Murie In The Bad Lands

Do you know the name Olaus Murie? If not, don’t feel bad. Neither did I ten years ago. Then I underwent a Lillian Crook education, and now I can tell you he is widely acknowledged as the Father of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and an early and long-serving director of the Wilderness Society. He was one of America's leading mammalogists. Prior to joining the Wilderness Society, he served twenty-five years as a field biologist with the U.S. Biological Survey, now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He lived in Moose, Wyoming, near Jackson Hole, where he helped established the National Elk Range. He spent much time in Alaska. He was the author of “The Elk of North America” and many articles on natural history.

So it’s fitting to read some of the best words ever written about North Dakota, written by Murie, right now, as we finally begin the process of reducing the elk herd in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, which starts Monday. I’ll give you that connection in a minute.

Murie was almost a native North Dakotan. He grew up in Moorhead, Minnesota, so he knew this part of the country well. To read a short NPS website biography, go here. To learn more about this remarkable man, and his equally remarkable wife Mardy, read her book “Two in the Far North.” Anyway, sometime in the early 1950’s, shortly after the creation of Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park (later to become Theodore Roosevelt National Park), Murie was assigned to come to western North Dakota to study the wildlife of the newly created Park, and to make recommendations on what the wildlife population ought to be that would most resemble the period Roosevelt had spent here 50 years earlier. That was important because this was a memorial park, not a true national park.

A few months ago, when I started putting into this space some of The Best Things Ever Written About North Dakota, Lillian shared with me a copy of an 8-page document – a handwritten account of Murie’s visit to western North Dakota. In Murie’s own hand. It is the draft of a report he wrote as he considered making recommendations about wildlife in the newly created park. It’s a marvelous little bundle of paper, complete with words and lines crossed out, handwritten edits and corrections, and blanks where he was going to check a fact and insert it later in his final report (I've done that for him here). I don’t know this for sure, and Valerie Naylor, the current TRNP superintendent, can correct me if I am wrong, but it is likely upon Murie’s team's recommendation that elk were reintroduced into the park. He was, after all, one of the premier elk experts in America at the time. But it was not without some trepidation that he made this recommendation. Read Murie’s words of caution carefully below. I’ve highlighted them like this, because this is a timely issue. The elk numbers have now gotten way out of hand, and they’re going to start killing those elk next week. Stay out of Theodore Roosevelt National Park for a couple months. There are going to be bullets flying.

So here’s a transcription of Murie’s handwritten essay-like notes. Surely, these are some of the best words ever written about Theodore Roosevelt National Park, western North Dakota, and the entire state of North Dakota. By a truly remarkable man.

Olaus J. Murie

The Little Missouri had been to me a legendary stream. I think I could hardly have described my vicarious impression of the river, so vague can a purely imaginary picture be. Now, here before me, was reality.

It was the 4^th of November, when winter should have settled with snow flurries, somber skies and threat of more to come. But we were enjoying a remarkably pleasant week of clear blue skies.

Allyn had driven us through the badlands of North Dakota, our crude roads leading north from National Park Headquarters. Eventually he had pulled off the road. Nic, Jim and I had followed him as he pushed his way through weeds and rose bushes among the gray cottonwoods, until we assembled at the river bank. Over there, across the river, somewhere back in those cottonwoods, was the site of Roosevelt’s Elkhorn Ranch.

It was hard for me to comprehend all that our guide was telling us, for my thoughts went back to boyhood days, when I had sought adventure in “Hunting Trips of a Ranchman,” and ______________ (likely he later filled in “Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail”—Jim). I recalled the virile writings of our hunter-naturalist President, how they had pictured in the boyhood mind the antelope and bison, the calling of geese, the sage grouse – the appeal of far places – the boyhood yearning for adventure in wilderness. With a sort of wonder at the chain of events, I reviewed more recent sequences. North Dakota now had a national park. Congress had created the Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park. I understood it was to commemorate the wilderness life of an outstanding President. And here we were, a group of us, with an assignment to study the wildlife of this new park, its historic and wilderness aspects, and to make recommendations on what might be done to restore the animal life that was part of the scene in Roosevelt’s day.

We looked about us on the river bank. Several cottonwoods had been cut up by beavers years ago, and we looked at the gnawed lengths. There were the tracks of a white-tailed deer in the mud near the water. The muddy river, flowing silently by, was at low stage this time of year, but we could see the high scars in the cottonwoods, where ice in spring flood had cut and bruised them. And over across there was the historic site. What a memorial – the muddy banks and muddy water of a small river and a line of twisted leafless cottonwoods! Behind them rose a low bluff, rising to the upland beyond.

But its very simplicity was eloquent. There at one time had stood a significant log cabin. By recognizing this humble spot on the bank of the Little Missouri we do more than establish a reminder of a prominent national political figure. It pleased me that this was not a mountain spire, a figure carved in a cliff, or some other obtruding picture. By selecting this spot where had once stood a cabin, representative of the bigger scene, a spot no different from the rest of it up and down the river (rather less striking, in fact, than the rest of it), we effectively recognize an adventurous era, a significant experience of mankind, a stretch of country that is capable of instilling in us something that can hardly be named in ordinary prose, but may only be guessed by the poet.

A bald eagle appeared and settled for a moment in a big cottonwood. Then he rose in the air and we ourselves seemed to feel a lift as we watched him soar upward on the air currents near the bluff. He swerved downward again and we watched his shadows moving across the cliff—then up again, and he slanted off behind the hill.

Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park. That is the imposing title bestowed by Congress. I don’t know who drew the boundaries, or why they were drawn as they are. The park is made up of three distinct pieces. The south area, containing park headquarters, abuts on Highway 10 at Medora. It comprises a picturesque section of the badlands, with the Little Missouri running through it, and consists of ____ acres (46,178.57 – Jim). Northward, down the river, is the site of the Elk Horn Ranch, a small acreage dedicated to preserve that historic location. Still farther down river is the north area, another rugged section of the badlands, containing ___ acres (24,070.32 – Jim).

As we looked over the area during these autumn days and contemplated the grasslands, the supply of browse, the thin line of trees, the forage resources contained within the park boundaries, we could have wished the area was a little bigger, that these two areas were somehow connected. We discussed such concepts as biological units. We scrutinized the species of brushes present and judged their palatability for various “big game” species. We gratefully estimated the carrying capacity of some remnants of original grama grass prairie which had been included within the boundary. Bison? Mountain sheep? Elk? What would they do to the limited supply of red ozier dogwood, plum cherry? They would have to be fenced in, and stray cattle fenced out, for farms adjoin the park on all sides and we can’t have bison and elk running loose on the country side.

We were thrilled to find flocks of sharp-tailed grouse, apparently thriving. What would reintroduced grazing and browsing animals (do) to the security for grouse? I was acutely conscious of the small population of such grouse on the National Elk Refuge in Wyoming some years ago, and how they dwindled year by year until they disappeared. Had the intensive winter feeding of elk on this refuge, over a long period of years, affected the food supply of those grouse by destroying the willow growth?

Such are the considerations. Such is the problem in trying to keep some sort of biological balance in a national park of limited area. (Are you finally listening, National Park Service?—Jim) The natural vegetation is also part of the biological assets. These bits of short grass prairie, for instance, in a land that is steadily going under the plow. Where prairie has given way to plowed fields elsewhere, and has become but a memory in the minds of men, how precious then must be these fragments.

I pictured in my mind the future visitor to the badlands, we’ll say the visitor who is attuned to the message (of) wild open country. I pictured him climbing up to a grassy plateau, and sitting there on a knoll to contemplate the scene. There would be the scent of sod at his feet. He would look with interest at the curled heads of the grama grass, the grama grass of Roosevelt’s day, the grama grass of the tumultuous days when this country was formed.

Here is history! Our visitor looks across the badlands—the broken, tumbled badlands—domes and bluffs and color-banded rims. Traces of lignite coal are there, speaking of ages still farther back in time. And the colored ________, (scoria, he would have added later—Jim) the product of native clay baked by burning coal seams. Traces of petrified forest. A landscape of clay and sandstone, persistently, patiently carved by muddy water, through infinite ages, until these rugged land forms took shape. Our visitor will visualize the broad undulating North Dakota plains, here in the west broken open and dissected to reveal the long, long Nature’s history of the state, which is elsewhere hidden beneath plowed fields and dwellings of the state’s homeland.

The first morning we had gone up Munsen Creek, and came to a prairie dog town. At the far edge we saw two coyotes trotting about, and examination of some droppings we found revealed that they had previously fed on prairie dogs and wild plums. A few days later we saw a badger and a coyote in another “dog town,” and they had apparently nearly depopulated this prairie dog village. The badger glared at us before he disappeared down the enlarged burrow he had taken from a prairie dog. In the stream bottom nearby we found the tracks of a bobcat.

A guide in the north area told us of seeing a badger, a coyote and a bobcat in a prairie dog town. The bobcat had a prairie dog in its mouth. The acquisitive coyote made a run at him, but the bobcat ran up a tree a little way and calmly devoured his game. When he came down, the coyote again made a run at him, and they disappeared in the woods. The badger had been nosing about at the far edge of the “town.”

These are the experiences this new park holds for the appreciative visitor who will quietly seek them out. These are the thoughts we had in mind as we went over the country day after day, sizing up range land, seeking proper habitat for mountain sheep in case they should be brought back, trying to anticipate the impact of one animal population on another, the impact of both of them on plant life, and the impact of hordes of people on all of it. We tried to visualize as much of the historic animal life, restored as nearly as practicable, on a sustained basis, all within the boundary of land allowed by the act of Congress.

We were continually intrigued by the prairie dogs. We visualized mountain sheep restored to the area, at home once more on the pinnacles and bluffs overlooking grassy bottom domain of the prairie dogs; bison lazily moving about on the adjacent bits of prairie. In short, our study was a mixture of routine biological study and intense personal enjoyment of what we found. After all, in a national park the end product is the enjoyment of the natural scene by people. Our studies and recommendations should necessarily contribute to those ends.

To me one of the most enjoyable experiences occurred on the last day of our stay. The superintendent had invited a group of people from the state, representatives of various organizations—State Historical Society, Soil Conservation Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, and particularly the North Dakota Game and Fish Commission. They were most enthusiastic about the prospects for the National Park. Heartening, indeed, was the assurance from the head of the Game and Fish Commission: “We are all for it. When you need help, just call on us.” (Are you listening, Terry Steinwand?—Jim)

I remembered what I had been told about the dedication on ___ ___ ___ (June 4, 1949 – Jim). The people of North Dakota had turned out 30,000 strong, and the parking problem was something to be concerned about. Evidently North Dakota appreciates its National Park. When a people understands and cherishes a natural treasure, I believe they are in the frame of mind to get the most out of it in historical significance, enjoyment and inspiration.

I like to remember one evening on the rim of the deeply chiseled valley in the north area. We had been looking down on the winding course of the Little Missouri far below us, with its typical line of cottonwoods, and bordered by the typical badlands formations. I had thought of those high school days in Minnesota, when I had borrowed Roosevelt’s books from the library. I remembered Frederic Remington’s drawings, remembered the burning desire to find this western scene. Will the people of today, the people of tomorrow, continue to feel the pull of land that beckons to a sample of our country as it was, a country of space and beauty and a sense of freedom?

The sun went low and dusk was creeping over the valley below us. We watched that poetic quality of light envelop the cliffs and rims about us, and settle over the river bottom where we glimpsed the gleam of water in the bends.

Not a serrated mountain range here, not a mossy forest, nor a lake-studded paradise. Rather an open country; its trees are twisted and storm worn, and grow sparingly along the river banks. A raw country, a country in the making, perhaps. This very fact, this character, the attributes of chiseled buttes and domes, the clay and the prairie grass, the eagle, the prairie dogs, deer, coyote; the flocks of grouse at the heads of the wooded draws—all of these spell one phase of our west—not to be compared with different ones—to be taken and enjoyed for its own singular beauty and character. Ordinary country, but with an aura of the west—something that drew Roosevelt, the adventurous ones.

How about that? Some of the best words ever written about North Dakota? I think so, too. And you can't imagine the intense pleasure I got reading them in Olaus Murie's own handwriting.

Let's Go Hunting

Okay, here’s what happened.

1. Duck season opened.

2. The walleye bite started on the Missouri.

3. Pheasant season opened.

4. I have totally disengaged from the 2010 campaign. It is ugly. I don’t like it. I don’t do things I don’t like. Instead, I hunt ducks, fish for walleyes and chase pheasants.

That’s why no blog posts here for most of the last month.

However, I am reading a lot of North Dakota literature and will comment on some of the best things I have read, as part of my ongoing series, The Best Things Ever Written About North Dakota.

I’ll say this much about the coming election: The Republicans peaked early. That happens in a media-mad society like ours. It’s two weeks to go, and all the stories have been written. What’s more, most of what has been written is negative, so most of us don’t care any more. I expect the backlash will be in the form of a very low voter turnout. “They’re all assholes, so I ain’t voting,” is a common refrain right now.

So far, the only politician who has my respect this year is Byron Dorgan. Because he quit. At exactly the right time. He’s among the first. But he won’t be among the last. To participate in this kind of election, you have to really want power. I don’t want anyone representing me who wants power that badly.

There are exceptions. Earl Pomeroy is one. He’s pretty sure that America doesn’t need a Republican majority in Congress, He’s pretty sure that is a really bad thing. I’m pretty sure he’s right. So Earl is doing what he has to do to win. This year. Don’t look for him to do it many more times. It’s too high a price to pay.

And so for the next two weeks, the TV and radio in my house will be tuned to Prairie Public, where there are no nasty commercials (although I might sneak in a baseball game or two, and get up for a drink of water between innings).

And yes, I am going to vote. On Tuesday, November 3. Until then, I am going hunting. And fishing. And hunting some more.

You should too.

A Really Bad Case Of Mistaken Identity

This is a message to all my Republican friends (if I have any left—I’ve been kind of hard on some of your candidates lately), so all you Democrats can quit reading now and go do something else—there’s nothing in this for you.

Okay, Republicans. One of you needs to ‘fess up. One of you gave my name to Sharron Angle and told her I was a Republican. You know Sharron Angle. She’s the Tea-Partier who won the Nevada Republican Primary to run against Harry Reid for the U.S. Senate, making her the de facto head of the Committee to Guarantee Harry Reid’s Re-Election.

I got a letter from Sharon yesterday. The letterhead said

Sharron Angle

Official Republican Nominee

For U.S. Senate Against Harry Reid

Kind of like “I still can’t believe it, but it is “official.” Here’s how the letter started:

Dear James Fuglie,

If you’re the Republican I’ve been told you are, then I need you to find your checkbook right now.

See? I told you, one of you gave her my name and told her I was a Republican. Well, for the record, I am not. Oh, I've voted for a few Republicans--the good ones--like Bob Martinson. I've lived in Bob's district much of my political life, and he's been in the Legislature all of my political life. I jut tell my Democrat friends he's the son of Henry Martinson, the old Socialist organizer, but he has to run as a Republican to get elected in his district, and none of them ever check to see if that's true or not.

But now I've been labeled a Republican, and now I’m going to get all kinds of mail from Sharron Angle and other Republicans and Tea Partiers, because I know these people share their lists. And I don’t want to get those letters, because if they’re all as mean as this one, they’ll just ruin my day. I gotta tell you, this Angle woman is one mean, angry lady.

About four paragraphs in, she launches an attack on President Obama, and it goes on throughout the letter:

Not only is this the #1 race in America this year, it is nothing less than a referendum on the far left policies of Barack Obama and Harry Reid . . .

Obama and Reid are joined at the hip in forcing this radical expansion of government . . .

Nothing, and I mean nothing, would be a bigger blow to Obama’s agenda than for me to defeat Harry Reid . . .

Defeating Reid will spell doom for Obama’s agenda!

The whole letter is like that. Obama’s bad. Reid’s worse. Send me money. Not once in the letter does Sharron (what’s up with that extra “r” anyway?) say anything about what she stands for, or why she wants to be a U.S. Senator, or what she will do when she gets there. No, “stopping Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is Republicans’ #1 priority right now,” Sharron says in her letter a few times.

So I’m writing to you, my Republican friends, to ask you if you agree? Is that your #1 priority? Fixing the economy doesn’t matter? Stopping the war in Afghanistan? Balancing the budget? Putting people back to work? Those are down the list, behind killing the President’s agenda?

Y’know what? I don’t think so. Not the Republicans I know, here in North Dakota, like my friend Bob. But I think it just might be the #1 priority for Sharron Angle and even Mitch McConnell and the national Republican leadership. And that is sad.

But, back to matters at hand. One of you gave Sharron my name. She sent me a letter. She called me a Republican. A cruel hoax. So I’m going to use her return envelope. I’m writing her a note:

Dear Sharron,

I will send $25 to your campaign if you will tell me who gave you my name.

Sincerely,

James Fuglie

I don’t doubt for a minute she’s going to rat you out, whoever you are. So you might just as well come forward now and confess.

Still Drilling, Just A Bit Farther Away

The Weather.com forecast for the Bad Lands on Monday showed a couple of days of mostly sunny skies with possible showers, so we loaded up the tent, sleeping bags, mattresses, food and hiking boots and headed west. We settled in about supper time on a Little Missouri River gravel bar a mile or so from the Elkhorn Ranch site, on some Forest Service land near the ranch owned by a friend of ours.

Tuesday was a grand hiking day. Mid-afternoon found us at the Elkhorn Ranch site, and as we walked down the mowed trail, we heard, behind us, a steady cadence: thump . . . thump . . . thump . . . thump . . . We paused to listen, and then Lillian said “It’s that oil well, up on the ridge.”

There are, in fact, three oil pumpers about a mile and a half, maybe two miles, from the Elkhorn site, high on a ridge overlooking the Buckhorn ranch, just upriver from the Elkhorn. You can see one of them from the ranch site (oil companies love busting the skyline instead of tucking their well pumpers down in a draw where you can’t see—or hear—them).

And what had happened as we hiked was that the wind was behind us, blowing maybe 15 or 20 miles per hour (a gentle zephyr by North Dakota standards), and carrying the sound of that well over that distance. Once we realized what it was, of course, it sounded even louder. THUMP . . . THUMP . . . THUMP . . . THUMP . . . THUMP.

Now this was not one of those old 20th century one-lung pumps you could hear for miles and miles. No, this was a modern, 21^st century, state-of-the-art pump, and we could hear it – and see it – distinctly, from almost two miles away.

That’s what’s so troubling about Rick Berg’s statements that he thinks we should allow horizontal drilling under Theodore Roosevelt National Park. I don’t want to see or hear any more oil development from Buck Hill or the Oxbow Overlook. I don’t think most North Dakotans, or most Americans, for that matter, do either.

But mostly there are two things about Rick Berg, and this whole issue he brought up a week or so ago, that really trouble me. The first is that I’m not sure Rick really knows much about western North Dakota. The second is he is running for an office that could affect policy about how we deal with western North Dakota, and if he should win, he could prove to be a big embarrassment to us as a state.

Let’s deal with these one at a time. We have oil under most of western North Dakota. Probably 15 million acres of land in western North Dakota have some oil under them. The Bakken alone, currently our most productive field, is under, from what I can tell, at least 3 million acres of North Dakota, probably more. The federal government owns more than a million acres in the western North Dakota. New wells are being drilled as fast as we can get drilling rigs to North Dakota. As I stated in an earlier column, Theodore Roosevelt National Park is just 70,000 acres out of the 15 million acres with oil under them. The National Park is less than one tenth of one per cent of the land in North Dakota with oil under it. It is less than 4 per cent of the land owned by the federal government with oil under it. So why in the world would we even be talking about drilling there? When we’ve drilled every other federal acre, the other 96 per cent, perhaps, 20, 40 or 100 years from now, we can discuss it. Maybe.

The second point is that people with screwed up priorities who get elected to office can do real damage, and so we need to try to be a little careful about who we elect. Case in point:

In its final days, the Bush administration issued new management plans for the spectacular red rocks area of southern Utah, and announced they would begin leasing on the fringes of places like Arches National Monument for drilling for oil and natural gas. Sure enough, in December 2008, the Bureau of Land Management went ahead and held a lease sale for mineral acres just outside a number of national parks and proposed wilderness areas in Utah. Just days after the sale, wilderness organizations filed a lawsuit, and in January a judge granted a temporary restraining order against the BLM, halting the issuance of the leases. In early February, just two weeks after President Obama took office, his new Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, ordered the BLM (often called the Bureau of Leasing and Mining by people like us) to cancel the sales. Secretary Salazar explained that his actions were necessary because “[i]n its last weeks in office, the Bush Administration rushed ahead to sell oil and gas leases at the doorstep of some of our nation’s most treasured landscapes in Utah.” Thank you, Secretary Salazar, for proving, once again, that elections have consequences.

Now, back to matters at hand. Rick Berg screwed up. No question about that. Desperation often flows through political candidates, and they say dumb things. For Berg, this one was a doozy. But it says something about how he thinks, and how he might act as a Congressman. He’s desperate as a candidate right now to throw out big ideas. He’s also smart enough to try to back off, as he did in a Grand Forks Herald submission this week: “I would consider national park resources only if there was a way to do so without entering the park, by using technology such as horizontal drilling to go under the park from well outside the park boundaries, and then only if it would in no way affect the park or view shed.”

But the thing is, Rick, there are some things you can’t control. The government doesn’t drill for oil. Private companies do. All the government does is lease the land and the minerals to the oil companies. There’s no way to know, when the leases are issued, where the oil company will put the well and the tanks, which way the sound will drift, where the road will go for the service vehicles, how far the smell of the natural gas will drift, how bright the flare will be, and a whole bunch of other things that could affect the quality of the park experience. How far can that horizontal pipe go? A mile? Two miles? How far is far enough? There’s just a lot you don’t know about the oil industry, and about western North Dakota, Rick. We can forgive your Red River Valley naivete about this part of your state. Except that you could be the Congressman for the whole state. You need to do your homework.

One thing is pretty sure. This dumb idea is going nowhere fast. There’s no need to panic. A friend of mine has already said this is the time she will lay down in front of a drilling rig. I hope that won’t be necessary. Another friend said recently, as we were canoeing through the Bad Lands, and rounded a bend in the Little Missouri River to encounter an oil well almost on the river bank, “If there was a God, HHe would have put the oil under Iowa.” Well, I’m not so sure. We DO kind of like the taxes the state is collecting. But Richland, Cass, Traill, Grand Forks and Pembina Counties might have been a nice place for it.

Drill, Rick, Drill

One of my friends put a note on his Facebook page today with a link to a Grand Forks Herald story in which North Dakota Republican Congressional Candidate Rick Berg says we should begin drilling for oil under Theodore Roosevelt National Park. He said “and now for an incredibly stupid idea . . . “ Boy was he right. Let me reprint the first few paragraphs from the Herald’s story:

Drilling for oil underneath western North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park and other federal lands nationwide could be a way to ensure Social Security funding for the long haul, Republican U.S. House challenger Rick Berg said.

During a meeting with The Forum’s editorial board Wednesday, Berg discussed his ideas for how to make the Social Security system viable for future generations. He said one option is drilling for oil and other mineral resources on federal government land.

“There’s a huge opportunity right now to take those mineral assets that are on the federal government’s balance sheet and shift them to Social Security,” Berg told the editorial board.

He said the national economy also needs to improve so more Americans will have jobs and pay into the system.

Money gained from more drilling on federal land would amount to “billions of dollars” from North Dakota resources alone, Berg said. He did not have specific data available on Wednesday.

The federal government already allows drilling on some public land, including the national grasslands in western North Dakota.

But drilling is banned in national parks with only a few exceptions — and Theodore Roosevelt National Park isn’t among them, park Superintendent Valerie Naylor said.

“Drilling is not allowed in national parks, as a general rule,” she said. “It’s important that we preserve the land for future generations.”

But Berg said he would include national parks — and specifically, Theodore Roosevelt National Park — when discussing areas of untapped mineral resources the U.S. government could use.

I’m disappointed in Rick on this one. He shows a basic lack of understanding of a very important part of North Dakota here.

There are a million acres of federally-owned national grasslands in western North Dakota’s badlands. Virtually all of it is open to drilling for oil. The federal government already rakes in millions and millions of dollars annually from leasing it to the oil companies. It rakes in millions and millions more, and will get to the billions Rick is talking about, in royalty payments from the oil the oil companies are taking out. That has been going on for years, since oil was first discovered in 1954 in western North Dakota.

Thanks to the efforts over many years of one of our state’s most conservative and irascible Congressmen ever, William Lemke, we managed, in 1947, to set aside about 70,000 acres—just a couple of per cent of our state’s spectacular Bad Lands—as a National Park honoring Theodore Roosevelt.

As a National Park, it enjoys the protection from development that has turned, not just the million acres of federal land out west, but the several million acres of private and state land as well, into one of the country’s major oil fields. Theodore Roosevelt National Park is a tiny island in a sea of scoria roads and sand colored tanks.

So Rick, listen up: Not only is the National Park sacrosanct, but it is insignificant compared to the million acres of federally-owned land already being drilled. This is not news to most North Dakotans, and you, of all people, should know better. The federal government is already reaping huge royalty and leasing checks from its federal lands in western North Dakota.

If what you meant to tell the Forum editorial board is you want to shift that revenue away from helping to finance general government and put it into Social Security, then tell us what taxes you want to increase to replace that revenue. But keep your drilling rigs away from the National Park. Good God, man, are you that desperate? That greedy? Is nothing sacred? Drill, baby, drill. National Parks be damned. That thinking makes me sad. And angry.

Adding A Barn Owl To Our Life List

Eight years ago, when I first met Lillian I asked her to teach me all the things she knows about birds and plants. She is as good a North Dakotan as there is. The perfect North Dakotan, I have always said, is one who, to borrow a phrase, can see both the landscape’s sweep and the flower’s petal. That’s Lillian. She can identify almost all of the native prairie plants on our frequent hikes, and, in fact, her love of the prairie is often the reason for our hikes. She is an excellent birder with a long Life List, and can identify most species by their song or call, not just by sight. I told her early on in our relationship that if I had not learned plants and birds well in a year, she could push me off the edge of Bullion Butte.

For the record, she is a patient woman. She has not pushed me off the butte, but I have a long learning curve yet. And I work at it. Like this week. Her birding ListServ message this week said:

“There currently is a family group of five barn owls in Petersburg. I have permission from Joe and Lorie who live at ____ (yellow house) to post this information. Birders should check in with them or their next door neighbor to the west, who was also very helpful in showing us where two of the owls were roosting yesterday afternoon in a tree in her back yard. These two owls use this tree a lot as a roost spot, but of course no guarantee can be made that they will be there on a given day. And it should be added that since the young are flying well, the whole group could leave the area at any time.

“If not found in that tree, try walking the streets and alleys to the east and south of Joe and Laurie’s residence and looking carefully through every tree. Petersburg has many large, mature trees so finding one of the five owls can be a challenge . . . “

Isn’t North Dakota a wonderful place to live and know people? And meet new people? We met Lorie yesterday.

Monday, when we read this note on Lillian’s ListServ, we thought we ought to take a drive to Petersburg. Barn owls are a rare find in North Dakota. Not many people who have lived here all their lives have seen one. This would be a rare opportunity. Petersburg’s only about 3½ hours away. And the timing was good. I have an uncle about 40 miles up the road at Edmore who was having an 83rd birthday, and I don’t see him often enough, and he’s not in great health, and his youngest daughter, my cousin, was home from California, and I have not seen her in along while, so we could make it a twofur day by driving up and having birthday cake in the afternoon and looking for barn owls in the evening. Which is what we did.

We got an hour and a half with my relatives before they had to leave for Grand Forks, where my uncle today is seeing specialists for a “problem in his belly.” I’m pretty worried about that. He is a man of few words. I will talk to him, or more likely my cousin, tonight, to see what the diagnosis is.

We arrived in Petersburg about 5:30. Met Lorie. Owls have flown the coop but are still hanging out around town, best she knew. We went for a walk. Turns out we were not the only ones there for that reason. We were spotted by two young women in a tan sedan as we were walking down the street with our noses in the air, looking at the trees. No, they hadn’t spotted the owls yet, but were optimistic. We covered the less heavily forested west side of town on foot, then got into the car and started cruising the small streets and alleys, and sure enough, Lillian, she of the keen eye, stopped the car beside a copse of ash and elm trees and said quietly “There’s one.” He/she looked exactly as Peterson’s Field Guide to Eastern Birds described him/her: “Our only owl with a white heart-shaped face. A long-legged, knock-kneed, pale, monkey-faced owl. Dark eyes, no ear tufts . . .”

We were about 50 feet from the owl. We watched it carefully for a few minutes, and I got out my camera, and tried taking a picture through the sun roof of the Jeep. But there was a branch in the way. I asked Lillian if I could get out and get a picture. She said sure, so I crept around the back of the Jeep and walked toward it slowly. It was dozing, and did not seem afraid, and let me get within 25 feet for this photo.

To say it was a spectacular bird is understating it. I’m just going to stick with “very, very cool.” Then, deciding we had bothered it enough, and knowing there were others prowling about town, we let our stomachs lead us south on North Dakota State Highways 32, 45, 65 and 20, through the Sheyenne and James River Valleys in the golden glowing light of an early North Dakota fall evening, to the Buffalo City Grill in Jamestown where we celebrated with a fine meal of bison.

An addition to Lillian’s Life List (I say Lillian’s because she started it long before she met me, but I am claiming joint custody). One step further back from the edge of the butte for me. As fine a day as you could have in North Dakota. And there are a lot of fine ones.

The Story Of The Nonpartisan League

"One night in October, 1919, and I think it was the 19th of the month, five farmers dined at a restaurant in Washington, D.C. It was a good enough place, rather noted for moderate prices and a varied menu, which was why the farmers chose it. They ordered, with design, a dinner of staple viands, and, as it came to the table, measured or weighed or closely estimated each dish; so much of bread, so much of potatoes, so much of butter, so much of meat, so much of sugar, and thus to the end.

"With paper and pencil they recorded each amount and, at current prices at the farm, the net sum the producer received for each dish they consumed. When all was done, they called for their bill. It was $11.95, exclusive of gratuities.

"They made a total of all the items they had entered as they went along, showing what the producer had netted from this. It was 84 cents."

That’s how Charles E. Russell begins his book “The Story Of The Nonpartisan League,” published in 1920 when the League was still in control of North Dakota Government. I’m not going to give you a history of the Nonpartisan League here. There are a number of books on the NPL, the most important of which, I think, is Robert Morlan’s Political Prairie Fire, published in 1955, and reissued in 1985 with an excellent introduction by my old friend, the late Larry Remele. Another old friend, Ardell Tharaldson, thinks it should be required reading for graduation from a North Dakota high school. I think he’s right.

But I’m quoting today from Russell’s book because it has just been reprinted, along with a couple others of his, by a company called Nabu Press, and so you can buy it from Amazon for 25 bucks. Or you can buy the original 1920 hardcover on ABE.com for about the same price. I have a good copy of the 1920 first edition and that’s what I’m quoting from.

Russell, incidentally, is a cool guy. He was a socialist, muckraking journalist in the last part of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th. He joined the Socialist Party of America in 1908, he was one of 5 co-founders of the NAACP in 1909, he ran unsuccessfully for governor and senator from New York and mayor of New York City, he wrote at various times for daily newspapers in Minneapolis, New York, Chicago and Detroit, and he wrote 15 books, one of which, “The American Orchestra and Theodore Thomas” won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1927.

Much maligned by politicians for his style of journalism, he once wrote, in response, “The best way to abolish the muckraker is to abolish the muck.”

But I digress. Russell spent part of a year here, during the heyday of the League, and his book lays out the case of the farmers of North Dakota and what he called the Middle Northwest that led to the formation and success of the League. I want to share two more passages from the book for you, and then recommend you get it and read it. Because it is one of the best things ever written about North Dakota. The first is part of a speech given in 1917 by League President A.C. Townley in St. Paul, Minnesota.

“Let me try to make plainer still to you the reason for the injustice in our industrial life. This war (World War I) will cost America maybe thirty, forty billions of dollars. It is very difficult to raise so many billions of dollars. It entails tremendous sacrifices on us all, a sacrifice that we shall not shirk. Those billions will be spent by this government to win the war for Liberty and Democracy. Part of it will be spent for guns, part for ships, part of it for coal, clothing, shoes, leather. A part of it will be paid to those that are making millions of profit out of the war to-day.

“But a soldier boy cannot carry a gun unless there is bread in his stomach. A soldier boy cannot dig a trench unless he has a strong body made by bread.

“And some of those billions of dollars have to be spent to pay the farmers for the wheat to make the bread. Now we have been calling for government control of prices. And we got them all right. But in our clamor for government control we overlooked the better tool.

“We forgot, or neglected to see, that the representatives of the profiteers were too large a part of our government, and so we got the government control too largely on behalf of the profiteers. They are to-day influencing this government in too large a measure. Else they would not fix a price on coal twice what it was before the war; else they would not be so long reducing the price of bread after they have reduced the price of wheat.”

Townley and other Leaguers were relentless with that message in 1917 and 1918, and in the 1918 election, the League won complete control of North Dakota government, including the newly-created Industrial Commission to oversee the beginning of the about-to-be created state industries (Governor, Attorney General and Commissioner of Agriculture and Labor), and both houses of the North Dakota Legislature. And in the 1919 Legislature, they passed their program into law. And later that year, opponents of the League secured a referendum election, at which seven of the measures passed by that Legislature were put to the test of a popular vote. Here is Russell’s analysis of why the issues to be voted on were being referred.

"1. The Bank of North Dakota threatened the huge profits of money-lenders, in which the entire banking system of the Northwest, including the overshadowing financial institutions of Minneapolis and St. Paul, had shared for a generation. These financial institutions were directly connected with the powerful banks, insurance and trust companies of Wall Street, whose influence on national affairs has been solemnly attested by a committee of Congress.

"2. The railroad rate bill directly menaced the most powerful railroad companies of the United States; companies accustomed for many years to unquestioned political domination in the Northwest, companies also directly linked with the great packing-house combinations, the greatest banks in Chicago and New York, and the Interests that were once called the arbiters of national destiny.

"3. The proposal that the state should own its elevators struck directly at the great and profitable business of handling grain, erected through so many years around the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce. This naturally involved an assault upon the profits and prosperity of the Minneapolis banks, linked as before said to the greatest banks in the country; linked also to the great and not always apparent speculative Interests in the grain business that centered in the Chicago Board of Trade, involved the Armours and other packing Interests, and was linked once more to railroads, banks and insurance companies.

"4. The proposal that the state should build and operate flour mills was an ominous blow at the great flour-milling Interests of Minneapolis, the greatest of their kind, whose mills rolled forth a daily total of eighty thousand barrels of flour, and fed an appreciable part of the world.

"5. The Hail Insurance Act menaced the business and profits of the insurance companies linked with the banks that were linked with the railroads and linked with the controlling groups of Wall Street.

"6. The suggestion that the state might print and furnish its own school text-books was a menace to the business and profits of the school-book trust, linked as the other Interests and in the same way to the controlling groups.

"7. The laws instituting the State Income Tax, State Inheritance Tax, Work-men’s Compensation for Injuries, the strict inspection of mines, although not without precedent, undoubtedly aroused each its own element of opposition that was drawn now to the general assault. For it was felt in all these menaced quarters that if the League’s innovations should be sustained in North Dakota they would be adopted within a short time in other states, and no man might foresee how far the reform might go no what profound changes it might achieve."

Well. A state-owned bank. A state-owned mill and elevator. Worker's compensation. State hail insurance. You think we have big ideas today? We haven’t done anything to match this lineup since the day they were passed in 1919. Suppose they all went away with the demise of the League? Hah! Look around. State hail insurance disappeared in the 1930's when the federal government thought it was such a good idea they created federal hail insurance. You know the rest of the story.

As for Russell’s analysis? Remember, this was written in 1920, and he—and the League—believed these conspiracies and threats were real. And they probably were.

In the special election on June 26, 1919, the League prevailed on all seven measures.

Russell’s book closes with a recount of the great Scandinavian American Bank scandal, which ended in another League victory—this time in court. It was published before Lynn Frazier, William Lemke and John Hagan were re-elected in 1920 as governor, attorney general and commissioner of agriculture and labor, and before they were successfully recalled from office the following year.

There were four books written about the League in 1920, one by Herbert Gaston, who was editor of the League’s newspaper, the Leader; one by Oliver Thomason, about whom I know nothing; and one by William Langer himself. Gaston’s and Langer’s books have also been reprinted in paperback by Nabu Press. I can’t find a copy of Thomason’s anywhere. Ardell Tharaldson is the only person I now who has a Langer original. I haven’t read it. Gaston’s and Russell’s are fun to read because they were written in real time, during the League heyday. Morlan’s is still, however, the definitive history of the League from 1915-1921.

Surely the Nonpartisan League was one of the best ideas ever hatched in North Dakota. Oh, and by the way, someone has started a Facebook page for the League. Imagine that.

I'll Throw In A Roger Maris Baseball Card

M E M O R A N D U M

TO: Cory Fong, Adam Hamm, Kevin Cramer, Brian Kalk, Tony Clark, Doug Goehring, Bob Peterson, Kelly Schmidt

FROM: Wayne Stenehjem

CC: John Hoeven, Jack Dalrymple


Dear Republican Team Members,

Eighty years ago, someone with a warped sense of humor decided that the Secretary of State’s office should be here on the First Floor of the Capitol Building along with the offices of the Governor/Lieutenant Governor and the Attorney General. I guess they thought that maybe someday in the future the office would be important. Or maybe it was important back then. Or maybe they thought Ben Meier liked company (He was Secretary of State back then, wasn’t he?) and they wanted his office to be easily accessible.

Anyway, what’s happened is that the guy down the hall now is a royal pain in the butt, and he’s just 30 feet or so away from me, and he won’t leave me alone, no matter what I do or say. He’s over here almost every day looking for an opinion on something or other, trying to get me to take the blame whenever he screws up and has to make an unpopular decision. A couple of months ago, he lost some paperwork for a candidate running against Kevin Cramer and needed me to cover his butt by telling him to go ahead and put the guy on the ballot anyway. Never mind that this kid from Fargo, Voytek, I think his name is, didn’t really give a rat’s ass if he ran for Public Service Commission or not—he announced he would be a write-in candidate against Al for Secretary of State just a couple of days after he learned that Al had left him off the ballot for PSC, except he only announced it to 11 of his friends, apparently, because he only got 12 votes in the whole state.

So I told him to just put the kid on the ballot, and he did, (saying I said it was okay) and those darn Democratic-NPL Legislators jumped right in and asked me to issue a formal opinion. Well, I shopped it around among my assistants trying to get one of them to write an opinion that agreed with me, and they all said they just couldn’t do that because the law was pretty clear that he shouldn’t be on the ballot, and as a result I got a bunch of political heat I really didn’t need. And our buddy Al down here just smiles and says “Wayne told me to do it.”

Then there was that deal with the other Libertarians not getting on the ballot, and he’s got me in the middle of a lawsuit on that one. Seems like if he was willing to bend the rules when HE screwed up, he should bend the rules when THEY screw up too. Ah, but it’s easier for him to just send it down the hall to me and let me spend a bunch of state dollars in a long drawn-out lawsuit.

Well, I finally got smart after that one and I put one of our college interns on sentry duty outside my office, and kept him away most of the summer, but then school got ready to start, and the intern went away, and sure enough, Al snuck in the back door again this week asking for help on this petition signature thing. Yep, he had told the papers earlier this week that he was going to ask me to help him decide if those petitions should be declared valid. But I could see this one coming. He wanted me to say yes or no, so he could tell the papers again “Wayne told me to do it.”

Well, I decided I’d had enough and just told him to go read the law himself. He’s a big boy. AND KEEP MY NAME OUT OF IT!

And so today he told Wal-Mart and Walgreen and Tammy Wal-bach they won’t need to spend any money this fall on a ballot measure campaign. And guess what—for once he didn’t blame me!

But it is just a matter of time before he comes traipsing down the hall again with another screwup, and so and I’m looking for help. I’m thinking if I could just get him off the First Floor, where it’s not so convenient for him to come running over here, maybe I can put a stop to this. And so, I’m asking you, my faithful Republican brethren and sister, to help me find a new home for Al somewhere else far, far away. Cory, you’ve got some space up there on 16, I think, which wouldn’t be bad, but maybe one of you knows of a spot somewhere off campus. We could do an office trade. I’d even throw in this old Roger Maris baseball card—1961 I think it is—it’s pretty old and has what looks like some old signature on it, and is probably worthless, but it would be a nice present for one of your kids or grandkids. Just take this guy off my hands!

If it wasn’t Republican blasphemy, I’d even ask you to send some money to this Mock kid who’s running against Al, just to help get him out of here. I can’t send any more or my name will show up on his report, and that just wouldn’t look good. Look, I’m offering perfectly good First Floor office space here. John and Jack agree. It would be just fine with them. Somebody step up and volunteer, okay?

Thanks.

Your Buddy, Wayne

$90 Million Plugs North Dakota Problem

For the record, I was born in Devils Lake, North Dakota. Both my parents were reared in the Devils Lake basin, in Ramsey County. My uncle and aunt and cousin still farm the home place just southwest of Edmore. So I am declaring a conflict of interest on the subject I will address today. What the heck.

I walked Grandpa Pete and Grandma Sophie’s farmstead a couple weeks ago. The crops don’t look so good. Ground is much too wet this year. My cousin says it is the worst crop year of his life, and he’s been farming about 30 years.

In past years, it was not uncommon to see a Ramsey County farmer standing beside his tractor on a section line road, a pump hooked up to his power takeoff, draining a field into the slough across the road. Not this year. No place to drain.

In past years, if you drove west of Devils Lake on Highway 19, you drove through the town of Minnewaukan before you turned west toward Esmond. Not this year. The new road skirts the north side of Minnewaukan, because part of the old road is now under Devils Lake.

But I remember years way long past, too, when much of Devils Lake was a dry cattail slough, where we hunted ducks when I was a young boy. 50 years ago, or so, the lake started its long, slow rise, with a few setbacks along the way, like in the drought years of the 1980’s and early 1990’s. A hundred years ago, and 50 years ago, and indeed during the 1980’s and 1990’s, people built homes and towns and farmsteads, some of them where they shouldn't have, that are now gone, or threatened, by that long, inexorable rise.

Some of it is natural. Some is exacerbated by those drainers. But it is important to remember that the lake was there first. Just 125 years ago, the steamboat Minnie H ran regular shuttles between the towns of Devils Lake and Minnewaukan. Historians say the lake started to drop in the mid-1880’s, ending those daily dockings in Minnewaukan, and remained low for about a hundred years. Now, the Minnie H could dock in Minnewaukan once again. You'd think we might have expected this.

I asked my cousin a couple weeks ago what could be done to help farmers like himself, or the people in the towns. He just shook his head, and said quietly that maybe we shouldn’t be spending all that government money trying to stop the lake.

This is all on my mind today because of a story I read in the paper this morning. The city of Fargo, which wants to build a Red River diversion channel around itself, to send what are becoming the annual spring floodwaters downstream to bother some other towns, is now nervous about water escaping from Devils Lake into the Sheyenne River (which flows into the Red River, Fargo’s current water supply source) because it may contain sulfates.

Sulfates. That’s the problem. Here’s a line from the AP story this morning:

“Water high in sulfates, including salts, can taste bitter and act as a laxative.”

Aha! Now we got a problem. Water that gives you the runs. According to the AP, Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker called the situation “very traumatic.” Well, I guess so. At least for some people. On the other hand, I’ve got a lot of friends in Fargo. A lot of them are my age. They might just welcome this development. Might just help them get their mornings off to a better start. Skip that early-morning walk, and throw away the Ex-Lax, Kevin, and Lee, and Jim, and Duane, and all the rest of you sixty-somethings, and just have a glass of water. Problem solved.

Well, Fargo and West Fargo officials have a solution. About $90 million in federal funds will treat that water and get rid of the problem, the AP story says they said at a meeting with Senator Kent Conrad Monday.

Oooohhh, I can just see the headlines in the national media now. “$90 Million Treatment Plant Plugs North Dakota Problem.” I can see the Ex Lax and drug store lobbyists getting behind that kind of appropriation—they have a lot of business at stake here.

Walaker, in today’s AP story: “Devils Lake is a real significant problem, and we sit here and argue about sulfates (read: laxatives). But the reality is that the city of Fargo would like some assistance.”

West Fargo Mayor Rich Mattern: “Today, as a city, we do have some concerns (like a huge strain on the city’s sanitary sewer system, maybe, Rich?) . . . These concerns are not insurmountable by any means.”

I’m sorry, Rich and Dennis, but I’m having a hard time keeping a straight face here. You’re both good guys, but $90 million will buy a lot of Kaopectate. Good luck with this one. Dorgan and Conrad are good guys, and they’re really good at getting federal money to solve North Dakota problems, but this one might just be more than they’re willing to tackle.

"He Is Already An American."

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who, from all I can tell, is generally not a wacko, has joined forces, or actually taken leadership of, a group of wackos who want to repeal parts of the 14th amendment to the United States Constitution, specifically Section 1, which grants automatic citizenship to anyone born in the United States. Specifically, that section says, simply, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Graham is apparently trying to regain some conservative credibility after getting too cozy with Senator Byron Dorgan and other moderate Democrats, but he’s in bad company on this one, with the likes of Senator John Kyl, former Rep. Tom Tancredo, Rep. John Boehner, and Senate candidate Rand Paul.

This is a mean-spirited effort to gain political points in an election year by highlighting the illegal immigration issue once again. Repeal of the 14th amendment would deny citizenship to children born of illegal immigrants. And also those children born of legal immigrants. It’s been in the news lately and you’re going to hear more about it. This is the amendment given to us by President Abraham Lincoln and a Republican Congress to guarantee everyone equal protection under the law. This was one of the reconstruction amendments which abolished slavery and then prevented states from passing their own laws regarding slavery and equal protection. These people, Republicans all, do not deserve to be part of the Party of Lincoln.

I wish these people had known my mother. And two friends of hers, Adolf Schmidt and his wife Leni.

Adolf and Leni (pronounced Laney) emigrated from Germany to Hettinger, North Dakota, in the years after World War II. Adolf had a cousin who ran a café in Hettinger, and they came here, with their pre-school age daughter, Elke, to work in that café. Adolf was a trained chef, and he cooked while Leni waited on tables. Through hard work and good fortune, they were able to buy that restaurant from Adolf’s cousin. They worked 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, and in their little spare time they learned English and studied for their U.S. citizenship test.

After a few years, Leni became pregnant. She worked right up until it was time to have her baby, and then was whisked off to the brand new Hettinger Community Memorial Hospital, the finest medical facility she had ever seen. She gave birth to a son, which she and Adolf had agreed to name Kent. Adolf stayed behind at the café that day, and at closing time, he trotted up the hill to that hospital as fast as his short, fat little German legs would take him.

He found Leni propped up in her hospital bed. She looked up at him and said, in her still-broken English “Adolf, we have a son. His name is Kent.” And then, her face beaming in joy and wonderment, she said “And guess what? He is already an American.”

My mother was the o.b. nurse on duty at the hospital that night, and she was standing at Leni’s bedside when Adolf came in. She loved to tell that story. She called it “the miracle of America.” She said that, as important as that son was to Leni and Adolf, equally important was the fact that their son was a United States citizen. By birth. Adolf and Leni could imagine nothing more wonderful, more important, than being a United States citizen. And they could only marvel that despite the fact they were not yet United States citizens, because of that wonderful document called the United States Constitution, their son was. Their son was an American.

My mother had many fond memories of her 40-plus years in nursing, but none more wonderful than that one.

Adolf and Leni and Elke eventually became naturalized citizens. Adolf and Leni ran the café until they sold it and retired. Kent was a citizen from the moment he took his first breath. He moved away when he grew up. I hope he lives in a state whose Senators and Congressman will oppose this effort. If not, I hope he calls them and tells them his story.

“He is already an American.” Surely some of the best words ever spoken in North Dakota.

Making Burritos in Fleischkuekle Country

So you’re asking “What’s up with Gary Emineth?” Me too. HIS story is he’s going into the burrito business and doesn’t have time to be the Republican State Chairman any more. But he has time to campaign for Republican National Chairman. And he’s caught the eye of some (conservative) national media.

The Washington Times reported “With Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele facing a barrage of calls to resign, North Dakota Republican Party Chairman Gary Emineth, a social conservative, told The Washington Times on Friday he is quitting his post to prepare a possible challenge of Mr. Steele after November's midterm elections.”

So which is it, Gary? Burritos or the National Chairmanship? Something doesn’t smell right. Seems to me that Emineth’s chances of being National Republican Chairman would be enhanced if he could claim that his party back home claimed the U.S. Senate and U.S. House seats held by Senator Byron Dorgan and Congressman Earl Pomeroy, if that should come to pass, or at least got close enough to scare the North Dakota Democrats (more likely).

No, my guess is that Emineth got on the wrong side of Rick Berg after Berg’s campaign used a party list prior to his endorsement. Remember this story from the AP:

“Republican U.S. House candidate Rick Berg improperly used a closely guarded e-mail list of GOP supporters to promote himself over GOP rivals in a contest to unseat Democrat Earl Pomeroy, the state party chairman says. Gary Emineth said he was convinced that the state lawmaker's campaign used the list, which is off limits to candidates during party endorsement campaigns. Emineth said e-mails were received by people whose addresses he personally "salted" within the list as a way to spot misuse.”

Berg had to end up firing his campaign manager, who had previously worked for the State GOP and had apparently brought the party’s e-mail list with him to the Berg campaign. Complete with Emineth’s additions (His dog? His cat? His mother-in-law’s second cousin once removed?).

Berg was contrite. It was just days before the state Republican convention when Emineth dumped on him. Likely it was just days AFTER the state Republican convention when Berg told Emineth to take a hike.

Berg’s case is interesting, because the Republican party has a history of rejecting their own State Legislators who seek high office (witness David Nething and Gary Nelson). Of the current crop of Republican state officials (and there are a slug of them), only Wayne Stenehjem and Jack Dalrymple came directly from the Legislature, and Dalrymple was essentially picked by Hoeven, and then ratified by the convention. (Public Service Commissioner Tony Clark once served in the Legislature, but was an official in state government during the Ed Schafer administration before being elected. More on him in a minute.) So it might not have been so surprising to see Emineth dump on Berg right before the convention. He expected Kevin Cramer to be the U.S. House candidate, and thought he might even help Cramer along by involving Berg in a mini-scandal right before the delegates were about to choose.

But Berg fooled them. And now he has his revenge. Don’t underestimate this guy. He built a following in his two decades in the Legislature. He was elected Speaker of the House when he was just in his early 30’s, a position generally reserved for elder statesmen in the majority party. He then served as majority leader, and it was his legislative allies who organized their districts back home to get him the Republican nomination for Congress this year.

With John Hoeven moving into the “superstar” category (a la Dorgan, Conrad and Pomeroy), Berg is now titular head of the party.

So now you’re asking “What’s up with Tony Clark?” Me too. Actually, this one is a bit easier to figure.

First, Clark is a Rick Berg protégé. Rick helped him get elected to the Legislature back in the ‘90’s. Once Rick got rid of Emineth, Clark was his choice for interim party chairman (and giving Rick one more little slap at Clark’s fellow PSC’er Cramer). If things work out the way he and Rick have it figured—a Republican landslide in 2010--Clark’s going to be able to claim some credit for jumping into the breach, and his standing in the party is going to go way up. That’s important, because the GOP has a big bench, and Clark, if he wants to move on, needs to move nearer the head of that bench. He needs to break from the pack, and this is his chance. The pack includes Wayne Stenehjem, Jack Dalrymple, Kevin Cramer, Drew Wrigley, John Warford, Dennis Johnson, Brian Kalk, Adam Hamm, Corey Fong, David Sprynczynatyk, Connie Sprynczynatyk, and perhaps a legislator or two and a businessman or two. Did I leave anyone out? Remind me if I did, please.

So this is Tony Clark’s big move. He’s paying his dues, and he can afford to take a little heat from the Democrats and the media. That will be short-lived. But should Kent Conrad decide to retire in two years, as Byron Dorgan did this year (not likely, but Berg and Clark are gamblers), Clark becomes the odds-on favorite for that nomination. And then there’s the Governor’s office. If Hoeven wins the U.S. Senate seat this year as Berg and Clark expect, Jack Dalrymple gets a two year free ride as Governor, but don’t expect him to go unchallenged in 2012. Somebody on that list, probably more than one of them, will go after him.

Meanwhile, Emineth’s in the burrito kitchen. What’s up with that? This is fleischkuekle country.

Footnote: I got a fundraising letter from Rick this week. I was actually kind of excited about it, because on the envelope were pictures of President Obama, House Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Pomeroy, which made me think “Wow, this Rick Berg guy is a cool dude, to put pictures of three of my favorite politicians on the envelope he sent me. If he’s looking to get on my good side, this envelope is a good start.” Until I opened it and saw what he had to say about three of my favorite politicians on the inside. Problem was, in the letter he called me James, and in the 40 or so years we’ve known each other, he’s never called me James (a few other things, but not James). So I must have ended up on some mailing list that his campaign staff bought, where I’m listed as James. Because we’re kind of friends. It would be like me sending him a letter reading "Dear Richard." We’re both from Hettinger. I said earlier this year he was going to cause me a lot of heartburn on Election Day, because Hettinger has never had a Congressman, and I might be willing to be a little more loyal to my hometown than to my chosen political party. But then Kevin Carvell reminded me I was wrong—Hettinger had a three-term Congressman named Norton back in the early days of the 20th Century. So I’m off the hook. And if I have any extra money to send this year (also not likely), I’ll probably send it to the people on outside of the envelope.

The Best Song Ever Written About North Dakota

It’s a music summer for Lillian and me. We started with James Taylor and Carole King at the Fargodome. We had tickets for Simon and Garfunkel, but Art got sick and they canceled.

Then we went to the Winnipeg Folk Festival, five days of rock and folk music. Lillian did the math. We sat through 45 hours of music. It came to $5.50 per hour each. To see Emmy Lou Harris, Hot Tuna, Levon Helm, The Wailin’ Jennys, Greg Brown, Bo Ramsey, Sarah Harmer and a whole bunch of others. A bargain.

While we were there we did a very bad thing. We were walking down the street in downtown Winnipeg en route to the Manitoba Museum on our first day there, and we noticed Neil Young was coming home to Winnipeg to play a concert later this month. On a lark we went into the Winnipeg Concert Hall box office and inquired if there were any seats. Sold out. Except for these two seats in the second row. We gasped at the price. And then Lillian started humming “Happy Birthday,” and she bought me the two most expensive birthday presents I’ve ever had. Well, one for her and one for me. Had to cancel my fall fishing trip with my brother on the Snake River to swing it, but hey, a steelhead salmon in one hand and Neil Young from the second row, in the other . . . My brother will understand.

We leave Monday (tomorrow) morning. We’ve seen Neil a few times, but not solo, all alone on stage, in his hometown. I’ve seen the set lists from the gigs he’s been doing on this tour. “Helpless.” “Down By The River.” “Ohio.” “After The Gold Rush.” “Cinnamon Girl.” “Old Man.” And on and on. Plus a whole bunch of new songs ready to come out on his new CD.

We’ll be back Wednesday. And then Friday we leave for Montana, where we’ll stop in Bozeman and see Jackson Brown. Seen his set lists too. “Doctor My Eyes.” “Runnin’ On Empty.” “I Am A Patriot.” And about 18 more.

We’ll end the summer at the Bohemian Hall south of Mandan, on August 21. You can all come along on that one. I hope you all will. To see Chuck Suchy, and most of his family, I expect, and maybe a surprise guest or two. North Dakota’s best songwriter, ever, is Chuck Suchy. Period. Don’t talk to me about Peggy Lee or Bobby Vee, or anyone else with a three letter last name ending in “ee.” A Rubber Ball? Is That All There Is? Oh, I loved them both, in their day, but Chuck Suchy is timeless. Do you have his CD’s? If not, I think they are still for sale at the Hallmark store and Mandan Drug in downtown Mandan. Or you can buy them at his website.

I think you all know his story. A homeboy from Mandan who, as a young man, started making music to support this bad farming habit he had. I watched Chuck stand on that smoky little stage at the Bismarck Town House night after night covering Glen Campbell and a few dozen other balladeers while legislators and lobbyists generally ignored him as they drank their whiskey cokes and martinis.

And then he started writing songs, and singing them, and recording them, and people liked them, and he finally said goodbye to the Town House and started doing what singer-songwriters do. Perform their own music. And the audience listens, and appreciates, and claps. Well, the first number in Chuck’s age is 6 now, I guess, and he just gets better and better. And so do his songs. His new CD, “Unraveling Heart,” is loaded with them.

But the first number in my age is 6, too, and I’m sentimental, and I really like his early stuff. My two favorites, surprisingly, are a couple of waltzes, “Saturday Night At The Hall” and “Dancing Dakota.” Except for “West Dakota Breezes.” That is surely the best song ever written about North Dakota. I told Chuck a couple years ago that I hope we both live to be really old men, and that I die just before he does, so he can sing “West Dakota Breezes” at my funeral. I hope it works out that way. Meanwhile, spend the next six minutes listening to it by going to this website, scrolling down and clicking on it. Whether you've heard it a hundred times, like I have, or never heard it at all, I guarantee it will be the best six minutes of your day.

A Whack On The Side Of The Head

Usually, when someone files a complaint against their spouse for assault, and then later recants and asks that charges be dropped, it is because, even though the assault actually did occur, the person complaining, for some reason, has decided that they don’t want to see the charges through, to the conviction of their spouse. There are a lot of reasons this happens. Fear of retaliation. Fear of the future alone. Fear that life without an abusive partner is worse than life with one. A belief that, “deep down inside, this is really a good person, he just let his anger get away from him, and it was probably my fault, anyway, that he lost his temper and hit me, and so if I just treat him better, he will treat me better, and we’ll be happy together.”

Usually.

In the much-publicized case of Nicole and Dave Weiler, it now appears that’s not what’s going on.

Special Prosecutor Ladd Erickson said this week “Nicole Weiler’s May 20th statement and additional circumstantial evidence not available to the prosecution at the time this charge was filed, now suggests David Weiler is innocent of this charge,” according to the Bismarck Tribune.

Erickson was referring to a statement by Nicole Weiler on May 20 that her husband had not hit her, as she had reported to police last winter. Erickson’s statement was pretty unequivocal, and prosecutors are not generally inclined to dismiss these kinds of charges lightly.

So it now appears that Dave Weiler did not hit his wife (this time). But somebody did. She was pretty beat up when she called police in March. We’ll see if the prosecutor files charges against somebody else.

A friend of the couple told me yesterday that Nicole Weiler is a little “wacky.” Well, I’d probably be a little wacky too if some big dude who had access to me 24/7 had been whalin’ on me for years. Just because Dave Weiler has only been convicted once doesn’t mean he’s only hit her once. I’m no psychologist, but I know that fear is often at the root of mental health issues. And anger is often at the other end.

Fear and anger. I hope both these people get the help they need. I hope Dave Weiler has the sense and compassion, now, to resign the visible position he holds which makes this a front page story instead of a “nubs of the news” mention. I hope he understands that if he had resigned after this first conviction, she would have seen little reason to file a second, and allegedly false, complaint, which his children read about in the paper. Most kids like it when their parents are on the six o’clock news. Not the Weiler children, I suspect. I hope he understands what his selfish desire to be a State Legislator has wrought on those children. I hope I never read either of their names in the newspaper again, unless it’s for the fact they won a medal at the Prairie Rose State Games, or something positive like that.

If he doesn’t have enough sense to do that, then I hope the recall effort by the folks in District 30 is successful. That would be a well-placed, well timed, whack on the side of the head. Turn about, after all, is fair play. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Baseball In The Badlands

Dave Gilbertson was drafted right out of high school. Not into the army, or as a professional athlete. Because of his wonderful creativity and imagination, he was drafted by his father and the other owners of a professional minor league baseball team as director of promotions for Bismarck’s newly formed Dakota Rattlers of the Prairie League in the spring of 1995. This was no glamorous undertaking. The league, its first year, had teams in Moose Jaw, Regina and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; Brandon, Manitoba; Bismarck and Minot, North Dakota; Aberdeen, South Dakota; and Minneapolis, Minnesota. In the second (and next-to-last) season it added Grand Forks, North Dakota, Brainerd, Minnesota, and Green Bay, Wisconsin.

As Gilbertson explains in his delightfully written book, “Baseball in the Badlands: Stale Beers and Stale Careers,” there is much we don’t know when we sit down in the metal bleachers to watch a ballgame. The personal and often heartwarming stories of young men with a dream, the chaotic lives of those men off the ball field, and stories of general managers disappearing in the middle of the night with the gate receipts from the previous night’s game, leaving a 19-year-old college freshman to fend off bill collectors.

Something of a prodigy in his young years, Gilbertson, now a mergers and acquisitions expert on the east coast, wrote his book at the end of his second season with the Dakota Rattlers (also the Rattlers last season), before he was 21 years old. It tells the story of those two seasons of professional baseball in Bismarck in 1995 and 1996. You don’t have to be a baseball fan to enjoy this book. Dave hooks you right out of the chute, combining his love for, and knowledge of, baseball, and his love for, and understanding of, the place he grew up. Here, read the first three paragraphs of Chapter One, and see if you agree that, right from the beginning, this is one of the best books ever written in, or about, Bismarck.

"In late August of 1995, the Oakland Athletics sent outfielder Ruben Sierra to the New York Yankees in a trade that was, at the time, considered relatively routine. Sierra was a well-traveled player who came to the Yankees with a reputation for being outspoken, surly and pompous. Shortly after arrival in New York, Sierra was preparing for the coming game, his third in Yankee pinstripes. A friendly older gentleman walked over and decided to welcome the new player to the team. Hall of Famer Phil Rizzuto, affectionately called “Scooter” by the Yankee faithful, was a New York star during the second golden age of New York Yankee baseball. Between 1948-53, he was part of the only major league baseball team ever to win five world championships in a row. He would later be named Yankee Team Captain, a title that to this day has been held by a select fourteen great players. The Yankees had retired his number and he had become one of America’s favorite play-by-play men with his soothing “Holy Cow,” a fixture in the Big Apple. Sierra had won no championships, likely will not have his number retired by any team, and will likely not be selected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, yet was still being paid the ungodly sum of $5.1 million per season to play the game. Upon seeing the old man amble towards him, he immediately picked up his baseball belongings and brushed past, muttering only “I don’t sign autographs.” Rizzuto was stunned as he sat down, mouth drawn, ready to give his best regards to a new man on the squad. “Things have changed in this wonderful sport since I played,” he thought to himself.

"On July 16, 1996, Rob Halasy, right-handed pitcher for the Dakota Rattlers of the Prairie League, walked into United Printing on Front Street in Bismarck, North Dakota. As director of promotions, I oversaw the release of the 1996 edition of Dakota Rattler baseball cards. The rest of the team was in Austin, Minnesota playing the Southern Minny Stars. Halasy was injured and had stayed in Bismarck for treatment on his ailing right arm. He had been asking, without fail, every single day since he arrived in Bismarck for this, his second season with the Rattlers, when the baseball cards would be done. I kept assuring him that they would be coming out soon and not to worry. He decided that the usual allotment of fifty cards given to each player would not be nearly enough. He had family and friends at home in Brooklyn, New York, that would like to see his face on an actual baseball card, so he ordered an extra one thousand baseball cards of himself. Partly because he was injured and partly to assure him that the cards were, indeed, on the way, I invited him to United Printing to view the final proofs of the cards before they went to print. As he walked in, his eyes twinkled and a grin appeared on his face. He was a child on Christmas morn. I showed him the proof of his first professional baseball card. The picture was dominated by Halasy, grinning from ear to ear, assuming the usual pitcher’s pose in his pinstriped Dakota Rattlers uniform. It was at that point, as he was admiring his very own baseball card, that he said it. It caught me off guard, but renewed my confidence in professional baseball and its much-maligned athletes. What did he say? What was it? “Look at this part of the card, right across my uniform, it’ll be perfect for me to autograph.”

"It was at this point that I immediately wished I could speak to Mr. Phil Rizzuto to assure him there is a place where they still play baseball on real grass. There’s still a place where the players don’t bother with what their agents tell them, or how much money someone will pay for their signature. Mr. Rizzuto, that place is Bismarck, North Dakota. It could, however, be Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan; Austin, Minnesota; or Aberdeen, South Dakota. In none of these places do the professional ballplayers worry about catching their chartered airplane or how to spend seventy five dollars per diem on meals. The ballplayers in each of these cities wonder how the next month’s rent will be paid, what their batting average or earned run average has reached, and where the next meal will come from. Rob Halasy is one of these players, as is Boo Moore and Dan Halpern. These players play because they love the game of baseball. Their dreams are simple: to play major league baseball. Millions of children grow up with these very same dreams putting them to sleep at night, but these players have come tantalizingly close to fulfilling those dreams. This fact makes it much more cruel when each eventually realize the dream will stay just that: a dream. They want to know the smell of a major league locker room, the feel of major league dirt beneath their cleats, to see a major league stadium filled with 60,000 people, and to hear those 60,000 cheer wildly for them. They dream every waking minute what it feels to put on major league, New York Yankee pinstripes and hear the announcer say, just as he does for Ruben Sierra, 'Now starting in right field for your New York Yankees . . .'”

If you like baseball, or Bismarck, or North Dakota, I hope you’ll find a copy of Dave Gilbertson’s book and read it. It’s a hundred and sixty pages of a young man’s love of what was going on in his life, and the sadness when it ended, and I think you’ll enjoy it just as much as I did when I re-read it again this summer. I have to admit, I was a Rattlers fan. I’m also a fan of the Gilbertson family. Dave’s parents, Joel and Jan, live just down the street from me. Joel was an integral part of bringing the Rattlers to Bismarck, just as he was a key player in the boxing career of Virgil Hill (I was fan of Virgil’s too—I once drove to Las Vegas to watch him fight). Anyway, I spent a lot of nights, as Dave says at the end of his book, sitting on the uncomfortable metal bleachers. Here, read the last paragraph, as he mourns the departure of the Rattlers from the baseball scene after two seasons:

"Dreams were made and crushed, re-made and crushed again. Aberdeen first baseman Craig Dour summed the experience best in saying, “That was the most fun I’ve ever had in baseball. The fans in each park are what I will remember. The people were just so great.” In the end, it is these memories which will last. The kids who chased foul balls at every game will reminisce to their children about those two idyllic summers. Baseball was in town and they met their heroes, whether they be Boo Moore, Dan Halpern, Ray Moon or Brett Muche. For the players the dream has lived and is now dead. For the children, the dream still lives. The sport is certainly bigger than Bismarck, and it will go on. For the small town fans in an isolated part of the Upper Midwest United States, however, the national pastime will again be enjoyed only through television and the distant radio. The fans will no longer be able to sit on top of the uncomfortable metal bleachers of Bismarck Municipal Ballpark, taking in a professional baseball game, looking out on the horizon where a North Dakota sunset is in full bloom. For Bismarck baseball fans, the sun has set and darkness has covered the soul."

A Modest Proposal

Okay, I knew this was going to happen. Among the notes I got last night and this morning were these two:

“If Secretary of State Jaeger is going to put Josh Voytek on the ballot, he should put him in the Secretary of State’s race, not the PSC. At least he got some votes for that one.”

“I think Voytek should be in the race for Secretary of State . . . There’s nothing set in stone yet about the ballot. It isn’t printed until September. He didn’t get any votes for PSC and he wasn’t certified by the State Canvassing Board, so nothing is being taken away from him except an offer from Jaeger. Give him Secretary of State as a compromise. I bet Wayne Stenehjem could find a way to make that legal.”

Well, how do you disagree with those two? It’s a great idea. Heck, Al can just have a do-over on his announcement and say that instead of Voytek going into the PSC race, he'll in the Secretary of State race. (I’ve been wondering, incidentally, if Al consulted Kevin Cramer before he put Joshua on the PSC ballot. Kevin can’t be too happy about that.)

Better yet, here’s my suggestion. Let’s decide it the democratic way, and take the pressure off Al at the same time. Let’s just put a link on the Secretary of State’s website that would let people vote what they want Joshua to run for—Secretary of State or Public Service Commission. All 400,000 or so eligible voters would be allowed to cast their ballot for one office or the other. Whichever one gets the most votes, that’s where Al will put Josh on the ballot.

How about that? I bet Josh would go along with it—look at the name recognition he’d get. Could get Al Jaeger and Kevin Cramer busy e-mailing their friends to vote for the other office. They’re both in tough races and don’t need a third party candidate siphoning off conservative votes.

Hmmm, I like this idea . . .