THE GOOD: Fourteen military spouses at Ellsworth Air Force Base will cut their locks on March 5 at Planet Hair Salon in Rapid City for Locks of Love, an organization that provides hair pieces to kids who suffer from permanent hair loss from severe burns, radiation treatment or other conditions, including alopecia areata, an autoimmune condition that causes hair loss and for which there is no known cause or cure.

THE GOOD: Alex White Plume, a Pine Ridge Reservation resident who describes himself as the only hemp farmer in America, will share his hard-won expertise on hemp with farmers in Ghana, Cameroon, Chad and other African nations. Those farmers will be producing seed oil from hemp for use in biofuels.

THE BAD: White Plume never got to harvest the three industrial hemp crops he grew on his reservation farm because the Drug Enforcement Agency destroyed it as an illegal marijuana crop. The U.S., unlike Africa, has restrictions on growing hemp for use in a wide range of products because it makes no distinction between the illegal drug marijuana and the commercial applications of hemp.

THE GOOD: Participants in Healthy South Dakota's Choose 2 Move challenge logged more than 10,000 hours of physical activity in one month. The Internet challenge drew 65 teams and 873 individuals from across the state.

THE UGLY: According to a 2005 Health Department survey, fewer than half of South Dakotans 18 and over met the recommendation for moderate activity. Only 23.5 percent met the recommendation for vigorous activity and almost one-fourth of those surveyed reported no leisure time physical activity at all.

THE GOOD: Gov. Mike Rounds was named chairman of the Midwestern Governors Association in Washington, D.C., last week, during meetings of the National Governors Association. Our congratulations to Rounds on the honor.

THE BETTER: While he was in the capital, Gov. Rounds visited the Capitol to meet with South Dakota's full congressional delegation in Sen. Tim Johnson's office, where they discussed budget priorities for the state, including water project infrastructure and the Farm Bill.

THE UGLY: Congressional inaction on the Farm Bill, which must be reconciled by a conference committee made up of members of the Senate and the House Agriculture Committees, before it goes to the White House for a signature or a veto. Two weeks before the most recent extension of the 2002 Farm Bill is set to expire, the House has yet to appoint conferees.