Black Hills Monitor

Women and the law

2012-01-30T09:24:00.004-07:00

by Lorraine Collins

Very occasionally I pen a few lines of verse and the other day I cameacross a couple of lines for a poem Iwas going to title "Scandal". I wrote the lines several weeks ago based on items in the news:

Women in Yemenare burning their veils.

Saudi women want to drive.

I never got any further with that idea but when I looked at a news itemin the New York Times last weekend, I was reminded of this attempt at verse.The Times reported that beginning in June, clerks in lingerie shops in Saudi Arabiawill be women. Until now, all the clerks were men---usually Asian men---becausewomen have been prohibited from working outside the home. It was veryembarrassing for heavily veiled women in their enveloping garments to go to theequivalent of Victoria'sSecret and be waited on by a man.

The law was changed in 2006 when the government ordered that these jobsshould be transferred to women, but there were so many objections that nothingchanged. After all, women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia,and there is little public transportation, so men would have to drive them towork. And if sales women were in the shops, windows would have to be coveredover so men couldn't see them. And of course, no women had been trained to workin retail. But it has only taken six years for the law to be enforced, whichisn't bad, considering the history of womankind.

According to the article by Thomas Lippman, who has written a bookabout Saudi Arabia,the employment of women in lingerie shops will probably lead to other changesin the next 30 years or so. It appears that because Saudi Arabia is such an expensiveplace to live, more men want their wives to work and more women are beingeducated. Even now the Ministry of Labor is compiling a list of other jobswomen might be allowed to have.

Before we start feeling smug and self-satisfied about how far advancedwe westerners are, we should remember a few things. When I graduated fromcollege, it was legal for an employer to refuse to employ women for certainjobs. I was really lucky to get my first job in journalism working for TimeMagazine in New York,but as a woman I would never be allowed to write for the magazine. I could beonly an "editorial researcher", gathering all the data, interviewingpeople, sending cables to correspondents, but then when I had all theinformation, I had to give this file to a man, who would write the story. Afterhe wrote it, I had to check the story to be sure he got the facts right. Luckily,the Civil Rights Act of 1964 changed all that. Gradually.

When I took some education courses at what is now Black Hills StateUniversity to be certified as a teacher, a fellow who was in some of my classessaid that he favored a law saying women should be paid the same as men. At thetime, this seemed to make him a very liberal chap, but he explained that if aschool could hire me for less money than they'd offer him, I'd get the job. Itwas a case of enlightened self-interest.

Although women in the United Statesfinally were granted the right to vote in 1920, it was not until 1943 thatwomen in South Dakotawere allowed to serve on juries. Something in our society seems to have alwaysheld that women are too delicate, or unable to understand complex issues,perhaps too morally flawed to be able to make good decisions for themselves andothers.

This attitude still prevails among some in Congress and some of ourLegislators. The Republican Party has recently been accused of waging a"war on women" because of proposed legislation that would restrictwomen's access to family planning, health care or even medically necessaryabortion. In response, the Legislators say they are just promoting laws toprotect women.

Sure they are. That's what they say in countries like Saudi Arabia,too.

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can becontacted at her new e-mail address, which is: collins1@midco.net

Adding up at year's end

2012-01-02T08:36:00.000-07:00

by Lorraine Collins

Since this is the time of year when we start summing up things, writingChristmas letters, reflecting on how fast the year has gone by, I thought I'dget out the notebook in which I keep the stack of columns I've written in 2011to see what they amount to. There arefewer to review this year because in July I reduced my output to one column amonth, inching toward retirement. There are just 16 columns instead of a coupleof dozen but it still took a while to read through them as I tried to rememberwhat I'd written about, and why. There were some lines I was quite pleased withwhen I read them again.

For instance, there's this one from the first column last January. Indiscussing expiration dates, I said, "How long is too long? That's thequestion, isn't it? Not only in food safety, but in life, love, professionalfootball careers, reality TV shows, Royal Dynasties, and living in a hospitalbed attached to tubes and a respirator." I think that covered quite a fewissues, right there, but several months later I'd add Republican primarydebates.

In an April column I started out discussing socks and ended up writingabout the fact that the gap between rich and poor is getting wider and that"the top one percent of the people have seen their income more than doublein recent years while the bottom 90 percent have seen their share shrink."I don't suppose this was the first mention in the media of the infamous onepercent, but I did suggest we should be paying attention to the situation. Isuggested that again in October when I mentioned that there has been a bigincrease in needy families coming to our food banks and many people werebeginning to gather in America'sstreets the way they had in Egyptand elsewhere in the Arab Spring. You can't say I didn't warn you.

I think I was pretty early in recognizing Texas Governor Rick Perry asbeing a possible candidate in the Republican Primary as I mentioned him lastJune before his band wagon really got rolling. I pointed out that onedifficulty with the governor was that he has said he wants to amend theConstitution to take away from the people the right to directly elect their U.S. Senators.He wants state Legislators to do this as they did in the old days before the17th Amendment in 1913. I don't know why Governor Perry trusts stateLegislators over the public, but I did point out that the first three words ofour Constitution are "We the people," not "We the states."

From time to time I've enjoyed writing about adventures I've had,including spelunking in Jewel Cave and trying to get to Pierre in a small plane and landing on ahighway, then hitchhiking to get to the Legislature. I wouldn't want to doeither of those things today, but 30 or more years ago they didn't seemunreasonable or hazardous activities. I don't think it's caution so much asexhaustion that makes us think about not doing stuff as we get older.

I do tend to talk about issues that we should be thinking about,including how we treat, or fail to treat, the mentally ill and the number of South Dakota childrenwhose fathers are failing to support them. And again this year, as every year,I have more than once pointed out that South Dakota ranks at or near the bottom in state supportfor public education.

Just now, thinking about this, Ilooked in the collection of my columns I published last spring and found this,published in January 2007: "At a forum during the campaign for Legislaturelast fall, I asked the candidates whether South Dakota was always going to beso far behind in supporting education, in having the lowest paid teachers inthe nation. Was there any hope? Amid laughter, I was assured that of coursethere was." That was five years ago. I hope nobody is still laughing.

Well, Happy New Year, everybody. Enjoy it while you can. TheLegislature doesn't convene until January 10th.

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

Things to wonder about while standing in line

2011-11-16T16:14:00.001-07:00

by Lorraine Collins

I was standing in line in the Post Office the other day and things weremoving rather slowly as one of the computers had broken down. So I had lots oftime to think about various things, including the post office. My relatives in Wyoming had recentlytold me that their post office is under threat to be closed and of course theywere very unhappy about that. We've heard the same story here in South Dakota.

One thing I've never understood is why we should expect the post officeto make a profit when we don't demand the same of the army or navy. Ourfounding fathers certainly thought it was just as important as those servicesand Benjamin Franklin, himself, was the first Postmaster General. Oh, I knowthe post office is now regarded as a business but isn't it really a service tothe people? As such, isn't it as worthy of subsidies as airports, highways,railroads and other entities deemed important for holding together the fabricof the nation? If we subsidize farms,energy companies, scientific research projects, schools, well, what's sodifferent about the post office?

Before I'd gone much further with this rumination, my eye was caught bythe stack of brochures for young men to register with the Selective ServiceSystem. I picked up a brochure and was advised that failure to register at age18 is a felony. So of course I got to wondering about that. The draft was endedin 1973. So why do we still have mandatory Selective Service registration foryoung men? And why don't we require the same registration of young women, manyof whom serve in all branches of the all-volunteer military? Has anyonerecently been punished with fines or imprisonment for failing to register?

Those questions were sufficient to send me to my computer when I gothome to look up some answers. Apparently the last time anyone was prosecutedfor failing to register was 1986 because unless a fellow confesses, it's hardto prove that he "willingly and knowingly" failed to act. As forwomen, back in 1981 President Clinton did look into the matter of having womenregister, too, but the courts appear to have ruled that since women were notallowed in combat, they didn't have to register. I do believe that events in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated thatthese days "combat" can be anywhere a suicide bomber or an IED can befound and many women soldiers have been wounded or killed. If we are going tokeep the Selective Service, I'd say women should register, too.

I found out other interesting stuff, such as the fact that SelectiveService registration was actually suspended in 1975 but reinstated in 1980 whenRussia invaded Afghanistan.There's still a fellow who has the job of Director Of the Selective Service.He's the 12th to head it and his name is Lawrence G. Romo. I also discoveredthat even young men in this country illegally have to register and they don'tneed a Social Security number to do so. In 1973, President Jimmy Carterpardoned all the men who failed to register for the draft during the Viet NamWar. Theoretically, there are still local Selective Service Boards, but so farI haven't been able to discover whether there's one around here. I could applyonline to become a member of such a board, but that seems a rather extreme wayof finding out whether there is one hereabouts. Anyway, I could find out allsorts of things about the Selective Service, except why we still have mandatory registration 38 years after thelast draft. Do you suppose it's just the inertia of government? Why doesn'tsomebody do something about it?

There are many other things I think about while standing in line at thepost office or the supermarket or at the polling place on election day butunfortunately I always come up with more questions than answers. Nevertheless,I do think it's important for me to think about things and ask questionsinstead of just dumbly standing there like a sheep waiting to be fleeced.

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

Maybe we should pay attention

2011-11-12T09:50:00.001-07:00

by Lorraine Collins

When I read a recent news report that Black Hills Airport inSpearfish had been granted over $3 million by the Federal AviationAdministration to build a taxiway to make the airport safer, I was happy forthe airport and for the taxpayers in Lawrence County. I don't know howmuch money the total airport improvement project has cost over the last fewyears, though I'm sure it is several million dollars. I haven't looked into thematter lately, but one eastern South Dakota newspaper indicated awhile ago that it was atleast $7 million and also said that 95% of this was paid by the federalgovernment. Another three percent is paid by the state, so we in Lawrence County have had to come up with only 2%of the money to provide an improved airport.

I'm certainly not against improving the Black Hills Airportbecause I know it has some recreational and commercial benefits to the county.I used to be co-owner of an airplane based there, my husband once served on theairport board, and he was also Commander of the Lookout Mountain Civil AirPatrol Squadron. I guess you could say we are pro-airplane.

Yet, thinking of the money the federal government has spent ondeveloping and improving this airport, I wonder whether folks who keepcomplaining about the federal deficit and government spending would be willingto say, "Okay, we'll get by without this modernized, improved, saferairport" or even, "We'll pay for it ourselves."

Considering this, I began to wonder what would happen if taxpayers hadto pass a bond issue to build an airport as they often do to build a school.Would they "opt out" of property tax limits to build it? Would localtaxpayers think that this airport is so important to them and to their childrenthat they would willingly increase their taxes in order to pay for it?

I rather doubt that. But if the federal government is paying 95% of thecost, then we tend to say, "Hey, this is a good deal! Go for it!"This may help explain how government spending gets out of hand. We want andneed highways, military bases, airports, bridges, water projects, and weparticularly want them where they help the economy of our county and state. We refer to these things as"infrastructure." But just now when President Obama has been tryingto promote government spending on infrastructure and on schools in order tocreate jobs, this idea is being rejected and blocked by political leaders whosay we can't afford it and it wouldn't work anyway.

Yet when I look around western South Dakota and see people working not only at the airportbut on roads and bridges, I have to think that projects like these have goodresults and pump real money into the economy. In July when Congress adjourned without funding the FAA, a couple ofbillion dollars of construction projects were put on hold, thousands of peoplewere laid off and the government was unable to collect taxes on airline ticketsso hundreds of millions of dollars were lost. At the time, that did not seemlike a good economic plan to me.

The fact is, this economy needs help and people need help. We can'tignore this much longer. The gap between rich and poor in this country is real,and getting bigger. In Spearfish, there has been a 33% increase in peoplecoming to the food bank in the last nine months. In Sioux Falls and Rapid Citythere has been an increase of 60% in the last three years. But Congress wantsto cut $800 million from nutrition programs. Does this make sense?

Last March there was a cartoon in the Pioneer in which a fellow with amicrophone was standing in a city square. He was saying, "It's eerilyquiet in the square, no demonstrations are planned. Despite an economy inshambles, high unemployment, huge disparity in wealth and a reviled rulingclass, there's not even a hint of a popular uprising. Americans may not beready for an Egyptian style democracy."

Well, we're seeing people gather in the streets now in many places,including South Dakota.Maybe we should pay attention.

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

Lessons learned underground

2011-09-16T17:38:00.001-06:00

by Lorraine Collins

Last Saturday morning when I first woke up I lay in bed thinking, forsome inexplicable reason, of a spelunking tour I'd taken in Jewel Caveback in 1973, guided by Herb and Jan Conn. Why was I suddenly remembering that?I most vividly recalled dangling from a rope at least 20 feet in the air as Itried to move up from a rather large cavern to a small hole high in the wall.We had already been in the cave several hours and I was exhausted.

Jan, who was encouraging me to swing my legs up and over a ledge,leaned down to say, "Now Lorraine, do you know what you want to do?"

I said, "Yes! I want to go home!" She laughed.

With my head still full of the memories of that long ago adventure, Iwent to the front door to get the Saturday paper and there on the front page ofthe Pioneer was a color photo of Jan and Herb Conn. Boy, talk about ESP!Somehow, the happy news that the Conns were being inducted into the SouthDakota Hall of Fame must have penetrated my semi-conscious mind.

I read the story and then headed down to the basement to look in my filecabinet for the story I wrote about the Conns for Denver Post's Empire Magazinebefore that spelunking trip more than three decades ago. And I thought about how much Herb andJan had taught me, not only about caving, but about journalism and life.

For instance, when I first visited Jewel Cave'svisitor center and saw some of the artifacts associated with the Conns' yearsof exploration of the cave, I thought they would be a good subject for a story.As a freelance writer I was always interested in good subjects. I wrote to themsaying I wanted to come visit them and write about them. They said no. Theywere not interested in an article about them, only about the cave. So I learnedthere are people in the world who are not flattered by public attention.

I wrote again, trying topersuade them to let me visit them, and I did something I had never done beforeor have done since. I promised I would let them read the article before I sentit anywhere. It was a good thing I did. After I interviewed them and sent themthe article, Jan wrote back saying that when I wrote of "walking" inthe cave, I obviously had no idea what caving was like. She said you do notwalk in a cave. "You scramble, climb, spraddle, crawl and ooze." Iused that line in the article.

It's important for journalists to be aware of their own ignorance, andif I hadn't thoroughly understood that before, I did after Jan enlightened me.You really shouldn't write about something you know nothing about.Unfortunately, I think there are quite a few people in the media who still needto learn that.

But one of the most interesting things we can learn from Jan and Herb Conndoesn't involve caves or journalism. It's how we can live our lives doing whatwe want to do without waiting for retirement to do it. Jan said it's simple."The biggest thing is not to want anything expensive!" At the time,that included electricity and running water.

Just don't want anything expensive, and you can liberate yourself froma lot of problems of our consumer society, including debt. You can spend yourlife pursuing a hobby that becomes a challenge, a cause, a contribution toknowledge and history that could not be gained any other way. You can end up inthe South Dakota Hall of Fame, whether or not you're kind of embarrassed aboutit. Not many of us have the grit to do what Herb and Jan Conn have done, but wecan certainly learn lessons from them.

When the Conns invited my husband and me and another couple to gospelunking in Jewel Cave, they wanted us tosee a spectacular array of crystals, which we could see only if we climbed thatrope and squeezed through that hole. They decided we were capable of that, sothey took us there. That's something else to learn. You never know what you cando if you don't try.

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

Free public education

2011-08-23T11:00:00.002-06:00

by Lorraine Collins

My daughter and family just moved from Norfolk,VA to Topeka, KS and though they seem to likeit there, several things have been a bit of a surprise, including some feescharged by their school district. At a social gathering shortly after theyarrived, a fellow remarked that he wondered how much free public education wasgoing to cost him this year. Last year, he said, it was $500.

It soon became apparent that the school district has a fee for"textbook rental" and "technology" and other things. For mytwo grandchildren in second and fourth grades, the fees added up to $200. Iwent to the school district's website to learn more and was amazed to see thenumber of fees charged to students. Fees for a 7th grade class in "livingskills" amount to $11.00 but 7th grade science is only $3.00. It costs $35to participate in middle school sports. High school sports cost $45 and feesfor science, art, music, business, debate, journalism, cooking, physicaleducation, foreign languages and numerous other courses range from $11.00 to$33.00. As one who once supervised a high school newspaper and yearbook, I wasreally shocked to realize that to be on the staff of either publication in thathigh school, a student would have to pay $33 per semester.

Although over many years I wasinvolved in education one way or another---student, teacher, school boardmember---it's been a while since I've paid much attention to the currentsituation, except to scold the South Dakota Legislature every year about itsanemic support of public schools. (Yes, we still rank last in state per-pupilfunding.) But spending just a few minutes on line asking about student fees inpublic schools was an education in itself.

Last year a lawsuit in Californiacomplained that 35 school districts were charging students fees to attendclasses in what is supposed to be a free public education. In Illinois a woman complained that herdaughter would not be allowed to register for her junior year in high school ifshe didn't pay $290 in fees. This woman is suffering from cancer and herhusband has lost his job. Fees in one New Orleansschool averaged over $1,000 and a school in Georgia charged $152 to enroll inAdvanced Placement chemistry.

Several schools charge fees for activities if not for classes,including in one case $1,833 for cheerleading and $400 for wrestling. Althoughthere has been grumbling in some South Dakota school districts about the costof co-curricular activities and the expense of bussing sports teams across thestate to play a game, so far the idea of expecting students to pay to playvolleyball or football doesn't seem to be something people are ready to accept.

There are some expenses for kids and their parents in attending publicschools in many districts in South Dakota, including insurance for laptop computers theschool provides students or the cost of taking an Advanced Placement or ACTtest. Fees are often forgiven for low-income families who meet incomeguidelines for free or reduced price lunches. And of course every parents knowsthere are numerous expenses in sending a child to school, as indicated by thelists in discount stores of school supplies for each grade. Yet the idearemains--public education should be free.

In fact, free public education has been considered so important that itis enshrined in our American history and in many state constitutions, includingthat of South Dakota.Article VIII says it very well: "The stability of a republican form ofgovernment depending on the morality and intelligence of the people, it shallbe the duty of the Legislature to establish and maintain a general and uniformsystem of public schools wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equallyopen to all; and to adopt all suitable means to secure to the people theadvantages and opportunities of education."

Even though we rank last in state support of education, at least it'sstill free. But one school administrator told me, "The way things aregoing, it's hard to say how long that will last."

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

The gumbo effect

2011-07-15T16:03:00.002-06:00

By Lorraine Collins

Anyone who grew up on the prairie or in the Badlandsknows about gumbo. I don't mean the kind they eat in Louisiana. I mean the kind that sticks toyour feet after a rain in South Dakota. In the old days before there were a lot ofpaved roads around here, driving on a dirt road and encountering a rain stormmeant you were more likely than not to get stuck in the slick, muddy clay. Weused to say that when you were walking in gumbo you'd take one step forward andslide back two. My father would laugh and claim that when he had to gosomewhere, he'd turn around and walk backwards so he could get where he wasgoing.

I've been thinking about the gumbo effect as a pretty good metaphor forwhat's been happening in South Dakotain recent years. That is, the more we strive to go forward, the farther back weseem to slide, at least in some important areas. For years and years we haveclaimed that we want to increase state aid to education but we haven't evenmanaged to maintain the same level of support as in the past and this yearschools have received even more cuts in funding.

Somehow, the idea seems to be that if we fire enough teachers andadministrators, enlarge some class sizes and cut out various courses, we willimprove education. And in terms of achieving an educated and competitive workforce, the concept appears to be that we should raise tuition, making it moredifficult for young people and their parents to afford a university education.If there's one thing we like to talk about in South Dakota it's the importance ofeducation. We just don't want to pay for it.

Of course, it's not onlyeducation that we don't want to pay for. We're kind of tough on roads andbridges, too. A recent report by the Road Information Program noted that onlyfour states have a higher percentage of structurally deficient bridges than wedo, but it is kind of comforting to know there's at least something in which wedidn't come in last. South Dakota'sAAA says that the poor condition of our roads costs motorists an average of$319 a year in extra vehicle operating costs, although I have no idea how theyfigured that out. The condition of our roads and bridges affects our ability tospur economic growth, which we claim we want, although we just don't want topay taxes to fix them.

The U.S. Census Bureau just released a report that places South Dakota dead lastin tax collections in the nation. In fact, our per capita tax rate declined $40from 2009 to 2010, so in terms of providing more money for government, we'regoing backwards. This is hardly a surprise because our idea of enticingbusiness and industry to our state seems to be to brag about having the lowesttaxes and the lowest paid work force in the country. The fact that wages arelow may help account for the fact that twice as many workers in South Dakota hold twojobs as the national average.

We in South Dakotaseem to prefer taxes to be paid by somebody else, which is why we like to taxtourists and why the federal government provides $730 million more for ourgeneral appropriations budget than we do. It's nice of the people in the other49 states to help us with our budget. I just hope they don't start thinking ofus as a bunch of freeloaders.

I do realize that speaking in favor of taxes is like speaking in favorof death, that other inevitable thing. It's just something we don't want tothink about and generally feel it's something that happens to somebody else andnot us. But if we don't do something about making our income take care of ourneeds, maybe we'll have to start walking backwards. We might get ahead. Andanyway we can see where we've been, even if we have no idea where we're going.

Lorraine Collins has published a collection of her Black Hills Pioneer columns called "Gathering My Wits."

Not worth a darn

2011-06-30T15:46:00.002-06:00

By Lorraine Collins

Every now and then I hear an amazing factoid uttered by a televisionpundit but he then moves on to discuss something else and I have to scribble itdown on whatever piece of paper is handy, lest I lose track of it. A recent onewas that one third of all the socks in the world are made in one factory in China. Workersthere earn $14 a day and send most of that home to their families in ruralcommunities.

I think the point of mentioning this was that we Americans should nottry to compete with Chinain making socks. We have to find other, more expensive and complicated thingsto make. That's probably true. But still---one third of all the socks in theworld? Made in one factory? I wondered how big the factory is and where all thesocks go. I decided that the destination for millions of pairs of socks had tobe countries where people have enough money to buy socks as well as shoes. Thatwould be in Europe, North America, the richer countries in South America, and elsewhere. Recently Sports Illustrated had photos ofchildren in Bangladeshplaying cricket on stony ground. They were barefoot like millions of otherpeople in impoverished areas of the world. So just hearing one fact about socksgot me to thinking about worldwide economies and populations.

This sort of fact can make me think of history, too, at least mypersonal history. By now there's been quite a lot of that. I remember that mymother had a "darning egg." It was made of wood and was egg-shapedwith a handle to hang onto as one thrust it into the sole of a sock to mend aheel or toe. About the only place one would find such a thing these days, Iimagine, is in an antique store.

I bet I'm safe in saying that nobody darns socks anymore, but if youdo, let me know. I buy quite a lot of socks in a year but I'm always surprisedto discover a hole in the heel of a sock, or a toe poking through after only afew weeks. I'm pretty sure that the quality of socks today is less than that ofthe 20th Century, and that socks today are not worth a darn. Like so much elsein society, we don't try to repair them, but just throw them away.

As I recall, darned socks weren't always comfortable but we wore thembecause we couldn't afford new ones. We had patches in our jeans, too, buttoday I see expensive new jeans with rips in them for sale in departmentstores. It's a fashion, I guess, though I don't know why. But it's probablyjust as well, because we now can't tell whether the person in tattered jeans isrich enough to buy a popular fashion, or is too poor to afford new pants. Thatmay be beneficial in terms of hiding how much poverty exists in America.

I've heard it said that people are falling out of the middle class inrecord numbers. Any number of Internetwebsites can offer us statistics that demonstrate that the top 1% of the peoplehave seen their income more than double in recent years while the bottom 90%have seen their share shrink. Personal savings have plummeted and one sourcesays that half of all Americans will experience poverty sometime before age 65.The gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider and wider. Just aboutanybody who looks at economics is aware of this, but we don't seem to pay muchattention to it when establishing tax rates or when we decide to cut programsthat help the poor.

Surely we should be paying attention to the situation, not only forcompassionate reasons, but in the interest of developing a stable andproductive society. Any plan for economic recovery that doesn't take these facts intoconsideration really isn't worth a darn.

Lorraine Collins has published a collection of her Black Hills Pioneer columns called "Gathering My Wits."

How to dig a hole

2011-05-11T15:47:00.000-06:00

By Lorraine Collins

The Black Hills Pioneer is the only newspaper in western South Dakota that benefits from a fulltime, year around reporter in Pierre. This is Bob Mercer, who works for the Aberdeen American News and also provides reports to independent newspapers in Mitchell, Watertown, and Pierre in addition to the Pioneer. Mercer has been covering the Legislature since 1985 though he took a few years off when he was Gov. Janklow's press secretary. By now he must be the most knowledgeable journalist in the state when it comes to knowing what goes on in the capitol.

Mercer's report published in the April 18 Pioneer offered an insight as to one cause of our state's deep budget hole. It's not all that different from the federal government, actually. Just keep adding new programs without figuring out new revenue sources to pay for them. Folks in South Dakota keep complaining that Washington does this, but they could look a lot closer to home. Mercer pointed to four programs that have added millions to the budget in the last 15 years with no new funding sources named.

Two of the programs that Mercer says are now "politically untouchable" are subsidies for ethanol plants and financial paybacks to big business projects. He points out that Republican governors and legislators were big promoters of these programs which have both grown rapidly over the years, including more and more beneficiaries and spending more and more millions of dollars.

The ethanol program started in 1995, providing $1 million annually per producer for up to 10 years. It was supposed to expire in 2005 but it's still with us. The amount budgeted has grown from $4 million in 2003 to $7 million currently, although this amount will drop down again in fiscal years 2012 to 2016 before bouncing up again. There is a new deal providing $3.5 million over five years for ethanol distribution and retail systems. All this is so complicated that it's hard for the average citizen to keep track of and there is considerable disagreement about whether the program was ever a good idea in the first place.

The same could be said of the construction tax refunds for big business. In 2006, refunds totaled $1.9 million but the amount grew rapidly and by 2009 was $18 million. The criteria was so broad that projects could qualify whether they needed incentives or not. The program is supposed to expire in January, 2013 but Mercer points out that Gov. Daugaard and the Legislature replaced it with a new program to start on that date that is expected to cost $15 million a year.

These two budget items demonstrate how easy it is for a program to start out modestly, with limited duration, and then grow and grow. They exist because those supporting them said they would benefit our state's economy. But to pay for them we are cutting support to our schools and to social programs that provide care and services to the elderly, the sick, the impoverished. Everyone talks about the cost of social programs, but few mention the cost of economic programs which may be of dubious benefit to our citizens.

The other two programs on Mercer's list could be said to benefit at least some South Dakotans. The Opportunity scholarship program was promoted by the Board of Regents to encourage high achieving high school kids to go to our state universities. In the Rounds administration, the criteria was changed to allow students to go to private colleges in the state as well and now one-seventh of the state funds are spent in private schools. This would seem to defeat the original purpose of the fund.

In 2003 the South Dakota Retirement System raised the mandatory contribution of employees and employers from 5 percent to 6 percent. Mercer says that extra penny per salary dollar has added millions of dollars of costs to the state, and to the hundreds of counties, cities, and school districts that are members of the state retirement system.

It's good to have subjects like this discussed outside of the feverish legislative session so I'm glad we have our man in Pierre.

Lorraine Collins has published a collection of her Pioneer columns called "Gathering My Wits."

Geography, politics and an adventure

2011-03-30T06:15:00.000-06:00

By Lorraine Collins

As I observed the recent events in Wisconsin when lawmakers fled the state capitol and headed out of state to prevent a quorum and thus prevent a vote on a bill they opposed, I realized that this tactic would be more difficult to achieve in South Dakota. Our capitol, Pierre, is right in the middle of the state, unlike Wisconsin's capitol, Madison. Any fleeing Legislators would have to drive quite a long way to get to Minnesota or Nebraska or Wyoming or North Dakota, avoiding the Highway Patrol all the way.

I don't suppose our founding fathers were thinking of this when they located the capitol in Pierre. They were probably just trying to find a central location, not realizing that many years later the Interstate Highway system would choose to go somewhat south of Pierre so the state capitol is not as conveniently located as one would like, and that the bigger population centers would be toward the edge of the state. The state capitol really isn't convenient for most of the people in the state to get to.

Back in the early 1970s I used to arise at dawn to drive to Pierre on Highway 34 so I could testify on behalf of legislation, or against legislation, that affected organizations I was involved with, such as school boards. So far as I know, we didn't have a lot of lobbyists in those days, so citizens themselves had to go to Pierre to talk to Legislators. One time a school board member and administrator from Newell joined a couple of us from the Belle Fourche school board to hire a small aircraft to fly us to Pierre. That turned out to be a real adventure.

When we got as far as Hayes, the pilot started to turn around to go home because there was a fog bank he couldn't fly through. We protested. We insisted. We said we absolutely had to get there. So this fellow, whose name I luckily can't remember, decided to set the aircraft down on Highway 34 which at that hour had no traffic whatsoever. We got out of the plane, pushed it off of the highway onto a road leading to a field, and the Newell guys hiked to a nearby ranch for help. The rancher took us into Hayes.

Soon, a pickup truck pulling a trailer with a piece of farm machinery of some sort came along, and we were able to convince the driver to take us into Pierre. The two men got in first and the other woman and I got in and sat on their laps. The accommodating good Samaritan drove us right to the capitol and we made it in time to testify before a committee. I believe that was the time we wanted to change the law requiring a 60% majority to pass a bond issue.

When I got up to testify, a Legislator said that usually nobody ever bothers to come to talk to their committee. So I told the story of what we'd gone through to get there, to illustrate how important this was to us. Eventually, the pilot was able to get the plane to the Pierre airport so we flew home safely. But by then, our story had been picked up by the Associated Press who called me to ask about this adventure.

The problem was, it's generally illegal for a small plane to land on a highway unless it's an emergency, and a school board emergency probably wouldn't qualify. I said I really didn't want the pilot to get into trouble. So the reporter said he would say that our pilot, "an experienced crop duster, looked around for a place to land." So the story went out: School Board Members Fly and Hitchhike to get to Pierre!

All that effort went for nothing. Our bill was killed in committee. Yet, I'm glad we tried. And I'm glad to know that many others go to Pierre these days to support causes they believe in, no matter how hard it is to get there and no matter how futile it seems.

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

The Gates Notes

2011-03-04T11:05:00.001-07:00

Getting information these days is easy. Getting good information is quite a bit tougher.

Watching Fox News and CNN, listening to the BBC and NPR, all offers a wide range of information and opinions, but much of it conflicts with other sources. Who to believe?

This morning we read that Secretary of State Clinton has used Al Jazeera as an example of “real news.” Not having been exposed to much of Al Jazeera, that’s hard to know. Their image in this country has largely been that of purveying Muslim causes, much like Fox is viewed with by disdain by many liberals, and NPR is vilified by many conservatives. Al Jazeera is making a big push to get into more cable television homes across the country. It’ll be interesting to see how that turns out.

But you need not wander into the realm of international news to find a disconnect of facts.

We’ve been following events in Wisconsin, where a pointed conflict continues to evolve between unionized public workers and state government. Folks I hear on Fox News talk about how public employees are compensated far better than their counterparts in the private sector. Not true, claims the head of the AFL-CIO, who says public workers lag behind in salaries when compared to private sector workers – that they deserve a good benefits package to make up for that.

The task of trying to gather good information – at least through the media – seems fruitless. Most of us soon get burned out on this approach, trying to sort out one radical claim from another.

That’s why it’s rather refreshing to find what appears to be more objective information shared from a surprising source: Bill Gates.

Yesterday, we heard Gates, who’s long been an ardent advocate for education and health care issues, weigh in on public employees, state pension plans, and how they impact the delivery of quality education.

We’ve been tracking public employee retirement funds in several states – mostly reviewing what they say about themselves. Reading their newsletters would cause one to well up with confidence that, despite hard economic times, “their” retirement fund is in good shape. Not to worry.

Nonetheless, public pension funds are – and should be – a big concern for the whole country.

Take a few moments to explore the The Gates Notes to learn a bit more about this issue and others. It offers seemingly unfettered data, unaccompanied by the hostile rhetoric that seems in vogue over on the news channels.

I probably won’t give up splashing around the “main stream media” for information, but I suspect I’ll be spending increased time “on-line” trying to harvest more accurate information. That may not be easy either, but I find The Gates Notes to be a breath of fresh air.

And I don’t think I’ll miss the shouting and name-calling that permeates commercial broadcasting.

Lucky to be an American

2011-01-31T18:17:00.000-07:00

Every so often, we happen across a news item or video that captures our attention.

Such was the case earlier today when good Nebraska friend Con Marshall sent us a video link by Baxter Black.

He may not be very well know in urban settings, but Baxter Black is something of a household word across rural America. He's been sharing his insight and down-home common sense for several decades now, and we first became acquainted with his work while living in Oklahoma and working for public radio. Baxter Black had earned a regular spot on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition," which was trying to find an audience, just as "All Things Considered" had done many years earlier.

A native of the southwest, Baxter is usually identified as a "cowboy, poet, philosopher, and former large animal veterinarian."

We like what he has to say in this produced video -- and it's vintage Baxter Black. Left or right. Conservative or liberal. Baxter's words should be an inspiration for all. Enjoy.

What are we going to do about it?

2011-01-27T13:23:00.000-07:00

By LORRAINE COLLINS

After the latest tragedy in which a seriously mentally ill person murdered random citizens engaged in peaceful pursuit in Tucson, there is finally some attention being paid to the fact that there is little or no protection in this country for the mentally ill, or for those who may be fatally impacted by this lack of protection and help. Families like mine, who have encountered all the difficulties and impossibilities of trying to get help for the mentally ill, may finally have some hope for somebody else's future, even if it's too late for us.

There are several reasons why there is so little help for the mentally ill in this rich and powerful country. To go back in history a bit, in many countries it used to be possible for a person to be involuntarily committed to a mental institution with little or no due process. In the Soviet Union, political dissidents were sent to mental hospitals. Before women had many rights anywhere, a husband could declare his wife crazy and off she'd go. Anybody who didn't conform to social norms could be regarded as insane. To correct this situation, in the 1960's in the U.S. the rules were changed and suddenly mental hospitals were emptied in the name of Civil Rights.

That was good, except no provisions were made to give help and take care of those who were seriously mentally ill. Governmental units were pleased to get rid of the expense of caring for the mentally ill and closed mental hospitals. Unfortunately, this seems to have resulted in spending more money on building prisons. The statistics are astonishing, but it seems that 70% of juveniles in jails and prisons have at least one mental illness and at least 20% of inmates in adult prisons are mentally ill.

Laws make it difficult for families to get help because many times these laws are based on the Tombstone Theory. That is, until the mentally ill person does something awful, such as bringing a gun to school and killing people, there's no way to involuntarily commit him to a hospital where he could get help. In many states a parent or caregiver has to go to court to declare their loved one a danger to himself or others in order to get him committed. This is a very difficult experience to go through.

And in the end, the stay in the mental hospital doesn't last long. The average stay at the Human Services center in Yankton, SD is 15 days. In my experience, that's typical. The person is stabilized, is back in his right mind, compliant, and the crisis is over. He can be referred to other outpatient services and everyone wishes him well. On C-Span's "Washington Journal" earlier this month, Michael Fitzpatrick, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) said that most mentally ill people are taken care of at home, by parents, spouses, siblings because there is nowhere else for them to go. When they leave home, which they often do, they are homeless, wandering America. Fitzpatrick said we must have "public discourse and education" on the problems of mental illness in this country.

In terms of being able to get someone help whether he wants it or not, Arizona seems to have more effective laws than many, but people don't know what the law is, don't have access to help, and of course the budget for mental health in Arizona has been very sharply cut in recent years. One report said it was cut 65%.

Help for the mentally ill is generally in the hands of states and counties, so how much help families can get depends on where they live and how much state legislators and county commissioners are willing and able to spend. Fitzpatrick said that half of the mentally ill people in the U.S. get no help at all, and that untreated mental illness has a tremendous impact on the community. He called this a national tragedy. It's a tragedy for families, too. So, what are we going to do about it?

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

Expiration dates

2011-01-16T22:39:00.007-07:00

By LORRAINE COLLINS

On New Year's Eve, I pulled a container of whipped topping from the freezer and saw that it said that if it was frozen, I should use it by December 21. I was ten days overdue! Should I use it, or not? A few days earlier, I'd found a can of sliced mushrooms that said it was "best" by October 3. Oops! Should I use them or not? If it wasn't "best" was it still edible? It came all the way from China, so I thought not.

I prefer dealing with fresh produce because it's pretty easy to tell if a head of lettuce or an apple is too old to be usable, or a carton of milk or cottage cheese. But canned, frozen and packaged goods are something else. I really hate to waste the product, but when I read the expiration date of something that's lingered too long in cupboard or freezer I worry whether, if I use the product, I'll be advancing my own expiration date.

How long is too long? That's the question, isn't it? Not only in food safety, but in life, love, professional football careers, reality TV shows, Royal Dynasties and living in a hospital bed attached to tubes and a respirator. Serious questions demand sober and thoughtful answers. I can in good conscience reluctantly throw away outdated food, but getting rid of out dated ideas has proved much more difficult for me and for many different societies over time.

Meanwhile, on a less philosophical level, we do have the current South Dakota Legislative Session to think about, and it does have a definite expiration date. That date is March 28th. It has a shelf life of 38 days and it has many things to accomplish during that time. The United States Congress, which also recently began its countdown to expiration, has two years before it turns sour, or so we hope.

At this point, we really don't know what the situation will be by time these governmental expiration dates arrive and so far as I know, there's no guarantee of quality or purity of product. It would be kind of nice to have some agency like those protecting us from poisonous food or dangerous products to examine various bills and call for those that are frivolous, poorly conceived, or based on a personal agenda to be voluntarily recalled. The Legislature wastes a lot of time dealing with bills that should never have been filed in the first place.

We know that in our state government there are expiration dates called term limits and there has been some argument about whether these are good for our democracy or not. Theoretically, term limits encourage more people to run for office to be involved in our government, but in practice when somebody's term is up in the House he or she runs for the Senate, or vice versa. And we've recently seen that when one Constitutional Officer is term-limited, he can just get appointed to another office, so government in Pierre becomes a game of musical chairs for those already in the game.

This year we saw again that elections serve as term limits in some cases and it can be said that this is the best kind of term limitation. Some years ago, South Dakota wanted to put term limits on our Congressional representatives but this was seen as unconstitutional. In fact, the ballot box has proved to be a pretty good substitute for any term limiting law.

On the whole, I think that if we need expiration dates on anything, it's political campaigns because shortening them would reduce the influence of money. If we can't get that, maybe we in the electorate should make it clear that our patience and tolerance for outrageous lies, accusations and distortions does have an expiration date. And that's today. If we make that clear, it might improve the quality of the product. And it's certainly something we aren't going to import from China.

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

Remembering our way to the future

2011-01-06T01:25:00.000-07:00

By LORRAINE COLLINS

There was a very interesting segment on the CBS program "Sixty Minutes" recently when viewers were introduced to a handful of people who could literally remember every day of their lives. If they were asked to remember a day like July 23rd 2006, for instance, they could tell you whether it was a Tuesday or a Friday, whether it rained that day, who they talked to, what they had for lunch and so forth.

Of course this is hard to verify, so scientific investigators asked about things they remembered on dates that can be historically documented and in every case the people with this incredible and somewhat frightening ability could recall that day instantly and exactly.

When asked how they could do this, they said they didn't know. Just ask them about a day they'd lived through some years ago and suddenly they "saw" that day and re-experienced it. They didn't particularly want to, but they did. Some of the instantly remembered days made them feel whatever emotion they had felt that day--sadness or joy. Subsequent MRI examinations revealed that there were some differences in the brains of these people and the rest of us.

Memory is a mysterious thing and losing it can be devastating both for individual people and for societies. I've been thinking of this, now that we are approaching the end of another year, because this is when the media attempts to sum up the year, decide what was most important, what good and bad things happened, to record it for posterity. I suppose that's inevitable and it does help fill pages in newspapers and magazines and many hours on television and radio. The trouble is, I'm not sure we are all remembering the same things in the same way.

For instance, some of us may remember that the last Legislature succeeded in balancing the budget but others of us will remember that to do so they had to use federal stimulus funds and cut state aid to public schools. Some of us may remember all the fun and profit the annual Sturgis Rally brought to the Hills, while others of us remember the noise and inconvenience. While some people are remembering that we are assured the recession hasn't hit South Dakota as hard as other states and that we have a good economic climate here, others may remember that eight of the poorest ten counties in the United States are within our borders.

In other words, I tend to think we often remember what we want to remember and forget things we don't want to pay attention to. Maybe that's the only way we can function much of the time or we'd get bogged down in regret and uncertainty.

Yet, as we approach another New Year, I hope that those who hold political and economic power in South Dakota and the United States do not suffer loss of memory. I hope they pause to reflect on some of the mistakes that have been made in the last decade. We wouldn't be in an economic mess and fighting two wars (not counting excursions into Yemen and Pakistan) if some mistakes hadn't been made along the way. Our highways wouldn't be deteriorating, our schools struggling, our prisons overcrowded, if we hadn't made some pretty bad decisions over the years. Remembering and recognizing mistakes is the first step toward making better decisions in the future.

Even if we all could remember every day of our lives, I'm not sure that this would help us achieve a more sane and benevolent society, because we would still be filtering reality through our own eyes, our own beliefs, fears, ambitions. People do remember things differently which is why there are conflicting reports from eye witnesses and arguments at family reunions.

Yet we should do our best to try to remember history and see it clearly. As the saying goes, those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it.

Happy New Year.

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

Bryant: No emergency at Terry Cemetery

2011-01-05T23:56:00.001-07:00

It appears that there is no imminent threat to the Terry Cemetery.

LCHS President Jerry Bryant spoke today (1/3/11) with Wharf Resources General Manager Bill Shand, who said he believes Wharf has no plans to do anything with the old cemetery for at least the next five years.

Wharf had filed documents with the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources on September 27th, indicating their intention to significantly expand their large scale gold mining operation near Terry Peak. (See our story of 12/25/10: Terry cemetery area targeted.) If approved, Wharf would expand its heap-leach gold mine operation by some 600 acres, including the old Golden Reward mining area. The Terry Cemetery was included in their request for “Determination of Special, Exceptional, Critical or Unique Lands” submitted to DENR.

Shand told Bryant that, if and when Wharf decides to do anything with the cemetery – which “he doubts” – they will give “ample” notice to LCHS and other interested parties.

After talking with Shand and State Archaeologist Mike Fosha about the cemetery, Bryant said it would appear there is no emergency regarding possible disturbance of the cemetery.

“But it never hurts to be prepared, and we’ll have our ducks in a row to combat it, whether it’s at Terry Cemetery or some other cemetery,” said Bryant.

At least one individual plans to submit a nominating petition to include the cemetery on the preliminary list of “Special, Exceptional, Critical, or Unique Lands. Jeannine Guern, who is active with both the Black Hills Pioneers and LCHS, plans to file her document with DENR before the January 11^th deadline.

Cemetery preservation and maintenance is on the agenda for the LCHS Board of Directors when they meet tomorrow afternoon (1/4/11) in Deadwood. The 4 o’clock meeting will take place at the Deadwood City Library.

The Board is also expected to discuss and take action regarding a contract with the Adams Museum and House, establishing the “terms and conditions” for use of the designated “LCHS Room” in the new Homestake Adams Research and Cultural Center. LCHS earlier approved spending $15,000 to gain space “in perpetuity” in the nearly-completed HARCC, which is located at 150 Sherman Street in Deadwood.

Construction on the structure is all but complete, and efforts are underway to outfit the facility. A grand opening celebration is slated for Thursday, June 16th, 2011.

Terry Cemetery area targeted

2010-12-31T16:25:00.003-07:00

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.

Where does charity begin?

2010-12-19T00:21:00.002-07:00

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.

The strength & problem of American democracy

2010-12-08T15:14:00.001-07:00

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.

Rush to make history

2010-11-08T07:13:00.001-07:00

by Larry Miller

Like long-time Spearfish resident and historian Linfred Schuttler, we're pleased that Mayor Jerry Krambeck and other members of the city council were interested in having a video produced that covers the history of Spearfish.

We're disappointed but not surprised that the Mayor would push to have the video produced by an out-of-town company that is owned by a long-time friend of the Mayor.

The rationale seemed to be that the Lead company "Historical Footprints" owns a lot of old film footage of Spearfish, and that -- therefore -- it should be a "sole source" contract with no opportunity for others to bid on it. That should not have been allowed. There's at least one company IN Spearfish that has the credentials and capability of producing a top-flight video production, but they and others were never even given a chance.

We've seen some of the "Historical Footprints" footage of Spearfish. While it would be helpful in telling the story of Spearfish, that alone should not have driven the project. With the talented Paul Higbee scripting the project, we have a feeling that the narrative will be well researched, but we believe the video production could have been better done by Western Sky Media in Spearfish. But none of us will never know, because the contract was awarded without competitive bidding.

And without any input from two organizations that you would think might have a keen interest in such a project: the Spearfish Area Historical Society and the city's own Historic Preservation Commission.

We look forward to seeing the video, but we're sorely disappointed in the process that will deliver the product.

Get it right

2010-11-04T07:45:00.001-06:00

In case you missed his "Letter to the Editor" in the Black Hills Pioneer last Saturday (10/30/10), this piece penned by long-time Spearfish resident and historian Linfred Schuttler is well worth a read:

GET IT RIGHT

The City Council and interested citizens are planning a historical video of Spearfish to be ready for the “125^th anniversary in 2013.”

The idea is great, but good heavens, let’s get the dates right.

Spearfish was established in 1876 by a town site declaration and survey made May 29, 1876, with occupancy effective May 30, 1876. The legality of town site organization was effected under provisions of a law of the United States which authorized the location of town sites on government un-surveyed lands, which also set aside portions of such lands for school purposes. The Spearfish town site document was signed by 32 founding stockholders, with at least three having descendants still living here.

Subsequent surveys confirmed the location and the town site plats which still exist as part of the present city records and maps.

On Feb. 28, 1877, President Grant signed the order abrogating the Sioux Treaty, which put all lands under territorial and county control and jurisdiction.

The town site came under county control, but few services were offered by the county.

On March 12, 1885, a charter of incorporation, under a board of trustees, was granted to the “city of Spearfish.” Three years later, under a new territorial law permitting the adoption of a mayoral and aldermanic organization of local government, Spearfish voted, in a somewhat tainted election process, to adopt a new charter which still exists today.

If the last charter date of 1888 is accepted as the establishment of a city, then Rapid City, Sturgis and Hot Springs would be less than 60 years old.

If the last charter date is accepted, then what happened to history in the years previous?

Judge W. W. Bradley proclaimed Spearfish as the “Queen City” on July 4, 1877, because it was to be the best and leader of the rest.

Linfred L. Schuttler

Spearfish

What really matters

2010-11-03T15:03:00.000-06:00

by Lorraine Collins

Whew! It's finally over! What a thrill! Oh no, I don't mean the election, which some may think of as more thrilling than others. I mean that enthralling rescue of miners in Chile last month. By now the rapt attention of the world has moved on to other dramas, but that event will live in song and story---television documentaries, movies, paperback books.

The first documentary about the rescue aired on PBS a few days ago. It showed the giant machines that were brought in to pound a hole through the rock and the men who worked so desperately. What a triumph of science and faith, technology and spirit, courage and teamwork it was. It also demonstrated government efficiency and innovation and an apparent willingness to share credit for the success. It's everything we long for here in America and we saw it for a few weeks there in Chile. The rescue also showcased American inventiveness and knowhow as American equipment and expertise were substantially involved in the rescue. So that makes us feel even better about it.

I guess you could say that what happened in Chile was the antipathy of what we've experienced here at home during the long, rancorous election season. The rescue of the miners cost a whole lot of money but maybe not as much as was spent by candidates in California. Or not as much as was lost by those big banks that were too big to fail.

In the midst of all the drama, one of the commentators who filled the television screens and airwaves during the rescue of the miners said something that I had not heard for a long time, but I think is still true. He reminded us that all wealth comes from two things only---mining and agriculture. Without mining and agriculture, it is said, nothing else exists. It's a primitive idea, perhaps, and one nobody thinks about. But if you wear it, sit on it, eat it, drive it, read it, watch it or use it to talk to somebody half a world away, whatever you are using would not be there for you unless somebody had dug a mineral out of the ground or grown a crop. That's where it starts.

Of course, a lot of other procedures have to go on after the initial production or extraction of the basic material, such as processing, refining, inventing, designing, manufacturing and marketing. All this leads, somehow, to banks, lawyers, corporations, hedge funds, speculation, bubbles, and Wall Street bankers who get millions of dollars in bonuses no matter what. Somehow, all those people who seem to have nothing whatever to do with mining and agriculture appear to be the guys with all the money. It kind of makes you wonder.

Our economic system seems to reward best those who are far removed from the basic source of all wealth---mining and agriculture. The only time we actually pay much attention to miners is when they are involved in a catastrophe that captures our imagination. And the only time we think much about those who toil in the fields is when we're wondering whether or not they're illegal aliens.

There are easier ways to make a living than mining and agriculture so we should be grateful for those who are willing to do the work. The men who were trapped in that mine haven't spoken much about the experience yet, but they've said they realized what was important, what really mattered to them, and so did their families waiting for the rescue.

The rest of us should stop and think of this, too. What really matters to the economic health of the nation? What are we producing, manufacturing, inventing other than complicated financial instruments that nobody really seems to understand? If we thought about that a little more, we might not be in the mess we're in.

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

Can we pass the test?

2010-10-19T13:52:00.000-06:00

We're pleased to once again offer the writings of Lorraine Collins, whose columns are regularly published in the Black Hills Pioneer. This time, she addresses an issue that we're hearing more about during this election season -- the U.S. Constitution. Our thanks to Lorraine for sharing her work with us. You may contact her at Collins1@rushmore.com

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There has been some talk lately about changing the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States that allows anybody born here to be a citizen of our country. Some people worry about illegal immigrants coming here and giving birth to "anchor babies" so eventually, those infant citizens can grow up and then sponsor their parents for citizenship. This would take 21 years, as I understand it, but those who worry about immigration seem to fret a lot about the ramifications of "birthright citizenship".

Most other developed countries do have some additional requirement for citizenship, such as having been born to a citizen or permanent resident of that country, but I kind of hate to see us starting to dismantle the Constitution because of some current fears. Next thing you know, somebody will decide it's dangerous to have all that stuff in the Bill of Rights about freedom of religion and speech and assembly.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that some of my ancestors were born in America to parents who were immigrants from Europe but were not yet citizens. Their children were "first generation Americans." By now I'm a fourth generation American so I'm glad the birthright citizenship worked for my family.

Those of us lucky enough to have been born here don't have to take any test to prove ourselves worthy of citizenship but what if we did? What if just being born here didn't entitle us to be Americans? What if we had to pass some kind of test? Could we pass?

Well, there's one way to find out. We can take the test required of everyone who applies for American citizenship. You can find the questions online, and I thought it might be fun to offer a few examples of the questions, so here they are.

1. What are the first three words of the U.S. Constitution?

2.What is one of the five rights guaranteed by the 1st Amendment?

3. How many Amendments does the Constitution have?

4.How many U.S. Senators and Representatives are in Congress?

5, If both the president and the vice president cannot serve, who becomes the president?

6. Who is the current Chief Justice of the United States?

7. Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?

8. What are the two longest rivers in the United States?

9. When was the Constitution adopted?

10. What territory did the United States buy from France in 1803?

Actually, it might be a good idea to sit down and take the citizenship test every now and then just to remember some of the history and geography that we may have forgotten since we were in school. Some recent studies have indicated that Americans tend to be woefully ignorant of history and current affairs. Maybe that's why so many of us are willing to believe practically anything anybody tells us.

Pondering all this, I had another idea and came up with another quiz, in preparation for Election Day. Let's assume everyone can name the two candidates for governor on the ballot for the November election. But who are the two men running for Lt. Governor? What do we know about them?

Do we all know that there are three people running for Secretary of State? Can we name them? How about the candidates for State Auditor, Treasurer, Commissioner of School and Public Lands? What do we know about them and whether or not they'd be any good at the job?

And what about the ballot issues this year---Amendments K and L, referred law 12 and initiated measure 13? These are the things we should know something about before we get to the voting booth. Luckily, sample ballots are available in several places including party headquarters, the court house and city hall. And there's almost a month before election day to study up.

Those of us who don't have to pass a test to become citizens still have to pass the citizenship test every couple of years in November.

Why we can't ban or burn books anymore

2010-10-10T20:53:00.005-06:00

Spearfish writer Lorraine Collins is a regular contributor to the Black Hills Pioneer newspaper, and we're delighted that she shares her column with us for Black Hills Monitor. She's touched upon a wide range of topics, and this time she writes about banning and burning books. Please double check to ensure that this column is not banned in your community. If it isn't, please consider having it banned so that we might increase readership of Black Hills Monitor. You may contact Lorraine at collins1@rushmore.com
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The September AARP bulletin, which I receive because I have been a member of the American Association of Retired Persons for some years now, has a list of books that have been banned at various times in America. This was published in honor of Banned Books Week beginning September 25th. It's always fun to read the list of famous and classic books that have been, or still are, banned in various libraries and schools in America.

For instance, there's the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. AARP says this was frequently censored from 1789 until early in the 20th century and sometimes "sanitized" by publishers so it could be used in schools. One problem is that it contains a very witty essay, "Advice to a young man on the choice of a mistress." I couldn't remember ever reading this but was able to find it online in a matter of moments.

It should be noted that Franklin tells the young man he should get married, and explains marriage is the only way a man may be completely happy and successful. He says that wives and husbands help each other and offer different strengths and talents to achieve a good life. However, if the young man persists in his present attitude, Franklin advises him to seek out an older woman and explains why. At the end, he repeats his advice about getting married. I think it's an entertaining essay by one of our more interesting Founding Fathers.

My experience in finding this essay illustrates why banning books or burning them is quite a useless exercise these days. It can be a theatrical or symbolic act, pleasing somebody's ego or assuaging some citizen's concern, but it's pointless. The books, or excerpts from the books, reviews of the books, and directions about how to find the books are all over the Internet. And kids have access to computers.

Another fact about banning a book is illustrated by my searching for Ben Franklin's essay on line. When something is banned, it becomes more attractive, an object of curiosity, and generates a lot of interest among those who otherwise might not have paid much attention to it. In the old days when a book was "banned in Boston" it became a best seller.

The list of books that have been banned at some time and in some place in America includes many famous classics including Uncle Tom's Cabin, Dr. Zhivago, A Farewell to Arms and 1984. Those were regarded as too political. Books banned for having too much sex include Ulysses, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Lolita and Jaws. Those are probably the ones we've heard about the most because sex is sensational.

Darwin's On the Origin of Species has been banned as have books like the Lord of the Rings trilogy because they were thought to be irreligious. Books in the Harry Potter series were burned in New Mexico and challenged in 19 states not only for being irreligious but because the books include rebellion against authority.

There is a long list of famous books that have been banned from time to time because somebody thought they were socially offensive. Oddly enough, this includes The Diary of Anne Frank and To Kill a Mockingbird, as well as The Scarlet Letter and Gone With The Wind. Some schools have banned several of Shakespeare's plays including King Lear, Macbeth and Hamlet.

Reading any list of banned and burned books causes me to shake my head in puzzlement. Sometimes I wonder if those offended by the books have actually read them, and what they fear about them. I do think it's fear that causes people or societies to ban books. They don't want to upset the status quo, or introduce new ideas, or explore social and political issues.

However, I've always thought that ignorance is much more dangerous for society than information, whether we like the information or not. So in honor of Banned Book Week, I'd encourage us all to go get one and read it.

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

The demise of the Lawrence County Journal

2010-10-08T22:20:00.001-06:00

It’s a bit of irony that the owner of the Lawrence County Journal would announce the immediate closure of the paper smack dab in the middle of National Newspaper Week.

Publisher Brad Slater of the Rapid City Journal, which owns the Lawrence County Journal, conceded Wednesday (10/6/10) that the move was “an extremely difficult choice to make." As part of the move, offices in Spearfish, Newell, and Deadwood will be closed.

The handwriting had been on the wall for quite some time.

We subscribed to the Lawrence County Journal a few years ago, but found the twice-a-week publication a bit lacking in coverage of local and area issues. Not surprisingly, occasional significant stories published by the Lawrence County Journal would frequently pop up in the Rapid City Journal – sometimes even with a photo. The local Lawrence County Journal story would be more complete, and would frequently include an abundance of photographs. Often, it seemed to include more photos than real news.

In a climate where the internet has gone toe-to-toe with newspapers for advertising dollars, we’ve seen both circulation and ad revenues drop sharply for newspapers all across the country.

We cancelled our subscription some months ago, hoping there’d be enough area news splashing over into the Rapid City Journal that we wouldn’t miss the Lawrence County newspaper.

A short time later, the Lawrence County Journal decided to abandon its mid-week edition and shift to a Saturday edition only.

That was not a surprising move either. Nonetheless, we had to chuckle when a telemarketer tried to lure us back to the fold, telling me that she knew we were “busy” and that she knew that it can sometimes be difficult to find the time to read the paper. “So we’ve consolidated our newspaper into a weekly,” she said, to make it more “convenient for readers to get their news in a single paper rather than two.” I had to chuckle.

In their October 6^th edition reporting the demise of the weekly Lawrence county paper, the Rapid City Journal noted that “Spearfish, Deadwood and other Lawrence County news will continue to appear in the Rapid City Journal.”

I turned the page to see a lot of ink telling about political cracker barrel forums conducted the night before in Rapid City. There was nary a hint of the Lawrence County forum held the same evening at Black Hills State University. So much for northern hills news coverage in the Black Hills.

Give me the phone number for the Black Hills Pioneer.

It, too, is overpriced – but it’s now the only newspaper left providing any real coverage of Lawrence County.

How to spot a scam artist

2010-09-15T18:05:00.001-06:00

We’ve always known that Lorraine Collins had great credentials. And now we learn that she’s also been selected for an online “Who’s Who” registry. Of course, her discerning ways will quickly elevate her to the head of the class of folks who know “what’s what” and can size-up a scam artist just a mouse click away. Lorraine has been a regular contributor to the Black Hills Pioneer newspaper for quite some time, and we’re delighted to offer you her latest column here on Black Hills Monitor.

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The other day I got a letter informing me that I had been "appointed as a biographical candidate to represent Spearfish, SD" for an online Who's Who registry for "executive and professional women." This was the biggest thrill I've had since I received word a couple years ago that I had been selected for membership in the Handyman Club of America.

Now, I knew that the Handyman Club was suffering from a serious case of mistaken identity when they said they wanted me to try out their chain saw, and I'm no less certain that this outfit is also laboring under some misapprehension. The misapprehension might be that any woman who receives this letter will be flattered and pleased and will immediately send the necessary biographical information to this organization for them to use as they see fit. But I thought the letterhead might as well have read SCAM instead of WHO'S WHO.

Yet it did sound awfully nice. They were pleased to inform me that my candidacy was already approved. They just wanted me to visit my personal website (one they had set up in my behalf) to verify my biographical information. The letter went on to explain that candidates are selected based on "researched executive and professional listings." Frankly, I couldn't think of any executive or professional listing I might be on and furthermore, I'd have been more impressed if the letter had been sent with a real 44 cent stamp instead of one of those indicating a mass mailing.

The letter indicated getting listed in their online directory would be free, which I sincerely doubted. I was not surprised when I did a bit of research online to find that the Better Business Bureau in several states had received complaints about the company. I guess everything is free for the first few minutes of a phone call. But then honorees are expected to purchase lifetime membership for several hundred dollars, or buy a hardcover book with their listing, or pay to have their skimpy biography enlarged. Some people have actually made the mistake of giving the outfit their credit card number.

Moseying around their website I found that many Who's Who members (they have several different categories) were self-published authors hawking their books as well as the occasional person who seemed to be either deranged or a con artist or both. One woman claimed that "Social Security checks will begin to shrink by September 30th this year" so she suggested a website where we could "discover sound alternate investing." I was not tempted to go there.

It's puzzling, really. I wondered how people could be so vulnerable to scam artists but then I realized that in a sense we are conditioned to believe whatever unproven allegation anybody tells us. Often we are told what we want to believe and sometimes we're told what somebody else wants us to believe for their own purposes. Just think of all the lies and distortions that circulate on the Internet and land in our email inboxes. Outrageous and untrue statements are made all the time, often by people who want to spread fear and anxiety to further their political agenda.

The best defense against scam artists in either commerce or politics is a healthy dose of skepticism which I think one can develop without becoming totally cynical. When we are offered something wonderful for nothing, we have a pretty good indication that it's going to cost quite a bit. When someone appeals to our ego, or to our fear, there's a good chance that the truth may be bent just a little. Some folks can spot a snake oil salesman a mile away and still fall for a smooth talking fellow who assures us that he knows just what ails the country and how to fix it.

The thing is, it's easier to spot a scam artist if he's not masquerading as a patriot.

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

Religious tolerance -- eroding everywhere?

2010-09-08T21:32:00.006-06:00

by Larry Miller

In the past several days, we’ve received a few forwarded e-mail messages with dire warnings about Muslims. The mail comes from friends and relatives alike.

Much of it is based on seemingly scholarly work attributed to one Dr. Peter Hammond.

A bit of research reveals that Dr. Hammond is founder of the “Frontline Fellowship” in Cape Town, South Africa. Its purpose is to “glorify God” and expose the “strategies and ideologies of evil.” Listed priorities include “working for Reformation and praying for Revival.”

As something of a conservative curmudgeon, my interest was piqued by their trove of literature about the Great Reformation – from the bloody Crusades and John Calvin to Oliver Cromwell and Martin Luther. Frontline Fellowship’s library is replete with books, CDs and DVDs focusing on the Reformation. And the clear message on its web site is that there needs to be a religious reformation with zeal and commitment – some would say radicalism – and it must be mobilized today if the forces of evil are to be defeated.

Interestingly, if you want to join the Frontline Fellowship, you’re asked to fill out a 20-page application and tell them about your military service. They also want a copy of your discharge papers.

Dr. Hammond seems something other than an objective biblical scholar.

And the data he offers is designed to scare the socks off you. And apparently it’s working, as more and more people seem to be expressing great fear of Muslims, whether moderate or extremist. Hammond correlates increasing Muslim populations with terrorism and lawlessness everywhere from France and India to Israel and Guyana. But he probably wasn’t counting when one-time-Christian-turned-extremist Jim Jones engineered mass suicides in Guyana a generation ago.

Hammond writes that he’d like Hollywood to come to his aid and produce films consistent with his view of the world, but overall, he’s not very thrilled with westerners. He charges that “the West is quick to intervene to help Muslims – but not Christians. They’ll help Muslims in Bosnia, Muslims in Kuwait, Muslims in Somalia – but not Christians in Rwanda or Sudan.”

Religious extremists everywhere are seeking followers for their causes. And most peddle misinformation and fear. They seem to be everywhere, from Afghanistan to the United States – and, yes, South Africa.

I am reminded of the hysteria perpetuated by the media a half century ago when John Kennedy was a candidate for President. It warned that if Kennedy were elected, the Pope would be de facto president of the United States. In retrospect, that anti-Catholic diatribe now seems ludicrous.

Fear of the unknown can be a real and very powerful force. Much of what many Americans think we know about Islam arrives in our homes via e-mail, predicting dire consequences for the United States. There are lots of “facts” in these e-mails, but little rational thought concerning the context or honest implications of those “facts.” Recipients of this stuff would do better to explore more credible research done by the likes of the Pew Research Center, which has found that most Muslims in the United States consider themselves U.S. citizens first, and Muslims second. And most of them – according to Pew – “are very concerned about Islamic extremism in the world.”

I am a Christian. While I’ve never been accused of being a devout Christian, I am an inquiring Christian, trying to learn and understand more about my faith – and the faiths of others who value the freedom of religion that our country has embraced since its inception.

As a journalist, I am also a skeptic. Radicals of all stripes get my attention, wherever they reside – in the news, in schools, in Congress, or in the pulpit. When they begin hatemongering, I refuse to sit idly by and blithely accept their versions of the truth.

The latest irrational salvo to hit my mailbox is a “fox guarding the henhouse” claim spewed out against Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Arif Alikhan. Not because Alikhan is alleged to be incompetent or crooked; but simply because he happens to be a Muslim – like nearly three million other Americans!

If the good folks who forward these ill-conceived e-mails would dig beneath the surface a bit, they’ll discover that Mr. Alikhan has pretty good credentials: he’s a former federal prosecutor, who also had “operational oversight of Los Angeles Police, Fire and Emergency Management Departments.” I would expect that he also has sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States, something I suspect many authors of these anti-Muslim missives have never done.

With a bit of inquiry, and a closer examination of the Constitution, we might all learn more about the letter and the spirit of “freedom of religion,” something that our forefathers took seriously.

And so should we.

The problem with August

2010-09-07T00:27:00.000-06:00

We always enjoy sharing the writings of our good neighbor Lorraine Collins, who pens columns regularly for the Black Hills Pioneer newspaper. For some time now, we've suspected there was something awry with the month of August -- but we just didn't know what! Lorraine spells it out here. You may contact her at collins1@rushmore.com.

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A friend in Toronto called me the first Monday in August and after we had chatted for a while she expressed surprise that the first Monday is not a holiday in the United States. In Canada it's "Civic Holiday." Now, it seems to me that this is a typical Canadian practical solution to a problem. In this case, the problem is August.

August is 31 days long and there are no public holidays. Therefore, declare a "Civic Holiday." It doesn't have to commemorate any historic event, the birth or death of any great person, or anything else. Just realize that August needs a holiday and put one in. Close government offices and banks and go fishing.

Of course, I think the solution to the no-holiday problem in August is to finally make an official public holiday of Women's Equality Day which is celebrated modestly by a few on August 26th, tomorrow. It commemorates the day in 1920 when the 19th Amendment took effect after it was ratified by the last state to do so on the 18th, so women in the United States were finally allowed to vote. This day was first proposed in 1971 by Rep. Bella Abzug of New York who managed to get Congress to declare in a Joint Resolution that August 26th is a day worthy of official commemoration.

But somehow, it has never been able to make it onto the calendar, even though one calendar in my house notes Ground Hog Day, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, First Days of Spring ,Summer, Fall and Winter, various Jewish and Christian holidays, Earth Day, Administrative Professionals Day, Armed Forces Day, Father's Day, Mother's Day, as well as all of the legal holidays like President's Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Thanksgiving, and so forth.

I tell you, it makes one a little paranoid to realize that calendar companies give more respect to ground hogs than to women. However, I try not to fret about it. I know that many women suffered, were imprisoned, went on hunger strikes, were force fed, were sent to mental institutions for demanding the right to vote. But that's only 90 years ago, so I suppose we shouldn't be too impatient waiting for recognition of the sacrifices made to achieve equality.

I also realize that there are many other worthy causes that are not on the calendar in August, though they could be if people just pushed hard enough to get them recognized. When I went online to find what various people thought we should be celebrating in August, I found that just about every day was designated to celebrate one thing or another.

It's amazing, really. There's International Left-hander's day on August 13 and there's Income Tax Day commemorating the date of the first Income Tax in the U.S. in1861. But I don't suppose there would be many patriotic parades for that one.

There are days in which we are asked to commemorate many nice things--friendship, parents, Switzerland, the Coast Guard, and even Bad Poetry Day. Personally, I think I'd skip that one. There are an amazing number of days in August devoted to recognizing food. These include days devoted to toasted marshmallows, filet mignon, potatoes, waffles, sponge cake, ice cream sandwiches, mustard, rice pudding and a host of others. I like all that stuff except mustard so I'm sorry I didn't learn of the various Days until it was too late.

I suddenly realized that August 26th is not only Women's Equality Day but also is National Dog Day, I wondered whether we could join forces to try to get on the calendar together, celebrating our mutual virtues. But when I went to the website for National Dog Day, I realized it honors dogs for offering "Love--all you want, unconditionally, forever, no contract required."

Hmm. That sounds more like Mother's Day to me.

Accepting the Journal's "Page Too"

2010-09-04T14:40:00.007-06:00

My bride and I often vote for opposing candidates in elections, thereby cancelling any impact our votes might have upon public office holders from U.S. president to mayor.

But politics isn’t the only place we’ve seen things differently.

When the Rapid City Journal created its shrine to wayward celebrities on “Page Too,” my spouse became an almost instant fan. Curmudgeon that I am, I would not allow myself to forage through these juicy tidbits of “human interest” stories that have little relevance to my life. As a journalism school graduate, I thought there was just too much weightier stuff that I should be reading – everything from health care issues to the plight of Social Security. And surely the war in Afghanistan and our faltering economy deserve more of my attention!

But to get from the Journal’s front page to local and state news on page A3, I’ve always felt I had to hurriedly ignore “Page Too,” lest my eyes and curiosity be aroused by those fluffy features.

Alas, it’s no use. The longer that I worry that the Journal is only feeding the frenzy over all things celebrity, the more I catch myself shamelessly devouring the latest gossip about David Letterman, Lady Gaga, or Barbra Streisand.

I am a reluctant, if guilt-ridden, convert.

So now it’s time to pay homage to the Rapid City Journal for hatching “Page Too.” Without it, I wouldn’t know about the tax woes of actor Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee), the non-injury accident outside the home of author Stephen King, or the seemingly endless drug problems of Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, rapper T.I., and a litany of other celebrities.

Commercial television long ago realized the value of dumbing down its programming to “give the people what they want.” And it’s so much less expensive than providing all that confusing news stuff. Newspapers have just been slower to abandon their journalistic souls in adopting this “eye candy” media strategy.

Tomorrow, I may even discontinue my search for elusive world news in the back pages of the Journal, while also cancelling my subscriptions to Time and the Wall Street Journal. That way I can focus more on Page Too, contributing my “Two Cents” worth of anonymous opinion, catching up on “The Odd” blurbs, and maybe even digressing to more on-line computer time, Twittering and exploring Facebook.

Maybe Paris Hilton will be my friend.

Bootleggers, walnuts, and nostalgia

2010-08-23T12:59:00.008-06:00

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An elderly gent I know told me that when he was a kid Prohibition was still in force, so he and his pals would get on their bikes and ride through their small town in northwestern South Dakota on Sunday morning to gather up half pint whiskey bottles that had been emptied on Saturday night. They would return the bottles to the bootlegger for cash. I guess this is an early example of recycling.

The bootlegger he dealt with ran a lumberyard and stashed his whiskey in a pile of sawdust at the back of the yard. He says, "If the police wanted to know who the bootleggers were, all they had to do was ask a kid."

Stories like this always make me think of how much society has changed over the course of the last 75 years or so. There are many small differences that we may not think of very often but eventually they add up to big changes. For instance, I watched a TV weatherman the other evening who spoke of "half dollar sized hail." That surprised me, because I haven't seen a half dollar coin in years and I wondered if anybody else has. Why did the half dollar disappear from ordinary commerce? Maybe it's because of all those vending machines that have slots that can take quarters or dollar bills, but not half dollars.

In any case, I thought that "half dollar size" hail was rather quaint until I read a report in the "100 years ago" section of the newspaper in which a fellow reported hail stones "the size of walnuts."

We don't hear of walnut-sized hail anymore because we rarely see a whole walnut in the shell, except maybe occasionally at Christmas. Otherwise, we buy plastic sacks of walnut pieces. So now our reporters say that hail was the size of ping pong balls, or golf balls or even baseballs, but not walnuts. The fact that people out here in the west are more familiar with golf balls than walnuts is just one more indication of how our neighborhood has changed over the course of a century.

It's the gradual realization of how much life has changed, and how complicated it seems to be these days, that leads us to long for the good old days. We think that everything was much simpler when the biggest criminal in town was a part time bootlegger and no one had yet heard of crack cocaine or meth. It's easy to become nostalgic for the time that Norman Rockwell depicted so well in Saturday Evening Post covers when neighborhoods and families seemed wholesome, intact, and benign. It's a pleasant, if unrealistic, vision and politicians sometimes exploit our nostalgia. They persuade us that the country has lost some essential values and talk about trying to get the nation to return to some past idyllic time.

Yet when we cling to the idea of the past, we're investing it with a virtue it may not have had. Those good old days included racial segregation, discrimination against women and, often, limiting children's education to no more than the 8th grade so they could go to work and help support the family. A lot of things were going on behind those white picket fences that the public either didn't know about or ignored, including domestic violence, alcoholism, and child abuse. People with physical or mental disabilities were parked in institutions or hidden in back bedrooms. There wasn't a lot of help for the elderly or families in need.

So we shouldn't get carried away with nostalgia, no matter how complex and hazardous life seems to be these days. Politicians who rely on our longing to return to what we think of as a simpler and more comprehensible life aren't really offering us a clear eyed view of the past. When I hear them talk about "taking America back" I just wonder, taking America back to what?

Students and athletes

2010-08-03T21:56:00.011-06:00

Writer Lorraine Collins of Spearfish offers her perspective on recent developments at Black Hills State University and the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology regarding their new status in the NCAA. Her articles are published in the Black Hills Pioneer, and we thank her for allowing us to post them on Black Hills Monitor.

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Not too long ago I was driving down the road listening to South Dakota Public Radio as I usually do and I heard a telephone interview with the fellow who had just been hired by the University of South Dakota to be their Athletic Director. USD had recently been approved by the National Collegiate Athletic Association to be a "Division I" school, and everyone seemed excited about that. This fellow had some experience in Division I schools, so he'd been hired to help USD go through the transition process to become a full fledged member in a couple of years or so.

One caller asked the new AD if he could expand the sports program to include hockey and the fellow said he wasn't sure because the NCAA required schools to have a women's sports program equal to men's and to offer equivalent athletic scholarships. After the long struggle to get Title IX enforced, I was happy to hear this. Later when I went to USD's website to check on things, I discovered that the university actually offers more women's sports than men's. Both men and women are offered basketball, track and field, cross country, golf and swimming and diving. The only thing men have that women don't is football. Women have soccer, softball, tennis and volleyball. I tend to believe that the university has to offer those four women's sports to try to equal the amount spent on football. But that's just a suspicion.

Since Black Hills State University and the School of Mines & Technology have both just excitedly announced that they have been accepted into Division II of the NCAA, I wondered how their sports programs shape up. So I visited their websites, too. BHSU offers more women than men's sports but SDSM&T offers an equal number. It's interesting that all of these schools, in making their thrilling announcements about being accepted into a Division of the NCAA, immediately said they were going to have to raise a lot more money. One report indicated that SDSM&T's scholarship funds will need to more than double from $500,000 to more than a million.

Being in Division I or II of the NCAA means that schools are going to have to concentrate their fund raising efforts on offering scholarships to recruit athletes. Whether this should be the priority for our state supported institutions of higher education is a good question. I was surprised to read a statement by the Athletic Director of the School of Mines saying that about 65% of the school's athletes are from out of state. I presume this means that about 65% of the School of Mines athletic scholarships are given to students from out of state. This is something that alumni and donors may want to think about when they are asked to support athletic scholarships. I hope that scholarships for science, art, music, mathematics, drama, education, English and the like do not suffer because everyone is pouring money into sports scholarships.

The NCAA has many rules and requirements, one of which is that member schools must have a fulltime Athletic Director, which neither BHSU nor the School of Mines had until they began to make application for Division II status. There will no doubt be a number of other costs associated with achieving full membership in the Division, including getting associated with Division II conference and competing with schools in other states.

If BHSU and Mines join the Northern Sun Conference, they'll be with schools from North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska. If they find their way to the Rocky Mountain Conference they'll be with schools from Nebraska, Colorado and New Mexico.

I suppose the least we can do is congratulate the schools on meeting the challenge of NCAA membership, while hoping that the schools don't lose track of what they are supposed to be doing for students who are not athletes.

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

Problems in South Dakota pharmacies?

2010-07-21T20:54:00.007-06:00

STATES FAIL TO REPORT DISCIPLINED CAREGIVERS

By Tracy Weber & Charles Ornstein - ProPublica, 19 July 2010

Hundreds of state agencies nationwide have never told the federal government about health professionals they disciplined, undermining a central database meant to weed out dangerous caregivers.

The federal database is supposed to contain disciplinary actions taken against doctors, nurses, therapists and other health practitioners around the country so that hospitals and select others can run background checks before they hire new employees.

Federal officials discovered the missing reports after a ProPublica investigation in February found widespread gaps in the data, including hundreds of nurses and pharmacists who had been sanctioned for serious wrongdoing.

Since then, regulators nationwide -- prodded by federal health officials -- have submitted 72,000 new records to the database, nearly double the total submitted for all of 2009.

All states are required by law to report the licensed health workers they've sanctioned to databases run by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). But ProPublica found that many state agencies either didn't know about the requirement or simply weren't complying.

The failure to report means frontline health workers who have a record of on-the-job misconduct, incompetence or criminal acts aren't flagged to hospitals or other potential employers, who pay a fee to run checks on job applicants.

Wisconsin, for example, has not reported sanctions against emergency medical technicians. The state's Department of Health Services website, however, shows that more than two dozen EMTs have been disciplined, including several for criminal convictions and one for stealing drugs from an ambulance.

An agency spokeswoman said officials are working to submit the missing information.

HRSA's analysis of 13 nursing boards flagged by ProPublica as missing records shows the depth of the problem. Since being contacted by HRSA, those boards collectively have reported more than 2,000 missing cases, including 147 in California and 66 in Illinois. Florida alone had 972.

Despite the important public safety role of the database, federal officials have little power to enforce compliance. Earlier this month, they took what they said is the strongest action allowed against scofflaws: They put a checkmark next to state names indicating they were "noncompliant" and posted the information on the HRSA website.

"That's the tool we've been given by Congress," said Mary Wakefield, administrator of HRSA, noting that no prior administration had even used that before.

Twenty-one states and Puerto Rico were thus chastised for not reporting on at least one category of health professional or ignoring the government's requests for information. Kentucky was flagged for 10 professions; Louisiana, six; and Alabama and New Mexico, five each.

Many states were listed as "working toward compliance," meaning they were in the process of submitting missing information, or "under review" by the federal government.

Congress ordered the government to create a database of disciplinary actions against all health providers more than two decades ago; information about doctors and dentists was first made available in the National Practitioner Data Bank in 1990. But hospitals could begin searching other professions only in March of this year. The database is not open to the public.

The completeness of the database is important because health professionals often have licenses in multiple states. If a hospital checks just one state's oversight board, disciplinary actions elsewhere may not turn up.

California, for example, recently discovered that 3,500 registered nurses with clean records there had been disciplined in other states.

ProPublica's report in February found that no sanctioned pharmacists had been reported by South Dakota or New Hampshire and only one each in Alabama, Delaware, Ohio and Tennessee. But a search of those states' websites showed hundreds of sanctions, including a pharmacist in Ohio who ran an Internet pill mill that dispensed nearly 1.5 million drug doses without valid prescriptions.

Wakefield acknowledged that her agency is just beginning to assess the completeness of the information. After ProPublica detailed the gaps in the data, federal officials sent letters to the nation's governors requesting help and held numerous training sessions.

HRSA is still trying to sort out the compliance status of 450 licensing boards and agencies that appear to never have reported discipline for some of the professions they oversee. The agency plans to report additional information in October.

Officials are in the process of comparing disciplinary actions reported to the federal database to what states have listed on the states' own public websites. "This is a work in progress," Wakefield said.

The review did not examine state agencies overseeing doctors and dentists because they have been reporting actions for nearly a decade more than others.

Some state officials said they were surprised to be labeled noncompliant.

David Potters, executive director and general counsel of West Virginia's pharmacy board, acknowledged that his board had not submitted all of its disciplinary actions, but said he had turned in a plan to catch up.

Consumer advocate Dr. Sidney Wolfe, who has pushed for a more accurate databank, said the agency's work in recent months is a huge step forward.

"HRSA is at least making some moves in directions that it hasn't made for a while -- and hopefully there will be many more moves," said Wolfe, of Public Citizen, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that advocates for patient safety.

Road construction: my investigative report

2010-07-20T11:41:00.008-06:00

Spearfish writer Lorraine Collins is a regular contributor to the Black Hills Pioneer newspaper, and we're delighted that she shares her column with us for Black Hills Monitor. She's touched upon a wide range of topics, and this time she opines on the fine art of high-tech information about road construction. Here's her latest offering.

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My brother-in-law from Montana was here recently for a few days and he asked, "So, is there road construction around Sturgis?" I said there is. He said, "I've been coming to South Dakota for 35 years and there has always been road construction around Sturgis."

Of course, I can't verify that statement without doing more research than the assertion warrants, but I know just how he feels. It's hard to believe how certain sections of I-90 seem to be subjected to construction and reconstruction year after year. This is the perception folks have around here. Road construction around Sturgis begins in the spring, is suspended for the Rally, and resumes until winter. Why does that particular section of the Interstate always need something done to it?

Well, it's probably not the exact same section of I-90 that gets torn up every spring, but it sure seems familiar to those of us who drive it year after year. There are so many problems with infrastructure maintenance and repair throughout South Dakota that it's hard to believe they keep tearing up that same stretch of the Interstate just to stay busy.

I was curious about how many road projects are ongoing on I-90 right now, so I went to a website called Safe Travel USA. The South Dakota Department of Transportation uses it to show a map informing us about road conditions, weather and construction, these being important things for travelers to know. This site also provides webcams at various places along the Interstate and other highways so viewers can actually see what the road and weather conditions are.

The problem was, when I went to the website and began counting the number of icons indicating construction sites from the Wyoming line to Minnesota, there were no construction sites mentioned west of Rapid City on I-90. There were 22 construction sites noted between mile markers 59 and 412, but what about those first 59 miles of I-90?

I thought, "Ah ha! This is a conspiracy!" Obviously, the government doesn't want the public to know that the highway around Sturgis is torn up again, because it's embarrassing to keep admitting that year after year. People might get suspicious and think that there's some hanky-panky going on. There's no sense letting the whole world know about our little secret. Folks who live in the area will know of it and they're used to it anyway. By the time a few hundred thousand bikers converge on the area, things will be tidied up as well as possible and all will be serene for a little while.

On the other hand, I thought that maybe construction activity around Sturgis is regarded as "normal" and therefore not worth mentioning. The DOT site does often mention "normal driving conditions", after all. If construction around Sturgis isn't normal, I don't know what is.

I decided to go to the webcam site near Sturgis. Two cameras mounted east of Sturgis looking both east and west revealed nothing of any interest. Then I went to the camera mounted west of Sturgis at mile point 28.6, looking west. There, in the distance, one could see a line of orange barrels. Proof!

The camera doesn't lie!

Since Safe Travel USA provides an opportunity for feedback, I sent an email, politely pointing out that the map of road construction doesn't show the four-mile stretch of orange barrels near Sturgis and asking why. A nice man answered that he appreciated my question and was checking with the SDDOT staff in Rapid City Area to find out. A few days later he emailed me to say that they had discovered there actually is an icon for the Sturgis construction on the map, but it is hidden by another one revealing construction on Highway 34,so we can't see it.

He was going to try to figure out how to correct the situation.

I suppose it doesn't matter much by now. The Rally will be here soon.

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

A license to drive

2010-06-26T14:26:00.005-06:00

Having recently gone through the anxiety of preparing for an examination to get my driver's license renewed, I immediately appreciated the following column written by Lorraine Collins. As visitors to this site well know, Lorraine is a Spearfish neighbor who writes regularly for the Black Hills Pioneer newspaper. She graciously allows us to use her material on Black Hills Monitor.

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I stopped in at the drivers licensing station recently to check on all the new requirements to get or renew a South Dakota driver's license. When I read of everything I would need to prove I am who I claim to be, I was really glad that my license is good for another three years and that my passport doesn't expire for four years. With a passport, at least I won't have to try to find my birth certificate and marriage certificate.

Several other things will be required, though, because of new rules that came into effect last December as the result of federal regulations. I believe this is the result of the fact that the driver's license has commonly been used for identification in various business transactions including the purchasing of airline tickets. This has led to some catastrophic events in our recent history. So I guess it makes sense to say that people getting a license to drive must demonstrate that they are who they say they are and live where they claim to live.

This does mean a lot of inconvenience. In addition to the Identity Document, we need to provide proof of a Social Security number and two documents to prove our residential address. These might be utility bills, rent receipts, phone bills, bank statements, and so forth.

People who have changed their name over the course of a lifetime, such as women who chose to use their husband's name after marriage, need the marriage certificate to show why their name is different from their birth certificate. Later, if they get divorced and revert to their previous name, they have to bring the divorce decree to their next licensing session. A rather ominous note in the instructions says that "If you have had multiple marriages you will need to bring similar documents providing legal proof of each name change." That's certainly an incentive for long term monogamy.

I learned to drive before South Dakota required a license to drive. It may surprise many people to know that South Dakota was the last state in the union to require a driver's license, not doing so until 1954. The actual driver's license examination wasn't instituted in South Dakota until 1959. I remember those pre-driver's license days because it was very awkward to be in some other state and not have a valid driver's license. All I could say if some law officer asked to see my license was, "Uh, I'm from South Dakota." I finally went to visit my sister in Colorado, drove her car and passed a driver's test in Denver. I therefore had a driver's license with a completely bogus address. So I do understand the desire of the government to know that drivers actually live where they claim to.

When we left the U.S. to move to Singapore my husband and I had International Drivers Licenses based on being licensed to drive in South Dakota. When we moved to London three years later we used our International Drivers Licenses for a while but eventually---I'm not sure why---I thought it would be a good idea to get an English license. Amongst Americans it was said that the Brits didn't like giving us drivers licenses and no American we knew had ever passed the test. I thought that was a challenge.

I studied. I drove with a driving instructor. I showed up for the test properly meek and humble with a big "Student Driver" sign on the car roof. I did everything the manual told me to do no matter how dumb I thought it was, including putting on the parking brake at every stop sign. At the end, the instructor said he thought I'd been overly cautious, so he wanted to know how long I'd been driving.

"Thirty-six years," I said. He burst out laughing and gave me the license. That license was good until I was 70 years old, but I suppose the British have changed things by now, too.

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

Public art and argument

2010-06-15T18:54:00.005-06:00

Spearfish writer Lorraine Collins is a regular contributor to the Black Hills Pioneer newspaper, and we're delighted that she shares her column with us for Black Hills Monitor. She's touched upon a wide range of topics, and this time she reflects upon art.....and how it can often create a bit of disagreement among local citizens. Here's her latest offering.
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The first time I realized there could be controversy in connection with public art was when I innocently agreed to be president of the Spearfish Area Council for the Arts and Humanities 20 or so years ago. I had been involved with SACAH only a short time and didn't know the organization was embroiled in a lawsuit about a sculpture. Since then I've heard of public controversy about statues in several other towns, most recently Sturgis. I've come to realize that whether the public is paying for public art or not, the public has an opinion about what they want to see on their streets or in their parks.

Oddly enough, two of the controversial works of art involved fish, including the one in which I became inadvertently involved. A group of citizens decided to enhance Spearfish by raising money to commission a sculpture and after they had pledges of several thousand dollars, they realized they could get a matching grant through the National Endowment for the Arts to make an even bigger prize.

The trouble was, to do that they needed to work through the local arts council and to open up the contest to sculptors nationwide. SACAH agreed to cooperate with the citizens group and sent out invitations to submit a proposed statue to artists around the country. I don't know who the judges were, but the winning artist was a fellow from Ohio who proposed a sort of abstract sculpture called "The Hungry Fish."

When they saw what he had in mind, quite a few people hated it and refused to have it in their park. The citizens committee wrote a letter to the Ohio artist informing him that he had been deselected. He didn't sue them, he sued SACAH, which had been totally uninvolved in either the selection process or the rejection. As I recall, it took a couple of years and $2,000 to settle the suit. We all learned a lot, including that public art causes public controversy more often than not.

In 1995 a sculpture titled "Rapid Trout" was put in Founder's Park in Rapid City. Since it was partly funded by the Cement Plant, it had to be made of concrete and the commission was given to a professor at the University of South Dakota. The sculpture consisted of huge slabs with the fish head carved on one piece, the torso and tail on others. There have been a lot of jokes about the fish but I guess people learned to live with it and perhaps even appreciate it by now. Or maybe they just don't pay much attention to it any more.

The greatest controversy generated about public art may be the sort that Sturgis is now experiencing. Two of the 14 sculptures recently installed on Main Street and elsewhere for the Sturgis Sculpture Walk are unclothed human forms, that is to say, nudes. Some people have protested that these are unfit for children to see. This is reminiscent of what Sioux Falls went through back in 1971. That year a wealthy philanthropist named Thomas Fawick donated to the city a full size replica of Michelangelo's "David". The original has been on display in Florence, Italy for 500 years but some Sioux Falls people felt it was "in bad taste and would have a bad effect on the moral values of citizens."

The statue was placed in a park named for the donor but facing away from traffic. Trees were planted to screen it from the street. Later, when the park was being renovated, the statue languished in storage for several years and then was replaced in the park in a more open location. The Sioux Falls website now brags about it.

It's not surprising that public art causes public argument. Art helps us define who we are and what we value. That isn't always easy to agree on, even in small towns where we might think everybody sees everything the same way we do. Actually, they don't.

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

Valuing what we have

2010-05-31T11:01:00.004-06:00

We rarely offer links to videos, but this one caught our attention. As evidenced by the video, this is a message that resonates particularly well with adolescents -- but we can all benefit from it.

Paying for the quality of life

2010-05-24T10:14:00.000-06:00

Our neighbor Lorraine Collins always has an interesting perspective on a wide range of topics. Here's another that should catch your interest -- and perhaps spur a comment or two. Her commentaries appear regularly in the Black Hills Pioneer, and she graciously allows us to share them with on-line readers here.

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The other day I met a young woman who had just moved to the Black Hills from the Sioux Falls area. She said she'd been surprised that that wages were so low out here since the cost of living was so high, compared to where she'd lived before. I don't have much hard information about the cost of living, but I hear complaints about how much higher groceries and gasoline are here than in East River.

I also came across a recent report by U.S. News that ranked various South Dakota cities in terms of best places to retire. Eight of the nine cities were in East River, with Rapid City the lone representative of West River. The cost of living in all East River cities was described as low whereas Rapid City was ranked average. Income was ranked low in all towns except Pierre and Sioux Falls where it was average. Housing prices were high everywhere. So the young woman's opinion seems to have some credibility--higher cost of living, lower wages out here.

About a year and a half ago when I was writing a column about South Dakota's economic situation, I found some statistics that showed that people in East River earned quite a bit more than those of us here in the west. The mean salary in Sioux Falls was $2600 higher than in Rapid City and $5400 higher than that of people in "non-metropolitan" western South Dakota, which is where most of us live out here.

This may help explain why some folks out here tend to be skeptical that politicians from Sioux Falls can understand us, and why candidates for governor or Congress from metropolitan East River towns sometimes have a hard time connecting with us. I think it says something interesting about our state that this spring's candidates for governor include three lawyers with Sioux Falls connections, the former mayor of Brookings and two West River ranchers.

I was thinking about all this economic stuff recently because of two stories in the media. One said that South Dakota workers are paid less than workers in any other state, and the other reported that the governor spoke to outstanding high school seniors and encouraged them to find jobs in South Dakota. Since they'd just learned they could earn more money by leaving the state, the governor tried to put a better spin on that news.

He said they shouldn't believe the "hype" that South Dakota is a low-wage state and that we rank 10th in the nation when disposable income after taxes is adjusted for the local cost of living. I looked for that peculiar statistic at various online sites but I couldn't find it. If South Dakota ranks last in the nation for wages, is it also true that the cost of living here is cheaper than anywhere else in the country? Or if it isn't, are our taxes so low compared to other states that we have higher percentage of our money left after paying taxes? If so, is a higher percentage of less income better than a lower percentage of a higher income? The statistic seems meaningless to me.

I came across an interesting chart in a Retirement Housing Guide on line. It ranked state property taxes in 2007 and included such things as taxes as a percentage of home value as well as taxes as a percentage of income. In terms of taxes as a percentage of home value, South Dakota ranked 13th. If I understand this, it means that our homes were taxed more heavily than those in 37 other states. In terms of "taxes as a percentage of income" we ranked 23rd.

The governor said, "The quality of life is here." Many of us agree with that, but we shouldn't pretend we aren't paying for it, one way or another.

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

Seat belts and your money

2010-05-23T20:31:00.009-06:00

Good friend Roger Whorton has written in the past about health care, offering a very personal perspective. Here’s another topic which Roger takes personally: seat belts. In the long wake following a public debate on the topic last year, Roger returns to Black Hills Monitor and shares this pithy piece he sent to the Rapid City Journal some months back.

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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has released statistics for 2006. Seatbelt use saved the lives of 15,383 people. Since 1975, belts have saved 226,567 folks.

One was our daughter, so I take personal interest.

Drivers who do not wear seatbelts are costing you money. Accidents involving those not wearing seat belts cost the U.S. $20 billion per year, and their hospital costs are 50% higher than patients who use belts. You, the taxpayer, pay 74% of the tab.

About 28% of South Dakotans do not wear seatbelts, and yet this group made up 77% of the fatalities (117 or 147 total deaths) in a recent year’s statistics.

I’ve heard the arguments saying seatbelts should be a personal choice, but not when not using belts is costing all of us money, and killing young people.

Are we now turning down $5.2 million in federal funds that could be used for road improvement, if we do not allow police to stop motorists not wearing seatbelts? Sometimes the feds push us into doing something because they know it is for the public good, and will save money and lives.

Why would any legislator or the RCJ be against that?

Accessing the unconscious mind

2010-05-22T01:00:00.016-06:00

From time-to-time, Black Hills Monitor will share perspectives on different art forms. Good friend Dick Hicks, who grew up and went to school in Detroit, later taking a degree from the University of Iowa, has lived in Spearfish for many years. A retired art professor at Black Hills State University, Dick wrote this piece about painter Roy Kramlich and shares it here.
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Roy Kramlich, local artist, has a display of paintings at the Green Bean Coffeehouse. The building, a remodeled older house, is located at 304 N. Main Street, Spearfish.

Roy, a native of Mobridge, attended Black Hills State University. He is now employed locally. Independently of this, he works as Artist in Residence at the Spearfish Art Center

Roy’s work has been influenced by the Abstract Expressionists, a movement that existed in New York City from 1940 to 1960. In this movement, Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning and Franz Kline have had the strongest impact on him.

Looking at Roy’s work, I see more of Jackson Pollock than anyone else. Pollock, a native of Wyoming, came to New York in the 1930s to study with the Regionalist painter, Thomas Hart Benton. Later, because he was an alcoholic, his family sent him to a Jungian therapist. Unable to get Pollock to talk about his problems, the therapist tried to reach him through drawings, which he subsequently analyzed in terms of Jungian symbolism.

The therapy was unsuccessful in that Pollock was reticent about delving into the contents of his personal life. However, the technique did open a pathway for him in terms of personal artistic expression.

Jung, along with Sigmund Freud and others, was responsible for the discovery of the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind exists along side the conscious, rational mind of everyday consciousness. They resemble two parallel rivers each flowing in the human soul. The unconscious mind contains drives, experiences, and imaginations the mind is not aware of. Nevertheless, they exist and exert their influence on the human being. For Freud, the sexual drive exerted a strong influence on the conscience mind.

On the other hand, for Jung, the unconscious mind exhibits itself in a series of archetypal symbols and images. Examples of this would be the evangelical animals of Christian art of the Middle Ages. The four writers of the gospels have their symbols: Luke – bull (will forces); Mark – lion (heart forces); John – Eagle (intellect); Matthew – (blend of others).

Neurotic symptoms such as hysteria, panic attacks and other abnormal behaviors can be considered as expressions of the unconscious mind. The strange and seemingly irrational content of dream images flow from the unconscious mind. These impulses have been repressed and pushed down into the sub-conscious mind where they wait to resurface.

In his artwork, Jackson Pollock attempted to access the unconscious mind. The result was an art that was non-objective. That is to say, there are no recognizable images from the physical world – it is a world of swirling lines and colors bursting with energy. He painted on huge canvases that were laid flat on the floor. He dripped paint onto the canvas using vigorous motions. One looks through layers of dripped paint, which creates a feeling of space.

Like Jackson Pollock’s work, Roy’s paintings are non-objective and executed energetically. There is no relationship between the lines and forms in his work and the shapes of the physical world. Various colors can express a mood: reds and yellows could mirror a happy mood. He uses reds and blacks a lot. He begins with no plan in mind and states he doesn’t want to think about it too much. The ideas seem to be tied into the physical act of painting. And his source of inspiration is the unconscious mind.

To Roy, experimentation is more important than making a finished product and making a sale. He refuses to add flowers that possibly would make his work more popular. The power of the lines and colors seem to extend beyond the limits of the canvas which is why he likes to work so large. He is following an inner impulse which has to do with freedom and self-expression rather than reproducing an image of the physical world.

The painting “The Cold, Cold Ground” (above) shows a layered colored surface. Patterns of black, red and some yellow lines stand out over a green ground. The lines, vigorously done, seem to be mainly vertical with some diagonals. The whole surface is energetic and full of movement. .

This movement seems to extend beyond the surface of the canvas into the space of the room. The drawings of very young children consist of mainly verticals and horizontal lines. We are told this is an exploration of physical space for them. Also, where lines cross each other in children’s art, the X shape stands for the emerging ego. What does the repetitions of these basic patterns in Roy’s art mean? Is it an asserting of the ego, seeking self-expression and freedom, and an opposition to normal conventions?

On the other hand, the painting “News” seems to be quite different. Instead of dramatic verticals and diagonals, quiet horizontal lines move across the picture. A toned down yellow surface stands in front of a newspaper collage background. It seems almost minimalist (art reduced to its simplest forms). Sometimes in his work, a kind of script or writing comes out of the background. Does this show an oriental influence? In contrast to the first painting, this message seems quieter and more contemplative.

Therefore, if the external aspect of art is a reflection of an inner state (originating from the unconscious) and, as such, not known to the conscious mind, we are seeing a diversity of expression. The two paintings described here indicate this. If nothing else, perhaps this reveals the complexity of the human soul.

The ancient Greeks believed, under the influence of the sun god Apollo, art would follow rules, be logical, ordered, and have an intellectual content. Thus, a Greek temple exhibits all these qualities. The disadvantage of this influence is that it can become too rigid.

The Greeks also believe that art, under the influence of the god of wine and theatrical arts, Dionysus, was wild, frenzied, emotional and sensuous. This type of art would be mirrored in Abstract Expressionist art. Its disadvantage might be that it is too personal and repetitive.

Personally, I find the art of Roy Kramlich to be vibrant, free, and expressive. Examining it more closely has given me the opportunity to delve into the realm of the unconscious mind and its importance for everyday life.

Striving for objectivity

2010-05-10T10:32:00.004-06:00

As a former staffer with Duhamel Broadcasting some 50 years ago – and as a frequent watcher of KOTA-TV news – I was surprised and a bit disappointed about recent developments surrounding Shad Olson.

Mr. Olson, an anchorman at the ABC affiliate, reportedly spoke at an April political rally in Rapid City sponsored by Tea Party folks. According to the Rapid City Journal, his remarks were in support of principles embraced by the Tea Party. By such advocacy, he allowed himself to be publicly associated with a political movement, thus undermining his role as a reporter.

KOTA News Director John Petersen – appropriately – suspended Olson from his on-air chores, but kept him on the payroll. Subsequent reports indicated that Olson, who has been with the station for about 10 years, would be reinstated.

We didn’t hear Olson’s remarks to the Tea Party group, and our information about all aspects of these events came from newspaper and web reports.

There’s been quite a stir created by this incident. Recent letters to the editor in the Journal suggest that KOTA unduly stripped Olson of his First Amendment rights to free speech. They believe that his First Amendment rights trump the First Amendment rights of KOTA, and that the courts should intercede. I smell a lot of lawyers fees.

Having watched and enjoyed Shad Olson quite a bit over the past few years, I was surprised and disappointed that he would step into harm’s way by getting publicly involved with partisan politics rather than reporting on them.

We believe KOTA took appropriate action. However, Olson’s reported reinstatement may be another matter. IF he acknowledged that his actions were the result of a lapse in journalistic judgment, then reinstatement is in order. If not – we wonder about KOTA’s commitment to journalistic integrity, and our disappointment would be compounded.

In a media world where the line between news reporting and editorial opinion seems to no longer exist, fairness and objectivity is truly an endangered species. Cynics are quick to argue that as long as human beings are involved, there can be no such thing as truly fair and objective reporting.

I would suggest that when reporters and media organization abandon their quest for fairness and objectivity, we all lose.

The Facebook mystery

2010-05-05T10:01:00.004-06:00

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I heard a rather curious bit of news on the radio the other day. South Dakota ranks number one in the nation for the percentage of our population on Facebook. It seems that 31% of us subscribe to this social networking site on the Internet. Whenever I come across statistics about South Dakota I always try to figure out what they mean, but I confess this one has had me baffled.

Why would a higher percentage of South Dakotans subscribe to Facebook than people in the other 49 states? Are we more technologically savvy, or just more lonesome and isolated, more desperate for human contact? When somebody invites us to be a "friend" on Facebook, do we eagerly jump at the chance because we don't have enough human contact in our villages and farms and suburbs?

Maybe we just have more spare time than other folks do. For instance, a couple of years ago when I found some statistics about life in South Dakota, I discovered that no matter how economically disadvantaged we are, on the average it takes us only 16 minutes to get from home to work. Just compare that with the commutes of folks in any city in America! They may earn a lot more money than we do, but we don't have to spend so much time on the road to get to the job to earn it. So we have more time for cyber-socialization on Facebook.

Another possibility is that South Dakotans are used to small town life, and in a sense, Facebook provides the same sort of experience. At least that's the theory of a writer named Whitney Carpenter writing in an online magazine called Bygone Bureau. She says, "Social networking is roping our personal worlds---all of our acquaintances spread across our lifetime and the globe--into one...small town." She claims that everyone on Facebook is the equivalent of the small town busybody peering through blinds to see what's going on in the neighborhood.

Well, it's a theory. I admit I have a Facebook page, though I'm not sure why, except that some friends urged me to join so I could see the photographs they post there, and that has been a nice benefit. And, in fact, a woman who was my roommate for a semester my freshman year in college contacted me via Facebook. I hadn't heard from her, or thought of her, in half a century but suddenly we were in contact. I'm not sure how that happened, but it's been mildly interesting to send brief messages back and forth and to see some recent photos of her.

Of course, we're never going to have serious, heart-to-heart talks on Facebook, but that's not what the site is for. I guess it's for keeping track of acquaintances and staying in touch, the way we do when we wave at our neighbors as we drive by, or stop to chat a minute when we meet them in the supermarket. We enjoy these pleasant encounters, but we don't expect them to replace meaningful conversation. We still need substantive relationships with people and social networking will never replace real friendship. Facebook is a means of sharing things, but only things we're willing to share with everybody.

Searching for a clue about why 31% of people in South Dakota use Facebook, I did find one other fact that might help explain our high ranking. It seems that although two thirds of Facebook subscribers are under 35, the fastest growing demographic among subscribers is made up of women over 55. I think there are a whole lot of us in that demographic in South Dakota.

Well, this may be a possible explanation, but a friend of mine had another idea. When I asked her what she thought might explain our high usage of Facebook, she laughed and said, "It's because we haven't yet figured out how to use Twitter."

Sometimes the simplest answers are the best.

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

Dorothy Provine dies

2010-05-04T11:35:00.007-06:00

A little over a year ago, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer shut down its print edition. We noted here at that time that there was “little to cheer about” in its demise – and we used an old photo of UW student Dorothy Provide at work, cheering the Huskies on in a football game they lost to the Ducks. It was a photo from a 1954 edition of the Intelligencer.

Little did we know that Provine, born in Deadwood in early 1935, would soon be passing the way of the iconic Seattle newspaper.

Press reports last week told of Provine's death on April 25 in Silverdale, Washington. She was 75 years old and died from emphysema.

Her obituary was printed in the April 29, 2010 edition of the New York Times.

While she never attained stellar fame, she performed in several popular movies of the 1950’s and ‘60s – including “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” which was laden with stars ranging from Spencer Tracy and Ethel Merman to Milton Berle and Jack Benny. It was an all-star cast and Dorothy Provine was tapped to be among them.

While she also was cast in several television series in the 1960s, it was her performance in the motion picture “The Great Race” that was most memorable for us. Actor Jack Lemmon was at his comedic best in the film, along with Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood. The clip below demonstrates the wonderfl talent possessed by Dorothy Provine.

On the wrong side of history

2010-04-13T11:48:00.003-06:00

One thing I noted in that article was that the State of South Dakota had filed a "friend of the court" brief in a case before the Supreme Court of the United States, supporting the city of Birmingham, Alabama fighting against Title IX. I wondered why South Dakota would defend the right of the Birmingham school district to say that it was okay for the school to fire a girls basketball coach when he complained that the girls team had to pay their own way to games and were allowed less practice time than boys and so forth. Why on earth would citizens of South Dakota defend such a thing?

I contacted the Attorney General's office to inquire. I was told that they had undertaken this at the request of the Associated School Boards of South Dakota and that the state did not have to spend any money to do this. The specific argument was that the coach was not covered by Title IX since he was not a girl, just a coach of girls. Luckily, Birmingham and South Dakota lost the argument, but I was pretty embarrassed to live in a state that would join such a lawsuit. It certainly demonstrated that when it came to equality for women, we were on the wrong side of history.

Now, all these years later, I'm embarrassed again. My state is party to a lawsuit to deny implementation of the health care reform act. Apparently this time the lawsuit will cost taxpayers some money, though Gov. Rounds said on PBS that he hoped it wouldn't be more than $30,000. I hope not, since I am told by most sources the lawsuit is frivolous and doomed. Those who think it's a great idea to sue the government cite Medicaid costs or they object to the federal government mandating that citizens buy health insurance. These are legitimate concerns, but since these folks also object to the so-called public option or anything as radical as single-payer health insurance, the only idea they seem to have is to leave everything as it is now.

But so far I have never heard any pundit or political leader claim that what we have now is doing the job of providing health care for millions of people, or reducing costs, or limiting fraud and abuse. Now finally, after decades of inaction, a year of argument, millions of dollars spent on lobbying and advertisements opposing health care reform, we have the beginning of some attempt to do something. At least we are finally on the road to trying to reform a health care system that burdens businesses and families, denies coverage to millions and costs us millions of dollars more than any other country in the world even though the World Health Organization ranks the US only 37th among nations in health care.

There will no doubt be detours and, I hope, improvements. But we have to start somewhere. Because of what seem to be the political realities in this country, and how the system works, we're starting here. Better than not starting at all. It's going to happen, more slowly than we may imagine, less perfectly than we'd like. But we are finally going to achieve something that many other nations have achieved generations ago.

So I'm sorry that the only thing we South Dakotans seem to think of doing is to join a law suit to try to stop it. This does not put us on the right side of history.

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

The FUD factor

2010-04-01T01:16:00.009-06:00

Our neighbor Lorraine Collins always has an interesting perspective on a wide range of topics. Here's another that should catch your interest -- and perhaps spur a comment or two. Her commentaries appear regularly in the Black Hills Pioneer, and this one is entitled "The FUD Factor and unintended consequences." Our thanks to Lorraine for allowing us to include her work on Black Hills Monitor.

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It was the last week of the State Legislature and I stayed up late enough to watch the Statehouse report on South Dakota Public Television. I was sleepily nodding through a long discussion about regulating the sale of goat milk when things suddenly got interesting. There was a brief, pungent discussion of HB 1135, a Bill to rescind all previous applications by the Legislature to call for a Constitutional Convention. What was that all about?

I sat up straighter as I heard Sen. Craig Tieszen of Rapid City say he was opposed to the Bill because "I think we are very close to needing to rein in an out of control federal government." He said a lot of things were going wrong in Washington and that we may need the states to hold a Constitutional Convention to fix things. But one of the Bill's sponsors explained that over the last 30 or 40 years 32 states, including South Dakota, had called for a Constitutional Convention for various reasons. If a total of 34 states said they wanted a Constitutional Convention, Congress would be forced to call one. And who knew what would happen then?

By a vote of 33 to 2, the State Senate approved the Bill to rescind all previous requests for what's familiarly known as a "Con-Con." Until that moment, I had been unaware of any serious move to call for a Constitutional Convention or any controversy about who wanted one and why. From Sen. Tieszen's remarks, I assumed that conservative, anti-federal government people were in favor of a Con-Con and liberals were not. However, as soon as I looked on the Internet for more information, I came across a website that insisted that President Obama was trying to get a Constitutional Convention so he could change the Constitution to suit himself. Good heavens! Who knew?

Several right wing websites, including that of the John Birch Society, warn against calling for a Con-Con because such a convention could not be limited to, for instance, passing a balanced budget amendment. The delegates to the convention could do pretty much whatever they pleased in terms of changing our cherished Bill of Rights or any Article of the Constitution. Such changes would become law when ratified by Legislatures in three fourths of the states or by "Conventions in three fourths thereof."

Article V of the Constitution doesn't specify how delegates to the Constitutional Convention would be chosen and I imagine that the selection process itself would be pretty wild and controversial. On the whole, I think it was a good idea for the South Dakota Legislature to draw us back from the brink. Now only 31 states are currently on record as wanting a Constitutional Convention and I imagine other states will be rescinding their applications for one when the possible unintended consequences of such a Convention become more widely recognized.

I had been totally oblivious to the controversy raging on the Internet about whether to call for a Constitutional Convention, but I'm not surprised by it. We seem to have become so suspicious of government and our political leaders that we are willing to believe any conspiracy theory that comes along. This is the result of what's called "The FUD Factor," the spreading of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Those opposed to current issues, whether health care reform, energy policy, or trying to regulate Wall Street, have long been trying to instill fear of government, uncertainty about our safety, and doubt about the integrity of our leaders.

The FUD Factor can undermine our confidence in government and make us cynical and mistrustful of all of our political leaders, no matter what party they belong to. The trouble is that those who foment such anxiety and unrest may become victims of it themselves. Those who believe that the way to political power is to inspire fear, uncertainty and doubt about government may discover some day that they have created an angry mob they cannot control. Anarchy, anyone? How's that for an unintended consequence?

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

Skeptical self-criticism?

2010-03-22T20:25:00.010-06:00

In the twilight years of my Navy service, I was an Emergency Preparedness Officer assigned as Naval Liaison Officer to the State of South Dakota. Each of the armed forces assigned one “EPLO” (Emergency Preparedness Liaison Officer) to the staff of the Adjutant General. We routinely received a publication known as the Observer from the Natural Hazards Center in Boulder, Colorado, dealing with earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes. It was an interesting assignment, but global warming wasn’t on our list of concerns.

Nearly two decades later, I still receive the Observer, and climate change has skyrocketed as a hot topic item.

The March 2010 Observer offered several reviews of books about climate change. I found their review of Kerry Emanuel’s What We Know About Climate Change to be particularly interesting. Perhaps the brevity of the book was a subliminal response to its title. We may not know as much as we think, hence the brevity.

The reviewer said, “Emanuel’s book is even shorter than its advertised 85 pages, because it’s in a small format with wide margins.” In the spirit of full disclosure, I confess that I’ve not read the book, but the reviewer gives it high marks for its “unflinching look at the strengths and weaknesses of climate modeling.”

And that brings us to our motivation for this posting. Pioneer meteorologist Dr. Joanne Simpson died earlier this month (3/4/10) at the age of 86. Until I saw her obituary, I had never heard of Mrs. Simpson, but she was extremely well known in the scientific community – once described by the Associated Press as “one of the top five meteorologists in the world” – and one of the foremost hurricane experts of the 20th century. She was Chief Scientist Emeritus for Meteorology at the NASA Goddard Space Center and was a Fellow of the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences.

In February 2008, Dr. Simpson wrote about the “climate controversy” in vivid terms that – I believe – accurately describe the continuing donnybrook between believers and non-believers alike. She was a proponent for tracking data and measuring climate models against that data, a seemingly straightforward and scientific approach.

She reminded us of the frailty of climate models, and wisely observed that all we need do is watch the weather forecasts to appreciate the shortcomings of such models. Dr. Simpson bemoaned the fact that scientists on both sides in the global warming controversy “are now hurling personal epithets at each other, a very bad development in Earth sciences.”

So who to believe and what to do?

Despite her apprehensions, Dr. Simpson acknowledged that “decisions have to be made on incomplete information. In this case, we must act on the recommendation of Gore and the IPCC because if we do not reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and the climate models are right, the planet as we know it will in this century become unsustainable. But as a scientist I remain skeptical.” She observed, too, that the term “global warming” is very vague.

The media are complicit in adding fuel to the fires that rage between the increasingly radical scientists on both sides of the global warming issue.

“Few of these people seem to have any skeptical self-criticism left, although virtually all of the claims are derived from either flawed data sets or imperfect models or both,” she wrote.

With the death of Dr. Simpson, there is now one less scientist possessing those healthy scientific attributes, and we are the poorer for it.

Secrecy in government hiring

2010-03-19T00:34:00.009-06:00

Retired journalism professor and life-long ranch guy Bill Kunerth of Belle Fourche has been following the secrecy surrounding the hiring of a new superintendent for Rapid City schools. He re-visits key points he made some 30 years ago in an op-ed piece for the Des Moines Register about secrecy in the hiring of government officials.

(1) If candidates are identified some will be lost. And, although almost all candidates would prefer not to be identified, it is the weak and/or insecure ones who are most likely to refuse to apply if identified. The strongest, most competent ones will be the most willing to be identified. If not given the choice of anonymity, the best, serious candidates will usually apply. If there is a state law, as there should be, requiring identification – at least of the finalists -- then they would have no choice.

(2) In almost all employee-employer relationships at this level, the employee looking for another job is committed to or will usually tell the boss he is applying elsewhere (If he doesn't he may suffer more than if he did). And all employers take for granted that their most competent employees are likely to be looking to move into better positions. Good employees usually improve their current status if is known they are looking elsewhere.

(3) Even if a candidate is not identified, the likelihood of keeping the application of a high-level employee secret from an employer is remote. As soon as the application is received, the prospective employer is on the phone or mailing letters to several references. The references may be sworn to secrecy but that's highly unlikely.

(4) Secrecy breeds rumors and unfair publication of names--whether accurate or inaccurate. Although, my guess is that the South Dakota media are less aggressive about this than the media in most states, the common pattern is for the press to be nosing about, doing its best to uncover the names of candidates and it often goes with whatever reports it gets.

(5) Secrecy allows for a "good old boy/girl" situation in which, for personal or political rather than public interests, members of the hiring body do not consider excellent candidates. For example, a city council in a city manager form of government might be reluctant to hire a highly competent, independent manager who would clean up city departments, identify incompetent employees and root out favoritism. These candidates can be ditched without the public even knowing they applied. The same may be the case for a school board, whose main interest is in hiring a superintendent of schools whom it can manage.

(6) The most important stakeholders in the search for appointmive govermental officials are those most affected by those being hired, For example--in the search for a school superitendent, it is the teachers, students and their parents. In the hiring of a city manager or a police chief, it includes their potential employees but also the entire community. These are the parties who need as much information as possible about likely candidates before they are hired so they can provide valuable input.

(7) Only the job security of prospective appointees is considered in the discussion of identifying job candidates. Equal attention should be paid to the impact on the large number of persons who work for the candidate, especially in the case of school administrators. Many sub-administrators and teachers are likely to look for new jobs if their superintendent is doing so. And, in their cases, the appointments are often made after they sign contracts.

(8) A public agency should question whether or not it is wise to hire an individual who prefers a policy of secrecy in hiring. This is likely to be indicative of his entire philosophy about the city, county or school governance.

(10) Of course, the hiring agencies prefer confidentiality. They want as smooth a process as possible (no outside involvement) and they want as much control of the hiring process (candidates) as possible.

Bill Kunerth is a retired Professor of Journalism at Iowa State University in Ames. He lives in Belle Fourche.

More sunshine for Spearfish, too?

2010-03-14T16:31:00.003-06:00

Beset by a myriad of problems, not the least of which was the recent attempted skewering of Councilman Sam Kookier, the Rapid City Council has made a step toward redemption.

Beginning tomorrow, according to the Rapid City Journal, a variety of council-related meetings will be streamed lived on the Internet. Importantly, these sessions of the Planning Commission, Public Works Committee, Legal & Finance Committee – as well as the regular Rapid City Council meetings themselves – will all be archived for citizens to access.

Not only will the meetings be available to watch, there’ll also be a variety of important documents ranging from meeting agendas to supporting documents previously available only to folks who actually attend meetings or specially request them.

It’s a nice step forward in civic responsibility, and the Rapid City Council – which has taken a lot of justifiable criticism of late – deserves a pat on the back for taking this most welcome and appropriate step.

The Spearfish City Council should pay attention and follow suit.

Last summer, Black Hills Monitor advocated a similar move for Spearfish, but received a cordial rebuff. City Administrator Greg Sund, who has since left his post, said “there doesn’t seem to be majority interest among the Spearfish City Council to adopt this technology,” perceiving that our interest was simply in seeing cable television coverage of council meetings.

The City of Spearfish – a few years ago – made some really bad deals regarding cable television franchises. As those franchises with MidContinent Communications and Knology are renewed down the road, the city should be tougher negotiators, enabling an open government arrangement similar to those enjoyed by Pierre citizens. Franchise fees fund their Oahe TV operation, which covers city council and school board meetings and provides comprehensive Internet archives of those sessions.

We’re not sure that the Black Hills Pioneer on-line video initiatives spearheaded by former publisher Stewart Huntington include coverage of Spearfish council meetings. We've seen his folks covering legislative crackerbarrels at Black Hills State University, and that’s a good thing.

Whether it’s done by the private sector or the Spearfish City Council, video streaming and archiving of city council and related open meetings conducted by city government should be pursued. With all the disenchantment over government – particularly at the national level – our city fathers should be in the lead to help get more citizens involved in local government.

Our Spearfish City Council would be delivering one of the most valuable of city services: open and more accessible government.

O Canada!

2010-03-13T09:41:00.004-07:00

Our neighbor Lorraine Collins always has an interesting perspective on a wide range of topics. Here's another that should spark some interest up and down the CAN-AM highway -- and perhaps spur a comment or two. Lorraine's commentaries appear regularly in the Black Hills Pioneer, and she kindly allows us to share it here with on-line readers.

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I was a young --well, youngish-- bride following my new husband to Canada where he was engaged in exploration for various minerals and we spent quite a bit of time in British Columbia, surrounded by spectacular scenery and few amenities. We stayed some of the time in a small, shabby motel in a tiny town some distance from anything I would have called civilization and one day someone came to our door and asked if it was true that I was an American school teacher. Well, I had briefly been a teacher in Deadwood High School, so I admitted I could be regarded as such.

This person was greatly relieved, because she needed a substitute teacher for a day at the one room elementary school house nearby and she really, really wanted me to come there. So a day or two later I walked through the woods and came to the school. As I recall, after all these years, we raised what was then the Canadian flag and sang God Save The Queen. Then I read a few verses from the King James Bible, and the class began. I have no memory whatever of what transpired in the school that day and I'm sure none of the students remembered it by time they got home.

But this was an interesting introduction to the country I came to admire and enjoy, although I haven't spent very much time there in the last 50 years. I've thought about this, watching the Olympics from Vancouver and seeing the Canadian Maple Leaf flag flying, listening to the Canadian national anthem being sung from time to time, and remembering that in those days, "O Canada!" was not the official anthem. In fact, if I ever got to a town big enough to have a movie theater, and got to go to a movie, after the film finished the lights went up and we all stood for "God Save The Queen."

We've heard a lot about Canada lately, not only because of the Olympics, but because of our interminable health care debate, with anecdotes flying fast and furious about how evil "socialized medicine" is as practiced in Canada, even though we also know that elderly Americans board buses to go to Canada to buy prescription drugs that cost a fraction of what they cost here.

I've been amused or bemused sometimes, listening to the debate about whether the U.S. government should force citizens to buy health insurance. In Canada, nobody is forced to buy health insurance from a for-profit insurance provider. They just pay taxes and everybody automatically has health insurance. So, what's wrong with that? "Single payer" doesn't mean "single provider" and everybody picks their own doctor and nobody has to hold bake sales to be able to afford an operation. But even President Obama says this simple plan won't work here, even though it works not only in Canada but in several European countries, because our society is so "complex." I think this means totally messed up.

There are many other things I like about Canada in addition to the scenery and the fact that Canadians have always been free to go anywhere they want to whereas we Americans are prohibited from going to, for instance, Cuba. We think of ourselves as being free, but in this instance we are not as free as Canadians.

I also like the fact that the Canadian national anthem, "O Canada!" can be sung in either English or French. A few years ago there was a big uproar in the United States because some people wanted to sing the Star Spangled Banner in Spanish. Somehow, this was regarded as a travesty, an abomination, the ruination of our country. But it seems to me that if someone wants to stand and hold their hand over their heart and try to sing the national anthem of the country they love, it's okay to sing their praise and gratitude for America in whatever language they want to.

We all came from somewhere else, so what are we afraid of?

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

Tall tales from NASA

2010-03-05T11:38:00.006-07:00

In the aftermath of the powerful earthquake that virtually “shook the world” last Saturday (2/27/10) the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has offered us some precise and rather interesting data.

Mother Nature inflicts an enormous toll on humanity when quakes measured at 8.8 magnitude strike populated areas. And while the estimated 800 lives lost in Chile last week pale in comparison to the devastation wreaked upon Haiti in early January, any loss of life is a sad thing.

It’s relatively easy to grasp the scale of difference between an 8.8 magnitude earthquake and one that is measured at 7.0, as was the temblor in Haiti. We can even understand the reasons behind the stark contrast in damages and loss of lives in Chile and Haiti – density of population, quality of building construction, and so on.

But NASA's precision in announcing that the length of our days will be shorter by “1.26 millionths of a second” is beyond our comprehension.

Writing a review of the book entitled not exactly for the Wall Street Journal, Andrew Stark suggests that its author, Kees van Deemter, seemed to see a virtue of sorts in vagueness – that all words have “fuzzy” boundaries. What is "tall"? What is "short"? But there’s even disparagement of scientific measurements, like the platinum bar that has been used as the definitive length for a “meter.” Apparently, it was mismeasured by “about 0.00005 millimeters.”

Admittedly, the focus on van Deemter’s book about “vagueness” appears oriented more toward social interaction and politics than science or economics.

But it was the quote attributed to former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan that really caused us to ponder the precision of NASA’s statement regarding a shift in earth’s axis, caused by the Chilean earthquake.

“If I seem unduly clear to you,” Greenspan once remarked, “you must have misunderstood what I said.”

NASA, which has been beleaguered by budgetary and political woes in recent years, should employ Greenspan as a spokesman.

Perhaps he’d have allowed that our days will be shorter by “just a tad.”

Winning a food fight

2010-03-02T06:55:00.001-07:00

Our neighbor Lorraine Collins always has an interesting perspective on a wide range of topics. Here's another that should catch your interest -- and perhaps spur a comment or two. Her commentaries appear regularly in the Black Hills Pioneer, and this gives new meaning to the old term "food fight." Lorraine graciously allows us to share it with on-line readers here.

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A few weeks ago when I was in a supermarket browsing through the frozen food section, I saw a box labeled "chicken fried rice" so I thought I'd try that. Usually I make fried rice myself, but I thought this would save me some trouble. I checked the sodium content and it didn't seem too bad, so I happily purchased it. After I got home I took time to read the whole label, and was chagrined to discover the small print that said, "contains shell fish." I am extremely allergic to shell fish and didn't dare eat what I'd bought, so I gave it to a neighbor.

Why would something labeled chicken fried rice contain shell fish? Maybe it was just some fragments left over from some other kind of fried rice, but no matter how miniscule the bits may be, they're poisonous to me.

I was trained some years ago to check food labels for trans fats, sodium and the like, after my husband had a heart attack and the cardiologist sent me to a nutrition class. I have been so dedicated to serving low sodium dishes for a decade that last summer the cardiologist finally got alarmed about the guy having too low a sodium count and told him to go eat a piece of watermelon and put salt on it.

In Arizona I knew a woman who was so allergic to monosodium glutamate that she became deathly ill after eating green bean casserole because it was made with soup containing MSG. I had not realized that MSG is used so ubiquitously in canned soups and other products, until I began seeing signs on some packaged and canned foods bragging that they don't have any of it in them.

Labeling the contents of frozen, packaged, canned food is very important to our health and safety, but at the same time consumers have to take the time to read labels and know whether high fructose corn syrup is really something their kids should be ingesting. When food is prepared at home, we know what's in it, but when it has been prepared in a factory, it often contains substances from fat to salt to food coloring to flavor enhancers in order to make it look good and taste appetizing, regardless of what this process does to nutritional value.

And the fact seems to be that the more our food is processed for us, the fatter and less healthy we become. In 1960, when the "TV dinner" had been marketed for just half a dozen years and fast food restaurants were not on every corner, according to a Center of Disease Control study, the average American man weighed just over 166 pounds. By 2004, he weighed 191. Women in 1960 averaged 140 pounds but by 2004 this had increased to over 164.

First Lady Michelle Obama recently announced she will be devoting time and energy trying to combat childhood obesity and this is a very timely cause to espouse. CDC statistics indicate that childhood obesity in America has tripled in the last 30 years. Just 6.5% of children were regarded as obese 30 years ago and now that number is 19%. Adolescent obesity has grown from 5% to 18%. No doubt many lifestyle changes contribute to these statistics including children being less physically active, but certainly the American diet of processed and "fast" foods must be part of the problem.

Now some frozen food purveyors are providing more healthful entrees and some alternatives are provided for children's meals picked up at the drive through window including fruit and milk instead of fries and soda. But it's hard to say how much of this is window dressing to counter negative publicity and how much is an earnest effort to improve nutrition.

There is a lot of resistance to change in this country, whether in energy policy, health care, financial reform and other issues. I can only assume that there will be forces aligned against food reform, too. But winning the food fight is important for our kids.

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

No ethics medal for Rangel

2010-02-26T23:55:00.009-07:00

We’ve long admired the achievements of Congressman Charlie Rangel of New York, who rose from a tough childhood in Harlem to a career of public service in New York and a leadership role in the U.S. House of Representatives.

With a witty – some would say charming -- demeanor, the 79-year-old Rangel is one of those rare politicians who can make himself understood clearly in ten words or less.

Chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee in the House, Rangel has been admonished by a House ethics panel for accepting trips to the Caribbean from a private corporation. While that panel exonerated four other Congressmen who were also on those trips in 2007 and 2008, they didn't absolve Rangel.

Alas, Rangel’s utterance this week in defense of those trips was more than ten words. He was dancing the old “Potomac two-step,” and it’s not a happy situation for Rangel or his supporters.

The usually amiable Rangel told a news conference, “I don’t want to be critical of the committee but common sense dictates that members of Congress should not be held responsible for what could be the wrongdoing or mistakes or errors of staff unless there’s reason to believe that member knew or should have known, and there is nothing in the record to indicate the latter.”

Army hero Charlie Rangel, winner of the Purple Heart and Bronze Star for his valiant service during the Korean War, wouldn’t duck responsibility. But this is another Charlie Rangel, numbed by some 40 years on Capitol Hill, deflecting responsibility and suggesting underlings were to blame.

Charlie Rangel has done a lot of good things for his constituents in Manhattan. And he’s done a lot of good things for his country. But I fear he has succumbed to the ways of Washington, cutting corners and losing touch with the people – and the principles – that may have lured him to public service in the first place.

It’s a powerful example of why we need term limits for most elected officials.

Anonymity breeds a bit of libel...

2010-02-23T15:03:00.005-07:00

We’ll shed no tears over the demise of HB-1277 and HB-1278 at the state legislature yesterday (2/22/10).

The bills were crafted to help identify culprits who plaster the internet with anonymous comments that are libelous. Had they become law, they would have required web site operators to provide information about people who post articles or comments on their websites. Specifically, it would have sought logs that contain the Internet Protocol Addresses (IPA) of bloggers and people who post comments and other content onto web sites. Supporters said they were simply trying to give some recourse to people who’d been victimized by anonymous and libelous attacks on the internet.

Most of the speakers who provided testimony before the House State Affairs Committee – both pro and con – seemed to agree that something needs to be done. In the end, committee members indicated that these bills, even if passed into South Dakota law, would likely have little impact upon the worldwide web. They tabled HB-1277 and sent HB-1278 to the 41^st day, effectively killing it.

We’re no fan of anonymity on the internet. Criticism is not regular fare on Black Hills Monitor or our any of our other sites, but we do occasionally take some institutions and individuals to task for what we consider to be their transgressions. That said, we try to keep above the gutter gibberish that adorns some blogs.

We suspect this issue will not go away. Nor should it. The worldwide web is a marvelous tool, but it is increasingly abused by individuals and corporations alike. At some point, the “blogosphere” will need to embrace better tools to keep it from being overrun by a cesspool of unscrupulous marketers and disgruntled rabble-rousers who hide behind anonymity while injecting libelous venom across blog postings.

Something must and something will be done about anonymous internet postings that defame folks. That was part of the message conveyed in this KELO-TV interview (below) with a former colleague of ours, Todd Epp of Sioux Falls. We agree with that position – but it won’t be HB-1277 or HB-1278.

Let's stop apostrophe abuse!

2010-02-13T15:41:00.007-07:00

Lorraine Collins offers her Black Hills Pioneer column to us every two weeks or so, and we always enjoy them. We trust you do, too.

The big black headline in the newspaper said, "Resident's brace for storm." I wondered who this resident was and what his brace looked like. I don't know why the headline writer was so determined to add an apostrophe between the t and the s, but maybe it results from what seems to be a widespread paranoia about the apostrophe. People seem to be afraid of it, and they aren't sure just what to do with it, so every now and then they shut their eyes and fling it onto the page, hoping it lands in the right place.

On the theory that knowledge overcomes fear, as a public service I thought I might spend a moment or two today helping folks get acquainted with the apostrophe so they can learn to live with it or, sometimes, without it. I presume the headline writer meant to indicate more than one resident was bracing for a storm. Actually, the plural of "resident" is simply "residents" with no apostrophe required. Apostrophes are used in the English language for only two reasons: to indicate a letter has been left out, as in "don't" for "do not" or to indicate possession, as in "the resident's snow shovel."

It may seem odd that I'm so concerned about the apostrophe when so much other damage is being done to the English language as we used to know it. We used to worry about the degradation of language by using the lingo common to e mail, but now we have Twitter and texting syntax to worry about. Some believe these are going to be the ruination of eloquence and poetry if the trend keeps up. Can you imagine Romeo texting to Juliet, "LU! UR 6Y!"

Although I may be fighting a rearguard action in a lost war, I believe the apostrophe is the single most abused and misused punctuation mark in the English language. Some aficionados of the apostrophe have become so concerned that they formed the Apostrophe Protection Society. I'm not an official member of the society, but want to do my bit to protect the apostrophe anyway. So this is my lecture on why the apostrophe exists and what we should do with it. Please pay attention as I do not want to go through this again.

One problem folks have occurs when they want to indicate that more than one person possesses something, such as a house, so we see signs such as "The Smith's" by a front door.

Actually, this means that a single person named Smith lives there, and maybe his or her first name is "The." If the Smiths want to indicate that more than one Smith possesses the house, they should put the apostrophe after the letter s. A sign saying The Smiths' indicates the reality of the situation. But people seem even more troubled by the apostrophe in these cases.

So my solution is to simply have the sign saying "The Smiths" with no apostrophe whatever, indicating that The Smiths live here and never mind who owns the house. Another solution would be to just have a sign that says "Bob and Betty Smith". No apostrophe required and it offers more information anyway, to the guy who comes to the door wanting to sell a vacuum cleaner. He can say, "Hello, Betty, may I show you a nice vacuum cleaner?"

One last word: of all the trouble dealing with apostrophes, the worst seems to be deciding between "it's" and "its". The thing to do is to think of "its" as being just like other words indicating possession, such as his, her, our, your, or my, none of which has an apostrophe. So one can say his glove, her coat, its dog house. To put an apostrophe in the word indicates that a letter has been left out, as in "It's a really cold day" or "If that woman doesn't shut up about the apostrophe, it's going to drive me mad."

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

America's "Voice"

2010-02-06T16:24:00.018-07:00

Despite intense jamming by the Soviet Union and China during the Cold War, and unabashed political assaults within the U.S. government over the years, the Voice of America has survived.

Alas, while the broadcasting service is a mere shadow of its former self, VOA continues to span the globe in 45 languages, reaching an audience that they estimate at about 130 million people every week. To serve that audience, VOA uses shortwave, FM, medium wave AM broadcasts, the Internet, and television.

Long-time international broadcaster Alan Heil, Jr., who toiled in the vineyards of VOA from 1962 until 1998, has written Voice of America – A History, and it’s a masterful history of an important American institution. While little known within U.S. borders because of the Smith-Mundt Act (yep, that’s South Dakota’s own Karl Mundt), the Voice of American has been a beacon of information and hope for millions of people around the world since it was created in 1942.

The Heil book introduces us to VOA by providing a fascinating narrative about its role in providing news and information to some 60 million Chinese during the tumultuous 1989 uprising in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The VOA delivered news that the Chinese citizens couldn’t get from their own government. It’s a compelling story that hooks the reader right away.

Then Heil escorts readers back to the origin of the VOA in 1942, when its first broadcasts in German pledged to listeners in Europe, “We bring you voices from America. Today, and daily from now on, we shall speak to you about America and the war. The news may be good for us. The news may be bad. But we shall tell you the truth.”

And that has been a guiding light for VOA for nearly seven decades.

Heil sorts out the continuing struggle to “get it straight” during the early journalistic years of VOA. He provides insightful stories of correspondents doing their jobs from Cairo and Beijing to Munich and Moscow. He adds some touching stories about the many talented immigrants who escaped from dire political and economic circumstances to find a home at the Voice of America. There’s an inside look at the abiding struggle for a VOA charter and independence – a firewall from political influence.

While the bulk of the book focuses upon news and information services at VOA, Heil also pays tribute to the value of music and cultural programs. He acknowledges the plight of many VOA broadcasters: they are well known around the world, but unknown at home. The late Willis Conover (at right), long-time producer and host of “Music USA” jazz programs was a real celebrity around the globe, but virtually unknown in the United States.

Alan Heil's book takes the reader right up to the turn of the century (it was published in 2003). It’s extremely well documented, but it reads every bit as easily as a good novel. Alas, its final chapter, “Conclusion,” leaves the reader with some anxiety about the future of VOA.

And rightfully so.

By 2010, we find a complicated menagerie of bureaucracies – each pitted against the other – fighting for missions and funding from the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). It’s the 9-member BBG that tries to oversee not only the Voice of America, but a group of so-called “surrogate” broadcasters – also funded by U.S. taxpayers. English and many foreign language broadcasts have been chopped from the VOA schedule. Some of those foreign broadcasts, like Arabic, were moved to the surrogate agencies: Radio Free Asia, Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), and Radio and TV Marti broadcasts to Cuba in Spanish.

As nearly as we can tell, the BBG has allowed itself to be mired in day-to-day operations, rather than focusing upon policy and planning. Some of the services seem bent on luring only a young audience, thus we find a real dominance of music and youth-oriented programming – at the expense of news and information programming.

We were taken by a quotation Heil offered by our former public broadcasting colleague and one-time VOA Director, Mary Bitterman, who said, “It is not the organizational structure which permits creativity and integrity, but the character of the people involved in oversight.”

Alan Heil’s book offers a rare glimpse of both the organizational structures – and the people – who have shaped the Voice of America.

The grass roots league

2010-02-04T18:33:00.010-07:00

Our neighbor Lorraine Collins always has an interesting perspective on a wide range of topics. This time she writes about journalism -- specifically, well-known columnist Ellen Goodman. It's a piece that might catch your interest -- and perhaps spur a comment or two. Lorraine's commentaries appear regularly in the Black Hills Pioneer, and this is her most recent offering. She graciously allows us to share it with on-line readers here.

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A very fine columnist for the Boston Globe, syndicated in many newspapers including some in South Dakota, retired this month. Her name is Ellen Goodman and I met her a couple of times more than 30 years ago. Just as she was retiring, she was interviewed on the Public Radio show, "Talk of the Nation." She sounded great, laughing when asked why she was retiring. Her answer was, "My editor asked me that, too, and I said, 'Why not?'" She had been a journalist for 41 years.

She still is a journalist, of course, just no longer regularly employed . I'd say we're in the same boat, except she's been on an ocean liner and my craft has been more like a canoe. I was interested to hear her say that she once worked for Newsweek Magazine in New York. A few years earlier I had a similar job at Time Magazine. We were both "editorial researchers", all of whom were women, gathering data, contacting correspondents, interviewing people, getting whatever the writer needed, handing him the file. All writers were men. After the men writers had written their articles, we would have to check those for facts. If the guy said "This is the longest bridge in Venezuela" we had to find out whether it really was.

Ellen Goodman said that people she has talked to in the intervening years were not surprised that she was discriminated against for being a woman, but they were surprised that it was legal. This was before the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Ellen Goodman's career has been much more straightforward than has mine. She left New York, as I did, but she went home to Massachusetts and continued to be a journalist for the Boston Globe. Eventually she won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Well, I went home to South Dakota and eventually was named The South Dakota Presswomen' s Woman of the Year, but it's hardly the same. I first met Ellen in Mitchell in 1977 when this was the site of the South Dakota International Women's Year Conference. She was our Keynote Speaker and I was co-chair of this event.

Later that year, at the National IWY event in Houston, Ellen was there covering the conference and interviewed me. This long ago event, now buried in the detritus of history, was very controversial at the time. Betty Friedan was on one side, and Gloria Steinem was on the other. Should we be concerned about Gay Rights, or just Women's Rights? I sided with Friedan, thinking that the only issue we had was that gay women should have the same rights as gay men, just as straight women should have the same rights as straight men. Our side lost and the huge arena erupted with celebrations of pink and blue balloons up in the gallery. It was some experience, I tell you.

I've thought, sometimes, about Ellen Goodman and me, our similarities and differences. She continued to be a very good journalist and commentator in a very good venue, sophisticated, metropolitan, East Coast. I came back here to the hinterlands, which seems to be a place I like. Although apparently her life has been devoted only to journalism, I've been active in politics and public office, have ventured into writing fiction, which I love doing. I think well, she's been in the big leagues, and I've been in the minor leagues, but I'm comfortable with that.

I think of the Rapid City Rush hockey players, the minor league baseball players, the golfers who never quite make it to the PGA tour. Life is pretty good out here in the minor leagues, and sometimes I think I can still make a difference in some small way in how this community, this state, this nation runs its affairs. I call this the Grass Roots League.

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

Veteran broadcaster gone

2010-01-30T14:49:00.001-07:00

One of the legends of South Dakota television has passed away. Veteran broadcaster Dave Deadrick died Friday, January 22nd in Sioux Falls.

While we had met Dave in the 1980s when he was still going strong at KELO-TV, we didn’t know him well. But his visage was well known for decades throughout east river – and later west river, when KELO expanded its television operation to Rapid City.

A long-time weatherman for KELO-TV Channel 11 in Sioux Falls, he was perhaps even better known as Captain 11, host of the longest-running children’s program in the country. It was a job he loved for 41 years.

He reportedly was the first voice broadcast by KELO-TV when it went on the air in May of 1953 and landed the job as Captain 11 by winning a coin toss! Dave was inducted into the South Dakota Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 1997 and the South Dakota Hall of Fame in 1999.

Dave Deadrick was 81 years old. Read Dave's full obituary.

A new decade, a new word

2010-01-29T13:13:00.003-07:00

Our neighbor Lorraine Collins always has an interesting perspective on a wide range of topics. Here's another that should catch your interest -- and perhaps spur a comment or two. Her commentaries appear regularly in the Black Hills Pioneer, and this one helped launch us into the 21st century. She graciously allows us to share it with on-line readers here.

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I was one of those who thought that the first decade of the 21st Century wouldn't be completed until the end of 2010. When we start counting, we begin with the number one, after all, and when sorting things by tens, whether years or pennies, we end with the number 10. So why was everyone insisting that 2009 ended a decade? I suppose it was because we started with zero, or three of them, in 2000. So by 2009 we'd lived through ten years, and thus a decade, but it still didn't seem right to me.

A decahedron has ten faces, a decagon has ten angles and ten sides, and the Ten Commandments are a Decalogue. Knowing all this, it's just hard for me to accept that the number 9 ended a decade. I'll have to get used to it, I know. Just as I've had to accept the fact that when people talk about an event that "decimated" a town, they really mean it devastated the town, not that only 10% was ruined. Originally, I believe the word decimate meant that a conqueror would line up the defeated troops and count off, selecting every tenth one to be killed. In this case, only those unlucky fellows would be decimated and the other 9 in the group were spared.

At the end of one decade and the beginning of another, pundits and prognosticators have a tendency to recall momentous events of the previous ten years and try to predict what the next ten years will bring. I read and heard quite a few of these the first week of January. There was some hope for peace and prosperity, for the end of the wars, the flourishing of science and art, the building of a stable economy. Of course others predicted even more armed conflicts, natural disasters and the disintegration of civilization as we know it. Given the violent attack on our homeland, economic collapse, and the misguided adventure of invading Iraq, we can see why Apocalyptic predictions do have a certain appeal. Enough bad things happened in the last decade to make us fear what might happen in this one.

So, are we getting better and better every day, or are we just waiting for the next catastrophe to show up as a distant blip on our radar screens, moving inexorably and ominously closer? In a delightful book titled "Archie and Mehitabel" written by Don Marquis early in the 20th Century, he wrote that "An optimist is a guy that has never had much experience." By now I've had a lot of experience, but I'm going to be optimistic anyway. I'm going to be optimistic because I think maybe we are actually going to start paying attention to something called accountability.

I tend to think that citizens in the United States and several other countries are fed up with lame excuses and such non-accountable explanations as "mistakes were made." We've heard too much of that over the last decade. We're fed up with people, whether on Wall Street or Washington or in state government or in business not being held accountable, not accepting personal responsibilities for their actions. This gives me some reason for optimism, if not "irrational exuberance."

When people start demanding accountability, not only from those in positions of political and economic power, but from themselves, and how they conduct their lives and the decisions they make, then I do think there's hope for the future. Democracies depend on an informed and literate population, which means people have to think, to be able to distinguish mindless rants from reasoned argument, and to be willing to hold themselves as well as their leaders accountable.

If there's a word I want to hear in this new decade, it's accountability. Let's see how much of that we find in this new year of the new decade. It may tell us how the other nine years will go.

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

Ink for needless art

2010-01-27T11:39:00.015-07:00

One of our pet-peeves while working in radio news years ago was the gratuitous use of what we called “actualities” -- small snippets of sound, or comments by newsmakers or observers.

When they really added substance to a story, and they often did, such devices were invaluable. But using an actuality just for the sake of using an actuality was – and is -- sloppy. It adds nothing to the story.

Such is the case with unnecessary “art” for daily newspapers and other print media.

I was reminded of this yesterday (1/26/10) when the Rapid City Journal ran a photograph of Chris Nelson, South Dakota Secretary of State. It was attached to a short story in which Nelson reminded candidates, political parties and others, that the deadline for campaign finance reports is just around the corner. The story was likely a routine press release out of Nelson’s office. Certainly not a big story, but probably worth some ink. But Journal editors could have done without the photograph.

Is it important that I know what this guy looks like? If so, I could take a peek at any of the 100+ photos of him that the Journal has used over the past few years (Okay, okay, I didn't really count them all).

I’ve never met Chris Nelson, but I suspect he’s doing a pretty good job as Secretary of State, based upon what I’ve heard and read.

Oh, yes, did I mention he’s running for Congress? Now that’s the Chris Nelson story that deserved an accompanying photo!

Fighting "...irrational negativity"

2010-01-21T17:05:00.014-07:00

This has been an interesting week.

The Denver Post’s parent company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The New York Times is positioned to start charging for its on-line content. And the Rapid City Journal’s owner – Lee Enterprises – reports revenues for 2009 dropped by 18.2 percent.

In fact, Lee indicated that its yearend report was actually encouraging news. Fourth Quarter revenues were down by 14%. Lee owns the Rapid City Journal, the Bismarck (ND) Tribune, the Casper Star-Tribune, and several Montana papers among its stable of some 53 dailies. They also operate more than 300 “specialty” publications in 23 states.

Lee CEO Mary Junck, in a letter to stockholders, ticked off a wide range of Lee accomplishments, including the refinancing of $1.3 billion of debt and streamlined operations.

“Through intense collaboration, our editors redesigned our pages to a reduced width of 11 inches, gaining approval from readers and advertisers,” Junck wrote. That move helped Lee shave newsprint usage by 31 percent.

Interestingly, Lee has launched a public relations campaign to combat what Junck called the continuing, “irrational negativity” about the future of newspapers. One of the PR steps was producing the "business card" similar to the one shown here for the Rapid City Journal, touting the audience and performance of Lee. Click on the card to see how the Journal and other Lee papers are attacking that negativity. Similar cards were done for all of Lee’s 53 daily newspapers.

Meanwhile, over in Colorado, Denver Post CEO Dean Singleton is promising no layoffs as a result of imminent Chapter 11 bankruptcy for MediaNews Group, a Denver-based organization that owns the Post, Boulder Camera, and 52 other daily newspapers. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that MediaNews has been “teetering for months.” The bankruptcy will reportedly reduce MediaNews debt from $930 million to $165 million, and Singleton suggested employees play up the positive aspects of the Chapter 11 filing.

Perhaps Singleton and Junck – and many newspaper executives have been talking with one another about how to paint a rosier picture.

To be sure, we’re hopeful that newspapers can re-invent themselves into a sustainable product that endures for years to come. Perhaps I’m old fashioned (perhaps??!!) but thumbing through and reading the morning paper is a joy I don’t want to give up.

On-line news just isn’t quite as cathartic. Especially if you have to pay for it, after having enjoyed free access to the New York Times for such a long time. One of the last holdouts offering free access to its on-line version, the Times will likely announce within the next few weeks exactly how it expects to monetize its on-line services.

We support charging for these services. But exactly how such fees are assessed and at what level will be a challenge. We like the “tease” approach being used by the Black Hills Pioneer (a Seaton publication), whereby you can read a paragraph or two – and possibly enjoy a photo – before being prompted to click a link to “…read more.” That’s when readers can subscribe to the full-meal deal and read the entire paper on-line.

On-line journalism is likely to continue to grow. We trust it will also get significantly better. If newspapers can survive and then thrive in a modified form, that would be a good thing, giving us some choices.

For now, we’re entrenched with one foot in the print world and one in the on-line world. We can live with that.