SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER

Writing a cowgirl writer’s résumé

By Julie Carter

I have been asked to submit my résumé to have on file at work. I agreed to present one as requested knowing full well I would first have to do some serious updating of a version from another era.

I had to dig through several file boxes to locate my old résumé that hadn’t seen the light of day in over 15 years. It is so old it was typed with a typewriter and had dates from the last millennium.

I was pretty sure most those years from college forward working jobs like waiting tables, driving truck and tending bar didn’t count for much in this century. The 15 years of managing onsite construction offices for major industrial projects are now only valuable for good narrations. Those stories chronicle the work as well as the geography I saw while moving like a gypsy from project to project.

Two decades of rodeo entry fees and worn out road maps don’t count for much on a résumé. But they do provide a link to the past through friendships made and the fine tuned skill of telling “I yusta rid’em” yarns.

Then came the dead years. Dead to paychecks, office politics, 40-hour-weeks, weekends off, vacations--paid or otherwise, and any thoughts of retirement off in the distant future.

I was back on a ranch where work has a level of physical that few people equate with the panoramic photographs of ranch life as seen in the glossy magazines.

At different times in my life I have worked physically hard jobs where I wore a tool belt, ran a nail hammer, chipping gun, tied rebar, and ran a boom truck--all the name of equal opportunity construction. It doesn’t compare.

While the list of jobs from the ranch would read the same for most ranch women, it has little to do with my job as news writer except maybe the required hours. Both often entail working from “can see to can’t see.”

Peppered among spring brandings, fall shipping, and the daily chores of splitting fire wood, toting ashes, bucketing drinking water from the cistern and the daily dirt road drives to the school bus were stories I wrote for an assortment of ag publications. I was officially published if that qualified me for anything.

Writing grocery lists to feed lunch to 15 cowboys for four days straight and then 40 cowboys on Saturday doesn’t fit the résumé. Neither does the skill to cook it up and serve it either on the mesa top with my horse tied to a tree or at headquarters in a postage stamp sized kitchen.

The 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. check of the corralled heifers awaiting the imminent birthing of their calves is not a usual line on a journalist’s job listing. Nor is the requirement for defensive safety skills usually involving a Maglite flashlight and running a fast retreat on frozen ground with a fire breathing bovine butting at your back pockets.

I had an editor tell me a few years ago that never before me had he had a writer email him and say, “Hold the presses. I’ll be right back. I have to go pull a calf.”

If growing up and living “cowgirl” prepared me for anything in my current job as a writer, it was the lesson of perseverance, endurance, and getting the job done as right as you are able--- whatever it takes.

The lifestyle is a great source of anecdotes but a résumé doesn’t even start to tell the story.

© Julie Carter 2005



THANKSGIVING

by Larry Gabriel

We can learn from history, if we don't rely too much on mass media.

We have all heard the popular story of the first thanksgiving feast of 1621, when the pilgrims celebrated their first harvest. We only assume they ate turkey.

Edward Winslow reported it like this: Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, among other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed upon our governor, and upon the captain, and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.

For some reason we hear little about the following proclamation by the Congress made at Philadelphia on Oct. 11, 1782.

IT being the indispensable duty of all Nations, not only to offer up their supplications to ALMIGHTY GOD, the giver of all good, for his gracious assistance in a time of distress, but also in a solemn and public manner to give him praise for his goodness in general, and especially for great and signal interpositions of his providence in their behalf: Therefore the United States in Congress assembled, taking into their consideration the many instances of divine goodness to these States, in the course of the important conflict in which they have been so long engaged; the present happy and promising state of public affairs; and the events of the war, in the course of the year now drawing to a close; particularly the harmony of the public Councils, which is so necessary to the success of the public cause; the perfect union and good understanding which has hitherto subsisted between them and their Allies, notwithstanding the artful and unwearied attempts of the common enemy to divide them; the success of the arms of the United States, and those of their Allies, and the acknowledgment of their independence by another European power, whose friendship and commerce must be of great and lasting advantage to these States:----- Do hereby recommend to the inhabitants of these States in general, to observe, and request the several States to interpose their authority in appointing and commanding the observation of THURSDAY the twenty-eight day of NOVEMBER next, as a day of solemn THANKSGIVING to GOD for all his mercies: and they do further recommend to all ranks, to testify to their gratitude to GOD for his goodness, by a cheerful obedience of his laws, and by promoting, each in his station, and by his influence, the practice of true and undefiled religion, which is the great foundation of public prosperity and national happiness.

In those days, the federal government did not order citizens to take a day off. They sent their declaration to the states. The states also just passed it along.

Some states responded like New Hampshire, which printed the proclamation and sent it to "worshiping assemblies" with a suggestion that a day of thanksgiving be observed, when "citizens abstain from all servile labor thereon."

That's not the whole story of Thanksgiving, but its worth knowing in a land of self government.

Larry Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture