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Northern Valley Beacon

News, notes, and observations from the James River Valley in northern South Dakota with special attention to reviewing the performance of the media--old and new. E-Mail to MinneKota@gmail.com

Saturday, March 9, 2024

Oh, didn't he dither?

When Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) rebutted Joe Biden's state of the union speech, she based her comments on the contention that he was dithering away and lost control of the country.  However, much you may disagree with what Biden has done, you cannot validly say he hasn't done it.  Saying that Biden can't perform because he's old is like saying Obama couldn't perform because he's black.  Ageism is a prejudice just like racism.

As my spouse has been a staff member for both  U.S. senator and a congress woman, I am familiar with the reputations of many people who have worked in Congress, Joe Biden being one of them.  Biden is a task man.  When there was a  particularly difficult issue to address in Congress but something had to get done, he was often assigned to help get it done.  He has an affable and kindly demeanor that could cool down partisan rancor.  He was friends with many people from the opposing party.  

Joe Biden is a stutterer.  He has had to learn a therapeutic procedure that stutterers employ so that they don't stutter when they speak.  Stutterers can generally read aloud without stuttering. (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/us/politics/trump-mocks-biden-stutter.html)

During my first year of college teaching, I had two stutterers in my classes.  I was concerned about how to treat them during a class discussion.  I didn't want to put them in an embarrassing situation in front of their peers.  The college I was at then was known for its speech therapy program, so I asked the chair of that department for advice.  He explained that stutterers process language differently than those who don't stutter, and a technique that stutterers are taught to help them with their speech is to write the words in their heads that they want to say before they pronounce them.  As it turned out, the reason that the two young men chose that college was because of its speech therapy program.  I gained a great respect and admiration for stutterers from that orientation and especially for those young men.  I note that Joe Biden often refers to notes at his press conferences and often hesitates a bit as he answers questions.  His occasional stumbles are not a matter of age.  And he joins Winston Churchill as a world leader who stuttered.

As an old person myself, I am well aware of the vicissitudes of age.  One of them is the huge amount of information one acquires.  When asked to give a perspective on some matter, there are so many facts to sort through.  It may take a while to give a considered answer because there is so much information to consider.  When we call up information on our computers, we get that whirling circle or a notice that the computer is gathering and loading the data.  But we seem to expect humans to be instantaneous in their thought processes.  It has nothing to do with age, but with process.

However, there is a fatigue factor to consider.  This is something that affects people of any age, and people who do intellectual work know that there are times when you have to rest and renew your approach when dealing with vast amounts of information and difficult issues.  We warn people about making decisions when they are tired and advise them to tackle a problem in the morning after a good night's sleep.  Competent decision-makers avoid being impetuous and give their information and their own thought processes careful deliberation.   Taking care and time is not a matter of age;  it's a matter of competence and integrity.

Acts of competence, care, and thoroughness should not be considered dithering.  Calling Biden a ditherer is in the same class as calling Barack Obama a n*gger.  We should hope to lift our politics up out of that level if the American experiment in democracy is to have a chance to succeed.



Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Procto-America

 procto-

combining form

indicating the anus or rectum: proctology

   

The election of Donald Trump to the presidency signaled a drastic change in American values.  It was a rejection of what Tom Brokaw termed The Greatest Generation, and everything it stood for and accomplished.  It was an expression of America's fascination with and love of assholes.  The United States have become a procto-nation, a nation of assholes, which they want led by a preeminent asshole, Donald Trump.

There is a segment of Americans who admire success and for whom the measure of success is wealth.  They admire Donald Trump, therefore, because he has acquired millions, or is said to have, at any rate.  In their minds, wealth is the mark of leadership.  But Trump has established a record of saying stupid and malevolent things that call unto question his fitness for office.  He is such an obstreperous jerk, an asshole, that he seems unfit to be involved in any human activity that requires intelligence, probity, and respectfulness.  What is disturbing about Trump is not his politics, but his demeanor and what it portrays about his mind and his motives.  What is more disturbing is the number of Americans who approve and support such a person.

An aspect of America's system of freedom is that Americans have the capability to vote away their democracy.  It has developed a pronto-caucus which seems interested in doing just that.  They threaten to change the land of the free and home of the brave to land of the servile and home of the dolt.


Sunday, March 3, 2024

Elegy for a dying town

More than 300 more people will lose their jobs in Aberdeen in coming months as the town faces another episode in its history of abandonment.  Banner Engineering is closing its plant which had 311 employees.  Just a year ago, it expanded its Aberdeen plant.

The nation is experiencing a high point in the economy, but Aberdeen seems to be left out.

This is the latest in a series of major manufacturing companies closing down their operations in Aberdeen.  In the 1980s. Control Data shut down its Aberdeen plant with 1,340 employees to move the jobs to the Pacific Rim.  More recently, Molded Fiber Glass left town, joined by Hub City, Inc., which had been in town for 125 years.

The closure of Presentation College last summer marked a trend that community leaders don't want to talk about.  And they don't.  But it demonstrates a reality, which is a community in decline.  That decline is more evident in the retail sector which in recent years has had the closings of Kmart, Shopko, J. C. Penney, Herbergers, Sears, and Conlin's.  Aberdeen has lost its role as a shopping destination for the region. 

The most significant closing was Presentation College because it indicated that its  sponsors did not see a future in Aberdeen. In their statements on the closing, the leaders listed the demerits of the town as a  factor:  its remoteness was the major one cited. 

As the business editor for a newspaper, I covered many business changes, relocations, and closures.  Mergers and buyouts often signal an eventual closing.  Smaller companies which are merged or purchased by a larger one disappear into the corporate murk.  An example in South Dakota is the Gateway computer.  Once prominent in the midwest, it disappeared when the company moved to California.  Decisions to move or close a facility are often notional.  Executives decide to make a change for personal reasons or just because they have the power to do so.  Business reasons are often not good reasons.  They are a matter of executive choice.

A lot of executives have chosen to shut down their operations in Aberdeen.  Why Banner decided to abandon its operation here a year after expanding it is a matter of someone's choice.  Given the circumstances, it is difficult to understand how it could be the only rational choice.   

Someone or a group of someones decided to abandon a newly expanded plant and get rid of 311 people.  Corporations are not democracies.  They are dictatorships.  The people affected by their decisions cannot call them into account.  

Northern State University has a strong business department.  It cooperates closely with some business ventures.  It was involved in the EB-5 scandal  a few years back when some corporate magicians made millions of dollars disappear.  Although not primarily a research university, it is in a position to study the community which supports it.  While it can make nice with the businesses in the community, it can also exercise its academic function of examining how companies are going about their business.  Are they pursuing the good business practices taught in the classrooms?  Are they meeting the standards of competence and integrity that contribute to an honest democratic society?

And what happened to the people who have lost their jobs in recent years?  I recall when Control Data dumped its employees into the job market, many came to Northern to prepare for new careers.  But what has happened to the people let go by Molded Fiber Glass and Hub City?  What will happen to the people from Banner Engineering?

Economic development and business promotional people customarily suck up to and bow down to businesses to attract them and keep them in a community.  No one keeps a serious check on how the businesses are performing as corporate citizens.  And being a corporate citizen is a matter of how one contributes to and lives in the community. 

In a statement about its closing, Banner said, "We regret having to take this action and will work to provide the resources and tools to make this transition as successful as possible.”  From the business standpoint. a successful transition means getting out of town as fast and unobstructed as possible.  It doesn't mean having anything further to do with the community.

At this time, state officials are commenting on a shortage in the labor force.  Aberdeen will contribute 311 people to alleviate that shortage, but where will they gave to go and what will they have to do?  Finding a commensurate job in Aberdeen seems unlikely.

The city manager recently issued a glowing prospective on Aberdeen's outlook.  When asked about specific developments, the only thing he could cite is the upgrading of the waste water treatment plant.  Could some of those 300 people be hired for that job?  As a neighbor put it, dealing with more of Aberdeen's shit.

But at some point, Aberdeen leaders will have to face reality.  And reality can't be dispensed with by glowing predictions that do not address the facts.  



Friday, March 1, 2024

Prattle is all the rage

Friday night is the night for discussion shows on television.  For a while, I watched  some network discussion about presidential candidates during which some people registered their attitudes about Joe Biden and Donald Trump.  There was much talk about age and how it affected ability to do the job.  I was struck by the absence of any facts about what the candidates have done or not done.  There was mention of both of the men visit\ting the southern border and of an immigration bill that is floating around Congress, but there was no reporting on what the bill proposed or what issues were being raised about it.

So, I turned to the Northern State University channel, and four professors were chatting on the same subject.  They were sprawled in easy chairs around a coffee table in very casual clothing.  Very casual, hell.  They looked downright unkempt.  Although that was appropriate for the level of discussion.  It seemed to have no point of examination.  It consisted of asserting some contentions, but were expressive of the attitudes of the speakers, not the characters or accomplishments or lack thereof the candidates.

We, the general public, used to refer to such exchanges as tavern talk.  But this session didn't offer the compensation of a cold beer.  It did inspire a trip to the refrigerator, however.

Thursday, December 7, 2023

YMCA: Where some go to get fit and others go to get shot, in the town where democracy goes to die.


A clown-car spectacular!

Several law enforcement agencies were outside the Aberdeen Family YMCA responding to a shooting in the parking lot Wednesday, Nov. 15. Aberdeen Insider photo by Troy McQuillen


A man was shot dead in the parking lot of the YMCA.  Law enforcement and the news media treated the matter with the comportment as if someone passed gas during high mass at church.  They wrinkled their collective noses, exhaled, and went about their business as if nothing happened.

This report from the Aberdeen Insider:  "At this point,  [Police Capt. Tanner] Jondahl said, officers have determined two vehicles pulled into the parking lot and one person shot the other in the north entrance of the YMCA parking lot."  (That's a nasty part of the body to get shot in.)

The problem is that the victim was shot dead.  The victim was not named.  Neither was the shooter.

And for the most part, the entire incident remans factless.  So, the local newspaper, the Aberdeen American News, did not bother to report  what actually happened..  It published this statement:  "The name of the person who was shot has not yet been released pending notification of family."  And that appears to be the final word on a fatal shooting in this fine, upstanding community, as far as that newspaper is concerned. That's probably because the paper no longer has any reporters in town.  The staff of the Aberdeen Insider is comprised of two former reporters from the Aberdeen American News.

That brings up the matter of withholding names of people involved in law enforcement and other public incidents.  There are no laws or rules regarding the disclosure of identities of people involved in government proceedings.  There are laws requiring that accurate records be kept and that those records are open to the public because they are the property of the people in a democracy.  Records may be withheld if the information would impair an investigation or a business negotiation in process, but they are supposed to be available once the work is completed.

South Dakota has what purports to be a sunshine law which requires that government records be maintained and open to the public.  However, the law provides discretion to public officials which in effect nullifies the open record requirement.  Generally in the case of a death, the deceased person will be named in reports, but news media withhold the name of the deceased until the family is informed, which is usually  a matter of a few hours.  The police may either inform the media if the family has not been notified or embargo the name until the notification is made.  But the police do not have the authority to withhold names because they want to.  

In this case the name of the man killed, Donald Michael Heinz, was withheld for four days.  The name of the shooter was never revealed, nor were the circumstances of the shooting.  And that is a violation of democratic principle that the people have a right to know and an obligation to keep informed about how their government is performing.

The reports published the names of all the agencies involved in the shooting of Mr. Heinz as they patted themselves on the back for doing such a great job, but not a word was uttered about what actually happened.  And that is a failure of the agencies and the news media.  

It is not clear what is behind the refusal to inform the public in Aberdeen.  It could be the officious, bumbling ignorance and incompetence of some public employees or it could be the nefarious collusion of those who think they are the rulers of the public.  But crimes and disasters do not happen anonymously.  They happen to real people with names, ages, and addresses, and real people respond to them.  Sometimes incompetently.

The Washington Post has a motto on its masthead that says, "Democracy Dies in Darkness."  It seems to have taken its last gasp in Aberdeen.

Below is the coverage of the homicide, and no one is informed about what kind of homicide it is.


 

  

 [Aberdeen Insider 11-17-23]  A shooting incident on Wednesday, Nov. 15, where one person shot another in the parking lot of the Aberdeen Family YMCA  still remains under investigation as the Aberdeen Police Department continues to look into what led to the incident.

According to a news release from the Aberdeen Police Department, law enforcement received a report of a man with a gunshot wound who was in the YMCA parking area around 12:15 p.m. on Wednesday. Life-saving measures were attempted and the man was taken to the hospital, but he died from his injuries.


“The individual who is believed to have fired the gunshot was on scene when law enforcement arrived,” per the release.

Police Capt. Tanner Jondahl said the person believed to have shot the gun was initially detained, but released on Thursday. No charges had yet been filed as of Friday but, the case remains an active investigation. Any charges, he said, will be under discussion with the Brown County State’s Attorney’s Office.

As of Friday, State’s Attorney Karly Winter said the case remains an ongoing investigation and the case is still pending.

“We want to have all the evidence before making a charging decision,” Winter said.

Officers had determined by Wednesday that two vehicles pulled into the north entrance of the Aberdeen Family YMCA parking lot and one person shot the other, Johndahl said.

YMCA staff assisted with life-saving measures, he said.

According to a statement from YMCA Executive Director Mike Quast members and staff immediately called 911 after the shooting occurred.

“We are thankful for their quick response and are keeping those who responded as well as the victim and their family in our thoughts and prayers,” Quast said in a statement.

According to the release, Avera St. Lukes made the determination to go on lockdown out of an abundance of caution. No security measures were taken at the YMCA or at Roncalli’s elementary school. Jondahl said officers were able to discern very quickly there wasn’t a security risk to people at the YMCA or the school that would necessitate a lockdown. According to the release, the incident appears to be isolated and unrelated to the YMCA.

“The safety and wellbeing of everyone who enters our doors is a top priority of the Aberdeen Family YMCA, and we will continue to work with Aberdeen Police Department to ensure our safety policies align with best-in-class practices. We are also providing mental health counseling to the staff who responded to the situation,” Quast said.

In addition to the Aberdeen Police Department, other agencies responding are The Brown County Sheriff’s Office, the South Dakota Highway Patrol, the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation, Brown County Emergency Management and Aberdeen Fire & Rescue.

**************************************************************************************

[Aberdeen Insider 11-21-23]  A 70-year-old Aberdeen man who died as the result of a Nov. 15 shooting has been identified.

The incident remains under investigation, but Brown County State’s Attorney Karly Winter confirmed the man who died was Donald Heinz.

The shooting was in the parking lot of the Aberdeen Family YMCA.

According to police reports at the time, Heinz and the man who is believed to be the shooter both pulled into the parking lot where Heinz was shot. The identity of the person who shot Heinz has not been released, though he was immediately detained by law enforcement and later released. No charges have been filed.

“We want to have all the evidence before making a charging decision,” Winter said.

The shooting was around 12:15 p.m. on Nov. 15. Life-saving measures were attempted, and Heinz was taken to the hospital, but he died from his injuries.

Avera St. Luke’s Hospital went on lockdown out of an abundance of caution, according to the initial news release from the Aberdeen Police Department. No security measures were taken at the YMCA or Roncalli’s elementary school as law enforcement determined there wasn’t a security risk.

OBITUARY: Donald Michael Heinz

In addition to the Aberdeen Police Department, other agencies responding included the Brown County Sheriff’s Office, the South Dakota Highway Patrol, the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation, Brown County Emergency Management and Aberdeen Fire & Rescue.



Thursday, November 2, 2023

The day we blew the school up

 

The old Moline High School, now an apartment building
The science classrooms and labs were on the top floor where I went to high school.  Some of the labs had sky lights in addition to the windows.  In chemistry lab on this particular day, we were generating oxygen through some chemical reaction.  We were instructed in setting up the glass ware over a bunsen burner, letting the chemicals work, and then lighting the gas that emanated from the  pipette to produce a clear blue flame.  There were nice blue flames aglow throughout the lab, and my lab partner Dan and I were carefully assembling our experiment, measuring the chemicals, getting them to cook for a time to produce the oxygen, held the match to it, and lucky for us, the explosion sent the entire experiment straight up into the sky light, and then rained down chemicals and glass into the laboratory sink.  In trying to determine what went wrong, Mr. Swanson said we probably had an obstruction in our pipette.  

Our obstructed pipette became a feature of the After Dinner Club-Maroon Fellowship annual review show which did a sketch of why the school held a fire drill if Newquist and Holland were ever seen in the chemistry lab together.  The sketch capitalized on the known fact that I smoked cigarettes and portrayed me as trying to light the oxygen gas experiment with a lit cigarette.

The chemistry lab was the source of many interruptions of the school day.  A favorite prank was to create a rotten egg smell that would pervade the building and cause an evacuation until it was cleared of the odor.  At a school board meeting a citizen asked why they bothered to clear the building;  why not let the nasty little asses sit there and breathe the foul air they had created?  The young speech teacher asked who would want to sit in a room and breathe air that smells like a particularly egregious fart.  The young speech teacher received a letter of reprimand from the school board for saying the word fart in public, suggesting it was permissible to fart in public, but never to use the word.  And where does that smart aleck get off using a word like egregious The school board passed a resolution that the chemicals used in creating that odor be kept under lock and key.  That was proven absurd as the odor became more frequent as its ingredients were smuggled in from the outside  and placed in the ventilator shafts. 

Times have changed.  My spouse works at the high school.  I have never heard her mention the school being emptied to clear it of a rotten egg smell.  Nor for any chemistry experiments that went awry.

However, schools are alert for possible shootings, and long for the day when rotten egg smells were the biggest threat.  


                                                                                                                          

Sunday, October 29, 2023

Aberdeen, a great place to be from

 

Aberdeen was once a shopping center for northeastern South Dakota and southeastern North Dakota.  It had national brand stores such as Walmart, Target, Kmart, Shopko, Sears, Herbergers, among others, and a functioning downtown area as well as a couple of strip malls.  For a time, it supported a good-sized mall, but the tenant stores come and go.  Many went.  When Northern  State U. students from the area wrote essays about growing up, they often included memories about coming to Aberdeen to shop, dine, attend movies, sport events, and special entertainment events. For the most part, the places of those memories don't exist anymore.  When I first moved to Aberdeen, there were, for example, four mens clothing stores on Main Street downtown.  No such enterprises exist in town now.  

Aberdeen still has a Target and a Walmart and two locally owned supermarkets.   In the retail sector, Kohl's and Marshall's are recent additions.   But the chamber of commerce and other promotional organizations say little about the town's advantages because most of their efforts are devoted to denying that the town is shrinking commercially.  People in Aberdeen tend to drive the four-lane highways to Sioux Falls or Fargo or cross-country to the Twin Cities for their serious shopping.

The buying habits within a community change with the times, the fashions, and the shifts of populations.  Aberdeen's changes are trending downward.  It has lost stores such as Kmart and Shopko recently.

This summer marked the closing of Presentation College.  The college leaders said the remoteness of the town was one of the factors in their decision to close the college.  It is somewhat difficult for students to get to Aberdeen.  It's not on the way to anywhere, and is not much of a destination in its own right, a fact that community leaders are loathe to admit.  Aberdeen's most important asset at this juncture is Northern State University.

The city is purchasing the Presentation athletic facilities, including an inflatable dome, to add to its parks and recreation program.  The academic and residential facilities remain vacant at this juncture, reminders of a lost educational enterprise.

 The town has a history of being abandoned by enterprises.  Control Data closed its operation in Aberdeen which had 1,340 employees at one time.  Some employers have merged with or been acquired by large companies, and seem to follow a pattern of shipping the operations performed in Aberdeen to other locations.  Such is the case with Hub City, Inc., a manufacturer of transmission parts which had operated in Aberdeen for 125 years before its corporate owner, Regal Beloit Corp., which is now Regal Rexnord, closed it down.  Molded Fiberglass for which a special building was put up for manufacturing blades for wind-powered electricity generators left town in 2021.

Businesses have noted the difficulty in finding and keeping competent employees, and some have closed because of it.  This was cited as the closing of a Max and Irma's restaurant.  A personnel manager who was a neighbor of mine complained that as soon as people established good credentials at his firm, they would use them to obtain jobs in other places.  He eventually followed suit.  Employable people are aware of the fickleness with which corporations have treated Aberdeen, and choose to invest their energies where companies offer a more stable work environment.

Public transportation to and from Aberdeen is scarce.  The town gets its nickname, Hub City, from the fact that five railroads once converged here. There are no passenger trains now, but a couple of BNSF freight trains rumble through a few times a day.   A bus service is listed as having a stop at an automotive repair shop, but I haven't seen one traveling through town recently.  Through federal subsidies, Sky West has airplane flights to and from Minneapolis a couple times a day at some inconvenient times.  If you google for the flight schedule, however, you won't find  one.  Aberdeen does have a 4-lane expressway east for 75 miles to I-29, and 2-lane highways in other directions. An automobile is essential for getting in and out of Aberdeen.  And many people have chosen to drive the heck out of here.

The current population of Aberdeen is listed as 28,500, up from 26,100 in 2010.  While Aberdeen, along with the rest of the state, has shown growth, there has been some fluctuation in the town's expansion.   The population took some hits ten years ago when a meat packing venture failed as part of a scandal involving the government EB-5 program.  But Aberdeen is affected by a situation that is statewide.  It was brought up at a meeting of the governor's economic advisers:  “Trying to keep our talent in the state, rather than going elsewhere, is the continual challenge we’ll all have.”

The outmigration of educated and talented people is shifting the population in ways that are indicated in the political make up of the state by voter registration:  Republican, 302,066; Democratic, 148,136; Libertarian, 2,943; independent, 89,180.  Republicans are more than double the number of Democrats.  Just a few years ago, Democrats held all three federal offices, the one House of Representative seat and both Senate seats.  With today's political makeup, it doesn't look possible to elect a Democrat to anything.  That applies to Aberdeen and Brown County.

Political "scientists" castigate the Democratic Party for the Republican domination of state's political offices.  They accuse it of slovenliness.  They fail to acknowledge that the outmigration from the state is led by people of the liberal bent who wish to escape the mean-minded stodginess of which the so-called political scientists are a part.  The governor's advisers, at least, note the problem.   The dominance of South Dakota governance by Republicans is a reflection of the outmigration.   Liberals tend to flee from the state for political and cultural reasons.  And that is true for Aberdeen.  Many of the younger people I encounter are focused on getting out of town and living their lives elsewhere. They tend to be of a liberal mentality.

With two colleges in town and their associated activities of sports and cultural activities, Aberdeen was an educational center.  It boasted both a public and a private Catholic higher education facilities.  The closing of Presentation College removes a basis for that claim.  Northern State University has stepped up to take over some of the programs Presentation offered, such as nursing.  Northern has almost  a 7 percent enrollment increase over last year, some of which is likely the absorption of local Presentation students. 

For those who find the politics and culture oppressive, there is some comfort in knowing there are other places and other cultures to go to.  Higher education offers a passport to those places.  The talent is here, looking for some place to go.  Aberdeen is a great place to be from.  That seems to be its future.


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