Russell Ford-Dunker

4/11/2006: On this day in 1833, the German aristocrat and naturalist Prince Maximilian of Wied and his hired Swiss illustrator Karl Bodmer were on board the American Fur Company’s steam-driven paddleboat Yellowstone. They were heading west and north from St. Louis, toward the upper Missouri and Yellowstone river country of present day North Dakota and Montana.

4/10/2006: Springtime is an excellent time of year to set out on a river journey. And that’s exactly what a German gentleman named Prince Maximilian of Wied was preparing to do in April of 1832. The journey would take the Prince and his two assistants to the heart of North America before they would reverse direction and return to Europe two years later. This was no pleasure cruise. It was a serious scientific expedition with some inherent risks.

2/24/2006: Not to be confused with Fargo State Representative Jim Kasper, an advocate for North Dakota becoming a legal safe haven for online poker parlors, the original Poker Jim is a legendary North Dakota Badlands cowboy who lies buried in a cemetery that bears his name in McKenzie county, near the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

1/30/2006: January is a crucial month for a gardener. Like a blank canvas to a painter, a gardener’s imagination allows the frosty white rectangle beyond the window to explode with green growth and bright colors. By the end of the month, seed catalogs are dog-eared, orders are penciled in, and colorful dreams and schemes begin to solidify into a plan.