Advice for Kristi Noem: We’re all in this Together

Earlier this year, I started this post, but wasn’t able to pull it together, wasn’t able to communicate what I understood intuitively.

It was March, and COVID-19 was just working its way into South Dakota. I was talking with the dearest of dear friends one evening — we talk every night, for which I am grateful — when he alluded to a challenge he was facing. Initially, I wasn’t astute enough to pick up on it.

He mentioned ethanol plants were shutting down as the need for ethanol decreased. I didn’t realize this would impact the cattle industry until he spelled it out for me. Without ethanol, beef producers wouldn’t have what has become a standard component of most feed blends — distiller’s grain. His supplier had managed to find one load, but the odds of finding what was needed until the pastures filled out in June didn’t look good.

We talked about other options he had, and his concerns about each. With last year’s moisture — euphemism for “extensive flooding” — supplies of some alternatives were limited. He didn’t have to tell me that meant prices would go up.

As we talked that night, a single thought kept skittering through my mind — we’re really in this together. Cattle prices had already taken a beating when COVID-19 affected trade agreements. With higher production costs, producers were going to be hit again — because folks weren’t driving as much.

At the time, chemo was knocking me off my feet and the pandemic had put me in a virtual isolation chamber. I didn’t see people for days on end, and electronic devices provided my only contact with the world outside my apartment. Nausea and fatigue pounded me worse than an abusive lover, and more than once I would have greeted death with open arms had I been given the opportunity.

Still, I somehow knew that we were going to have to face COVID-19 as a nation, that the pandemic would affect all of us one way or another, and we would only find our way through the destruction and despair if we were united. Sadly, in facing this threat, we have not had leadership which united us. In fact, some of us have been abandoned to our own devices by leaders more concerned with building their political careers than with the people they were elected to serve.

Among them is Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota. She has been getting such a buzz from her close relationship with the president — the classic example of a leader who has abandoned those he was elected to serve — that  she has been inviting COVID-19 into the state and then dashing off to build her national profile, leaving her constituents to suffer the consequences. Not only did she host a Fourth of July campaign rally at Mt. Rushmore for the president, which was attended by thousands, but she also encouraged bikers from across the country to attend the Sturgis Rally, which was attended by hundreds of thousands.

Through it all, she had one simple message: no masks required.

On FOX, which apparently has Noem on speed dial, she claimed that she threw her constituents under the bus because — and I quote — “I believe in our freedoms and liberties.” She went on to say, “What I’ve seen across the country is so many people give up their liberties for just a little bit of security and they don’t have to do that.”

Of course, she was right. Folks have given up freedoms. They have given up the freedom to drive drunk because government has said killing people is not OK (at least, it isn’t if you’re a drunk driver). Folks have given up the freedom to buy an airline ticket and board a plane without going through a sometimes invasive security check because government wants to stop terrorists from using planes as weapons. Folks have given up the freedom to smoke whenever and wherever they want because government has said action must be taken to prevent people from getting cancer where possible.

All of those freedoms were relinquished — even when they had opponents — for the common good. All of those freedoms were relinquished to provide a little more security for the people of this nation. Our roadways are safer without drunk drivers. Airlines are safer for travel with precautions taken to stop terrorists. Our public buildings are safer without secondhand smoke shortening the lives of nonsmokers.

Noem, with wisdom of a politician trying to rise on the coattails of an individual elected to an office higher than the one she holds, doesn’t think it’s necessary for us to give up our freedoms, though. However, since she’s not tried to eliminate laws against drunk driving or smoking in public places or tried to eliminate airline security, she is apparently only opposed to wearing face masks in order to save lives.

To date, in our sparsely populated state, nearly 200 people have died, 21 in the last seven days. To date, more than 18,000 people out of 880,000 have tested positive for the disease and the numbers are increasing every single day. In May, during the first major outbreak, the state averaged 82 new cases per day. Since Sept. 1, the state has averaged 271 new cases every single day. Hospitalizations are at an all time high.

It’s time for Noem to sit by a few hospital bedsides — without a mask if she doesn’t want to relinquish her personal freedoms. It’s time for Noem to return to her home state, instead of gallivanting around the country in an effort to build her national profile, and attend the funerals of those who have sacrificed their lives so that she could get more time on FOX and in front of voters nationwide.

It’s time for Noem to realize that her star is not going to rise if she tramples the people of her state in an effort to shine because — surprisingly — we are all in this together.

Choices have Consequences

I was in fifth grade when I first read Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken.”  My desk was setting in the corner, by the aquarium, not because I had misbehaved, but because I had injured my ankle and was on crutches. I may have been in a cast as well, but what I remember most about that childhood misadventure is puzzling over that poem — while doing art, while Miss Groths was explaining a new math concept, while the other children went out to recess.

I was in the corner because I had to sit with my leg elevated. I am sure the goal was to reduce the likelihood that other children in their rambunctious, healthy way would bump or shove me and inadvertently — or intentionally — cause me more pain. Children, unfortunately, pick on one another and I was a child others liked to bully. Having worked for years with a counselor to unravel the Gordian knot that handicapped me in early adulthood, I have no doubt that I was socially inept due to a wide range of factors, so I was probably an easy target.

But during those weeks in fifth grade, I was like Cinderella in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. Separated from the other children, “in my own little corner in my own little chair, I [could] be whatever I [wanted] to be. On the wings of my fancy I [could] fly anywhere and the world [would] open its arms to me.” In that corner, I felt safe. I assume I managed to get my assignments completed, but what I remember most is daydreaming, or perhaps I was reflecting because over and over I went back to the lines from the Frost poem which was in our reading book.

The third stanza, especially the fourth line intrigued me:

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

Frost ends the poem with lines that have appealed to many over the years because they speak the truth plainly: “I took the one less traveled by,/ And that has made all the difference.” For M. Scott Peck, who wrote a book which remained on the New York Times bestsellers’s list for more than 10 years, “The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Values and Spiritual Growth,” the road less traveled was one in which we live more authentically in healthy, loving relationships.

But, what I have come to learn and appreciate over the years is that any road we choose, whether less traveled by or trampled by the masses, makes all the difference because “way leads on to way.” That’s the pivotal phrase: “way leads on to way.” We can’t go back. We can’t change what has been done or left undone. We can only move forward — step by step.

But, what I have also come to realize is how the ways we choose are interwoven with the ways others choose and create the tapestry of God’s hand at work. I think of that a lot these days when the social isolation recommended to stop the spread of the virus causing COVID-19 is especially necessary for me due to my compromised immune system. For the better part of two years, I spent several weekends every month visiting the dearest of dear friends on his family’s ranch. I never would have met him had I not given up a job I loved to accept one to help a floundering nonprofit in what proved to be a doomed effort.

But, in working for the nonprofit, I met his sister — a newlywed who had accepted a newly-created position for which she had little experience. I was in a position to offer her a first-class training experience if she was willing to accept a position on my board of directors. My organization had received a grant which would enable me and two board members to attend a week-long, intense workshop. Since none of the experienced board members was interested in attending, they were not opposed to adding two young women to the board for the specific purpose of attending the workshop. My friend’s sister was one.

The other young woman quickly dropped out of my life when I left the organization, but my friend’s sister remained in touch. For well over a decade, we’d drop one another occasional email messages, and she stopped by to see me once in a while when it was convenient. For a while, we even had a blog together, which was fun. She’d choose the topic; I’d write something; she would respond. Then, when her family was nominated for a prestigious conservation award, she asked for my assistance. I edited the nomination for the team which did the heavy-lifting of compiling the information. The family won and my friend asked me to put together a scrapbook as a family memento. That project turned into a book of nearly 300 pages.

And, that’s how I met the dearest of dear friends. I went to the ranch to interview family members. My friend said her brother would talk to me if I would ride in the tractor with him while he was doing chores. I don’t think she expected that conversation to last long, but we ended up talking for four hours and I fell head over heels in love with him — which embarrassed me, because he’s 20 years younger than me. I felt like a cougar and determined I would never visit the ranch or see him again. It didn’t work out that way, for which I am grateful, because it was his constancy and generosity of heart that got us through that rough first year when I vacillated between intense feelings of love and equally intense feelings of self-loathing, because I feared I was taking advantage of his kind nature.

But what does this have to do with cancer or God, you’re wondering. Well, it has to do with cancer because my low magnesium level made me think of how inter-related and nuanced are all things in God’s created world. The chemo apparently likes to strip my system of magnesium. When the magnesium is low, my body doesn’t absorb potassium. When my potassium is low, my blood pressure rises. Neither increasing my blood pressure medication nor my prescription for potassium helps if my magnesium is low. That’s the issue which must be addressed. Since I also get diarrhea from chemo, I can’t take the simple remedy — milk of magnesia — because it’s also a laxative. We have to try something different — soaking my feet and calves in water with epsom salts daily.

When you think about it, that’s a small thing to do. But when you think about it, most of the things that God asks us to do can be expressed with small gesture. We are to pray — for for God’s kingdom to come (not the world as we in our flawed humanity want it to be), for God’s will to be done (“thy will” not “my will”), for daily bread (not enough to last a lifetime), for the ability to forgive (because that may be one of the hardest ways we are called upon to show God’s love into this world), and to be delivered from evil (which wears such attractive guises, as we can see in the way greed of the wealthy has come to dominate our landscape crushing the hearts and lives of God’s beloved poor).

And then, our prayers are to be followed by actions — not necessarily grand gestures, but actions. We help give birth to God’s kingdom each time we act with love toward another — whether that’s a kind word or a helping hand. We embrace God’s will each time we open ourselves to the simple truth that each day is God’s gift to us and we are to live it with gratitude (and hope, even when cancer or another challenge makes it tough). We place our trust in God when we choose to live simply so that others may simply live, when we are willing to share what we have with those who are in need. We find our way into forgiving others not by an act of will, but by staying in relationship with those whom God has given us to love, by showing up with a willingness to see that person — and their trials — with God’s loving eyes, which helps anger and hurt and pain release their grip on our heart.

We can only be delivered from evil by asking God to open our hearts and minds to the inter-relationships of all things. We live in a world which increasingly works to deny this. This can be seen in every arena. I’ll use the example of neonicotinoids simply because it was a conservation award which brought the dearest of dear friends into my life. Neonics are administered through seed coatings. The theory is that the plant’s roots absorb the insecticide; the reality is that much more of it is washed away and is decimating insect and wildfowl populations it wasn’t intended to affect. However, farmers find it to be effective and are reluctant to sacrifice the convenience. So, bee keepers and those who rely on bees are dealing with the consequences, and hunters, who are finding fewer ducks and pheasants in the fields because the insect life needed to sustain the young simply isn’t there, are living with the consequences.

The same pattern can be seen in so many areas of our life today, and our society is becoming increasingly immune to the ramifications because those who benefit the most have the loudest voices. However, if we are to live as people of faith, we have to be willing to see our world as God created it — inter-related — and only when an action benefits the common good can it said to be of God. Only when we work for the common good can we know that our values are aligned with our prayers. Only when we work for the common good can we truly say we are acting in a way which is consistent with our desire to be delivered from evil.