In the early years of publishing South Dakota Magazine we learned that a distinguished and beautiful Native American actress and storyteller from the Rosebud Reservation was still alive and active in New York City. We tried to arrange a story, but it never quite happened and then she died in 1992.

Her story is featured in the January issue of Smithsonian, and now we wish more than ever that we'd interviewed her before she died.

In a nutshell, she was the great-niece of Sitting Bull. She graduated from USD and became an actress in New York where she met Alfred Frantz (who, interestingly, had attended USD at the same time she'd been there). Frantz promoted foreign travel for the Big Apple, and hired Yellow Robe in 1938 to help greet visitors. They married 13 years later.

They gave a child's sled made of eight buffalo ribs to the National Museum of the American Indian in New York, and that's the gist of the Smithsonian story. But there's still a bigger story about Alfred and Yellow Robe that we should pursue.

Food and Fermentations, a downtown Sioux Falls staple and good boosters of South Dakota Magazine for many years, has an amazing new home about four blocks north of their old location.

The wine & cheese shop & restaurant has moved into the grand old quartzite building at 431 No. Phillips that formerly housed the Sioux Falls Brewing Company. The old stone, brick and wood is a perfect fit to Food and Fermentation's trade. Doug and Laurel Lather and their staff have been working hard in January to ready the place for their big opening on Thursday, Feb. 1st. I stopped by to investigate yesterday; it's really going to amaze people. You'll think you escaped into Tuscany.

Ten years ago, we met an old fellow by the name of Berlye Seaman. He was living alone in a tiny cabin with no electricity or phone, near the Bad River about 30 miles southwest of Pierre. We've written about him before on the web site, and we featured him in our March 1997 issue. Berlye is now deceased, but we think of him with every cold blast. Here's his picture, along with a poem by Robert Frost titled "An Old Man's Winter Night." Remember your lonesome neighbors on these wicked winter evenings.



An Old Man's Winter Night

All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him -- at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off; -- and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man -- one man -- can't keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It's thus he does it of a winter night.

We are working on a sheep story, but we were scooped today by the New York Times, which has a piece on whether gay sheep can be converted to straight sheep. That's not exactly the same angle we are pursuing. I believe that if a sheep thinks he's gay then who are we to herd him in another direction. Hopefully these aren't our tax dollars at work (or did we already find a cure for cancer?)

Here's our sheep story. We've identified the king of the shearers in South Dakota. He's an octogenarian from Rosholt who has been shearing for 69 years and has a busy schedule this spring. We plan to hang out together for a day or two when it warms up. I'll get some photos and he thinks he's going to get some free help. You know what they say about free help.

He says a North Dakota television station has been planning to do a story with him for eight years but there is always too much mud and manure for the TV guys to manuever around. That's where print journalism differs from those sissy broadcast guys; we don't have to look pretty for the 6:00 o'clock news. I'm actually looking forward to wrestling muttons in the mud. But I think I'll take the cheap Nikon.

While strolling around a little town west of Yankton a few days ago I saw this herd (pictured above) on the edge of the city limits. All the sheep were shorn but the one on the left. I don't know why he/she was left with a full wool coat, but he seems to be ostracized by the others.

Seven Canadian cattle somehow showed up on a Jerauld County ranch. It's a mystery, because the all-powerful and all-knowing USDA prohibits such a thing.

We learned it this morning while reading the Wessington Springs True Dakotan, the largest newspaper in Jerauld County. They didn't report the name of the rancher because the Stockgrower's Association feared that it might hurt his prospects of selling cattle to packers.

It cost the poor fellow $11,000 in lost revenue so it's no laughing matter. And he has no idea how the cattle found their way south of the border. He bought them as feeder cattle. The photo above is not an actual picture of the Canadian imports. I think the steer in the picture wandered here from Scotland, which is legal according to the USDA.

The president's State of the State speech is tonight, and the historic-but-hysteric Sutton hearing begins today in Pierre – but we're going to focus on frozen grasshoppers. Not the ice cream drink, but the insect.

The Yankton Press & Dakotan, the oldest paper in the Dakotas, reports today that on this date in 1932 some scientists reported on their research to kill grasshoppers:

"While the grasshoppers that last summer infested the Rosebud region in huge quantities are sleeping or hibernating or whatever it is the little pests do, scientists have been researching what should be done to kill them. They tried chilling the beasts in an electric refrigerator, but to no avail. Then they placed one in a glass of water, froze it solid for 13 hours and after the ice had been chipped away from around the hopper, it began to stir and nibble a cabbage leaf."

While touring a West River town, a nice old lawyer told me a true story about one of his very first cases. He made me promise not to divulge the town because some of the characters are still characters.

As his story goes, two cowboys got in a fight in the bar. The loser went to the sheriff and pressed assault charges against the winner.

The defendant hired the lawyer, fresh from USD School of Law. Court was to be held in the offices of the Justice of the Peace, which in this case was in a basement shoe repair shop off main street. The repairman, who doubled as a JP, lived in the back of the shop.

The states attorney, the defendant, the plaintiff with his black eye, and the young attorney all gathered in the shoe shop. The Justice of the Peace had been napping, but he came out from the bedroom when he heard the commotion. There were just two chairs, and nobody seemed to be taking charge of the situation so the young lawyer introduced himself and said he was representing the defendant. "Where would you like him to sit?" asked the lawyer.

"Tell the guilty SOB he can sit wherever he likes!" said the Justice of the Peace.

And true to his word, he found the defendant guilty within five minutes.

On the way back up the steps the defendant confessed to his lawyer, "Maybe I should have told you .... but I haven't paid that guy for some repairs I had done quite awhile back."


You can thank Gov. Richard Kneip for reforming the state's judicial system in the 1970s.

I bought a homemade "ice boat" from an old fellow in Nebraska two winters ago. I was convinced that this could be the next big thing in winter recreation. What could be better than quietly sailing on ice on a brisk winter's day, far from maddening crowds, the television and all that?

Unfortunately, last winter was so warm that the lakes hardly froze. This winter started the same -- then it froze nicely but snowed on the ice. Just a little snow will stop the blades.

Still, the "boat" has been sitting alongside my barn for two winters so the dog and I hauled it to Lake Marindahl over the weekend to see if we could figure out how it works.

Most of the parts seemed to be there, and with just a little baling wire we soon had it sailing from snow drift to snow drift (3 to 4 feet distances). While we were tinkering, the game warden came to investigate. I think he thought it might be an oversized fish trap – which hurts my feelings because I haven't done anything illegal like that in more than 40 years. And if I were to start again I wouldn't hang a 20-foot high sail on it.

If the snow melts before the ice, I'll give you a report later this winter. Meanwhile, if I were you I wouldn't rush out and buy one of these.