Tag Archives: Sunday Columns

Sunday Column: Our songs.

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It’s a nostalgic time of year. The Christmas tree is up and families are making plans to get together. I’m working on cleaning up the kitchen after a cookie decorating party that almost didn’t happen if it weren’t for Betty Crocker and my mother.

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And I’m thinking about the music as we move into the new year.

Songs that were written as my dad recovered. Songs that were written on the backs of horses in the spring, during a rain storm with the windows open in our house and the morning after a late night playing with the band.
Songs about settling into a lifetime love. Songs about promises and shoveling dirt and making it all work when I was sure it couldn’t possibly happen.
Songs about the world getting smaller.
Songs about home.
After the new year I will take another trip to Nashville, and then maybe another, and then plans will be made to get these songs out into the world. The work has just begun on this project. I have taken my music across the country before, but there was something sort of surreal about packing new and unheard words with me, carrying them up over the clouds and putting them down, recreating them in a place where music seems to ring from the windows of every building, when the music I make was taken from these hills and small town streets.
It’s always been this way. This place has been inspiring me since I wrote poems about the frogs I would catch in the crick below the house.
And as got older I wondered if maybe I should try something a little more catchy. A little simpler. Maybe a song about drinking beer while dangling my feet off the back of a pickup bed.
The subject matter seems to be popular these days.
And it’s not like I’ve never drank a beer while sitting on a tailgate. But isn’t there more to say about that? About the person sitting next to us? About the ground we’re drinking on?
About what it feels like to be 18 and then 21 and then 31 and so scared and so free at the same time?
Isn’t there a place for a song about the hot sticky calm before a rain that brings the men in from the fields?
I think so. I want to listen to those songs. And so I try to write them.
When I got home from my first trip to Nashville the music around me became apparent again, somehow just ringing louder in my ears. Maybe being away for a minute is a little inspiring in itself. Seeing Music City reminded me of what a weird and challenging little life I’ve set up for myself living out here as far away from any coast or city center as I can get,  making my way as a singer and writer in such a practical environment, where a real job makes so much more sense.

Except don’t we need songs out here too? Songs about us? Isn’t that old country church that closed its doors years ago worth commemorating? Isn’t the story of the man in the bar who looked at me and lamented the loss of his high school love worth telling?
Isn’t this place just the right combination of romantic and heart wrenching, hopeful and unforgiving? What about the lines created on the faces of our grandparents earned through a life of work and worry, that in this day in age, we’d know nothing about if we weren’t told?

I’ve always just wanted to tell it.

Coming Home: Singing about home from a recording studio on Music City
by Jessie Veeder
12-21-14
Forum Communications

Sunday Column: My sister, the coach…

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And now I give you one of the most embarrassing photos of myself on file.

IMG_20141006_0001Here I am. Twelve years old. Fresh into my seventh grade year, first year out of country school. First year in a real sport. Trying my hand at volleyball, but apparently not trying my hand at ironing my wrinkled shorts that are pulled up way beyond my bellybutton, barely able to contain the size Large shirt I was given.

Where are my arms?

I don’t know.

Where are my braces?

Coming next year.

Where was my talent for sending a ball over the net, at least once or twice a game?

Non existent.

But you can’t blame me for trying. Growing up is all about finding out what you like and what you’re good at, and unfortunately, sometimes, they don’t go hand in hand.

For example, I liked wearing leotards…

Why? Wwwwhhhhhyyyyy?

Why? Wwwwhhhhhyyyyy?

But I was no good at dancing.

You know who was?

That little California Raisin doing jazz hands to the left of me.

Yup, Big Sister was made to dance, as you can tell….

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Thirty-some years later and she looks exactly the same…think she even still has those pants… could probably fit into them…

My spandex leotards, as you can see from the photographic evidence provided, didn’t stand a chance on me the first go ’round.

Yeah, the right sister is the dancer.

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Because it turns out me, my long, gangly, noodle arms, lack of coordination or control over those limbs, my fear of floor-burning my entire body and my nonexistent competitive nature didn’t magically combine to create a phenomenal athlete.

But rest assured the athleticism in our family didn’t start and end with those jazz shoes. Because along came Little Sister.

There she is down there on my right, strangling our momma dog in a mischievous love embrace, hair wild, planning her next move…

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And her next move was to get straight A’s, make sure everyone is being nice to everyone else, practice dribbling and shooting the basketball on the only slab of concrete on the entire ranch, make varsity and head to state basketball…then do it all over again during volleyball season.

IMG_20141006_0004Always working, always making plans that one.

Anyway, this year Little Sister, all grown up now, is at the beginning of her first year as a guidance counselor in our hometown’s elementary school and at the end of her first season as a junior high volleyball coach.

So last week Big Sister, Mom and I headed to the school, bought some popcorn at the concessions and went to watch her work and cheer on her team of Wolves.

And then I had a flashback…

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*cringe*

Anyway, it was quite a proud moment for us and one we hadn’t seen on that woman since her days of hitting free throws and playing mean defense in high school.

We watch Big Sister put on dance recitals and my family comes to my concerts, but we haven’t had a chance to be spectators in Little Sister’s work life for years.

And she was good at it. So positive and encouraging. So adorable and official with her clipboard under her arm. I couldn’t help but think, watching those skinny seventh grade girls hit the ball back and forth over the net, that if I were them, I would have loved her as my coach…

We were so proud.

So that’s what I said here in my column this week. I wrote about why it matters in our town now, the town that’s bursting at the seams…why it matters that someone like Little Sister would find her calling here, chose to come back home with a big wide world out there ripe for the picking. The same big wide world that seems to be making their way here too, with their hopes and their plans and their volleyball playing children…

Coming Home: Little sis shaping kids’ future one volleyball game at a time
by Jessie Veeder
10-5 -14
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com

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Coming Home, my weekly columns, appear in newspapers across the state, including the Fargo Forum, Bismarck Tribune, Dickinson Press and Grand Forks Herald.

Sunday Column: My village…

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A few weeks ago one of our neighbor girls got married at a church in our hometown.

I remember when she was born, when she was wobbly, and chubby and learning to walk in that little farm house up the road. A little toe-headed spit fire of a girl I was certain would never grow up.

My sister and I photographed the wedding, behind the camera doing our best to capture personalities and memories and people just loving each other, laughing and having fun.

Here we are, demonstrating...

Here we are, demonstrating…

When you’re behind the camera you get to be a sort of quiet observer, sometimes chiming in to direct a look one way or the other, but mostly you’re just there to see what happens.

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What happened for me was a rush of gratitude for the people who raised us, my blonde neighbor girls and brunette Veeder girls down the road. Gratitude that after all these years we still come together to celebrate.

Gratitude that it takes a village…and grateful that our village just keeps growing…


Coming Home: Our village grows with us
by Jessie Veeder
9-21-14
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com IMG_9017

Sunday Column: Good days in a season change

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Ever had one of those perfect days? Where the sun is not too hot, and the clouds come at the right time and all of the things you want to do you do because somehow that voice in your head that is usually there nagging you about vacuuming and paying bills is just silent, quieted down enough for you to just live in the moment?

That seemed to be Sunday at the ranch. After a late Friday night and a busy Saturday of running around town filming a music video (yeah, I can’t wait to show you!)…

I woke up Sunday with plans on my sisters coming out to the ranch and then we would take it from there…hopefully on a horses’ back and then to the plum patch to fill our buckets.

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Husband said something about bow hunting as we squished together with our morning coffee on the big chair with the caramel rolls I decided to make.

 

Then Little Sister showed up and so did the sun and we went down to the barn to catch the horses, listening for Pops’ 4-wheeler coming down the road to join us.

And the three of us, Pops, Little Sister and I rode, through the east pasture and up to the fields to check out the plum crop before heading to the other house to meet up with Big Sister and Little Man to see if he wanted to take a ride too.

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And from there we ate lunch and made plans to pick plums from the patch we found up by the grain bins just loaded with branches of fruit. The plums this year are like nothing we’ve seen.

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So they met us up there, my friend and her two daughters, her dad and her gramma. They came driving up the trail and backed that pickup right up into the brush patch so the little ones could reach and we talked and swatted bugs and filled our buckets to the top in no time.

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Back at the house Husbands’ buddy pulled into the yard and they were shooting at targets, practicing their aim with the bow, warming up for the hunt that evening, dressing up in camouflage.

I came home with buckets of plums. They were off into the trees.

A rain storm blew through, leaving behind a rainbow and then a bright beautiful sunset. I played guitar and sang on that big chair as it passed.

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Then I pulled on my muck boots to walk under that sky because there’s nothing like the air after a summer rain.

This was back in the last day of August, the last day of the summer months and it was a good one.

One of the best.

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This week in my column I talk about seasons, in weather and in this life. I turned 31 last week. My high school friends have kids who are in first or second grade. I am not feeling as restless as I am planted here.

Coming Home: Life measured by seasons–even if we’re not ready for change
by Jessie Veeder
8-31-14
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com

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Sunday Column: Spontaneous Fishing

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When you live on a ranch, your free time is pretty much mapped out for you. Meaning, you don’t really have it. There’s always something to be done, especially in the summer–fences to be fixed, cows to be checked, weeds to be sprayed, yard work to procrastinate, gardens to weed…you get the idea…

And it’s ok really, because if you choose to live on a ranch, most of the time most of us prefer to be out working the place than anything else.

Especially in the summer. Summer is why we stand strong through the winters here.

But when you live on this ranch there is a bit of a distraction, one thats swimming in the river about ten miles to the south, or the big lake that surrounds us.

And when your work in the yard or digging fence posts unearths dozens and dozens of worms just waiting to be collected for bait on a Sunday evening after you’ve tired of tinkering on the tractor or you’re on your seventeenth load to the dump grounds, a farmer or a rancher might take it as a sign to head to the river before dark and see if the catfish are biting.

I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

Sometimes you just need to throw those homegrown worms in a coffee can, grab whatever tackle is leftover from last summer and maybe the new stuff you got for Christmas, trade your boots for your old tennies, grab some seeds and bug spray and head to the river.

Because it’s summer dammit. And sometimes you just need to go fishing.

Coming Home: Quick, hold on to summer traditions
by Jessie Veeder
6-15-14
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com

You can find my columns weekly in the Fargo Forum (Sundays), Dickinson Press and the Grand Forks Herald. All columns are reposted on this blog.

Sunday Column: When the outside comes in…

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Well, it snowed.

So there’s that.

I sorta knew this was coming. We watch the weather like hawks around here, so on Friday when it was a calm, almost 70 degrees I called in the troops and we saddled up and headed east to get the kinks out of the horses’ backs, stretch our legs and get our saddle butts back.

It was a glorious few hours spent out under that spring sky, visiting pastures we haven’t seen in a while, counting crocuses and ducks and blades of green grass.

I even saw a couple turtles sunning themselves on a log in the stock dam.

I bet those turtles are pretty pissed right about now.

I bet those ducks are booking their flight back south.

I bet that muskrat that found his way into our garage last week is glad the cat put him out of his misery.

This week in my newspaper column I wrote a piece about all of the creatures that have come to life in this warm weather.

I was one of them. I had emerged. I traded my muck boots for cowboy boots. I put on a short sleeved shirt for crying out loud!

Things were looking up.

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I should have known better. Only in North Dakota would the end of April mean ice pellets slamming up against your window at midnight, turning a perfectly peaceful promise of spring into a snow day.

At least I didn’t go so far as to pack away my winter gear. I have a feeling a few creatures will be knocking on my door today, looking to borrow a sweater…

Coming Home: When the great outdoors venture inside
by Jessie Veeder
4-28-14
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com

Sunday Columns: What faith might be

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The reason I write is to share, to relate and reason and wonder out loud. The reason I read is to find a common ground, to learn about the world and those who exist here and to find out that I might not be so alone after all.

When I wrote about my dad’s survival from a major heart condition and emergency surgery last week, it was my way of connecting the dots, researching and sorting through my own feelings. I was terrified. I was grateful. I was nervous and worried and not breathing. I was on my knees.

And then I was alive. Alive with my family in the middle of the frozen North Dakota prairie.

Alive with my dad who means more to us in this world than we could truly understand before.

Before we almost lost him.

And now here we are. It’s been two weeks since he opened his eyes and declared he was living and every day we learn something new about what it means to be hopeful, to have faith, to wonder why and how and what next.

But I don’t really know what next, except that the cowboy is getting restless and we all prayed for this moment.  His sister took him to visit his aunt and uncle yesterday. Then we drove him to the badlands, my aunt, my little sister and I. We drove through those buttes with the window down a little and then stopped to take a walk on a paved trail through the campground before driving him back home in the sunset.

Since I got my dad back all of the the little things have become big things.

All the things I thought were so big have become much smaller now.

And I know I still wonder about all this.

Because I wrote his story and it was out there then, out there being read and shared and open for discussion. His story was seen by thousands of humans around the world. He received hundreds of comments and messages wishing him well, thankful that he was alive. Glad that we got our dad back.

Because some of them did too and they felt our joy and relief.

And some of them didn’t.

The week before Christmas one of my best friends was scheduled to deliver a baby. Their first. I visited her the month before and we took pictures and talked about names. We decorated the nursery and made plans for my next visit when she would have a little baby boy or girl in her arms. When she would be a momma.

The week before Christmas, as planned, my friend delivered a beautiful baby boy.

All he needed to do was breathe. To suck in the air of this world. To cry and scream with the shock of it all and their dreams would be fulfilled. Their prayers would be answered and life would move on.

But the baby didn’t take a breath. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. No matter how hard they prayed.

A week before Christmas my friend met and lost her first child.

And I can’t shake this as I walk with my father down the paved trail in the badlands, bring him tea and sit with him as we watch t.v. or play the guitar and think about the months ahead when the snow melts and the earth greens up and we get back to work. Get back on the horses. Get back to life as our lunges fill with air and our hearts beat strong and alive within our chests.

How can a world be so cruel and so forgiving all at the same time?

We all have our own story. My dad has his. My friend has hers. And the only lesson I can take with me as I move through the days is that we just don’t know the plan. We don’t know how tomorrow might hurt us or make us rejoice.

And maybe I am grateful for that. Maybe I am scared as hell. I’m not sure yet.

But what I do know, what I have learned is that our pain, our struggles and our joy is not ours alone. And maybe that’s the only thing that faith can really provide for us after all.

The promise that we are not alone.

Sunday Columns

The day my dad lived
by Jessie Veeder
1/19/14
Fargo Forum
http://www.inforum.com

A happy life starts with what you do on the weekends
by Jessie Veeder
1/11/14
Fargo Forum
http://www.inforum.com

Life about laughter, not resolutions
by Jessie Veeder
1/4/14
Fargo Forum
http://www.inforum.com

Sunday Column: Looking for mercy from the prairie sky

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On Friday it rained relentlessly. I woke up in the dark at 6 AM to the sound of drops pounding on my windows. I drove out of this place kicking up mud under that weeping sky and headed out toward the big town and back again.

It never let up.

And then the wind came and it blew that rain sideways and covered my head while my boots sunk in to the slippery on my way to hunker down under the safety of my roof.

The day before the sun shone bright and clear and the season looked and felt like the photographs you see on all of the Western calendars for October.

24 hours later the scene was drenched.

We expect this. Rain in October. Snow in October. Heat in October. Fire in October.

Anything can happen under this prairie sky. And that’s the beauty and the tragedy of it all.

Coming Home: Looking for mercy from the prairie sky
by Jessie Veeder
10/13/13
Fargo Forum
http://www.inforum.com

Want to help the South Dakota ranchers? Here are some ideas: 

 The South Dakota Cowgirl
How can you help?
http://www.thesouthdakotacowgirl.com

Heifers for South Dakota
Pledge a heifer (a bred yearling or a replacement quality weanling) for a rancher in South Dakota

Give to the cause today!
Rancher Relief Fund

Sunday Column (on Monday): When the chokecherry trees bloom

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Well, my favorite day of the week, Sunday, got hijacked yesterday for an impromptu trip to the big town to get new tires for Husband’s pickup. And a funny thing happened on the way. He got a flat tire.

So the quick trip turned into a long trip and while we were at it we thought we might as well load up on supplies to finish up the master bedroom, and, most importantly the closest.

I’m going to have an entire shelf for my shoes people.

An entire shelf.

It only took a good hour or so of discussion,  planning and negotiation in the closet organizing section of Menards to come up with that plan, but it’s happening.

My life will never be the same.

And so that’s what I was doing yesterday. I was closet planning and waiting for tires and checking off the last of our supply list and sitting next to Husband as we drove home into the sunset and into the evening to unload doors and shelves and trim boards and laundry detergent and a little gift for Little Man and tools and screws and the rest of the things we need into the house in the middle of the pitch black night.

And that’s why you didn’t get my Sunday post. I know you were worried. I even got a worried email, so thanks for that.

But it was a good weekend all in all, one that kicked off with a birthday party for Pops and rolled on into Saturday where I played music for a beer festival in a neighboring college town and ended with my dream of an organized closet one step closer to realized.

And now it’s Monday and the rain is pouring down again, filling up the stock dams, sending the river out past its banks and women running from their cars to the nearest building with newspapers and magazines and jackets and briefcases covering their hairdos.

In the last month we’ve had all the rain we can handle. The grass is green and the chokecherry blossoms are in full bloom.
Everything is alive and another day more beautiful.


Another day older.

Pops turned fiftysomethingorother last Friday and this week’s column celebrates him and how fitting it is that he was born in during the best of the seasons.

Coming Home: Chokecherry blooms signal special time
by Jessie Veeder
6/1/13
Fargo Forum

Enjoy your week. Enjoy the rain, the smell of the chokecherry blossoms, and  God willing, let’s enjoy some sun too.


If you need me, I’ll be picking wildflowers and organizing my boot collection…

Sunday Column: On Mother’s Day.

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My momma and me, the day we first met.

Long time followers of “Meanwhile, back at the ranch…” may have seen this before, but I wanted to share it again this Mother’s Day because it’s important to remember to celebrate the special women in our lives for all that they are.

Happy Mother’s Day to my momma and to all the mommas out there who share the best parts of themselves with their children.

Coming Home: Imagining mom before she was mom
By Jessie Veeder Scofield
Fargo Forum
Sunday, May 12, 2013