in the 1880's and has been a mainstay of the town along the Missouri River ever since. Today they share a campus with Mt. Marty University and the largest [...]
Were Muddy Mo’s a campus cafe there would be bad folk singers on a microphone late in the evening; and were it a bar it would be the kind with local brews on tap where everybody knows your name. Instead it is a simple coffee shop in an old brick building on one of the [...]
About four years ago I visited and reported on the personalized learning in elementary and middle schools in Harrisburg (South Dakota) School District. Since then I have pointed all of my school network colleagues to Harrisburg; if you want to see what a transformed school of today/future looks and works like, get on a plane [...]
I live near San Diego where rain any more is as rare as Leap Days; a weather report of “partly cloudy and 25% chance of rain”means that all the prayers in the world won’t get those squalls to spin south below Los Angeles". On the Dakota prairie, that same weather report means something else entirely. [...]
Back then, you told your kids to take care of their health, your house and your food. That's the three things should be your most concern. Everything else should be secondary. Mary Thomsen is a spry 95, still working every day at the local Community Action center, mostly coordinating food and supply donations to those [...]
