Articles

MATTERS AT HAND: Herald misses coverage of own journalism event

You can add the publisher’s name to the list of people annoyed when the Herald doesn’t cover events in our town. The Jack Hagerty Lecture was delivered Thursday evening. It wasn’t mentioned in Friday’s paper. Wait. It gets worse. The lecture was in the Herald conference room. The Herald endowed the lecture series to honor Jack Hagerty when he retired. The lecture is among the most important things we do, because it helps our community appreciate our business.

• Mike Jacobs

ALWAYS IN SEASON: Sparrow season runs all year, peaks in spring

Sparrow season is upon us, and it’s time for tips on finding and identifying sparrows. Actually, sparrow season never really ends here. Some species can be found most of the year. Several species are nesters, and some spend the winter, depending on weather conditions. Spring is a good time for sparrows because a number of species spend time here as they move north to their nesting grounds. Some of these species are in the area now; some will show up a bit later. The same is true of nesting species. Some have arrived. Some are awaited.

• Mike Jacobs

MATTERS AT HAND: N.D. presents government activism with a twist

Lately, North Dakotans have been getting more attention than we’re used to. Extremely well-timed presidential preference caucuses brought three Republican presidential candidates. Mitt Romney was in Fargo on Thursday; earlier Rick Santorum and Ron Paul visited the state.

• Mike Jacobs

MATTERS AT HAND: Higher ed critics use nickname for wider point

After decades of disagreement about UND’s Fighting Sioux nickname and logo, we suddenly have the most significant constitutional confrontation of recent North Dakota history. At first blush, the logo seems an unlikely instrument for an attack on higher education, but that is what it has become.

• Mike Jacobs

MATTERS AT HAND: A glance through the donut hole shows economic clouds

My mother was kind of a World Bank of truisms. Whenever one of us needed a lesson, she’d dig into her account and come up with the right adage to treat our troubles.

• Mike Jacobs

MIKE JACOBS / ALWAYS IN SEASON: Birds provide early signs of spring

Horned larks show up along rural roads in the Red River Valley just about the time the snow begins to recede and the ground begins to appear. Most years, I notice the first horned larks about the middle of February.

• Mike Jacobs

ALWAYS IN SEASON: Birds provide early signs of spring

The horned lark is always an early sign of spring, but it is not always a sure one. Horned larks show up along rural roads in the Red River Valley just about the time the snow begins to recede and the ground begins to appear. Most years, I notice the first horned larks about the middle of February.

• Mike Jacobs

MATTERS AT HAND: Region’s great challenge? Living with water

Today’s Herald contains the first installment of another important Forum Communications Co. project. It’s called “Living with Water.

• Mike Jacobs

ALWAYS IN SEASON: Longspurs can be abundant — but also elusive

Out walking the other day, I flushed a big flock of small birds — easily the most individual birds I’d seen so far this winter. The birds were feeding along County Road 33, and as I approached, they lifted, wheeled and drifted away, settling in a stubble field, which was almost snow-free in what had been an open winter.

• Mike Jacobs

ALWAYS IN SEASON: Some bird species are newcomers in the valley

About this time every year, bird lovers fall back on the old reliable species, perhaps especially in a year like this. This could not be described as “a birdy winter.”

• Mike Jacobs
• MATTERS AT HAND: Medora reflects the conundrum of state’s rapid growth

Columns

ALWAYS IN SEASON: Cliff swallows forecast summer’s arrival

Mid-May always brings a rush of new arrivals in the bird world. The late-moving sparrows showed up last week. So did the Baltimore orioles, ruby-throated hummingbirds and a big suite of warblers, sometimes as many as a dozen species in a single day. But the most notable arrival, for me, was the cliff swallow.

• Mike Jacobs

MATTERS AT HAND: Laws of politics work in U.S. Senate campaign

Politics in North Dakota operate according to a few immutable laws. These are unwritten, of course, but they can be seen in political campaigns, behavior in office and election abstracts. There are only a few of them, hardly a handful in fact. In this campaign, each of the candidates for the U.S. Senate has broken some of the laws, and this contributes to the close contest that was highlighted in a Forum Company poll printed last week.

• Mike Jacobs

MATTERS AT HAND: Insult the state, but not the Capitol building

North Dakota has absorbed a couple of insults in the past couple of weeks, one of them trivial and one of them hurtful. The suggestion that North Dakota is “the worst place on earth” (made in a movie called “The Five-Year Engagement”) is easy to shrug off. Probably nobody who lives here thinks it, and if anybody did, they could go somewhere else and find out that it’s not true. The suggestion that North Dakota’s Capitol building is architecturally lacking: Well, that one stings a bit.

• Mike Jacobs

ALWAYS IN SEASON: Spring brings a profusion of birds

Writing about birds is not as easy in spring as it is in winter. This seems counterintuitive, of course, but it’s true. In winter, birds are scarce. Even a diligent search such as the one conducted on the Grand Forks Christmas Bird Count can turn up only 50 species or so. Some of those are unusual, and worth writing about. By contrast, any day last week might have produced 50 species, given a bit of effort, and even without effort, every day seems to produce a new species.

• Mike Jacobs

MATTERS AT HAND: We got by with a lot of help from our friends

This is Flood Week, and in the office discussion about how to handle the flood anniversary, I was on the side of doing less rather than more. My notion was that the community already had observed the anniversary, when Bill Clinton, the great sympathizer, was here last month. People don’t want to wallow in flood memories, I said. We’re over it. Let’s move on. I didn’t prevail.

• Mike Jacobs

ALWAYS IN SEASON: Robins are common but mysterious at same time

Swamp sparrows. Marbled godwits. Yellow-rumped warblers. Ruby-crowned kinglets. Sandhill cranes. LeConte’s sparrows. Turkey vultures. This is a short list of the birds reported in Grand Forks this week. Yet, I have been fixated on American robins, perhaps the most familiar species of all birds in our area, and certainly one of the most abundant.

• Mike Jacobs

ALWAYS IN SEASON: Many birds announce spring season

Probably every bird lover has an idea about what species signals the arrival of spring. The western meadowlark? The American robin? The Canada goose? The tree sparrow? Good choices, all of these. I would add another. Or two. Both are species that my father showed me, and so they are among the first birds that I learned to recognize. One is the killdeer. The other is the lapwing, or kievit as it is known in Dutch.

• Mike Jacobs

MATTERS AT HAND: Oil, higher ed could mix well

It seems pretty clear that the issues of the decade in North Dakota are oil and higher education. What’s not so clear is whether these can be linked to the benefit of the state’s economy. That’s the trick that Texas pulled off when it became suddenly wealthy. The Texas university system is among America’s best. That state’s broad emphasis on culture and the arts is impressive, too. Such an opportunity has opened for North Dakota, which will soon be second only to Texas in oil production among the states — and from a much smaller area and many fewer wells.

• Mike Jacobs

ALWAYS IN SEASON: Let’s act now to be optimistic in the future

It’s hard to be a pessimist in springtime. All of nature seems to be welcoming another year. This week, red-winged blackbirds reappeared in the wetland near our place west of Gilby, N.D. I’m confident that I’ll see these birds every day until late fall.

• Mike Jacobs

MATTERS AT HAND: N.D. Democrats look back as 2012 campaign begins

It’s hard to be a pessimist in springtime. North Dakota Democrats pretty much proved that over the weekend. Their state convention in Grand Forks was full of brave talk. In fact, Democrats did well, finding credible, qualified candidates for every available statewide office.

• Mike Jacobs