On a hazy summer morning, Sheila and I drive 30 miles to the east end of Canton, South Dakota to see a fence. The fence in the distance holds one of South Dakota’s most painful secrets. Located between the fourth and fifth holes of the Hiawatha Golf Course, the fence surrounds a cemetery where 121…
I’m relieved that St. Christina the Astonishing isn’t officially venerated as a saint by the current Roman Catholic Church. While she has inspired many Christians by the austere practices of her faith, I believe her sense of smell is what left her out of the official canon of saints. At an early age her parents…
“Loss is a cousin of loneliness,” Olivia Laing. The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone My mother and Lost Bird, a Lakota woman who died at the age of 29, share at least one thing in common. Both have lived at All Saints, the Sioux quartzite building in Sioux Falls, South Dakota….
Winter: Turbulent northwest winds usher in blizzard conditions, leaving Dakota buried under ice and snow that piles along the roads, crusting into white and black. In 2013, winter arrived prematurely when a blizzard blanketed western South Dakota, killing tens of thousands of cattle, horses, and sheep. In one day, the West River rains switched to…
Genesis 1: “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon…
“But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you . . .” from the Book of Job “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven . ….