Tag: philosophy

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The Meaning of Snow

By Ken Blanchard

When I vacationed in Alaska a couple of years ago, I learned for the first time that winter can be used as a verb. It means to spend the darkest, coldest months of the year somewhere else. It occurred to me today that the meaning of a simple word like snow is different in South Dakota than it was in my native state of Arkansas.

Down there, snow was an event. You saw it coming if you were lucky, prayed for it if you were pious and eight years old, sat through it over a cup of hot chocolate, and then waited a day or two for it to melt. In the Dakotas, snow isn’t an event; it’s a season. It overlaps the end of fall and the beginning of calendar spring. We wait for it to pass the way Twins fans wait for another winning season. Fortunately the former is something that might actually happen.

The Easter holiday, which begins with Good Friday and ends with Not Half Bad Monday, is a good time to read the history of the snow. Some of it fell softly and evenly and some roared in parallel to the ground like it was being chased by the cops. The wind sculpted the loose power into dunes and new snow iced their tops. Some folks reclaimed their driveways and sidewalks with those modified tillers known as snow blowers. In doing so, they built up one side of the long ramparts that line streets while the snow plows built up the other.

Other folks labored like the Israelites in The Ten Commandments, stooped over their shovels making bricks for Pharaoh. British farmers used to assemble long rock walls along the edges of their fields, not so much because they needed the walls but because they needed something to do with the rocks. So we in these Dakotas build walls of snow along the edges of our yards because it is illegal to shove it back into the streets.

Now those once awesome structures have mostly melted to the height of speed bumps. If you look closely at their texture, it doesn’t look like snow at all anymore. Compacted by its own weight, softened and refrozen almost daily, it’s more like sponge cake. Looking at it now and at the blasted grass it retreats across, I remember how my hair used to have color and how my brother used to have hair.

I have tried to be pleased and educated by every gift that God has given me. Snow is one of those gifts even if it sometimes pleases me too much. I can see why snow is good and I can learn some of the things that it has to teach us. I just think we could learn those lessons well enough by the end of February. The season of snow has gone on long enough. Still, I know the meaning both of winter and summer better because South Dakota has taught me the meaning of snow.

Editor’s Note: Ken Blanchard is our political columnist from the right. For a left-wing perspective on politics, please look for columns by Cory Heidelberger every other Wednesday on this site.

Dr. Ken Blanchard is a professor of Political Science at Northern State University and writes for the Aberdeen American News and the blog South Dakota Politics.


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The “Aha” Moment

By Christian Begeman

Sometimes in life we are blessed with”aha” moments. These moments become, for lack of better words, mental photographs of a specific time that changed your life. It may be a small change or it may be huge. In either case, these”moments” soon become part of who you are. Such moments have been few and far between for me. You see, like most people, I don’t like change all that much. I’m pretty content living here in South Dakota where I have family close by, a good job and good friends.

A couple years ago, I was asked by a good friend to consider helping an orphanage he was involved with to make a video presentation for their supporters. This orphanage was in Tanzania, Africa. Long story short, I went. I experienced at least two”aha” moments on that trip. One was confirming my love of travel and the wonder of creation as I reveled in the sights and sounds of Serengeti National Park. The other more important moment came when a handful of four-year-old orphans stole my heart on the shores of Lake Victoria. I wasn’t the same after that.

Fast forward to this February. I find myself in the small yard of VisionTrust Guatemala’s Learning Center in a poor, indigenous village of Guatemala when God blesses me with another”aha” moment. I’m there to assist a friend of mine learn how our church can become involved in helping the less fortunate and orphans of the world. I’m busy doing my”get the award-winning photo” thing so we can tell the story of VisionTrust to our church. As usual, I am loving every minute of the photographic experience. The kids were great subjects, full of life and happiness. Then class breaks and this little guy makes a beeline for me and proceeds to clamp onto my leg in what for him must have been a massive bear hug. That was when the”aha” moment started to happen. I kneel down and try to interact as best I can. I don’t know Spanish, but he doesn’t care. He is giggling and smiling. I pick him up like I do my nephew and hold him above my head and he laughs harder as he soars in the air.

That was the moment. This kiddo was teaching me the lesson I needed for the trip. The fact is I need him as much as he needs me. Yeah, he might be short on food and clean clothes. He probably hasn’t seen his daddy in weeks…if at all. But he’s not short on love. He’s not short on gratitude and hospitality. He may experience poverty materially but he’s showing me by example that I experience poverty relationally. This American rugged individualism that has shaped me has left something important out. The fact that I don’t”need” anyone’s help to live comfortably has made me selfish and even a bit arrogant without even realizing it. Volunteering in poor countries continues to teach me that truly helping the needy means more than just handing out food and saying a prayer. Getting to know people and loving them is what matters. It is how Jesus ministered 2,000 years ago.

I realize this column is supposed to be about photography, but I guess I wanted to point out how a hobby or passion like photography can be a means to change in your life. Going on vacations or mission trips are a great reason to take your camera and document where you’ve been and what you’ve seen. However, don’t get so caught up in”getting the photo” that you never really meet the people or learn about the culture you visit. You might miss your”aha” moment. If it wasn’t for a little Mayan boy full of excitement and love, I would have.

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog.

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Stories of Stones

By Ken Blanchard

There is a good reason why the Lord decided to change Simon’s name to Peter. Petra in New Testament Greek means rock and that, Jesus told the newly christened Petros, is exactly what you are.”Upon this rock I will build my church.” The language is accessible and evocative. Everyone understands that a rock is something unyielding. There is wisdom in that.

Stones are not mute. Like everything in nature, they tell stories and teach lessons. I have been an avid camper and backpacker since my teens. Almost every year I return to hike the Ozark canyons of my native Arkansas and sleep with the sound of Sylamore Creek in my ears. The caves and sink holes are battle scars from a war between water and limestone. There has been no peace for millions of years. A pine tree, twenty feet tall but clutching with roots not much bigger than my hand to a ledge I would not care to try to stand on, will remind me how precarious is my own purchase on life.

I have made several trips to Lost Twin Lakes, in the Wyoming Big Horn Mountains. At ten thousand feet above sea level, the lakes still entertain ice in July. Standing on the shore of the upper lake, you are facing a half circle of cliffs that rises more than two thousand feet above you. I know that some still think the world to be six thousand years old. This alpine cirque will have none of that. It says, with bold authority, that all of man’s history and reach is like the life of an insect skirting the surface of a puddle.

None of those places has taught me more than Teddy Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota, where I recently spent two chilly nights backpacking with my son. Much as I love South Dakota, our northern neighbor has the better Bad Lands. Rich in color and texture, the Little Missouri canyon tells a truth that older and bolder mountains will not readily confess. Nothing in this world is enduring.

The river is coffee-brown with silt. Rain turns walls of gritty earth into elegant curtains. Frequently you will observe a cap rock formation. This is a tower of soil formed as the rain slowly erodes the soil on all sides of a rock. Sometimes you can find a row of them, a sandcastle engineered by gravity out of wind, water, and stone.

What is concealed by the ancient Rockies is flamboyantly on display at Teddy Roosevelt. Everything in this world is here because something else fell apart. Everything here is always turning into something else. This bit of wisdom has been mined by the Buddhists more than anyone else.

If it sounds sad, stick with it for a while. Without the constant process of formation and erosion, our life would not be possible. Because nothing in this world is enduring, everything and everyone in it is precious. That, at any rate, is what I have learned.

Dr. Ken Blanchard is a professor of Political Science at Northern State University and writes for the Aberdeen American News and the blog South Dakota Politics.

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Prisons, Flood and Cancer

By Bernie Hunhoff

C.S. Lewis wrote,”We read to know we’re not alone.” So we all need to do more reading. Or we could put the books down and reach out to neighbors trapped in their various prisons.

One day this summer, I visited the Federal Prison at Yankton to speak to inmates about writing and publishing. That same afternoon, I learned that one of our best friends was diagnosed with a serious cancer.

Later, at the office, I asked a co-worker who has survived cancer,”What’s it going to be like for her?”

“She’ll feel all alone at times, no matter what people do to help, because it’s something you have to ultimately face alone,” said my co-worker.”She’ll walk down the street and feel sort of disconnected from everyone else as they go about their daily routine, smiling and laughing.”

That same week, I also traveled up and down the Missouri River, meeting with victims of the historic 2011 flood. By coincidence, one landowner used the same street analogy as he explained his predicament.”You walk down the street and you think, ‘these people have no idea I might be losing my house and farm. They have no idea what we’re going through.'”

I’ve spoken to classes at the Yankton prison for a number of years, and on every trip I leave with somewhat the same message that the flooded farmer and the cancer survivor expressed. Prisoners are crammed on a campus or cell-block with hundreds of other inmates as well as guards and staff, and yet there is a palpable atmosphere of aloneness, despite the hail-fellow camaraderie.

As the summer wore on, friends and total strangers came to help the flooded homeowners and farmers — including state and federal prison inmates who filled thousands of sandbags in June.

Hutterites, who live on communal farms in South Dakota, came to help neighbors they’d never met. Just when one particular fellow was feeling overwhelmed by the flood, some large four-door pickup trucks came and parked on the nearest dry spot, and then,”eight large men got out of each pickup ….” He was referring to the arrival of the Hutterites.

The flooded fellow was also overwhelmed with the assistance and generosity of Native Americans who lived in his area. He hadn’t met most them, even though he grew up in the same small county. They showed up in droves, working and sweating alongside the Hutterites and the white farmers to save a stranger’s property.

A few days later, the homeowner was refueling his vehicle at a local gas stop when he saw a Native American coming out of the store with a twelve-pack.”I thought, man, I’m fighting for my life and this guy has nothing better to do than drink beer,” he admits to thinking.

He was surprised when the Native American stopped by his pickup and asked how the battle was going with the river.

“Do you know where I live?” asked the surprised homeowner.

“Yes, I was out there helping yesterday,” said the Native American.

Prison. Cancer. Floods. Droughts. Fires. Poverty. Alcoholism. Mental illness. There are a hundred types of prison cells. We are on solo paths, but perhaps we’re seldom as alone as we feel.