Columns

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

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.

The most common misconception in America today is that criminals are crafty, cunning and smart. In reality, I think most people turn to a life of crime because they are just too stupid to do anything else.

I passed the heavy "Cast Only" doors and muted harmony drifted from behind them, voices warming up. In the theater's darkened balcony, I sat down beside my spotlight.

It has been a wonderful year with regards to our mailbox milk prices. I have heard many managers talk about how much easier it has been to cash flow farm expenses this year.

During a long-ago interview, the great grandson of a Kansas homesteader noted that only a handful of the 40 or so families who staked out farms with his family a century before remained after three years of disease, drought and death.

I was talking to a sweet woman one day this past week, and she mentioned that her little Westie dog is getting old and feeble.

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.

Even above the 6 o'clock newscast I could hear an insistent voice - that of a chickadee calling over and over, and loudly, from the back porch.