I drove to Pierre on this Sunday night to prepare to hear Governor Rounds' budget address on Tuesday (yes, I am lacking for entertainment). The governor is expected to say that state tax revenues are questionable at best, and we must tighten our collective belt.

I bought the Mitchell and Pierre daily papers on the way to Pierre, and both papers had big pleas for people to SHOP AT HOME. The Pierre editor said it's the practical thing to do, it creates local jobs and the tax dollars are needed locally.

Daily Republic Editor Korrie Wenzel quoted Mitchell chamber exec Bryan Hisel in a top-of-the-front-page article. Hisel said it isn't easy to keep shoppers at home. "What we have found is that guilt doesn't work You can't shame them. What works is targeting businesses that have the merchandise, the selection and the value that they want ...."

Sure, it's smart for Mitchell people to shop in Mitchell and for Pierre people to shop in Pierre. But at the very least, we hope our South Dakota readers will shop within our borders. And to take it a step further, why not try to buy made in South Dakota? Our Nov/Dec issue has a pull-out gift guide packed with South Dakota products ranging from buffalo steaks to children's tipis, candies, cheeses, beef, rugs, clothes, guns, toys and jewelry.

We'll show you some longtime favorites over the next few weeks here on the Web site. You might also visit the state's Made in South Dakota Web site.

Buy a Chinese-made product at an Arkansas-owned big box store and it's true that you do help fund some jobs, and your tax dollars stay in the state. But most of your money ends up far away.

Buy a Dakota-made product and most of your money stays home.

Some call the day after Thanksgiving "Black Friday." I'm not sure why, but it makes a catchy title for the last Whereizzit contest of November.

Name the town that still has this old wood water tower (we don't think it holds water anymore) and you'll win an autographed copy of our favorite photo book, South Dakota Photographed. One guess per reader per hour. Must be 21 to win. Must be an American citizen (or someone who wants to be). Must not have won any other prizes from us for 90 days. Must not be related or ever had a beer with anyone from our editorial staff.

I won't be here to offer many clues because I'm going shopping.

click on picture for a better look

Tomorrow morning in our little country church, the pastor will continue his tradition of asking everyone to say what they're thankful for this year. We're mostly bashful Germans, so we'll say "our family's health" -- up and down the pews -- until it gets sickingly repetitive. Then we'll say "a good crop year" and "cause the Yankees didn't win" and "my 5-point buck" and all sorts of heart-warming exhortations.

I won't commercialize the holy event tomorrow morning. But high on my list are the nearly 40,000 people who annually pay for a subscription to South Dakota Magazine. You keep about a dozen of us fully employed, mostly happy and totally thankful that we get to explore the culture and history of this big beautiful state with you.

In a sense, we pass "the plate" once a year and our readers kindly give enough to allow us another year of poking around the backroads, boulevards and byways of South Dakota. So I'll be thinking of you when the pastor calls my name -- but I'll probably mumble something about grandkids.

Today I had a chance to visit with wind energy entrepreneur Joe Kolbach, who is working to restore the buildings on the old blind school campus near Gary. His project is easily one of the most ambitious and interestiing rural renovation projects in state history.

Joe and his associates plan to renovate the historic buildings, and they even hope to restore the old lake and trout stream that runs past Gary. His master plan calls for creation of lodging, a museum, recreational opportunitites and the possible restoration of the old Lake Elsie. He wants to involve the Deuel County community in the planning process, and he has reached out to the rural renewal experts in Miner County for guidance.

The School for the Blind operated in the buildings from 1900 to 1959. After the school was moved to Aberdeen, the facilities were used as a retirement home for a few years. However, the area citizens have never really given up on the campus; many times through the years, I've heard the locals express hope that someone would come along with a vision.

Joe is also collecting information about its history as a School for the Blind. He wants to preserve not only the brick and mortar, but the stories that brought the campus to life. Email him at joe.kolbach@dakwind.com if you have anything to add.

We'll keep you posted on the project it progresses.

(click on photos to enlarge)

I'm not a big investor but once or twice when I was a few dollars ahead and had enough hay for the horses I did buy some mutual funds. I wasn't paying a lot of attention to the prices, but now I see that a lot of my fellow fund owners have sold their shares. And more are selling every day.

Most people think that's a bad thing. But doesn't it leave me with a bigger share of the companies? And if everyone keeps selling (and that's the trend) won't the day come when I'll be the last man in America who owns stocks? Along with South Dakota Magazine, I'll also be the owner of General Motors, General Electric, General Machinery & Electric, General Foods and a bunch of other businesses.

I'll have my hands full, but I promise you that I won't neglect South Dakota Magazine, the flagship company that made this all possible. And I'll apply the same business principles to my new acquisitions that I've learned here in South Dakota.

Let's take General Motors as an example. I'll immediately split the company into eight separate companies. The GM honchos say car companies have to be huge because the business is getting so complicated. Meanwhile they can't figure out a hydrogen hybrid car. The other day I met Eli Johnson, a young kid in Yankton. He lifted his hood and showed me his own contraption; two bottles and a few tubes. He says it cost him about $30. One jar is water (or anti-freeze) that gets an electric charge from the battery, separating the hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen then flows to the other jar and mixes with the gas. Eli says it has tripled his gas mileage and increased his power. (Don't do this at home based on my explanation because I'm the investor, not the inventor).

Eli says his hybrid does burn spark plugs a tad faster, so I hope I also end up with General Spark Plugs, Inc., when I'm the last owner of my mutual fund.

Here's my economic recovery plan; I'll find eight South Dakota innovators like Eli and I'll sell each of them a GM division on a CFD. Hummer might end up in Aberdeen and Saturns could be in Sioux Falls and Saab probably belongs in Spearfish.

How will Eli and I deal with the unions? The way it should have been done 50 years ago; when we make money, the workers make money. The workers' fortunes' (pensions, benefits et al) will rise and fall with the company as a whole.

We'll have real car competition. I promise you that Eli's cars will look nothing like the boring vanilla autos coming out of Detroit.

All our national economy needs is a big dose of South Dakota innovation and entrepreneurism. Instead the big companies are being run by greedy CEOs who are busy cooking the books and planning their own bonuses.

So please keep selling your stocks. I'm not selling. When I'm the last living stockholder the recovery plan will begin. And South Dakota will be at the epicenter.

Anyone age 55 or older spends at least a moment every Nov. 22 remembering where he or she was when news spread across the nation that President John Kennedy had been killed in Texas.

The innoble day is especially meaningful to longtime South Dakota politico Joel Rosenthal, who saw Kennedy just hours before the shooting that change the course of world history. Joel writes about his memories in his Straight Talk blog.

We're adding a new contest to our Web site. We'll call it Know Your County Courthouses, or if David Letterman sues us for copyright infringement we'll change the name to Where's Yeller?

Of course, all you have to do is be the first to guess the name of the county where the courthouse in our picture is located. Yeller and I shot this picture on Thursday, so the tad bit of snow can be a clue. Comments are timed upon arrival so don't worry if your comment doesn't show up right away.

There are no rules to this game. You can be the register of deeds in the courthouse and still qualify to win. You can be Yeller's veterinarian. You can be the person who slipped me a $10 bill to win the $19 subscription we're going to give away. You can be anybody.

There are 66 counties in South Dakota so you have an excellent chance of winning. Click on the photo if you want a larger view of Yeller. Good luck.

We often get memoirs written by South Dakotans, but none have had hair-raising stories about running from revenuers. Leona Pietz recently sent us her book, Memories of a Bootlegger’s Daughter. It’s about helping her father make moonshine on their farm southeast of Parkston in the late 1920s.

As she tells it, times were tough. Her dad already made spirits for certain family gatherings, so he decided to create a full-fledged bootleg whiskey operation to support his family. Adolph Schelske developed a good reputation, and people came from hundreds of miles away to get his whiskey.

Soon revenuers were hot on Schelske’s trail. They made many visits to the Hutchinson County farm, poking around buildings and sticking long rods into the ground searching for buried whiskey jars. Once they cornered 12-year-old Leona, hoping she would reveal the location of the hidden still. But she didn’t crack. She was repeatedly coached to never say anything about what they did.

You might still find a jug or two of whiskey on the old Schelske place. A hunting party found bottlenecks sticking out of the ground long after Adolph dismantled his still.

- John Andrews