I am back...yes, I am.

More stuff to come soon...

I think I'm going to start this up again....

Just a thought...

whattddya think?

Anybody care?

It's coming....

Hello all my blogging trackers....

I'm in Montana for a week, so hold your horses...

Thank you.

Dan

Sic semper tyrannus

The photo you see below is of a Marion 8750 dragline used by the Falkirk Mining Company to remove "overburden" (top layers of soil). The strip mining operation is pretty standard for what you see in much of western North Dakota. This particular mine is about fifty miles north of Bismarck, North Dakota's state capitol. It is an incredibly large machine.

I had the opportunity once to see the inside of it while it was operating. That was an awe-inspiring experience. The body housing of the machine is three times as big as a standard, two story house. Once you are inside, the experience of the machine turning one way to the other is disorienting. It's like a big office building on roller skates spinning around. It spins as the boom moves from left to right to tear away at the soil.

When you get to the operator's chamber, a person can see through a plate glass window to the huge bucket that is suspended over the prairie by long, thick cables. The boom seems to thrust out for several football-fields length, but it probably is only seventy or eighty yards out. (The sheer, mammoth proportions tend to distort how far everything is away.)

I remember my words I spit out when I saw the dragline operator, working his little joystick back and forth and felt, saw, and heard hundreds of tons of prairie soil removed in one fell swoop: "If that doesn't give you a god complex, I don't know what would..."

The State of North Dakota likes its strip mines. They provide many jobs that otherwise wouldn't be in North Dakota. The mine's operations, therefore, are a main player in the state's big game of politics.

All that coal is burnt up in power plants to feed our nation's demand for more and more juice. The mine digs it up; they burn it; you turn on your light. Simple.

But, wait a minute! After the mines dig up the coal, what happens to all that dirt that's stripped away? Does it just lay around in piles?

This is how the mines used to do it all the time. In fact, there are some piles out there that are still laying around from mining prior to 1977 in North Dakota. They are big piles of infertile earth with weeds all over them.

But now, because of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, strip mines are required to reclaim the land they have torn apart to put it back into production. In essence, it's about putting the land back the way they found it. (At least in theory, it doesn't really work out that way.) This is the process called reclamation.

You can see an article of this whole process here (Falkirk Land Reclamation).

Well aren't those mines just the greatest thing since Fleischkeuchle came in little plastic bags!?

Hold on now...

One of the things that I have always found interesting is how self-congratulatory Falkirk mine is with its land reclamation.

Several years ago I went on a tour of the mine. It was a special tour that wasn't looking at the whole operation, but at the aspects of reclamation. As the bus glided across the mine's private roads, the guide on the microphone in the front explained the wonderful native grass and wildlife communities the mine was re-establishing. An average tourist, not knowing the history behind the mining laws, would think that the mine itself came up with these great ideas. When, in fact, it was the "wacko" environmentalists of the 70s who forced the mines through legislation and regulation who were the authors of these fine plans.

What we have to remember about corporations is they are not individual human beings with moral directives.

Corporations are neither moral nor amoral. Nor are they like your greedy little brother Nicky or your stingy Uncle Jack. They are different entities entirely. Their purpose for existence is to make money. Period.

So Falkirk mine, or any other mine, would NEVER choose to reclaim land unless they were forced to do so. Because it is a lot cheaper to dig the coal out of the ground and leave all the piles around to be somebody else's problem.

However, since the mine has to go through all that inconvenient--and expensive--process of separating all the soil out and putting it back, they might as well run tour buses through and tell about what great land stewards they are. It is only good public relations to do so (which makes investors feel a little better about themselves--and makes their pocketbooks a little looser, too).

'Sic semper tyrannus' means 'thus shall tyrants always be' in Latin. It is an acknowledgment that tyrants shall always be a certain way; it's no good trying to change the way that they are.

Big corporations are here, and they are here to stay. Any denial of this fact is wistful tomfoolery.

If enlightened, ecology-minded individuals are going to try to change corporations' practices that are wasteful, polluting and lack stewardship, they first must accede to the fact corporations are not individuals like you and me. Corporations are not people that a person can convince to be right for right's sake.

Instead, if individuals want to change large corporations' practices, political activism and legislative support are paramount.

In North Dakota, one such organization is Dakota Resource Council (www.drcinfo.com). Good, ethical people seek to work with like-minded organizations to lobby support to make change happen.

No one says that this is a perfect system. But if you want things to happen, "you gotta put a little muscle behind it."

That's the way tyrants are kept in check.

Variety is More than Spice

It's been a long time coming, but I have to admit that it's true.

Diversity is a good thing.

Once in my college years I completed a business intership in a nursing home. As an intern, I was included in the daily staff meetings that the administration would have. Often, different employees would give presentations to teach us all about some new aspect of nursing home management. One day, one of the other interns passed out little plastic baggies with various nicknacks and baubles contained in them. The different items were supposed to be a teaching tool for the employees to embrace diversity in the workplace. Eye rolling and gagging gesticulations could not express strongly enough my disdain for such a display of overt political correctness.

I have changed my tune--almost completely. The political correctness still makes my eyes roll.

Diversity is actually a strengthening agent and something to be celebrated, not despised.

The problem is, much of the diversity that is out there is either seen as something subversive and damaging to the whole, or it is overlooked for wider brushstrokes on the canvas of life.

That's the problem with the Great Plains.

People view the Great Plains as "flyover states" between one coast and the other. (Cheryl Unruh has a wonderful site devoted to this very topic right here:http://www.flyoverpeople.net ). The dismissal of the Plains as only worth a small footnote in our culture is almost universally pandemic. Those of us who live here have a problem, too: we don't acknowledge and taut the rich mosaic of diversity and life that resides in and with the plains.

When you think of diversity, you generally don't come up with an "empty" grassland as the best example. We like big, action-packed things. We don't like seemingly static, empty things--even if they are full of infinite variety and diversity.

Take the dirt of the Great Plains.

The greatest resource that the Great Plains has is not its wind potential (although this is wonderful, too). It is not its hard working people or its rich cultural diversity from the first peoples who persevered in this place. It is something that is foundational to every other life system on the planet: the soil.

Soil filters water. Its nutrients allow plants to grow and root systems to mesh life together. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of different chemicals and elements contained within it. The animals and people eat the plants that grow on it. They die and the nutrient cycle continues ad infinitum.

Aldo Leopold had a wonderful metaphor in 'A Sand County Almanac'. The "Round River" that flowed in a neverending circle was tended by Paul Bunyan in the folk tales of these parts. Although physics deny the literal existence of such a river, figuritively it makes a good discription of soil. The soil never runs out of stuff that makes it live and thrive! But only if the other things that are connected to that soil are healthy and thriving, too.

When a person thrusts a hand into the sod of the prairie, and rips out the top layer of soil, it is a piece of the collective life that resides there. If you put your nose up to the life in your hands and breathe deeply in, you will smell the sweet-pithy bouquet of diverse life that is there. It's more than the sum of the parts that make the whole. It is the whole itself. The soil IS alive! It's alive!
If you do the same in your front-yard monoculture of Kentucky Bluegrass, you will smell a combination of various chemicals and a slightly off, water-soaked cardboard smell. That's soil that has life in it, but it is not diverse, healthy life.

The person who taught me this is a farmer-rancher from Turtle Lake, North Dakota. Gene Goven got started a few decades ago trying to figure out how to get more cows in a parcel of land to feed on the grass without destroying the forage that was there. What he found was far more than he had planned for.

As it turns out, by mimicking the grazing patterns of Bison by the use of "cells" within different paddocks, and moving the cattle around to grind the carbon life back into the soil, the soil responds with more microbial diversity and more plant varieties. This, in turn, allows more tonnage of feed to be produced. That translates to sustainable larger herd sizes, which drives more carbon back into the soil. So the cycle of life and the sequestration of carbon creates one huge conglomerate of a life form called soil.

Gene also found out that the healthy, diverse soil was filtering water much better than the unhealty soils.

One season the Northern Plains got a proverbial "gully gusher" of a rain storm. Gene complained that all his neighbors stock ponds had filled up so quickly and their cows were all drinking already. His ponds, however, were still dry a day after the rain. (It had been a dry, hot year). Eventually, his ponds did fill up. The water, it turns out, was being filtered and used by the plants in the healthy, diverse soil. The diverse, healthy soil was 'catching more water where it fell.'

For an great read about diversity and Gene's system of rotational grazing go here: http://www.holisticmanagement.org/

Interestingly, farmers are finding that diversity is healthier for the soil, too. If you came to the plains eighty years ago, you would see the process of desertification gaining a foothold. The dust bowl happened for a reason: people didn't know the soil and its needs--that it needed diversity.

Now, many farmers (at least the ones who want to stay in business) are turning to so-called no-till farming. No-till seeks to allow residual matter on top of the soil over the winter to hold the soil in place. Instead of turning the dirt over with a plow in the spring, the farmers drill the seed directly into the stubble. The residue holds more water in place and keeps the soil from blowing into the next state. In addition to more diverse rotations and cropping, farmers have found their yields to increase four or five fold on a what a particular piece of ground would produce in the 20s and 30s. Diversity in farming has increased profits, benefitted wildlife and water retention, and just overall makes a lot more sense than turning everything over every year.

The interesting relationship between diversity and health with other life systems is uncanny. For instance: What happens when a society yearns to create a so-called pure, racially "superior" monoculture in a human nation?

You get a nightmare.

It is a twisted thing to think of Nazism as comparible to a whole field of leafy spurge on the prairie (a non-native invader destroying range land), but this is a fair comparison. Both the plant community and the Nazi society are choking the life out of their foundations. (The ironic thing about the Nazis is that even their high holy Fuehrer wasn't exactly the epitome of health, beauty and vigor to begin with.)

The prairie can teach America to claim her rich asset and empowering strength. Diversity and variety in human societies are as strengthening and healthy as thousands of different species of microbes, insects, grazers, grasses, legumes, forbs and sedges that the good Lord spreads like a mat across the land to the Rockies. We should think twice when we seek to continually change others to our way of thinking and acting.

Their differences, rather than a chink the armor or a weak link we despise, just might be enriching the whole in ways of which we never conceived.

Feeling SAD?

One of the most difficult things that I have had to adjust to moving to the northern plains is the amount of daylight we receive in the winter months. After having grown up in Minnesota in the 1970s, I remember getting on the bus to go to school in the dark. But the sun was usually peaking through the clouds; dawn was well on its way when we reached school. This must have been about eight o'clock in the morning or so. The situation in Western North Dakota is far different.

There are days in December and January that officially begin at nine AM. And you still are tired, wishing that the warm covers and nirvana of sleep were washing over you in transcendent bliss. Certainly, Alaskans must experience this to the nth degree. I have never been to Alaska, but those winters have got to be tough.

Add to this the never-ending-constant-godforsaken-wind that ensues day in and day out on the plains, and you have a depressing day indeed.

I have always had the contention that any day that the wind does not blow on the plains is a good day. It doesn't matter if it's 20 below outside. No wind? Good. Wind? Wind bad. Very bad.

It's not that humans cannot benefit from the wind. Even our President recently said that Americans must look at developing wind energy as "a part of the equation" for future energy needs. I guess shrubs do waver a little when the wind blows, too.

Add into the mix of very little to do in rural North Dakota and you have a syrupy concoction of wind, darkness and boredom to give you a good recipe for ennui and purposelessness.

Some believe that depression is actually a evolutionary survival skill for our northern European ancestors. The metabolic processes certainly are reduced when you sleep an extra two hours per day. But there had to be some Norwegian up late stirring away to produce Aquavit to exacerbate and amplify depression even more. Certainly, those who came to the plains took this poison with them to whittle away those cold evenings in some sod house on the prairie.

North Dakota has the coveted #1 rank in the nation for per capita alcoholics.

Whether or not the sun has a whole lot to do with this is controversial.

DSM-IV states there is certainly a "pattern" of "depressive episodes" that are consistent with winter circadian rhythms. But the fact of the matter is that, "despite the heuristic appeal of a circadian hypothesis for SAD, there are as yet no consistently replicated data to support abnormal circadian rhythms as an etiology for SAD or for the therapeutic effects of light."

In the meantime, it seems, the people of the Northern Plains will have to learn to live with the winter blues. We can curse the wind, scream at what's on TV, and pour another bottle of HEET in the tank. But we will still have to live with the winter's lack of sun and fun. What many say here, "it keeps the riff-raff out" might actually be true.

At least it makes us feel a little better about ourselves that we actually are tough enough to 'like' depression.

Keep thinking of June...and those eleven o'clock sunsets.

Congratulations! You've won an all-expense paid trip to....North Dakota!

I read this post today on Aberdeen News' online site. Let the numbers speak for themselves. I don't think kids are breaking down the doors for this prize. Once again, this shows that perception is everything in a world of glitzy advertising and glamorous 'destinations'. For a direct link to this article, click here.

National Guard essay contest offers free trip to North Dakota

Associated Press
BISMARCK, N.D. - A National Guard essay contest is offering 10 selected high school students from every state and four territories a free trip to North Dakota this summer.

The Guard's Lewis and Clark Youth Rendezvous is being planned to bring the 540 students to North Dakota Aug. 13-18 to educate them about the journey of explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark nearly 200 years ago.

Two chaperones from each state and territory also will get the free trip, the Guard said.

The students will be selected based their thoughts about the military value of the Lewis and Clark expedition. The competition is open to those who will be high school juniors or seniors in August 2006.

"We're still looking for more entries," said Staff Sgt. Billie Jo Lorius of Bismarck, a Guard spokeswoman. "We're really encouraging creativity."

Only 26 students have sent in entries, with 12 from North Dakota. The deadline for entries is Feb. 28.

While in North Dakota, they will visit sites including Fort Abraham Lincoln south of Mandan, the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center and Fort Mandan in Washburn, and Medora.