After 41 years of silence, there are a few things I want the world to know:

1.) Stop naming every crappy tourism store in the Black Hills “Rushmore this” or “Rushmore that”. This is one of the greatest monuments in the world, a modern wonder. If what you sell can’t stand on its own merits, then you ought not be in business.

2.) I’m not too pleased about Mt. Rushmore sharing the new state quarter with a pheasant. The pheasant is an import from China and Rushmore is American-made.

3.) Pick up your garbage when you leave the monument, dammit.

4.) I never intended for the Black Hills to be a sculpture garden and I don’t like the giant concrete dinosaurs scattered about the region. But I am a fan of Crazy Horse monument and think every effort should be made to get it finished. I spent far too many years running around the countryside with hat in hand looking for the money necessary to finish Mount Rushmore. It’s sad that not once but twice in the last century, someone didn’t step forward and finance a great piece of public art. I should have accepted Coolidge’s offer to give me the full $500,000 for the monument — Sen. Norbeck was furious when I didn’t — but I was also afraid of being indebted to others.

5.) I just loved North by Northwest.

6.) No matter what anybody tells you, follow my lead and marry the first time for sex and the second time for love.

7.) Nebraska is a great place to be from.

8.) I always wondered why the name Gutzon didn’t become a crazy among new parents the way that Britney and Phoenix did.

9.) I wouldn’t do well in this politcally correct society where you subsist today. I never really thought women and men should be on equal ground. That’s why I had so much trouble with the broads in the Daughters of the Confederacy and why I was livid when someone in Congress proposed, in 1937, that Susan B. Anthony’s face be added to the monument. We had already struggled with the four president and weren’t close to being done and all of a sudden they wanted another face? Luckily, some quick thinking lawmakers added a rider to the bill requiring that any additional faces be financed privately. Show me the money! Ha. It will be another 20 years before women make as much money as men, you think they could have afforded Susan B. on Mount Rushmore back then.

10.) I always kind of liked the name, “Mt. Harney”.