Writer, lawyer and consultant with over thirty years of writing and photography experience.
While my areas of writing expertise include history, travel, politics, foreign affairs, aviation, the environment and law, I believe a good writer should, with enough research, be able to write about anything.
Good writing is good writing.
Todd D. Epp, LL.M.
News Law Foreign Affairs Aviation History Travel
Harrisburg, SD (Sioux Falls metro area)
Writer, lawyer and consultant with over thirty years of writing and photography experience.
While my areas of writing expertise include history, travel, politics, foreign affairs, aviation, the environment and law, I believe a good writer should, with enough research, be able to write about anything.
Good writing is good writing.
/SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - Hail, snow, flooding, a tornado and a tropical storm made it a "severe weather" Mother's Day in much of the center of the United States and on the Carolina coast on Sunday. Rescue helicopters in Denton County, Texas pulled six people out of homes after thunderstorms dumped heavy rain in the area.
(Reuters) - Schools in large cities across the Midwest and into the Northeast announced they will close on Thursday to protect children from bitterly cold temperatures as wind chill warnings were issued for most of the eastern half of the United States.
The National Weather Service (NWS) warned of an Arctic air blast from Canada continuing to provide subzero temperatures for the U.S. Midwest, Southeast, Mid-Atlantic and Northeast on Wednesday evening and into Thursday.
On Wednesday, public school officials in Chicago, Milwaukee and Boston canceled Thursday classes out of caution, saying the frigid temperatures in the forecast pose a danger to children.
What’s the difference between a big hole in the backyard and a swimming pool? Yes, even a swimming pool—one of a homeowner’s biggest luxury add-ons—doesn’t last forever. And swimming pool technology has gone high-tech, meaning lower energy costs, less impact on the environment, fancy water elements and the ability to run the pool from anywhere in the world.
CANTON -- Along the streets of this southeast South Dakota community, piles of carpeting, plywood and house furnishing pinpoint where recent heavy rains overwhelmed sump pumps, storm sewers and basements.
Inside the Canton United Methodist Church, where the state of South Dakota has set up a volunteer service center, actual pinpoints on maps show the widespread nature of the damage in Canton and throughout Lincoln County.
But for the Department of Public Safety's Cari Leidholt who is coordinating the volunteer effort, those pinpoints mean real people with real needs -- and not just the need to muck out muddy basements.
Photos by Todd Epp/NPNLincoln County Hwy 110 at Lake Alvin east of Harrisburg, S.D. was still closed to traffic around noon Tuesday. _____ Copyright 2013-14 Northern Plains News, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Columnists and other content providers syndicated on NPN retain all rights to their works. Views expressed in opinion pieces and columns are those of their authors or content providers and may not represent the views of Northern Plains News, LLC, its contributors or its subscribers.
The yard is blah.
It needs a certain something to give it “curb appeal”—and make it more useful and enjoyable. But don’t expect to grab shovels, trees and paving bricks at the local “big box,” spend a weekend afternoon horsing stuff around and then getting a satisfactory result. To get a good result—whether a “do it yourself” project or letting the landscaping professionals do it—it takes a number of steps, but one in particular: Planning.
NORTH DAKOTA -- Members of the North and South Dakota wings had the opportunity Sunday to meet with U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry when she visited the air operations branch of the State Emergency Operations Center after a tour of flooding in North Dakota.
The branch, up the stairs and across a couple hallways from the operations center in Bismarck, is where Civil Air Patrol members, a contingent of active-duty and auxiliary Coast Guard members and state and federal officials coordinate airplanes and helicopters, as well as airboats and rescue boats.
North Dakota is in the midst of another springtime battle against flood waters across the state.
“We’re all one team,” Landry told her hosts. “I’m proud of all of you. but I’m especially proud of my Coasties,” she added with a smile.
SOUTH DAKOTA — What do you do when your squadron is spending the day training, when suddenly reality — in the form of floodwaters — intrudes?
You turn the wet reality into part of the training.
At least, that’s exactly what the Sioux Falls Composite Squadron did Sept. 25 while holding a search and rescue exercise that had been scheduled for months.
Is intellectual property law capitalism's "toady"?
You think of these things when you are a self-described "simple country lawyer with a specialty in intellectual property," bumping along on the back of a four-wheeler across a dirt field, looking for volunteer soybean plants on a hot summer day in South Dakota. In this part of South Dakota, the northeast, which is way north of much of the United States, the sun is high, beaming down on one's head like an array of sun lamps at a cheap spa. This area is sometimes described as "the empty quarter."
The ballet is playing, but the stage is a marsh, the dancers are grebes, the critics are blackbirds, and the family sedan is the best seat in the house.
SISSETON--This weekend and next should be the best time to se the blazing reds, oranges, and yellows in the hollows near Sisseton.
Sumacs are about at their reddest. The sugar maples are red-orange. The ash and cottonwoods are changing to yellows and browns.
/SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - Hail, snow, flooding, a tornado and a tropical storm made it a "severe weather" Mother's Day in much of the center of the United States and on the Carolina coast on Sunday. Rescue helicopters in Denton County, Texas pulled six people out of homes after thunderstorms dumped heavy rain in the area.
May 10 (Reuters) - Hail, snow, a tornado and a tropical storm made it a "severe weather" Mother's Day in much of the center of the United States and on the Carolina coast on Sunday. Tropical Storm Ana, the first named storm of the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season, weakened after making landfall near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, but high surf and flooding still threatened the coast.
The sun is free; the problem is converting it to energy for your house isn’t. Solar-powered electricity isn’t unique in the Topeka area. The Colmery-O’Neill VA Hospital recently installed over 2,600 solar panels on its grounds to help generate green power. And if you travel in Italy, you’ll see solar panels on almost any long, flat surface, such as parking garages or even stand-alone panels along their equivalent of their Interstate highways.
While the Keystone XL pipeline has received most of the public and press attention in South Dakota, there’s another crude oil line that may be crossing the state—the Dakota Access pipeline. “It will range anywhere up and down the line from what I’ve been reading from 12 inches to 30 inches,” Sattgast said.