My mother dedicated her life to teaching.   Not just teaching,  but reaching out to those left behind in America’s broad educational system.   She taught junior high!   Wait,  it gets better:  she taught juvenile delinquents of junior high age! However,  even she reached her limit,  and when they started posting armed guards in the hallways of her Chicagoland school, she quit.   Unfortunately,  this born teacher discovered too late that no other school system was willing to t

Heroes come in all kinds of packages.   In fact,  many heroes are not even recognized  –  least of all during their own lifetimes.   But with the recently observed Native American Day,  I thought I would share a few of mine  –  some that you may have heard of,  and other lesser-known aborigines of North America.   This is not by any stretch of the imagination,  a comprehensive list. It would be like trying to list all your favorite white people. The great Olympian Jim Thorpe

The Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota was in the headlines last fall and winter because of Native American demonstrations protesting an oil pipeline being dug under their tribal lands and threatening their main source of water.  Trust me, I have no intention of weighing in on this bitterly contested issue.  But it does occur to me that I have never written about one of the best stories to ever emanate from that corner of the world. Standing Rock, which straddles

When I fall in love with an author – which I do with some regularity – it is passionately, deeply, obsessively. I set out immediately to devour every literary morsel he or she has ever written. Typically I cannot contain my enthusiasm and extol the author’s virtues to everybody I know, and not a few that I don’t know, as if I had personally discovered this rare talent and was responsible for his success. This can be embarrassing, as I have been known to “discover” brilliant w

At a recent history conference I learned – among other things – that the stereotypical movie depiction of circling the wagons against an imminent Indian attack (a plot device used in countless Hollywood movies and TV westerns), originated not on the Oregon Trail but with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. And if you know your American history, this was in the late nineteenth century, when America’s frontier was all but gone. Westward wagon trains beginning in 1841 did circle thei

October is pow wow time here in the Black Hills. One of the largest annual pow wows in the country is staged right here in Rapid City the first week of October. Hold that thought. First some background: I moved to Indian Country from New York over 40 years ago to get married. It was the early seventies and it was a bit of a culture shock. I was teased unmercifully for wearing mini-skirts (which hadn’t quite made the scene here yet), and the omnipresent country music, western