December 31, 2010

Terry Cemetery area targeted


With gold prices nearly double what they were 10 years ago, Wharf Resources indicates they're moving forward with plans to expand their mining operations near Terry Peak -- and that could have implications for the Terry Cemetery.  

Although Wharf started its application process in September, it's been pretty much under the radar ever since.  That is, until a story by Kevin Woster emerged last week in the Rapid City Journal.  Woster wrote that the proposal "worries some nearby landowners and could force the relocation of more than 200 graves in the Terry Cemetery."

Above is a bit of history regarding the Terry Cemetery as depicted in the LCHS 1994 publication "Cemeteries and Graves in Lawrence County and Environs," edited by Irma Klock.  You can click on the image to see a somewhat larger version.

We suspect Wharf's proposal will gain additional attention in coming days as folks have an opportunity to comment on their plan.  If you wish to be heard, you should act by Tuesday, January 11th.  For a wealth of information -- and an opportunity to comment -- go to the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources web site.

As a sidebar, we are reminded of the appropriate steps taken some years back by Hershey Food Corporation when they discovered an old cemetery on land they were preparing to convert to a parking lot near their west plant in Hershey, Pennsylvania.  As it turns out, it was an old Hammacher family cemetery, ancestors of many Hamaker families now living in western South Dakota and western Nebraska.  Hershey stepped up to the plate and did the right thing by taking leadership in helping to preserve this historic cemetery.  We believe their actions serve as a model of corporate and civic responsibility.  
We hope Wharf Resources will display the same kind of leadership, but a public nudge in that direction might help.  

December 19, 2010

Where does charity begin?

By Lorraine Collins

This is the time of year when our mail box gets filled with catalogs and requests from charities so we have forces pulling us in two different directions. On the one hand, we are offered full color photos of exotic and glamorous things---boxes of chocolate, hams, jewelry, toys, electronic devices, furniture, clothing. Layered between the catalogs are envelopes asking us to save people in Darfur, Niger, Haiti where children are starving and homeless.

We are asked to help the people in Tibet, to try to free prisoners of conscience around the world, to send doctors to areas ravaged by flood and earthquake. We receive pleas for help from agencies providing food for the hungry and homes for the homeless. We are asked to help find a cure for cancer, for multiple sclerosis, for children with cleft palates, the blind, the paralyzed.

I'm told there are one million charities in the United States and sometimes I feel that I'm being contacted by all of them. By actual count, though, we have received requests for donations from just 23 different charities in the last three weeks. Still, that seems like quite a few. What are we to do with them all?

Some of the letters asking for our support come from famous people--Richard Gere, Meryl Streep, Tom Brokaw. One included a nice note from the Dalai Lama. Some include little gifts of things I don't need and don't want but which seem to be sent along to make me feel obligated to give at least a small donation. One charity sent me a pen and another enclosed note cards, so I'm all set for correspondence for another year. Some include actual money such as a nickel or three pennies. On a more spiritual plane, I've been sent Tibetan prayer flags and a Native American dream catcher. I've enough return address labels to last me several lifetimes.

In addition to the messages from famous people and little gifts, some charities take a more direct approach. One envelope showed a sad eyed little boy saying, "Throw me away. I'm used to it." So how could I toss that envelope in the garbage can? If we want to give money to a charity supporting children and families in dire straits, should we donate to the UN Refugee Agency, or to the International Rescue Committee, to CARE, to SOS Children's Villages, to the Children's Hunger Relief Fund, or to Oxfam? All of these agencies have asked us for money in the last few weeks.

One way to decide which charity to support is to take enough time to try to find out how efficient those charities are. How much of a donation actually goes to support the program to help people and how much is used up in administration and fund raising? There are online sources that can help us evaluate which charities are the most efficient and deliver the highest percentage of their donations to doing the actual work the charity says it's doing.

For instance, there is a website called Charity Navigator that evaluates various charities based on this sort of criteria. One charity they evaluated was "The Paralyzed Veterans of America" that rated only one of a possible four stars. Apparently a whole lot of money they receive goes to raising more money and paying executive salaries so no more than about 62% of donations they receive goes to actually helping the people they say they want to help.

Other helpful websites I found are the American  Institute of Philanthropy and the Independent Charities of America. I'm sure there are others that can tell you which charities have won awards, which are rated highly for putting most of their money to work, and which are outright scams. The AIP web site advises us to know the charity we are giving money to. One good way to do that is to give money to organizations active in our communities including food banks, homeless shelters, free clinics and local branches of charities like the Salvation Army.

Sometimes it's true that charity begins at home.

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be contacted at collins1@rushmore.com.

December 8, 2010

The strength & problem of American democracy

By Lorraine Collins

As one who has been an observer and occasional participant in local, state, and national politics since the Eisenhower administration, it's been kind of hard for me to sober up after the most recent election. Election years offer a real high for those of us who are referred to as political junkies, and now we have to wait two whole years for another fix. Normal people are immensely relieved that they don't have to pay attention to all this for a blissful two years.

Well, actually, of course, this isn't exactly true, because the next campaign began on November 3rd, so far as I know. I studied political science in college and very nearly majored in the subject until I fell back on the safer degree in English, having been convinced by  my academic friends that political science just wasn't worthy of serious study.

Boy, were they ever wrong. If anything deserves study in this or any country it is how and why governments are formed, how and whether the consent of the governed is achieved, and how much influence people with money and power exert on the electorate. This has been a good year to think about that in the United States and in this quiet and essentially neighborly state. Just think of the millions of dollars spent in South Dakota's Congressional election, and ask who was so eager to spend it, and why. Does this have anything to do with South Dakota, or with agendas established elsewhere?

It was a tough election for Democrats in South Dakota but they can at least take comfort in the fact that since Republicans more or less own and control the state, it is their responsibility to solve all the myriad problems we have and if that doesn't happen, it's their fault. In South Dakota and the rest of the nation, so far as I know, nobody wants to raise taxes or eliminate services. So it's going to be really tricky to figure out how to do one without the other.

As for Congress, it's going to be interesting for those of us who are political junkies to see what happens between now and the convening of the next Congress in January. They might actually come together to do something in the lame duck session. It's kind of hard to imagine this, but maybe they can practice being civil to each other, which would be nice.

The other night I heard a TV pundit talking about the election, saying that the main effect had been to rid Congress of most of the moderates. A lot of moderate Democrats, like Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, for instance, lost their seats in Congress, so the only Democrats left, I heard, are those most liberal, from safe liberal constituencies. Meanwhile, many moderate, main stream Republicans who ran in the primaries had already been defeated by the so called "Tea Party" sponsored candidates, some of whom have radically conservative ideas.

So what we have left in Congress are left wing Democrats and right wing Republicans. If that's true, does anybody expect these people to come to any sense of compromise and moving forward to solve problems for the sake the Republic?

We in South Dakota have a sort of tradition of discarding the people we've sent to Washington about the time they achieve some expertise and clout, complaining that they have "lost touch" with the homefolks. Republican Larry Pressler and Democrat Tom Daschle are recent examples and the same charge was made against Herseth Sandlin.  Frankly, I think one thing that happens in the "throw them out" orgy, is that we discard a lot of people with considerable experience in trying to achieve compromise, trying to arrive at a consensus. This is what successful politicians do and how good laws can be made.

 But though we want professional accountants, doctors, artists, writers, lawyers, we don't seem to want professional politicians. That may be the strength of American representative democracy, but it's also the problem.

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be reached at collins1@rushmore.com.