Post a Comment On: A Nod to Nothing

Pooteewheet and I are making our plans for our upcoming vacation. My grandmother will be turning 90, so we decided that we'd couple a trip to (the near side of) Montana for her party with a tour of the Dakotas. Not the most inspired choice of a vacation, particularly as it's been 95+ around here and it's usually hotter there, but it will be convenient as we have to come back to Minnesota anyway, and driving completely around the Dakotas is so darned inconvenient, and Iowa always gets in the way on the final leg. So far, we've nailed down one thing we're not going to do, and that's visit the South Dakota Hall of Fame. In case you're worried I forgot a word, like Hockey or Amateur Baseball in the middle of that phrase...nope. It's a museum dedicated to famous South Dakotans, like...oh...

Mary Hart - Know nationally for her work in the news media.
Terry Redlin – World wide acclaim for his beautiful artistic work portraying nature and American life.
Tom Brokaw – Nationally recognized for his contribution to media and journalism.
Al Neuharth – Renowned as the founder of USA TODAY, the Freedom Forum, and honored with the Al Neuharth Media Center in Verimillion, S.D.
Sitting Bull - The famous leader of the Hunkpapa Sioux tribe who was a man of vision and well respected by all who knew him.
Crazy Horse - Known as a brave and generous Sioux Indian Warrior, he is honored at the Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
And Many Others!

You'd hate to put any of those Native Americans first, even though they're the most interesting and well known of any of those people outside of Tom Brokaw. Maybe it's alphabetical. Or racialbetical. But "and many others!" includes Jerry Olson, Jack Marken, Vern McKee, Martin Busch, et al. (but not Cheryl Ladd, Sparky Anderson, Ted Waitt, and Katherine Bach, at least not until after the remake of Dukes of Hazard), and some of them aren't native American, so maybe that absolves the ordering decision. I'd refer you to the virtual tour, but it seems to be woefully out of commission. As a service, I'd like to give the museum a hand and reconstruct the tour on my site using powerful visual language, so lean back and imagine yourself standing in the middle of South Dakota - dusty, windswept prairie, waves of golden grass, black-hills style, coal-striated scenery, rattle snakes, packrats, ground squirrels, the weighty history of The Sioux Wars and frontier life and justice, the solemn silence of missing herds of bison and extinct flocks of passenger pigeons one of which once darkened the plains, the other the skies...now...quick! add Mary Hart! (or Tom Brokow...as you please). Ah...infinite variety indeed!

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