Beer Glass Art.

Veteran’s Day 2019

A look bsck at Veteran’s Day from 2019

The Joan Wigen Endowed Fund for Women’s Cancer Research

A Birthday Ask. 

Friday, July 24th is a big day for me. It marks my 80th birthday. More than that, the year 2020 also marks what would have been, Joanie Wigen’s 70th birthday. 

I’m not asking for myself, but for a donation to honor her in her Endowment.

Joanie Wigen

 This year I’m asking for contributions to the Endowment that friends of Joanie and I established in 2009 at the University of…

Today was the day man stepped on the moon. July 20, 1969. This is a repost of what I remember about that day.

D-Day, June 6, 1944 As a veteran from a different time, I look at these photos and know the stories behind them and know how lucky I was to be born when I was. These kids are to be revered every day. And most of them were kids.

Have a good Memorial Day weekend, and take time to remember why we are able to do what we do, even during the time of COVID 19

Today is Joanie’s birthday. As any of you who have followed my words over the 12 years since she died, you know I can’t let it pass without writing something or saying something. The poem that follows is one I wrote several years ago, and I couldn’t think of anything else to say, except she mattered.

May 10, 2020

Birthdays count years. They are markers we use To measure the time of our lives.

Fr…

“April is the cruelest month…”

Those opening words from T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” seem to resonate with me this April. While the Coronavirus has the world in its grip and people are dying from a virus that has virtually shut down the economy, and closer to home my friend Peter Porinsh’s wife, Dianne dies, just short of the 12 year anniversary of Joanie’s death, April 9, 2008, I still feel I…

Today I got one of those phone calls that one dreads. 

Peter Porinsh, perhaps my closest friend, called me this afternoon to let me know that his wife of 18 years, Dianne had died this morning of  complications from Alzheimer’s disease. She was 74. 

They had met when they both lived in Santa Barbara. Peter had a wood flooring company, and Dianne was big in the Tennis Association and the last…

  Legislating in the Time of a Pandemic

Time for the Senate to change their rules, and not allow any amendments that are not germane to the issue of the recovery from this pandemic that is shutting down our economy and inflicting the kind of pain that is here already with more to come. So, Democrats and Republicans, take your amendments and put them where the sun don’t shine and deal with them…

Christmas Eve Quiet

Here in my town, Bismarck, ND it is quiet, much like a lot of other cities in the country, though perhaps not as quiet as others.

I walked out this afternoon to make a grocery and wine run and stopped when I was struck by how quiet it was. It was the quiet I associate with Christmas Eve when the white noise of metropolitan traffic is gone, and you know everything is shut down…

Where The Popsicles Are

A Bed Too Big

The night is quiet,

I can hear my heart.

And your long-ago laugh

echoes in the silence

of a lonely room.

Even Brandy, as she tries,

can’t fill the space,

in a bed too big

Without you.

The Tale of a Necktie

From the Town House Memory Vault

He was a politician I respected. He was also one with a great sense of humor. 

His name, Bob Melland. He was a State Senator from Jamestown.

By chance, he also stayed at the Town House, as I did, when the Legislature was in session, so I not only came in contact with him at the Capitol, I would run into him, at the Town House during the cocktail hour as well. 

My…

‘Cheers’ to old Town House

As I sit here today and watch the demolition of the Kelly Inn in Bismarck, I’m reminded of the history surrounding that property.

It opened in the Summer of 1970, and I was working for a television station in Fargo at the time, doing news reporting, and I was dispatched to Bismarck for the Grand Opening of the Town House Motor Inn.

For me, it was a strange assignment. I wondered why the opening…

Reflections on a Motel Bar

Throw back Thursday brought this to mind.