As we write this, it appears that the last day of the annual legislative session may end with a whimper rather than a holler. Lawmakers seem to have the loose ends nearly tied together. But often, the last day of the regular session is the "longest day of the year" in South Dakota.

It occurs because the constitution requires that the lawmakers may only meet 35 days in even-numbered years and 40 in odd-numbered years. If an issue or two is unresolved, the traditional solution has been to cover the ornate clocks in the senate and house chambers with suit jackets. Then the members continue their debates and back-room dealings on past midnight.

A few years ago, the governor sued the legislature, maintaining that those final bills were not legal because the votes came after midnight. The S.D. Supreme Court ruled that legislators can decide the length of a legislative day since it isn't spelled out in the constitution.

There's often high drama in Pierre in the winter at our state capitol. But most of us are so busy shoveling snow, balancing on the ice and waiting for spring that we don't notice it.

A lot of our Web readers have been demanding an updated photo of our newest staff member, Steven Michael Hunhoff. So here he is, dressed for work and barely awake .... just like me after 4:00 p.m.

You learn a lot by having a baby around. One of my newest discoveries is the amazing intuitive ability of a new mother to remember who gave her every bit of clothing she received over nine months of pregnancy from friends and family — even when it runs into the dozens and many of them look alike. After all, most are pink or blue.

Not only can a young mother remember who gave each garb to her, but she has a sixth sense to dress the child in the outfit of the person most likely to visit next. This — like a baby calf's ability to walk within an hour and like a salmon's instinct to return to the very spot where it was hatched to spawn — is a phenomenen worthy of greater study. I'd be researching it today if I was in the Infant Apparel profession.

Is the old River City, home to South Dakota Magazine, starting a new trend back to local ownership? When Yanktonians awoke this morning, the only media company not owned locally was the venerable WNAX Radio. Every other media in town is back in local hands. Few cities can boast of that. Yes, I say BOAST of that.

Even though the territorial capitol was stolen from us in 1883, Yankton has remained a media capitol. There was a South Dakota Magazine published here in the 19th century by the famous historian Doane Robinson. The Yankton Daily Press and Dakotan printed its first copy in 1861, making it the oldest paper in the Dakotas. WNAX serves a five-state region. KYNT Radio has a smaller reach but it has made a big mark in broadcasting, and it "discovered" Tom Brokaw.

We also have a weekly newspaper (The Observer), FM stations, a religious magazine, a college weekly, and a regional life-style magazine. And of course we've published South Dakota Magazine on main street since 1985.

A week ago, Doyle and Caroline Becker (both who grew up here) bought KYNT Radio, and today Gary Wood annnounced that and a group of locals have purchased the Press and Dakotan. It was sold into corporate/outside ownership 30 years ago and has been tossed around by the chains ever since.

Bland and boring are two of the worst sins a broadcast station or print publication can commit, at least from a business standpoint. And the chain medias have perfected bland and boring and made it into a recipe for how to run a business.

It will be interesting to watch how the local owners change their product through the months and years to come. I'm quite confident the changes will be good for our region.

Rapid City jazz saxophonist Gary Bloomberg is featured on the cover of our March/April '08 issue. We wrote about him a few weeks ago on this site. He's the father of Jeff Bloomberg, a well-respected state official who ran the corrections system for a number of years. Gary once had a pool hall in Huron, and then operated one in Rapid City. He is skilled with a cue, and he taught his grandson the game — that would be Shane Van Boeing, 24, one of the greatest pool players in the USA.

Gary says the skills for playing pool and playing the sax are much alike -- so all our readers out there who can play pool ... go buy a saxophone and make yourself useful.

Also in this issue:
— a major feature article on the city of Lead by Paul Higbee, our Black Hills corresondent;
— a story on Clarence and Phyllis Justice, longtime publishers of the Grantt County Review in Milbank.
— a story on how jazz music is gaining popularity not only in Sioux Falls but across South Dakota.
— a story on the Cottonwood Slough, an unusual place in Roberts County
— a food article on wuchdich, with lessons from Joyce Hofer of Freeman on how to cook the German dish.
— a historical remembrance of the great Boss Cowman Lemmon, one of the West's most colorful characters.
— a photo story on the pasque flower, with tips from some of our top photographers.
— a story by Mark Meierhenry on the old growth pines of the Black Hills and the stories they can tell.
— a photo article by Jerry Wilson on hot air ballooning here in the birthplace of ballooning.
— a long overdue article on the South Dakotan who was in a famous picture at Iwo Jima during WWII.
— and a very honest journal of the calving season by rancher Irma Jean Smith.

If you're not a subscriber, call us today and we can still send you the March/April issue. In fact, mention that you read about it on the web site and we'll give you this new issue free when you start a new subscription. It's just $19 a year. Call us at 800-456-5117.

Jim Lane shot this picture of two baldies, perched high in an old cottonwood tree on his family's homestead just north of Yankton. A pond with open water and some thick CRP grass lies below the trees, so they're no doubt looking for lunch. Jim's wife, Jana, is our circulation director.

A few years ago, I flew in a small plane with some game officials who were doing an "eagle count" along the Missouri River. We were parallel with the trees, just 50 or 100 feet off the ground, looking for the white heads. One of the experts said that the eagles have 180-degree vision, and that they can see small prey — even a dark fish in dark water — from hundreds of feet away.

Their comeback here on the western prairie is quite amazing. I remember when an eagle sighting made the front page of the local paper. Now we give them just a tad more attention than a chicken hawk.

Reading is one of life's greatest joys for many people, and it's quite sad when some folks begin to lose their sight and can no longer enjoy books and magazines.

We occasionally hear from South Dakota Magazine readers who tell us that they regretfully cannot renew because they can no longer read the articles. Some do so almost tearfully.

We've just learned, however, that the South Dakota State Library continues to produce its Braille and Talking Book Library. A librarian told us that our magazine is one of the "most requested."

There is no charge for this service. You just need to fill out an application. Here is the State Library link to apply -- look in the left column and go to "adult application." You can also call the State Library at 800-423-6665.

The taped version is available about a month or two after the issue date.

Our friends who suffer from declining eyesight, but can read large type, might also want to get acquainted with this Web site because the size of the text can be adjusted for every computer. While the elderly are sometimes averse to new technology, there is probably nothing friendlier to read than a computer screen because the format can be customized. So we should all be prepared to tell our elderly friends about the Talking Books and the options of doing more reading on the Web.

The Verendrye Plate of 1913.

We normally think of South Dakotans as a stoic, practical and straight-forward people who wouldn't plan a hoax or a con — unless they were playing poker or eating lutefisk, when our true selves are always exposed.

But we've had some classic tricksters in our history, and today on Grant Peterson's South Dakota Smorgasbord radio show we'll be remembering a few. One of our editors kibbitzes with Grant every Tuesday at 3:15 p.m. and now you can listen wherever you are by linking to Depot Radio. We'll be talking about the Thoen Stone that was discovered on Lookout Mountain near Spearfish, and the Petrified Man found near Hot Springs. The Verendrye Plate found by Fort Pierre in 1913 was no hoax, but we're less certain about the second lead plate found along the Cheyenne River by a dog in 1995.

Often we cynics confuse a hoax for a good old mystery. Am I missing any that we should be talking about?

If you're not busy at 3:15, tune in.

In South Dakota, the name Sue is one of those first names that suffice — like Cher or Oprah or Brittney. Why is it just women who can achieve such status?

Sue is of course the T-rex fossil that was unearthed near Faith in 1990 by Sue Hendrickson of the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research. Ownership of the bones became a huge controversy, and eventually BHIGR lost out to the landowner who sold them for millions to the Field Museum of Chicago.

The museum has created a traveling exhibit of Sue, and it will make its premier appearance in South Dakota — a homecoming of sorts — at the Faith community center from May 10 to Sept. 1. We'll write more about it in the next issue, but plan to visit when you head for the Black Hills this summer.

Want to know how Faith could make the exhibit really interesting? Invite Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, one of our favorite South Dakota writers, to come to town and explain how the bones are part of a bigger picture. In her new book, "New Indians, Old Wars" which we'll review in our May '08 issue, she writes, "I had been told about these creatures by storytellers of my tribe, and how they were ancestral figures. The Dkaota/Lakota/Nakota people of the region have recognized the existence of these creatures for thousands of years, have names for them, and claim them not as precursors of the Sioxu, but precursors in a universe now unknown nor unacknowledged by the Sioux; yet no one in the dialogue that followed this 20th century discovery mentioned this tribal knowledge, nor did anyone bring this scholarship into the discourse."

She continues, "The issue of intellectual property, which is at the heart of such controversies, is perhaps the most crucial issue facing native populations in this century, yet few mechanisms are in place or even on the drawing board as defensive and regulatory and transformative mechanisms."

When we lost Vine Deloria Jr., two years ago a lot of people lamented that there just isn't anyone else like him. Actually, there is his friend Elizabeth. They are a tad different. Elizabeth likes to hide her humor, where Vine used it to knock you on the brow. But like Vine she makes us think. If they invited her to Faith to stand by the bones and give her thoughts ... I think I'd make the six-hour drive.