Warming climate unleashing waves of pine beetles in Colorado

Global warming has been accelerating since humans began setting fires to clear habitat, as a weapon or just for amusement. Evidence that we humans have eaten or burned ourselves out of habitats creating catastrophes behind us is strewn throughout the North American continent. 

The 2012 Waldo Canyon Fire was Colorado's costliest at nearly half a billion dollars until the Black Forest Fire the next year surpassed that. In October, 2020 the East Troublesome Fire incinerated nearly 200,000 acres of mixed timber and grass becoming the second largest wildfire ever recorded in Colorado. It was believed early that downed power lines caused the Marshall Fire in Boulder County, today the state's most destructive blaze, with claims for damage north of two billion dollars. That firestorm forced the evacuation of tens of thousands and evaporated over a thousand homes. 

Today, extracting oil and gas from public lands releases about 20 percent of energy-related US greenhouse gas emissions.

William R. Cotton is Professor Emeritus of Meteorology at Colorado State University. He says cloud seeding can produce minimal results in winter and the practice during summertime is probably fruitless but now there are eight state-permitted cloud seeding generators across Colorado.

The Aspen Acres Fire is a human-caused wildfire in southern Colorado that has burned 102,007 acres and some 850 structures have been damaged or destroyed, including 319 confirmed homes. Investigators of the seventh largest fire in Colorado history identified two distinct ignition sites directly under San Isabel power lines near Highway 165 leading to allegations of negligence and trespassing. 

Ponderosa pine contains a much higher level of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) than many other cone-bearing trees and tends to be more explosive in wildfire conditions especially when under drought stress. Beetle-affected trees are pockmarked with ‘pitchouts’ that burst into flames during wildfires and torch more readily.

Across the country, climate change is ravaging ecosystems, bringing more robust storms, rising sea levels, record-setting conflagrations and fatal heat waves. In Colorado, the staggering die-off of the majestic pines is difficult to stomach. [Capital & Main]

In 2018 after the Trump Organization gutted the National Environmental Policy Act then was thrown from the White House Hulett, Wyoming-based Neiman Enterprises closed their Hill City, South Dakota sawmill and is threatening to shutter another in Spearditch. Neiman purchased Colorado's Montrose Forest Products in 2012 but will likely cease operations there, too.

SDSU Student's Association recognizes college land grab

Despite the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act in 1862 that distributed unceded lands in the public domain to raise funds for colleges. 

After the defeat of the 7th Cavalry at Greasy Grass in 1876 and the Great Sioux War Congress abrogated that treaty in 1877 and the Utes, Lakota, Arapaho, Cheyenne and others who migrated, lived and hunted all along the Front Range were driven into concentration camps.

In 1980 attorney Mario Gonzalez filed the federal court case stopping payment of the Black Hills Claim award to the Oglala Lakota Nation. Gonzalez contends that the commission charged to make peace with tribes inserted language into the Fort Laramie Treaty signed in 1868 that Red Cloud had neither seen nor agreed to in negotiations. 

In 2019 during an episode of The Keepers, a podcast produced by the Kitchen Sisters and NPR, the lead Archivist at the National Archives told listeners lawyers are combing the records for treaties with tribal nations none of which have been honored by the United States.

The Morrill Land-Grant Acts are directly linked to the Native American Genocide and South Dakota State University is just one of those offenders. SDSU was funded using 160,000 acres of land-grant scrip or parcels. A significant portion of the lands allocated for South Dakota's land-grant fund came from territory originally recognized under treaties with the Sioux (Oceti Sakowin) nations, including the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 and subsequent agreements that were systematically altered or violated by the federal government as white settlement expanded.

Ordinance 26-1-O passed during Monday night’s Students’ Association (SA) meeting, establishing a formal and acknowledgement for all SA Senate Meetings. The ordinance was created in collaboration with the American Indian Students’ Association (AISA). SDSU’s land acknowledgement, created through the Wokini Initiative, will be read after the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of each SA meeting. Senator At-Large Paul Fasen said he spoke with members of his constituency after initially reading the ordinance and asked them whether or not they care about the land acknowledgement. “Resoundingly, the constituents that I talked to said that they didn’t care,” Fasen said. “One person actually said that he would prefer it if we didn’t include this land grant.” [Students’ Association passes land acknowledgement]

USD journo tackles CTE

The NFL, the Fox group and the Trump Organization are among the country's most hated companies so dissolving the NFL then ending college and high school ball can't happen soon enough. 

A 2017 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found 110 out of 111 brains of those who played in the National Football League had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). In 2023 Arizona State’s Neurodegenerative Disease Research Center learned that the worst damage to developing brains comes from repeated blows to the head especially among those who play American football.

A University of South Dakota journalist is telling readers just how horrible the results have become.  

Eight-hundred-seventy-eight former NFL players died between 2016 and 2021. Researchers were able to examine 235 of the deceased players’ brains, and found CTE in 215 (91.5%) of those brains. This means that at least one in four NFL players have the disease. Tanner Peterson, the coordinator of athlete mental health, addiction & preventative services at USD, discusses student athlete mental health and what he looks out for. Peterson compares mental health to physical health, “Just like we anticipate physical strain with student-athletes, we also want to equip them with the tools to manage the mental and emotional strain of being a student-athlete.” The disease cannot be diagnosed until after death however, so the current rate of CTE in current NFL and football players is unknown. [Brady Cartledge, The Volante]

"Chronic traumatic encephalopathy has devastated generations of football players. Does that mean it’s unethical to be a fan?" www.statnews.com/2026/09/14/f...

[image or embed]

— STAT (@statnews.com) September 14, 2026 at 11:10 AM

Burns: Medicare for all seems reasonable

Editor's note: there is a growing movement among Democrats and others to fund Medicare for all but this interested party likes the idea of rolling the funding for Obamacare, TriCare, Medicare, the Indian Health Service and the Veterans Health Administration together then offering Medicaid for all by increasing the estate tax, raising taxes on tobacco and adopting a carbon tax. Yes, socialized agriculture, socialized dairies, socialized cheese, socialized livestock production, a socialized timber industry, socialized air service, socialized freight rail, a socialized nursing home industry, socialized water systems and now a socialized internet are all fine with Republicans in South Dakota but then they insist single-payer medical insurance is socialized medicine.

Robert Burns is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Dean Emeritus of the Honors College at South Dakota State University. His column appears in the Brookings Beacon.

Much is being made of a progressive proposal for “Medicare for all” as we approach the 2026 midterm elections. 

There are variations of exactly what the proposal entails but agreement exists among supporters that healthcare would continue to be delivered as a combination of private and public providers — but a single public payer system would be created to pay for the healthcare goods and services provided.

Critics argue the proposal is far too radical and expensive. Proponents argue it is a reasonable proposal in response to the healthcare issue which the American public identifies as the third-leading public issue in American politics.The American healthcare issue is identified by the public and policy makers as a multipart issue involving high cost, limited access and poor results. 

Annual healthcare spending in the U.S. is nearly $5.3 trillion and accounts for approximately 18.5% of our nation’s GDP. The per capita spending is approximately $15,600.

Both the total spending and the per capita spending levels are nearly twice that of all other democratic industrialized nations, all of which provide some version of public, universal and comprehensive healthcare for the citizenry. 

The high cost of healthcare in the U.S. is traceable to multiple factors including the fact that the industry employees state of the art expensive technology and high-salaried professionals. Other factors accounting for high costs include the lack of price visibility and regulations for drugs, devices and procedures, the fee for service practice and the high administrative costs associated with administering a tangled web of scores of private and public health insurance plans.

Our highest level of global healthcare spending fails to provide the highest level of access and the best healthcare results. Access is limited by several obstacles including lack of personal funds and insurance, rural medical provider shortages, insurance restrictions on care, and lingering social and racial disparities.

The most recent government reports identify nearly 9% of the American public or approximately 28 million persons lack healthcare insurance of any type and that number is expected to increase by nearly 3.5 million during this calendar year because of Affordable Care Act insurance premium subsides being eliminated and federal funding for Medicaid being reduced by $800 million due to the One Big Beautiful Bill. 

The lack of coverage is not spread evenly across the public. Nearly 30% of households with incomes below $25,000 per year lack health insurance which explains in part why our low-income public suffer disproportionately worse health conditions. Children have a high level of health insurance coverage with approximately 5.6% being uninsured while nearly 12% of the adult public between 18 and 64 years old have no health insurance.

Our nation’s public, 65 years old and older, enjoy the highest level of coverage due to Medicare. 

High costs and an inability to afford the high costs limits access to quality care which leads to poor healthcare results in the U.S. Our life expectancy, infant mortality rates, chronic illness rates and the number of avoidable deaths all compare unfavorably with statistics and rates found in other democratic industrialized nations. The American lifestyle and a lack of emphasis on preventive health along with limited access discussed above all contribute to our poor healthcare results. 

Nothing discussed above is new to our list of public issues. We have been faced with these same healthcare realities for decades, yet our policy makers bring us only incremental change. We find some satisfaction in Medicaid and Medicare approved in the mid-1960s, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program that followed and the 2010 Affordable Care Act but the healthcare issues outlined in this essay persist. Under the current Trump Administration and the Republican controlled Congress, funding and regulation regression has been the direction of policy change in healthcare giving us even higher costs, more limited access and poorer results. Perhaps it is the right time for a leap beyond incremental change in the form of Medicare for all. 

A single integrated, regulated and funded healthcare payer system promises universal access, more efficient spending of our healthcare dollars and results competitive with the rest of our democratic industrialized cohort nations. Over 30 modern democracies have proven public funded and regulated universal and comprehensive healthcare is a more efficient and effective use of healthcare spending. 

Those who insist the proposal is a radical version of socialized medicine are invited to advance a better alternative model of healthcare that will address our current challenges of high cost, restricted access and poor results. 

The status quo promises more of the same.

Minnesota's off-reservation cannabis compacts a model for other states

Tribal sovereignty binds the hands of states competing for federal resources. Under the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act the Tohono O'odham Nation won its lawsuit with the State of Arizona and in 2017 it opened a casino in Glendale outside its established boundaries. 

In 2018 the Oglala Lakota Oyate bought fifty acres just off I-90 outside their Nation then legalized cannabis for all adults in 2020. According to the Lakota Times Oglala Lakota College has the equipment to test cannabis but so far the cost of constructing a lab in Pine Ridge has proved to be prohibitive.

A year ago Legacy Cannabis in Duluth was the first non-tribal retail shop to open and in February a Minneapolis building housing a Pizza Hut became one of more than a dozen non-tribal dispensaries operating in Minnesota. Customers packed into the Brooklyn Park location of RISE dispensaries on its first day of cannabis sales, one of the first privately owned facilities to open about two years after the Legislature fully legalized the herb. 

Several Tribal Nations have signed compacts with Minnesota and lead retail cannabis growth where the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe is becoming a billion dollar enterprise after completing construction of a 50,000-square-foot cultivation facility that dwarfs any non-tribal operations which are capped at 30,000 square feet. The White Earth Nation was the first of Minnesota’s eleven Nations to open an off-reservation dispensary and compacts include how Minnesota taxes Tribal Nations on the sale of cannabis products to a licensed wholesaler or dispensary off-reservation.

Minnesota’s Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) said other states and tribal nations are looking to mirror its approach — including Virginia, Wisconsin, New York, Connecticut and California, where tribal cannabis is restricted to reservation lands. Waabigwan Mashkiki, translating to “flower medicine” in Ojibwe, can barely keep up with demand as it expands operations in Mahnomen and opens retail stores across the state. Now seven tribally owned stores have opened outside of tribal land. The compacts allow each tribe to operate up to eight. [Minnesota Star-Tribune]

The closest dispensaries to the horrible red state of South Dakota are in Pipestone and Luverne, Minnesota.

Trump Organization now threatening Prairie Pothole Region

The number of acres in 'agroecosystems' has tripled since the 1940s so poor ag practices like tiling have made soils unable to absorb rainfall creating toxic runoff and flooding. 

In red states like South Dakota freedom equals the right to pollute and agriculture is the leading source of pollution in the waters of the United States. Most East River lakes are already eutrophic shit holes filled with toxic algae and unable to even support fish populations so the Prairie Pothole Region is becoming increasingly threatened by the encroachment of industrial agriculture but more irrigation means pumping from depleted aquifers mainly recharged by the Prairie Pothole Region. 

And, after massive failures of state agencies like South Dakota Game, Fish and Plunder invasive species like zebra and quagga mussels are taking over waterbodies as diving ducks like the Canvasback, Redhead, Bufflehead, Lesser Scaup, Common Goldeneye that feed on the pesky bivalves are being eliminated. 

Yes, the US Environmental Protection Agency and US Fish and Wildlife Service are within the Executive Branch and as Commander in Chief the president could simply order the Army Corps of Engineers and all to stand down.

On July 24, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service opened an unusually brief, 14-day public-comment period seeking information about how it manages agricultural drainage pipes—a type of perforated pipe called drain tile—installed near federally protected wetlands. Comments are due August 7. But the information request appears to be the opening move in a process that could weaken protections for more than 28,000 conservation easements covering over 1.5 million acres in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa. Simply put: drain tile installed too close to a prairie pothole would effectively drain that wetland and eliminate waterfowl and wildlife habitat. 

If the government now permits drainage systems close enough to starve them of water, the easements may survive on paper while the wetlands themselves quietly vanish—and much of America’s migratory ducks, geese, and other water birds along with them. “The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering repealing the rule that protects the integrity of the Duck Stamp easements that have been purchased for generations.” [A Quiet Rule Review Could Drain the Prairie Pothole Region, America’s “Duck Factory”]

Learn more at South Dakota Searchlight.

Leo and Smith on the ocean

The Order of the Presentation opened St. Mary’s in Elkton where I attended grade school but the nuns were from the Dominican and Benedictine Orders, too. They were Commies who taught us Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and Puff, the Magic Dragon.

Norbeck Society pushing back on Neiman influence in LawCo

After a century of fire suppression, a decades-long moratorium on prescribed burns, a lack of environmental litigators and GOP retrenchment the Black Hills National Forest has been broken for decades. The collapse of the Black Hills hydrologic region was forecast in 2002 even as the mountain pine beetle raced to save Paha Sapa water supplies. Nevertheless, Hulett, Wyoming-based Neiman Enterprises bought the former Homestake mill in Spearditch in 2008 after logging most of the Black Hills National Forest into the dirt. 

In 2018 after the Trump Organization gutted the National Environmental Policy Act then was thrown from the White House Neiman closed its Hill City, South Dakota sawmill and is threatening to shutter another in Spearditch announcing layoffs and production cutbacks while blaming the US Forest Service. Earth hating US Senators John Thune and John Barrasso introduced the Save Jim Neiman's Ass Black Hills Forest Protection and Jobs Preservation Act of 2022 but it died in committee. The downsizing came despite Neiman's successful operations in blue states while enjoying the fruits of socialism as Republicans found a way to funnel taxpayer dollars to the Black Hills timber mogul under a partnership between the US Forest Service and the National Wild Turkey Federation. 

 

In June, 2023 an interested party asked former acting Black Hills National Forest Supervisor Jim Zornes to comment on an article appearing in South Dakota Searchlight about the heinous state of affairs on the Forest then the publication followed up on that piece with another describing the unheard of turnover of supervisors so an interested party asked Dave Mertz to comment on it. Mertz is a retired natural resource officer for the BHNF who attended a roundtable discussion in Spearditch hosted by South Dakota's lone US Representative Dusty Johnson when he sicced two fellow Earth haters on Regional Forester Frank Beum and BHNF Supervisor Shawn Cochran. 

Historian Paul Horsted, the Norbeck Society, People for Sustainable Logging in the Black Hills and the Black Hills Environmental Coalition joined the condemnation of Rep. Johnson's attack on the Forest Service.

The subtext: 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘭𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘯𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺.

Until recently the Lawrence County “Natural Resources Committee” was called the “timber committee”. To the best of our knowledge, since the name change a few years ago, they have not addressed any resource except timber.

Since 2011, science has repeatedly shown that logging on the Black Hills National Forest is unsustainable.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙇𝙖𝙬𝙧𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚 𝘾𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙮 𝙉𝙖𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙖𝙡 𝙍𝙚𝙨𝙤𝙪𝙧𝙘𝙚𝙨 𝘾𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙞𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙚 𝙝𝙖𝙨 𝙞𝙜𝙣𝙤𝙧𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙛𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙪𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙤 𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙞𝙣𝙘𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙚𝙙 𝙝𝙖𝙧𝙫𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙨 𝙗𝙮 𝙩𝙖𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖 "𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚 𝙤𝙣 𝙞𝙣𝙘𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙗𝙚𝙧 𝙝𝙖𝙧𝙫𝙚𝙨𝙩". In addition to the widely available information about the depletion trend of saw logs, the committee has disregarded the resulting consequences to aesthetics, habitat, wildfire risk, and how the pressure they exert on the Forest Service to cut down big trees will run the timber industry out of business for lack of suitable trees for logging.

By our calculations, within 6 years at the current pace of logging, the Lawrence County Natural Resources Committee will likely have no more “expertise” to offer to the Forest Service. Maybe at that time they will move on to other resources.

Concerned residents might consider a visit with Lawrence County Commissioners and/or Committee members about the influence the County is exerting on the Forest Service and management of the national forest lands within the county. [Norbeck Society]

Lumber prices are depressed as wildfire salvage floods mills.

In a request for comment on the status of the cooperative agency status and what it means for the Forest Service and the private timber industry, Cochran’s office said they felt the issue had been resolved and refused further comment. [Lawrence Co. regains cooperative agency status with Forest Service]

Devil finally takes Lindsay Graham; McConnell and Trump next?

If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) May 3, 2016

 

Passenger rail a priority for some Montana legislators

Imagine a time when portions or all passenger rail in the United States are elevated for wildlife egress and a corridor between Mexico City and the Amtrak station in Shelby, Montana is a route to the Yukon River in Alaska intersecting with a bridge over or a tunnel under the Bering Strait connecting South and North America to Russia and the rest of Eurasia.

Cheyenne, Wyoming is on board with Colorado for expanded Front Range passenger rail that would connect El Paso to Shelby. I-25, especially from Pueblo, Colorado to Fort Collins through Colorado Springs and the Denver metro, sucks at biblical proportions as does flying into Denver International Airport so growth on the Front Range is driving planners to pick up the pace on passenger rail. Littleton, Louisville and Pueblo are among several Colorado cities pushing for increased passenger rail service.

And, although Amtrak rejected Delaware-based AmeriStarRail plans to utilize existing infrastructure from Amtrak and Norfolk Southern to complete the Transcontinental Chief the company is currently petitioning Congress, the Federal Railroad Administration and the Department of Transportation to pressure Amtrak back to the negotiating table. They are now targeting a revised 2028 launch timeline to coincide with the Los Angeles Summer Olympics.

Calling the potential for passenger rail service "a huge asset" Broadwater, Butte-Silver Bow, Dawson, Gallatin, Granite, Jefferson, Missoula, Park, Powell, Prairie, Sanders and Wibaux counties became founding Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority member counties. Now with twenty counties and several tribal nations on board BSPRA hopes to restore passenger rail across southern Montana from North Dakota to Idaho and include some 47 stops in seven states.

Some legislators, including Billings Democratic Rep. Denise Baum and Missoula Democratic Sen. Andrea Olsen, have pushed for increased access to passenger rail alongside some of their Republican counterparts, including Glasgow Sen. Gregg Hunter. Many transit agencies around the state are interested in this conversation too, as adding train lines could be an opportunity for bus services to expand offerings. One question in the survey asked what type of public transportation would be used if it was offered. Trains were the most popular answer, followed by buses. [Survey shows Montanans interested in more public transit]

Dad

Born fifth of eight, 29 December, 1919, on a rock-strewn, hilltop farm in Richland Township, straddling a glacial river divide in Brookings County, South Dakota Lawrence Kurtz's first memory was of an open motorcar trip from Elkton to Chicago and back again with Grandmother and Grandfather over dirt roads.

Milking cows, burning corn cobs for heat, sleeping three to a bed, taking turns at the outhouse with diarrhea, trudging behind a horse-drawn plow for what must have seemed like years, walking (or, if Gus didn't need it that day, two to a horse) a mile and a half uphill both ways to Richland School #48 maybe through blowing and drifting snow at -20, day followed humble day.

For sixteen years his greatest joys were the Christmases when each child was presented with an orange. A favorite story recounted a day in 1935, when, in the worst of the Dirty Thirties, he and brother Kenneth walked across a completely dry basin that had formerly held Lake Benton.

To attend school in Elkton, Lawrence lived with Grandfather and Grandmother Kretsinger, a stern household at the home in which sister, Leslie and husband, Dave, live today. Although he recalled a mostly unpleasant experience, Lawrence excelled in track, played the kettle drums in band and earned the move to Brookings to attend his final year of high school then graduated to the Aggie course at South Dakota State College. His favorite treat in Brookings? Nick's, of course. Burgers were a nickel.

Since world war came as no surprise to most, enlistment represented an odd deliverance to Lawrence. The Army Air Corps seemed like the logical assignment for a twenty one year-old man with the skill and patience to fix those things that were unfixable. During his deployment in Guam, while strolling on the beach near the base, he espied a young woman walking toward him. It was his sister, Irene, who had joined the nursing corps and was also stationed at Guam, unbeknownst to both.

Fairmont Army Air Field, Nebraska, and its close proximity to the Union Pacific Railroad hub at Columbus brought Sergeant Kurtz (whose friends were now calling Larry) where he met a sultry, sassy, stenographic superstar with whom he would fall inescapably head-over-heels, ass-over-teakettle. Having helped build the aircraft that carried the bombs that led to the end of that war in 1945, he flew in an identical aircraft to take photographs, not only of the results of his B-29s built at the Martin Plant in Omaha, but also circled the signing of the Emperor's surrender on the USS Missouri.

A bright, blue-eyed daughter born a few weeks later accompanied her parents to a post-war Canal Zone, the outpost critical to arming continents for a stewing Cold War. In 1947, Larry, Harriet, and toddler, Leslie were assigned to the Department of the Air Force, newly created to execute that mission.

In 1954, while stationed at Castle Air Force Base near Merced, California, Harriet and Master Sergeant Kurtz (much to the dismay of a pampered eight and a half year-old sister) presented a breathtakingly handsome boy, now taking vaguely artistic liberties with sacred family history.

Reassigned to Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, the emerging brain of the Strategic Air Command, Dad and Mom delivered a sweet little brown-eyed girl in 1956. In 1957, Senior Master Sergeant Kurtz was ordered to Torrejon Air Base near Madrid, Spain, the passage on the SS Independence a vivid family memory, and a year later, he was awarded the rank of Chief Master Sergeant, one of 620 elite non-commissioned officers.

Maintaining the B-52s flying the sorties while cradling armed nuclear weapons every day to the margins of the Soviet Union and to forward bases throughout Europe from Franco's Spain as attache to the Inspector General of the Air Force for three and a half years, Larry still found time to shower his family with a richness of travel experiences. He took us to Expo 58, the Brussels Worlds Fair, to Paris and Lisbon. We saw Pompei and climbed Mt. Vesuvius. We saw Rome, where Pope Pius XII blessed our rosaries just weeks before he died. We saw the watery streets of Venice in gondolas and watched glass being blown. We boarded cable cars and ascended to a castle in Bavaria. In Las Palomas, base-housing families stood along la calle to wave at President Eisenhower, Generalissimo Franco and my dad driving by in a motorcade.

Kurtz hob-nobbed with colonels and played golf with generals; his uniform emblazoned with citations, airmen snapped to attention. But, living out of a flight bag took its toll, so in 1961 he made the decision to fly us home and retire. After a year at Dow Air Force Base, Maine, Larry called it quits after 20 years, nine months. He bought a 9' plywood travel trailer and put a hitch on the '60 Mercedes Benz 220 that he had purchased from the plant in Germany, our drive through Quebec and on to South Dakota now just another delicious memory.

But, in about 1970 or so, my very furious retired Air Force, Republican father wrote the Sioux Falls Argus Leader after it ran a photo during the Vietnam War. Dad cited Senator George McGovern with what he believed was the unforgivable offense of a civilian wearing a USAF flight suit. The letters in the paper that followed afterwards accused Dad of nitpicking while he got volumes of support in the mail from the likes of the John Birch Society. Dad never forgot it and clearly I haven't either.

In '71, after I used Mom's Singer to sew an American flag upside-down on the back of a fatigue jacket from Korea that Dad had given me, he threw it into the burn barrel, poured gas on it and set it afire. That he didn't throw me in there too is testimony of his love for my mother. In the late 60s and through the 70s Dad won conservation awards for terracing the farm, planting trees and avoiding atrazine. He remained "inactive reserve" for ten years and somewhat later on a night of quiet reflection he quipped, "I'm finally free of the bastards."

1972 was my first time to vote. I was a stupid punk, had a very high draft number, ignored a Presidential appointment to the United States Air Force Academy (an entitlement for a dependent of CMSgt Lawrence E. Kurtz, USAF (Ret)) because Richard Fucking Nixon was Commander-in-Chief; besides my glasses prevented me from being a pilot. Filling in the oval for Gus Hall, the Communist Party candidate, was a protest to somebody else's failed democratic adolescence.

In the 80s when he visited us in Spearditch Dad was able to see how most of the fertile land in Lawrence County was being covered with concrete and housing for people from other states. In the 90s and 2000s he wept as shelter belts were being cleared for center-pivot irrigation and fossil water was being pumped from fragile aquifers for the industrial agriculture now killing his once-beloved Brookings County.

Lawrence the Elder, whose often-close proximity to B-24s saw history's remembrance of George McGovern's military service as fabrication, supported fellow Strategic Air Command alumnus Tom Daschle through his entire career but gave up on voting after his home state turned Senator Daschle out for Earth hater, John Thune. Dad died in 2010.