The Pro-Life Handbook Wins Regions, Goes to State

Thursday, February 1, 3:40 p.m. -- that's our next showtime. The Montrose cast and crew claimed the Region championship yesterday, winning unanimous first-place rankings from all three judges and earning its sixth straight trip to the State One-Act Festival (general festival info at the South Dakota High School Activities Association Speech website and South Dakota Public Broadcasting).

This play is why I haven't been blogging the legislative session much this month: the play carries the most important messages my cast and I have for South Dakota. It really is blogging on stage. We'd like everyone who can make to come down to Brandon next week and see what we have to say. This is the most important and immediately relevant play the Montrose HS Theater Company and Valley Road Productions have staged, and we're eager to share it with everyone we can.

If you can't make the show in Brandon (or even if you can but would like a preview), you can view the script online at my school website. Read it, see it, review it -- we are glad to participate in the conversation about life in South Dakota.

The Pro-Life Handbook -- Reviews!

The first review of "The Pro-Life Handbook," Montrose High School's one-act play, has arrived! Rani posted it as a comment to my initial PLHB post, but I wanted to spotlight her comments and use them to launch this separate post for all reviewers:

Rani said...

It was intriguing and I found myself encompassing many emotions as I watched. At times I became defensive, other times I found myself giggling at the hypocrisy. I was saddened and moved by a couple of realizations that I had never made before. In the end it was entertaining as usual and this year I felt like I learned a thing or two [emphasis mine].

"learned a thing or two" -- exactly the playwright's intent. I just hope the hypocrisy Rani giggled at wasn't our own! See Rani's complete comments on the play (and other valuable comments on life in Montrose) at her own blog, Mommyville.

We perform again Thursday morning, 9:35, at the Brandon Valley Performing Arts Center.
***Update We won Regions and have qualified for State! Our next performance is Thursday, February 1, 3:40 p.m., at the Brandon Valley Performing Arts Center. Come see what you can learn, and post your reviews here!

The Pro-Life Handbook -- Blogging Hits the Stage!

Come one, come all! See some of the issues discussed here turned into funky high school theater! The Montrose High School Theater Company will present "The Pro-Life Handbook," written and directed by yours truly, on the following dates:

• --Sunday, January 21, 3:00 p.m., Montrose HS (world premiere!)


• --Monday, January 22, 2:45 p.m., Montrose HS (school performance)


• --Thursday, Janaury 25, 9:35 a.m., Brandon Valley Performing Arts Center (Region I-B One-Act Contest... in Rep. Roger Hunt's hometown!)

All performances are free and open to the public. The show lasts just 40 minutes, so make the short drive to Montrose or Brandon and see what our young people can do with some of the serious issues facing South Dakota. Spread the word! Bring your friends! It will be worth it.

Leslee Unruh -- Blogvergence

Posted 2007.01.04 on Leslee Unruh's Abstinence Clearinghouse blog by Sherri Page:

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. It is insane to say that more money needs to be spent on family planning.

Posted 2007.01.05 on Clean Cut Kid by Chad, quoting a report in the Yankton Press & Dakotan:

Leslee Unruh, the former manager of the Vote Yes for Life campaign which advocated the ban during the 2006 election, said legislators should expect to see the issue come before them.

"We promised the people of South Dakota we would not stop. I haven't changed my plans," she said. "I expect it to be an issue at every legislative session until abortion is banned in South Dakota."

Argus Peddles More Smut!

The leading Sioux Falls newspaper (which would remain nameless if I weren't trying to reach the search engines) must be seeking synergy with one of its major online sponsors, Annabelle's Adult Superstore (i.e., the porn shop). While my wife was scrolling through an Argus Leader online forum on a letter to the editor about transportation for drunk bar patrons, she found an offensive avatar next to one of the posts. (See the forum thread here, but click at your own peril.) The avatar consists of a bare-breasted Betty Boop. We thought maybe some wise-acre hacker had found a way to sneak some porn onto South Dakota's flagship newspaper. But as we read through the post (from an individual of apparently good sense maintaining that people should be responsible enough to get themselves home from the bar in one piece without getting drunk and expecting our tax dollars to provide them with a way home), we found the following postscript:

Do you like my avatar, kids? I found it in the Argus Leader forum gallery. Don't you think my bare breasts are sexy and appropriate for the readers of these forums?? Way to go, Argus!!

Sure enough, when readers register to participate in the forum, the Argus offers a gallery of avatar images, including the Betty Boop and a few other cartoon images of women ill-dressed for South Dakota's winter.

Now I thought my earlier post on the Argus peddling smut might be considered a bit of an exaggeration. The Argus was advertising a porn shop, but at least doing so semi-discreetly. But now here's the Argus posting pornographic images on its own website and encouraging its forum members to use them next to their discussions of the great issues of the day. Now I'm really ready for a boycott. Nobody offers as much South Dakota news as the Argus, but I just don't want pornography coming uninvited into my house (and I won't be issuing any invitations). I don't dare recommend that my fellow teachers or students in my classroom look up articles online in the Argus. I go the Argus for education, not titillation. If the Argus is going to push the latter, I'll have to seek the former somewhere else.

If You've Got to Subsidize...

Some characters around here will surely say the last thing we need is some liberal kid from out East telling us how to run our farms. (Listening to me is bad enough, I'm sure.) But Hannah Lupien, Yale freshman (freshperson?) and food pantry volunteer, writes an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun about the real cost of food (reprinted in various papers; I found my copy in the Minneapolis Star Tribune). She notes that many of the people she has served over seven years of volunteer work at a Baltimore food pantry are overweight and suffer diabetes. These poor folks can't afford diet products or even fresh fruits and vegetables. Lupien suggests various solutions to the lack of nutrition among the poor, including higher standards and funding for nutritious food supplied through food pantries and WIC. But here's Lupien's kicker:

Most important, if the government would stop subsidizing corn and soybeans and start subsidizing fruits and vegetables, we could begin to make real progress.

I'll probably get a tractorload of snow dumped at the end of my driveway for saying this, but Lupien makes sense. Our agricultural market has been knocked out of whack by government intervention to favor agriculture products that don't really feed people. For instance, 80% of the corn we grow goes to feed livestock (which, yes, we do eventually eat, but imagine how much better that meat would be if the livestock ate grass!). Far too little of the corn we directly consume is fresh corn on the cob. More than three times as much corn is used to make high fructose corn syrup and other sweeteners than is used to produce cereal and other directly consumable corn products (see the chart on page 4 of "US Corn Growers: Producing Food AND Fuel" from the National Corn Growers Association).

Government subsidies of corn and beans drive producers away from healthier products. The result: the cheapest foods are indeed the least healthy. The seemingly paradoxical increase of obesity among the poor is a result of bad choices, not by the poor, who act quite rationally in choosing the cheapest foods, but by the government, which favors certain agricultural corporations who proceed to flood the market with cheap, fattening food.

Now I can't guarantee that the government could make everyone give up Cheetos in favor of celery sticks by an overhaul of its ag subsidies. But by shifting the market back toward fruits and vegetables, the government could drive some healthy changes, as the poor might find healthy food more affordable, and, as a not so peripheral benefit, many of my neighbors might find it more profitable to turn their cropland and their cattle back to pasture.

Wish List -- Top Ten Stories of 2007

The good folks of Madison and the great state of South Dakota have given me plenty to write about in 2006, and I'm sure they'll keep up the good work through 2007. But if I could wave my magic wand and conjure up news of my own, here are the ten biggest South Dakota stories I'd like to be able to comment on in 2007:

10. Rounds Endorses Replacing Property Tax with Corporate Income Tax
--Says Governor Rounds, "It's time Wal-Mart and Citibank paid their fair share for the highly educated workforce our tax dollars provide."

9. Madison Abandons Marketing Campaign; Banners Recycled to Fill Potholes
--"$100,000 a year, for banners?!" gasped Mayor Gene Hexom. "What were we thinking? We can get more bang for the buck paying kids to shovel snow and mow the city parks."

8. Rounds Commutes Death Sentences to Life in Prison; Legislature Follows by Banning Capital Punishment

7. Camp Lakodia Purchases Land, Donates to Nature Conservancy
--Entire south side of Lake Herman now off limits to further residential and commercial development.

6. Krabbenhoft Abandons Viking Dreams, Donates Personal Fortune to Schools, Speech Programs
--Sioux Valley Hospital CEO says education, not sports, real basis for community development. "Besides, the Vikings stink!"

5. South Dakota Implements Statewide Universal Health Coverage; Businesses and Young Professionals Flock to State
--"We've been shouting 'Live baby good, dead baby bad' at all the pro-life rallies," says Representative Roger Hunt of Brandon. "I figured it's time for us to put our money where our pro-life mouth is. Besides, universal health coverage will save South Dakotans millions."

4. Legislature Mandates School De-Consolidation
--Citing "educational advantage of smaller schools," Governor Rounds signs into law requirement that Sioux Falls, Rapid City, Aberdeen, and 12 other districts split into autonomous districts with enrollment no greater than 600 by July 1, 2009.

3. Highway Patrol Reports Quiet New Year's/Prom/Graduation Weekend
--"How do we explain the complete absence of DUI accidents and fatalities among our teenagers in 2007?" asks Secretary Tom Dravland of the South Dakota Department of Public Safety. "Is it our Parents Matter program? Is it parents putting a stop to teen drinking? Is it kids themselves finally getting sick of losing their friends for no reason? Who knows... and who cares, as long as our kids live long and happy lives?"

2. No Abortion Bills in 2007 Legislature
--"We're too busy," says Leslee Unruh, leader of the newly renamed Abstinence (from Political Grandstanding) Clearinghouse. "Feeding children, helping single mothers, promoting comprehensive health education -- who has time for politics?"

1. Pitchfork Revolution -- South Dakota Evicts Corporate Farms, Goes 100% Organic
--Brandishing pitchforks and copies of Kirkpatrick Sale's Human Scale, South Dakota farmers celebrated the Legislature's unanimous passage of land reform abolishing corporate farms and non-organic farming practices. "Farm Bill Schmarm Bill!" cried jubilant ex-legislator turned farm-revolutionary Gerry Lange of Madison. "With our organic meat and produce feeding our own people and filling high-end markets, we won't need any more farm subsidies!" When asked where South Dakota would find the workforce necessary to sustain the sudden increase in the number of smaller farms and the more labor-intensive, non-technological practices of organic farming, Lange pointed to the thousands of South Dakota ex-pats flocking back to the state to enjoy the recently passed universal health care program and the unparalleled quality of life. "So many good things are happening in South Dakota," said Lange, "that everyone wants to be a part of it."

TANSTAAFL -- Ethanol Plants Impact Quality of Life

TANSTAAFL: "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch." As we seek solutions to economic problems, it's tempting to think we can find some magic solution that will make everything better. But we must remember that no solution will come without costs. Yesterday's Mitchell Daily Republic offers more evidence of the costs of ethanol, costs we don't see until it's too late. Residents in Loomis, a tiny town 10 miles north and west of Mitchell, complained to the Davison County Commission on Thursday of the noise pollution generated by the new Prairie Ethanol plant. Folks living near the new plant are losing sleep. One resident, Jay Ivers, backs his complaint with some science: using a dosimeter, he has measured noise levels from the ethanol plant reaching 58 to 63 decibels in his bedroom and 70 to 80 decibels in his yard. Perspective: normal conversation is 60 decibels; 80 decibels is a vacuum cleaner, heavy city traffic, or, according Ivers's own experiments, a rolling freight train passing 40 feet away.

Ivers gets my sympathy right away just for being scientific in his approach to the problem. As the father of a noisy, erratically sleeping infant, I further sympathize with his desire for a simple quiet night's sleep. A homeowner ought to be able to sleep peacefully in his own house without having to rearrange his life by moving his bedroom to the far end of the house or the basement, turning on appliances to drown out the noise, or installing expensive insulation. (A homeowner who loses sleep because of a noisy baby -- well, that's his own problem! :-) ). Ivers also wins my sympathy as he faces the typical corporate reaction: plant manager Dean Frederickson shrugs off the complaints, saying Ivers and his neighbors "have every right to say what they want, and I have a right to exist as a business as long as I'm legal, and I am legal and will continue to be legal." Don't expect good-neighborliness from corporations; all that matters to industry is the bottom line and the law (when the law works in their favor).

Ivers and his neighbors are victims of a classic example of externality, a cost of an economic transaction borne by individuals not party to that transaction. Prairie Ethanol gets to produce South Dakota's new liquid gold, which we are told will keep our family farms in business and promote energy independence to boot. To produce this valuable product, ethanol plants consume great quantities of energy and water, which they pay a fair market price for (cushioned, of course, by the ethanol production subsidy which the government gives not to the farmers producing the corn but to the big industrialists operating the ethanol plants). However, the ethanol plants also consume something for which they offer no compensation: the peace and quiet of country living. That quality of life is South Dakota's trump card in the competition for business. We can never outduel New York or San Francisco or even Minneapolis or Omaha for big-city shopping, transportation, or culture. But we can offer quiet country living, wide open spaces letting folks build their homes far away from the rush and roar of population and industry. That quality of life distinguishes South Dakota from the places we compete with for jobs... and that quality of life will erode as we buy into the promise of ethanol riches and crowd our landscape with ethanol plants. More prairie towns and farms will become uncomfortable, if not outright unlivable as the roar of the machinery, not to mention the glare of the factory lights (see the photo in the Daily Republic story) and the stench of grain alcohol (when the wind is right, I've smelled the Wentworth ethanol plant from Lake Herman, ten miles away).

Now I'm not ready to abandon ethanol as an alternative energy source. South Dakotans have to make a living, and the nation has to pursue alternative energy for its own economic and military secruity. However, we need to recognize all the costs that come with ethanol and balance them with all the benefits so glowingly promised by the big corporate interests and our own government. Higher corn prices? Great. More jobs? Keep 'em coming. But a quiet prairie night, a good night's sleep -- what are they worth to us?

Legislature's New Year's Promise: You're Fired!

This public school teacher wakes up on the last day of 2006 to find the legislature may be eliminating his job. Keloland.com reports that the 2007 South Dakota Legislature will consider mandating consolidation for school districts with fewer than 200 students.

At my place of employment, the Montrose School District, where enrollment sits too precariously close to 200, we've been expecting this move for some time. The governor has hinted in this direction previously. It doesn't surprise me that the state has waited until after Governor Rounds's re-election to make this move. (Hmmm, I wonder what other interesting and controversial legislation our governor might pursue now that he doesn't have to face his small-town constituents at the polls again.)

We have to keep in mind that this legislation can only be justified on fiscal, not educational grounds. Senate Republican Leader Dave Knudson from Sioux Falls has stated (in the Sioux Falls newspaper that advertises smut) that it's hard to get a quality education in schools that small. If that's the case, then how does Senator Knudson explain Montrose producing two SDSU Briggs Scholars (SDSU's most prestigious academic award to incoming freshmen) in the past two years, or Montrose making its annual yearly progress goals under No Child Left Behind?

The State Aid Study Task Force final report from this fall offers a little more perspective. Small schools* outperform larger districts on the state's own NCLB assessments. The report notes, "The differences in performance are more pronounced at the elementary level, less so at the middle grades, and disappear at the high school level." The report does show a full one-point advantage for large-school students on the ACT over their small-school counterparts, a reflection of the advantages large schools have in offering more college-prep courses in addition to the required curriculum. However, the report also shows that in the last two years, small-school students have tied or bettered their medium-school counterparts on the ACT. The task force report itself points out that since consolidation will turn small schools into medium schools, not large schools, we should weigh the educational impacts of consolidation by comparing achievement results of small and medium schools. When we focus our attention on that data, we find no educational reason to mash small schools into fewer, larger schools.

So don't let your legislators fool you: they aren't acting in the educational interest of our children. School consolidation isn't about education; it's about money. Legislators like Senator Knudson aren't asking whether kids learn better in small schools (or they are ignoring their own data, which seems to suggest that students, especially the younger ones, enjoy significant benefits from education in smaller districts). The legislators pushing consolidation are asking just how much we are willing to spend on education... and the answer seems to be, "Not enough to keep small schools -- and small communities -- alive."

Please note that while my job hangs in the balance -- even if my teaching and coaching position would survive consolidation, I'm not terribly interested in teaching in a larger school district, and I certainly don't want to have to commute further to a consolidated school in Canistota or Salem -- I am open to the fiscal debate on school consolidation. I would argue that in a state where people can afford RVs, half-million dollar lake homes, and other proliferating luxuries, the money exists to expand funding for all of our schools and bring teacher pay up from the national cellar. However, the Legislature may be able to produce evidence that the state cannot justify drawing more tax dollars out of the economy to prop up the existing statewide school district structure, which already gives extra funding per student to the small schools. Even with that extra assistance, small schools still shortchange their teachers, who earn an average of $1500 less per year than their medium-school counterparts and $7000 less than their large-school counterparts. I am open to the argument that small schools, while educationally effective, are not sufficiently efficient for state fiscal purposes.

The Legislature should definitely have an open and studious debate about the best way to fulfill its State-Constitutional duty to provide a free and uniform education to all of its children. However, let's be honest in that debate. The evidence shows that small schools educate their students just as well as, if not better than, the medium-size schools into which consolidation would transform them. The real debate is about whether the legislators and taxpayers of this state are willing to pay for the good education those small schools produce.

*Some perspective for my friends from the big city: on South Dakota's very human scale, "small" means up to 200 students in the district. "Medium" means 201-600. "Large" means a school district with more than 600 students. [back to text]

Argus Peddles Smut, Drives Blogger to Irrational Behavior

Four weeks ago, I submitted a complaint to the Argus about its advertising for an "adult superstore" -- i.e., an establishment that sells sex toys and other degrading items. The ads appeared on the same page as regular news stories. I suggested to the Argus that if it couldn't bring itself to pass on the sex store's advertising dollars, the paper could at least restrict the ads to a separate section of its website requiring a login and certification that viewers are adults. The Argus has not responded, not even with a simple, "Thanks for your concern, but our advertising is our business, so tough cookies."

I hate to call for a boycott -- I like reading the Argus, and I have found it to be te best source for substantive online South Dakota news articles. But for what it's worth, I'm going to remove my link to the Argus here, and I will try my best to refrain from referring you, gentle reader, to articles in that paper, at least for a little while... until my desire to fight quixotic battles gives way to the practical need to know what the heck is going on!

Kucinich for Farmers, for Workers... for President!

While the Washington Post trumpets the entry of "Populist Edwards" into the 2008 Presidential race, the Madville Times proudly throws its support behind a real populist, Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich. Of particular interest to South Dakotans should be the Cleveland congressman's views on saving family farms and rural communities by promoting local economy. And Dennis, if you're listening, come on out to South Dakota! We'd love to have you over for dinner and help you round up some primary votes in 2008!

The Transparency of Baloney

The banners emblazoned with Madison's new slogan, "Discover the Unexpected," have been up for a good couple-three months now, and the city's marketing ads have been on the air (or so my friends report -- I apparently haven't been watching enough TV... although I have seen Marion's and Mitchell's ads). Strangely, I haven't noticed any great whooshing sound of tourists, shoppers, and venture capitalists zooming here to invest. I'm sure the Chamber of Commerce and the Lake Area Improvement Corporation are gathering data right now and will be able to offer complete reports next year on exactly how much tax revenue these marketing efforts are generating and how many times these efforts will recoup the amount we paid outside consultants to come up with them.

While I wait for such data to roll in and prove the marketers' worth, I offer the following comment, more than tangentially related, from 15-year-old Traci Drinkwater. Today's New York Times reports on a 152-year-old rural Georgia church's decision to change its name from Hog Mountain Baptist Church to Hamilton Mill, after a new subdivision nearby.

But evidently, the name is no more likely to appeal to the young than the old. Traci Drinkwater, 15, a member, and her friend Elyse Young, 17, a frequent visitor, said they preferred the name Hog Mountain.

“Everything’s changing to fit the Hamilton Mill folk,” Elyse said. “They’re snooty. Money’s what it’s all about.”

Traci added: “If they weren’t coming here with the old name, then they wouldn’t be coming here for the right reasons. It’s not the name, it’s what’s on the inside.” [emphasis mine]

It's a relief to know not everyone falls prey to the "image is everything" thinking the marketing industry would sell us. Whether we're talking a church, a store, or an entire town, what matters isn't signs, but substance.