Category: Uncategorized

I’m rather proud of myself this weekend, as I’m finishing up a furniture project. But, if it hadn’t been for one of my long-time mentors, I wouldn’t have touched it with a ten foot pole.

In preparation of sprucing the house up for the graduation of our number three daughter this year, we had some painting done. And to make sure the wall behind our bed didn’t get scuzzy again we decided that after all of these years, we needed a headboard that matched our oak bedroom set.

The problem was, we couldn’t find one under $500.  So, I set out to build one using some oak table leaves salvaged from the oak table in my parents house. A dog had used the base of the table for a chew toy, so the table leaves were all that was left to salvage from the table I grew up with at the ancestral Powers home in Pierre.

So, I set about turning the table leaves with worn finish (pictured at the left) into something that my wife wouldn’t be embarrassed over if someone saw it in our home.

The process wasn’t terribly difficult, as my bedroom furniture is a fairly simple mission style design, so there’s not a lot of fancy work requiring routing. Just basic construction, with right angles, and simple joinery.  So, I made my cuts, added some oak plywood from the local lumber yard, stripped, sanded, stained and put polyurethane on.

And as I wait for the coat of polyurethane to dry to drill for the bed frame and add some final touches, I like to think I have a fairly decent looking product.

But, I have to give credit for where credit is due, as I would have none of those skills without my mother and being placed into forced parental servitude whenever she had a project.

Since I was the oldest, I was often ‘nominated,’ into assisting with my mom’s latest project she was working on. Long before she was an auctioneer, she was one of the few in town who would strip and refinish furniture. For a time, her business was operated as “the Strip Shop” out of Hayes, SD with her business partner at the time.  And yes, they played up the entendre’ advertising with a lady of the night saying “Give us your cold and tired furniture.”

I didn’t like the drive out into the boondocks, but when she worked at home, on the hot summer days in Pierre, I would be involuntarily inducted stripping, sanding, staining, applying sanding sealer, or whatever task she felt comfortable trusting me with, depending on my age at the time.

Oddly enough, I could never coerce my friends that it was fun, Tom Sawyer style.  “Hey, want to help me? All you have to do is to put on heavy long sleeves, gloves, and shop glasses to pour a caustic substance that will burn you like acid onto a painted dresser to remove paint? It’s only 102° out!”   “Uh, no. Bye.”

So, as we did in later years in the auction business, we slogged through it together.   My mom was never a woodworker, but I did learn some solid basics on refinishing furniture, such as if you have to repair or add wood to a piece to be refinished, repair it before stripping. Why? When you strip it, chemicals and finish from the old wood gets into the new and helps to make it look aged and match better when you go to apply a new finish. And if you fill holes, to mix sawdust from the piece with the wood filler, as it helps it take the stain closer to the rest of the piece.

Silly anecdotes? Sure. But this was part of the body of knowledge she passed on to me in working side by side with her over several decades. Along with many other things and life lessons delivered with the unconditional love and eternal patience of a mother.

She didn’t do a lot of furniture work in her later years, as she was too busy with being a school nurse and auctioneer, but she’d done it for too many years on the hot sidewalk out of our garage on North Central Avenue in Pierre wearing flannel shits and paint-stained sweat pants for people to ever forget it.

Upon her passing back about Thanksgiving in November 2000, in noting her natural oak coffin, I remarked “if she were here with us, she would study it for a moment, and say, “I could turn that into a great coffee table.”   And people who knew my mom laughed, and say “yes, she would.”

So, here’s to our moms today, present or remembered. Thank you for everything.

From the Rapid City Journal:

During a debate this morning, Rapid City mayoral candidate Steve Allender admitted that he engaged in racially charged “insult humor” with co-workers two decades ago while he was a police officer.

“I’m not a racist,” Allender said, “but I am a human being.”

In his group of co-workers between 1990 and 1993, he said, everyone participated in what Allender described as friendly ribbing. He stopped participating in 1993 when he learned that fellow officer Glen Yellow Robe, a Native American man, was tape-recording the interactions.

Read it here.

Uh oh. That could be a tough one to explain away in the racially tinged atmosphere of Rapid City city politics.

I have just read that Rapid City lawyer and native of Ft. Pierre has died.

For many, Pat is known as a partisan Democrat and an aggressive attorney.  I know him as a high school basketball player (least talented player in his family but better than most), a member of a close-knit clan, and a man of faith and reflection.  To say I knew him well by many interaction would be inaccurate.  I knew him well because he did his best to live the values instilled in him by his family and his Faith.

As you know, I have written many pieces when people die and often with regret I didn’t say something to them before they die.  I don’t have that regret with Pat.  He is a Duffy.  He said what was on his mind.  He expected the same.  He gave respect to others even if they didn’t give it back.

Pat, the world has been made better because you were in it.  Forgive me for not being able to give you a more expansive eulogy but I have a golf tourney and tee off shortly.  As an Irishman, you understand.  🙂

By the Mercy of God, may you Rest in Peace.

There’s a great column by Joseph Bottum in USA today on the unusual level of indifference that most of South Dakota is treating President Obama’s visit with.

It’s an unexcitement matched by the general reaction of the state. Part of that is cultural. “This is the Midwest,” explains Mary Bibby, a longtime Republican activist from Brookings, S.D. “What’s to get excited about?”

And…

“Locally, having a president visit is a big deal,” notes Lee Schoenbeck, one of Watertown’s representatives in the legislature. Still, although he offered the bland comment deliberately to avoid controversy, that diminishing qualifier “locally” adds, yet again, a curious sense of indifference to the presidential descent on the state this week.

Even Bernie Hunhoff, founding editor of South Dakota Magazine and an enduring Democratic figure in the state, couldn’t find much to say in praise of the visit. “Watertown is the right place for the president to shine light on workforce development,” he began — before launching into a diatribe about the failure of Washington to address the “150-year-old problem in South Dakota that was directly created by Washington.

Read it all here.

From Congresswoman Noem:

Today, I join millions across the nation in prayer and thanksgiving for the abundant blessings found within our great state and nation. I hope you’ll join me and my family in praying for those most in need, and for a future of prosperity and happiness for friends, neighbors, and loved ones.

National Day of Prayer

I am honored to serve you in Congress, and to have your support.

Have a blessed day.

Sincerely,

Kristi

Losing US Senate Candidate Slick Rick Weiland is out shilling for money again for his organization “takeitback.org.”  And in the latest edition of his “Send me money” e-mail, Weiland claims he’s going to introduce an initiated measure in South Dakota:

One of our favorite cartoonists is “Tom Tomorrow” who, once a week, delivers a cartoon that brilliantly satirizes current events, and was just nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. You can visit his website here: http://thismodernworld.com/, and be sure and visit Daily Kos on Mondays for his weekly cartoon.

Between the tragedy continuing to unfold in Baltimore, the gridlock and disarray of Congress, it sort of feels like our country is slowly coming apart at the seams.  People feel a sense of hopelessness and abandonment.

What happened yesterday, with the Senate passing their 10 year budget blueprint, the first joint congressional budget plan in six years is certainly worth a comment or two.

This new budget cuts 4.2 trillion dollars from benefit programs like Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps; it kicks 27 million people off of Obamacare and Medicaid, cuts Pell Grants, slices $600 billion from school lunch programs, nutritional assistance for poor mothers, and tax credits for the working poor.
Hmmmmm. It gets worse….

Medicaid is slated to become a block grant program to the states. Medicare will be turned into a voucher program to buy private health insurance policies. Obamacare will be repealed – not replaced, and there will be more tax cuts for wealthy.

As President Clinton was so fond of saying – “Give me a break!”

Balancing the federal budget on the backs of those who can least afford it is a cowardly act, one perpetrated by the powerful and privileged who have rigged our politics and now own our politicians and our government.

How about some tax fairness for starters by requiring that corporations pay their fare share of taxes? Repeal the tax law that allows them to hide their profits in offshore bank accounts before you start cutting food stamps and education? You can read about here: its call “Inversion.”

With Republican control of the House and the Senate, and a Presidential election around the corner, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

While the political process has been bought and paid for by ‘big money,’ TakeItBack.Org has a plan to fight back, to use populist ballot initiatives in the 24 states that allow them.

We will send a message, starting in South Dakota, that “We The People” have had enough! How? By passing our ‘anti-corruption/big money’ initiative which will be released at the end of the month and, when passed, will be proof that the public is mad as hell, pure and simple, and that we are not going to take it anymore.

Please contribute and join us in making this pledge: that working together, using direct democracy, we will take our country back, one state at a time!

Paid for in part by TakeItBack.Org-Political Action. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Contributions to TakeItBack.Org are not deductible for federal income tax purposes.

All content © 2015 TakeItBack.Org, All Rights Reserved
P.O. Box 20‌17 Sio‌ux Falls, SD 57‌101

So, Slick Rick claims that “We will send a message, starting in South Dakota, that “We The People” have had enough! How? By passing our ‘anti-corruption/big money’ initiative which will be released at the end of the month and, when passed, will be proof that the public is mad as hell, pure and simple, and that we are not going to take it anymore.”

And don’t forget to send him money. Which seems to be a common thread in all the e-mails he’s sending.

If Weiland is going to release this ballot measure at the end of the month, that would assume that he’s  done their pre-clearance of the initiated measure through the Legislative Research Council and Attorney General. In the middle of all this fundraising.

But if you look at the Secretary of State’s web site on ballot measures, what do you see regarding what Weiland is proposing?  Nothing. No state ballot measure group. Nothing on potential ballot measures.

I’m double checking, just in case something hasn’t been posted yet. But barring that, I’m not thinking we’re going to see anything from Weiland this month. Outside of more fundraising e-mails.