Pretty, perky and petite are the three words that pop into my mind when I see Lynette Kurth breeze through the door of Piesano’s Italian restaurant for a late lunch. As she sits down at our table, I say them out loud, and the smile that lights up her face is worth a million pizzas. “You can’t imagine how wonderful it is to hear someone use words like that to describe someone like me,” she says.The first thing I am compelled to do is apologize for suggesting a lunch...

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jThere’s something to be said about how much people change by the time their high school reunion rolls around.The president of Rapid City Central High School’s class of ’97 is no exception.Jeremy Thomas won’t quite be his old self when he and his high school classmates reunite this summer after going their separate ways 10 years ago.Thomas lost his left leg below the knee in June 1997 — three weeks after he graduated from high school.It’s a story he doesn’t mind...

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There is a chocolate shop near the edge of Deadwood, close to where highway 385 turns off for Pactola and Hill City. There is a large sign, beautifully designed and painted, depicting a cartoon female chipmunk. She looks quite attractive (to male cartoon chipmunks) as she runs along, smiling merrily and holding aloft a chocolate truffle on a platter. She wears a leopard-skin vest and black boots and her hair appears to have been hastily tied back into a chignon from which a couple...

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