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November 19, 2009
Page 3
Hello,
Well, safely back at home. For a
short while. Last week I was writing
from Connecticut. When we got
home, I had to haul a load of oil
field stuff to Oklahoma City. Today
I have to go to Casper. Over the
years, Shirley has gotten pretty darn
good at getting things fed. I'll guar-
antee you one thing, the horses are
glad I'm gone and ghe is at home.
On every journey, you can usual-
ly drum up a story. Some involve
being dumb. Some luck. Some
boredom.
I've told you before that I pick
up hitchhikers. That is how I met
Shirley. No, not really. But it would
have made a heck of a story.
Anyway, I'm on the way back
from OKC. Had left Salina, Kansas
early in the morning and pushing
hard to be home that night. Driven
by a corn harvest in full swing.
Through the Sandhills of Nebraska,
across the Niobrara, and headed
north from Valentine. Had nearly
six hundred miles under my belt
when I saw this guy thumbing just
outside Mission, South Dakota.
Being the nice guy that I am, and
needing a story, I pulled over and
waved him in. He was happy to get
a ride, happy to share my iced tea,
and happy to share a piece of jerky
that I was saving for my dog. But I
figured it was close to Thanksgiving
so what the beck.
Well, this guy jumps in and he's
sweating. He's been running. With a
winter coat on and carrying a suit-
case. I think about it and I decide
I'd better ask if he's running to
The guy was
good to visit with.
Explained how he
had worked at one
job for over three
years. Had a wife at
home in White
River and he was
anxious to see her.
something, or away from some-
thing.
"I've got to get home to White
River," he explains. "Right away!'"
I could sense this was some kind
of emergency, so I picked up a cou-
ple miles per hour and started pass-
ing a few of the people that had
driven by him. He really enjoyed
that.
The guy was good to visit with.
Explained how he had worked ,at one
job for over three years. Had a wife at
home in White River and he was anx-
ious to see her. She was the reason he
was in a hurry. Missing Shirley, I
knew how he felt and I picked up a
couple more miles per hour.
He went on to explain that he
had been staying with his aunt, but
his mother had called this morning
and said he had better get home. It
was his wife. That made me more
nervous and I picked her up another
couple mph. We were flying right
along. The first time I had sped in
three days of steady driving!
I asked what was wrong with his
wife. He went on to explain that his
wife had written him a letter. His
mother said it was an official look-
ing letter and she figured his wife
was going to divorce him! So he
had to huny home.
When I inquired, "Why would
she do a thing like that, when she
should know you were hurrying
home?"
"'Well," he explained. "It's
because I fell off the wagon and
left."
I thought hard and long about
this and finally replied. "That's too
bad. but maybe when you hurry
home like this, and she sees your
concern, and you explain that
you're trying, she will give you
another chance."
But curious, I had to ask, "How
long you been gone?"
He thought a minute then sin-
cerely answered. " I left in early
July. That's why I'm in such a
hurry."
Being it was now the middle of
November, I said, "Maybe you
should have started hurrying a few
months earlier!" And I let the
Dodge back down to the speed limit
for the rest of the trip.
And I will guarantee you one
thing: I didn't go up to the house
with him. Although he kind of
wanted a three hundred pound
bodyguard.
Later, Dean
N. D. Matters
By Lloyd Omdahl
Sometimes we have to eat our experiments
My 84-year old mother bent
over the cookbook one day recent-
ly and read aloud to me as I
wolfed down a chicken sandwich
I'd made at lunchtime. The read-
ing was a lesson in how to make a
traditional - and very fine as it
turned out - pork roast.
Personally, I suspect it would
be morally responsible to live as a
vegetarian, and certainly good for
my family's health and for the
nation's medical-care bills. But
I'm a sinner, and my kitchen pro-
duces meat and poultry meals on a
daily basis.
My mother read aloud the part
of the recipe we both knew well
concerning what happens when
you take a beef or pork roast out of
the oven. For a good bit of time,
the meat will continue to cook as
it rests on your countertop. And,
indeed, the temperature inside a
roast actually rises for about 5 -10
minutes after you take it out of the
oven.
What's up with that?
While it's cooking in the oven,
the roast experiences a moving
"wave" of intense heat that's com-
ing from the oven into the roast
from all its surfaces. At first, only
the outermost smidgen of the roast
is warmed. Then it becomes hot
and a smidgen more inside the
roast becomes warmed - and so
on. Over a couple of hours, the
wave of heat that started on the
surface of the roast has penetrated
into it, further and further.
When you take the roast out of
the oven, that wave of moving
heat starts to collapse. But the
decline takes a bit of time, and the
wave is still moving inward. So
the inner portion of the roast can
and does warm further.
Geologists love heat waves on
a nmch bigger and slower scale.
Roc Doc
By Dr. E. Kirsten Peters
The roast that
inspired this train
of thought is long
since gone. The
next roast in my
house is coming up
shortly, but it's
going to be a fancy
"crown" roast with
a big, gaping hole
in the middle.
Cook' s Corner
By Jane M. Cook
Here's why:
Last summer, the solid rock and
soil around your home was
warmer than it is now. That wave
of warmth went down into the
Earth all summer long, growing
like the heat-wave in the roast in
the oven.
The wave that's down under
our feet got launched going into
the Earth, and it will continue to
move downward. By mid-winter,
it wilt be about 60 feet below the
surface. Yes: last July is really
down there, about six times the
depths of my basement's floor.
And the heat wave from the
summer of 2008 is down in the
Earth, about 120 feet deep.
I like that idea very much. I'm
not sure why, but the history of old
heat waves is pretty cool.
Yet it's also true the waves are
getting a whole lot smaller in size.
Really smaller, and rapidly so.
This winter, last summer's heat
wave will be only 0.002 as big as
it was at its peak. And the summer
of 2008 warmth will be reduced to
4 parts in a million of what it was.
The numbers just mentioned
came to me from Fred Gittes, a
physics faculty member here at
Washington State University.
Because he's not a rock-head, but
a clear-thinking physicist, he
worked out the mathematical
details as formulas and graphs for
my pork roast, just for fun. But he
hadt0 use basic figures for the,
conduction of heat and the like
assuming that the pork roast
would behave as water does.
That's because physicists and
geologists, at least, don't have a
completely detailed picture of just
how heat gets into the meat in
your oven. That's clearly our loss.
The roast that inspired this train
of thought is long since gone. The
next roast in my house is coming
up shortly, but it's going to be a
fancy "crown" roast with a big,
gaping hole in the middle. But
bear with me and later in the fall
I'll take some measurements on a
solid beef roast and a stuffed
turkey - and report back on the
heating-in-the-center effect.
No matter what the calculations
of physicists may be, as a rock-
head I trust the simple measure-
ments of thermometers. Luckily,
Fred is an easy-going fellow who
takes an interest in this project and
agrees with me in some ways.
"All food experiments are
good," he said.
Dr. E. Kirsten Peters is a
native of the rural Northwest, but
was trained as a geologist at
Princeton and Harvard. Questions
about science or energy .[or future
Rock Docs can be sent to
epeters @ wsu.edu.
Playing
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Pundits don't understand off-year elections
The political pundits had a field Over-promising is a common fea-
week with the recent gubernatorial
elections in Virginia and New
Jersey and Congressional elections
in New York and California.
Depending on their political biases,
they each grabbed a different part of
the elephant and analyzed it to
death.
Most of them offered shallow
interpretations of the results. While
there may have been some local
issues in the gubernatorial races, l!ae
best explanation of the results was
the failure of the unmotivated 2008
President Barack Obama voters to
show up at the polls.
That being the case in these elec-
tions, Democrats have reason to
worry about the 2010 elections
because the folks who elected
Obama in 2008 will not be there in
2010 either and Democrats will lose
at least five senate seats and 25 to 30
House seats. Only the well-funded
incumbents will be safe, with first-
termers going down as they did in
1966 following the Lyndon Johnson
landslide in 1964.
It is an historic fact that, more
often than not, the party in control
of the White House loses
Congressional seats in the off-
year. This was truer 50 years ago,
but the availability of large sums of
canapaign money in recent elections
has changed that and incumbents
have been able to deflect the off-
year impact.
For decades, political scientists
looked at this off-year phenomenon
Over-promising
is a common fea-
ture of modern
elections and for
good reason.
Candidates for
public office, if
elected, can't deliv-
er anything by
themselves.
and have developed all sorts of the-
ories. It isn't that difficult to
explain. What happened to turnout
in the recent gubernatorial elections
will happen again in 2010. Without
Obama on the ballot, the turnout
will have a different demographic
hue than the 2008 election. Many of
the African-Americans, the enthusi-
astic young people and the disen-
chaflted will not be there.
While current policy controver-
sies have been over-emphasized in
light of this historic trend, the 2010
elections will reflect some discon-
tent with Obama's failure to deliver
on all of his campaign promises and
President Obama made more than
any president could deliver.
ture of modern elections and for
good reason. Candidates for public
office, if elected, can't deliver any-
thing by themselves. They must
function in a status quo political sys-
tem where power is shared widely
by branches of government, between
the federal government and the
states, and with competing interest
groups.
However, no one would ever get
elected promising only what can be
delivered because the expectations
of voters in this status quo political
system are unreasonable. So in
order to get folks to the polls candi-
dates have to sound as though they
can make the sun rise in the west.
Nobody would vote for an honest
candidate who promised merely that
he would try. Campaigns have
become games of out-promising the
other side,
A good number of veteran
Democrats in the Congress have
taken advantage of the energy and
health issues by sponsoring fund-
raising events to extract millions in
campaign contributions from the
interest groups involved. With this
money, they will be able to survive
the off-year tsunami but this will not
be n'ue for their underfunded col-
leagues. So we should expect to see
Democratic losses in 2010, not
because of political issues of the day
but because of the change in the
demographic makeup of the off'-
year electorate. That trumps all
issues.
ur
sure
aroun
I
I'm sure many of you have heard
or seen the TV show "Lost," or have
seen the movie, "Raiders of the Lost
Ark." You might even have read
"'Paradise Lost" or "The Lost
Horizon."
Then of course there is a band
called Lost Boys, and I've seen ads
for The Lost Books of Nostradamus
and The Lost Books of the Bible.
There's also a story I've heard of a
gold mine somewhere in Arizona
called The Lost Dutchman's Gold
Mine.
But most recently we've experi-
enced our own version of "Lost."
Let's title it, "The Lost Papers of
Golden Valley and Billings
Counties." Now this has happened
before, so it's not anything excep-
tionally new. However, for the most
part, the temporary "lostness" has
usually been limited to one sub-
scriber at a time. Meaning that one
customer doesn't get his or her
newspaper.
Yet in this day of modern tech-
nology, we have finally come
together as one, in which no one
received their issues of the Golden
Valley News and Billings County
Pioneer, except for one bundle of
about 20 BCPs that arrived in Beach
Of those that I
happened to con-
verse with, I must
say, they were very
polite in their
inquiry, just curious
as to where their
weekly subscription
happened to be.
last week.
Here in the News office, we
received many visitors and phone
calls inquiring as to where their
newspapers were. Of those that I
happened to converse with, I must
say, they were very polite in their
inquiry, just curious as to where
their weekly subscription happened
to be.
Weekly, the newspapers are print-
ed in Rugby and are sent via the mail
2009 Home for the Holidays Storybook Contest
All work must be original and can be fiction or non-fiction, with a limit of
250 words. Categories include: elementary grades 1-6, grades
7-8; high school and adult. Entrants do not have to be residents of our
readership areas. Prizes will be awarded to a winner in each category.
The winning entries will be announced and published, and the others
will be published as space allows in the Dec. 24 editions.
Stories and poems will be accepted until noon, Thursday, Dec. 3.
Send entries, along with your description of the age category you are
entering to: Golden Valley News/Billings County Pioneer; P.O. Box 156,
Beach, N.D., 58621.
eastward and then eventually end up
in Bismarck, and then westward to
Belfield, Medora and Beach.
Tliis last week, however, most of
the newspapers apparently went fur-
ther east, perhaps even to
Minnesota, before arriving, which
was the reason behind the delay. The
newspapers arrived on Saturday.
Usually they arrive on a Wednesday
for further delivery for the next day,
except for the past week, when
Wednesday was a holiday.
Hopefully this isn't something
that will be repeated too often in the
future. One thing's for sure, local
news sure does "get around."
i
Golden Valley News
P.O. Box 156, Beach, ND 58621
(U.S.P.S. Pub.
No. 221-280)
Staff: Richard Volesky,
editor, reporter, advertising
and office manager; Jane
Cook, office and news assis-
tant; Ellen Feuerhelm, news
and office assistant.
The Golden Valley News is
published each Thursday, 22
Central Ave., Suite 1, Beach,
ND 58621 by Nordmark
Publishing, Rotla, ND.
Periodicals postage paid at
Beach, ND and additional mail-
ing offices.
POSTMASTER" Send
address changes to: Golden
Valley News, P.O. Box 156,
Beach, ND 58621.
Please allow two to three
weeks for new subscriptions,
renewal of expired subscrip-
tions and for address changes.
Contact Information
• Phone: 701-872-3755
• Fax: 701-872-3756
Email: gvnews@midstate.net
Subscriptions
• 1 year: $31 Golden Valley
and Wibaux counties
• 1 year: $34 elsewhere in
North Dakota
• 1 year: $37 out-of-state
• 9 months: $19 In-state
college rate
The Golden Valley News is a proud
member of the North Dakota
Newspaper Association.
i!
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