Just completed my 446th consecutive weekly Bismarck Tribune newspaper column. The wind is howling outside. Im about to drive to Dickinson for meetings, and then, on the weekend, off to Crazy Horse country in the Black Hills and the Pine Ridge. Im reading Thomas Powers The Killing of Crazy Horse, which is a cross between traditional CH biographies, all of which begin with the Grattan Fight (1854) and end in the mystery of his burial place. But this one has some echoes of Evan S. Connell’s marvelous Son of the Morning Star, which is the most whimsical account we have of the Little Big Horn. My garden seeds are sprouting. For the first time this year, I’ve started eight 25-unit flats inside my house. Mandan and Hidatsa and Arikara seeds, Monticello seeds, commercial garden seeds. I was gone in New York with my mother for Easter. I planted the seeds on Thursday of last week. When I got back Monday night, some of the beans had sprouted, one or two tomato plants were beginning to show, two seeds of the commercial corn. It’s still too cold and windy to till the garden, but the potatoes, lettuce, and peas need to be planted next week, or the week after that. As usual on the eve of column day, I did not sleep particularly well. But now I have filed the essay, and I am free to drive the wind to Dickinson. No mosquitos yet, no thunder, no buds on the cottonwoods. But all will change in the next days or weeks. In a few days I will be praying at Bear Butte. The need is upon me. csj
Posted on: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 16:36:55 +0000
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