Dakota Beacon

Sometimes, success is keeping your head above water when others are drowning.  The Associated Press issues an Economic Stress Index for U.S. counties with populations over 25,000.  Its December index placed three ND counties in the first eleven of the nation’s best counties: Ward (Minot), Grand Forks (GF) and Burleigh (Bismarck).  Eight of the ten most stressed counties are in California’s agricultural Central Valley.

When it rains it pours!  It would be hyperbolic to say NDSU is coming apart, but it sure stays in the news.  Former President Joe Chapman’s expensive house and extravagant spending are in the rear view mirror, so is the collapse of a campus office building, but the school’s budgetary problems are very much in front.  NDSU Acting President Dick Hanson announced further budget cuts.  As icing on the cake, the executive director of the NDSU Foundation, Jim Miller, was arrested for drunk driving.  The foundation was involved in Chapman’s house, employed Mrs. Chapman and subsidized his family in numerous other ways. 

Embattled Jamestown Mayor Clarice Liechty has thrown in the towel -- she will not run for re-election in June.  Liechty is consistently opposed by other members of the City Council, but she does not see herself as the problem, her view -- “We need a complete change in the council.”  Another shot: “I’m a successful businesswoman, although . . . the council may not see it.”  Liechty is right about one thing -- she once said this newsletter needed improvement.

In an amazing sleight of hand, the Jamestown Sun squeezed both a “bravo” and a “buffalo chip” out of the same event.  They praised the “Polar Pig Splash” for charitable fundraising, while simultaneously “chipping” thieves who stole the event proceeds from donation jars.

Reporters must have second thoughts when their boss is part of a story they are covering.  Mike Jacobs is editor and publisher of the GF Herald and, until Jan. 26, the president of the North Valley Arts Council.  Four months earlier, NoVAC hired Pamela Siers as director.  She is a veteran art consultant from the East -- in Febuary, Siers left the director position following a stormy start.  The new NoVAC president, Julie Rygg, who is also director of the GF Visitors Bureau, declined to say whether Siers resigned or was terminated.  A Herald article said Jacobs was influential in hiring Siers and remained her strongest supporter on the NoVAC board.

Public Service Commissioner Brian Kalk quoted TV detective Joe Friday: “Those are the facts.”  Kalk was addressing critics of ND energy policy, he said, “North Dakota is No. 1 in lignite coal production, No. 4 in oil production and now, No. 10 in wind production.  North Dakota is a leader in all types of energy research and development.”  Take that you dirty rats!

Horse trading for the 2011 ND Legislature is already beginning.  David Piepkorn, a Fargo city commissioner, admits Fargo needs big money to buy permanent flood protection.  He says, “I know that some will say that Fargo should pay its own way,” but then goes on to list the ways Fargo is vital: “It is an economic engine for the rest of the state.”  He also slyly added that western counties will need money to solve the infrastructure problems caused by the oil and gas boom.  The market is open -- the trading has begun.

Bismarck attorney Timothy Purdon has been nominated as U.S. Attorney for ND.  CoDoPo (ND’s congressional delegation) hailed the belated nomination as an “outstanding choice.”  Bill Brudvik, a disappointed Democratic candidate for the spot, had a different take: “When President Obama said he wanted to restore the independence and dignity of the U.S. attorney’s office . . . and then appoints a political activist and party fundraiser, it seems a little to me more like ‘politics as usual’ than ‘change we can believe in.’”  Purdon is ND’s Democratic National Committeeman and a fundraiser for Democratic candidates.

Goodrich (150) is a declining town in the Prairie Pothole region -- almost dead center in ND.  Among its claims to fame, Goodrich was the home of a 101-year-old Avon lady who died about ten years ago.  Rosie Griess became immortal for selling Avon products almost to the time of her last breath.  Forum columnist Bob Lind says Rosie’s persistence is not the entire story -- her great granddaughter, who accompanied Rosie on her Avon rounds, has applied for graduate school at NDSU and is busily and happily . . . selling Avon products.

You might consider Grandma Judy Evans of Langdon a little ruthless.  When a great horned owl swooped down and snatched her little Riley, a Papillon dog, Judy held and choked the owl, finishing it off with a shovel.  The Herald’s Ryan Bakken says she has only one regret, “Now, everyone calls me the owl slayer.”

Do older Nodaks suffer disproportionately from compulsive hoarding syndrome?  Is this a way children of the Great Depression try to compensate for earlier feelings of deprivation?  Hoarding is a pathological attachment to belongings of dubious value -- the resulting clutter can make a house unusable.  A Fargo psychologist says, “Often, relatives and friends feel cleaning up the place will solve the problem.  But if what’s going on underneath is not addressed, in a couple of weeks the house will be messy again.”

Beer-making in ND has a checkered history.  There were efforts in the 1960s to establish Dakota beer brands, but they never caught on.  The Tribune reports new efforts to slacken beer thirst --  both a beer pub and a microbrewery are on the drawing boards in Bismarck.  Paul Nelson is a chemist in the Twin Cities and a member of a Bismarck family, he says, “North Dakota is kind of considered a dead zone for craft brewing.”  But he believe the Bismarck beer scene is ripe for exploitation, it has all the right ingredients: barley, beer drinkers and Germans.  His family has chosen a quixotic name for their microbrewery, Edwinton Brewing, derived from Bismarck’s original name.

Quote without comment: Praising the Minot AFB, the Minot Daily News wrote, ”Its personnel, after some highly publicized mishaps in the past couple of years, have again proven to be among the best in the Air Force. Indeed, that is why only the best come north.”

DAKTOIDS: The population of Minot AFB, about half of whom live off base, represents about two percent of the state’s population and a payroll of about 1/4 billion dollars . . . In 1993, Devils Lake was a little nothing lake, covering only 85 square miles, but since then the lake has been on growth hormones sweeping by national contenders such as Lake Tahoe to reach today’s 255 square miles.  The lake is still ambitious and has set its sights on 400 square miles . . . ND’s economic boom has been great for the trained and educated.  However, the Forum said the boom is not “trickling down” to those with lower skills -- there is an increase in ND’s working poor.