Thoughts from the Middle of Nowhere

Excuse me Susan O'Leary, but I disagree.

We need to assume our children will bully and begin teaching them as soon as they are old enough to recognize bullying and how to stop it.

Maybe your children were horrible enough that you had to "assume" they were bullies, but mine are not. Assuming your children are bullies is no different than assuming all males are rapists or all Indians are lazy or any other such stupid stereotype.

IT IS WRONG!!!!!

I am doing it the right way and making no assumptions. I teach my children to accept people as they are and not to tease or make fun of people. These are the things that lead to bullying. My oldest has made a habit of standing up to bullies and has made some of her best friends with kids she has rescued from bullies.

You assume about your kids all you want Susan, don't tell me to assume about mine, they are doing just fine so keep your nose out of my business.

It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury; Signifying nothing. William Shakespeare

There has been around 8 years of drought so far, I will not say it is over, and all through this I have never had to feed hay once I turned cattle "out in the hills." There has always been enough grass for the cows to get them along once they were out.

That all was until this year. I was looking around and we are worried about growing enough grass to keep the cattle going. We get a decent amount of moisture to grow some grass and the temperatures turn so cold the grass almost quits growing. So what did I start to do today? Feed hay again to the cattle in the hills. This cold weather is horibble. The grass slows down and isn't growing and it's freezing the alfalfa down. In the long run the grass will be okay but I don't know for sure how it's going to affect the alfalfa.

All we can do is keep plugging along and see what happens.

Struggle is strengthening. Battling with evil gives us the power to battle evil even more. Ossie Davis

This report kind of tickled my fancy this morning.

It would probably be a whole lot funnier if my main computer wouldn't have bit the big one yesterday afternoon. I think my hard drive is done in. Luckily I have a backup of all my personal files but it is taking me a while to build a new system up. I am using an older computer that the kids use for some of their stuff while I am trying to get the other one working. The thing I am missing the most is my bookmarks and the RSS feeds of all the sites I keep track of. I have never liked any of the web based RSS readers so they were all on the computer and now I can't access them so if I miss something on somebodies blog sorry. I'll get things working again eventually.

Death solves all problems - no man, no problem. Joseph Stalin

This would apply to computers, wouldn't it.

I am real happy about the moisture we have been getting but is it ever going to warm up? All that moisture doesn't grow much grass with the tempartures like they are. I took a generator to town today and heard the sugar beets were up and with the freezing tempartures coming up more than likely they will all get froze to nothing and then they will have to replant.

WHERE IS THE WARM TEMPARTURES!!!!

If it isn't one thing it is another.

Don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while. Kin Hubbard

Forgot my camera yesterday but we got 6 bulls in from Sitz Angus Ranch that we bought earlier this spring. They were pretty good looking fellows. It is a pretty good year to replace a bunch of bulls. In the bunch of critters we sold last week was 6 bulls that needed to be sold and they brought extremely good money with cattle prices like they are.

All the cattle we sold last week brought really good money, over twice what they brought a few years ago, so replacing the bulls doesn't cost as much money. We have 4 more coming eventually that we picked up at Midland Bull Test but I haven't worried about delivery on them yet.

Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull. Samuel Johnson

Doesn't this just give you that warm, fuzzy feeling?

Harvest of opium crop begins in Afghanistan

In more news from Afghanistan I find this.

Afghan Woman Killed for Alleged Adultery

Our Army went in and did a great job of kicking the bad guys out. I would like to know how do we change the culture to make such things unacceptable? Both of these things are accepted practices in the culture so the way they look at things has to be changed I just wish I knew how to do this. Maybe someday it will change. I hope so.

A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least. Jacques Barzun

The latest issue of Rascal Fair is up over at A Secular Franciscan Life. Go check it out for the Mystery of Montana blogs for last week.

Give me a mystery-just a plain and simple one-a mystery which is diffidence and silence, a slim little, barefoot mystery: give me a mystery-just one! Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Luckily we don't have this problem yet. I have seen some baby mormon crickets but no large amount of grasshoppers. Riding yesterday in one pasture there were more over-wintered grasshoppers than I am used to seeing but not a large damaging amount. I will have to see if there is a problem later.

A problem is something you have hopes of changing. Anything else is a fact of life. C R Smith

I received an E-mail this morning from some time commenter JoeG informing me about S.843 Combating Autism Act of 2005.

This email came from my daughter, XXXXXX and we are concerned about autism because my Grandson, 8 year old XXXXXXX has it. The number for Sen. Burns is 1-800-344-1513 and the number for Sen. Baucus is 1-800-332-6106. Or you can email them with the link. Thank You for your support, Joe

original message
I just took action on S.843 known as the "Combating Autism Act 2005." This is critical legislation that can only get passed by the support of the Senate. Please take 2 to 5 minutes to email, call, and fax your US Senator and ask them to co-sponsor S.843.
To take action on this issue, click on the link below:
https://secure2.convio.net/aen/site/Advocacy?s_oo=EooQZ0y16jmPLhYs3lnipg..&id=121
If the text above does not appear as a link or it wraps across multiple lines, then copy and paste it into the address area of your browser.

The link given in the E-mail takes you to Autism Education Network which talks about the bill. Do with the information what you want but I am getting a hold of my Senators with my opinion and support of the issue. Whether my son can be helped with increased funding I don't know but more reasearch into the issue might keep people in the future from having to deal with this. Having experienced the effects of autism in my son that is a worthy goal to work for.

Striving toward a goal puts a more pleasing construction on our advance toward death. Mason Cooley

JOE, I hope you don't mind me sharing the information in the way I did. Let me know if there is a problem.

I caught this article over at New West and had to speak my piece.

It seems that Sen. Rick Santorum has introduced a bill that would not allow the National Weather Service (NWS) from offering their forecasts to the public. Now I rely every day on the weather and I have seen the forecasts the Weather Channel and Accuweather offer and to be quite frank, they are a piece of shit!!! To get accurate weather and forecasts the only place to go is the NWS and get the weather from people that do a good job for everybody in the nation and not those on the East Coast because the pay services only pay attention to those areas where large numbers of people live, not areas like here in Montana.

The NWS provides the products I need in forms that are useful and accurate and I don't want to lose access to them so this whole bill irritates me. The bill is S. 786 (I couldn't find a permalink for it so I posted it myself). I had to look at the bill to see for myself that what is being reported is true. Sure enough it is right there.

(b) COMPETITION WITH PRIVATE SECTOR- The Secretary of Commerce shall not provide, or assist other entities in providing, a product or service (other than a product or service described in subsection (a)(1)) that is or could be provided by the private sector unless

And (a)(1) says:

(a) NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE- To protect life and property, the Secretary of Commerce shall, through the National Weather Service, be responsible for the following:


(1) The preparation and issuance of severe weather forecasts and warnings designed for the protection of life and property of the general public.

So the only thing the NWS could provide the public is "issuance of severe weather forecasts and warnings designed for the protection of life and property of the general public." This is horse crap.

If the private sector can provide a superior service to the government they should be allowed to do it. There are many package carrier services that effectively compete with the Postal Service and I see no problem with this I just wish the Government allowed these services to provide 1st class service too but that's a discussion for another time. The same goes the other way though. If a Government Agency can provide a superior service to a private sector company they should be allowed to do it (I don't believe I'm said that). It's our tax dollar at work, shouldn't we benefit from it?

I find it interesting that over at the raw story they point out that Accuweather is based in PA, Sen. Rick Santorum home state, and has been a contributer to his campaign. It isn't illegal to have arrangments like this but it sure is unethical. I guess that explains why he is doing it but that doesn't make it right.

I hope this bill never makes it out of committee. I have all ready wrote both our Senators stating my opposition to this bill. Hopefully the American People can win this battle.

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress. Mark Twain

I didn't see a City Lights column in the Gazette this morning but I did enjoy the Horse Sense column by Charles S. Johnson. I have really enjoyed reading these through the Legislative session because it usually gave a little different viewpoint on what was happening at the Capital.

Today's column is a very good wrap-up of the session with his view of the winners and losers.

It was back home where our citizen-legislators returned to their families, jobs and normal lives after nearly a four-month interruption.

They deserve our thanks for their hard work, even if we don't agree with everything they did.

I would agree with this statement except I would say, "even if we don't agree with almost everything they did." The only thing i would add to his list is:

Winner: Politicians of both stripes who want more control over the people can and can not do.

Losers: The people of Montana!

When a man of sense happens to be in that disagreeable situation in which he is obliged to ask himself more than once, What shall I do? he will answer himself, Nothing. When his reason points out to him no good way, he will stop short, and wait for light. A little busy mind runs on at all events, must be doing; and, like a blind horse, fears no dangers, because he sees none. Philip Dormer Stanhope

UPDATE: I just got in from moving some cattle and see City Lights is up. He talks about the close of the Legislative session in his column also. I think he gives to much credit to Gov. Brian Schweitzer">The Second Coming, but everybody knows how much I like him so take that with a grain of salt I guess.

One of the enduring mysteries about living in Montana is why the national media doesn't recognize we exist. Parts of southern Montana just received a fairly large storm which included much snow but I didn't see a thing about it in the national media until the exact same system started dumping snow on the Midwest. Maybe someday I will understand this mystery.

Mystery is in the morning, and mystery in the night, and the beauty of mystery is everywhere; but still the plain truth remains, that mouth and purse must be filled. Herman Melville

I started blogging about a year and a half ago and have watched the world of blogs grow and continue. They say about 40,000 more blogs are started every day and the whole thing is exploding. With that kind of growth there is no way to keep track of the whole thing and see what is going on.

Blogging started out as personal than moved into the political realm very quickly and now I see that businesses are starting to look at it.

Blogs Will Change Your Business

Business Week has a cover story this week about the blogging phenomenon and how businesses could start using it. Interesting, a whole new arena of blogs exploding out. I found the article very interesting since how business utilizes this phenomena will be new territory for many. I am sure there will be many misstep's but a lot of interesting things to come.

They also have a second story that is an online extra which is Six Tips for Corporate Bloggers. I read this and thought these same rules should be used by the hard-core political bloggers that are only around to push one candidate, and maybe even being paid for it.

No. 1: Train Your Bloggers
No. 2: Be Careful with Fake Blogs
No. 3: Track Blogs
No. 4: PR Truly Means Public Relations
No. 5: Be Transparent
No. 6: Rethink Your Corporate Secrets

You look at these and they could easily apply to hard-core political bloggers to. As we've seen here in Montana these types of people are trying to run roughshod over everybody but they should stop that and look at these good rules to follow and people would trust them more when at least they are telling the truth. Oh well, the world just doesn't work that way. Lie, cheat and steal is the way it's done in politics which is why I get so frustrated with the whole thing. Democrats or Republicans are no different. Thier agendas might be different but they both go about them in dishonest ways.

Hopefully businesses will get this whole blogging thing right. I doubt it though. Most of the time it seems like they think lying is the way to go too. Then they wonder why people don't trust them anymore than they do politicians. Nobody trusts, or likes, a liar.

The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way. Samuel Butler

Why is it that government agencies demand things from ranchers that are about impossible under other Federal laws? We finally got it figured out while barely maintaining legality but the Banker is not particularly happy with the situation. We finally had to tell him do it our way or our business goes elsewhere. He came around then. He even personally delivered it.

Given the planet, it is still necessary to add the impulse; so, to every creature nature added a little violence of direction in its proper path, a shove to put it on its way; in every instance, a slight generosity, a drop too much. Ralph Waldo Emerson

The rain/snow finally quit late last night. We must have got 3 inches of moisture out of it. It was wonderful. My oldest missed yesterday and today from school because it was so muddy we couldn't get her to the bus. It is amazing how fast it is settling around here though. We will be able to get around and do some thing tomorrow. The only problem with that idea is I am meeting family in Billings tomorrow so I won't get much accomplished around here. It will be nice to see everybody so there will be no loss.

We were all getting cooped up around here during the storm. Even the cats were getting cooped up. I looked out just a while ago and what do I see, a cat dragging something in.




What does this cat have. He kept tripping and stumbling, moving pretty slow which is unlike him. I begin to suspect I know what he has so I grab my camera and run out in my stocking feet to get a picture of this. Continue reading "What Is That!?" »