By Roger Bluhm 

Valley City is colored in blue and white. The Hi-Liners football team is playing Saturday in the Class AA State Football Championship. With a win, Valley City High School earns its first football title since 1936.
With a loss, the Hi-Liners still deserve a great deal of thanks.
They need a thank you for bringing this community together. Few things can generate the excitement, the “buzz” of a successful sports team. Everyone wants to be a part of it – businesses and homes are decorated, people talk about the team all over town and families have a reason to don their Hi-Liners gear and go out to the games.
As the season has progressed, more and more people have been sucked into the winning vortex created. Should it matter if our team loses? Isn’t the fact the Hi-Liners made it this far the exciting, successful season we wish every season to be?
Sure, we all want a win. We all want to say we were there for the first Hi-Liners football title in 52 years. Many of us will be at the Alerus Center hoping, cheering and praying for that win.
    Yet, it doesn’t matter too much. The team has done its job. It went out and competed for 12 straight weeks. It entered the game unbeaten. The players grew, communicated, became the one unit – instead of dozens of individuals – that all successful squads must be.
The coaching staff has expressed their joy, their pride, their wonderment of all that has happened. They’ve praised the players, the booster club, the parents and all the fans for following the team and supporting them.
Water cooler groups, coffee shop patrons and lines at the U.S. Postal Service all are talking about the game. Those who aren’t planning to attend Saturday’s game will no doubt be watching on TV.
There’s a chance the other athletic teams will benefit from this run by the Hi-Liners. The wrestling team, basketball teams, baseball and track teams all will take note of the dedication of the football team. They will all see the sacrifices made to become a state finalist. They will all want that feeling of success for themselves.
Or, if they are football players who then move on to the other sports, they will want to carry that feeling from one sport to another. Again, win or lose, the football team has accomplished this as well.
Since I’ve been here, I’ve been informed that while Valley City High School has all the extra-curricular activities a student could want, that its most successful programs are its fine arts programs. Speech, drama, choir and music have all been highly successful programs at the school.
Move over fine arts, sports has joined the scene.
With the undefeated run of the Hi-Liners football squad, the late-season push by the volleyball team to reach the postseason and the pure numbers of athletes out for cross country, girls golf and boys tennis, it’s easy to see that athletics are making a comeback at the school know for fine arts.
This is a good thing. Programs such as these shouldn’t compete, they should compliment. A smart athlete is a successful athlete. A competitive student is a good student. The two should never be separate from one another, but as often as possible they should be combined.
It’s no secret that a quarterback is often called a field general. He needs to be smart, quick, decisive, read the defense and know how to bail his team out of a tough spot.
Wouldn’t you want your lead in a play to be the same type of leader on stage?
Again, the football team has helped other programs as the desire to continue to be top programs will fuel the fine arts programs as well.
With all this being said, win or lose, the Hi-Liners are a successful team this season. They’ve had A Season to Remember. We want to make sure it’s remembered by all.
Coming in December, the Valley City Times-Record will put out “A Season to Remember: The 2008 Hi-Liners” for our subscribers.
This special section will feature high-bright paper – allowing the photos within to be clearer and crisper. We will reprint from all 12 games the stories and pictures that we printed in the Times-Record during the season. We will also include many more pictures that we weren’t able to run throughout the season.
And we will have pictures and stories from Saturday’s title game.
Win or lose, the Hi-Liners have done so much for us in Valley City. They have brought us together and challenged their peers to match their success. They have captured the imagination of a community and school. They have come together as a team to reach their ultimate goal. We plan to celebrate them.
Win or lose.

Roger Bluhm is publisher of the Valley City Times-Record.

By Steve Browne 

“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
    --George Orwell

My wife was reading my Veteran's Day article about USAF Lt. Col. (ret.) Nick Soulis' presentation at VCSU last Thursday.
Wow!” she exclaimed, “He flew over the Himalayas? How many people were there to hear him?”
“Not many,” I replied, “about a dozen I think.”
She was dumbfounded. She had originally tipped me off about the presentation and was irritated she couldn't come herself.
She couldn't imagine why more students wouldn't want to hear what an old WWII pilot had to say about his war. But then, she's a soldiers daughter and was raised on war movies – often American ones at that. Her father is a retired Polish Army officer who loves American war movies.
I sometimes wonder if that's what we have in common. We come from different countries, different generations, and grew up speaking different languages. What we do have in common is a weird sense of humor, and the fact that we're both military brats.
My father retired a captain in the Navy Medical Corps, her father a major in the Secret Chancellery of the Polish Army. My mother was a Navy nurse, her grandmother was a member of the underground army during WWII. When they met for the first time, her father presented mine with a Polish officer's saber. So our children have grandfathers who were officers on opposite sides of the Cold War.
Everything changes in time.
Their military experiences were far different, of course, and not entirely positive. My father retired at a time when our country was rent by a still-ongoing debate as to whether, and when we should send our military abroad, and shaken to the core by the revelations of the My Lai massacre.
Her country's military were acutely, humiliatingly, aware they were treated as the local auxiliaries of an occupying power. And the role of Polish forces in crushing the Czechoslovakian freedom movement in 1968 is deeply embarrassing to this day.
The legacy in both our countries, is an attitude towards the military in the present generation of young adults that ranges from indifferent to actively hostile. This is expressed, as I saw last Thursday, by a disinterest in military history and the reminiscences of old veterans who in their youth, saw the world descend into madness.
Valley City has a fortunate relationship with the military. Our experience is mostly with the citizen-soldiers of the local National Guard. These men and women are less transient than regular military, more rooted in our community, more settled. And after being sent half a world away, they return to us, not to a duty station among strangers.
Some of them have served in Iraq. Soon, some will go to Kosovo, and in the future perhaps to Afghanistan, if our new president follows through on his campaign promises. These are ancient lands, consumed by divisions older than the history of our nation, and a debate rages as to whether our involvement in their affairs will do them, or us, any lasting good.
    The experience of the Second World War generation would seem to incline them one way, more recent experience another. The differences might tell us a lot about why, and if, and under what circumstances we should send our young men and women in harm's way, far away.
      I confess to being deeply conflicted about where the Guard is sending our friends and neighbors. Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan. All three? None? Any one or two of them?
    I don't know what the judgment of the next generation will be on any of these. But I strongly suggest when they are called on to reminisce about their war - listen.
    

By Carla Kelly 

There’s a funny listing on eBay. Apparently there’s someone in New Hampshire who has an old, haunted spice rack he is trying to get rid of. After acquiring the antique, he started hearing an old lady humming in the kitchen, and the banging of pots and pans, when no banger was in sight. The spook seems to be a real control freak because the man claims the she rearranges the spices in the rack.
I can’t see the problem here. I wish a ghost would rearrange my whole kitchen. She could begin by bricking up the doors so I would never have to cook again. We seldom eat out, and after 40 years, I’m tired of cooking. Heck, if that spectre wanted to materialize and cook, you wouldn’t find me putting her on eBay.
I’m amazed what can be purchased on eBay. I’ve only bought two things on the online auction house, and they were both the same thing: two antique glass Lydia Pinkham bottles. I only did it as a gag.
How this fascination with Lydia Pinkham started, I can’t recall, except that it happened when I worked at Fort Union Trading Post NHS, where all things historic come up for discussion regularly. Richard Stenberg, one of my ranger friends, and I liked to talk history, and somehow, Lydia Pinkham entered the discussion.
She was an interesting lady, tenth child in a Quaker family of 12 children, born in 1819 in Lynn, Mass. Her family was comfortably well-off, so she was educated and became a school teacher before she married Isaac Pinkham in 1843. Things went along well enough with the Pinkhams until 1873, when a series of business reverses knocked Isaac out of the saddle. He squeaked out of arrest for debt, but his health was ruined.
Not to worry; Lydia was a resourceful woman. For years, she had been making a home remedy for what were primly called “female complaints.” She made what she described as a “vegetable compound” for what ailed her occasionally, and had always just given it away to female neighbors who expressed an interest.
Supposedly it was her son, Daniel, who suggested she market the product and sell it. Lydia whipped up a pot on her stove and did precisely that. In a short time, Lydia’s Pinkham’s vegetable compound became a hit and was produced in a factory. The Pinkhams were on their way to riches.
They were shrewd about the business, advertising regularly in newspapers large and small, and including testimonials from grateful users of the compound. (Check out old Times-Record newspapers for a look.)  The testimonial became a powerful advertising tool. Today’s clever “Got Milk?” ad campaign using celebrities with a milk moustache is a modern descendant of the Pinkham testimonial.
Some home remedies that followed Lydia’s success were probably not safe for man nor beast. Some were highly alcoholic in content and became an accepted way for women to hit the bottle without ruffling any Victorian sensibilities. Lydia’s vegetable compound did have an 18 percent alcohol content, but it also contained ingredients effective in dealing with menstrual disorders and menopausal megrims, black cohosh in particular.
This whole thing intrigued Richard and me, so I turned to the Internet to find out if it was still manufactured. Sure enough, Numark Laboratories sells what they call “Lydia Pinkham Herbal Compound.” I order two bottles, then went on eBay to see if I could locate two original Lydia Pinkham bottles. I could, and did, sending Richard one old empty bottle and a bottle of the new stuff. (You can buy it at Walgreen’s, CVS and Rite Aid pharmacies. but without the alcohol content now.)
Richard keeps his Pinkham gifts in his office at Williston State College, where he teaches history. Mine is in a drawer somewhere, also untasted. A few weeks ago, just joking around, I asked Richard if he had ever tried it. His college has gone through some nasty administrative turmoil lately, and who knows? Although Lydia was designed for female complaints, sometimes when times are tough, any port in a storm will do.
Let’s hear it for Lydia Pinkham, who was immortalized in numerous drinking songs, most unrepeatable. Here’s one verse, and it will do: “Up to heaven her soul ascended/Oh, the church bells they did ring./She took with her medicinal compound/Hark the herald angels sing!”

By Katie Hajicek
Nutrition Education Agent

The American Academy of Pediatrics is doubling the amount of vitamin D it recommends for infants, children and adolescents.
The new clinical report, “Prevention of Rickets and Vitamin D Deficiency in Infants, Children, and Adolescents,” recommends all children receive 400 IU a day of vitamin D, beginning in the first few days of life. The previous recommendation, issued in 2003, called for 200 IU per day beginning in the first two months of life.
The change in recommendation comes after reviewing new clinical trials on vitamin D and the historical precedence of safely giving 400 IU per day to the pediatric population. Clinical data show that 400 units of vitamin D a day will not only prevent rickets, but treat it. This bone-softening disease is preventable with adequate vitamin D, but dietary sources of vitamin D are limited, and it is difficult to determine a safe amount of sunlight exposure to synthesize vitamin D in a given individual. Rickets continues to be reported in the United States in infants and adolescents.
The greatest risk for rickets is in exclusively breastfed infants who are not supplemented with 400 IU of vitamin D a day.
Adequate vitamin D throughout childhood may reduce the risk of osteoporosis. In adults, new evidence suggests that vitamin D plays a role in the immune system and may help prevent infections, autoimmune diseases, cancer and diabetes.
“We are doubling the recommended amount of vitamin D children need each day because evidence has shown this could have life-long health benefits,” said Frank Greer, MD, FAAP, chair of the AAP Committee on Nutrition and co-author of the report. Supplementation is important because most children will not get enough vitamin D through diet alone.
“Breastfeeding is the best source of nutrition for infants. However, because of vitamin D deficiencies in the maternal diet, which affect the vitamin D in a mother’s milk, it is important that breastfed infants receive supplements of vitamin D,” said Carol Wagner, MD, FAAP, member of the AAP Section on Breastfeeding Executive Committee and co-author of the report. “Until it is determined what the vitamin D requirements of the lactating mother-infant dyad are, we must ensure that the breastfeeding infant receives an adequate supply of vitamin D through a supplement of 400 IU per day.”
The new recommendations include:
*    Breastfed and partially breastfed infants should be supplemented with 400 IU a day of vitamin D beginning in the first few days of life.
*    All non-breastfed infants, as well as older children, who are consuming less than one quart per day of vitamin D-fortified formula or milk, should receive a vitamin D supplement of 400 IU a day.
*    Adolescents who do not obtain 400 IU of vitamin D per day through foods should receive a supplement containing that amount.
*    Children with increased risk of vitamin D deficiency, such as those taking certain medications, may need higher doses of vitamin D.
Given the growing evidence that adequate vitamin D status during pregnancy is important for fetal development, the AAP also recommends that providers who care for pregnant women consider measuring vitamin D levels in this population.