Category Archives: agriculture

Let the Ethnic  Cleansing Begin—Part One 

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Our retread President has promised that deportation of 11-millon undocumented aliens will be started on his first day in office. A number of economists or economy-watchers say the consequences could be severe. But that is immaterial to the incoming Commander/Demander in Chief of our country.  Others have raised serious humanitarian questions about the policy. But nobody has ever accused our incoming President of having any humanitarian interests except for his own, which are closely tied to his personal wealth.

Today we are going to start describing a plan that will mitigate any economic or diplomatic damage resulting from this deportation efforts. We expect no recognition from the incoming administration for these helpful ideas. However, if an invitation were extended to attend the State of the Union speech during which it would be announced that our necks soon will be decorated with a Presidential Medal of Freedom, we would not object.  Much. We are offering this advice at no cost, something that will please Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world who seems to have a plan to reduce government spending no matter what the cost.

Some might find this plan slightly off-the-wall. Or entirely so. But somebody has to provide some insight into how to deal with this issue and your faithful scribe will jump into the breach.

Mother Jones magazine, which some people dismiss as a liberal rag, took a hard look at Trump’s proposal a few months ago.  The incoming president has blamed foreign drug cartels and gangs have “invaded” the United States and have established a foothold at an apartment complex in Colorado, a claim contested and/or debunked by the town mayor and residents of the apartment complex in much the same way that leaders of a town in Ohio deny there’s any cat-eating going on there. Regardless, the “invasion” deserves a forceful response from this country.

The incoming President also has asserted that brown people from Venezuela and other countries that have emptied their prisons and lunatic asylums are killers, rapists, fentanyl importers, and probably don’t wear clean underwear every day.

Mother Jones describes a lot of problems with 47’s plan (actually he’s the 45th person to be President. He’s the second one to have two different administrations):

The magazine  says it’s going to take 95,994 chartered flights to get the 11-million people out of the country and going to wherever they will be  unloaded.  Projected costs, spread through 20 years because you can’t do this in two weeks would be $300-Billion.

Who would profit?  Private prison companies such as CoreCivic and the GEO Group were paid $1.5 billion by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to run immigration detention centers in 2022. They’ll improve our economy by building new facilities and hiring a lot of people to guard the women and children—and men—at new lockups.  A GEO Group subsidiary, BI Incorporated, got a five-year deal to produce ankle monitors and phone tracking apps worth $2.2 billion to ICE and will do quite well making 11-million more of these shackles. CSI Aviation has a $128.3 million contract for daily transport flights that they’ll have to increase, again pumping more money back into economy.

And this business expansion will offset the loss of jobs elsewhere in our economy.

There probably will be inconsiderate and ungrateful lawyers who will sue the government if the 1798 Alien Enemies Act is used to justify the deportations.

This might be the time to invest in a critical industry: hardware and home improvement companies. All of those detention camps will require a lot of posts and poles and wire and plywood buildings for the large facilities for undesirable Canadians, Mexicans, etc. A spokesman for the American Immigration Lawyers Association likens such camps to Soviet Gulags.

If there aren’t enough people in our regular military services who are guarding Taiwan, and South Korea and other pressure points in the globe and a decision is made not to lessen those protections, then nationalizing the National Guard is a possibility, he says. Fine and dandy but the Posse Comitatus Law forbids the National Guard from doing civilian law enforcement jobs.

Let’s face it, establishing military guard posts at every road in and out of all of our states is going to take a lot of people making sure no undocumented aliens can seek safety in a different state from their illegal homes here.

The article suggested we brace ourselves for big increases in food costs, decreases in important segments of the workforce, cuts in housing development, and cuts in some health programs.

The magazine quotes an agriculture and economics professor at the University of California-Davis who estimates food prices for hand-picked products will go up 21% because the deportations will eliminate half of the hands doing the picking. The survey also estimates 25% of the people who process our chicken, turkeys, pork, and fish are undocumented aliens. And it says we can look for a doubling of the price of milk if the people doing the milking are shipped out.

Illegal migrants are not eligible to collect Social Security. But they pay about $13-Billion a year into it. Undocumented immigrant households paid $35.1 Billion in state and federal taxes in 2022. That’s a pretty big economic hole. We’re waiting to see the plan for dealing with that.

It’s estimated about 350,000 undocumented immigrants work in health care, two-thirds of them in providers or in supporting positions. Rebecca Shi, who heads the American Business Immigration Coalition says, “They are the people that pick our crops, prepare our foods, clean our hotel rooms and empty our bedpans.”

This roundup also could affect the roofs over our heads. A study indicates one third of the crews that are whizzes at installing new roofs on our homes and businesses are potential deportees.  The construction industry already is short an estimated half-million workers.

But don’t worry.  The incoming President knows who will replace all of these workers.  If he doesn’t, we’re going to tell him in our next installment.

It might seem bizarre and crazy.  It isn’t.  It’s just the new normal.

Another Bogeyman—the Chinese Farmer

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We don’t know what kind of nonsense folks in other parts of the state have been seeing and hearing in this campaign about the dangers of Chinese ownership of our farmland, but it’s been a central issue in the Third Congressional District television commercials for contenders for Blaine Luetkemeyer’s soon-to-be-vacated seat. It even has oozed into the governor’ race and the state auditor’s race.

China, like the illegal immigrant, is a campaign bogeyman this year. One congressional candidate, Bob Onder, has decided name-calling is a proper way to attack his main competitor, Kurt Schaefer—something that should not be unexpected given that Onder has the full support of Donald Trump, the nation’s leading advocate of character-assassination.

Onder has been sending out direct mail pieces charging “Shanghai Schaefer” with voting to let China have Missouri farmland.

Gubernatorial candidate Mike Kehoe faces the same criticism, without name-calling so far.  And incumbent Treasurer Vivek Malik has a commercial that assures us that no state funds are invested in anything Chinese.

Onder and Kehoe’s opponents aren’t shooting straight with the voters. But what else is new in today’s politics?   Or politics, ever, for that matter.

Here’s what really went on ten years ago, and more, on which these attack ads are based:

Missouri was among several Midwest states to pass laws in the 1970s that prohibited or restricted foreign land ownership amid concerns over Japanese investment. Missouri law completely banned foreign land ownership until 2013, when lawmakers passed a bill allowing as much as 1% of agricultural land to be sold to foreign entities. The move was an economic necessity to deal with a situation in rural north Missouri.

One of the biggest agricultural issues of the time was Corporate Agriculture, Big Ag, if you will, personified by an outfit called Premium Standard Farms that set up huge contract hog-raising and processing operations in north Missouri, a sparsely-settled part of our state that relied on agriculture for its economy.

Premium Standard revolutionized the pork industry. It had been founded in 1988 with the goal of producing premium pork and was the first pork producer in America to get into vertical integration—in other words, controlling the market from birth of the pig to the marketing of the pig’s parts after it grew up.  To accomplish that, PSF bought a lot of land and contracted with many farmers to raise pigs the company would process.  North Missouri went from being a region of independent farmers to being suppliers. But Premium Standard offered an economic stability the region had not previously had.

PSF was a huge concern in terms of environmental issues as well as generating concerns about gobbling up small family farms, an anachronistic phrase that had faded from reality many years earlier. It was the second-biggest pork producer and the sixth-biggest pork processor in the country.

In 1999, six people sued for damages, namely odors, coming from PSF’s hog farms.  The court ordered PSF to pay then $4.6 million.  In 2010, a Jackson County jury gave seven neighboring farmers $11 million in damages because of odors produced on PSF’s 43-hundred acre finishing farm—which processed about 200,000 hogs a year—near Berlin.

By then, Smithfield Foods had bought PSF for $800 million in cash, stock, and assumed debt.

At one time, Smithfield—headquartered in Princeton, Missouri with a processing plant in Milan—ran 132 company-owned farms and had 109 contract farms in Missouri. It also leased farms and eight feed mills.

When China’s biggest pork producer, Shunghui International, wanted to buy Smithfield about five years later, it ran into the state law prohibiting foreign ownership of farm land (several other Midwestern states had adopted similar laws).

As your faithful scribe recalls, the law threatened the purchase as well as the economy of a wide part of north Missouri.  So the legislature passed a new law allowing foreign interests to own one percent of Missouri farmland.  That cleared the way for Shanghai Holdings, as the United States entity for Shunghui International was known, to take over Smithfield—now known as the WH Group—and the approximately 40,000 acres Smithfield owned. At the time, few people suspected letting foreigners own one percent of Missouri’s farmland would be a major campaign issue or some kind of proclaimed major national security threat.

Senators Kurt Schaefer and Mike Kehoe voted for that bill, which passed the Senate unanimously. Governor Nixon vetoed it. The Republican-dominated legislature overrode the veto.

Schaefer later lost a Republican primary election for Attorney General to Eric Schmitt and has been a lobbyist and Columbia attorney since. Kehoe was appointed Lieutenant Governor by Governor Parson, who sponsored the farmland bill in 2013. Parson is a farmer in southwest Missouri.

The MOST Policy Initiative says Missouri ranks 9th in the nation in foreign-owned acreage—but the 324,658 acres held amounts to only 0.78% of all of our farmland, ranking us 35th in that category.

Nationally, we are not under any threat of a foreign government buying our country.  The USDA put out a list in 2021 showing how much various countries own of our land. Five countries own two percent of the total land in the United States.

Here’s  the top ten as compiled by Forbes:

  1. Canada (12,845,000 acres)
  2. Netherlands (4,875,000)
  3. Italy (2,703,000)
  4. United Kingdom (2,538,000)
  5. Germany (2,269,000)
  6. Portugal (1,483,000)
  7. France (1,316,000)
  8. Denmark (856,000)
  9. Luxembourg (802,000)
  10. Ireland (760,000)

China ranks 18th on that list with 0.3 million acres.

There is some sentiment today to either reimpose the total limit or cut it back to one-half of one percent. The Center for Strategic Studies has estimated the WH Group now owns more than 146,000 acres of farmland here. Earlier this year, Governor Parson issued an executive order banning companies antagonistic to national security from owning land within ten miles of staffed military sites. No antagonistic foreign entity owns any of that land now.

We don’t know about you, but we don’t plan to vote for candidates who rely on public ignorance of an issue or its history or its significance to level distorted charges against opponents.  We’re more likely to vote for a candidate that shoots straight, doesn’t overstate his or her capabilities or the capabilities of the office, who spends less time attacking an opponent and more time outlining a realistic program that benefits the people who will cast votes.

But aiming for the gut is far easier than appealing to the intellect, so don’t expect any break from the fertilizer distribution in the days ahead

A Glimpse of Sacred Ground 

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Nancy and I were in our seats on our tour bus traveling through the pleasant pastures of the rural Somerset region of southwest England a few days ago,

having just left Glastonbury, believed by many to be the home of the country’s earliest church and the legendary burial place of the legendary King Arthur.  We were headed for the ancient Roman city of Bath, but hoping that perhaps the bus might stop just for a moment in a small community where ancient pre-Britons erected a stone circle contemporaneous with the better-known Stonehenge about 4,000 years ago.

Specialists in place names (the science of toponymics) suggest the name of the community conveys a sense of “mud, earth, clay, soil,” or perhaps is a reference to “earth houses” that actually are Bronze Age barrows, or burial hills.

Unfortunately, we were on a tight schedule and the bus could not stop so Nancy and I could jump out and have our pictures taken at the city limits sign reading:

PRIDDY

We have some camera shots through the bus windows as we passed by.

This is sheep country near the scenic Mendip Hills.  In 1348, the infamous Black Death that produced several plagues in England, forced the annual sheep show to be moved from what we would call the county seat of Wells, to Priddy.  It was continued until 2013 and eventually abandoned as unsustainable.

This also is holy ground, not just to those named Priddy but perhaps to all who call themselves Christian.

Archaeologists have found Roman lead ingots in the area dating to about 49 CE and others have found evidence of lead working as far back as 300 BCE.  Local legend has it that a tin trader from what we now call the Holy Land, with his young nephew, stayed at Priddy.  The trader was Joseph of Arimathea, uncle of Jesus who—legend says—traveled with him during his “lost years” in the Biblical accounts of Jesus’ life.

The legend has been memorialized by the great English poet, William Blake, who asked in his poem, “Jerusalem:”

And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England’s mountains green:

And was the holy Lamb of God,

On England’s pleasant pastures seen!

 

And did the Countenance Divine,

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here,

Among these dark Satanic Mills?

 

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:

Bring me my arrows of desire:

Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!

Bring me my Chariot of fire!

 

I will not cease from Mental Fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:

Till we have built Jerusalem,

In England’s green & pleasant Land.

You will recognize the poem, perhaps, as the source of the title of an Academy Award-winning movie from 1981. Set to music, it is considered England’s unofficial second national anthem, often sun as one of the final numbers during the last night of the annual Promenade Concerts, held at Royal Albert Hall.

(7) BBC Proms – Hubert Parry: Jerusalem (orch. Elgar) – YouTube

There is scholarly doubt about the Jesus part of the story and it is felt that the song is based on older recorded account that Joseph of Arimathea brought Christianity to ancient Britain after the death of Jesus.

Fourteenth Century records claim the Glastonbury Abbey, now in ruins, was founded by Joseph of Arimathea.  Legend has it that Joseph brought with him the Holy Grail, the vessel used to collect Christ’s blood.

We had explored the mesmerizing ruins of Glastonbury Abbey that morning.  We explored the remains of the Roman baths in Bath and had lunch before betting back on our bus and moving on to the next destination.

The more I look at this picture, the more I want to be that person on the bench.

We did not have time to learn if anyone named Priddy still lives in the area. But we know that the first Priddy in this country came from nearby Cornwall. Captain Robert Priddy was a privateer—the owner of a boat that he used on behalf of his country to fight Pirates on the Spanish Main (an area comprising the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea), for which he received a land grand in Virginia about 1650 from Queen Elizabeth I.

So much history.  So much legend. We were immersed by it that day.  Glastonbury and Bath seized us, as evidenced by the large number of photographs we have that put us back there with arresting images. And in the midst of the record of that dramatic day are a few  hurried glimpses    of a town with our name.

That’s life, isn’t it?   A series of glimpses and then we move on to the next day, the next adventure, the next tour through life.   But at least, we were there. At least we were among the fortunate ones who have had those glimpses.

And we took a lot of pictures, even if we didn’t get one that we wish we could have—the city green that includes a view of the 13th Century Church of St. Lawrence and its medieval altar frontal.  .[

We are grateful for what we did get.  And if that’s all this lifetime afford us, being within those sacred grounds with centuries of family links will have been enough.

 

 

The Future of Water (update)

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We seldom update one of these posts, and even less often do we do it immediately.  Had we posted on this topic today instead of yesterday we would have changed some information. But here’s an important update that underlines the point we made.

The Corps of Engineers announced yesterday that it was implementing drought conservation measures on the Missouri River.  June runoff from rain (very little) and snowmelt (much reduced) was just 52% of the average amount. The Corps has updated its forecast for upper basin runoff to finally be 60% of average.

It says this will be the tenth driest year in the upper basin since 1898.  Water storage in upstream reservoirs is expected to decline further.  That means less water coming downstream for all of the purposes defined by federal river law.

This doesn’t mean we who live in cities that rely on the river for our water will have to stop watering lawns, wash dishes once a week and clothes once a month and ourselves only on Saturday nights using the same water for everybody in the family (as many of our pioneer ancestors did).  But it adds further weight to yesterday’s discussion.

There isn’t “water, water everywhere” in more and more places.

The Future of Water

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A good part of Missouri has gotten an excessive drenching in the past few days.  But we—and perhaps you—have friends to the west who are being baked well-done by record heat and who are watching forests burn and water reservoir levels drop and disappear.

We might think we are glad we don’t have their problems—although our monsoon week is hardly without problems of its own.

For several years, Nancy and I enjoyed going to the Four Corners area for a week each fall to do archaeological work on or near the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation, adjacent to Mesa Verde National Park. We first recorded rock art from the days of the Anasazi (a Pueblo word meaning “ancient enemies”—we don’t know what those people who lived in the area until the 1200s called themselves because they left no written language). Although popular telling of their story has it that they just suddenly disappeared 750 years ago or so, archaeologists and anthropologists think they know where their descendants are, and they have developed some theories on why they fled the Four Corners area.

It’s thought they are the ancestors of the present Hopi people. One of the factors—the final straw—leading to their departure from the Four Corners area is believed to have been a 45-year drought that left them without the food and other resources needed to survive.

All of this has been brought to mind by recent reports that Lake Mead, which is behind Hoover Dam, has declined to its lowest level ever because of a drought that is now in its 22nd year. The condition is critical for 25-million people including the cities of Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Diego, Phoenix, and Tucson.  The lake has hit a record low, down 140 feet since 2000, creating the bathtub ring you can see in recent pictures. One-hundred-forty feet is about the height of the Statue of Liberty from base to torch tip.

Some states already have imposed water rationing and they expect to tighten restrictions as conditions worsen. Agriculture is in dire straits. Adding to the awful conditions is the rise in major fires in forests that haven’t seen protective rain for years.

It’s hard to understand that green and verdant Missouri faces some water shortages of our own. Today.  Right now.  And stewardship of our water will become more critical as our population increases, as agriculture is under increased pressure to produce more and more food in an increasingly populous world, and as our economy grows.

The Department of Natural Resources 2020 update to its Missouri Water Resources Plan warns, “Although Missouri is fortunate to have rich water resources, localized shortages do exist because of the distance from adequate supplies, insufficient infrastructure or storage, water quality constraints, and other limiting factors. In many areas, surface water supplies are subject to seasonal fluctuations; supplies are frequently at their lowest when demand is the highest.”

Farther into the study we are told, “On average, the 6.1 million people and numerous businesses in Missouri consume 3.2 billion gallons of water each day. Of that demand, 78 percent is supplied by groundwater, while the remaining 22 percent is supplied by surface water.”  Three fourths of our water comes from under our feet.

We often heard testimony in legislative committee hearings on the dangers of agricultural runoff or industrial pollution going into our streams and rivers, our surface waters. A major concern, yes.  But that’s only one-fifth of the water we use or think we need to use.

Studies indicate our population will rise to about seven-and-a-half million people by 2060, well within the lifetimes of some who read these entries—them or their children—putting more pressure on water, a finite resource.  The report suggests a number of policies and practices that need to be started now in anticipation of that growth.

We need to do more than read about them. Our generation has to start something that later generations can continue to meet Missouri’s water needs.

The greatest pressure on our water supply is agricultural irrigation—65% of our water withdrawals go to farming. Major water systems (that provide us with water to drink, to bathe in, to do our dishes, and flush our toilets) are another 25%.

The study says the agricultural counties of Butler, Dunklin, New Madrid, Pemiscot, and Stoddard Counties—all in the southeast corner of the state—are projected to have the greatest growth in demand in the next four decades. High demand also is expected as our metropolitan areas become more metropolitan.

DNR says the state “generally has plentiful water sources.”  Now, it does. But the report also says, “many supply-related challenges exist.”

Much of the groundwater originating from bedrock aquifers in northern and west-central Missouri is highly mineralized and unsuitable for most uses. In northwestern Missouri, precipitation is generally the lowest in the state, and the lack of surface water availability during prolonged droughts can result in water shortages. Timing is also important in determining the availability of water, since peak demands often coincide with the driest times of the year and multiyear droughts can lower aquifers and drain reservoirs that typically provide ample supply. Even when available, the quality of the water may not be suitable for all intended uses without treatment.

We already are facing a critical problem in dealing with our water supplies. The DNR report says, “More than half of the state’s community public water systems became active prior to 1960, meaning that without repair or replacement original water pipes, mains, and equipment are nearing or exceeding their average expected lifespan…Many small drinking water utilities have indicated that they lack the funding not only to proactively manage infrastructure needs, but also to meet current water quality standards and adequately address water losses.”

At the other end of the process (to coin a phrase): “Similar to drinking water infrastructure in Missouri, a significant portion of wastewater infrastructure may be approaching the end of its expected life.”

Need an immediate reminder of how precious Missouri’s water supply is and how carefully we must use it and prepare for its future use is no farther away than the greatest of our rivers?

This past April 7, the Missouri River Basin Water Management Division for the Corps of Engineers noted the snowfall in the upper basin had been poor.  “We expect upper basin runoff to be below average,” said Division Chief John Remus. The Corps thinks the snowmelt runoff into upstream reservoirs to be 83% of the annual average this year.

Water is going to become more precious.  You and I might not notice it.  But our grandchildren could.  We aren’t going to turn into the Southwest by the end of the week.  But we have to understand that the way we use water today can’t be the way our next generations will use it.  And we need to prepare for those times.

Unlike the ancient pueblo peoples of the Colorado plateau in the 12th and 13th Centuries, we won’t have anyplace to go when the great drought hits us.

If you want to read the entire 2020 Missouri Water Resources Plan you can find it at:

https://dnr.mo.gov/mowaterplan/docs/2020-mo-water-resources-plan-highlights.pdf

A Priddy Good Christmas Kiss

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A lot of people have visited towns bearing their names.  But your faithful correspondent’s name is not so common that it can be found in very many places.   There are two that I know of, one in the historic area of England, of Glastonbury and the territory of King Arthur, an area that legend records Jesus walked during the “lost years” not covered in the traditional Bible, taken there by his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, a tin merchant.  The area is known for its tin mines.  .

We shall not delve into a theological discussion today, however.  We shall instead tell you of a little Texas town and a seasonal crop that is a central part of the romance of the Christmas season and its seldom-discussed questionable reputation.

A few years ago, Nancy and I satisfied a long-held desire of mine to visit the other town named Priddy. It’s in Texas, south of Dallas and about 100 miles northwest of Austin, a community of 75-100 people with (it appeared to us) more cemeteries than churches, a one-bus school district (at least, we saw only one bus parked at the school), a former gas station that is now the town store, and some nice people.  Some might say it’s out in the middle of nowhere, of which Texas has plenty, but the people in the little town—as people in small towns throughout the nation—think it’s just fine, a good place to live, and to raise their children.  It’s the quality of the people, not their number, that makes any town a nice place to live.

Priddy, Texas is one of those towns that becomes important at certain times of the year.  And this is the time of year for Priddy because that area is prime growing area for one of the most important crops for Christmas.

Mistletoe.

The stuff mommy kissed Santa Claus under.

Scott W. Wright wrote for the Cox News Service thirty years ago, “This out-of-the-way little town is the place where the makings of romance are ripe for the picking. Where kisses are conceived.”

Mistletoe grows in a lot of places. It’s the state floral emblem of Oklahoma.

The Tiemann family has run a mistletoe business in Priddy for many years. Some years they don’t ship any because the stuff just didn’t grow in enough quantity to make processing and shipping worthwhile. Other times, there’s been a lot. Wright wrote about the company processing 2 ½ tons of it in one day.

Dozens of folks have gone out and harvested it in the good years and when they do, other plants are probably glad—as much as trees and bushes can show gratitude, because—and this was a surprise to us—mistletoe is a parasitic weed that attaches itself to trees and bushes.

Sort of takes the romance out of things, doesn’t it?

Kind of like some relationships, we suppose. Clinging vines.  Parasitic.

But it’s a symbol of how we can recycle something bad into something nice.

Kind of like relationships, too, we guess.

And who really cares, especially if two people can use it as an excuse for some public or private osculation?

Priddy, Texas never claimed to be a mistletoe capital of anything. It’s just been a big business in a little town on the vast central Texas plains.

We wonder if people who work on this weed all day find anything romantic about it.

And what do you suppose the school athletics teams call themselves in a town known for mistletoe?

The missiles?    Surely not to Toes.  The Parasites?   The Osculators?

Pirates, as the town sign says.  The Priddy Pirates.

As in people who steal kisses.

Under the mistletoe.

 

The history of Christmas yogurt

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The following is based on a true event. The names have been changed to protect the innocent and any resemblance of the names used in this account and the names of real people is entirely coincidental.

To: all staff   From: Gala Landowski, coordinator of interoffice activities

This Friday will be the Christmas Party potluck. There are signup sheets in each department area. Please try to have your food items picked out by the end of the day.

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To: Gala Landowski, CIA   From: Armand LeSoir, Accounting Department

The Accounting Department will be meeting tomorrow to determine what brand of unflavored yogurt to contribute.

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To: Armand LeSoir, AD   From: Gala Landowski, CIA

We are emphasizing the use of home-grown products from producers throughout the state.

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To: Gala, CIA From: Armand, AD

A very good idea, Gala. I have a good friend who has an organic yogurt farm outside of Clarence, Missouri. In fact, he says the recent harvest of yogurt berries was exceptional and produced some very high quality product this year. His is one of the few farms in Missouri to escape the serious outbreak of yogurt blight this year, or as some call it, Yogurt Rust. He grows his yogurt organically with no pesticides, insecticides, or artificial sweeteners. Each berry is carefully picked and processed by the highest-trained immigrant workers, some of whom have worked for him since they were thirteen years old. All of them carefully wash their hands after they use the bathroom.

The yogurt plants on his farm are nourished only by manure from organically-grown Angus cattle fed only organically-grown grass and high-quality organic grains. His plants have been carefully bred, using the highest quality yogurt berries from Bavaria and Latvia which are known for their hardiness, with berries from France which have a certain tartness balanced by berries from South Carolina that are known for southern sweetness. These in turn have been bred to the famous Missouri wild yogurt berry, which was a favorite of our pioneer settlers after being introduced to Missouri by the legendary Johnny Yogurtseed. The result of all of this careful work that has spanned generations of his family is an outstanding natural and well-balanced organic yogurt.

I shall make every effort to obtain some of my friend’s yogurt for the event Friday. However as many of you know, the Corps of Engineers is holding back billions of gallons of water in reservoirs in the Dakotas and Montana so people in those regions have lakes on which to go ice fishing and to experience other winter activities that we in the South would never understand. Because the Corps has taken that step, the navigation season on the Missouri has been shortened considerably because of lack of water in the channel which, in turn, has made it impossible for the yogurt barge companies to operate.

You might remember that last week the final yogurt barge of the season didn’t get downstream quickly enough and one of the tows struck a snag near Boonville and settled on the bottom of the river. Only the fact that the tow had a double hull has kept us from having a major environmental disaster. The interior hull protected against a major yogurt spill but the frigid weather and the cold water has caused the yogurt to congeal, making it impossible for salvage crews to pump it out into their smaller boats. They won’t be able to remove the yogurt until a few days before the spring navigation season.

By then the yogurt—because it is organic and therefore contains no preservatives—will have rotted and will be usable only as feed for captured feral hogs. I understand a University of Missouri study done by the College of Agriculture, Food, Natural Resources, Home-Produced Ethanol, and Quilt-Making has recently shown that rotted yogurt produces a chemical change within the brains of feral pigs that transforms them into pets suitable for children who sometimes come to regard them as large and hairy potbellied pigs.

Fortunately my friend had insurance that will cover his loss and he did hold back some of his crop in a yogurt storage bin so he might be able to provide us with enough yogurt for our part of the party. The situation has produced a significant supermarket price increase to excessive levels for organic yogurt this winter. If my friend cannot provide some yogurt from his storage bin we won’t be able to afford to buy some at the supermarket and will be forced to look for other items for the food crawl. Should you find something other than yogurt on Friday, please understand that we have been forced to provide it with the greatest reluctance.

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From: Darrell Upton, Coordinator of Pencils and Stationery   To: AS, AD

If my memory is correct, the “first” yogurt was created by a special kind of bacteria—most definitely ORGANIC in nature.

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From: AS, AD   To: DU, CPS

Your memory is accurate to a point, Darrell.   In fact, the first yogurt bacteria was carefully cultivated by Neanderthals who found them in a cave near what is now Lascaux, France. It was found growing mysteriously and voluntarily in the dark recesses of a large room in the cave. (Did you know, by the way, that an analysis of my saliva by National Geographic shows that I am 1.8 percent Neanderthal, which is above average?) The leader of the group that found it was known as a sage because of his great intellect and his willingness to experiment in a primitive scientific way. He rubbed his finger through the bacterial growth and tasted it. He survived the experiment and, in fact, thought it tasted rather good. After consulting with others in his clan, it was decided the bacteria should be grown as a food source, a delicacy. Through experiments and using various ground herbs mixed with virgin’s urine, it was determined the bacteria could be grown rapidly enough to supply a small amount of food for the group.

The testing process took a considerable length of time during which various members of this Neanderthal band stood watch inside the cave to protect the precious small growing area. Although Neanderthals were not as intelligent as we are today, they nonetheless were as easily bored as we can become, especially in the dark. They took to carrying small lamps fueled by the oil of the glands of certain goats indigenous to the area into the cave and also took some ground- up berries native to the area. While waiting for the bacteria to flourish, they used the juice from the berries to paint some figures on the walls of that cave.

In time, this clan was able to get the bacteria to reproduce in a peat bog in a shaded area outside the cave and as the bacteria evolved it became capable of growing in the daylight and if not harvested for a lengthy time, formed into berries with reproducing seeds. Thus were born the earliest yogurt berries, the progenitor of the berries raised by my friend near Clarence.

In the middle of the 19th Century, some explorers discovered the cave and were dazzled by the great cave paintings those early yogurt developers left behind those thousands of years ago. Little did they know the other historic activity that happened in that cave, an early experiment that led to one of society’s most useful foods. Few know the name of that early clan elder, the sage, but this story was told to me in my youth by my high school science teacher who claimed to be a direct descendant of that Neanderthal family.

The old sage/scientist’s name was Yog, and the product became known as Yog-urt, which is Neanderthal meaning “Food from the Finger of Yog.”

At some indefinite time, it appears the Neanderthals had enough berries that they traded with some ancient Greek traders who found the berries flourished on Mount Oikos,

And the rest is history.

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To: AS, AD   From: Barbara Singlemom, Human Resources

Wow!   I heard it was newborn baby poopoo (thus very organic and all naturelle). Your story is much more interesting.

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To: BS, HR   From: AS, AD

Barb, you’re partly correct. Modern scientists who have reverse-engineered the yogurt berry have determined that the original bacterium began in the feces of the Miniature Jurassic Tyrannobat that lived in the cave before the species became extinct.

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To: AS, AD   From: BS, HR

Well, we all have much to think about now each time we enjoy our cup of Yoplait.

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To: BS, HR   From: AS, AD

Yo-Plait, in fact, was the first virgin whose urine was used in those early experiments.

If we are not able to get enough yogurt from my friend near Clarence, our department will provide some sourdough biscuits for the crawl.

Did you know there is a “Sourdough Citizen Science Project” that has sequenced the DNA of sourdough starters from throughout the world to better understand the sourdough microbial biodiversity? You can Google it.

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The figure on top

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Ceres was lifted back to the top of the Capitol Tuesday morning. Not everybody was happy about it. The reason why is part of our national faith and national political history.

At a couple of the several pre-Christmas events we attended last weekend people asked if your observer had observed Representative Mike Moon’s letter in the local newspaper objecting to a pagan goddess being put back on top of our Capitol and what our observations were about his position that a statue of Jesus would have been better.

The tones of their voices as they asked those questions was indicative of their feelings that Rep. Moon was—–I guess “mistaken” is a generic way to put it.

My observation was that I disagreed with Rep. Moon, not because I am not a Christian—I shall let a much higher power than public opinion decide if I am and if being so entitles me to some eternal benefit—but because I am an American.

This incident and the attitudes implied in those brief discussion is both a commentary on some of the unfortunate polarization within our national community in which people tend to stake out a position and those who disagree are branded as political heathens, enemies, liberals, conservatives—whatever disparaging brands you can think of with which we brand people today instead of respecting their right to think differently from us.

There is nothing wrong with disagreement. Our nation, or at least the New England version of it that has been part of our school history lessons, was founded on disagreement. Unfortunately, our history tells us that those who disagreed with the Church of England enough to flee England often did not tolerate disagreement on matters of faith within their own ranks once they got here.

The discussion of Ceres vs. Jesus is part of our national faith fabric that we’ll explore a little bit later. But first, allow your faithful servant to explain why he comes down on the side of Ceres in this discussion.

Ceres is a symbol. Jesus is a person of worship. We do not worship Ceres by having her on our capitol. She symbolizes our greatest industry—agriculture—among other things. We do not worship agriculture although without it we could not exist. So her importance is in that quality of Missouri that is essential to all who live here. She might have been a goddess to be worshipped by ancient Romans and Greeks (who called her Demeter), but today she is but a symbol of a bountiful state.

The other day I drove past the Vipassana Buddhist Church, Center for Buddhist Development in Jefferson City, which has been in town since 2001. A few minutes later I drove past Temple Beth-el, the oldest synagogue building still in use west of the Mississippi River, built in 1883. Had I driven a little longer I would have gone past the Islamic Center of Jefferson City. Just outside of town is the Unity Church of Peace. And I have spoken several times at local Unitarian Universalist meetings. There even is a loose-knit organization of Atheists that gets together from time to time in Jefferson City.

Most Sundays you’ll find me at the First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), one block from the Methodist, Baptist, and Episcopal Churches, kind of a mainstream nest in downtown Jefferson City.

All of these mainline and other organizations are free in this nation to worship as they please and who they please or to worship nobody if they please. This nation for centuries has tried to keep church and state apart. The degree to which that has succeeded has been discussed for as long as the effort has been made. But the underlying sentiment behind it has been that this nation is a nation where believers or non-believers of various ilks are equal in the eyes of the law and as such are to be respected as citizens of this country. Refining that concept has produced court rulings by the dozens without eliminating the attitudes by some that they are closer to God than others are. In the end, however, we think as an individual that God will decide who is closest to God and that the human tendency to separate ourselves on that basis is spiritually counterproductive.

Putting Jesus atop our Capitol would not recognize the diversity of faith or non-faith that is a perpetual part of American history, one of the things that sets our nation apart from many others.

Representative Moon sees things differently and he is entitled as a citizen and a man of faith to do so. Those who dismiss him out-of-hand are being dismissive of our heritage. A healthy and respectful discussion of the issues surrounding his feelings is not likely to produce many converts in any direction but the freedom we have to explore competing points of view on subjects such as this is part of who we are as a nation.

I’m reading George M. Marsden’s Religion in American Culture, a broad survey of the role of religion in creating and shaping our country. One of the things he writes about early in the book is the world that produced those we call Pilgrims and Puritans, people who came out of a Europe in which the Catholic Church only a century earlier had split into the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, and in which more recently the Roman church had divided through the Protestant Reformation (“Protestant,” as in one who protests), and the further divisions within Protestantism that was free of Catholic doctrine. In England, where King Henry VIII created his own church rather than follow dictates from Rome, a further split occurred between those who believed the Anglican Church could be cleansed from within and those whose disagreements with that church led to persecution and their eventual flight to Holland and ultimately to the New World.

But those who landed here in 1620 and the Puritans who came a few years later had a low tolerance for non-traditional interpretations within their ranks, the foremost result being Roger Williams’ banishment from Massachusetts Bay to found what is now Rhode Island as a refuge for those who felt church and state should not be one.

Williams was a co-founder of the Baptist Church in America with Dr. John Clarke. Marsden says, “Baptists carried the Puritan emphasis on conversion a step further by insisting that baptism of adults symbolizes spiritual separation from the world. Interested above all in the spiritual purity of the church, early Baptists believed in separation from the state Church of England, rather than working for reform from within, as most Puritans believed…Williams thus championed the separation of church and state, but not for the same reason that later Enlightenment thinkers, such as Thomas Jefferson, did. Jefferson was concerned that the church would corrupt the state. Williams feared that the state would corrupt the church.”

The challenges of survival by settlers who faced another new world beyond the Alleghenies led to new denominations that recognized individual responses to God rather than responses to the structured and creedal churches of the colonies.

We might have oversimplified what Marsden spent many pages explaining, but we remain today a nation of conversion-oriented, structured religions and religions that place greater emphasis on individual responses to faith outside of church-required adherence to doctrines.

One might be more likely to insist Jesus should be atop the Capitol. The other might be more likely to insist a state showing a preference for a particular faith tradition should not be what the country is all about. This discussion about the proper place of religion in American life is an ongoing one. Fortunately, we live in a nation that allows that discussion. We must be vigilant in protecting that right.

So Representative Moon is neither wrong nor right. He’s just being an American citizen and in his advocacy for Jesus being on top of the Capitol, he has reminded us of the differences that have shaped our free country and remain part of the diverse dialogue that is welcome here. We are glad that he can be such a citizen. And glad that those who respectfully disagree with him are Americans, too.

A face of Missouri

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What do we read in the face that is a symbol of our state?   What would she say to us about who we are and who we should be?

Her right hand is outstretched in blessing but her gaze is challenging.

She is waiting for us to say something. What would we say? What should we say?

She will tolerate no nonsense. No fawning. Flattery will get us nothing. Neither will bluster. Threaten her with harm and she won’t change expression while she breaks your arm. Offer her flowers of friendship and she will be thankful but flowers won’t get you very far.

Her eyes see through us.

We wonder what we should say. Nothing that would compliment her beauty. She knows she is beautiful and has no need to flaunt it or to expect others to tell her what she already knows about herself.

She is strong of will, confident in her intelligence that is obvious to those who come face-to-face with her.

What is she saying to us just by her look at us?

This is one intimidating lady.

You can be better than you are, she says. You might have greatness but do not stop achieving it. Get on with the business of loving your neighbor. Don’t ignore those who need you. And stop whining about things. Be meaningful, not just important.

Don’t dispense and don’t accept BS.

Obfuscation won’t work with me. Don’t try it.

Be better. You can be but you too often don’t want to be and you know it.

You can be more than yourself. Get with it.

I won’t tell you how to do it. You’re capable of figuring that out.

I was the goddess of agriculture, grain, and fertility to the ancient Romans. I was kind and benevolent and anything that was “fit for Ceres” was very good, splendid in fact. I represented the love a mother bears for her child.

You will not see me this way for the rest of your lifetime, probably. But I will be atop your Capitol and I will be watching you as a mother watches her child.

Do not disappoint your mother.

Straighten up. Behave. Be “fit for Ceres.”

            (Ceres. Sunday night, December 8, 2019, waiting to “go home.”)

 

 

 

 

Notes from a quiet street (holidays edition)

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We’re puzzled by President Trump’s pronouncements that some people are “human scum.” Apparently he has forgotten that there are good people on both sides.

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Ceres will be on display this weekend at the capitol before she’s hoisted back into her position on top of the dome. She’s back from her year-long “spa treatment” at a bronze restoration company in Chicago. We expect a lot of folks to go to the capitol to see her before she goes back up. Who knows, it might be another ninety years before she comes back down.

However, the folks in Chicago did some detailed 3D scans of the old girl. The Capitol Commission hasn’t decided what to do with them yet. There’s been some discussion of creating a Ceres hologram somewhere inside the capitol so we won’t have to wait ninety more years to see her up close.   Your observer has advocated for years flying drones or something around the dome to do just such a scan so 12-inch reproductions could be made and sold at the tour desk.

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Speaking of Ceres: One of the questions we’ve been asked several times is whether she was supposed to face north instead of south (or at least, north as we think of it in Jefferson City—an observation about that in a minute). We think she was always intended to face south.

North advocates say it’s odd that the patron goddess of agriculture isn’t facing the most fertile farmlands in Missouri and is instead facing the rocky Ozarks.   Not really. She’s facing south because that’s the entrance to the capitol and she’s extending a hand of welcome to those who come to the building. It wouldn’t do to have her turn her back on visitors.

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Now, is she facing south? No. We think she’s actually facing, uh, southwest.   Columbia is north; Fulton is northeast. Check a map that shows where north is.

Many years ago, Jefferson City officials realized house numbering was a scrambled mess because some houses, say, were in the 400 block of West Kneecap Street while houses right behind them on West Headache Avenue had numbers starting with 700. It wasn’t a problem in the earliest days of the town when it was a nice grid. But when it spread and the streets began to snake along the high ground that conformed to the meandering river channel, numbering became scrambled.

It was a huge deal when the city launched a house renumbering program that brought things into a more sensible system that would make it easier for police or fire or other service people to find out where something was happening or had happened. A lot of folks didn’t like getting new numbers but they had to go out to Westlake/s Hardware or maybe uptown of Schleer Brothers Hardware Store (imagine that: a hardware store on High Street. And a grocery store. And a dime store.) and buy new numbers to put on their walls, mail boxes, and doors.   But they finally did.

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We’ve often observed that our church as a hymn, “In Christ there is no east or west; In him, no north or south” and we’ve suggested the substitution of “Jefferson City” for “Christ” would give us an accurate city anthem.

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Our city has a contest for the best house Christmas lights. There’s a place just up the block from our house where the folks seem to take great delight in the darkening months’ holidays, not with lights but with balloons. This year there are inflatable figures of Snoopy and Charlie Brown and other Christmasy things. We always look forward to the fall holiday season when we see the latest Halloween inflatables , then the Thanksgiving ones and, now, Charlie Brown figures, including Snoopy’s Sopwith Camel, complete with turning propeller.

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Something from the Jefferson City Daily Democrat-Tribune in June of 1914, a headline reading “Beautifying the River Front.”

Nothing is more unsightly than railroad tracks between a city and its river front. It was a mistake to ever permit the railroad tracks to be constructed between the city and the river. Under the circumstances, there is nothing to be done but to arch over the tracks, or at least a part of them…

The article was about an early drawing by the architects of the soon-to-be new capitol showing a terrace over the tracks on the capitol’s river side with steps leading down to the water. That part of the capitol project was never done, of course. But the often-maligned proposed Bicentennial Bridge might materialize that hope of 105-years ago.

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For the record, the last time a state official was impeached and removed from office in Missouri was when Secretary of State Judi Moriarty was removed from office for post-dating her son’s document filing as a candidate for the Missouri House. Eric Greitens quit before articles of impeachment could be taken up in the House. In about 1968 there was a circuit judge in St. Louis named John Hasler who had taken a fatherly interest in a woman whose divorce case he was hearing. But he resigned before the trial could be held. And the last impeachment before THAT was probably State Treasurer Larry Brunk in the 1930s, who was charged by the House but the Senate couldn’t get a two-thirds vote against him. Brunk had been a state senator a few years earlier. The Brunk case is considered one of the reasons the new constitution adopted in 1945 eliminated trial by the Senate and put it before the Missouri Supreme Court.

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And in each of those cases, we are sure there were good people on both sides.