Thoughts from the Middle of Nowhere

Word is spreading fast that Craig at mtpolitics is calling it quits. Kind of a sad day if you ask me. He was here in Montana Blogs when I started and has always been a favorite of mine. I have never managed to meet him in person but would like to someday. I can understand his motavation for calling it quits and hope everything works out great for him. He will be missed.

Does anybody out there know how this affects Rascal Fair? Craig was kind of heading that up and with his retirement is the Rascal fair to die or will somebody else take up the task? Any volunteers for the job. Let me know what you think.

Friend, ahoy! Farewell! farewell! Grief unto grief, joy into joy, Greeting and help the echoes tell Faint, but eternal - Friend, ahoy! Helen Hunt Jackson

UPDATE: I heard from Craig this afternoon via Rascal Fair mailing list and while not actively blogging he is still taking an interest in Montana blogging and will keep up the mailing list and email for Rascal Fair. Thanks Emeritus Montana Blogger Craig. We appreciate the efforts to help us.

A brief history of R-CALF and the work it does and what it believes in can be found in todays gazette. I've had people ask me about them and this provides some good information.

Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders. Ronald Reagan

I try to follow worldwide information on BSE to keep up on what is going on and I see a headline that really caught my eye that comes out of Britain.

Three calves test positive for BSE

This headline astounds me since BSE is not detectable in animals under 30 months old so how do they have 3 calves tested with it? So I read the article.

Three young calves on a Welsh farm have tested positive for BSE in what is believed to be the first cluster of infections discovered for almost a decade.

Damn, it even gets scarier, they are "young calves." What is going on here? Is all the science we know about BSE out the window? I continue reading.

The cows are aged between 36 and 43 months. The first case was identified more than two months ago and the two others were confirmed at the end of last week.

WHOA!!!! Hold your horses, what is this? Now they all of a sudden are cows aged 36 to 43 months that have been tested for BSE. Now this fits with what we know so there is a little comfort there.

So I have a question. Why did the paper call them "calves" to start with and then call them "young calves" later on? Knowing a little bit about cattle and cattle production, cows over 3 years old are not considered calves by any stretch of the imagination. I always wonder about stuff like this. Is it deliberate misinformation to scare people away from beef or is it an honest mistake? I wish I knew.

Among all the world's races, some obscure Bedouin tribes possibly apart, Americans are the most prone to misinformation. This is not the consequence of any special preference for mendacity, although at the higher levels of their public administration that tendency is impressive. It is rather that so much of what they themselves believe is wrong. John Kenneth Galbraith

Today we branded at one of the neighbors places. We got them done but I almost wondered for the number of people. It seemed like God and everybody was there. I know all the neighbors and their wasn't that many. A lot of people that didn't know a lot about cattle but were trying to help anyway. It was a lot of people there but a very small crew. That's one of those things that always bothers me. All the weekend cowboys that crawl out of the woodwork to help at brandings. It makes twice as much work for those of us who know what were doing.

Amateurs believe their enthusiasm will suffice. Mason Cooley

A lady from Missoula, Montana, who believed the environment was all important, purchased a piece of timberland. There was a large tree on one of the highest points in the tract. She wanted a good view of the natural splendor of her land so she started to climb the big tree.

As she neared the top she encountered a spotted owl that attacked her. In her haste to escape, the lady slid down the tree to the ground and got many splinters in her crotch.

In considerable pain, she hurried to the nearest doctor. She told him she was an environmentalist and how she came to get all the splinters. The doctor listened to her story with great patience examined her injuries and then told her to go into the examining room and he would see of he could help her.

She sat and waited many hours before the doctor reappeared. The angry lady demanded, "What took you so long?"

He smiled and than told her, "Well, I had to get permits from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management before I could remove old-growth timber from a recreational area. I'm sorry, but they turned me down unless we do an EIS to study the impacts of any wildlife in the area, do you have any crabs or other wildlife living in the recreation area we need to be concerned with?"

Today's Unsettling Times stories are from my neck of the woods. The first one that caught my eye was 'I loved the life'.

Claribel was one of the first non-native children born on land south of the Yellowstone River that was part of the reservation. This strip was opened to white settlers in 1906.

This is the same country my Great-Granddad settled in around the same time as mentioned. He came up from Missouri in a wagon with his wife and settled in the "ceded strip" as it's called around here and settled in the spring creek area. Later just before the Depression he moved here and settled the ranch I now run on.

The other story is Less is more. Now I live far enough away that I am not real familiar with the Hysham community but a whole lot of names ring a bell in the article and it is somewhat like reading about family.

The whole Unsettling Times set of stories in the Gazette as been interesting to read and absorb. What strikes me about the whole thing is that the perspective of the Gazette seems to be how sad it is how these places are losing population. Don't get me wrong, it is, but what strikes me more is the persistence and courage of those who stay and keep fighting against the odds to make it work. Now that takes a special person and should be applauded.

Courage, determination, and hard work are all very nice, but not so nice as an oil well in the back yard. Mason Cooley

I got a little behind on reading the paper and blogs due to my Internet connection being down. I have satellite Internet but it wasn't working quite right so they sent a guy out to fix it. He worked on it for 5 hours Friday night and when he was done it didn't work at all so he was back Saturday morning and worked another 6 hours on it and finally got it working. 11 Hours to fix a simple problem. Amazing.

Once I was looking things over last night I came across the story about Big Ben having a few problems. Kind of reminds me of my Internet connection lately, doesn't work once in a while. What's interesting is they say it might have to do with unseasonable warm temperatures. Then the article about the heat advisory for Seattle struck me. The weather might be beautiful here but other places are suffering. Global warming, or is it just natural variations in the weather causing these things? Question I can't answer and I don't think anybody can but I guess someday we'll know.

The question of whether it's God's green earth is not at center stage, except in the sense that if so, one is reminded with some regularity that He may be dying. Edward Hoagland

I found this interesting, maybe it gives me as a man an insight to women. My Darling Wife found it funny too. Continue reading "Interesting" »

Saving the weak and disabled when no one else wants to. That's a hero in my book and so I introduce you to Lucy Fensom, savior of Donkeys.

"Donkeys are seen as the lowest of the low," explains Fensom, a petite blonde English woman in her mid-thirties, once a flight attendant for British Airways. "They're a humble creature, who spend their whole lives serving man. At the end of that time there should be somewhere for them to go."

In Israel, as in many countries throughout the Middle East, donkeys, the biblical "beasts of burden", are still widely used as a means of transport, for carrying loads and in farming. However, says Fensom, once they become sick, old or injured, it is often cheaper for an owner to buy a replacement than it is for him to seek veterinary help.

This is something that excites me, not someone asking for a handout or offering one to voters, someone out their working hard and making a difference, albeit a small one, in the world and making it a better place. Lucy Fensom is a true HERO!!

By hero, we tend to mean a heightened man who, more than other men, possesses qualities of courage, loyalty, resourcefulness, charisma, above all, selflessness. He is an example of right behavior; the sort of man who risks his life to protect his society's values, sacrificing his personal needs for those of the community. Paul Zweig

Click on thumbnails for larger image.









The camera is no more an instrument of preservation, the image is. Berenice Abbott

Sometimes I just don't understand things and wish I did. Most of the time these things are political in nature so it's obviously something to do with with that slimy game. This time my lack of understanding is the excitement there appears to be about Jon Tester announcing his bid for one of Montana's Senate seats. Matt at Left in the West and Mike at Last Best Place are literally having orgasms over this announcement.

I wish I could see what all the excitement is about but I can't. All Tester says in his announcement is:

"I just feel small business, family farmers, agriculture, working people have been kind of under attack for the last 15-20 years," Tester said. "I think the federal government needs to make these people a priority. The middle class has built this country, and we need to make them whole."

That's a pretty broad generalization that doesn't make any sense to me. Definitely not something to get excited about in my opinion since I don't see how people have been under "attack." Don't get me wrong, I don't like Conrad Burns but I would like to see more definite ideas and less rhetoric from a candidate I can support. That he is a wheat farmer just doesn't do it for me.

It seems like every year I get more Jaded with the whole political process and the rhetoric that is thrown out by candidates of all political stripes. There is never anything concrete and it just sickens me after a while. I better just get used to it because election season has started again and the Slime is starting to flow. How sad.

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. Aristotle

It's about time they charged somebody. I guess two women being brutally beaten to death doesn't stir the FBI to do much about it. They seemed to move as slow as molasses in January on this one. How disgraceful.

Justice delayed, is justice denied. William Gladstone

Strange as it may seem, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and formal education positively fortifies it. Stephen Vizinczey

Now I like cats but this is ridiculous.

Margaret Sue Jamel made her initial appearance Monday in Waukesha County Circuit Court on charges that say 193 live and 65 dead cats were taken from the home Friday by Humane Animal Welfare Society personnel and the Dousman Fire Department.

Why was she keeping the dead ones? It's probably a good thing she is going for a mental exam.

I have contented these people with all the many bizarre things that have come into my head. And the less they understand, the more they admire it. Pablo Picasso

Moisture is good, but drought still lingers

I find this story humorous since almost 2 weeks ago I talked about how the drought was not over. I guess information is better late than never, even though I all ready put it out there for consumption.

Ah! late I spoke to silent throngs,And now their hour is come. Ralph Waldo Emerson