High Plains Observer

2004-01-13T06:38:00.000-08:00

Gephardt is making a strange decision to leave Iowa for 3 days. It's a big gamble, it seems. But he needs money.

2004-01-11T09:56:00.000-08:00

Here's the latest on the organizing in Iowa. And don't miss David Broder's analysis of the Iowa political culture.

2004-01-11T09:54:00.000-08:00

Looks like it could be a long winter for the bison in Wyoming.

2004-01-02T08:28:00.000-08:00

Dan Drezner (via Andrew Sullivan's blog) is going on about agricultural subsidies.

2003-12-30T09:33:00.000-08:00

Tim Giago has a new column about the massacre of the Sioux at Wounded Knee, South Dakota in 1890.

2003-12-30T09:16:00.000-08:00

1968 consistently shows up as a defining year in American politics. See this essay (and how Dean views 1968). And note the book, which is a must read.

2003-12-30T09:06:00.000-08:00

The Road to the White House since 1988 has gone through Yale. And...Dean, Kerry, and Lieberman are Yale grads this year.

2003-12-30T09:02:00.000-08:00

Dick Morris on triangulation and how it drives the other side crazy. Alan Wolfe also weighs in on the electoral map.

2003-12-30T08:57:00.000-08:00

Note Howard Dean's (quite expansive) views on concentration in agriculture. Good stuff.

2003-12-30T08:51:00.000-08:00

The ever-interesting Jacob Levy has a new essay in The New Republic. Note this conclusion:

In retrospect, it appears that the New Democratic moment was a fragile one, and its highlights more than a bit accidental. Welfare reform, NAFTA, and the WTO were all essentially products of the interaction between Clinton, a small minority of moderate Democrats, and a majority (but not an overwhelming majority) of congressional Republicans.

The transition could be seen in 2000, Jacob should note--during the Presidential campaign, Gore went from New Democrat to Old Democrat Populist.

2003-12-30T08:42:00.000-08:00

The blogging phenomena gets some serious attention from USA Today.

2003-12-29T08:11:00.000-08:00

The writing of the Afghan Constitution continues.

2003-12-28T15:51:00.000-08:00

Did that Mad Cow come from Canada?

2003-12-28T13:50:00.000-08:00

Iowa Caucus Watch: It's past time to zero in on the Iowa caucuses. In case you missed it, read "Gephardt's Last Stand" in The Weekly Standard to get up to speed.

2003-12-28T13:43:00.000-08:00

The Omaha World Herald names its Midlander of the Year, a University of Nebraska History Professor. He's the editor of the updated journals of Lewis and Clark. Congrats Professor!

2003-12-28T13:37:00.000-08:00

Is there ever any good news out of Zimbabwe? See this for the latest horrors.

2003-12-05T17:14:00.000-08:00

Don't miss this article describing the organization of the "Saving North Dakota" series in the Fargo Forum.

2003-11-11T07:33:00.000-08:00

On this Veterans Day, note that there are still 200 veterans of World War I alive.

2003-11-02T12:44:00.000-08:00

Corporate Farming: Also on the agricultural front, note that the full Eight Circuit Court of Appeals has decided not to review a 3-judge panel's earlier decision upholding a lower court's decision declaring South Dakota's constitutional provision banning corporate farming unconstitutional (that's a mouthful). The SD Attorney General has said he will probably take the case to the Supreme Court, but, then again, they may not want it.

2003-11-02T12:39:00.000-08:00

See this story in today's New York Times. Should farmers be able to keep beans for re-planting? The courts will decide soon. Note that many farmers on the High Plains have been sued for saving and replanting.
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2003-11-02T12:31:00.000-08:00

Iowa Caucus Watch II: The most recent poll indicates that Dean and Gephardt are tied in Iowa 26% to 26%. And from this story, it appears that tensions are rising.

2003-11-02T12:24:00.000-08:00

Iowa Caucus Watch: Here's one of the more interesting stories out Iowa recently, reflecting the fissures in the Democratic field, cultural, regional, and symbolic.

2003-10-23T07:29:00.000-07:00

Speaking of Iowa, note this grim story in today's New York Times about the scramble for farm land in some parts of the farm belt.

2003-10-23T07:28:00.000-07:00

Iowa Caucus Watch: It appears that Gephardt may be threatening Dean in Iowa--we're back to where we were several months ago.

2003-10-19T10:44:00.000-07:00

More on the farm seizures:

The seizure of commercial farms, it turns out, kicked away the legs of the economy. With property rights no longer assured, foreign money fled.

With no foreign money, Zimbabweans could no longer buy imports. Without imports — fertilizers, spare parts, gasoline — large-scale agriculture has collapsed, and with it most of the industry that supported farmers.

At the same time, the ousting of all but about 600 of the nation's 4,500 white farmers also uprooted nearly 300,000 black workers on those farms, almost all of whom are now jobless.

"They came to us and said, `You have 10 minutes to leave this farm' — 10 minutes — that's it," said Edson, a 29-year-old foreman on what was once the Shrewsbury farm 40 miles south of Harare. Fearing reprisals, he spoke on the condition that his last name not be used. "We lost all our money, all our property — everything." Since then, he said, the 600-acre tract has lain fallow.

That is a recurring theme in conversations with local Zimbabweans of all races and economic levels. They say many of those who have taken over farmland were never farmers, but in fact were local backers of Mr. Mugabe's party who elected to reap quick profits by selling off seized assets instead of plowing and sowing crops.

Others simply lacked the ability to run a farm — or, because the government has yet to give them legal title to the land, had no collateral for the loans needed to buy seed and tend crops.

The choicest farms were awarded to senior government officials and party leaders. "Of the people who got good, arable farmland, 99.2 percent are cabinet ministers, wives, political cronies, relatives, girlfriends," Barnabas Thlondlan, the associate editor of the recently banned Daily News on Sunday, said in an interview. "We call them cellphone farmers — all they do is call every once in a while and ask, `How's everything on the farm?' "

Bad would be the only answer. Corn production has fallen by nearly half from its peak. Harvests of wheat, a profitable commercial crop, are down by 90 percent.

2003-10-13T22:24:00.000-07:00

And the agribusiness consolidation debate will certainly intensify with this deal.

2003-09-24T16:00:00.000-07:00

The Economist on the Cancun talks.

2003-09-21T07:09:00.000-07:00

"Authoritative Communities": This is the new term for the components of civil society, or civic virtue, or republicanism, whatever you want to call it. And also one of the keys to understanding the High Plains.

2003-09-21T07:04:00.000-07:00

As is the Olympic Commission doesn't have enough to worry about, now they're picking on the "Rat Olympics" in Nebraska!

2003-09-21T06:50:00.000-07:00

Iraq's new laws designed to promote investment:

To try to allay safety concerns and provide for rich returns to those willing to risk investing money in a war zone, Mr. Gailani said foreign owners could control as much as 100 percent of any enterprise in which they invest in Iraq; that would be a sharp contrast with most of the Arab world, where foreign ownership of locally based concerns is typically highly restricted. The ownership rule applies to every sector of the economy except natural resources, meaning that the lucrative, but still relatively dormant, oil industry will remain entirely in the hands of Iraqi owners.

The new ownership laws, completed on Friday, allow investors to jump into Iraq immediately, without having to be screened by the government. All profits from such ventures can be fully and immediately remitted overseas, meaning the money does not have to be stored for any period of time with an Iraqi institution. Real estate cannot be owned by foreigners under the new law, but can be leased for up to 40 years.

For companies and individuals who set up shop in Iraq, corporate and personal income tax rates will range from 3 to 15 percent after a tax holiday expires at the end of the year. To boost trade, Iraq will impose a flat tariff of just 5 percent on all imports except for relief supplies.

The Central Bank of Iraq has been made legally and operationally independent, and foreign banks will be allowed to open branches there. The law permits six foreign banks to buy complete control of local banks within the next five years, after which there will be no limits on foreign banks' entry into Iraq. An unlimited number of foreign banks can purchase up to 50 percent of local banks.

The banking law, should it gain traction with outsiders, would introduce competition to a market dominated by just two large Iraqi banks, Rafidain Bank and Rashid Bank. Lending in the country is anemic, and an adviser to Mr. Gailani said he hoped that the law would encourage new banks entering the market to make loans to small businesses, which are seen as a key to future economic growth.

On Oct. 15, Iraq will introduce a national currency, the new Iraqi dinar. It will be the first single unified currency in Iraq in some time.

All of these moves come in advance of a donors' conference in Madrid in late October, where America will ask allies to contribute funds to Iraq. The United States will hold a similar conference here on Sunday to seek funds for Afghanistan.

Some of these ideas sounds similar to economic development plans for the High Plains.

2003-09-21T06:45:00.000-07:00

More grim news from Zimbabwe.

2003-09-21T06:32:00.000-07:00

Trying to save the Cherokee language in Oklahoma.

2003-09-20T09:10:00.000-07:00

Senator Robert Kennedy's son is taking on hog farms. He wants the Clean Air Act to apply to them.

2003-09-17T06:47:00.000-07:00

Gephardt continues to struggle for votes in Iowa that should easily be his.

2003-09-16T06:38:00.000-07:00

The dwindling air service on the High Plains, as reported in The New York Times.

2003-09-16T06:11:00.000-07:00

Bad news for High Plains farmers: The end is here for the Farmland cooperative.

2003-09-15T13:22:00.000-07:00

Disturbing news about the media at Instapundit.

2003-09-14T21:55:00.000-07:00

Remember the gulags.

2003-09-14T16:54:00.000-07:00

Enough said.

2003-09-14T16:53:00.000-07:00

A different kind of "land war in Asia" is being waged.

2003-09-14T16:22:00.000-07:00

Mugabe Watch: The police in Zimbabwe have now shut down the nation's largest newspaper.

2003-09-14T16:17:00.000-07:00

It appears the global agricultural trade talks in Cancun have collapsed. Big surprise.

2003-09-14T16:16:00.000-07:00

Here's another review of the new novel by the Minneapolis writer Charles Baxter, who is in part focused on the theme of youth:

There is a nod to Columbine, in the story of an alienated high school loser named Gordy Himmelman who commits a horrifying act that somehow, after the fact, draws the other high school losers into stupid and vicious acts of their own; and in a few late chapters Baxter makes the mistake of giving these children the narrative impetus when they don't deserve it. There is a fine contempt for youth throughout ''Saul and Patsy,'' a pleasing lack of sanctimony about kiddies. Early in the book, before the trouble begins, Saul walks through the local college looking at students a little older than his own struck dumb by self-love: ''They were beautiful but wanted to be admired for their minds, of all things.'' More often, though, they are unattractive and unclean, like Gordy Himmelman and the ''gothic mortuary'' cult called Himmelism that, bizarrely, springs up after him. ''God, what a hotbed of superstition, and gossip, and malice and Dark Age reasoning these kids were,'' Saul exclaims to himself at one point. But then Saul is not so much older than they are himself.

2003-09-12T06:50:00.000-07:00

R.I.P. Johnny.

2003-09-09T06:32:00.000-07:00

Cotton Farmer in Uganda

The debate over Western agricultural subsidies and their impact on the poor continues. See this article in The New York Times.

2003-09-04T12:02:00.000-07:00

The Problem of Being a "Midwestern" Novelist: See this review of Charles Baxter's new book in The New York Times.

But despite his enviable track record and a new novel, "Saul and Patsy" (Pantheon) due out Sept. 9, he remains surprisingly obscure, less read and talked about than writers of comparable — or arguably lesser — accomplishment.

Part of the explanation may lie with the label "Midwestern" and the mostly dubious associations it implies that hover over his fiction like, well, storm clouds over the prairie.

"When others think about Midwesterners, they think: naïve, somewhat simple," Mr. Baxter said ruefully. "Why else would you live here if not for some failure in judgment?"

A lean, fine-featured man with a wispy beard and a warm tenor voice, he added with mild defiance: "Alice Munro lives in Ontario, which is sort of the Midwest of Canada. But her themes are universal. When literature is of a certain quality, whatever its origins, you just don't care."

It's not simply that Mr. Baxter's stories tend to be set in the Midwest, where he has spent most of his life. Or that his characters are prone to the same snobberies and prejudices about the region as the rest of the nation. ("What a Midwesterner he was," muses Diana in "The Feast of Love" about the man to whom she is briefly, disastrously married. "A thoroughly unhip guy with his heart in the usual place, on the sleeve, in plain sight. He was uninteresting and genuine, sweet-tempered and dependable, the sort of man who will stabilize your pulse rather than make it race.")

In Mr. Baxter's case the Midwestern label has less do with geography than style, denoting a sensibility that seems stubbornly impervious to fashion. Subtle forays into the lives of ordinary people, his stories lack the verbal pyrotechnics, formal gimmicks and overweening social ambition that have lately become prerequisites for buzz and the stock in trade of hot novelists like Dave Eggers, Jonathan Franzen and Jonathan Safran Foer. To use the words routinely invoked by admiring critics, Mr. Baxter's books are luminous investigations of the prosaic — quiet, gracious and deeply felt.

2003-09-02T07:40:00.000-07:00

National Bison Range: it's 18,000 acres in Montana. The Bush administration wants to give it to local tribes. Others oppose that decision. Interesting alliances in this debate.

2003-09-02T07:23:00.000-07:00

Go Ahead, Drink the Water: In West Point, Nebraska, officials tell Mexican immigrants it's ok to drink the water.

For most of its existence West Point has been virtually all white -- a community settled by another generation of immigrants, German, Czech and Irish. But they came over 100 years ago.

State Sen. Matt Connealy, a local farmer, said folks here are slowly accepting a new reality.

"We're moving to the point where we realize it's not necessarily a problem and that it's not temporary," Connealy, a champion of immigrant rights, said over a hamburger at a local eatery. "It's the face of who we are going to be in the next generation."

Across the Midwest in the 1990s, 800,000 Hispanics arrived as 640,000 whites departed. So many were Mexicans that the country opened a consulate in Omaha to service Nebraska, Iowa and the Dakotas after the 2000 Census confirmed the obvious.

2003-09-02T06:34:00.000-07:00

PETA drops its lawsuit against KFC.

2003-09-02T06:01:00.000-07:00

Iowa Caucus Watch II: here's another horse-race article in today's New York Times. If this report is correct, no candidate is doing much of anything in Iowa just yet.

2003-08-31T10:43:00.000-07:00

Iowa Caucus Watch: from today's New York Times horse-race article:

Mr. Gephardt's advisers say he would almost certainly fold his second bid for the White House if he lost Iowa, his neighboring state, which he won when he ran for president in 1988. And many Democrats in Iowa say Dr. Dean would probably defeat Mr. Gephardt if the vote was today.

2003-08-21T09:28:00.000-07:00

Here's The New Republic piece on the agricultural trade disputes that Instapundit noted.

2003-08-21T09:23:00.000-07:00

Instapundit is now weighing in on agricultural subsidies and keeping people living among the Sioux and the buffalo.

2003-08-10T20:36:00.000-07:00

By way of South Dakota Politics, please take note of another High Plains blog, Billingsblog in Montana.

2003-08-10T13:00:00.000-07:00

Why History Matters: The New York Times uses the chronicles of Lewis and Clark to craft a new environmental vision for Jefferson's big real estate deal.

2003-08-10T12:54:00.000-07:00

You know all those German Mennonites who flocked to the High Plains? Apparently, many of them went to Paraguay too:

The forefathers of Filadelfia's Mennonites fled Russia in two waves. The first went to Canada in the 19th century, when they lost their exemption from military service, and then to Paraguay, while a second wave fled Stalin's collectivization program via Germany and China. The Mennonites now make up less than half the town's population of 8,000.

"We are victims of our own success," said Gundolf Niebuhr, curator of the town's tiny museum, which is filled with Mennonite memorabilia and stuffed wild animals. "The Mennonites' highly successful work ethic and commitment to build a functioning society attracts others and ends up fragmenting our own social structure."

Mr. Niebuhr speaks German with a faint trace of Plattdeutsch, the guttural dialect that the Mennonites have preserved ever since they were hounded out of the Low Countries in the 16th century for following a radical Anabaptist reformer. He reflected that, given the harsh conditions in the Chaco, it was surprising that the settlers had survived here at all.

When the first 350 German families arrived in 1927, they found a drought-plagued wilderness.

In the first years, the settlers' cotton and peanut crops failed repeatedly. It was only with grit and discipline that homesteads took root.

The settlers came both because of anti-German sentiment in Canada after World War I and because Paraguay wanted to populate the Chaco, fearing the territorial ambitions of neighboring Bolivia. The Paraguayan government passed a law in 1921 giving Mennonites the right to organize their own churches and German-language schools and exempting them from military service.

Bolivia did invade in 1932, but at the end of the war in 1935, Paraguay kept the territory and the Mennonites continued their hardscrabble existence.

In 1937, some colonizers broke off to set up a new colony in a more clement region in east Paraguay. In 1944, two factions — one pro-Hitler and hopeful of reoccupying their farms in the Soviet Union, one pacifist and anti-Nazi — clashed violently. The pro-Hitler faction left.

2003-08-10T12:50:00.000-07:00

The Bush administration has lifted the ban on Canadian beef:

Although the border will remain closed to live cattle for now, the announcement was met with relief by Canada's beef producers, who have lost more than $8 million a day since late May. Prices for cattle have plummeted on Canadian auction blocks, leading to the loss of several thousand jobs and fears that the industry might collapse.

Eighty percent of Canada's beef exports go to the United States, and Washington's action today is expected to help persuade at least some of the more than 30 other countries that have closed their markets that Canadian meat products are safe.

The American decision also came as a relief to the overall Canadian economy, which has slowed in recent months after a string of hardships starting with an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, in Toronto in March.

2003-08-08T10:44:00.000-07:00

In case you missed the latest Iowa Poll:

Dean -- 24%
Gephardt -- 21%
Kerry -- 14%
Lieberman -- 10%

It's getting very interesting.

2003-08-07T23:26:00.000-07:00

A new group forms to flex some muscle in the next Presidential race. They see Iowa and Minnesota as battleground states.

2003-08-07T07:26:00.000-07:00

Hats off to the Iowa Irish!

2003-08-06T12:22:00.000-07:00

Powerline, with some help from OpinionJournal, makes more sport of Tom Daschle's blog. As Glenn Reynolds has noted, the real action is at South Dakota Politics.

2003-08-05T08:26:00.000-07:00

Bringing Home the High Plains Bacon: It turns out that women are bringing home more than the men, according to the Christian Science Monitor:

In a handful of the nation's counties, the typical full-time working woman now earns more than her male counterpart - sometimes a lot more, according to census figures released this week.

One might expect to find these bastions of gender enlightenment in, say, Massachusetts (rated "best for women" last year by one women's group) or Minnesota (home of the nation's first pay-equity law for state government workers).

Instead, they're nestled in rural places few people have visited. And they're led by a small, no-stoplight county called, of all things, King, and located in a patch of north Texas where men still wrangle cattle and NOW refers to time rather than the National Organization for Women.
...
The difference in median income between the genders, using 1999 data for full-time, year-round workers:

King (Texas) $8,790

Golden Valley (Montana) 5,035

Aleutians East Borough (Alaska) 3,484

Ziebach (South Dakota) 2,129

Blaine (Nebraska) 2,083

Bent (Colorado) 1,506

Crowley (Colorado) 1,107

Source: Census 2000

2003-08-04T13:13:00.000-07:00

Iowa Caucus Watch II: The New York Times carries a piece today about how anti-Bush sentiment animates the Democratic base. HPO wondered how this sentiment, as galvanized by the war in Iraq, would shape the caucus landscape in Iowa. Given Gephardt's collapse, there seems to be evidence that something is happening.

2003-08-04T12:47:00.000-07:00

Iowa Caucus Watch: So much for the early touting of Gephardt's organizational skills. The St. Louis Post Dispatch reports today that the Gephardt organization is melting down.

2003-08-01T16:49:00.000-07:00

Dot Commons: One can't help but like the phrase. The Nation reviews the notion, and other methods of widening the universe of forums available to the republic's citizens. And it's happening on the High Plains, where bloggers like South Dakota Politics are breaking through the stale monopoly of local reporting with a bit of unwitting help from Tom Daschle who, according to Instapundit, is going to blog.

2003-08-01T07:04:00.000-07:00

Meat Tour: Yes, in Forth Worth. Lawmakers are inspecting a packing plant:

[D]uring this first outing by members of the newly formed Congressional Food Safety Caucus, there was pointed disagreement among the legislators about how much change was needed to ensure that no more children die of meat poisoning, and even about whether that was a realistic goal.

2003-07-31T14:42:00.000-07:00

Longevity in North Dakota, as reported in The New York Times:

Whatever the travails of old farming communities of the Great Plains, with population decline and temperatures that swing 120 degrees from January to July, something about these places produces triple-digitarians even as people plug their arteries with sausage, strudel and dumplings soaked in gravy.

Survivors of scarlet fever and smallpox epidemics, the Dust Bowl and the Depression, they have been cracking 100 at least since 1950. The 2000 census found that McIntosh County, where Ashley is located, had the highest proportion of people 85 and older among the nation's 3,142 counties. North Dakota had the highest proportion among the states.

The census found that Florida, Pennsylvania and West Virginia had higher proportions of people 65 and older. But many of their elderly die in their 60's and 70's; North Dakotans tend to keep aging. The census found 162 North Dakotans 100 or older, also near the top among states in relation to the total population.

These North Dakotans may be biological artifacts, the recipes for their health beyond bottling or replication by baby-boom office dwellers in big cities and suburbs. Clean air; going slow; patience; a low-cost, low-stress economy for all but active younger farmers; decades of heavy lifting outdoors; keeping an eye out for one another; long stable marriages; an absence of sharp differences in income and wealth all may contribute, people here speculate.

2003-07-31T14:36:00.000-07:00

The July vacation is over. More posts coming soon...

2003-07-07T05:32:00.000-07:00

Downtown Minneapolis: Shriners v. PETA, see here. See here for PETA's massive chicken lawsuit. PETA's influence is becoming alarming.

2003-07-07T05:20:00.000-07:00

Gambling, a more and more frequent economic development method, is taking some heat from local Iowans who don't like the idea.

The anti-gambling group was off to a quick start, Stockdale said, providing information about the likelihood of crime, bankruptcies and suicides increasing.

They have also struck a chord with residents, telling them a riverboat casino would forever alter the atmosphere of one of Iowa's top tourist attractions.

The region is billed as a great place for a family vacation. The casino "is going to drown out the family tourism idea," Stockdale said.

2003-07-07T05:15:00.000-07:00

The first woman on the Iowa Supreme Court is retiring.

2003-07-06T08:28:00.000-07:00

The Collo, a Sudanese tribe, is having its fourth annual conference in Des Moines.

"We celebrate because we came from a place where we were oppressed," said Fashoda Community Association chairman Michael Kalakon of Louisville, Ky. "We came here and we got freedom."

2003-07-06T08:22:00.000-07:00

Iowa Caucus Watch: Again, the divisions in the Democratic field over American foreign policy are becoming more evident. Will the Iowa City/Ames pro-Dean peaceniks prevail over the Waterloo union workers supporting pro-war Gephardt? The Democratic Leadership Council is getting nervous about the outcome. Six more months and we'll know.

2003-07-05T08:14:00.000-07:00

See the story in today's Minneapolis Star-Tribune about the wild horses of the Black Hills, tended by Dayton Hyde:

On 11,000 acres of canyons, Ponderosa pines and open grasslands, he presides over a place for wild horses to run. More than 300 mustangs live on this land south of Hot Springs, S.D., on the southern edge of the Black Hills.

American mustangs descended from the horses brought here by the conquistadors; they've been a part of the American landscape for almost 500 years. They're tough, smart and prolific. A hundred years ago, 2 million populated the federal lands of the Western states. Now, the population has been whittled down to about 50,000.

Each year, the Bureau of Land Management culls the herd, auctioning off the best animals. The Black Hills Sanctuary has become home for some who were unadoptable -- too ornery, ugly or gimpy.

The herd is tended by volunteers -- including Hyde, who draws no pay but lives in one of the old ranch houses. The funding comes from donations and from visitors, who pony up $20 to be taken in an old bus to see the horses and the spectacular Western scenery.

The chance to see wild horses running -- or just walking by -- is a powerful lure. Last year, more than 10,000 visitors came to the refuge, which opened in 1988.

2003-07-05T08:00:00.000-07:00

Lewis and Clark's route, courtesy of The New York Times.

2003-07-05T07:47:00.000-07:00

Another review of the present-day Lewis & Clark Trail in The New York Times:

As government botanists, Lewis and Clark left a benchmark — call it the first environmental census of the American West. The explorers described a Noah's Ark of plenty: 178 plants and 122 animal species until then unknown to science. At times, it was as if they were describing Eden on creation day, with naming privileges.

Bighorn sheep. Cutthroat trout. Blackbilled magpies. Lewis's woodpecker and Clark's nutcracker, prairie dogs, pronghorns, spruce trees that were 36 feet across at the trunk, wild sage that tasted like chamomile. All of it went into the ledger of discovery.

Today, the major ecosystems and river highways seen by Lewis and Clark are tattered scraps of once-splendid mosaics. Some of the living things they described have left the earth. Though the Missouri stretches for more than 2,300 miles, and the Columbia empties more water into the Pacific than any other waterway in the contiguous United States, in many places these are not rivers at all. They are but a series of artificial reservoirs controlled by political ebb and flow.
...
When they left St. Louis, the big land of the upper Missouri and beyond was mostly a rumor. Lewis and Clark thought they might find mammoths and seven-foot beavers.

They did find creatures that had never been described by scientists and that have long since left the Plains. Chief among them were grizzly bears, "the verry large and turrible" bruins that once numbered 100,000. Now 1 percent of that population remains in the contiguous United States.

Through the short-grass prairie of Nebraska and South Dakota, the naturalists described the New World wonders at a furious pace. Pronghorns, prairie wolves, magpies, coyotes and entire cities of "barking squirrels" — prairie dogs.

Most of the prairie dog towns, viewed as a menace to agriculture, have been wiped out, though the population has come back in places where people have given up the plow and moved away.

Lewis and Clark were impressed by pronghorns, a sort of gazelle that can run up to 60 miles an hour. Pronghorns bounce all over the northern Plains today.

Most migratory bird species have also fared well. Peregrine falcons and bald eagles have been restored, but some species of sage grouse are endangered.

Part of the reason bird species have flourished, scientists say, is that as people abandon farms, the plains revert to grassland.

2003-07-04T09:59:00.000-07:00

Time for hot dogs and
Roman candles at the lake!
Happy Fourth!

2003-07-04T08:14:00.000-07:00

Freedom seeker in Monrovia, named for
President Monroe by former American slaves.

2003-07-04T08:11:00.000-07:00

Happy Fourth of July: On the subject of freedom, note that 2,000 American troops are waiting on board the USS Iwo Jima off the coast of Liberia. They're waiting for the President's final decision on whether to deliver Liberia from the Charles Taylor dictatorship.

2003-07-01T16:47:00.000-07:00

Note the essay in the Claremont Review of Books about "Cowboy Culture":

The identification of America with frontier life is longstanding in politics as well as popular culture. Presidents like Andrew Jackson, William Harrison, and Abraham Lincoln invoked their vigorous frontier origins in order to increase their democratic stature. Even after the closing of the Western frontier in the 1890's, Teddy Roosevelt cultivated his reputation as a Rough Rider in South Dakota and Cuba. A century later, Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush continue to embrace the cowboy way. The pioneer spirit has also been conjured in order to gain support for policy initiatives. Woodrow Wilson exhorted America to join World War I in order "to make the world safe for democracy"—as the pioneers had once made safe the American West. John F. Kennedy made the "New Frontier" the motto of his administration, promising to land a man on the moon within the decade. Given the supposed timidity and self-interestedness of modern democracy, what sustains this manly devotion to justice and noble achievement so long after the actual pilgrims and pioneers went to their reward?

Read the essay and find out.

2003-07-01T16:24:00.000-07:00

New York Times snobbery: Don't miss the post at Regions of Mind (based in Omaha) on the Times' snide treatment of the Kearney, Nebraska arch. It seems like the Times never misses the chance to take a shot.

2003-07-01T05:30:00.000-07:00

The Very Northern Plains: The lighter sections of an article about Canada's political turn:

On this Canada Day -- commemorating the creation of a central Canadian government on July 1, 1867 -- let us pause to wonder: What happened to that clean cold land of Mounties, Dudley Do-Right, loons on lakes, loons on coins, cheese on french fries? What of the goofy, front-teeth-missing, bad-haircut, lovable beer-and-doughnut civilization of hosers like Bob and Doug McKenzie, the characters created by Canadian comedians Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas? Eh? Bob would ponder conundrums like: "What is a six-pack equal to in metric conversion?"

That's a Canada we recognize, where everyone speaks in a crisp nasal deadpan, even the French. It is the home of a self-deprecating and polite-to-the-point-of-invisible people. In Michael Moore's 1995 satirical film "Canadian Bacon," the Canadians say "pardon me," "excuse me" as the Americans club them like baby seals during an invasion to keep the military in business after the Soviets caved. Toronto, observes one of the invaders, "is like Albany, only cleaner."

In more noble moments, we admire the benefits that seem to come with a passive, upstanding, low-key, non-controversial existence. Moore's new film, "Bowling for Columbine," hails Canada as an unarmed, low-crime utopia Where Front Doors Are Unlocked.

But Canada is also like the well-behaved child who is fun to pound on the playground. "Blame Canada," goes the song in the 1999 "South Park" movie, which depicts another invasion scenario. (Why is the idea of going to war with Canada such an easy laugh?) "It seems like everything went wrong since Canada came along."

2003-06-30T05:48:00.000-07:00

OMB now has a new name for those small prairie towns: micropolitan areas.

2003-06-30T05:44:00.000-07:00

The nation's second-largest population of East Africans is living in Minnesota.

Only California has a bigger East African community than Minnesota's, according to 2000 census data. Minnesota has more than three times as many Somalis as the remaining states. Large numbers of East Africans come here from Ethiopia, Eritrea and Kenya. There are also Tanzanians, Ugandans, Rwandans and Djibouti, among others.

Those who make it here are a fairly select group. Only about 100,000 of the world's estimated 35 million refugees and displaced people manage to resettle outside their homelands each year, according to the American Refugee Committee, an international aid organization headquartered in Minneapolis. Said Sarah Hartman, an American Refugee Committee staffer: "To get into the U.S. takes a lot of money, connections and luck."

Abroad, as here, well-educated people tend to be more involved as leaders in their community, said Michelle Larsen, a social worker with St. Paul's Center for Victims of Torture. As a result, she said, "they are more likely to be targets of violence in their home country."

"The best and brightest are forced to flee," said Ali Galaydh, who was Prime Minister of Somalia between September 2000 and December 2001, and now is a public policy professor at the University of Minnesota. "The gangs and warlords have no place for people who are highly skilled."

For Somalis in Minnesota, language is the biggest problem, said Aidarus Osman, a 37-year-old security guard from Mogadishu. Sitting on a ledge next to bags of rice in St. Paul's Ugaso Grocery, Osman explained that while English is commonly spoken in most East African countries, Somalis tend to speak Italian, Arabic and Somali rather than English.

2003-06-29T19:35:00.000-07:00

A smart kid with a plan to revitalize Grand Forks, North Dakota.

2003-06-29T15:39:00.000-07:00

Spockapalooza: Yes, in the Iowa town of Riverside, the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk.

2003-06-29T15:33:00.000-07:00

Don't miss the series in the Omaha World Herald about how Latino immigration onto the High Plains is changing social structures. See this story on Lexington, Nebraska:

Lexington is a case study of how small-town America is affected by our modern immigration phenomenon: millions of poorly educated Latin Americans toiling, often illegally, in difficult, low-paying jobs.

The results are mixed, offering ammunition to immigration advocates and opponents alike. Consider:

Household incomes and individual wages have increased, but so has the number of people living in poverty and public spending on aid to the poor.

School costs have soared. Retail sales have sagged.

Municipal spending is not out of hand. Property values are up. And crime is down.

Local leaders radiate optimism. For them, the great debate on U.S. immigration policy might as well be over. Immigrants are here to stay, and they intend to capitalize on a rare resource in small-town Nebraska - a young and growing population.

"We've been chugging along - knock on wood - with a very strong economic engine," Mayor John Fagot said. "A lot has to do with the immigrants, who come with very little, which means they have to purchase necessities of life."

Such views make sense given the local history. In 1985, smack in the middle of a rural recession, the community's biggest employer, a Sperry New Holland combine factory, announced it was closing. Home prices dropped. Retailers suffered. Working-age people packed up their families and left.

After several barren years, along came IBP in 1988 - willing to renovate and reopen the plant in exchange for breaks on their state income tax and local property tax bills. Civic leaders jumped at the offer despite dissent within the community.

Latino workers and their families, lured by 2,400 meatpacking jobs, soon replaced whites as the majority. The 2000 Census showed Lexington had the nation's fastest-growing percentage of foreign-born residents among all U.S. cities with more than 5,000 people.

2003-06-29T15:27:00.000-07:00

The Mexican immigrants who travel to the High Plains face no shortage of perils. See more on Karla Chavez, the leader of the immigrant-smuggling ring that recently caused the death of 17 immigrants:

Law enforcement officials say that Ms. Chavez's group was typical of those that bring more than a million immigrants across the Mexican border into the United States each year. Unlike narcotics organizations, which are tightly centralized and controlled by powerful dons, immigrant smuggling networks rely on constantly shifting configurations of guides and safe houses from Honduras to Houston and beyond.

Illicit rings of coyotes, as the smugglers are known, are so common in the border area that immigrants often regard them as services rather than criminal syndicates. It is precisely their informality that makes them especially difficult for United States authorities to track, and potentially very dangerous for those who put themselves in the smugglers' hands.

Immigration officials say that women often play leading roles in smuggling rings, because the illicit business rarely sees the kind of gangland violence connected with drug dealing.

Ms. Chavez and her accused associates used technology no more advanced than their cellular telephones and sport utility vehicles, court documents show. They brought immigrants across border rivers on inner tubes, stowed them in their own apartments in low-income housing projects and met each other at welfare offices and truck stops, the documents show.

According to her indictment, Ms. Chavez packed far too many immigrants — at least 77 — into a tractor-trailer that had neither water nor ventilation, for a 325-mile journey in scorching desert heat. Some immigrants who survived the journey had body temperatures of 105 degrees when they were discovered.

2003-06-29T07:40:00.000-07:00

More on Little Big Horn:

It took more than 75 years, but the Indian tribes that once flourished on the plains of Montana finally have a memorial to call their own at Little Bighorn Battlefield.

Tribes consider the site sacred ground. It was where Indian warriors wiped out Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and all 260 of his cavalrymen after they had attacked a tribal village -- and badly misjudged the size of its fighting force.

The 1876 battle, known ever since as Custer's Last Stand, is a momentous chapter in the history of the West -- a great yet final triumph for Indian tribes struggling to preserve their way of life.

The hillside where the battle was fought has long had a memorial and grave markers for Custer and his troops, but nothing to honor the Indians who died there, too.

That slight ended a few days ago, when several thousand members of the Sioux, Cheyenne, Crow, Arapaho and Arikara tribes gathered in a solemn ceremony of song and prayer to dedicate a permanent memorial featuring a bronze sculpture of three Indians on horseback and a sunken circular stone adorned with a plaque.

Outcry among tribes for such recognition began as early as 1925 but was ignored for decades. Congress authorized funding for the $2.3 million project two years ago.

"Today's ceremony," Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton told the crowd assembled for the memorial's unveiling, "finally lets healing songs begin in this place."

2003-06-27T10:59:00.000-07:00

The Argus Siege III: Sibby Online reports that the editor of the Argus Leader is dodging questions while on the radio and deleting emails. South Dakota Politics lists a large number of items that the Argus Leader has refused to report. SDP has a great eye for hypocrisy and double-standards. Given the beating the Argus is taking from bloggers, reporters are now referring to the Argus editor as "beleaguered."

2003-06-27T06:14:00.000-07:00

Zimbabwe Watch: President Bush made a major speech yesterday on Africa policy and said the right things about Zimbabwe:

Following up on Mr. Powell's call this week for South Africa and other African nations to do more to oust President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, whose increasingly authoritarian rule is driving the country into economic and political chaos, Mr. Bush said it was time "to encourage a return to democracy" in that country.

2003-06-27T06:10:00.000-07:00

Is it possible that the EU is serious about reforming its agricultural policy? The vote was 14-1 in favor of reform. What's the story with Portugal, the lone naysayer?

The reforms do nothing to change the European Union policy of subsidizing the sale of food on world markets. That means, experts and activists said, that farmers in poor countries will still find it difficult to compete with cheap sugar, wheat and cotton from Europe as well as the United States.

"Farmers will continue to produce more than we need and will continue to dump it on the developing world," said Sam Barratt, a researcher at Oxfam, a British charity and activist group.

The common agricultural policy, which began four decades ago, currently subsidizes farmers on the basis of the crops they grow and the amount they produce.

Under the new system, farmers may still choose what and how much to grow, but their subsidies will be indexed to payments from previous years. Growing more food will not automatically earn them larger earnings.

Subsidies to large farms will be cut back and the money saved will be used for "rural development projects." Farmers' payments will also depend on how well they treat their animals and on environmental criteria.

2003-06-27T05:55:00.000-07:00

When on the North Shore of Lake Superior last week, a vineyard owner from Oregon insisted to HPO that Eastern Oregon was part of the High Plains, or at least a part of the West. Fair Enough. See this article about a renegade buffalo herd terrorizing Eastern Oregan:

These buffalo, the remnant of a privately owned herd abandoned about two months ago by a rancher in trouble with the law, were not exactly ideal guests. They munched blithely on everything in sight. They plowed through fences, setting livestock free. They terrified cattle ranchers and knocked down newly planted Ponderosa pines, leaving large tufts of smelly wool and trampled terrain in their wake.

They also defied all efforts to round them up. People on the reservation, members of the Umatilla, Cayuse and Walla Walla tribes, quickly learned what their ancestors surely knew long ago: Buffalo may be herd animals, but they are very hard to herd.

The chase was supposed to have ended today, according to Carl Scheeler, wildlife program manager for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.

After tempting the bison for weeks with alfalfa, salt and sweet feed, Mr. Scheeler thought he would finally coax them all into a contraption modeled after an elk trap, and close the door.

But elk are considerably more docile and predictable than buffalo. And buffalo, it was clear this morning, are not easily outfoxed.

"They are very fast learners," Mr. Scheeler said. "Very savvy."

Mr. Scheeler had consulted heavily with other American Indian tribes with solid buffalo experience, including the Yakima Indian Nation in central Washington State.

A tribal organization based in South Dakota that is working to restore buffalo to American Indian land across the West sent a buffalo expert here on Wednesday.

"It's never fun when you have to try to round up buffalo that are loose like this," said the expert, Tony Willman, a technical services provider for the Intertribal Bison Cooperative of Rapid City, S.D., after the buffalo escaped again today. "It's hard to say what will happen."

Just before dawn this morning, about 20 of the buffalo were voraciously eating the bait inside Mr. Scheeler's trap, a giant corral made of steel panels and trap doors that theoretically would be used to carefully herd the buffalo through a narrow chute and then into a trailer.

Mr. Scheeler considered pulling the ropes that would set the trap in motion, but then 12 other buffalo would remain free.

And, as Mr. Scheeler said he had learned the hard way, buffalo are not stupid, so that would leave a dozen loose buffalo with the knowledge that the food was a trap.
After they ate most of the bait, the herd, which consists mostly of females, left the area where the trap is set up and headed up to a ridge above the plain to forage for the morning.

2003-06-25T11:40:00.000-07:00

Little Big Horn: There is now a Native American memorial there too, commemorating one of the major events in the history of the High Plains: "The Sioux and Cheyenne may have won the battle of the Little Bighorn, but they lost the war. Within two years, their way of life on the Northern Plains was over."

2003-06-25T07:25:00.000-07:00

McDonald's and Wendy's are now leaning on livestock producers to treat animals differently. If animal treatment is the concern, market pressure on sellers from major oligopsony buyers is a much more efficient solution than federal regulation. The other point of this story: it underscores the market power of large food buyers, justifying the fears of all those High Plains antitrusters in recent years.

2003-06-25T06:28:00.000-07:00

North Dakota's Finest: They paid tribute to Peggy Lee at Carnegie Hall last night. Peggy hailed from Jamestown, North Dakota. Don't miss Eric Holden's clever review:

A supreme minimalist whose mystique of impenetrable glamour grew gauzier and eerier as the years passed, Lee, even in her later years, could conjure more erotic sparks by lightly snapping her fingers, rolling her eyes and flashing the hint of smirk than a dozen gyrating scantily clad pop sirens strutting their curves. Lee's singing, with its layers of subtext, reconciled opposing extremes. Misty on the surface but hard-boiled underneath, she fused the ironic sexual swagger of Mae West with the romantic masochism of Billie Holiday. Jazzy phrasing that seemed spontaneous was calculated down to the last millisecond. These contradictions made for a nightclub persona infinitely tantalizing but ultimately mysterious.

Note the comparison to Frank in this New Yorker obituary:

She swung with a sense of humor, and handled lyrics with an uncynical knowingness, letting you in on the little secret of whatever song she happened to be singing, or, at least, letting you know that she had a secret. Unlike Frank Sinatra, her peer in musical intelligence, she had a voice that didn't command you to pay attention; it suggested that you might have a lot of fun if you did.

2003-06-24T19:42:00.000-07:00

One of HPO's interests is the ongoing crisis in Zimbabwe, especially the land crisis. Do not miss today's New York Times editorial by Colin Powell on the subject:

For hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans, the worst has already come. Millions of people are desperately hungry because the country's once-thriving agricultural sector collapsed last year after President Robert Mugabe confiscated commercial farms, supposedly for the benefit of poor blacks. But his cynical "land reform" program has chiefly benefited idle party hacks and stalwarts, not landless peasants. As a result, much of Zimbabwe's most productive land is now occupied by loyalists of the ruling ZANU-PF party, military officers, or their wives and friends.

2003-06-24T19:33:00.000-07:00

Twister attack in South Dakota tonight.

2003-06-24T08:20:00.000-07:00

North Dakota Loneliness: It's tough for guys in North Dakota's small towns. All the girls move to Fargo.

PLAZA, N.D. - Keith Hegney hadn't had much luck finding love over the past five years, so the 27-year-old slipped on a cowboy hat and went to try his luck bidding on a date.

He attended the annual singles auction at the Wabek Bar, which for rural residents of communities like Plaza can become a vital way for unmarried people to mingle and perhaps even meet that special someone.

"The guys stay home. The women leave for Fargo or other big cities," said Hegney, one of fewer than 200 people in this town about 70 miles from the Canadian border. "So the best hope we have is Canadian women coming down."

The promise of a chance to woo someone brought about 100 people to the auction earlier this month. The singles crowded into the one-room bar when a downpour hit, sipping beer and making small talk.

Some men bid more than $100 for dinner and a movie with one of the bachelorettes, and one shelled out $425 for a skydiving date. April Helwig, 23, drew a bid of $125.

"In small towns, it's hard because you don't have a lot of options. But at something like this, you can meet quite a few people," she said. "If I don't find the love of my life, hopefully I'll find a good friend."

Census figures show 32 percent of North Dakota's roughly 254,000 males age 15 and older have never been married, compared with 23 percent of the roughly 258,000 females in that age group. The census uses 15 as a minimum marriage age for statistical purposes.

That gap is wider in many of North Dakota's rural counties. In Slope County, the state's smallest county with about 770 people, census figures show 31 percent of the 344 males have never been married, compared with 15 percent of the 282 females.

Nationally, 31.3 percent of males age 15 and older have never said "I do," while 25.1 percent of females have never been married, according to census figures.

Remember how HPO said we need a book on the plains exodus? To wit:

The exodus of young people is putting the biggest strain on marriage rates in North Dakota, Rathge said. During the past decade, the number of adults in North Dakota between ages 20 and 34 fell 16 percent, from 151,888 in 1990 to 127,390 last year. Nationally, the age group was down 8 percent.

"Most people get married in their mid-20s. We're losing those people. You can see that in many of these rural areas - right after high school, they leave," Rathge said.

2003-06-24T08:03:00.000-07:00

Exodus: Leon Uris has died. The New York Times obituary explains his painstaking work on "Exodus":

Published in 1958, the 600-page ``Exodus'' was a sensation as millions read Uris' detailed, heroic chronicle of European Jewry from the turn of the century to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. The novel was translated into dozens of languages and was even distributed secretly in communist countries.

'``Exodus' has been the Bible of the Jewish dissident movement in Russia,'' Uris told The Associated Press in a 1988 interview. ``It's referred to as 'The Book.'''

Energetic and unafraid, the author was as much an adventurer as a writer, traveling tirelessly and sometimes risking his life. In researching ``Exodus,'' he logged thousands of miles and ended up reporting on the 1956 conflict in the Middle East.

Uris also endured some of his own battles, feuding with directors Otto Preminger and Alfred Hitchcock, and fighting lawsuits for both ``Exodus'' and the thriller ``Topaz.''

An obvious point with regard to the High Plains: someone needs to write the "Exodus" story for the small towns and farms of the plains. Who will be the Uris of the Plains?