Editorial
Volunteers shine for Roslyn concert
By: John Suhr
Kudos goes out to all the people on the Roslyn Centennial committee for risking to bring in a big name band.
For those who may have never been involved in bringing in big name entertainment or putting on a large event, it is not a piece of cake.
It takes a lot of time, energy and the biggest worry. Worry about the weather. Do you get weather insurance to help recoup costs, yet only to add costs to a struggling budget? Where to hold it should it rain?
If the weather is not a big enough worry, then there is the worst thoughts going through the committee’s heads. What if no one comes out and supports it? Was it the location? Was it the time of the week? Was it the band chosen? Was it...
The list is endless. All the way down to will even the locals support it.
That is just the tip of the worries. Then there are workers. I should say volunteers as a small community comes together to try and do something so great for this area.
There is security to porta potties, set up to teardown and cleanup.
It is not seven plus hours, from the time the gates open to the last person out of the beer garden.
It is a long time planning. First of all the bigger the big name band, the more time out you need to book them.
Once the band is booked, it is not a downhill slide, it’s when the work really begins and this committee did a tremendous amount of work and it should have paid off in dividends.
It may even be weeks or even months before the tally is complete and they know exactly how they did.
One thing for certain, they did their community and this entire area proud with all the work they put into this concert.
No matter what part may have been, no matter how big or small, it took you all and you should be proud and looking forward to your community celebration in 2014.
Column
By: LeAnn Suhr
Options stink, but carefully weigh the decision on your life
Editor’s note: Peggy Ames is the sister of LeAnn who is filling in as a guest columnist while LeAnn bikes across South Dakota. Peggy is a cancer survivor and continues to fight the disease. She has worked for newspapers and currently teaching in Huron.
What a lark it would be, I thought, to be a tame old 52-year-old with a tattoo.
I have been lopsided for the past eight years post mastectomy–I just couldn’t commit to the “renovation” process of building a new ta-ta after being cut up and stuck a thousand different ways for the year and a half of treatment that followed. Shortly after surgery, I’d seen a magazine article about a woman who had put a delicate, flowery tattoo on the area, which seemed like the perfect touch–growing some flowers in the “scorched earth.” It would be a nod to my grandma, who grew beautiful flowers on the farm alongside the tomatoes, and something to make me smile instead of grimace after a shower. So I’ve been intending to do it for awhile. The question has been, “Where?” The young guys who do it here in town might be weirded out, and I would be weirded out if I ran into them afterward at the gas station or grocery store.
The perfect solution had arrived, I thought. I would be traveling to Washington, DC to participate in a work group. Anonymity! Selection! A friend (also “of a certain age”–we’re into the buddy system!) had been toying with the idea as well and agreed to go along for, at minimum, support, or maybe to get one of her own.
She got busy making arrangements, and needed to know how big it would be so she could get a cost and time estimate. I dug up a book of beautiful Victorian flower patterns and got busy with the mirror. In the process, I found a lump.
The trip is off, and in a few weeks I’ll be undergoing surgery. It could be nothing, or it could be another e-ticket ride. I know I’ll be ok, live or die. But I would like to preach a little bit, either way.
Angelina Jolie has been in the news recently with the story of her brave decision to undergo a prophylactic double mastectomy. Jolie lost a young mother and recently, an aunt to breast cancer. The odds are not in her favor for dodging the bullet. She has been understandably traumatized and is ready to do whatever she can to not also be a victim.
The idea to cut off the tissue most likely to develop tumors is logical and proactive. Unfortunately, in the stampede of articles following her decision to do so (and to undergo subsequent breast reconstruction), no one seems to be mentioning the fact that reconstruction can kill.
When I returned to South Dakota and had my first exam “for one only, please,” I worried that the PA would think I was a real oddball for opting to go asymmetrical. I stammered to explain myself, but she shook her head and told me she would’ve chosen the same route.
A friend of hers, she explained, had gotten an implant after her mastectomy. A new tumor developed underneath, where it couldn’t be detected, and she had died. Once the saline/gel sacs go in, you’re not going to be able to feel what might be growing underneath that must be addressed.
Just because a breast has been removed and margins are clear does not mean remaining tissue cannot develop tumors in the future. Discussing this with my current physician when she examined the current lump, she mentioned that, even when a nipple is salvaged for a more natural looking reconstruction, it is not uncommon for it to be the site of new cancer development.
So ladies, though the options really stink, please weigh them carefully. (And that includes ladies who are simply thinking of bumping up their cup size to look better in a bikini.) It could come down to your vanity or your life.
By George, by George
Father’s Day created by Mother’s Day
By George Thompson
A West Virginia church sponsored the first event explicitly in honor of fathers. It consisted of a Sunday sermon in memory of the 362 men who had died in a coal mine explosion and was a one-time commemoration.
The next year, a Spokane, woman named Sonora Smart Dodd, one of six children raised by a widower, tried to establish an official equivalent to Mother’s Day for male parents.
She drummed up support from churches, shopkeepers and government officials and was successful.
In 1916, President Wilson honored the day by using telegraph signals to unfurl a flag in Spokane when he pressed a button in Wash-ington, DC.
In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge urged state governments to observe Father’s Day. However, many men continued to disdain the day. As one historian wrote, “they scoffed at the holiday’s sentimental attempts to domesticate manliness with flowers and gift-giving, or they derided the proliferation of such holidays as a commercial gimmick to sell more products – often paid for by the father himself.”
During the 1920s-30s, a movement began for a single holiday, Parents’ Day. How-ever, the Depression derailed that effort to combine and decommercialize the holidays.
Then struggling retailers and advertisers redoubled efforts to make Father’s Day a second Christmas for men, promoting sales of neckties, hats, socks, sporting goods and greeting cards. During World War II advertisers pushed Father’s Day as a way to honor American troops and support the war effort and soon it became a national institution.
In 1972 President Richard Nixon signed a proclamation making Father’s Day a federal holiday.
Economists now estimate that Americans spend more than $1 billion each year on Father’s Day gifts.
bye george
Know what a small town really is
By: Amanda Fanger
Since moving here, I’ve heard several people call Webster a “small town.” I always find myself wanting to correct them because to me, Webster is big. Well, it’s bigger than where I grew up anyway.
Recently I came across a list I wanted to share. If you could answer yes to any one of these items, you just might have grown up in a “small town.”
...I have a feeling just about anyone in South Dakota can appreciate the humor in this list...
1) If you gave directions using THE stoplight (sign) as a reference point.
2) If further directions were not given by street names but rather by references: “Turn by the dead oak tree, go two blocks to Anderson’s (the green house) and it’s four houses left of the track field…”
3) Your car stayed filthy because of the dirt roads, and you have declared you will never own a dark-colored vehicle for this very reason.
4) If it was considered normal to see someone riding through town on a lawn mower.
5) If you used to “drag” Main Street.
6) When you decided to walk somewhere for exercise, a handful of people pulled over to ask if you needed a ride.
7) If you saw at least one friend a week driving a tractor through town and one of your friends occasionally drove a grain truck to school.
8) If the gym teacher suggested you haul hay for the summer to get stronger.
9) If your teachers remembered when they taught your parents.
10) Or if your teachers called you by your older siblings’ names.
11) If you can name everyone you graduated with.
12) If the whole school went to the same party after graduation.
13) If you whispered the f-word and your parents knew about it within the hour.
14) If it was cool to date somebody from the neighboring town.
15) If you ever thought the people in the “big city” dressed funny and then you picked up the trend a few years later.
16) If you couldn’t find someone at home, you knew to look at the local gas station or bar.
17) Most people went by a nickname.
18) If you could charge at any local store or write checks without an ID.
19) If there were no McDonalds.
20) If the closest mall was an hour away.
21) If you wouldn’t have wanted to be raised any other way.
