Columns

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.

They are to stand in three (almost) straight lines on the shiny wooden floor. Tennis shoes screech loudly in that nails-on-chalkboard yet oddly satisfying way that they sometimes do on gymnasium floors, as 46 feet swivel into position.

My friend Judi and I discussed plans for our club: delegating, decorating, and, of course, our talks almost always lead to food.

Corn silage is in and combines are running everywhere. When corn and beans are dry and the ground is fit to drive over, a good manager knows it is time to attend to these tasks.