Columns

All of my columns carry alternate titles (if only in my head). What the nice typesetter might call it and what I call it is often something else entirely.

Eating healthy is important for everyone, especially for people with diabetes because the type and amounts of food can have a great impact on your blood glucose (sugar).

Before a months-long summer slips into a months-long winter, it's time to use this week or two interlude - formerly called fall - to sweep my office.

The world of agriculture keeps evolving in all sorts of ways, and it is refreshing to be able to say that many things are looking up.

For me, Christmas morning can't hold a candle to one of these rare October dawns when the sun is not quite up and the dew is heavy on the grass and contrails play tic-tac-toe in heaven's splendid blue vault.

What ever happened to "play nice?" News sources quote a Chinese safety official with the "General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine" (whew!) as saying that discussion with the United States over how much lead paint could be used in toys were being worked out by product safety officials in both countries.

As sure as the rooster crows every morning, someone will crow every farm bill year on how New Zealand's 1984 elimination of government farm programs has brought a never-ending dawn to Kiwi farmers.

This is the time of year that slows us down enough to enjoy the grandeur all around us. The leaves are absolutely stunning as the bright blue sky serves as their backdrop and the sunshine dapples the entire show with brilliance.

I wish there was a vaccine for parents, administered around the time their children start talking, that provided immunity to kidfluence.

What does it feel like to face foot-and-mouth disease? What does it feel like to have your farm quarantined? To have an entire geographic region closed to animal movement? To lose generations of livestock genetics in the blink of an eye? To receive little compensation for dumped milk or for meat? For all we know about farming here in the United States, we know little about the terror, the frustrations, of farming in the midst of a major animal disease outbreak.