After a courageous battle with old age, my father-in-law, Bernie Lesnar, died recently, and my wife would like to share a few of her thoughts and memories about her dad with you. “Praise be Jesus Christ. May all His good blessings shower upon all of you!” is how my father began all his correspondence, whether it be a letter to his parents while in basic training or the cards he sent his children…
Worth a read on America’s 250th…The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them,…
On June 8th, 1996, Dawn hitched her wagon to this donkey. Or as Father Leonard Savelkoul, the priest that presided over the hitching ceremony would have said when he was Mr. Savelkoul, presiding over History and Shop classes at Burke Central High School, she married “Some Rufus.” I suppose more accurately, Dawn and this Rufus consolidated their individual wagons into one and hitched it to an idea.…
When I was a wee lad, sometime around the 77th year of the last century, my dad got a job at the grain elevator in Palermo. Palermo, North Dakota, not Palermo, Sicily. Although, for a 5-year-old who has nothing to do but stare out the window of a Butterfinger colored Ford Econoline and bicker with a little brother, the 50 mile move from Lignite to Palermo, North Dakota seemed roughly the…
The great-grandson of the Magic 8-Ball, the Google Machine, tells me that “mayday…mayday…mayday”, the international distress signal used by aircraft and ships to indicate imminent danger to life, originated from a phonetical pronunciation of the French phrase m’aider, which means “help me”. The dusty but trusty Funk & Wagnall defines “imminent” as something unpleasant that is certain to happen…
There’s a man that I’ve chanced to see a few times over the past year or so standing on the northwest corner of 5th Avenue and Main Street in Rapid City holding a homemade sign, smiling kindly, and waving at the passing cars. The man appears to be in his 50s, appears to be pleasant, kind and largely unassuming, and the sign appears to be a 3x3 foot portion of what was once a cardboard box. The…
I recently read “The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl” by Timothy Egan. A good read. The book came out in 2006, but I must have missed it while Dawn and I were earlobe deep in what I now recognize as our “best hard time”. That time when we were parents to little kids. That time when the gaps between the ends seemed as if they would never meet.…
We all play a part, or I suppose, more accurately, we have the opportunity to play a part. Some take that opportunity, some don’t. This became especially apparent to me last week while Dawn and I were rambling around Ireland for a week. Those that shared a bit of their time, shared a bit of themselves, took it upon themselves to play their part…they made our trip. Thinking back to the various…
It’s amazing how much you learn about something when it suddenly is vying for a large amount of your attention. Raising kids, taking care of a dog, trying to distinguish between food poisoning and stomach flu. The first thing I learned was that while it is often called the “stomach flu”, it is viral gastroenteritis, not influenza, and often occurs through the “fecal-oral route” when infected…
It’s that time of year when college baseball teams, whose home fields reside in northern climates, head south to play in the sunshine. Play is important in life. Recently, a bus from a small community college in Iowa, taking 33 young men to play in the sunshine of Arkansas, left the road and rolled. Many of the young men received injuries of varying severity, and one tragically died at the scene.…
Google tells me that gaslighting is “an insidious form of emotional abuse and manipulation where the abuser causes a victim to doubt their own memory, perception, and sanity to gain power. The term stems from the 1938 play Gas Light (and 1944 film), where a husband attempts to convince his wife she is insane by constantly changing the reality around her, such as dimming the gaslights.” We have an…
For as long as the written word has been in existence, there has most likely been writers of those words adopting pen names, or a “nom de plume”, as you would say if you enjoy sounding pretentious and hoity-toity. Try it…nom de plume…nom de plume… If you were to choose a nom de plume to write under what would you choose? Since my middle name, Charles, has never gotten much play time, perhaps I…
Another semester in the books. They seem to gather speed as the years go by. I enjoy attending commencement and witnessing the conclusion of one chapter and the beginning of another. I find it meaningful to see the students, their friends, family, and loved ones coming together one final time before scattering in the wind to attend to life. One of my colleagues has been in charge of “guest…
For as long as I’ve known what a visit to the dentist for a checkup and cleaning meant, I have religiously flossed my teeth two or three times a day for at least two days prior to my appointment. The other 363-days are hit or miss…mostly miss. This same logic applies to the reason why I schedule my yearly dermatologist checkup in the winter, so as to give the evidence of my unprotected summer sun…
If you spend any time on any sort of social media, you have probably noticed the massive influx of AI generated videos parading around. If you haven’t noticed, “I’ve got some ocean front property in Arizona” that I’d like to visit with you about. I’ve developed an allergy to sharks and need to move further inland. My loss your gain. It’s a beautiful spot, “from my front porch you can see the sea.”…
On November 5th, 1995, our daughter, Sierra McKay, exited the womb at St. Lukes Hospital in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Dawn, the owner of the womb in which Sierra exited, was 24-years old, and myself, a bewildered bystander to the entire womb exiting event, was the ripe old age of 23. Just a couple of college kids one minute and parents the next. A “Mom” and a “Dad” forever more. Although 30 years…
“Indoctrination” is defined as “the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.” Over the years…decades…centuries…many busybody entities, groups and individuals, for whom peddling outrage to the masses is a business and/or hobby, have rolled this old chestnut out and flung it at institutions of higher education. Like chimps flinging feces, they beat their chests…
Although the daytime temperatures still feel like summer, the daytime allotment of sunlight, the rotation towards the south of my “morning sun” chair, and the shift in color palette of the trees indicate fall is upon us. Soon our sun kissed skin will fade a shade or two, once domesticated bikini lines will run feral under the cover of denim, and our favorite flannels will emerge, disfigured with…
Being a human is a lot of work, especially if you happen to be a human that resides in a human body. The upkeep is ridiculous…feeding it, washing it, clothing it, moving it, resting it, deodorizing it, odorizing it…its needs are endless. Thankfully the fine folks at Irish Spring have taken it upon themselves to consolidate some of this endless upkeep into one bottle. A stately green bottle with a…
After reading the article “Old News, New Life: Decades of the Tribune Go Digital” in the August 20th edition of the Burke County Tribune, I typed ndarchives.historyarchives.online/home into my computers search engine and fell down a rabbit hole that I didn’t emerge from for hours. It’s a treasure trove of memories, and I highly recommend you open it up and see what, or who, you might find. When…
Something borrowed, something blue, something old, and something new. On September 19th, 1975, my aunt and uncle, Debbie and Doug Nelson got married. I was only 3 years old, so I don’t remember the event, but due to the miracle of photography, I’ve seen the day various times throughout the years while flipping through our stacks of family photo albums. A few years back, I was out at Doug and Deb’s…
A few weeks back my wife and I ventured westward to give musician Sierra Ferrell a listen at the KettleHouse Amphitheater in Bonner, Montana. As is often the case, when you go to a concert of this sort, there is bound to be an opening act…some good…some not so much. Musical taste, like many tastes, is quite subjective. Basically, we like what we like, and although we can say why we liked or didn’t…
I don’t hate snakes. When I’m out camping or hiking I don’t go stark raving mad at the sight of a snake and remain raving until the snake has been bludgeoned into a sufficiently slitherless state. Not hating something doesn’t necessarily imply fondness. I understand that snakes, like jazz music, are an important part of the ecosystem, I would just prefer that snakes, and jazz music, not share…
June was here just a minute ago, and then we turned around and went to Houston for a graduation, headed to upstate North Dakota to celebrate my Aunt Susie’s 60th at the Bowbells pool, ventured to Grandin, North Dakota, for a Chrest family gathering at Uncle Tim’s and Auntie Holly’s…and “poof”…June was gone. I’m fond of calling her Auntie Holly, especially when I’m a bit deep in my cups, as we’re…
We ventured to Houston last week to attend our nephew’s graduation, enjoy some family time, and to put our antiperspirants to the ultimate test (they failed miserably). “Swelterland”, as I referred to Houston many moons ago in a Ramblings column of the same name, did not disappoint. Like last year, when we attended our niece’s graduation in Houston, my wife flew and I dusted off my chauffer hat…