Columns

Be it bird hunting in Minnesota or vote hunting on Capitol Hill, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson is seen as a straight shooter of both pheasants and fools.

In the dead of winter, I dream deep dreams of swimming. As the thermometer sits precisely on zero this morning on our farm, I just awoke from a blissful night of dreaming, snuggled down in my cozy warm bed, topped with a down comforter.

Just think: Spring, by the calendar, is only three months hence. And isn't it sweet to have those few extra minutes of daylight each day, even though the vernal equinox still slumbers? Meanwhile, we must all endure Old Man Winter's wrath along with trying to keep warm, keep the pipes from freezing and despite having had the fireplace chimney relined several years ago, I still can't summon the courage to light a fire.

Apparently, a 50-percent divorce rate isn't high enough for the cellular telephone industry. No, they've given otherwise loving couples yet one more thing to squabble over: shared minutes.

It's a fine man's name, though you don't hear it used much. Marion Morrison, who surely could have found fame using his real name, became better known as John Wayne, then dubbed simply "Duke".

An unwritten motto of a former employer, market adviser Professional Farmers of America, was that it's easier to turn journalists into economists than economists into journalists.

Standing at the fence, enjoying a rare day of sunshine in January here on our farm, I watched our dog Channing circling the pasture in a sweeping motion and wondered what she was up to now.

At last week's retirement open house for Jefferson County Extension Director Ken Simeral, OSU Extension retiree Joe Pittman observed, "I've always said there are good agents, there are average agents and there are those who should be working someplace else.

Make no mistake: down the road, we will pay for the prolonged January thaw which blessed us for so many days.

He's always been less a lover, more a fighter. We bought him almost 15 years ago, in our early dating days when buying a cat together was still giddily committed, "hey look at us, we're a FAMILY!" We found him in a pet shop, stuck in a cage in a roomful of barking dogs, eyes wide, fur on end.