The basketball thudded against the holes in the red dirt as Lakota Beatty dribbled in her yard on Native land. Midnight turned to morning in Anadarko, Oklahoma, as the basketball passed from hand to hand — from sisters Ryan to Beatty to Ashley to Nichole, and back to their parents, Michelle and George. Beatty couldn’t go far without finding a hoop in her house.

Cyndy Mountain’s laughter fills the room, bouncing off walls with canvas paintings of eight-pointed stars and whiteboards half-erased with the remains of handwritten words — friendly, humanity, inclusion. She’s come for the weekly women’s group at Little Earth of United Tribes, an intertribal residents’ association in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She’s lived here for more than 10 years.

For Floyd County’s annual entry in Governor’s Charity Steer Show, it isn’t always about the beef When it comes to picking the exhibitor for the Governor’s Charity Steer Show, Matt Hoeft doesn’t look so much at the steer, but more at the one holding its halter. “Honestly, the main [thing is] good kid, great family,” Hoeft said of the qualifications. “That’s what it really is.”

As Anders Haglund stepped out onto the stage, it was the first time since competing in the National Association of Teachers of Singing Student Auditions that he had a live audience before him. And this time it wasn’t just a few judges in the semifinals. Instead he was before a room full of people and competing for a national ranking. Haglund said he wasn’t thinking like himself in those moments. “I was nervous then, and then walking onto the stage I guess I went into sort of game mode

As RAGBRAI riders made their way into Charles City Thursday, they were greeted with a picturesque view of the Cedar River and a rolling slope down into their final stop for the day. Beyond the views that greeted them were the smiles and welcome of the community and a taste of the Iowa spirit for riders from all 50 states and 20 countries. “Oh gosh you all are the nicest people in the whole world,” said Rebecca West of Lexington, South Carolina. “I told my friends yesterday everybody’s rolled out the red carpet every town we’ve gone into.”

The Bethel Election Shock Therapy Watch Party Tuesday night drew people from the left, the right, the politically curious and the just plain curious. Christopher Moore went to his professor’s home and joined his fellow students on couches and chairs for a watch party for the 1996 presidential election when he was a freshman in college. Now, as an Associate Professor of Political Science at Bethel, he is helping to host a watch party with other political science professors