Articles

Year’s photos stand as a reminder of life’s richness

Several years ago, another newspaper reporter remarked that then-Gov. George Mickelson liked to pound stakes into the ground to measure progress. The former governor didn’t really pound stakes into the ground, but when he was looking ahead and gauging how far he had to go, he did like to look back now and then to see how far he had come.

Opinion: Christmas went on, even amid last year’s storm

A year ago at this time, the National Weather Service was tracking a massive snowstorm heading our way, the governor was advising Christmas travelers to get out of Dodge quickly or hole up for the holiday and I was preparing to work in the state’s Emergency Operations Center.

A $2 tree and a baby girl: the recipe for a perfect Christmas

The first year we were married, I bought a Christmas tree for something like $2 at Lewis Drug in Sioux Falls.
We were renting the main floor of a small house a block off Cliff Avenue. The east-west street that ran past our place went past the front door of McKennan Hospital. These days the whole area is pretty much swallowed up by the medical campus, but when Nancy and I lived there, our place was about three blocks from the hospital’s front door.

Opinion: If the rosary is being said, driving was probably a bad decision

When I looked east through the passenger-side front window of our Chevy van and saw the snow-covered eastbound lanes of Interstate 90 stretching ahead of me toward the Salem exit, I knew I was in big trouble.

Opinion: South Dakota has seen its own party upheavals

When I think of upheavals in the South Dakota Legislature caused by elections, I usually think first of the 1972 vote that put Democrats in charge (sort of) of both houses and the 1976 vote that put Republicans firmly back in command of both chambers.
As I looked through old legislative history to compare some past elections to this month’s GOP victories in legislative races, I was reminded that the Democrats’ surge really started in the 1970 election and the first hints of the Republican resurgence came in 1974.

Opinion: Fallen soldiers stay young in our memories

Way back when Harding Hall was a men’s dormitory at South Dakota State, my roommate and I subscribed to a daily newspaper and a weekly newsmagazine.
Guys in at least two other rooms on our floor had newspapers delivered, and at least one other room got a newsmagazine. We used to trade issues around, and during some of the bull sessions in the evenings we’d talk about current events. I lived in Harding my junior year, 1964-65, and more and more often as the year went by, the current events involved a growing United States military presence in Vietnam.

Opinion: When driving, keep mind on road — not on distractions

My wife would tell you I’m a little crazy about distracted driving, whether the distraction is a text message, a phone to the ear, a newspaper open across the steering wheel or a driver fishing for something on the floor mat on the passenger side of the vehicle.
I’ll admit I pay attention to those things — maybe more attention than is good for my mental well-being.
I’ve read too many crash stories that involve distractions.

Opinion: Nebraska vs. SDSU; times have changed

Had you offered me 30 points and the Jackrabbits against Nebraska before last Saturday’s kickoff in Lincoln, I probably would have turned you down.
I’m a loyal SDSU guy, sure enough, but I’m also old enough to have been in college with some of the fellows who played for State the last time the Jacks and the Cornhuskers collided.

Opinion: Newsmen deserved recent inductions into Hall of Fame

When the Rapid City flood hit in June of 1972, I had been with The Associated Press for about two years, but I was completely unprepared to cover a news story of that magnitude.No one can really prepare for something like that. How do you imagine something that builds through a rainy Friday afternoon and evening, rages through the night and is gone by sunrise? Before the counting and confirming was finished, 238 people lost their lives in the flood that June weekend.Maybe disaster exercises these days contemplate such an event.

Opinion: Summertime makes quick exit along river

Well, that was a change of seasons.
Perhaps it was different where you live, but out along the Missouri River, summer turned to fall sometime between Sunday evening and Monday morning. A sunny, 80-plus degree Sunday afternoon turned into a cloudy, 56-degree Monday morning, with showers to dampen streets and lawns.

Columns

WOSTER: Coming to terms with Blackberry co-dependence

They seemed to be friends, and they seemed to be together, but they weren’t talking to each other. Each seemed lost in a cell-phone world.

• Terry Woster

WOSTER: Chasing guitars and dreams

Fenders fired the imaginations of 1950s teens.

• Terry Woster

WOSTER: My big break... if I could stay at the meeting

The first time I covered a legislative meeting, I was asked to leave the room just when things were getting good.

• Terry Woster

WOSTER: Parkston’s Marking had great attitude about life, basketball

Back when I wrote for the newspaper in Sioux Falls, one of the treats of a Sunday afternoon came when Nancy would answer the telephone, track me down holding the receiver in her outstretched hand and whisper, “It’s Jim Marking from Brookings.”

• Terry Woster

WOSTER: Former lawmakers honored South Dakota

Leonard E. Andera, of Chamberlain; Eddie Clay, of Hot Springs; Bert Ellingson, of Sisseton; Frank Henderson, of Hill City; Maury LaRue, of Sturgis; George Shanard, of Mitchell; and Burdette Solum, of Watertown — those were men I saw in action in the House and Senate.

• Terry Woster

WOSTER: Reorganizing the executive branch

Forty years ago this month, then-Gov. Dick Kneip introduced Executive Order 73-1, a plan to reorganize the executive branch of state government.

• Terry Woster

WOSTER: Wintertime stroll with spouse sure beats sitting on a bucket

I’ve never understood the whole ice-fishing thing, anyway. It’s a cold, boring wait in a tiny shed on a frozen body of water, peering into a little hole in the ice, hoping some fish will be gullible enough to bite at a minnow that shouldn’t be there in the first place.

• Terry Woster

WOSTER: Former justice, senator Frank Henderson was larger than life

I saw the news of his passing on a blog. It was a quiet and unremarkable way to learn of the death of a loud and memorable human being.

• Terry Woster

WOSTER: Resolving to not feel guilty over lack of resolutions

I did, more than once, make a resolution to exercise more. I suppose I should have gone the other way and resolved to eat less.

• Terry Woster

WOSTER: We've entered the ‘breather’ after the storm

We’re entering the time of the year I always refer to as the “breather.” When I was a full-time newspaper guy, I used the phrase to mean the time between the Christmas season and the start of the annual legislative session in early January.

• Terry Woster