Thoughts on Gov. Janklow

Posted on January 31, 2012 by mollymiron

As a newspaper reporter in Brookings, S.D. Register from 1987-1999, I covered state government and had regular encounters with elected officials, including the late (as of Jan. 12) Gov. Bill Janklow who served two terms as governor starting in 1978 and then another two terms beginning in 1994. We moved to S.D. in 1979. I recall Janklow calling himself the “best fat man water skier on Lake Oahi,” which is a dammed up section of the Missouri River.
Janklow was born in Chicago, but moved with his family to Flandreau, S.D. after his father died. He explained that he had “deportment” problems at Flandreau High School (Home of the Flyers) and joined the Marines as an alternative to jail time. Doug had a run-in with Janklow during one of the first Janklow terms. The argument occurred when the governor came to South Dakota State University where Doug, as a professor, asked forcefully for better engineering department equipment. The discussion may have concluded with some rancor, but Janklow delivered the equipment.

Janklow was known for fast driving, something that people sometimes admired because he was on the spot when trouble arose. One incident was a tornado that wiped out the town of Spencer. Janklow chased the tornado into the disaster area and was blown off the road, only to drive out of the ditch and continue his mission. One time, I was in DeSmet where Janklow was reopening the clinic. The town paid tuition for a young doctor in exchange for the MD’s commitment to stay in DeSmet for five years (I think that was the schedule.) While we were hitting the punch and cake, the snow storm turned into a blizzard and whiteout. I had to get back to Brookings to whip up my story and get the pics developed. (Dark room days, no digital then.) I asked Janklow if I could follow him as he was more confident about driving in the white than I was. He said sure I could, but he said he was going to drive fast. I lost him before we got out of town.

Janklow was also known for speaking his mind. I interviewed him about some controversy once and then, in reporterly style, called the other side of the disagreement. We published comments from both points of view. The Register was an afternoon paper at that time, but Janklow, then living in the governor’s mansion in Pierre, got hold of a copy and read the article. That night about quarter to 11 after I had gone to bed, Janklow called me at home to chew me out for putting in what he considered false information from the other guy. Besides saying he would never speak to me again (he actually did after he cooled off) he harangued me for 45 minutes. I put the phone down on the table and laid my head beside it. I just didn’t know how to cut off a governor.

Bill Janklow was an interesting person.

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Holiday adventures

Posted on January 25, 2012 by mollymiron


Meme, Billie Rose and Papi and Joel, Henry, Grandma Molly and Adelaide

During December, Doug and I took a long sojourn visiting family members. First we stopped in Richfield with Dave and Phoebe, then drove to Iowa City for an early Christmas with Joel, Aimee, Adelaide and Henry. Then we drove back to Richfield where Phoebe took us to the St. Paul Amtrak station for the trip out East. Joshua picked us up at the Boston station and took us home to their place in Waltham where we kissed Stephanie and met Bille. Becuase Billie is a French baby, as well as American and Canadian, she will use the French names for grandma and grampa – Meme et Papi, easier for a little child to say than grandmere et grandpere. Adelaide and Henry refer to us as Grandma Molly and Grandpa Doug, pronounced gramma and grampa.

Back to Richfield and then home to Pinesol. This blog is late in updating because I got sick almost immediately on arriving home. I spent some time at Sanford Hospital and am recovering. Sanford was very comfortable, and the food was good.

I should be in good shape when planting time comes around.

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Christmas music

Posted on December 15, 2011 by mollymiron

In 1974, Doug and I had moved from our farm in central New Brunswick, Canada, to a three-room basement apartment in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia for his new job at a plant that designed and manufactured, among other things, sono-buoys. They are channel markers that emit sonar pings to warn ships about sandbars, reefs and other hazards. That Christmas, we had two children: Phoebe, 3, and Joshua, an infant. We hadn’t unpacked everything, including most of our records. Just before Christmas, Doug walked home from work carrying a new LP. (We’re talking vinyl.) The title was “Gold, Incense & Myrrh,” and there were no Christmas carols I recognized on it. That’s because they were all new songs written by Sister Miriam Therese Winter and sung by the Medical Mission Sisters (and friends).

Doug said I would get to like the new songs, and he was right. They aren’t Burl Ives singing “The Holly and the Ivy,” but they are good songs.
I looked up Sister Miriam and the Medical Mission Sisters today and found that they are well known internationally. The Medical Mission Sisters were founded as a Catholic religious congregation outreach, something like Doctors without Boarders, I think, in 1925. Sister Miriam has been writing sacred music since 1966, including a song I have heard titled “Joy is Like the Rain.” She is a professor at the Women’s Leadership Institute based in Bloomington, Ind. She teachers liturgy, worship, spirituality and women’s studies.
That three-room, over-populated, sometimes wet apartment is a long time ago and far, far away. But we still have the record – among our vast vinyl collection – that Doug brought home to brighten our Christmas in 1974.

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Muppets

Posted on December 11, 2011 by mollymiron

Last week, Doug and I went to The Muppet Movie at the Bemidji Theatre. I enjoyed it and the kids in our neighborhood laughed a lot, too. It wasn’t a good movie for Doug because there are sight jokes about every 5 seconds, too fast for me to explain them.
But the movie reminded me of the Muppets on Sesame Street in the 1970s. When we lived in Five Mile River, Nova Scotia near the Bay of Fundy, the only TV station we could pull in was the French language channel from Moncton, New Brunswick. All the programming wasn’t in French. Some, like Mr. Dressup, were in English. But Sesame Street was in French, except for the Spanish lessons and, oddly, a brief segment in Ukranian about making pirogies.
So, the kids got used to Kermit and all the others speaking French. When we moved in 1979 to Brookings, S.D., the first time the kids watched Sesame Street, one of them said, “Kermit’s mouth is moving wrong.” They were turned off by the English-speaking Muppet.

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Thanksgiving

Posted on November 30, 2011 by mollymiron

Thanksgiving chicken

Dpug and I had a pleasant, quiet Thanksgiving. No guests, but I spent the forenoon and part of the afternoon serving in various capacities at the Community Holiday Meal at Evangelical Covanent Church. There were rumblings last summer that the traditional community meal started 32 years ago might fade away as the charter committee members retired. I knew I was going to retire from the Pioneer in October, so I volunteered to join the committee. Everything worked out fine. With 230 or so meals delivered to shut-ins and a steady stream of guests at the church hall, more than 500 people enjoyed turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce and a veg.

When I cam home, I started our Thanksgiving. We didn’t have turkey, but my mother’s neighbor in Clarkson, Neb. raises homegrown chickens and lets some get big. Our bird was 7 1/2 pounds. We finished its final incarnation as chicken-vegetable-noodle soup Tuesday evening. I used the dressing recipe Anne Welch made for the community dinner: stale bread, cooked wild rice, onions, celeery, stock and butter. It was good. A nice day.

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Pictures at an Exhibition

Posted on November 22, 2011 by mollymiron

UCONN Husky Marching Band

When I started college in 1964 (age 17) I had a boyfriend who played in the band. I sat with the band during football games and had a wonderful time. I approached the band director, Allan Gilespie, and asked him how I could join the band. He asked me what instrument I played. None, as far as bands go. He said he needed more high brass and did I want to learn cornet. Sure. So, I met him the next Monday morning at the band instrument closet and checked out a horn. He gave me lessons and I practiced. I was good enough (although not very good) by the fall of 1965 that I could begin field practice and put on the spiffy navy blue and white uniform.

The band had a standard pregame formation to show off the ROTC color guard, national anthem and fight song (“UCONN Husky, symbol of might to the foe”), but we learned a new halftime show every week during the football season. In those days, a grad student arranged the music and worked out the drills. He (David Maker) drew the formations and steps for each band member on graph paper. We marchers had our music on 4-by-6 pieces of paper mounted in flip books (each page covered with plastic) perched on little music stands screwed to our instruments. We used grease pencils to write in our steps on the spaces above the appropriate measures of the music. Such as eight forward, 16 left, 180 turn etc.)

One of our arrangements,a whole 12-minute halftime show, was from Modeste Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.” The piano piece was arranged for orchestra by Maurice Ravel. Ours was arranged by David Maker.

I was thinking about this and remembering the marching drill as I listened to the Ravel arrangement on MPR a week or so ago.

The “Great Gate of Kiev” is the theme that connects each of the “pictures.” Our arrangement featured the woodwinds playing the softer sections, such as the Oxcart “picture,” with the brasses and percussion marching away fwith our backs to the stands. Then when the Great Gate theme came in, we brasses did a quick 180 with white capes flashing and blared the theme as we marched toward the audience. I remember the first time we did the maneuver seeing people who had taken the opportunity of halftime to hit the concessions dropping their popcorn as we pounced on the bright, loud melody.

It’s interesting how music can invoke memories. It is also interesting that no one has seen the pictures since Ravel. They were lost or destroyed. All we have is the tunes Mussorgsky wrote about them.

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Iowa City

Posted on November 7, 2011 by mollymiron

The weekend before Hallowe’en, Doug and I drove to visit our son, Joel, belle fille, Aimee, and grandchildren, Adelaide and Henry. The weather was beautiful and we had lovely fall outings to an orchard, pumpkin patch and Adelaide’s school, where she showed us her classroom and she and Henry climbed on her school’s playground apparatus.
We broke up the trip with an overnight at the Richfield, MN. home of our daughter and beau fils, Phoebe and Dave.
It’s great to have the time to make a leisurely trip.

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New granddaughter

Posted on October 31, 2011 by mollymiron

Joshua and his new daughter, Billie Rose

We joyfully welcome our new granddaughter, Billie Rose, into the family, Joshua and Stephanie adopted her last week. We hope to meet her sometime fairly soon, but as her family lives in a suburb of Boston, Mass., the trip will take some planning.

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Bean glory

Posted on October 5, 2011 by mollymiron


Harvest

I love growing beans. They’re always a successful harvest. I grew several varieties of green, purple, red and yellow beans for eating fresh and freezing. Yes, beans freeze well and are tasty veg for winter, steamed, sauteed in soups and hotdishes.

Last weekend, I harvested all the beans for drying that were ready. I know big growers use various methods of thrashing out the beans from the dry pods, but with just a family garden, I enjoy splittting the pods with a thumbneal (don’t ask about my manicure) and popping the colorful bean into an ice cream bucket. I also harvested my seed beans to plant next year. They keep well over winter and have good germination if kept in a dry place. I save them labeled in business envelopes in a box in a kitchen cupboard.

I still have cranberry beans and yellow Indian woman beans to harvest, as well as the remainder of the pole beans. But here’s a sample of the harvest so far.
Clockwise from bottom right: Bird’s egg, tiger eye, burgundy (seed), Roma (seed), Jacob’s cattle, violetta, Experimental very early green bean from Shumway’s (seed), top crop (seed, pencil pod waz (seed), Maxibel (my favorite French filet bean) scarlet and pink runner, and center duke (seed).>
Of course, some of each of the non-seed varieties will be seed for next year, too.

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Heavy harvest

Posted on September 28, 2011 by mollymiron


Valiants

About eight years ago, Doug and I planted six baby grapes vines – Valiants.
Doug set posts and put up latticework trellises to support the growing vines.
Besides knowing Valiants are bred for extreme cold conditions, minus-50 degrees or colder, we were friends in Brookings, S.D., with Ron Peterson, the plant breeder who developed the variety of grapes at South Dakota State University.
Ron and his wife, Anna Liisa, also cultivated an apple orchard near Brookings to prove that apples could be a viable commercial crop on the prairie. I worked in the orchard picking apples in the fall of 1987 before I went into the newspaper business.
Ron bred the Valiants by crossing Fredonia grapes, a variety recommended for zone 5, with Vitis riparia, a wild grape commonly called River Bank Grapes or Frost Grapes. Considering that Pinesol is on the cold edge of zone 3, they’re certainly hardy here. He said he found the V. riparia stock near the Missouri River and spent many years crossbreeding and waiting for the vines to mature and bear fruit. I remember he also told me he went back to where he found the V. riparia to collect some more plants and found the site had been cleared out with herbicide. Apparently, grapes are very sensitive to herbicide.
Valiants inherit the Concord-grape-like flavor of Fredonia combined with higher sugar and intense color from the V. riparia parent. As a result, it makes juice and jelly with a flavor like Concord, but with much better sugar, acid and color, according to the online catalog.
Valiants also bear fruit soon after planting. I think we harvested a few clusters the second year after we put the vines in.
Now, it’s time to harvest. I plan to make some jelly, mostly for gifts because we don’t eat much jam or jelly. I am also going to try wine. I have a book with recipes. Now I just need technique.

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