Old Ones Dream

Earth Day Returns for 2014

Earth Day has come around again, and that’s a good thing. Earth Day Flag (Wikipedia) Look to Wikipedia and National Geographic for background information. Earth Day was first observed by United Nations Proclamation on March 21, 1970, and again as an environmental teach-in on April 22, 1970, founded by U.... Read more →

Sunday Column: Be careful with this place… | Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Jesse Veeder is a fourth generation member of a ranching family in the western part of North Dakota, in the middle of the Bakken oil shale formation, who has returned home to live on the ranch. She is a singer song writer, and writer. She has a big heart and... Read more →

The LIttle Missouri National Grassland and Hay Camp

When I met Kim Schade in January 2012 he told me about how he harvests several hundred acres of hay the old fashion way using 60 year old tractors and horse teams. That brought back memories so I invited myself to hire on the haying crew at Schade Ranch. In the spring and summer of 2012 there was no rain and no grass so no hay. I have Medora, ND set up as a location on my weather app so I watched as the snows came all winter and the rains came all spring and, sure enough, I got the call from Kim several weeks ago to come to "hay camp". He says the grass is so green that the badlands look like Ireland. Read more →

Fifty Years Ago On Friday - November 22, 1963

It was Friday and a sunny day in Gainesville, Florida where I was enrolled in the College of Accounting and Finance. I had finished class for the day and had negotiated the six lanes of traffic across the street to the student union to grab some lunch. I had my... Read more →

A String of Headlights Heading Toward Boomtown... by Jesse Veeder

The Bakken, the largest oil formation in the Western Hemisphere, encompasses some 25,000 square miles of North Dakota, Montana, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. The center of the activity in North Dakota is Williston and when I rode AmTrak out in June I was counseled to avoid Williston and de-train a couple... Read more →

Horse Teams Putting Up and Feeding Hay

When I signed on to help with harvesting the 2013 hay crop at the Shade Ranch in the Little Missouri grasslands south of Medora, North Dakota, I knew that horse teams were used there and so I had visions that came straight from the pages of Ivan Doig's 1979 memoir,... Read more →

The Marshall Tucker Bull

There is a farm on the Orangeburg Scarp in South Carolina, that we called ours for 94 years until 1984. And on that farm we had some cows which made necessary a new bull every year or so. In the winter of 1978-'79 we had a dream of getting in... Read more →

The Almost Autumnal Equinox Surprise Sunset

Here on the ridge we like to make sure that the sun sets in its appointed place on each equinox and solstice, but another feature of life on the ridge is the strong likelihood of being "socked in". So when Saturday was a total sock in all day rainy day,... Read more →

Forty Eight Bottles of Blog on the Wall

We've been "blogging" for 224 day and there are now 48 individual posts (articles) available on Old Ones Dream. 67 comments and / or replies have been posted. The most popular posts appear to be: German Prisoners of War in South Carolina A Good Slow Rain On the Great American... Read more →

"The Science of Righteousness"

Out beyond wrong and right there is a field I will meet you there - Rumi Going to the Sun "Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" is the sub-title of The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt, published in 2012, and reviewed as follows: “Haidt’s research has revolutionized... Read more →