Fargo, ND - A man from St. Louis Park, Minnesota has claimed to have found the perfect tailgating food.”All of my health and nutrition consultants say that oatmeal, yogurt, and berries are the perfect breakfast food.”  Stated the man at a recent North Dakota State University tailgating event.  “This is the perfect combination of fruit, fiber, protein, and carbohydrate that your body needs to really kick start the day.  Through in a little coffee and it is as close to a perfect breakfast as you can get.”

Health experts disagree on the benefits of the tailgaters breakfast.

“Yes, we absolutely agree that oatmeal has substantial heart benefits.  Yes, we absolutely agree that berries are a great way to get a daily serving of vegetables for your balances diet.  Yes we absolutely agree that dairy products provide good protein and calcium necessary for strong bones and healthy teeth.  Yes, we ultimately agree that a cup of coffee is a relatively safe way to get a dose of caffeine to start the day,” stated one dietary expert.

However, with all great master plans, there is a flaw and health officials are condemning the local man’s perfect tailgating breakfast.

“The combination of oatmeal stout beer and berryweise beer is not an effective way to get the necessary ingredients of a healthy breakfast,” stated one health official.  “Nor is it a good idea to wash down the oatmeal stout and the berryweise beers with coffee and Bailey’s Irish Cream.”

“These people just can’t stand to have it both ways,” stated the tailgater with an obvious glazed look in his eyes.  “Why can’t a healthy breakfast be combined with massive doses of alcohol on game day?”

The St. Louis Park man, whose name we could not quite make out because of his slurred speech, was about to make another startling announcement about the addition of a serving of vegetables to his nutritious breakfast menu by way of a Bloody Mary, but unfortunately hauled away for an emergency stomach pumping.

We do not have leaders for times like these.We need leaders willing to stand up and say, “Times are bad.  The economy is hurting.  The nation is hurting.  The world is hurting.  The time for greed - on Wall Street to Main Street must end.  People - all people - must take accountability for their actions.  The person making the bad home loan and the person taking the bad home loan, the person charging high interest on credit card debt and the person who is not paying off their credit card debt, and finally the government big enough to get involved in pushing all parties to make unwise decisions in the first place - all are responsible for the economic crisis.

We do not have leaders for times like these.

We need leaders willing to stand up and say, “The way we have lived our lives for the last twenty years is gone.  We must each make a personal choice up and down the ladder of society that more toys, more cars, bigger houses, and fatter check books do not a richer life make.  Our lives must be lived for each other.  Not in some government dictated socialistic network, but in our families, in our schools, and in our communities.  If history has taught us nothing else it is that our lives are not our own - our lives should be lived for our families, for our friends, for our children, and our children’s children.  The way is hard, the choice is easy.”

We do not have leaders for times like these.

We need leaders willing to stand up and say, “The world is changing.  We must change with it.  Global warming may be real, it may not be real.  We may be running out of petroleum, we may not be running out of petroleum.  Our natural resources may be running thin; our natural resources may be more bountiful then ever.  In the end, with creativity, with ingenuity, with the will of a people that have not yet given up, we must press forward.  We must press forward in making sure that the world we have handed off to the next in better shape then it was handed to us.  With cleaner air, cleaner water, and a dedication to improving our lives, while improving the world that we live in.

We do not have leaders for times like these.

We need leaders willing to stand up and say, “Now is not the time to shrink from the world stage.  People may love us or hate us.  People may help us or hurt us.  Other countries may be aiming to knock us down or lift us up.  In the end, we must keep our doors open.  In the end, we must go forward with trust, with understanding, with a knowledge that respect, candor, and a policy of listening, negotiation, and firmness when we need to be firm will gain us more then retreat, distain, and trying to force our ideas on others in the international arena.  Might does not make right, but a living up to our ideals while respecting the rights and sovereignty of our friends and enemies a alike will go far in building the brotherhood of man.

We do not have leaders for times like these.

We need leaders willing to stand up and say, “I was wrong or I don’t know the answer or that is something we must learn together or I don’t know what the future holds.  We cannot be held back by holding on to policies of the past.  We cannot be held back by continuing to hold to our positions without learning, with out growing, without opening our hearts our minds while still sticking to the underlying morals and innate sense of right and wrong.

We do not have leaders for times like these.

We need leaders willing to say, “You want your child to have a good education?  Get involved on your local school board.  Vote to raise your taxes for your school district.  Take a hammer to your television set.  Spend time with the youth of today.  Set an example in your personal lives, in your homes, in your churches, in your community.  Don’t worry about buying them the latest fashions or toy, worry about making sure that they get an education.  Make sure that they know how important community and family are.  Make sure that they get that education - in the classroom, in the home, and in their hearts.

We do not have leaders for times like these.

We have never had leaders for times like these, or for any other times - in the end, we must each stand up, we must each strive to be the leader in our homes, in our communities, in our places of work, in our schools and churches.  We must strive to live the life worth living.  We must strive to do the deeds, to devote our time, our treasure, our talents, our hearts to building a better world.  We must dedicate ourselves to the strenuous task in front of us.

We must each strive to be the leader that is needed for times like these.

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today)

Smut peddling is becoming a lucrative business according to new reports.  Apparently people across the country are rediscovering smut and are finding that they like it.

Perhaps a healthy smut market is just what Iowa farmers need to diversify their operations.  They could probably produce smut better than anybody,

Hold your imagination in check.  Before you start imaging Iowa’s farmers wearing nothing but lecherous grins and seed corn caps taking racy photos and making naughty home videos, let me explain.

The smut I’m talking about is a fungus that grows on corn.  It completely ruined my sweet corn last year.  Just about every ear was covered with it.  I had a bumper crop of smut in my garden.

But last year it wasn’t in demand by gourmet restaurants; it was just disgusting.  I dug a hole and buried it.

This year’s smut is still disgusting.  It’s gray and goopy looking and reminds you of something from an old science fiction movie.  The Associated Press reports that diners at New York’s Plaza Hotel and San Antonio’s Hyatt Hotel are eating it up.

As far as I know, smut is not on the menu yet at the Tic Toc or the Black Knight here in Boone.  Where it is on the menu, gourmet chefs use the fungus as a base for other dishes or they use it as a flavoring in meats, soups, and sauces.  The Associated Press reports that you can even order smut-flavored ice-cream.

More food was in the news recently.

People don’t know what’s in their food.  Most of here in Iowa have some distant link to agriculture and know that milk initially comes from a cow and the sweetener in you Pepsi comes from corn.

But apparently quite a few people don’t have a clue what’s in their food.  And I’m not just talking about additives and preservatives here.  Heck, even I don’t know what monosodium glutamate is.

Here’s how misguided these people are.  In recent study commissioned by the Wheat Foods Council, 49 percent of the people polled didn’t know what white bread was made from wheat.  A whopping 48 percent thought that wheat was the main ingredient in oatmeal.

I’ll bet they lie awake at night wondering why they don’t call it WHEAT-meal.  They probably can’t imagine what their cornflakes are made of.  Rice-a-Roni probably has them stumped too.

It’s amazing.  But then again, these are probably the people who go out on the town to dine on smut-flavored ice-cream.

Last week, I was pulling out of the church parking lot and was cut off in traffic.  I followed too closely, I tailgated for a mile or so.  I wanted that guy to know that he had cut me off, had not followed the rules of the road.  I wanted to make this guy pay.As I pulled up along side of him on the interstate, I scowled over at him…and he smiled sheepishly and waved at me as if to say, “Sorry, I didn’t see you.”

Boy, did I feel foolish.  I had faced a choice.  At eight o’clock on a Sunday morning, after congratulating myself for saying good morning to the usher, holding the door open for a group of people behind me, and letting several cars pull out in front of me in the parking lot, I turned into a nasty monster once I left the sanctity of that church parking lot.

I had gone to battle with my emotions and lost.

Every day, we go to battle.

In our thoughts and in our deeds, in what we say, in what we do not say, we make choices on a daily basis that impact ourselves, impact our fellow man, and impact our world.

We often don’t think about these battles.  In they end, they seem kind of short and have more too do with the people around us then they do to us.

“I wouldn’t have tailgated that guy if he wouldn’t have cut me off.”

“I wouldn’t have yelled at that customer but he wouldn’t listen.”

“I wouldn’t have made fun of that guy if he would have undersood.”

These are all examples of little things that we react too on a daily basis.  All things that we have a choice in - all times when we confront challenges in our world, in our lives, and in our hearts, and we make the choice on how we respond.  Do we meet fire with fire?  Do we defend our turf against interlopers?  Do we sin in response to ignorance?  Do we sin in response to an intended slight?  What choice do we make as our heart and head answer the questions that face us on a daily basis.

In our daily lives, we face the choice of sin or not to sin, to understand or to stick to our ignorant ways.  To love, or to hate.  Every day, we face sin.  Sin in our world.  Sin in our country.  Sin in our heart.  How we respond, how we live our lives is the measure of who we are.  We are not perfect.  We will fall into the snares of the evil one, but as we seek to live the life closer to our Lord, may we remember the words of St. Paul:

“Have no anxiety at all, but in everything,
by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving,
make your requests known to God.
Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding
will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers and sisters,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure,
whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious,
if there is any excellence
and if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.”

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today on September 301987)This year was the first time that I was exposed to all the hoopla surrounding the Iowa-Iowa State football face-off.  I’m not out to make any enemies or friends by saying this, but I can’t help but identify with the Cyclones.

As a graduate of the College of Agriculture at North Dakota State University, I guess I’d have to side with the land grant university every time.

I’m not much of a football fan, but I was even caught up in the excitement of Bison Football at NDSU.  The thundering herd brought home a national championship trophy three years out of the four that I attended.  Not bad, even by Iowa standards.

Not too long ago, Denny Waller, our distinguished general manager, was poking fun at the Bison’s nick name- The Thundering Herd, He wanted to know the origin of the name.

The bleachers at Dacotah Field have a board bolted vertically under the seats.  When 14,000 fans stand up for a kick-off and bang the heels of their cowboy boots against that board…

A loyal bison fan gets a little down here with all these Cyclones and Hawkeyes.  It is a rare and momentous occasion when one NDSU alumnus meets another.  Last week while doing an interview with local pharmacist Pete Bilden, he mentioned he was from eastern North Dakota.  I responded that I was a graduate of NDSU.

“Hail the Bison!  So am I,” he replied.  NDSU has a large and notable pharmacy program and Pete and another local pharmacist, Don Tuckers are graduates of the program.

Pete has a notable record as a Bison fan. In his five years at NDSU during the late ‘60’s, he never saw the thundering herd lose.  Those boys up on the prairie knew football even then.

Much like iowa and Iowa State, NDSU had an intense rivalry with the other university in the state, the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux.  Unlike the Iowa rivalry, the land grand college has traditionally been the victor in North Dakota football face-off.  Hence the little ditty:

Hail the Bison!

Hail the Bison,

Wth their tails up in the air.

University!  University, you can kiss us under there.

Any Bison alumni out there?  Drop me a line.

UND grads are welcome too.

It’s actually pretty strange that I never played football, even in high school.  My hometown, Mahnomen, Minn., was a “football town.”  Everybody walked, talked, slept, and ate football.  If you didn’t well, …everybody just did.

 The Mahnomen Indians have one state title under their belt, captured in 1981.  Most years they are like the Vikings.  They make the playoffs.  They even make the championship game, but they just can’t win the big one.

The Bison and the Indians rely on the same game plan.  Big strong guys who can muscle their way to the end zone.  It is a slow, agonizing way to win a football game, but the strategy has been pretty successful for both teams.

My brother, john, played high school football but a foot injury kept him off the field quite a bit.  Over the past few years the Mahnomen High School football program has turned into somewhat of a farm team for the Bison.  Now John is at NDSU.  He’s not playing football, he’s hitting the books and pounding his heels.

Hail the Bison!

With a glint of bratwurst and roast pork in my eye and a yearning for my old alma mater, I’m heading back to North Dakota State University this weekend.It is a little strange going back.

I am older, but some days I don’t feel all that much wiser.

I have more money in my pocket now then when I did then, but I’m not necessarily happier because of it.

I am much more traveled now then I was when I was at good old NDSU, but the yearning for little homestead in my hometown where I was born and raised still burns as bright as it did when I was a student.

As much as I’ve changed, the old place has changed too.

The school has moved up from the old Division II conference to now Division I.

The football games were always fun, but now the tailgating and festivities are bigger and better then anyone could have imagined back not that many years ago.

Most of the old buildings still stand, most looking a little better then they did when I was there, but more impressive, the old buildings are surrounded by new buildings - wellness centers, new dorms, new classroom buildings - the whole nine yards.

It is always difficult to go back.

The buildings, classroom, and proffessors offices that once seemed so intimating now seem small and almost comical.

The places where I felt most welcome now seem so distant.

The old fraternity house on College Street has a big hole next too it where they are working on constructing a bigger and better place (one not on the verge of being condemned).

The comforting thing is the number of things that haven’t changed.

The university really hasn’t changed all that much - the buildings, the names, and streets are the same (though there are some new ones added).

The old fraternity house may be on its last leg, but the values, the lessons, and the stories that it inspire are not linked to the building, it is linked to the men young and old that still believe in the time honored values and traditions at its core.

I haven’t changed all that much.  Many days I’m still the scared farm boy trying to make it in this big world.

In the end, I am looking forward to heading back, catching up with old friends - and maybe meeting some new ones, cheering on the mighty Bison football team - and maybe eating a brat or two at the tailgate, walking the old campus  and seeing many of the old buildings that graced the school during my tenure - and some of the new ones, and going back to the old fraternity house to see the place I called home for four years - and see the big hole where the new one will be.

If you need me on Saturday, you will know where to find: Fargo, North Dakota and the campus of North Dakota State University - and I’ll be happy to be home.