SCHMID: LOOKING BACK FROM THE LEFT COAST
Would you like to be one of the Top 20 highest-paid public employees in ND? If you do, don’t go to Bismarck -- go to Grand Forks where you will find eight of the Top 10 led by a department chair at the UND Med School who makes $758,000. The governor and other state officials don’t begin to make the list. To make the Top 20, try to fit into one of three categories: faculty member at the Med School, psychiatrist for the State Hospital, or president or coach at UND and NDSU. Position #20 is held by Dr. Kimberly Krohn of the Med School, who makes $262,000.
As Dr. Hamid Shirvani heads down the road, the Board of Higher Education needs an interim chancellor -- they have asked for public recommendations. Tom Dennis at the GF Herald cheerfully stepped up and proposed a list -- the “Magnificent Seven.” Congratulations, Tom, this is highly unusual -- newspaper editors usually don’t stick their necks out -- they second-guess decision makers. Dennis proposed a solid list of senior executives and administrators who have relatively unblemished careers -- they range from the dean of the UND Med School to a federal administrator -- the list even includes a former chancellor.
Tom Dennis has another idea, but this one needs work. He has believed for years that ND students would benefit greatly from Chinese immersion programs in elementary schools. Those students, he thinks, could eventually jump into the arms of Google, Apple or Microsoft. Putting aside the impracticality of attracting and retaining good Chinese instructors in smaller ND communities, there are at least two major problems with Chinese immersion programs. Mastering Chinese language to the satisfaction of educated Chinese is overwhelming -- read “River Town” by Peter Hessler, a Peace Corps volunteer in China. Secondly, there is absolutely no shortage of American citizens fluent in both English and Chinese with high level computer, engineering and science skills -- if you have the slightest doubt, step on to any U. of California campus.
Clay Jenkinson began his 400th Bismarck Tribune column with a rather small note of celebration. He agonizes over the Oil Boom and its physical and social impact on ND. Yet, he says if he were told, “You have to vote yes or no on the carbon boom, there can be no middle ground, I would swallow hard and vote yes. But my heart has been breaking in a kind of silent slow motion for several years. And I do think there is a middle ground.”
“We have nothing to fear from biotech wheat. This is a safe product. Approving it for commercial use would allow wheat farmers to grow more food and reduce their production costs.” -- State senator Terry Wanzek, who represents four central ND counties, in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. He said American farmers are planting fewer acres of wheat because it is a less profitable crop than biotech crops. Wanzek used to grow wheat on 80% of his acreage, now he is down to about 10% because of the advantages of corn and soybeans.
The reasons are not clear, but out-of-staters are disproportionately represented in ND auto fatalities and serious accidents. Unfamiliarity could be a factor, fatigue and alcohol are issues, but just being young, male and away from home may be a big part of it. Last week two young Montana motorcyclists were hit head on and killed by a Texas motorist trying to get around a semi with a Wyoming driver.
The above accident occurred in McKenzie County where Hwy 85 is said by the Forum News Service to be “one of the busiest two-lane highways in America.” Two days later the driver of a Hummer died in a fiery crash as he rammed the rear of a semi which was backing up on Hwy 85. The McKenzie County emergency manager threatened to shutdown heavy truck traffic on the county’s gravel roads until they dry out. In recent weeks, trucks have damaged 500 miles of gravel road causing $50 million of damage.
Nodaks have 780,000 telephones, a little over one phone per person, but two-thirds are cell phones. It makes sense that in a flat, sparsely populated state, cell phones are the best fit. Blogger Rob Port speculates that as the percentage of cell phones rises, it will no longer be economical to maintain land lines in parts of ND.
Richard Ramirez, known as the Night Stalker, committed murder and mayhem in Southern California during the mid-80s. Ramirez (53) was one of the most feared killers in California history. In 1989, he was convicted of 13 murders and sentenced to death. He died recently of natural causes, as is so often the case in death sentences. The Ramirez story leads to Bismarck, where Billy Carns (58) lives next door to his mother. Carns is one of Ramirez’s victims and is partially paralyzed and has brain damage. Ramirez climbed through a window and shot Carns in the head while he was sleeping. At the time, Carns was a promising 30-year-old systems designer in Mission Viejo, California.
“It seems that almost everyone in Williston has a lilac bush in his or her yard.” -- Sara Spaulding, a Williston Herald columnist, celebrated ND’s lilacs. When I was a child, there was a brief period in spring when lilac blossoms fringed our yard and the blooms floated in mason jars around the house. Spaulding wrote, “Perhaps lilacs are so well loved partially because of their short-lived state. When they only bloom for so long in the spring with their overwhelmingly sweet fragrance, they become cherished.”
That’s one way of doing it. Justine “Rusty” Soderquist Fleck of Bismarck was a twin born in Minnesota in 1921. She was delivered at home by her physician grandfather who placed the twins in shoe boxes surrounded by hot bricks to keep them warm. “Rusty” grew out of her shoe box, moved with her parents to Bismarck, where she married an attorney and lived until her recent death. Her life seemed ideal with many clubs and activities in Bismarck, winter in Scottsdale and summer at Detroit Lakes.
It’s a mainstay of college football -- a big school starts its season by booking a home game with a school from a lesser league, paying them a handsome bonus, then killing them. UND will play Pac 12 teams Utah ($450,000 guarantee) in 2017 and Washington ($500,000) in 2018.
DAKTOIDS: The Forum thinks the state should subsidize the film industry; the Bismarck Tribune says it shouldn’t. The Tribune recalls how the state got excited and wasted $1.7 million on the movie “Wooly Boys” . . . What to you do with a dried up little town? In the case of Manfred (on Hwy 52 east of Harvey), the entire town was turned into a museum . . . The Dakotas have the lowest cost of living in the nation -- ND is 89% of the national average. If you have a little more money to throw around, go to Hawaii which is 116% of the national average.
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