FEATURED ARTIST – JOE STAMPLEY
Joe Stampley is recovering from unplanned heart bypass surgery. He had just returned from a tour and was carrying a fifty-pound sack of corn out to feed the deer on December 21, when his chest started hurting enough to make him drop the bag off his shoulder. It was a warning, not an actual heart attack, and there was no damage to his heart. The doctors at first thought a stent would be sufficient. But further tests showed five blockages, with one artery 99 percent blocked, and they scheduled bypass surgery. (more…)

–This is a speech I gave to a veterans’ group at the Center for Active Generations in Sioux Falls on January 27, 2016–

Good morning, and thank you for inviting me to be here. It’s so good to be living in South Dakota again. I graduated from Augustana College in 1972 and joined the Navy, and did thirty-two years on active duty. I’d come home once or twice a year for a visit, but that was it, until moving back here to live in 2010.

I thought this morning I would talk about some of the lessons I learned in the thirty-eight years I was gone from the state. (more…)