We are not exactly easing our way into the long Thanksgiving weekend.
Hi, it’s me, FFP editor Matthew Hansen, sending you your weekly email newsletter two days early so you can watch Nebraska and Iowa calmly and in peace as they struggle to score points on Friday.
And I come bearing the second part in our series, “Who’s Buying Nebraska?”
When we started this project, we knew we would do a story on the top purchaser of Nebraska land. But we had no idea that, when reporter Destiny Herbers unraveled the identity of the organization behind the nonprofit buying up the land, that the top buyer in the past five years would be…The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
But that’s the reality. And it’s quite a thing, this tale of a Utah-based church commonly known as the Mormon church buying up almost the entire half of a Nebraska county. It involves religious belief, ranching, an amount of wealth that could stagger Warren Buffett, long-term investment and…paying taxes. Sorta.
The land series continues next week, with a look at an original gangster of Nebraska land buys, Ted Turner. Glance at the series overview, complete with nuggets of info on the top 10 land buyers in Nebraska, here.
More than shoes: They wanted to revive fading Native traditions. They wanted to connect city-dwelling Native people with tribes located in rural areas hundreds of miles away. They decided to make moccasins. They got so much more than footwear.
What a wonderful week for this wonderful story from freelancer Tim Trudell.
Giving Tuesday update: Our nonprofit newsroom is smack in the middle of our annual fundraising drive. This year, a year of rapid growth at FFP, we’re trying to nab 400 new donors between mid-November and Giving Tuesday. Exciting update: We’re at 269 new donors as of this morning! We need your help to hit our goal. Add your name to that list here.
And to our friends who have donated to FFP in years past … from now ‘til the end of the year, every $1 you give us becomes $3 thanks to local and national matches. Triple our money right here.
Nine paragraphs of thanks:
It’s so easy, in my life, and surely in yours, too, to get busy and breeze right by the part where we stop, look around us and express gratitude.
Thanksgiving week is as good a time as any to take a few moments and do that — I always loved writing this column for the Omaha World-Herald.
OK, a few deep breaths as I try not to think about deadlines or to-do lists:
This year, I’m thankful for the remade Gene Leahy Mall stirring to life just after sunrise on a postcard-perfect October day. The park has made downtown Omaha and the lives of so many Omahans — including mine — a bit better.
I’m thankful for a May mid-morning on the Cather Memorial Prairie near Red Cloud, where we hiked as the wind rustled the greening Nebraska grasses. And I’m thankful for the raucous tubing trip down Long Pine Creek under an endless Sandhills sky on a sweltering July afternoon.
I’m thankful that, in February, Sarah and I can afford two tickets on a plane flying due south out of Nebraska for a few days. (I will never be thankful for a Nebraska February.)
I’m thankful for the bolognese at Avoli, the yakitori at Koji, the iceberg lettuce salad bar with Dorothy Lynch at The Drover, the chicken tikka korma at The Oven in Lincoln, every gyro joint on Lincoln’s O Street, the pork belly at the Speakeasy near Holdrege, a Block 16 cheeseburger, a Mercury mezcal drink, the wine at Red Cloud’s On the Brix, a Bolo Beer Co. beer and the three different kinds of pie we devoured at City Cafe in Newman Grove.
I’m thankful that there’s an Orange Theory Fitness mere blocks from our home, where the coaches cheerfully urge yours truly to burn all those calories.
I’m thankful for the joy Keisei Tominaga spreads after he hits a three, and Black Friday sales that start on Monday and every single one of you who wrote the Flatwater Free Press and reporter Yanqi Xu a note of support after Nebraska’s governor did about the least Thanksgiving thing I can imagine.
I’m thankful for a boss like Matt Wynn. I’m thankful for nonprofit news. I’m thankful for a life filled with friends and laughter. I am always and forever thankful for Sarah.
And I am thankful for the memory of driving a few Flatwater Free Press reporters from Texas and Michigan to the little cemetery outside Neligh, where we found the most decorated grave — the most decorated grave every single day since the 19th century — and I got the honor of telling them the story of White Buffalo Girl, as it was once told to me.
It’s a horrific story. It’s also a beautiful story. It’s a Nebraska story, as is every story written by the reporters I’m very thankful for at the Flatwater Free Press.
Thanks wanted: Instead of story ideas this week, reply to this email with one Nebraska thing you are thankful for. I will love reading ‘em over the long holiday weekend.
With deep gratitude,
—Matthew Hansen, Executive Editor
Here’s what we’re into this week: News from around Nebraska
Every week we like to share great Nebraska journalism, no matter who made it. Here’s what caught our eye this week:
- An important one this week from the Journal Star’s Andrew Wegley, who reports on new information suggesting that the state’s new education fund, meant to support public schools even as it cuts property taxes, may be fresh out of money in a decade or so.
- There’s still no safe drinking water on the Santee Sioux Nation — where there hasn’t been safe drinking water in four years — but there’s some hope that residents will finally get some help soon, reports Nebraska Public Media’s Brian Beach.
- A rough week for the University of Nebraska. Budget cuts are now expected to end six academic programs at UNK, reports the Kearney Hub’s Mike Konz. And budget cuts are also being rolled out at UNL, where the College of Arts and Sciences — which educates most UNL students — is expected to take some deep slashes, reports the Journal Star’s Chris Dunker.
- This isn’t how development normally goes! A seemingly cool idea, courtesy of the Journal Star’s Margaret Reist.
- This story isn’t a Nebraska story. But it is the most heartbreaking and heartwarming thing I read this week.
