Friday, May 29, 2009

Beets of Wrath


North Dakota looks to economically ravaged Michigan for some Joads desperate enough to move in and take some of our abundant jobs. If this doesn't work, there's always illegal aliens.

North Dakota Seeks Workers

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Bobby Vee


After Buddy Holly died in 1959 en route to a show in Moorhead, a group of Fargo teenagers played the date instead. The bandleader, Bobby Vee (ne Villine), is today best remembered for a couple of hits now in endless rotation on oldies radio, and his connection a kid named Bobby Zimmerman who played piano for him in Fargo for a summer.

The piano player, who later became Bob Dylan, still admires Vee and wrote in his memoirs, "Bobby Vee and me had a lot in common, even though our paths would take such different directions. We had the same musical history and came from the same place at the same point in time. ... I'd always thought of him as a brother."

Vee discusses his career and meeting Dylan in Fargo again in 1991 in a long article in Goldmine.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Saberi Freed

Journalist from Fargo no longer pawn in international chess game.

NYT: In Turnabout, Iran Releases U.S. Journalist