Tri-State Neighbor: South Dakota Farm Newspaper

I need to take up bowling or scrapbooking. I need a hobby. Without a hobby, I have time on my hands. When I have time on my hands, I try to make sense out of world events. Unfortunately, I don’t have sufficient intellectual power to figure out recent events, so I have been spinning my mental wheels and getting myself nowhere.

For example, Saddam Hussein and Gerald Ford died during the same week. News of their deaths … and their lives … ran side by side in the news for several days. The proximity of those deaths must have some deep meaning on the grand cosmic scale. I have been trying to figure out the meaning … with limited progress.

My reaction to each of the deaths was very different. With Gerald Ford’s death, I had a sense of quiet passing - a life well-lived, dignity, respect, completion.

Hussein’s death was, frankly, more of a shock. When I read the news, I thought, “He’s gone? Really gone? Just like that?”

I felt as if there were suddenly a huge hole on the world stage, an empty spot.

Those reactions make no sense, I told myself. It should be the other way around. And yet … as I spent more time dwelling on the events … the reactions did make sense. Gerald Ford did not leave an empty spot on the world stage because he left behind the good that he had done. His leadership was quiet, steady and decent. His leadership style offered healing. Ford pardoned Nixon because he believed it was right for the nation. In looking back, we have a better understanding of the rightness of that act. So, Ford didn’t leave an empty spot. He left an example, a model, a legacy.

But why does Hussein’s death leave an empty spot? This was harder for me to figure out. Until it hit me … Hussein left nothing behind. On the world stage, he left us nothing honorable to emulate. Evil leaves a vacuum, an empty spot. The opportunity, and the challenge, is now to fill that spot with something other than more violence and hatred.

That was the amount of meaning that I was able to wrestle from world events this week. Other than that, I spent my time thinking about yeast.

I was at a dinner party last week where someone asked, “How did yeast start?” I am not sure what interest the person had in yeast … other than just to keep the conversation going.

Anyway, I was ready to move on from cosmic good and evil to a lighter topic, so I have been researching yeast. For my research, I turned to the world authority on everything: Google.

Google tells me that Egyptians likely used yeast to produce bread and alcoholic beverages more than 5,000 years ago. It’s not hard to imagine an Egyptian picking up some fermented fruit juice and saying, “This smells funny. (sip) And tastes worst! Ptooo! … Wait a minute. Let me try another little sip.”

Before you know it, he was sharing fermented fruit juice with his buddies and swapping war stories. Meantime, the women were discovering bread.

Yeast turned scientific in 1859 when Louis Pasteur figured out how it works. Nine years after Pasteur’s discovery, Fleischmann’s Yeast was founded and modern baking was born. I am now fully equipped for the next dinner party where the conversation turns to yeast.

Having meandered through odd mental topics for a few days, I am ready to turn over a new leaf. I need a hobby that is more active, productive, creative and down-to-earth. I am going to buy a bowling ball or scrapbooking supplies … right after I track down that story about the UFO that visited O’Hare airport last November.

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