October 21st, 2024
By Ed Raymond
Citizens United Turned Billionaires Into Oligarchs, Dictators, and Kings
We have reached a stage in Divided States of America politics where if the Democratic Party decreed that zebras have black stripes imprinted on white bodies, the Trumplican Party would object by yelling “No!”: white stripes are strategically placed on black bodies. Then, after hearings and a filibuster or two, they would kill zebras to prove their case.
We have reached that…
September 19th, 2024
By Ed Raymond
Where will the homeless go when billionaires go to their bunkers?
Icelanders are living almost on top of volcanos but are cooled by ice, snow, and placid attitudes while hiding a keen sense of humor. But with the planet heating up and devastating windstorms, floods, hurricanes, tornados, and fires of many descriptions constantly harassing the earth’s humans, animals, and plants, they understand what will happen.
In 2019 Icelanders decided to…
August 15th, 2024
By Ed Raymond
Men have made a real mess of the world. We should try estrogen.
I didn’t bother to count the countries involved in wars because this column won’t be published for a week. But I don’t think any of the participating countries are led by a woman at this moment.
There are wars and revolutions on five of the seven continents. Not much is happening on Antarctica, although there may be an encounter or three on Oceania, the continent of thousands of…
July 18th, 2024
By Ed Raymond
How can anyone be lonely with eight billion homo sapiens on Earth?
The world seems to be in the throes of a PTSD pandemic. Even the price of happiness is going way up. Back in 2010 two Nobel Prize laureates studied the complexities of happiness and determined that in most cases $75,000 a year would buy some of it. But this figure applied only to day-to-day moods. The two experts said happiness “plateaus” at some figure depending upon the individual.…
June 20th, 2024
By Ed Raymond
Should ‘The Chosen One’ be Sentenced to Spend Months at each Level?
It’s not unusual on this planet, we have had hundreds of men and a couple of women who have used religion to become dictators and gods in countries and empires when the only god they believed in was themselves.
Think Nero, Caligula -- and his horse, Qin Shi Huang Di, Hirohito, Genghis Khan, Joe Stalin, Catherine the Great, Adolf Hitler, Kim Sung-un, and Donald Trump – I love the…
May 16th, 2024
By Ed Raymond
Is It Possible to Move from a Tent on a Sidewalk to a Garage in the Sky?
There have been wealthy people who added a car elevator to the mansion for their Bentleys so they could unload groceries close to the kitchen, but I have never seen a high-rise apartment building advertise a sky garage for each of the 62 apartments in a high-rise—including the 62nd floor penthouse. On a barrier island called Sunny Isles Beach 30 miles from Miami, a developer is…
April 16th, 2024
by Ed Raymond
According to my great-grandfather many years ago, my French ancestors migrated from Normandy to Quebec to Manitoba to Wisconsin to Minnesota over the spread of more than two centuries, finally settling in or near Little Falls and then spreading to the Twin Cities. People left Europe for two major reasons: economics and freedom of religion and freedom from religion. France had been involved in many big and small religious conflicts between religions and…
March 21st, 2024
By Ed Raymond
The Catacombs under Paris Contain the Bones of Millions of Feudalists
Sixty-five feet below the Paris streets are about 170 miles of tunnels that go through stone quarries, galleries, and ossuaries that contain the bones of six million French who died between the 9th and 18th centuries. Along the tunnel walls are ossuaries where human bones are stacked in the form of crosses, hearts, and even a structure called the Eiffel Tower. The entrance is in the…
March 21st, 2024
by Ed Raymond
Why Jerry Lee Lewis Sang: "There’s a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on"
For the last couple of months, the “Star Spangled Banner'' was not the national anthem. It was Jerry Lee Lewis’s song about sex titled “Whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on.” At the same time there was a whole lot of sex going on the continents and in the great depths of the oceans. Pope Francis even got into the act by proclaiming in St. Peter’s Square at a general audience…
March 21st, 2024
By Ed Raymond
Two Super Bowl Seats at a 60 Minute Game would Pay a Year’s College Tuition
The final seat price is in. The average seat price for the 2024 Super Bowl is $9,850, figuring in scalpers, grifters, and the like. The super rich paid as much as $66,000 for an executive skybox seat. Meanwhile, back on earth, we have 45 million American adults from 18 to 95 who owe $1.7 trillion in college student debt. The average annual tuition for public universities in…
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By Bryce Vincent HaugenFor the first nine months, the dysfunction of the Trump administration and Congress was a four-time-zone-away abstraction for a Moorhead native living in Alaska’s interior. But it became all too real when…
By Michael M. Millermichael.miller@ndsu.edu I would like to recognize some of the scholarly Germans from Russia from Canada and USA shared on the GRHC website. There are additional names not included here. If you have suggestions…
December 17-21, 7:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. matinees on Saturday and SundayThe Fargo Theatre, 314 N. Broadway, FargoCould this be the end of an era? After 26 years of doing the Holiday Soul Tour and 35 years together as a band, The…
By Sabrina Hornungsabina@hpr1.com I scroll through comment threads on the news stories in my social media feed and come across the retort, “You voted for this.” Sure the vote’s in…but when someone’s livelihood is at stake,…
By Ed Raymondfargogadfly@gmail.comWill the Vatican ever love LBGTQUIA+ with open hearts and minds? Christians have been hot and bothered by sex for 2,000 years and Catholic popes, cardinals, bishops, priests and nuns have been…
By Rick Gionrickgion@gmail.com Holiday wine shopping shouldn’t have to be complicated. But unfortunately it can cause unneeded anxiety due to an overabundance of choices. Don’t fret my friends, we once again have you covered…
By Mandy Dolneymandy@ksbsyndicate.com This cake will be on the menu at Nova Eatery through Thanksgiving served with maple crème anglaise Ice cream. It uses pumpkin pie pumpkins grown locally at Ladybug Acres and local apples grown…
By Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.com Dakotah Faye is a hip-hop artist from Minot, North Dakota, and he’s had a busy year. He’s released two albums. This summer he opened for Tech N9ne in Sturgis and will be opening for Bone…
By Greg Carlsongregcarlson1@gmail.com In “Hedda,” Nia DaCosta’s bold adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s celebrated 1891 play, the filmmaker reunites with longtime collaborator Tessa Thompson, who starred in DaCosta’s…
By Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.com Gallery 4 downtown recently celebrated its 50 year anniversary, making it one of the longest consecutively running galleries in the country. With different membership tiers, there are 17 primary…
Press release“Shakespeare with a sharpened edge.” To launch its 2025 – 2026 season, Theatre NDSU is thrilled to team up with Moorhead-based organization Theatre B to perform a co-production of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and…
By Annie Prafckeannieprafcke@gmail.com AUSTIN, Texas – As a Chinese-American, connecting to my culture through food is essential, and no dish brings me back to my mother’s kitchen quite like hotdish. Yes, you heard me right –…
By Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.comNew Jamestown Brewery Serves up Local FlavorThere’s something delicious brewing out here on the prairie and it just so happens to be the newest brewery west of the Red River and east of the…
sBy Ellie Liveranieli.liverani.ra@gmail.com The holidays are supposed to be magical: party, presents, fancy food, lights and sparks. You are looking forward to it. You work very hard, you put in long hours at work as well as at…
By Alicia Underlee NelsonProtests against President Trump’s policies and the cuts made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are planned across North Dakota and western Minnesota Friday, April 4 and…
By Vern Thompsonvern.thompson.nd7@gmail.comPersonal background and historical perspective My deep concern about tariffs stems from my background as a fourth generation North Dakota farmer. Having lived through the 1980s farm crisis…
