Last Word

And Then The Illegal Bridge Becomes Legal

April 17th, 2019

Photograph by Jim Fuglie

It seems like the threats to North Dakota’s Badlands never cease. Let’s go back and revisit Wylie Bice. He’s the rogue, rich, rancher up in Dunn County, on the eastern edge of the Badlands, who’s built himself a private bridge on public land, without permission, over the Little Missouri State Scenic River. Now it appears he is going to get away with nothing more than a slap on the hands and a little dip into his very big pocketbook.

I’ve written about him before. After making a…

‘Teddy’s Walmart’ Comes to Medora

April 3rd, 2019

Medora - photograph by Sabrina Hornung

“(My) Father always had regarded making money as of secondary importance compared to moral values and one’s usefulness to the community.” – Bernard Baruch

“Take no credit, give everything to a foundation, and don’t even let the foundation bear your name.” – Harold Schafer/Larry Woiwode

“Medora’s Rough Riders Hotel appears to be the only (Negro Motorist) Green Book-approved establishment still in existence in North Dakota.” – Bismarck Tribune, 01/27/19

“I have…

In Pursuit of Culture: Bacon and Beer

April 3rd, 2019

By Zach Nerpel
zachnerpel@gmail.com

Surely, it wasn’t lutefisk all the way down, lefse or friendly attitudes. There had to be something more to our Upper Midwestern, white culture. I’d done extensive scientific research into the regions of our Great Country™ which led to intriguing, broad generalizations that we just couldn’t match. The East - old America, the melting pot. Commerce and tall buildings. Mafiosos, hot dog vendors.The West - manifest destiny, everything from surfing to…

A New Scheme to Change the Name of the State?

March 6th, 2019

The new(est) North Dakota logo

I’ve got a problem. I need to write a column that is going to be kind of critical of three people I like, and I’m trying to figure out how to do it without making them all angry at me. Their names are Sara, Doug and Marvin. Also, I’m not sure I want to be critical of what they are doing, or have already done, except that they’ve all done some weird stuff and somebody needs to tell the story. So I’m just going to start typing and see what comes out.

It’s about Rep. Marvin…

Our last communal misery

February 27th, 2019

Pinning the nose on Old Man Winter - photograph by C.S. Hagen

By Zach Nerpel
zachnerpel@gmail.com

The very air seeks to betray us. Temperatures this season have fallen well into the negative teens and twenties and the oxygen on which we rely has become fatal if sought outdoors. To simply exist has become painful.

Falling snow blurs our vision at night only to amass and blind us in the morning when it reflects our good friend, the sun, into our sleepy, innocent eyes. And if not, the clouds conspire to withhold our beacon of light for days on end.…

One Man’s “Deep State” is Another Man’s “Deep Doo Doo”

February 21st, 2019

“…the root cause of the poverty of Third World peasants is their powerlessness—their lack of power to alter the social structures responsible for their poverty. By buttressing these social structures directly (as in Chile and Guatemala) and indirectly (through national and international aid organizations), the United States has perpetuated rather than alleviated…”world hunger”…The failure of aid programs to narrow the gap between rich nations and poor is that…aid has been…

Portals, Blue Laws, and Roller Skates

February 13th, 2019

Roller skate - photograph by Cara Cody Braun

By Cara Cody-Braun
cara.braun@wyndmereschools.org

I am not much of a science fiction fan, but I’m a sucker for a story with a portal. Who hasn’t dreamed of entering a different world? Alice’s fall down the rabbit hole in “Alice in Wonderland” led to the most intriguing encounters. For me though, the idea of going to a different time period is most attractive. That’s why I have Diana Gabaldon’s “Outlander” series on my need to read list. Like most people, I loved the…

What Left Wing Conspiracy? What Left Wing?

February 6th, 2019

“(Søren) Kierkegaard…has opened our eyes to the shallowness of much of our pseudo-Christian life, and to the outright deception in politics which Christianity has been made to serve.”
- William Hubben

“The people starve because their superiors eat too much in taxes. The more laws there are, the more thieves and bandits will multiply.”
– Lao Tzu

“I thought it went without saying that when the Soviet Union collapsed and the eastern states opened up, we would be plagued by a…

“Affordable” Education and Health Care trump Nihilism and Reaction

January 23rd, 2019

“And now what is better, that our fatherland should be a Republican or a monarchical state?...Ask the rich for the solution, and they will love an aristocracy best, ask the people and they prefer a democracy; only the kings prefer a monarchy. How then is it possible that almost the whole globe is governed by monarchs?... But, truly, the real reason is…that men are very rarely worthy to govern themselves.”
– Voltaire, 1745

“…once fascists came to power in Germany and Italy, they…

The Infantile Politics Of Compulsive Trump Bashing

January 16th, 2019

President Donald Trump in Fargo - photograph by C.S. Hagen

By Gary Olson
olsong@moravian.edu

"People spend so much time mocking Trump or waiting for him to be impeached. And the danger with this kind of obsession with a single person is that you don’t see the system that produced him."
— Arunhati Roy

National Security Adviser John Bolton is criss-crossing the Middle East to engage in damage control, or what The New York Times derisively termed “clearing up after his boss.” Washington’s war crimes’ partners are being told that Trump…

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