Charles E. "Eddie" Clay (1922-2012)

South Dakota has lost one of its outstanding citizens.

Charles "Eddie" Clay of Hot Springs passed away this morning (10/4/12) at the Rapid City Regional Hospital after suffering a stroke yesterday.  He was 90 years old.

And most of those 90 years were dedicated to his family, his country, and his community.

It's sad to see the passing of such a remarkable person, and our heartfelt sympathy goes out to his wife, Clara, his daughter, Bobbi, and the entire Clay family.

Born in Missouri and raised in Iowa, Eddie served with the 8th Air Force in the Pacific during World War II.  Another assignment to Ellsworth Air Force Base allowed him to meet and later marry Clara May Hagen.  Eddie was also called up and served during the Korean War.

Eddie and Clara owned and operated Fall River Abstract in Hot Springs for more than 43 years.  He was devoted to Clara and Bobbi and his grandchildren.

Our sorrow at Eddie's passing  should be quickly tempered by celebration of his numerous and enormous accomplishments during his time on this earth. He was a champion for a wide array of community activities.  The list of his many causes is far too long to enumerate here -- and so we mention only a few.   They each elicited deep passion and commitment from Eddie.  He was not a half-way kind of fellow.  

We wrote the following when Eddie was inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame in 2007:

"A tireless worker in civic affairs, Eddie has provided vision and leadership to the Mount Rushmore Society, South Dakota Public Broadcasting, the Mammoth Site at Hot Springs, and numerous other organizations.

His service in the legislature and on Boards of Directors for many educational, tourism and arts organizations has been remarkable. A Mason for 50 years, Eddie Clay has been a role model for me and many South Dakotans. In addition to daughter Bobbi, the Clays have four grandchildren and four great children."

Eddie also served on the powerful Appropriations Committee in the South Dakota House of Representatives from 1967 to 1974.

Funeral services for Charles "Eddie" Clay will be at 10:00 a.m., Monday, at the Mueller Center in Hot Springs.  A viewing is scheduled for Sunday evening.  

You'll find additional information in this news story broadcast earlier today (10/4/12) by KOTA-TV, in which they appropriately acknowledged Eddie as a "visionary."   You'll also find a few photos and narratives that we posted in 2007 in this Hall of Fame gallery.

Juvenile justice in America: a Florida case

by Larry Miller

I remember once starting to read Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and asking myself, “Why am I reading this?  It’s as depressing as sitting through a screening of Rosemary’s Baby."  Not a fun thing to do.

But fun sometimes has to take a back seat to the necessity of examining the human condition and what it is that causes humans to sometimes become so misguided.

“Misguided” may be a bit euphemistic when describing juveniles who commit heinous crimes.  What are those things that make some youngsters stray from “normal” teen years and end up spending life in prison?  The answers are not simple.  And the U.S. legal system struggles for a path to true juvenile justice.   

Good friend Bill Kunerth recently shared excerpts of a book written by his son, Jeff, who is a writer for the Orlando (FL) Sentinel.  I was intrigued by what I started to read -- but had those flashbacks to In Cold Blood.

Then, a few weeks ago, I received a copy of the book from Jeff.  It’s entitled Trout, and it’s a true story of “murder, teens, and the death penalty.”  

I started the book late one evening, read the first chapter, and was lured into the story by Jeff’s riveting style.  It reads like a novel.  It’s anything but.

I’ll not provide details about Trout, other than to share that it’s a revealing story about high school-age boys in Pensacola who become wrapped up in an horrific event that ends tragically for almost all the families involved. 

“…I thought I was writing about a case of mistaken identity murder-for-hire by three Pensacola teens in 1991,” said Kunerth, who acknowledges that the book evolves into scrutinizing juvenile justice within the U.S. adult court system.

Jeff Kunerth - Orlando Sentinel

The writing style is called “creative nonfiction,” and it’s well suited for journalist Kunerth, who has sourced the story extensively.  He assembles just the right tools to tell the story of a gruesome murder of a clerk at Trout Auto Parts in Pensacola, Florida.

I don’t fancy myself a literary critic, but Jeff Kunerth’s style reminded me of Barbara Tuchman's work.

Like Tuchman, Kunerth may not consider himself an historian, but his detailed recounting of this event, accompanied by nagging questions about the implications for juvenile justice, are every bit as compelling as Tuchman’s “Guns of August” dissection of the events leading up to World War One.  And like it or not, juvenile violence is as much a part of our history as war -- and its impact is just as devastating.

The topics for both books were meticulously researched, thoughtfully written, and both authors spared no ink in assembling and listing their sources.  At just 195 pages, Trout is a fast read.  Twenty-two of those pages are source notes.

Like any good book, it leaves you wanting to know more.  And more is to be found online at www.jeffkunerth.com where visitors can ask questions, make comments, and get additional information, including links to the PBS Frontline documentary, When Kids Get Life.

We should listen to Kenny Rogers

by Lorraine Collins

I've never been a great fan of what we call country and western music because I thought it all seemed to be about broken hearts and broken promises, loneliness, trains missed and dogs that died. But sometimes it does reflect common human experiences and things that are true and important. One good example is a song made famous by Kenny Rogers---"The Gambler."

It's been running through my mind quite a bit lately because of the advice the gambler offers to the narrator: "Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em." Apparently the gambler didn't learn that too well himself because, after he's bummed a cigarette and a drink of whisky from a fellow he met on a "train to nowhere", he dies.

Yet,  his advice is still good: know when to hold and when to fold, not just in poker, but in life. I've been trying to figure that out myself lately, and I know if we could all learn that, everything might be easier for us. For instance, in the last year we've witnessed events in Egypt and Libya when dictators just refused to give up their power and ended up dooming themselves and their countries to a long ordeal. Still, the boss of Syria hasn't seemed to get the message that there's a time to fold.

In the recent Republican presidential nomination contest, one fellow might have bailed out a bit early, but others hung on way past the bitter end. So sometimes we do give up too soon, maybe because of a lack of grit, or because of a sudden realization that the goal is most likely unattainable, so we cut our losses. But in most cases we don't fold too soon but just hang on too long because we hate to give up whatever we have enjoyed doing.

There are a lot of examples. Many of us can name a famous professional quarterback who didn't know when to retire, and in music and the arts we've seen performers who would have been better off leaving their reputations intact with a graceful exit. Great literary works have been written about faded geniuses or warriors trying to regain former glory. It's not that we lack examples. It's just hard to recognize those same tendencies in ourselves.

I remember when I was a kid not wanting to come home from playing kick the can even though it was getting pretty dark. When my mother called me to come in, I protested that I was still having fun. She said, "Always quit when you're having fun." That's pretty good advice, too, though many of us wait until everything isn't quite as much fun as it used to be.

Of course I'm leading up to something here. It's been hard to decide to leave the Black Hills after enjoying 26 years living in Spearfish Canyon and Spearfish, but the time has come for my husband Keith and me to do so, as we've recognized it's time to fold. We've had a lot of fun here, flying airplanes, driving Model Ts, riding bikes, hunting deer, playing golf, attending plays, concerts, and even opera here in the Black Hills. But to tell the truth, as time has gone on the years have accumulated in our bones. It's just about too late to quit while we're still having fun.

One thing that has been fun for me is writing this column for the last six years. For the first several months I wrote a column once a week, then faded to twice a month and I eventually  realized that writing a column once a month is the best I can do if I'm going to do anything else, like laundry. There certainly has been a lot to write about. When I put together a collection of my columns last year there were 90 commentaries in seven different categories and it's really hard to think of something I haven't written about. I've enjoyed it and I really appreciated the response from readers over the years. Thanks.

           

Now it's time to start cleaning out the house and the garage and to pay attention to another line in "The Gambler." It's about "knowing what to throw away and what to keep." Good luck with that one. 

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

A small sign of the times...

By Larry Miller

Another setback for journalism has occurred with news that the New Orleans Times-Picayune is cutting back to publishing a print version of the newspaper just three days a week.  That sad news was delivered by visiting southern friend Jimmie Ray Gordon, whose late husband Bob was a respected veteran wire service reporter and newspaper editor in the south.

I confess that one of my long-time pet peeves has been the abandonment of local community service obligations by radio stations in favor of becoming part of a larger corporate operation.  Typically, such stations rely on satellite programming and minimal overhead to meet the bottom line profit expectations of shareholders.  Serious local news coverage is often the first “belt-tightening” step.

Clearly, technology evolution and a bad economy have significantly and negatively impacted many newspapers and broadcasting stations – particularly those that were not well run in the first place.

It was no big surprise, for example, to learn that KZMX Radio in Hot Springs, South Dakota, was slapped with a big fine last month (May 2012) by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for its “failure to make the stations available for inspection” and for “failure to operate in accordance with station authorization.”   The forfeiture was set at $21,500.

For those of us who remember the early years of the station, then KOBH-AM in Hot Springs, it stirred memories of a station that was once well-operated and reached a pretty good audience across the Black Hills and beyond, including many listeners in Wyoming and Nebraska.

We don’t know about the other properties owned and operated by Mt. Rushmore Broadcasting – licensee of KZMX-AM-FM – but the notice from the FCC seemed to make a compelling case that KZMX fits the profile of a station that “willfully or repeatedly fails to comply with…the provisions of the (Communications) Act.  They wrote the following in their Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture:

On Tuesday, May 31, 2011, in response to a complaint, an agent from the Enforcement Bureau's Denver Office (Denver Office) attempted an inspection of the Station KZMX(AM) and Station KZMX-FM main studio, during regular business hours. The Stations’ main studio is located approximately one mile north of Hot Springs, South Dakota, and is clearly marked in large letters “KZMX” and a sign on the front door reads “Mount Rushmore Broadcasting.” The door to the main studio was locked and there was no staff or management present at the building. There was no contact information posted at the main studio location, consequently, the agent was unable to gain entrance to the main studio. The agent stayed at the main studio site for several hours, monitoring Station KZMX(AM), which was operating on the frequency 580 kHz, and Station KZMX-FM, which was operating on frequency 96.7 MHz.2 The agent telephoned multiple phone numbers, including two published phone numbers associated with Mount Rushmore and the Stations several times, but none of his calls were answered.3 During the time the agent was at the main studio location, an individual identifying himself as a former employee stopped by the main studio location and informed the agent that no one had been present at the main studio for more than a year.

On June 1, 2011, during regular business hours, the Denver agent returned to the Station KZMX(AM) and Station KZMX-FM main studio and again attempted an inspection of the Stations’ main studio. The agent stopped by the main studio several times throughout the day, during regular business hours. Each time, no employees were present and the agent was unable to gain access to the main studio.  Both Stations were in operation and during each visit, the agent telephoned several phone numbers associated with the Stations but his calls were not answered. The agent then visited a non-affiliated business in the area owned by the president of Mount Rushmore. After being informed that the Mount Rushmore president was in the area, the agent left his business card with an employee who agreed to have the president contact the agent, however, the agent never heard from the president.

You can go to the FCC web site to read their Notice of May 17, 2012 in its entirety, but it’s not a happy story.  Not for Mt. Rushmore Broadcasting, nor especially for the public, which apparently has been shortchanged by KZMX for a long time.

I received a copy of the FCC Notice from a long-time friend on May 19 – just a few days after it was adopted – so I thought I’d share it with a news outlet that purportedly covers news in the Black Hills region.   I sent a copy of the notice to the Rapid City Journal, which also owns the Hot Spring Star newspaper.  I was operating on the assumption that Hot Springs area residents were not likely to hear about the event from KZMX-AM-FM, and it seemed logical to me that the Journal might have an interest in the FCC action.  I e-mailed the notice to Kevin Woster at the Journal.

His response came two days later with a terse question:  “So what’s the issue?”

I replied that I thought the Notice of Forfeiture from the FCC was self-explanatory.  He responded that he gets a lot of mail, indicating that he hadn’t bothered to open or read the attachment.

Kevin is a good reporter.  I think he’s an even better writer.  But I was disappointed that nothing ever appeared in the Journal. Perhaps it was a pure editorial judgment call that this $21,500 forfeiture by a federally-licensed station in Hot Springs was too parochial – that the significance of the story was minimal.  And  maybe he’s right.

I never saw a story appear in the Rapid City Journal about the forfeiture.  Admittedly, I don’t read the Journal from front to back, so maybe I missed it.  Nor do I subscribe to the Hot Springs Star, where it may well have appeared. 

When I cranked up various online search engines to see just who might have reported the forfeiture, I found only the FCC website and…….Wikipedia?

The fact that Wikipedia somehow captured and shared information about the KZMX forfeiture order – and not the Rapid City Journal or Hot Springs Star – may well be a subtle clue as to why traditional media are struggling…….and online sources are thriving.  Even the likes of Wikipedia.

...a battle worth fighting, nonetheless

by LARRY MILLER

Every now and then we read something in the newspaper that catches our eye, and which we think is worth repeating.

That was the case this week, when Aaron Orlowski of the Rapid City Journal penned an article quoting a couple of folks about the Rocky Mountain pine beetle infestation that has devastated much of our beloved Black Hills of South Dakota.  Flights of the pesky beetle are a recurring event and seem to plague the region a couple of times every century or so.

John Ball is a forestry extension specialist with South Dakota State University.  He was quoted as saying, “Every 40 years we have this problem,” suggesting that the infestation is part of a natural cycle for the beetles.  He noted that thinning the forest is one thing that definitely helps the situation, but that the Black Hills National Forest in recent years has had particularly dense stands of trees.  

He said that the only way to slow tree deaths would be to kill 97 percent of the beetles, but that would be an "unfathomable feat."

Ball concluded by observing that mixed stands with different species of trees and different ages of trees will help the forest be more resilient, once the current outbreak has subsided.

Wisely, Ball said that doesn’t mean that we should give up and not try to combat the beetle.  In fact, there have been workshops across the hills advising property owners about how they can fight the beetle and help protect their property.

It reminds us of another hot topic that Mother Nature has had on our plates since the beginning of recorded time:  global warming.  And global cooling.  Fears of a looming “ice age” caused some concern back in the mid-20^th century – much the way global warming has stolen headlines in recent years.

Rocky Mountain Pine Beetle

I believe we have a better chance – slim though it might be – of sending the pine beetle into oblivion than we do of having any significant impact upon the climate.

Nonetheless, it’s wise to be good stewards of the resources we enjoy on our planet, and to do whatever we can to preserve and protect a healthy environment.  So we’ll continue to engage in recycling and other environmentally-friendly activities.

And we're all for thinning the forest, making life a bit more difficult for the pine beetles, and maybe combating another hazard in Mother Nature’s arsenal:  forest wild fires.

Space junk and spring cleaning

by Lorraine Collins

I don't suppose there are a whole lot of people who remember when a satellite named Telstar provided the first transatlantic television transmission from the U.S. to Europe in 1962, but I was reminded of this the other day. Although the broadcast was just 14 minutes long, it included a dramatic scene of Mount Rushmore with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing "A Mighty Fortress is our God" and it was thrilling. Telstar was in use for only a few months, but  it's quite possible that it's still circling the globe.

A story on Public Radio recently said the fellows in the International Space Station were told to get into their space lifeboats because some debris was heading their way. If this collided with the space station, they needed to be ready to abandon ship. Luckily, it missed. But it seems there is no shortage of space debris. There are 22,000 objects circling our globe, whizzing by at 17,500 miles per hour. About 1,000 are space craft of some sort, but the rest is just space junk, some of it only a few inches long.

I haven't checked lately, but Telstar was reported to be still orbiting the earth in 2010. I suppose it's true that what goes up must come down eventually, but meanwhile bits and pieces of defunct satellites and other debris continue to clutter up what we refer to as space. At least this belt of working satellites and debris may provide us some protection from invasion by space aliens who will have to wade through it all to get to us. Think of it as barbed wire around the perimeter.

We don't often think of the trash that is flying overhead, unless we are threatened with a chunk of a Soviet spacecraft plummeting toward earth, which happened recently. Fortunately,  since two-thirds of the earth is covered by oceans, that chunk, like many others, fell harmlessly into the sea. The bad news is, the oceans are being clogged up with millions of tons of debris that did not fall out of the sky but were deposited by more mundane means.

Those of us who live out here in the middle of the continent probably think more often of the sky than the sea, since we can see the sky. Yet we may be vaguely aware that there are very large garbage patches in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Miles and miles, acres and acres of mostly plastic debris float just below the surface, moving as the ocean currents direct. According to the Ocean Conservancy, volunteers picked up nine million tons of debris on seashores last year. I'm not sure what's being done about all the miles of debris floating in the middle of the oceans, and I sure don't know what's going to happen to all the sad detritus generated by the tsunami in Japan that has sent millions of tons of debris floating on the ocean, some of which is headed toward us. But sooner or later I think somebody is going to have to pay attention to all this.

           

It's depressing for me to think of all the clutter and junk in the garage, the basement, my office, let alone that heading inexorably toward me by air and sea. I have the accumulation of a lifetime to deal with, even though I have moved several times, have auctioned off possessions, given hundreds of things away, donated to libraries, rummage sales, carted trailer-loads of stuff to the landfill and have shown up at the farms and houses of unsuspecting relatives with a ton or so of excess stuff for them to store, as we claimed, for a year or so. All right, it was eight years but we did reclaim it eventually. Well, most of it. Some of it.

This is the time of year when we begin to look around and consider what changes we can and should make in our houses and gardens and lives, and since spring seems to have come so early this year, everything is coming at us even faster than usual. There's hardly time to think of what we should do, because we should already be doing it. Yet we could sit out of an evening and look at the sky and think about how we affect the only home we know---this planet---and how we can be respectful of it. I'll try that. It may inspire me to clean out the garage.


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

Just a Graze

by Lorraine Collins

When I was a kid and went to Saturday matinees at the local movie theater, there was often a serial just before the feature, and these usually had cowboys exchanging gunfire. Frequently, just before the episode ended, the hero would be shot off of his horse, so we had to go back the following week to see what happened. At the beginning of the next episode, he'd pick himself up, dust himself off and say, "It was just a graze." That's how I feel about the Legislature this year. They didn't actually kill us all off, but the crease in our skulls might be slightly deeper than a graze.

Yet, it could have been worse. The only bill dealing with abortion this year just made some revisions in the bill passed last year, apparently in the hope to make it more defensible in court. Women and girls seeking an abortion are still required to go to a "pregnancy center" for "counseling", but now counselors have to be "licensed." The bill does not say licensed by whom, or what the licensing requirements are.

Teachers, firemen, and other public employees dodged a bullet when HB 1261, which would have prohibited collective bargaining by public employees, had a short life. Senator Stan Adelstein of Rapid City first proposed this but later he decided this was not a good idea, and said so. Senator Tom Nelson of Lead also abandoned a bill he had thought of introducing, exempting casinos in Deadwood from the smoking ban. It's always a good thing when Legislators realize that the Legislative session just isn't long enough to accommodate every idea that comes to them in the middle of the night or is proposed by a special interest group.

           

Nelson chalked up a victory for gambling, though, when he got the Legislature to  raise limits in Deadwood casinos to $1,000 from $100. I can remember when limits were $5 and folks said that our cozy little historic town would not try to compete with Las Vegas.

By far, the most controversial bill this year was HB 1234, introduced on behalf of the governor, who decided that he had a swell idea for improving education in South Dakota's public schools. This included eliminating "tenure" for teachers and offering thousands of dollars in bonuses for teachers who were in the top 20% of teachers in their schools, as measured by some method yet to be determined. Other bonuses would go to those who taught math or science. This was such an unpopular idea among teachers, school boards, administrators and the general public that the bill was argued about and amended several times. The bill that was finally cobbled together included scholarships for college students who promise to teach for five years in "critical needs areas", not just math or science, and offered some options for local school districts.

I heard a commentator on TV say that she thought the governor wanted to have a "legacy" and that's why he embarked on "educational reform". Personally, I think a great legacy would be to increase all teachers' salaries and lift us from the humiliating position of ranking last of the 50 states in terms of what teachers are paid. Coming up with money for bonuses for a few teachers and leaving the others at the bottom of the barrel doesn't sound like a good idea to me. School boards still cannot count on a sustained level of support from one year to the next, so they continue to cut budgets, drop courses, and lay off teachers.

But one of the more troublesome things about HB 1234 as far as I'm concerned is the provision that will end the "continuing contract" as is current practice in South Dakota. After this is eliminated, any teacher, regardless of how long she or he has been in a school system, can be fired and the administrator is "not required to give further process or reason for non renewal."

Due Process is one of the basic tenets of our Constitution. Due Process has been called "The Shield of the People" and it is also a shield for teachers who are professionals, who have chosen this career not just to make a living, but to make a difference.

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

Love, marriage, and politics

By Lorraine Collins

Since we've been celebrating Valentine's Day, I've been in a sort of romantic mood, remembering the only poem my soon-to-be husband wrote me considerably more than half a century ago. He was a mining engineer, and I was a graduate student. I had a new typewriter, an Olivetti, and I wrote him singing its praises. Apparently, that's all I wrote about, because he responded with this verse:

"Lorraine now loves her Olivetti

And has forgotten me alretti."

I have never forgotten that charming bit of verse and he has never remembered writing it, which is kind of typical of many things about our long relationship. Our brief courtship was conducted mostly by air mail since he was in Canada and I in Colorado, so hardly anybody ever saw us together, which wasn't the only reason friends were surprised to discover we planned to marry.

Over the decades, I have come to realize that nobody ever really does understand the private relationship of other people---what attracted them to each other, why they decided to live together, what they see in each other that others may not see at all. So any law or social or religious edict that tries to make people fit one mold just isn't going to work, in the long run. It's no coincidence that a great many of the world's greatest tragedies are written about people who love each other but are denied the ability to be together because of family, religion, law, race or some sense of social standing. Not a whole lot of comedies are written about this.

In terms of law here in the United States, things are in a bit of a hodge podge. We no longer have laws prohibiting the marriage of people of different races, although these laws existed in some states until the 1960s. People who could be legally married in New York could not be legally married in North Carolina, for instance. Now we have another problem. Same sex marriages are legal in several states, whereas in 2006 South Dakotans amended the state Constitution specifically to prohibit this and also to deny recognition for civil unions and domestic partnerships. So if you are a gay couple legally married in Iowa, you are probably not going to want to come to South Dakota.           

Recently a court in California said that when voters overturned a law that enabled people of the same sex to marry, they violated the United States Constitution. The Constitution demands equal protection of the law, so California could not take away a right previously granted. No doubt this decision will be litigated for some time. Now we are witnessing a big brouhaha about whether Catholic institutions should have to be even remotely involved in health insurance plans that offer non-Catholic employees family planning, aka birth control pills. The church as an institution does not approve of such things, even though we are told that 98% of Catholic women have used them. Some call this controversy a public health issue while others frame it as a First Amendment issue. Whatever else it is, it seems to be part of somebody's political agenda.

So in this election season we suddenly stopped talking about jobs and the economy to dwell endlessly on matters of sex and marriage. To begin with, we just heard about the sex lives of some candidates, but then the topic expanded to include the private lives of people in general. Some think this is all a plot by the Democrats to distract us from very slowly improving economy, while others think it's a Republican plot to make the election about something other than the economy which is slowly improving.

 If voters concentrate on divisive issues such as who can marry and who can't, who can have birth control and who can't, and whether a woman can have an abortion, then more people might be stirred into action for one candidate or another. But as long as we are talking about people's private lives, we do not talk of the national debt, tax reform, our crumbling infrastructure, housing, poverty, and many other important issues. I hope soon we can get the national political conversation out of the bedroom.

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish.  She may be contacted by e-mail at:  collins1@midco.net

Women and the law

by Lorraine Collins

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

Women in Yemen are burning their veils.

Saudi women want to drive.

I never got any further with that idea but when I looked at a news item in 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 Arabia will be women. Until now, all the clerks were men---usually Asian men---because women have been prohibited from working outside the home. It was very embarrassing for heavily veiled women in their enveloping garments to go to the equivalent of Victoria's Secret and be waited on by a man.

The law was changed in 2006 when the government ordered that these jobs should be transferred to women, but there were so many objections that nothing changed. After all, women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, and there is little public transportation, so men would have to drive them to work. And if sales women were in the shops, windows would have to be covered over so men couldn't see them. And of course, no women had been trained to work in retail. But it has only taken six years for the law to be enforced, which isn't bad, considering the history of womankind.

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

Before we start feeling smug and self-satisfied about how far advanced we westerners are, we should remember a few things. When I graduated from college, it was legal for an employer to refuse to employ women for certain jobs. I was really lucky to get my first job in journalism working for Time Magazine in New York, but as a woman I would never be allowed to write for the magazine. I could be only an "editorial researcher", gathering all the data, interviewing people, sending cables to correspondents, but then when I had all the information, I had to give this file to a man, who would write the story. After he 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 State University to be certified as a teacher, a fellow who was in some of my classes said that he favored a law saying women should be paid the same as men. At the time, this seemed to make him a very liberal chap, but he explained that if a school could hire me for less money than they'd offer him, I'd get the job. It was a case of enlightened self-interest.

Although women in the United States finally were granted the right to vote in 1920, it was not until 1943 that women in South Dakota were allowed to serve on juries. Something in our society seems to have always held that women are too delicate, or unable to understand complex issues, perhaps too morally flawed to be able to make good decisions for themselves and others.

This attitude still prevails among some in Congress and some of our Legislators. The Republican Party has recently been accused of waging a "war on women" because of proposed legislation that would restrict women's access to family planning, health care or even medically necessary abortion. In response, the Legislators say they are just promoting laws to protect 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 be contacted at her  new e-mail address, which is:   collins1@midco.net

            

Adding up at year's end

by Lorraine Collins

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

For instance, there's this one from the first column last January. In discussing expiration dates, I said, "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." I think that covered quite a few issues, right there, but several months later I'd add Republican primary debates.

In an April column I started out discussing socks and ended up writing about 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 double in 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 one percent, but I did suggest we should be paying attention to the situation. I suggested that again in October when I mentioned that there has been a big increase in needy families coming to our food banks and many people were beginning to gather in America's streets the way they had in Egypt and 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 as being a possible candidate in the Republican Primary as I mentioned him last June before his band wagon really got rolling. I pointed out that one difficulty with the governor was that he has said he wants to amend the Constitution 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 the 17th Amendment in 1913. I don't know why Governor Perry trusts state Legislators over the public, but I did point out that the first three words of our 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 a highway, then hitchhiking to get to the Legislature. I wouldn't want to do either of those things today, but 30 or more years ago they didn't seem unreasonable or hazardous activities. I don't think it's caution so much as exhaustion 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 children whose 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 support for public education.

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

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

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