What can we reason but from what we know? -Alexander Pope
What can we reason but from what we know? -Alexander Pope
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You gotta be kidding? That is my standard response to all the suggestions floating around out there about how I should be spending my “Stay At Home” time. Seems everyone has an opinion and you know what they say about opinions. Pick up a newspaper, magazine or turn on the radio or television and someone will be expounding the virtues of how they are filling their stay at home hours. Go for walks, get a dog, do a complete makeover of your yard, take up sewing, baking, archery or learn to pla...
“Temperance, tolerance, and moderation” has been a catch phrase emerging from over three centuries of denominational DNA. Though unable to pinpoint the exact moment it was coined, the embodiment of its ideals is deeply engrained in low church theologies of Anabaptism and Pietism, both owing much to the Radical Reformation gaining a toe-hold in Western Europe. As literal ‘re-baptizers,’ Anabaptists and Pietists were often subjected to torture and sometimes death for practicing believe...
State Representative David Ortiz (D-Littleton) makes a compelling advocate for the rights and struggles of disabled Coloradans. “I lived 30 years as an able-bodied leg-walker, a five-minute-mile running, hard-charging combat aviator — until a crash in Afghanistan left me paralyzed from the waist down,” he told the House Judiciary Committee. He understandably views himself as the unofficial representative of the disabled community and fashions his legislative agenda with that constituency in mi...
There is one irony of life that has frustrated and fascinated me as long as I can remember. We are all put on this earth with the same basic skills. We walk, talk, throw rocks, break things and fix things, to name but a few basics we all possess to some degree. This part I get. The part I find so interesting and confusing is this. Why are some able to perform one or more of these normal activities so much better than others? More important, when I have picked out one or two skills I really wante...
Finding the middle road can be tough. Getting up on it, and staying on it, can be tough. Sliding off due to a high crown in the road is not fun, and breaking down is never a highlight, especially when we are needing to be elsewhere (which is most of the time). Despite its challenges, the middle road, or middle ground, is an important locale to meet others. It is a place, a pathway, a route to somewhere or something that just might constitute a sacred encounter with the Divine if we are so...
Did you know who coined the term "Nativar"? Allan Armitage, author of Armitage's Garden Perennials, horticulturist and professor at Georgia University coined the term "nativar" "to show customers that the industry was offering what they wanted: garden plants developed from documented native sources, known in the scientific community as genotypes" from What's in a Nativar? by Carol Becker. A nativar is a cultivated variety of a native plant that has some ecological value in the environment. Nativars can be a native plant that is a genetic...
I guess I must be pretty easy to entertain. Most of my early morning coffee and quiet times are spent reading headlines from online newspapers. Headlines only because they want to charge me to read the whole paper. I figure the 30 or more I skim through, from ag and cattle magazines to big city newspapers all over the country would cost me about eight calves per year. Calf cost is how I keep track of expenses. I know about how many we will sell each fall and how many the bank is going to want...
Not quite a fully-fledged aphorism, “the power of one” is nonetheless influential enough to incorporate into our day-to-day existence, bringing some degree of hope and imagination to lives dulled by indifferent culture. The everyday can be wearing, and the suggestion that any single person could make a grand difference is a rather distant and foreign concept for many. Daily burdens weigh heavily on a most of the world’s population. “But, this isn’t what I signed up for,” rises the lament. A c...
Last year, the Colorado General Assembly demonstrated the good sense to pass Senate Bill 115, recognizing that property owners are not liable for actions committed on their property by criminals. It didn’t matter, legislators agreed, if the property owner operated a controversial business. Ultimate responsibility for harm rests with the person who pulled the trigger. This bipartisan legislation, which passed the Senate 34-0 and the House 64-1, came in response to a lawsuit arising from the 2...
Letter to the Editor, While in Montana I learned that Sheriff Elliott had passed. From the Saturday door campaign to a deputy’s funeral to several meetings in his office, I got to admire his humility and wit. Thom Elliott was a warm, kind listener. He could be tough with a knack for tongue-in-cheek expression, yet matter of fact intent of which to had better heed! In 2020 he told me my conceal carry permit would be approved if I wasn’t an habitual drunkard. I think he liked my training. I recall the head on truck passing another near Pao...
Knowing where you are and where you want to end up are two very different things. If it isn’t snow, its drifting snow, and if it isn’t drifting snow its mud, not isolated soft places on a gravel road mind you, but to-the-axel bona fide dirt road mud. In 25 years, the county road bordering a lower pasture has never been impassable … until now. Successive snows led to the need to keep drifts at bay by pushing snow ever higher along the county’s 30-foot easement setback. The piles, acting as addi...
What is mindfulness? How do we practice it? According to Kabet-Zinn the effects of mindfulness are an “awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, nonjudgmentally.” Practicing taking walks through your yard or the park and just noticing what is around you without actively labeling everything. This is an active way of quieting the mind. Another term for it is called just being. From one moment to the next there is nothing but that moment. Practicing mindfulness stops the judgement we consistently bring in...
Regular “Under The Wire” readers know I often compare human and bovine intelligence with the latter consistently coming out the winner. Today’s column once again points out how far ahead cows are over us humans. When Covid broke out over a year ago, many cattle owners pointed out a popular cattle vaccine protected bossy and her baby with “Bovine Rotavirus-Coronavirus” vaccine. The cow didn’t have to do anything to get the shot, just walk down the alley to the chute, leave a minute later, then...
Talk about close calls! I just had one. It was so close, just the thought of it gives me chills. “what,” you may ask, “was so memorably awful?” I’m going to begin writing very slowly and carefully because my hand begins to tremble as I think about it. In spite of my terror at the very thought of it, here it is in print. I almost retired. Yep, for a few days it looked like I was headed toward a life of rocking chairs, soft food and 24 hour a day television. At least I think that is what reti...
The world is full of unimaginable hardships, many which we will never experience. The list is long, both directly and indirectly. Hurtfulness has no favorites. But, a world of hurt cannot stifle the goodness that resides in others. We see it daily in kindnesses offered, the willingness to lighten loads of friends and neighbors and in the overwhelming generosities that come in unexpected moments from unexpected places. Hopefulness has no limitations. Loneliness in our culture is rampant and...
Sanctuary is a difficult concept to grasp. There are too many definitions and too few certainties in its use. Is it a building where religious program focuses primarily on worship? Is it related to border issues and so-called sanctuary cities, or is it more personal, individual congregations offering safety within their walls to those who are displaced? Is it inviolable once established or is there definitional wiggle room? Is it a place, an attitude, a blessing, or something more? We have lost...
You may have heard of the Midas Touch. It does not refer to mufflers, rather the fable of a man whose touch turned everything into gold. Lesser known is another fable I created to describe my luck at a point in my life years ago. It’s called the Reverse Midas Touch. Everything I touched turned into a mixture of hay and water put through a horse. During my late teenage years and early 20s I seemed to possess the first recorded case of this phenomenon. It seemed to follow me wherever I went. A...
Environmental conditions affect plant growth in many ways. Conditions that are too dry or too wet, too cold or too hot can all affect wheat production and survival. Determining whether wheat plants are alive in the spring due to adverse growing conditions should be done before spending production dollars on those acres later this spring. Visual inspection 1. Dig 10 wheat plants from the worst spots in the field, (hilltops, driest areas, etc.). 2. Cut plants diagonally and examine inside the root/shoot areas, especially inside the crown area....
I’ll never have to make up stories as long as I have friends. My friend received a card in the mail last month asking if he would participate in a survey evaluating new pickups. They offered to pay him if he would look over the various models and give them his opinions. What in the world were they thinking, anyway? He jumped at the chance, of course. Offering to pay any guy to look at new pickups is like being asked to judge a bikini contest. If he happens to be married ... well, let’s just say...
In the early 1990s, a group of researchers helped pioneer an inventive computational model known as distributed computing. In short, it allowed projects that were hampered by lack of computational power, time, and resources to invite public participation in the processing of data. One notable enterprise was the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. The data gathering capability of the National Science Foundation’s Arecibo Observatory radio telescope in Puerto Rico exceeded available c...
Most persons have experienced the participatory sport known as busting drifts, if not this year, then certainly in seasons past. Anyone is eligible for the sport if they have enough courage and the right vehicle. The sport is at its edgiest when the outcome is in the hands of drivers who apply a variety of maneuvers to achieve the goal of not becoming snowbound at the side of the road. Variables include speed, lighting, wind velocity, visibility, base conditions, vehicle clearance, temperature...
If you have spent the past three months stranded half way between Jeffry City and Mayoworth, Wyo., you probably haven’t heard about stimulus dollars flowing into just about every citizen’s bank account. I’m not going to try and explain it all. Just ask around and you will get an earful about this. I can, however, point out that these programs grew from aid to individual citizens to businesses, large and small with one exception. At first ag enterprises were not included. Later that was chang...
For the past 26 years an extra rider has accompanied us in one of our vehicles. It is in fact a small cartoonish plastic cricket from a fast-food children’s meal ordered from a drive thru in mid-summer 1988. There is no rhyme or reason to have kept it other than to humor our kids and whimsically reflect on our time together. Long after the cricket’s built-in chirp faded. we still found ourselves reluctant to give it up. It had grown on us. Through no real effort on our part, we had an hon...
Recently, it was pointed out I exhibit prejudice in my stories. Sadly, I had to agree. Looking back at past columns, a pattern of blatant prejudice is evident. Before you call the Civil Liberties Union, however, let me explain. The manner in which this revelation came to me was as odd as the accusation itself. It was channeled through my wife from a lady at our local convenience store. For those of you who don’t live in a small town, that’s how news gets passed around in a place where the cit...
Letter to the Editor, After listening to the Governor’s State of the State address recently, both my cousin and I were in dismay at the lack of importance given to our agricultural sector. Now to Governor Polis’s credit, he did include one point about water where he highlighted the importance of water to our great state of Colorado and to agriculture. It may be the first time in history that the Governor of Colorado did not mention (or at least allude to) the importance of our agricultural industry. The State of the State is a speech that is...
