“In one day I received more than 50 telephone calls from media outlets around the world,” said Soeth, a Moorhead native and retired high school administrator.

Journalists from nearly all 50 states and from the BBC, Vienna, Japan, Africa, New Zealand and a long list of other nations called his home last week in Burlington, Wis., to get the scoop on the liar’s club and how to participate.

“It must be they’re all looking for a diversion away from tragic news about Sept. 11 and the war in Afghanistan,” said Soeth, a 1955 elementary education graduate of Minnesota State University Moorhead.

He compared it to the response the liar’s contest received during World War II. “Typically we get about 500 entries,” he said. “But during the war we received between 10,000 and 18,000 a year. I suppose the soldiers were looking for a diversion and some connection to home.”

Soeth, 71, the brother of Moorhead Fire Chief Marty Soeth, was named president of the Burlington Liar’s Club in 1980 when he was assistant school superintendent in Burlington. “I can’t imagine why they picked me,” he joked. “Maybe it’s because I spent most of my career attempting to sell budgets to the school board.”

The liar’s club, if you can believe their history, began in 1929 when local newspaper reporter Otis Hulett, a well-known prankster, fabricated a story about a contest held by a group of local police and firemen who sat around the station on New Year’s Day seeing who could tell the biggest whopper.

Hulett distributed the story to the wire services, Soeth said, and it appeared in newspapers across the nation. He got so much mail from people who wanted to enter the contest, Hulett decided to start a real club.

For a dime and a lie, people from around the world could become card-carrying, lifetime honorary members of what he christened the Burlington Liar’s Club.

“There’s only one rule,” Soeth said. “No politicians are allowed to enter. They’re professionals, and we’re amateurs.”

Inflation has increased the one-time membership fee to $1 and a lie, but nonmembers are welcome to send in a lie without a fee.

“We get letters all the time saying that the dollar is enclosed, but it’s not,” Soeth said. “Can you believe that?”

To submit a lie, send it to: Burlington Liar’s Club, 179 F Court, Burlington, Wis., 53105.

Soeth and a local friend, Mitzi Robers­­the only two club officers­­ judge the contests themselves the week before Christmas. Off-color or mean-spirited lies are rejected.

Soeth said the club’s mission is to preserve the tall tale as a fun expression of exaggeration.

They announce the winner on New Year’s Day.

Last year’s winner was Gordon Zwicky of Oshkosh, Wis. Zwicky, who believes in obeying all road sings, said that while on a trip to Florida with his wife, they saw a sign stating: “clean restrooms ahead.”

Two months after leaving Wisconsin, the couple arrived in Florida after having cleaned 450 restrooms with 267 rolls of paper towels, three cases of toilet bowl cleaner and 86 bottles of Windex. They were so tired, they returned home soon after arriving in Florida.

Soeth—who taught at White Earth for two years and Parkers Prairie for four years after graduating from MSUM—settled in Wisconsin with his wife Janet after earning a master’s degree in elementary school administration from the university. For the past 25 years they’ve lived in Burlington (pop: 10,000), situated between Chicago and Milwaukee.

Here are a few other interesting tall tales submitted to the Burlington Liar’s Club:

* “My chili was so hot, it took two weeks to thaw after I took it out of the freezer.”
* A Missourian claimed it was so cold one winter that he actually saw a politician standing on a street corner with his hands in his own pockets.
* A husband insisted that his wife was so lazy she feeds her chickens popcorn so that the eggs will turn themselves when she fries them.
* One man claimed there was so much iron in the local wells that the town pointed north during electrical storms.
* Another entrant insisted that his family was so poor his parents couldn’t afford to window shop.
* Frank E. Simo of Kenosha said he and his wife traveled to California and back without having to buy gas because his fuel gauge was stuck on full.
* Another Wisconsinite reported that a robin in his back yard built a nest with a hole in the bottom because she liked to lay eggs, but didn’t like kids.
* A Green Bay resident reported that “our weeping willow tree is so large that our insurance agent required us to carry flood insurance.”
* Because of a drought, one farmer alleged, the cattle in North Dakota were so skinny one summer that ranchers were putting carbon paper between them and branding them two at a time.
* Another winning entry: “One hot summer day, I was riding my horse through a corn field. It got so hot that the corn began to pop, and the air was filled with white popcorn. When my horse saw all that white popcorn, he thought it was snow, so he lay down and froze to death.”

Bartruff, a 49-year-old speech and theatre professor, is one of 46 winners selected from 384 faculty members nominated by colleges and universities across the country.

Bartruff  is the fourth MSUM professor to win the Carnegie Foundation teaching award. Evelyn Lynch, an MSUM elementary and early childhood education professor now associate vice president for academic affairs at Arkansas State, won in 1992; David Mason, an MSUM English professor now teaching at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, won in 1994; and Andrew Conteh, an MSUM political science professor, won in 1999.

The Carnegie awards, established in 1981 by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, are recognized as among the most prestigious distinctions honoring professors.

Bartruff came to MSUM in 1990 and has served as director of theatre here since 1994. He coordinates the activities of the MSUM Theatre and Straw Hat Players and leads an annual theatre tour to New York City during spring break.

A veteran of academic theatre, he taught in and directed theatre programs at Carroll (Mont.) College for 10 years and at the University of Montana for two years before coming to MSUM. The son of a Methodist minister, Bartruff grew up in Nebraska, Missouri and Iowa and earned his undergraduate degree in speech and theatre from Kearney State College in Nebraska, a master’s in theatre management from the University of Oregon and an MFA in directing from the University of Montana

His talk is part of International Education Week events at MSUM.

Morris, a senior lecturer in media theory, will discuss why “The Full Monty” toppled “Jurassic Park” as the highest grossing release in Britain while earning the best-ever receipts for a British film in the United States. He’ll try to explain why this modest production managed to out-profit the mega-film “Titanic” and how the Brits seemed to beat Hollywood at its own game, earning four Academy Award nominations in the process.

The talk is free and open to the public. For details about other International Education Week activities at MSUM, contact the university’s International Programs office at 236-2956.

Coya Knutson's life has inspired a generation of feminists who look to the first and only Minnesota congresswoman as a model for defying the conventions of her time.

Knutson twice won election??in 1954 and again in 1956??to the U.S. House of Representatives from northwestern Minnesota's Ninth District.

Actress and playwright Kathy Ray of Barrett, Minn., brings Coya back to life as she re-enacts the circumstances surrounding Knutson's terms in office at the state and national level.

Her congressional career came to an end in the 1958 campaign, derailed by the intrigues of her own party's leadership and fallout from rumors of an extramarital affair with her Washington chief of staff.

The anti-Knutson machinations were fueled by the nationwide publication of two "Coya Come Home" letters written by husband, Andy, suggesting the congresswoman had abandoned her family in favor of a political career.

As a representative, Knutson made progress in support of farming and successfully introduced legislation that provides low interest loans to students wishing to attend college.

The program is sponsored in part by the Loft Literary Center with funding provided by the Blandin Foundation and the Land O'Lakes Foundation. The MSUM Alumni Foundation and the Red River Women's Network generously provided additional funding.

For more information, call MSUM Women’s Center director Patricia Nunn at 236-3792.

It’s the opening lecture in this year’s = College of Arts and Humanities Faculty Colloquium Series, which provides a forum for learning about the research interests and accomplishments in the department. They’re free and open to the public.

Imbarrato’s talk comes out of her larger, ongoing project on “Women and Travel in Early America and the New Republic,” a study of women and travel conditions in America from 1750-1830, a period marked by the establishing of the stage coach and the coming of the railroad.  She wants to understand how women traveled, what they observed, and what they experienced.

She has been working on women's travel narratives and tavern records for information on the frequency of female travel and details on how long they stayed, how much they spent, what they ate, with whom they traveled, and why they traveled.  Thus far, Imbarrato’s research suggests that the female traveler has a unique view of her surroundings, and whether she is venturing into the frontier or along more well-known routes, the female offers an articulate view of lodgings, roads, towns, and people.

Imbarrato, at MSUM since 1999, earned her doctorate at Claremont (California) Graduate University, and writes and speaks frequently on American travel narratives, early American women’s issues, and slave narratives.  Her most recent book is “Declarations of Independency in Eighteenth-Century American Autobiography,” published by the University of Tennessee Press (1998).

Monday, Nov. 12
* George “Joe Bush” Fairbanks, spiritual leader from the White Earth Reservation, opens the celebration at noon on the mall in front of the library with a traditional pipe ceremony.
* Members of the MSUM American Indian Student Association will prepare and serve Indian tacos from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the student union lounge as a fundraiser.
* “All My Relatives,” a video documentary that chronicles the oral history of the Spirit Lake Nation (formerly the Devil’s Lake Sioux Nation) will be shown at 2 p.m. in room 214 of Comstock Memorial Union. The video was produced, directed and narrated by Mary John, an enrolled member of the Spirit Lake Nation and an MSUM graduate.
Tuesday, Nov. 13
* “A Museum of White Earth History,” a collection of photos and films contributed by local families and museums, will be on display from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in room 218 of Comstock Memorial Union.
* Andy Favorite, historian for the White Earth Reservation, presents an oral history of Anishinabe migration at 11 a.m. and again at 1 p.m. in the library porch.
Wednesday, Nov. 14
* Artist and art historian Arthur Amiotte will present a slide lecture on how the historical tribal arts of North Dakota and South Dakota tribes have evolved and influenced contemporary trial art at 1:30 p.m. in the student union ballroom. His work is included in 26 public and nearly 200 private collections.
* American Indian dancers Reuben and Ash Fast Horse from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation present an education program that brings traditions and contemporary issues together at 8 p.m. in the student union ballroom.
Thursday, Nov. 15
* American Indian arts and crafts demonstrations will run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the student union main lounge.

Minnesota State University Moorhead’s special education department, which helped prepare the grant proposal, will serve as a partner and liaison on the project with WETCC.

The grant will help WETCC students who are interested in the paraeducator training program, paving the way for further education and ultimately a university degree at MSUM.

Paraeducation is a degree aimed at college students who want to work as a teacher’s aide in the classroom. The goal is to recruit more Native American paraeducators in the region who can also act as role models for Native American special education students.

The project will include an exchange faculty and students between WETCC and the MSUM special education department. It will also provide culturally diverse observation and field experience opportunities for students on both campuses.

The MSUM chapter of the Student Council for Exceptional Children (SCEC) has planned several trips to the White Earth Tribal and Community College to meet and interact with students in WETCC’s paraeducator training program.

Lin has traveled extensively in China and led a study tour there two years ago. Scheduled stops include the Great Wall, Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Yungang Grottoes, Stone Forest and the Tera Cotta Museum. Lin, a native speaker of Chinese, has taught Chinese language and culture at MSUM since 1985.

The tour is open to students, faculty, staff and the general public on a space available basis.  Credit is available for Chinese 390 during spring semester. Students can apply for financial aid.

Approximate tour cost is $3,995, which includes an international programs fee, round-trip airfare from Fargo, all airfare and ground transportation in China, entrance fees, local tour guides, accommodations in four-star hotels, and meals.

For more information, contact Jenny Lin, 218-236-2913, linjj@mnstate.edu, MacLean Hall 271L; or Jill Holsen, 218-236-2956, holsenj@mnstate.edu, Flora Frick Hall 151.

Cost is $5 in advance and $7 at the gate
 

Follow the arrows to the upper concourse anytime from 5 to 8:30 p.m. Take advantage of complimentary snacks, beverages, and the chance to reminisce.

Tickets can be ordered by calling the MSUM Alumni Foundation Office at 3265. Tickets must be ordered by Friday, November 2.