I have prevailed!

For years, I (and many of my contemporaries, I've observed) have had an ongoing battle. A tangled mess of a sticky situation, the war has been infinitely frustrating, and at times has even caused me to question my very sanity. I speak of the epic tale of the SaranWrap War.

Remembering times past when I have crossed blades with this Clear Evil makes me hang my head in shame. How is it that my motor skills can coax Beethoven from a string of 88 keys, but can never seem to successfully tear off a strip of SaranWrap to protect my favorite dish in the refrigerator overnight? I am sorry, apple salad, that I wasn't dexterous enough to save you.

True, I could have yielded to the Double-Sided Tape of Death and simply bought Press-n-Seal. But I'm kind of stingy, and I had a roll of roughly 5,000 feet of the stuff. Plus, I might never have been able to show my face again at a church dinner. Imagine, if you will, a whole host of church ladies, gourmet gastronomists all, wheeling around the kitchen in a varitable synchronized ribbon dance of Saran.

I could not let myself be so disgraced by the Filmy Fiend. So, I bravely saran-ed on, resulting in innumerable crushed egos and saran-balls of defeat ... until ...

TRIUMPH!

As soon as I grasped the Paper from Hell, I somehow knew that today was different. I dispensed the required amount, flicked my wrist (in what I can only imagine was as graceful-looking as a Russian Imperial ballerina), and magically ended up with a (mostly) flat, (mostly) intact, but more importantly, (mostly) USEFUL, strip of Saran!

Ah-HA! I AM VICTORIOUS! How shall I use my new-found gift? I feel like sharing it with the WORLD! Maybe I'll write a book. Maybe I'll start a new SaranWrap art form. Or, at the very least, I'll join the Saran Dance at the next church dinner ... !

The Caterpillar, The Oracle?

To me, there is something oddly comforting about old, familiar sayings. I don't 'collect' them, per se, but anytime I hear them, I love to think about how they were started.

This time of year, all the old folks in my town are talking about the winter. Like walking Farmer's Almanacs, they all have different old faithful predictors of how bad the weather is going to be this year. One new one (well, new to me anyway) I heard recently was this: it was concerning to this particular gentleman that the weeds were so tall at this point in the year. Upon further exploration, I learned that the old man was concerned because, he said, 'Every fall, God leaves the weeds tall enough to stick out the tops of the snow drifts so the birds have something to eat through the winter.' Wow, if that's the case, we'd better start stocking the cupboards, 'cause it's gonna snow cats and dogs.

One winter weather predictor that I've heard about since I was little, was the Wooly Caterpillar - those kinda plain fuzzy worms that're black on both ends and brown in the middle. They're fun to pet, because they curl up into a ball like a rolly-poly bug. Anyway, the deal is that depending on the amount of brown or black you see on the creatures, that's how bad or good the winter is supposed to be. (I could NEVER seem to remember which was which, so I made up a saying: 'The bigger the brown, the better the weather.' It rolls off the tongue pretty well, if I do say so myself.)

So, the more brown one of the wooly un-mammoths have, the nicer the winter weather is said to be. And this year, in general, we've been seeing an unsettlingly large amount of mostly black on them. But then I saw this guy on the sidewalk of the homestead the other day! Looks like fair weather 'til spring!!



Of course ... it might be a bad sign that he was dead.

Smooth sailin'

To some, this might just look like a picture of any ordinary stretch of rural road.

(Yes, there is a chance that I might have taken this while hanging out the window of my car, driving 60 miles an hour. Hey, it was either that, or snap the pic through the bug-splattered battlefield of my windshield. I did what I thought was best. Plus, I did have my seat belt on. Safety first! But meanwhile, back at my point ... )

THIS is not just another road. This is about 28 miles of the paved streets of heaven, dropped right down in the middle of Northeast Missouri. I cannot be sure what we humble citizens could have possibly done to deserve such a gift, but IT IS GLORIOUS!! (Never mind that a couple of us almost perished in the terrific traffic hazards caused by the road-building heavy equipment. That is PEANUTS compared to the MAGNIFICENCE of this achievement!)

Truly. In the whole of my existence, I have never witnessed a smarter, more well-timed, perfectly-placed use of Department of Transportation funds. The pitted, potted, over-used, dangerously narrow rubble that got resurfaced had nearly crumbled back into bare earth. I personally was considering buying a buckboard and mules to make this trip. But not anymore, DOT. Not anymore. I can now glide breezily over the new, glossy surface of the asphalt like my car was a hovercraft. Or maybe a Buick.

The Elections

Of course, you knew I couldn't let this monumental happening just slide by un-commented-on ... but, I'm probably not going to harp on what many of you are expecting.

True, the Presidential election did not go the way I had hoped it would. And, the results do make me a little uneasy. We'll see how he picks his Cabinet. But what I really want to report on is what happened in the state of California this election.

(Stand back, I'm chapped over this one.)

People in California voted to pass Proposition 2. The proposition, which won’t become law until 2015, requires that all farm animals, "for all or the majority of any day,"not be confined or tethered in a manner that prevents an animal from lying down, standing up, turning around or extending its limbs without touching another animal or an enclosure such as a cage or stall.

Sure, at first blush, this looks like something that should be passed, right? No one wants to think that the animals they're eating were, literally, cooped up. (ha.)

But the bigger issue here is this: even the American Veterinary Medical Assocation told the people of California NOT to pass this law. THE AVMA!!!! But they passed it anyway!! They didn't even trust the opinion and urging of the very people who most of them take their own animals to for proper, humane, compassionate care. Guess what it's going to do to many of the farmers it effected in California? Put them out of business.

Bloody hell, people.

What I don't understand is how it is legally acceptable for people who have had absolutely no contact with a farm or its operations to vote on the way we (farmers) conduct our business. I don't remember being given the opportunity to vote on whether or not big banks are allowed to lend money to people who have no way to repay it. I don't remember voting on how much unnecessary fertilizer/chemicals/etc urbanites are allowed to use on their purely aesthetic lawns. Where can I write THAT in??

I live in Missouri, and Prop 2 terrifies me. People who have no clue about agriculture or animals voted against even the informed, educated opinion of the experts. The ignorant majority is going to legislate our nation's agriculture out of business, and effectively ship all ag-related operations to Brazil, Argentina, etc. where we will have NO say whatsoever in how animals are treated, what kinds of chemicals they use on our food products, how their horses are slaughtered, etc.

These days, people are so terribly concerned about sticking up for those who have no voice (i.e., animals, the poor, the disadvantaged). But the underdogs who really need the extra volume right now are the farmers. Who is championing our cause to the likes of Oprah? My guess is that'll only happen once the public figures out that all this apparent do-gooding is going to push food production out of our country, thus driving the price of food up to Red Russia levels, where we'll all stand in lines to buy beef or eggs, and no one will be able or willing to put even a single can of beans in the Feed Our Homeless bins.

Oh well, above all else we must do what's good for the animals. To hell with first considering the PEOPLE in this country.

Public Service Announcement

Dear friends,

Avoid Columbia, Missouri.

No joke. Simply don't go there. I certainly will not be crossing the city lines unless my life depends on it, or I otherwise cannot physically avoid doing so. Here's why. Remember the time I totaled my car in that lovely city? Well, I was immediately issued a traffic citation. In these months that have followed, the city of Columbia has effectively thrown all manner of 'the book' at me. The only two options given me were to pay an exhorbitantly huge fine (in the hundreds of dollars), or pay a considerably smaller fine AND DO COMMUNITY SERVICE.

For a traffic violation. In which the ONLY vehicle that was even remotely harmed was MY OWN.

Realizing that my 'monetary contribution' would go directly into the pockets of the very city that is exploiting me, and my 'service contribution' would go toward my own town, I chose the service option. Mind you, this was, in effect, an admission of guilt. But even then, I was informed that my lawyer and I would both have to APPEAR IN COURT!

And now that the city has put itself on the top of both mine and my attorney's 'List of Cities that I Would Divest the World of, Had I the Means', if the city is demanding that we appear and idiotically use up taxpayers' money for me and my horrifyingly awful breakage of sacred traffic law, we will in turn very respectfully demand the presence of the Grand Jury, the Issuing Officer, the Judge, the Bailiff, the Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker - we might even issue an invitation to a Columbia newspaper journalist with whom I am friends. I can see the headline now: City Spends Thousands to Convict Violator Who Already Admitted Guilt.

Thank you, Columbia, for convincing me to explore Des Moines - the city I will now patronize when I want something from the mall, or a new car, or just want to go to a nice restaurant. And I will strongly encourage everyone else I know to do the same.

Columbia, MO: The city that invented Martial Traffic Law.
or
Columbia, MO: Death to traffic violators.
or how about
Columbia, MO: We STRONGLY encourage public transportation.