It’s one of those million dollar existential experiences you wouldn’t pay a nickel for. This, I imagine is how many of those summarily fired in the recent SDSU cuts feel. If they can come out of it with less than bitter sentiments, my hat is off to them. I’m not sure I could.

SDSU President David Chicoine, in justifying the budget cuts was quoted in last week’s Collegian that SDSU’s “Business as usual cannot be sustained.” He’s probably right but not in context with the subject at hand.

You’d think a university president could come up with a better cliché than “business as usual.” It’s a rhetorical device reserved for the stupid and self-serving. I’m not one to suggest that the SDSU leaders have ever been stupid or self-serving, but in light of the ‘business as usual’ quote, maybe the folks running the show are. . . stupid—if not self-serving.

The budget cuts (so far estimated at $4.7 million) represent the first public consequence of SDSU’s current policy to go for quantity rather than quality. The rush toward “big school” status with the emphasis on research rather than teaching is apt to become one of the boondoggles South Dakota’s educational system is known for. Faculty payrolls at last report are frozen. This, along with the emerging expectation that faculty members should put more time into research (a.k.a. university funding and income), I wonder how it happens that our state educates anyone.

Then there’s the on-campus construction. I don’t have figures on how much is being invested in upgrading SDSU facilities, but it’s got to be high. You know how it goes; a million here, a million there; and pretty soon we’re talking real money. It looks very pretty in the architect’s sketches. How much of it, however, was really needed?

A small case in point is the new entryway at the South Dakota Art Museum. Lord knows how much was spent in constructing what amounts to a glorified mud room—and if that’s the end product, God help us. I’m sure it cost more than one soon to be ex-SDSU employee’s salary.

I remember an aphorism displayed on the desk of a secretary in the old Education Department during the mid 1980s. It read “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.” I imagine the quote was relative to personal growth and not financial risk. In any case, I took it to heart. I began to train horses and though my career earnings might be fodder for lame jokes, I lived closer to the heart of my aspirations than many dare to imagine. I don’t regret a bit of it and with a bit of grace, I may do it yet again.

I’m now older than many of my instructors and don’t suffer fools as gladly as I once did. Hell, I’ve become an expert on the issue of foolishness. However, I’m even less inclined to play the grad student’s game of ‘yes sir, yes ma’am’ to get my degree.

I do, however, appreciate a quality education but in order to get one, instructors need to be focused on what they’re teaching and not concerned with when their job or program will be put on the chopping block and/or whether they’re generating enough income through grant writing and research. Furthermore, since we’re speaking of research, there’s the recent news that Three Cups of Tea, SDSU’s Common Read, is mostly fiction and the author’s charitable organization is filling his coffers more than investing in the education of Afghanistan’s youth. Maybe somebody should have researched that.

To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Hamlet, it seems “something is rotten at SDSU.” I’m not, however, going to presume from where the stench is coming. That’s up to people better informed than I. What I sense, however, is some sleight of hand being played at the expense of the people, students and staff of South Dakota and SDSU. If so, then despite Chicoine’s rhetoric to the contrary, it’s ‘business as usual.’

Keith is an SDSU alumnus and current journalism graduate student. Reach him atkabrumley@jacks.sdstate.edu

Ft. Yates, N.D., was my home back then and Bill’s operation was close in Mobridge. I met him through Joe Harrison, a bucking horse breeder and race horse man who’d sent me a horse to school after I’d first moved to Ft. Yates. After watching me work with the filly, Joe paid my entire monthly fee up front.

“I can’t take this,” I said. “I only want half a month’s fee down.”

“Take it,” Joe said. “I’ve got money today. I may not have it tomorrow.”

And so it was that my friendship with Joe was sealed. Later that season he gave me an elderly mare that wouldn’t make the harsh North Dakota winter.

“Send it up to Bill,” Joe said. “He’ll take care of you.”

I hauled the horse up to Mulligan’s and Bill—almost apologetically—told me the mare was worth very little. She was old, she was thin, and she was weak.

“Oh Hell,” Bill said. “She’s just dried out and needs some groceries.”

We cut a deal. Bill was honest and though he wasn’t in the horse business to make friends, he was kind to me.

Over the years, I sold a couple of horses to Bill—horses that I’d taken in on trade. They were crippled and therefore worth what they weighed. Bill took them all, paying me enough to come out ahead. The horses were spared slow painful deaths.

“Life,” John Lennon said, “is what happens when you’re making other plans,” and after divorce I moved on, focusing on training ranch horses and starting performance prospects. The prospects—like show cars–often went on the auction block and I’d ride them through the sale ring for their owners. Bill was invariably at every sale I attended—and he invariably supported my work.

In the late summer of 1997 I put together a string of horses to sell at a big sale in Mandan, N.D., They were mostly good but some, owned by another trader, were quirky.

The way it works is this: horse buyers travel the country looking for horses that’ll fit the wants of their customers. They rely on their instincts to buy the ones they think might make money and it’s a rough ride to success. Nobody wants to sell their horses to a disadvantage and the buyers often end up owning horses with issues. The traders’ concerns are with profit and as one person said, “I’d rather ride a good looking horse than a good horse.”

My job was to work out the kinks. A problem was that I had less time than optimal. That’s the business, however. Mostly it works but sometimes it doesn’t.

The ’97 deal was a wreck. The skies opened up the weekend of the sale and the world turned to mud. For the first time, my horses didn’t sell well. I took a big loss.

I felt, if anything, desolate but as I rode the last horse up to the ring, Bill stepped in, motioned for me to pause, and put his hand on my knee. He’d seen what was happening.

“You come a’ ridin’, cowboy.” Bill smiled, nodded his head and I rode into the sale ring. Outside of getting a good price for my horses, it was the best anyone could have done at the time.

I later learned Bill had not felt well that day. He had cancer. It quickly killed him and he was given a short obituary. For the rest of my life, however, I’ll remember his singular vote of kindness and respect.

So, whenever I see someone giving their best and I think it’s appropriate, I try to pass it forward. I tell them — whether they appreciate it or not . . . “You come a’ ridin,’ cowboy.”

Keith is an SDSU alumnus and current journalism graduate student. Reach him at kabrumley@jacks.sdstate.edu

While Japan dumps 3 million gallons of radioactive water in the Pacific Ocean and the U.S. is facing a governmental shutdown, I’m at home recovering from a total hip replacement.  I’d like to write about all the wonderful ideas I have but, due to the combination of pain and pain killers, there are none.  The pain hurts, I take the pain killers, and I feel better.  If I take the maximum dose I don’t think of anything.  I just “feel” good.  No worries.  All is well.  Nothing is bad.  It’s all great and everything is going to work out just fine.

The pain killers, however, are necessary, but as I’ve recovered, I’ve needed less meds until I’m now at the point where I’m taking little more than before surgery.   Except for a sore back, a tender hip, and such, I am (while resting) in less physical pain than I’ve experienced for some time.
Still, the Vicodin is waiting right there in the bathroom—and it’s ready to numb my brain.  I even have some refills but as my pain diminishes, so does the justification to take any more pain killers.  That, I suppose is why it’s called pain management—and I’m damned glad for it.  Toughing it out doesn’t hold the allure it did when I was still rodeoing and getting stoned– well, it’s just not any fun anymore.

It’s at this point that I wonder what everyone else does to numb themselves.  For the last few weeks, I’ve had a legitimate excuse and Lord knows, I’ve made as much of it as possible.  But the fact remains that things are not well on regional, national, and international levels.
Nevertheless, I’m not one to willingly don a hair shirt and start crying for world-wide repentance.  Given a choice, I’d just as soon spend my mornings making love, my afternoons putting around on a motorcycle and riding performance horses, with my evenings engaged in playing the guitar.  In other words I wouldn’t do much at all—except to set an example–and to be honest, my only job right now is to heal up.

Such visions however are idyllic.  And then there are all those pesky facts intimating our global culture is losing its center.   Perhaps it already has—which might justify making love all morning, riding horses and motorcycles all afternoon and then playing guitar all night.

I’m not, however, an end of the universe kind of guy.  I wouldn’t have had my hip replaced if I was.  On the contrary, I’ve sided with Cervantes’ character Don Quixote.  I don’t mind playing the fool and can say from experience that jousting at windmills can be both fun and rewarding.
The Hell of it now is that just about every action a person believing in positive change can imagine seems Quixotic.  And it very well might be.  Three million gallons of highly radioactive water (with more coming) pouring into the ocean is overwhelming.  A governmental shutdown is daunting.  A world perched on the edge of chaos is terrifying.  That doesn’t imply that one should stop caring.  If we care, it follows that we’ll do something—however ridiculous it might seem.  Positive change is possible.  In the process of promoting it, we might very well, like Don Quixote, screw it up.
This, however, is the only deal worth considering.  Follow your lights.  Do what is best.  Even if it comes to naught, you at least won’t spend your last days wondering about what might have been.

As for me, I’m going to take a well-earned nap–just as soon as I finish today’s physical rehab.

Keith Brumley - ColumnistThe geese are moving north. Snow banks are melting, exposing the detritus of winter. The people of Japan are reeling from an earthquake, a subsequent tsunami, and the possibility of a nuclear catastrophe. The United Nations, after weeks of dithering has issued a resolution allowing other nations to intervene with “all means possible” to stop the bloodshed of the Libyan Civil War. And then Norma, one of the elderly women who lived in my little apartment building tipped over and died.

It was, I suppose, a good death—relatively instantaneous. Folks around the building say it was a massive brain hemorrhage. Though I knew her, respected her and appreciated her presence during the small, intimate meals we all shared through the seasons, I didn’t attend her funeral. I also avoided the reception.

It wasn’t because I didn’t care. It just seemed too much and I’m now thinking that if tragedy half a globe away prompts me into emotional paralysis, what would I do if something horrible happened here?

My first thought is my daughter. She’s currently on Spring Break where she attends college and I don’t have the money to drive over and see her—even from here where things are relatively normal.  If I can’t afford a trip to the Twin Cities today, what would I do if things were serious?

Second are my friends. The more we’re inundated with the news and images of grief and brutality, it seems, the more we’re inclined to become numbed. Would I still care? Would my friends still care?

Finally, there’s everyone else. If we’re too calloused or numbed to respond to the needs of our friends and loved ones, how would we respond to the needs of strangers?  Would our hearts open out and would we come together as a community or would our culture come apart, with every person scrambling for safety?

These questions are both rhetorical and honest–with the answer being “it depends.”

First, how we do we view relationships? If our relationships are based on utility alone, we’re lost. One of my more cynical friends put it this way. “People use each other until they can’t stand it anymore. Then they move on to the next one.” In the case of catastrophe, only those who have the power to help us will be important—and then, only as long as they’re useful.

Second is the illusion of status and class. In a minor catastrophe, money and social status will still have its perks but if the real shit hits the real fan, these facades will rip away faster than a stripper bares her breasts. A life without effective and beneficent government under these circumstances would be, to quote political theorist Thomas Hobbes, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

Those most vulnerable: the sick, the elderly, the poor, and the omnipresent homeless will be first to suffer—but in the case of a complete societal meltdown many of those individuals will become some of the most likely to survive. Those without resources have honed survival skills that may—or may not—come forward in ways less than “acceptable” in a stable society. On the other hand, these have the means and the sentiment to come together. The vulnerable know what it’s like to be alone and are aware of the basic biological and spiritual need for human companionship. We know how much difference that makes in a crisis—regardless of one’s relative usefulness. Some, however, just can’t handle it and the future could very well be murder.

In the meantime, the geese are still moving north. The snow is melting and the Earth rotates on its axis 365 times with each revolution around the sun. All is well.
But then, I might be wrong.

Keith is an SDSU alumnus and current journalism graduate student. Reach him at kabrumley@jacks.sdstate.edu