The Weather Channel began assigning names to big snowstorms in 2012. A blizzard that blasted the Midwest on Jan. 12, 1888, was so destructive that it acquired several names: “The Children’s Blizzard,” “The Schoolchildren’s Blizzard” and “The Schoolhouse Blizzard.”
The morning felt more like April than January: warm, calm and clear.
Oscar Coursey, three of his siblings and their schoolmates were at recess the morning of Jan. 12, 1888, outside the schoolhouse near their homestead in southwestern Beadle County, playing in their shirt sleeves, without hats or mittens.
“Suddenly, we looked up and saw something coming rolling toward us with great fury from the northwest, and making a loud noise,” Coursey wrote in Pioneering in Dakota.  “It looked like a long string of big bales of cotton, each one bound tightly with heavy cords of silver, and then all tied together with great silvery rope.”
All the children had just gotten inside the schoolhouse when the storm struck with such force that it nearly moved the building off its cobblestone foundation.
George Duernberger had taken his horses to a well about one-half mile from his homestead in Faulk County when one of the horses jerked the halter rope from his hand and started for the barn. A hurried glance to the northwest showed him a gray bank.
“Then the wind came. Everything was blotted out, and the trail disappeared, the horses’ heads were not visible … It was difficult to breathe and utterly impossible to keep my eyes open against the driving snow … The cold was piercing,” according to Duernberger’s account in The South Dakota Historical Society’s bulletin The Wi-Iyohi.
A brief break in the storm enabled him to recognize a landmark and realize where he was. He was able to get his horses in the barn and start for the house. He was guided to the house by the sound of his wife blowing on a trumpet.
“It was but 80 minutes since I had left for the well. An eternity, however, had elapsed.”
Sadie Shaw wrote her brother and sister that the wind knocked her down when she attempted to go to the coal box about a rod (about 5.5 yards) east of her sod house in the Platte/Geddes area. Her husband had gone to get their children from school when he realized a storm was coming. He returned home safely after being in the storm for about an hour, unsuccessful in his attempt to reach the schoolhouse.
“Oh the agony of that hour no one can tell,” Shaw wrote in her letter contained in 900 Miles from Nowhere: Voices from the Homestead by Steven R. Kinsella. “The storm grew wilder colder and thicker every moment until it seemed to breathe nothing but Death and Death inevitable in its every gust. You could not see three feet from the window at times and not six feet ahead all day.”
A combination of gale winds, blinding snow and rapidly dropping temperatures made the storm dangerous. The Signal Station at Huron reported that the wind averaged 45 to 50 mph, with gusts up to 60 mph. The temperature fell from 20 degrees at noon to 17 degrees below zero at 10 p.m., further dropping to 28 degrees below zero during the night.
The storm abated early on Jan. 13. Shaw’s husband went for the children and found them all safe.
Others were not as fortunate.
The Wi-Iyohi listed the names of 178 people who perished in the blizzard in South Dakota. Many who lay dead on the prairie were children who were caught on their way home from school. In The Children’s Blizzard, author David Laskin states that about 500 people in the Dakotas, Nebraska and Minnesota perished in the storm.
Coursey was one of the fortunate schoolchildren, as his teacher kept her flock of pioneer children in the schoolhouse while the storm raged and into the long, cold night. In the morning of Jan. 13, the teacher saw that the storm had died out, took the schoolchildren to her nearby claim shanty, fed them and sent them home.
Coursey sat by his mother’s bedside when she died in September 1914. “The last thing she said to me before she passed away was this: ‘Son, you will never know the burden that was lifted from my heart the next morning after the Big Blizzard, when I looked out and saw you four older children scampering home over the snow-drifts, when I was positively sure you had all perished in the storm.’”
This moment in South Dakota history is provided by the South Dakota Historical Society Foundation, the nonprofit fundraising partner of the South Dakota State Historical Society. The South Dakota Cultural Heritage Center in Pierre is an official site on the Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail. Find the Foundation on the web at www.sdhsf.org.

As everyone knows 12-12-12 has passed as has 12-21-12, the day on which the Mayan calendar stopped. There were those who said the world was ending because the Mayans knew something we didn’t. Well, guess what, they didn’t SAY the world was ending, they just stopped their calendar there.
My friend, Finbarr orchestrated a tour to Guatemala for 12-12-12 and yes I was on it. My brother has also been to Guatemala and said he and his wife loved it. So, there you have it, I wanted to know the truth about this ending of the calendar and so I went to the source to find out the answers.
I met my friend, Angela (whom I’d met on my France trip) in Houston and off we went to Guatemala where everyone said there’d be soldiers with machine guns everywhere and wasn’t I scared.  No, I wasn’t scared and the whole time I was there I only saw six different soldiers or police with guns and they were not threatening. The American news media sensationalizes everything. The people were friendly and the countryside was very lovely.
We stayed in the jungle of Tikal near the famous Mayan pyramids. Our guide, Antonio was very knowledgeable. His father discovered one of the later pyramids, I believe it was temple VI. In fact, the lodge we stayed at in the jungle was owned by his family.  He walked us through the jungle (the area we were in was reforested in the last 25 years on its own) and explained how the temples were uncovered and showed us how the steps looked originally and now restored. There are many mounds everywhere that we actually saw from the air on our way in. Some are burial mounds and some are dwelling places and some are temples. The people have left them covered because it takes so much money and time to excavate them that they are better left covered so they do not deteriorate. Antonio took us on a path through the jungle and told us about the war in his country and how things changed. There were ruins of trucks and jeeps from the war in the reforested jungle. He showed us where there had been a building and other things 25 years ago and now the jungle has reclaimed itself.
    Antonio talked about the drug cartels and how it had changed their country. He said that people were forced to tell things about others or have their whole families murdered. That brings us to the Mayan shamans, most of whom are not visible because they would be killed to squelch the spirituality of the Mayan people. We were fortunate to meet two different shamans who did ceremonies for us, one on the Mountain of Gold where no “gringos” have ever been allowed to be a part of the Mayan ceremony. Two spiritual leaders from Guatemala worked for six months to set this up for us. More on that later.
Day 2
This morning six of us got up at 4:30 a.m. to walk through the jungle in the dark to one of the main pyramid temples to watch the sunrise. I carried a flashlight and we hobbled over roots and stones to the very high wooden stairway that led us almost to the top and there we climbed onto the rock steps that went all the way across the pyramid at the top. There were a lot of people there already when we got there.
We sat in silence in the dark and looked over the top of the jungle and waited. Finbarr pointed out what I thought was water, he said it was fog. Later, Antonio said that where the fog was the water used to be years ago. It was amazing sitting there in silence waiting for the sun. As it began to get light, the howler monkeys started. Their roars echoed over the top of the jungle from one part to the next. We had observed the howler monkeys swinging through the trees the day before. It was fantastic being right there in the midst of the jungle and the sights and sound. As it got lighter we began to observe toucan birds in the tree tops. How beautiful they were.
Finally Finbarr leaned over and said to start taking pictures. The last pictures showed the sun directly above one of the main temples, just the way they’d built it to showcase the winter solstice. Indescribably beautiful! It was like a huge golden burst of love. Because I had complained about having to get up so early to come see the sunrise, Finbarr asked me if it was worth it. He knew the answer from the look on my face.
We walked back down the stairs and through part of the jungle to one of the temples. Here a local shaman did a ceremony before we returned to the lodge for breakfast. It was funny, well actually annoying, as four or five people were on top of this pyramid and recording for something. The guy must have thought he was important as he was talking about 2012 but then he said to the others, “Be quiet, they are doing a ceremony.” And then he proceeded to talk really loud. Not very respectful we decided and he really had no idea what 2012 was all about.
The same ones who got up to go see the sunrise, except for Finbarr, all loaded up in a van and went to another part of the jungle after breakfast to go zip lining. It was on my “lifetime list” and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Two young men, one who had helped build the line, were our guides. They were so much fun and took pictures for us while they were zipping along. The first line we were all just getting used to how we were to do it.
By the second line, Karina decided to do it upside down like one of the guides She probably weighs 90 lbs. soaking wet so it was a blast to watch her go fast down the line.
By the time we got to the next line, everyone wanted to do something. My time came and I “flew.” When you fly, you let go with your feet and hands and are only hanging in the harness. One of the guides was behind me so he could stop me when I got to the tree, as I was the first one on that line. They had to tell me several times to let go with my last hand as it was a little strange hanging over the jungle like that before I took off. I want to do it again only higher and faster!
On the last run the guy at the back bounced us up and down on the line after we started. That was really fun!
All in all the five of us had a bonding experience we won’t soon forget. It was a very fulfilling day for all of us. We didn’t ask about the others’ afternoon, we figured they took naps.