Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Haugen Hump Day link-o-rama

Jill Callison of the Argus Leader tells about a couple other dudes from Canton (hometown of yours truly) who made it big. Not big enough to have their own blog! But pretty big ...
Even though his mother said he was "born grown up," no one living in Canton in the early 1900s would have predicted that Ernest Lawrence would be the first South Dakotan to receive the Nobel Prize.

Nor would they have expected that two playmates also would win worldwide renown.


And I could've sworn this said: A Guide to Books

I may have to add this one to the Amazon shopping cart: "Mom’s a Drunk, Dad’s a Writer: A Recipe for Disaster and a Memoir" Here's the NY Times review.

This dude at The Guardian blesses us with his list of the top 10 books of the 1980s. I may have to delve into these as well, because if it wasn't written on the back of a beer bottle in the 80s, I probably missed it.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Law enforcement has been notified

They're saying this could be bigger than The Rally. But "they" were really drunk when they said it.


From the fine folks at the Sturgis Area Arts Council:

Meet Author Mark Haugen


“Joshua’s Ladder” author Mark Haugen will be featured at a book signing on Tuesday, September 27 from 5:30-7:00pm at the Sturgis Public Library. He will talk about his writing around 6:00p.m. Copies of his book will be available for purchase as well as signing during the event.

“Joshua’s Ladder” follows Joshua Miller from depths of despair to heights of love; from South Dakota to Florida. Along the way Joshua’s love for the woman he saved from drowning is unquestionable, friendships he made unflappable, but his demons unmovable.” A reader found his “characters entertaining, charismatic and very well developed.”

Haugen has worked as a journalist for several newspapers in southeast South Dakota and across the border into Minnesota. At home near Rapid City, he lives with his wife, three teenagers, two dogs, and (formerly) Johnnie Depp, the pet rabbit. Besides writing, he enjoys running and gardening.

Refreshments will be provided by GFWC Sturgis Woman’s Literary Club, who share sponsorship of the event with the Sturgis Public Library and Sturgis Area Arts Council. If you have questions, please contact Dorothy Pulscher, 720-5467.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Norwegian TV keeps us in suspense

My former fantasy football league-mate Tom Lawrence of the Mitchell Daily Republic tells about a Faith, SD, resident about to be made famous on Norwegian television:
Did you hear the one about the Norwegian TV crew in South Dakota?

Don’t laugh. This isn’t another Ole and Lena joke.

A crew from a Norwegian production company is coming to the state this month to tape scenes for a series that will run next year on Norwegian TV.

The TV hosts are Esdwsben Selvig, who is called “Danish” and Thomas Gullestad, who is known as “The Finger.”

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Family tree lands on FB

As much of a time suck as it can be, Facebook has its virtues. Recently I was invited into the Renli Family group, a pretty exclusive hoity-toity group of Norwegian-rooted South Dakota ag families who have sprawled out over time.

It must be part of getting old when you start paying attention to ancestorial family tree type stuff, because I know I never used to care when my dad would explain to me about some great aunt who was the cousin of a fella who played baseball for the Triple A Mudcats of the Yankton League in 1927. Yet, now it seems somewhat more interesting and Dad isn't around to re-tell the story to a pair of re-interested ears. My bad.

So I'm in this club from the other side of my family now. My mother's maiden name was Renli. Her dad was Clayton. His dad was Olaf. His dad was Ole. Somebody in the Renli group recently posted a picture of Ole and his wife, Anne, from when they homesteaded in South Dakota in the 1860s, almost three decades before S.D. statehood. Olaf was a handsome, fully-bearded fellow. Anne, unfortunately, was also a handome, fully-bearded felllow; or maybe the politically correct term is that she was a "sturdy woman." My son looked at the picture and first thing he said of her was: "Is that a unabrow?" Yup. And he better watch it, because I'm pretty sure that unabrow could come back and kick his scrawny teenage butt to kingdom-come.

According to my calculations, that makes me a fifth-generation South Dakota, and better yet makes my kids sixth-generation South Dakotans. And fortunately, for my girls, the five generations in between managed to dilute the unabrow gene pool and replace the sturdiness factor with long, slender legs. Hopefully, though, they will be just as tough as their great-great-great grandma had to be.