Trees are natures home builders. Just about everything that lives above ground uses a tree in some way. Take the horned owl. They can live just about anywhere, but prefer old growth forrest. One such owl lived in an abandoned Kmart sign. A tree would have been better.

A tree is a work of art. We've heard of so called artists who get government grants to make sculptures with elephant dung. A tree does not require an artist to build it. Given a choice betwixt the two, we'd rather look at a tree.

E.E. Hinkle was a big believer in trees. This was because he saw the devastation caused by soil erosion back in the 1930s. Soil conservation was more than a hobby with him. If you take from the Earth, you must give something back. It's a promise that he lived by, a guiding principle. He passed this to his son, Harold Hinkle.

If Harold does nothing else in his life, he can be proud of one thing. The Ponderosa Pine that he planted in his front yard. It had a rough start. Through deep freezing snow, blistering heat, blowing snow and bulls rubbing it raw. Still today, it is the crown jewel of the Hinkle tree collection. Future generations can look at that tree and see what men, with help from God, can do for the Earth.

Anyone who has gone to the Black Hills of South Dakota and looked at a tree growing in the side of a mountain can truly marvel at the wonder of creation. That tree wasn't placed there by chance and folly.

Have we gone overboard giving props to the tree? Maybe we have. But it's only once a year. How many times do we walk past the tree and think nothing of it? If you don't live in South Dakota, you can find out when your state celebrates Arbor Day at the Arbor Day Foundation Website: http://www.arborday.org/arborday/arborDayDates.cfm
Too Much of a Good Thing?

Ken Ferris once told our Publisher that too much of anything can kill you. Almost proving that point was a patient of Surgeon James McClurken who reported a while back on a 50-year-old man who complained of abdominal pain and constipation. McClurken sliced him open and found "a large amount of bran-like material with a dry, thick, toothpaste-like consistency" in the lower small intestine. It seems the man had eaten two large bowls of bran with less then the recommended amount of milk the day before. His intestines absorbed what liquid there was and his guts basically turned to concrete. After the blockage was removed the patient was put on a liquid diet for a few days and was soon OK.

South Dakota Representative Stephanie Herseth received a fair amount of press in the last few days. Not because of her demanding an investigation for price gouging at the fuel pump, but because of her new hairstyle. Some are saying that the Hair Doo is more of a Hair Don't. As for our Publisher, all he would say is "Hair grows back!"

This whole hair thing will blow over soon enough. Still, why is it nobody gave this kind of press to John Thune or Tom Daschle. You can't tell us that is their real color!