Every year or two I get re-hooked on Country-Western (CW), and in recent months I’ve had the radio set on the local radio station that plays only CW. It is interesting to listen to CW music, now and then. There is a particular dark side to the often simple down home laments. Like the guy […]
Most of my working career I represented public school teachers in union matters like negotiations and grievance processing. It was a powerful learning experience in realism. Ideals collided with unpleasant realities. Even people on the same side of an issue were frequently in conflict about how to approach the problem. My world was full of […]
Last week my wife was in conversation with a neighbor down the street. “Georgie” is a good neighbor, a nice person: one of those people you hope will be in your neighborhood. But she’s not one to rely on if you’re in some other neighborhood. She has boundaries. In her sphere, there is only one […]
Sunday one of my favorite Catholic Priests, Fr. Joe Gillespie, was recalling a 1994 visit to Mother Teresa’s Sisters of Charity in Calcutta. At the time, he was a university professor in the United States, and he came by unannounced during a heavy monsoon rain. He knocked on the door and a Nun answered. “Would […]
I have chosen the blessing (or curse) of receiving and sending lots of e-mails. I have not warmed to the banter that seems to prevail in Facebook, and I will probably never be a part of the 144-character Twitter culture. I like handwritten letters, which are essentially extinct. Open and rational conversation amongst people with […]
There was a particularly remarkable moment at the closing program of the Initiatives in French Annual Conference in Bismarck ND July 10. We had been treated to an evening of wonderful music and dance with a French flavor. The performers were Metis, Native American, African, and Caucasian. They performed ancient and modern music from West […]
“History: 1) an account of what has happened; narrative; story; tale.” Websters New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 1979 edition July 8, about 6 p.m., I arrived at Bismarck ND, where I was to attend a French in America conference. My father was 100% French-Canadian, and I’d just completed a 500 page book on his family’s history, […]
Monday, July 12, was the six month anniversary of the catastrophic earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and area in Haiti. That same day, I spent a few hours helping my Uncle and Aunt, out at their now-empty North Dakota farm. (They’ve lived in a nearby town for several years – an option they don’t like, but […]
Mr. Bigelow lives in border country Texas and grew up in rural Colorado. He responds, here, to one of those ubiquitous basically anti-immigrant – if you’re not “white like me” rants that whiz around the internet – anonymous hate speech. “Yes, I have some different thoughts on immigration than those in the letter you sent. […]
We had just settled in along the July 4 Parade Route in Afton MN, but I decided to walk back to the car to get rainwear, just in case. It was a short walk up the street, going up hill, and I was on the left side of the street when I noticed something very, […]