Thank you, friends, for watching and working for North Dakota Today. It was a wonderful August day (and back-to-school week!) to talk about Danny, Chris, and Kelly Mapes, my Nice People of the Week, as well as an annual Valley City Parks & Rec event for those who like to go with the flow.
Read onI created this website in 2017 to tell stories about nice people, and North Dakota, and nice people in North Dakota, and myself. Thank you for reading, and feel free to send me a message about whatever is on your mind (especially if whatever is on your mind is something I can talk about on North Dakota Today or write in the Grand Forks Herald). If you want to vote on Sundays for the outfits I wear on TV, follow me on Facebook.
You will be either surprised or unsurprised to hear that I recently completed a Civil War campaign. I’m not sure for which side I was fighting; I’m pretty sure the Union. You’d think it would be…
The fact is, I’m a competent adult. I am. I know I’ve written about the time I accidentally wore orange pantyhose on TV while simultaneously strangling my organs with two pairs of Spanx, and about the…
When I was growing up, my dad built a large model train layout on top of a table in the middle of our unfinished basement in order to run his collection of model trains – and…
Both of my sons were human tornadoes as toddlers, and so I was often comforted and threatened by strangers in the aisles of Target with saying like, “Don’t blink; they will be grown in a moment”…
Thank you, friends, for watching and working for North Dakota Today. It was a wonderful August day (and back-to-school week!) to talk about Danny, Chris, and Kelly Mapes, my Nice People of the Week, as well…
Thank you, friends, for watching and working for North Dakota Today. It was a lovely August day to talk about the teenagers of the Grand Forks Impact Academy, my Nice People of the Week, as well…
Thank you, friends, for watching and working for North Dakota Today. It was a lovely, rainy day to talk about Joann Jesser, my Nice Person of the Week, as well as a long-distance runner named Theresa…
Thank you, friends, for watching and working for North Dakota Today. It was a hot day to talk about Chantel Zeller, my Nice Person of the Week, as well as an “extreme” case of North Dakota…
In college, I almost accidentally majored in archaeology. It happened my freshman year, while I was hunting through the coursebook trying to figure out a workaround for a math requirement and stumbled upon Introduction to Archaeology. Intro to Archaeology led to Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, which led to Mycenaean Civilizations, and on and on for every semester of my undergraduate degree. Somewhere around the deciphering of Lost Languages and the emergence of the Ancient Mayans it became evident that a career in archaeology was not in my future — archaeology is for people who don’t avoid math — but it did lead to a lifelong of love for the profession.
At least a dozen times a year, longtime readers of the Grand Forks Herald will come up to me and ask, “Are you Big or Little?” I am not the first member of my family to write a regular column for the Grand Forks Herald; I am the second. My mother, Robin Silverman, shared her own stories with the region starting in January of 1986. Many of those columns featured my younger sister and me, affectionately named “Little” and “Big,” respectively. My mom clicked her last clack of the typewriter on her column in 1994 when I, the Big — by then 14 years old and 4 inches shorter than Little — deemed her stories “too embarrassing for words.” Fast-forward 32 years and hundreds of my own authored stories about my ridiculous self and it turns out there were plenty of words left. Sorry, Mom.
“John Odegard was visionary and fearless,” my mother, one of the many people fortunate to know John, said when I asked if she had any thoughts about her friend.
“He learned to fly by holding the training manual on his lap. Can you imagine? He started UND’s aviation program in what was virtually a closet and wasn’t daunted by the fact that the department didn’t initially have a plane. He was humble enough not to boast that he was going to build the world’s premiere aerospace school; but with his boundless optimism, business smarts and energy, it’s not a surprise that is exactly what it became.
“He was a fabulous guy,” my mother said. “One of a kind. Forever missed.”
The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library opened on the Fourth of July in Medora, North Dakota. My favorite quote from the celebration came from Theodore Roosevelt V, the great-great grandson of Theodore Roosevelt.
“This library has never been about any one person. Don’t be fooled by the name out front,” Ted Roosevelt said. “Though it bears Theodore Roosevelt’s name, this library is not about him; it’s about you. If you leave here with nothing more than a better understanding of Theodore Roosevelt, then we will have failed, succeeding where quite frankly, a much less expensive book would have sufficed.”
“You should get your radon checked,” my mother said to me a dozen times over the past five years.
“I will,” I told her, tucking that advice between the “You should drink more water” and “You should change the batteries in your smoke detector when you change the clocks for Daylight Savings Time” parts of my brain.
There is nothing more North Dakotan than neighbors showing up for one another in times of need — and no community showed up more recently than Beulah, North Dakota, last weekend after 80 mph wind gusts snapped trees, tore through roofs and knocked out power around the area.
Great news — you have been invited to a graduation party! This is your official opportunity to celebrate a young person’s hard work and growth as they step off the well-trod path of one era and onto the shiny, uncharted path of another. It’s also your opportunity to honor the parents and guardians who nurtured, supported, empowered and sometimes dragged those young people to this moment; parents who would like to sit with you for a few hours in their garage before they have to take a deep breath and nudge their child into the future. Plus, there’s cake!
In a digital world where outrage often travels faster than compassion, Tyler Brickley had a simple question: What if kindness won? That question became the foundation of the Kindness Mob, an online movement Brickley launched on…
A wonderful reader of ND Nice – and a retired master chief petty officer of the Navy – has become my pen pal. He sent a few reflections on his now-shuttered hometown church and cemetery as…
You may know a lovely reader of ND Nice named Esther Donohue through her own blog, The Phat Hen, or through her food truck, Sweet Prairie. Esther is a rural North Dakota homesteader, educator, and mother…
A wonderful reader of ND Nice – and a retired master chief petty officer of the Navy – has become my pen pal. He sent a few reflections on his time in the service, and has…
If you are ever in a conversation with one or more people and the conversation inevitably turns to area fairs (as it should), I can almost guarantee that someone will say, “The best fair is the…
Here’s a fact about rhubarb: it’s an excellent source of fiber, calcium, and vitamin K. Here’s another fact about rhubarb: University Lutheran Church has been celebrating this vegetable (another fact! It’s not a fruit) for 32…
Remember when I talked about the Lindaas Barn Dances on North Dakota Today? Of course you do! As you know, the Lindaas Barn Dances are free old-fashioned family-friendly dances hosted over the summer by the lovely…
I bet you were just saying to yourself, “Man, I wonder if there is something awesome happening on Saturday, June 6, 2026? WELL WONDER NO MORE – it’s SMALL TOWN SATURDAY in Climax, North Dakota!
