Sometimes I Stop Writing

 Here are a couple of pictures from Dakota State University in Madison, South Dakota where I spent three years as the Director of Development for the Dakota State University Foundation. That means that I was the chief fund-raiser (so what else is new).  My main job was to raise the scholarship endowment so lots of kids who couldn't otherwise afford it, can attend college. The first photo is of General Beadle, long-time president of the college. The school once bore his name. The other picture is Beadle Hall, the College of Liberal Arts made from native stone and the oldest building on the campus. 

In August of 2000, I restarted my new century with a new adventure working as the Development Director for the Washington Pavilion of the Arts and Sciences in Sioux Falls.  This was my first foray into fundraising for arts and culture and I was very excited about the opportunity.  Sometimes things things were even more exciting than I'd bargained. I'd stopped writing for too long.  So I left in July of 2003 to start a new adventure and continue writing a bit more regularly.  Learn more about the Washington Pavilion by clicking on their own web site.  At the end of 2005, I joined the staff of the Volunteers of Americas, Dakotas as the Director of Planned Giving. More about that when I get the time to update this site. In the meantime, click on the link to visit the Volunteers site.

 I once wrote a grant application for the city of Marshall and for the Marshall Public Schools to the Department of Commerce, TIIAP (Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program) that would electronically connect the whole city, both within itself and with the outside world. The Internet would be used to move "virtual Marshall" closer to the country's urban centers while leaving "actual Marshall" safely and quietly set in the country. We didn't get the grant, but it was a really good idea. It's still a good idea.  Maybe I can try it again somewhere else.  I've actually read that a couple of other rural cities are trying the same idea.

Rural communications is a major interest of mine. So is rural economic development. I think the two issues are very closely linked in this modern information age and since I earn of lot of my living "out on the Net," I need to be involved.

Don't get me wrong. Life in the Great Plains is not all work. I fish a lot (and catch very little) and garden. The little red cabin pictured is our escape on Lake Shetek, the largest lake in Southwest Minnesota. The cabin, next to Lake Shetek State Park, was built by Lorna's father Loren and his father Noel about seventy years ago. Loren was the official owner until he passed away in February, 2003.  Now it's ours.  In the foreground, my mother and step-father, Penny and Robert Levine who came to visit at the end of our first summer out here and are pictured meeting our neighbor-at-the-cabin, Gay Stone. It can get pretty hot and humid out on the Great Plains, so lake and cabin society is an important part of living out here.

This nice sunset is from the cabin site. Photography is another hobby of mine. Years ago, I earned my living with a camera.

Hosting visitors is a favorite Minnesota past-time. Sandy and Linda Gallanter of San Francisco, my uncle (my late father's brother) and aunt who came to visit this summer. They are the only guests we've had (so far) who arrived in their personal private airplane. However, our first visitors, my Aunt Toby (Sandy's sister) and Uncle Dave Schenerman brought their own house and parked it behind the Tyler house for a few days. They stopped during their "we're going cross country in a trailer to celebrate our retirement" trip.

Other brave folks who have made the trek since we left the East include friend and partner in direct mail work, David Litwinsky of New York City, our friend Jay Siegelaub who lives in Westchester County, New York (and has the unique accomplishment of having visited twice) ; Barbara Reimuth, our downstairs neighbor in Ossining who now calls Southern Indiana home; Lorna's sister Susan and her husband Hunt, New Jersey people; Lorna's brother Al, his wife Janie and their children Christopher and Larissa, also New Jersey folk; and, of course, Lorna's dad Loren who lives... where else... in New Jersey. Bill Curtis of Olympia Washington dropped by for a couple of hours. Bill is an "Internet" friend and we'd never met before. Jon Wennerberg of Marquette, Michigan, an M-Rider (Mensa Motorcycle Club) and who I'd also never met before, stopped for coffee on his way back from the Black Hills Motorcycle Rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. 

There's plenty of room for all who do visit. The house in Tyler, pictured here, has four bedrooms, all furnished to accommodate lots of guests. When we first bought the place, we were trying to figure out how we would manage to fill a four bedroom house (plus living room, dining room, kitchen, & basement) when all we owned back-east fit in a small apartment.  However, we must have solved the problem because one Spring we held a garage sale just to get rid of the excess junk and we still had enough left over to pretty much furnish the house in Sioux Falls, which is pictured on the right.  

Behind the Tyler house, but not pictured, is the vegetable garden, which takes up lots of time, especially in canning season. From 1995 through 1998 my pickled green tomatoes have won a blue ribbon at the Lincoln County Fair. Of course, until 1999 nobody else ever entered pickled tomatoes.  In 1999, Lorna entered some and she got the blue ribbon while I had to settle for the red.  But I'll take my ribbons any way I can get them. Besides, the judges claim that ribbons are given out based on quality, not competition. Personally, I think they give me the award so they don't have to take a chance on tasting the stuff. Pickled green tomatoes are pretty much a New York deli kind of thing. However, my kosher dills did win a red ribbon two years in a row (1997 & 98)..

There are the other outside activities... going to synagogue, joining the Lions Club, trying to make the South Dakota Mensa meetings,  dabbling in local politics, watching football games at the local colleges, attending concerts and ballet performances at the Washington Pavilion, and keeping up with the good movies. 

 Small town life is far from dull. No, we don't have the restaurants, the Broadway shows or the ethnic diversity of New York City. But we don't lock our doors, we leave the keys in our cars and during one weekend not long after we moved I sat on the porch in Tyler for an entire half-hour before the first automobile went by the house. I developed my taste for country living in the 70s (See the Dusk of Aquarius), never lost the urge to return, not for 20 years, and now enjoy being here almost every single minute. (No the photo is not Tyler. It's Currie, Minnesota, near the lake cabin, population about 300. I took that picture last year and just liked the look. If you want to see Tyler, go the Tyler, MN 56178 Home Page)

In New York I worked a block from the World Trade Center (but there is no longer a WTC web site for obvious reasons), raising funds for The Legal Aid Society, who needed more money each year because they got less and less from the Legal Services Corporation. I heard the bomb go off in 1993, but that's not why I left New York. I escaped from the big city for lots of reasons, but if I had to pick only one, I would probably say it was because "Jose Sent Me" closed down.

Jose Sent Me was a Manhattan Tex-Mex bar and restaurant right around the corner from where David Letterman tapes his TV show. It was a quiet place, with a young Moroccan bartender who made first-class margaritas. The joint had a wonderful juke box and 1950s furnishings taken from a old hotel that closed down in Hudson, New York. Most every Friday afternoon I would go there with some fundraising colleagues to talk business and trash. The place closed because the proprietor (not the young bartender, but the almost always absent owner) was dealing cocaine and the feds seized the three restaurants he owned. He didn't need the money. The restaurants did quite well. He was dealing drugs because the illicit profession gave him prestige within his group and a measure of excitement. The day "Jose Sent Me" was closed down, I knew that New York and I no longer understood each other and I was leaving. I didn't know where I was going. I just knew I was going. The rest of the story I'll save for a book I'm going to start soon. It's called "ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, a daydream-believer's guide for moving to the country." Oh, but now we're back to talking about writing again.

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