I mentioned earlier a rant about the future of my old hometown. I still need to write that down.

Now, Rapid City is slowly decaying, but it keeps popping up in the news. One of South Dakota Public Broadcasting's reporters won a big-time award for its reporting--specifically, for this piece about contaminated water in the Black Hills. Nic and I are always talking about how much better SDPB is than, say, the local NPR affiliate, which doesn't actually have a news department, and it's nice to know our braggadocio is being regularly validated by the national news media.

The Rapid City Journal doesn't get quite as much critical acclaim--the Sioux Falls Gannet rag routinely beats the pants off them in the state awards show--but its political reporter Bill Harlan did a guest stint on the big NPR call-in show not too long ago. He even got hassled about the mess with the new 'voter ID law' that has the Native American tribes so infuriated. It was a nice segment.

But that's about all, really. I wish I could comment on the Daschle-Thune nonsense, or the fact that Larry Deidrich is still a jerk, but I am now a registered voter in Story County, Iowa, so I'm busy exploring the blotchy surface of Iowa politics. I think I might be voting for a Green candidate in September, and he might be my boss's nephew, and he might even be completely nuts. But what the hell? The incumbent has had his seat locked up for six years, and the challenger is little more than a stage prop. You can tell the people who vote straight-ticket Democrat every year, no questions asked, by looking for the "Art Small for Senate" lawn signs around town.

But OK for now.

~

LATE-BREAKING SOMETHING-OR-OTHER
Speaking of Bill Harlan: apparently he has so much time left over from TALKING TO POLITICIANS in his duties as a POLITICAL REPORTER that he helps run a South Dakota political 'blog. It--like most other editorial content generated by the paper he works for--is "right-leaning" and not of the highest quality. But then, I'm hardly one to talk, so! Snap.

I licked those damn robots, though.

Anyway, "Mount Blogmore" is a hell of a lot better than the one-trick pony we had before, so you might as well check it out.