North Dakota

This past week was spent traveling to and from North Dakota. The trip on the weekend had been planned for months, a trip to watch the Fighting Sioux play in the Ralph Englestad Arena in Grand Forks North Dakota. That trip came off with only two of us attending rather than three as had been planned due to the events of earlier in the week.

"The Ralph" as they call it was impressive beyond belief. The fact that the little counters where you put the mustard on your hot dog are made of marble was what really impressed me. It is of course full of Fighting Sioux symbols, including inlaid in marble in the floor. The "symbols" are a great example of the liberal doctrine of "consistency is not an issue". PETA has taken action against the Green Bay "Packers" because they feel that the Packer name HONORS the idea of killing animals and the job of meat "Packer". Of course with Indian names, the use of the name is DEROGATORY, and OFFENSIVE! There you have it, on one hand a team name is a point of honor, and on the other side, it is a point of offense. As a true liberal would say, "it is all in how you feel about it", and that is just fine. Individually, we can be "right" all the time even with conflicting internal views, but as a society, we better learn to just number our teams.

The early part of the week was filled with 22 hours of driving in a 42 hour period to attend the funeral of a friends father in Williston ND. The road was long, but once the decision was made to go, it seemed like the right way all the way through. It is just fine to use "emotional reasoning" to decide what funerals to go to, just not to tell everyone else what funerals they ought to go to, what their team ought to be named, or how high their taxes ought to be. "The Peace Garden State" isn't the most scenic in the union by my standards, but at least you can see a lot of many parts of it all at once, and there is certainly not much to get in the way of the wind.

So bogging continues to suffer even though the blogging environment is the best that it as ever been. Hopefully I will be able to make up for lost time soon.