By Jodi Rae Ingstad 

I’m always early to everything so it still surprises me that I was such a late bloomer in life.   
While the other kids my age were showing all the appropriate signs of puberty, I remained a child. One of my best friends growing up was a girl I mentioned before. She’s the girl with the fun to pronounce name, “Becky Bartl.”  
Becky Bartl was smaller than average just like me. We were inseparable. As our classmates grew, Becky Bartl and I remained stuck. What we lacked in size we made up for in spunk. We were like two peas in a pod.
And then, one day everything changed. It was as if all of my classmates who were girls, including Becky Bartl, took off in rocket ships and left me just hanging on to the end of a kite to find my height.  Becky Bartl began to grow and change. I can tell you exactly where I was the day a very traumatic incident took place. My trusted best friend and side kick, Becky Bartl, began to wear makeup! I was nowhere near that point nor did I have any idea how to apply all that gunk.
Let me jump forward 30-some odd years. Now I’m no longer wishing to grow. I got growing down pretty good I’d say. Becky Bartl grew up too. And we both wear makeup now.
  This past summer I did something I bet none of you did. I hung a full length mirror on the outside of the front of our cabin. I usually try not to look in mirrors but I didn’t hang it for reasons of vanity.   When I’m outside on our prairie during the spring and summer I get filled with wood ticks crawling in some pretty odd places.   Before re-entering the house I decided it would be a good idea to check in the mirror for any unwanted creatures crawling up my person. To me the mirror outside was a brilliant idea.
The blizzard hit this past weekend which stranded me alone in our cabin on the prairie. Since that husband of mine was tucked away safely in a well-maintained hotel in Jamestown it was my duty to shovel our walkway.  
I piled on way too many clothes in anticipation for the below cold temperatures the weatherman warned against. As I shoveled I began to sweat. The snow was heavy as I heaved it from the walkway into a pile. I took a break and walked towards the garage.
As I did I passed by that mirror. I glanced expecting to look horrifically horrible from all the sweat. Oddly just the opposite appeared. I’d never, ever seen myself look better. I know that sounds boastful but shockingly that’s what I saw.  
I kept looking back in the mirror to see if I could figure out why I was looking so different, so healthy and so good. I studied every piece of my face searching. I just looked too unlike my normal worn-out self to look away.
Finally I had studied long enough to figure it out. The sweat had formed tiny dots of white, glistening ice on all my upper and lower eyelashes. It was more stunning and more effective than any of that goopy, glittery highlighting eye gunk I’ve ever bought in a store. As I rested from shoveling, I blinked with my icy eyelashes and pondered in wonder.
I always thought it was makeup that made me look presentable. It took this blizzard to help me realize I look most presentable, healthy and alive in the midst of naturally created things.
Maybe if we rely on God’s creations instead of the world’s manufactured materials we might just find the beauty we keep attempting to buy. I may be a late bloomer but I’m early to be wise to God’s natural wonders.
Ice-kissed eyelashes changed my view of what beauty is and where it comes from.

By Roger Bluhm 

Today’s front page lists the various winners of the Times-Record’s annual Frosty Christmas Giveaway.
    This long-running tradition is a joy for us at the newspaper. I want to thank the area businesses who participated in this year’s event and encourage more participation for next year.
    Our readers – and plenty of non-subscribers – participate in this annual event. These are our neighbors, our friends, who shop local and value the importance of a thriving local community.
    It’s a way for all of us to help one another. We at the newspaper get the joy of helping our customers with a great promotion and to make the day of two people by giving away cash to help with those holiday expenses.
    We’ve spent the last few days in the office greeting tons of people who have stopped in just to drop Frosty tickets in our tub. All over the city I’ve watched people stop at various businesses to drop off Frosty tickets.
    I also want to thank all the employees who have taken the numerous Frosty tickets I would have gotten if eligible and handed them to the customer behind me in line. I know for a fact I’ve handed out dozens of tickets at a couple of places.
    All of these customers were pleased with the extra tickets, I was happy to be able to do it and I’m sure the businesses saw a benefit from the act as at least one of those customers later told me all 15 extra tickets she received that day she took back to that particular business.
    Now, don’t think for a second the Frosty Christmas Giveaway is all fun and games. There’s been plenty of work involved in keeping this event alive and well. Last year it was changed some to allow each of the businesses to have a greater role in the event. By drawing the names at each participating location, we encouraged more people to shop at these locations again and again.
    Some didn’t like the changes and voiced their opinions, but the greater number of people complimented us on the changes and continued to do so this year.
    I would be remiss if I didn’t thank the advertising staff for their wonderful job of keeping our participating businesses in Frosty tickets and for going out and collecting the tubs, tickets and photographing the business representative with the winning drawing.
    I also need to thank Nikki Zinke, our editor, and her staff for helping to promote Frosty throughout the contest and a wonderful front page with our participating businesses and the names of many happy people.
    But the most important thank you goes out to all those who took the time to fill out these tickets. These people took the time to patronize our participating businesses. They spent their hard-earned money locally and returned to these businesses to “play” our contest.
    These people may, or may not, be readers of our newspaper. They may, or may not, win today.
    However, we know they shop locally. We know they took time out of their days to deliver the tickets to the participating businesses. We know, from speaking to many of them in our office, that they enjoy the contest and had fun.
    To everyone who filled out a ticket I say thank you. Without all of you we wouldn’t be able to have a Frosty Christmas Giveaway. Without all of you, the holiday season would be a lot less fun.
    We hope all of our winners enjoy their prizes, we hope all of our readers and friends have a great holiday season and we hope everyone has a Merry Christmas.
    Oh, and don’t forget, plans are already under way for Frosty 2009.

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

By Steve Browne 

This Sunday at sundown, the 25th day of Kislev, Dec. 21 in the Gregorian calendar, begins the Festival of Lights, Hanukkah. For eight nights Jewish families all over the world will light a candle each night on the eight-branch candelabrum, called the menorah, until all eight are lit on the final night of Hanukkah. Some menorah also have a ninth candle, called the shamash, or “guardian.” The Talmud forbids using the Hanukkah lights for any purpose other than meditation on the meaning of Hanukkah, so the shamash is used to light the other candles. Because the Hebrew calendar is lunar, the dates of Hannukkah vary, and may occur from late November to late December on the Gregorian calendar. The festival celebrates the liberation of the land of Israel from the rule of the Seleucid kingdom of Syria, one of the states founded from the remains of Alexander the Great's short-lived empire. Under the reign of Antiochus IV, Judaism was outlawed, observing Jews massacred, and the temple of Jerusalem profaned with statues of the Greek gods and sacrifices of pigs. A village headman Mattathias, and his five sons Jochanan, Simon, Eleazar, Jonathan, and Judah led a revolt against the Syrian-Greeks. They were called Maccabees, after Judah's nickname, “the hammer.” Judah succeeded his father as leader after he was killed. When the Maccabbees drove the Seleucids from Jerusalem and re-dedicated the temple, it was found there was only enough lamp oil to light the sacred lamp for one night. The story goes that it miraculously burned for eight nights, hence the eight nights of Hanukkah. The Maccabbees fought for 25 years, until the last surviving brother Simon won recognition of the independence of their nation. He lived long enough to see Rome begin to expand into the region. Eighty years after his death, Rome wiped the nation of Israel off the map for 2,000 years. So why is this story so meaningful to a goy like me? Though I have Jewish relatives, I am not Jewish myself. Why does the Hanukkah story have the power to move me to tears? When I was a boy, I saw actor/folksinger Theodore Bikel tell the Hanukkah story on a TV program called, “Songs of Freedom.” He sang “La Marseillaise”, “Scots Wha Hae”, and “Follow the Drinking Gourd”, as well as traditional Hanukkah songs in Yiddish and Hebrew. He sang of Hanukkah in the longing for freedom of all peoples. He showed that freedom is tragically rare in history, often crushed, yet always rising from the ashes. He said, “In the lamp of freedom, there is oil enough for only a single night.” Yet still it burns. That group of national cultures we call “Western Civilization” has twin roots, in the ancient Greeks and the Hebrews. Whoever we are, wherever we came from, in a very real sense we are all Greek and Hebrew. Hellas lives on in the tradition of philosophy, skeptical inquiry, and the examined life. The Hebrew religious tradition was the first to place the Golden Age in the future rather than the distant past, giving us the hope that tomorrow might be better than yesterday. For though there may only be enough oil in the lamp of freedom for a single night, we may hope that the light will burn longer than we have any right to expect. Steve Browne is a reporter for the Valley City Times-Record.

By Dennis Stillings 

Ah, what to give for this first Christmas year of ClintoBushObamanomics! Perhaps—for those on the very top of your list—a spade, a coffee can and some gold coins to bury. And for those on the bottom of your list—whatever is left of your 401(k).
But let’s be realistic. It is probably best these days to retreat into a world of fantasy and nostalgia, a pleasant return to the days when fewer men thought they were gods, and those who did were much better at it.

Gift Number 1
For a visual escape, the best Valley City product of 2008 is “Valley City: Backroads and Byways,” a book of “visual inspirations” by Clint Saunders and Daron W. Krueger of the Obsessed Photographers Group. Pick up your copies at OPG headquarters at 314 Central Ave. N. and get them autographed free.  
Right now this book is being discounted and, if you tell them I sent you, they will sell you two for the price of two.
Why should you buy this book—other than because it is one of the finest of local artistic products, and because I said so? Because “Backroads and Byways” contains first-class photography and the book is a high-quality production. The photos have rhythm and texture, and the beauty of local landmarks is preserved in these photos to a degree that one wishes would be matched by local government stewardship.
Clint and Daron have a good eye for one of North Dakota’s great aesthetic resources: boundless wabe sabe.
Wabe sabe is the Japanese aesthetic term for “accidental imperfection,” for such things as old buildings falling apart, decay and rust, lost knowledge, forgotten cultures and peoples—the impermanent.  
Modern Americans love the shiny, the high-tech, the gleam of progress, the prospect of perfection, the inorganic. The ruins of North Dakota evoke reflection on a rougher life, more durable values, and authenticity.
On the less serious side, it appears that the authors are late risers: plenty of sunsets, but where are the sunrises? I’ll tell you: Grand Prairie Township.  We get two “sunsets” a day, sundogs that follow you home, and prairie vistas that will match any in the state.  
The section on fence posts is a bit overdone, and I would have liked to see some space given to Valley Alleys—the nifty wabe sabe of the in-town byways, if you will. I have a great collection of arty shots-between-the-dumpsters in our photographically (and commercially) unexploited alleys.

Gift Number 2
Perhaps the Number One gift for old-timers, as well as for medium-old-timers, is a copy of the extraordinary museum production commemorating “Our 125th: 1883–2008.”  
If you have any feeling whatsoever for what it means to live in this town and county, and you know about this publication, you already have a copy. Therefore, this is just a reminder to buy several more as Christmas gifts for other born-and-bred Valley Citians, wherever they may be. Go to the museum, slap down thirty bucks, wrap it up, ship it off. Simple. The recipient will be impressed. I know—I have already given away a couple of copies. It’s a winner.

Gift Number 3
(Before we continue, I wish to make it clear that I have received no benefits for these positive reviews. I paid full price for the books. No percentage. I didn’t even get the discount that you can get right now! These are purely objective reviews.)
This city has produced some exceptional talent, people who have gone out and truly made their mark in the world. Two of those were close friends of mine throughout my grade school years: Murray Hamlet (whom we shall deal with in another column) and Mike Thompson.
I remember Mike as having a touch of larceny when he lived here. He liberated at least a couple of pies from the window of the Hi-Liner Café, and he still has a cowboy hat he filched from me back in  about 1952 or so. It is part of his collection.
It is therefore not surprising that, as an author, he has done some great writing—with a disquieting knowledge of detail—on criminal activity in North Dakota; more specifically, on West River bootlegging during the 30s. According to Ken Rogers of the Bismarck Tribune, the book—“Curse of Al Capone’s Gold”—showcases Thompson’s “… rich and authentic detail … he joins personal knowledge of rural North Dakota, the unintended consequences of Prohibition on the Plains and the mystique of Al Capone.”
Mike is retired military and a Vietnam veteran. He has tested explosives, worked in the oil fields, been a field medic and a museum curator. He has also been a professional actor and appeared in the TV series “Deadwood” during the first year, as well as in other Western movies. He is an authority on Teddy Roosevelt. He also looks like Teddy Roosevelt.
I have suggested to him that there may be material for a major new novel on political greed and corruption in Valley City. Whoa! Hey, fellas— just kidding!!!
Be extra literate: get the book before they make it into a movie. Available at Amazon.com.