A "Dairy" Good Obituary

A tombstone on the grounds of the former Northern Michigan Asylum in Traverse City, Michigan:

Traverse Colantha Walker
361604

Born 4-29-1916

Died 1-8-1932

World’s Champion Cow

Milk 200,114.9 lbs.

Fat 7,525.8 lbs.

Nine Lactations

Bred, Owned, Developed

By Traverse City Hospital

Perhaps the most famous inhabitant, period, of the entire Asylum -- was Traverse Colantha Walker. She was a grand champion milk cow who produced 200,114 pounds of milk and 7,525 pounds of butterfat in her lifetime. A lifetime that spanned over 9 years. When she died the hospital staff and patients held a banquet to honor her. She was buried in a small, grassy knoll and they placed a marble tombstone over her grave, a grave situated outside of the brick dairy barn she would have called home if cows could talk.


I bring this info to hyperspace in the hopes that it will bear witness to the fact that food production animals are not all treated as a commodity.  They weren't in the past and they are not now.  There are always some bad actors out there and they anger and embarrass me when they show up but my experience tells me that these are rare rather the norm. I have witnessed the care provided to dairy animals in particular and to the efforts put forth to produce a food that can be used to feed the world.  Yes, feed an often times starving world. with a quality, nutritious product.  And it can be and is done humanely. And our farmers are not making a lot of money doing it. Especially this past year.


Now I am loath to even mention the following two organizations names but I will.  They get enough press without my help but they just make me so sick to my stomach that I have to do it.  I am so tired of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) (and I wish to note here that they are in NO way your local animal shelter) and the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)shocking our society with disturbing images that more often misrepresent and distort the mainstream. Look up those organizations on the internet and find out what they really are all about.  They are simply another group of "radicals" that are trying to once again force a group's personal issue on a whole of society. Disguised as a moral issue, like we need more of those burdening our troubled collective soul.


I don't criticize them about the pain and suffering that go into the harvest of a carrot, stalk of celery or a turnip. I imagine they would have issues about eating a nut that fell from a tree. Murdering an oak tree fetus, perhaps? And I am no way mocking the serious issue of abortion.


Understand, I realize that in order to eat meat an animal has to die.  I am OK with that. I am a hunter and I have killed animals for that very reason.  I have also humanely put down the family dog when she was suffering. Leave my choice alone. Realize that the soils of the world are also vanishing right out from underneath our boots due to overproduction of grains, vegetables and other food crops. Look it up. The United States had in happen during the time of Oklahoma dust bowls.  Seen the sand dunes that dominate the once "Fertile Crescent" in the Middle East? You can't grow much on a sand dune. I guess you start to make glass jars to put food in that you can no longer grow.


We have to work together to create (or fix for that matter) a food web that is sustainable yet can meet the growing population of the world.  The world needs quality protein as much as the other building blocks of good nutrition. 


I wish that people would just breathe and think, breathe and think and breathe and think some more.

Looking Down at Stuff--and It's Boring

I noticed this evening while I was running how boring the world at your feet is in the winter. Snow and ice and sidewalk. Oh, and a pair of white socks about 10 feet apart. Near the middle school, discarded pieces of homework assignments half-melted in the snowbanks. If you get a fresh snow you might see some rabbit, squirrel or deer tracks cross the path. And light, why do I feel it is always leaving, like something, a glimpsed object, only there in the corner of the eye and gone when you turn.

Boring! I need more. I need to feel that thrill of surprise for what lies in my path.

And because I spend a lot of time in the winter months with my eyes cast down, just for the safety reason, this starts to get to me near the end of January. You can't hardly find a pretty leaf on the ground these days, though if you do and you aren't paying close attention you will slip on it and end up on your a#@!

In the nicer months, where trails in woods and parks and meadows are walkable and runnable, there is a plethora of the most interesting "stuff" just lying there, waiting, for me to see it or even stop and pick it up. I am not opposed to adding a bird feather to my hand during a run. I may even stop and look at an interesting track in the sand and mud. Admiring a wildflower or weed growing in or near the trail may be worth stopping or pointing it out to my wife for that matter. Usually, I don't stop as my wife makes me run in front when the trail is only able to accommodate single file. Sudden stops can cause a collision. I tend to be a lot like Doug the dog in the movie "Up". I'm running along and "Squirrel" will take over and seize my mind. And if you haven't seen that movie, rent it and you will understand. My wife and running companion tells me to run in the lead because she tells me I set the pace better, but I really think she thinks I would be distracted while looking at her butt. I will have to convince her it is for "safety" that I pull up the rear of the run.

Missing also from the landscape in the winter months is the animal life that is abundant the other three seasons, snakes sunning themselves in the trail, small mammals scurrying through the edge grass and lots of different bugs. Some of those bugs end up in the nose, eyes or mouth requiring picking, spitting and poking removal techniques. Deer will stand and watch you run by with that curiously scared attitude they have. Cold, hibernation and snow rob me of most of those interesting encounters. The deer seem to always be around, just not where we are forced to run when snow settles in many inches on the ground. I even try to look at the sky but that is painted by about three colors in January. Generally gray, then a slightly darker shade of gray and finally a lighter shade of gray boringness(I made this word up).

So please, Persephone, rise from your time spent in the underworld with Hades and return to thy mother Demeter, so the goddess can release the Earth from the great dearth put upon us during the months of your absence. What I really mean is I need spring.

Don't Bite the Hook!

"If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything."--Malcolm X

I've learned to trust less and less "those people" who make no effort to seek the truth behind the ideas, products and beliefs that are thrown out by them to us. Are we fish in a pond waiting for someone to throw them a new bait? Some shiny or smelly or wiggly bait to break the monotony of the ordinary crayfish, the always reliable worm or the bug of the day that is usually on our daily menu?

Now granted, I learned this the hard way. Like a ball-peen hammer to the temple. I've felt the zealot, the draw of the sword of self-righteousness and the ideas (or lack of original ideas--dogma) that can be spawned. How else can we explain so many people sent to the gas chambers, starved to death and rounded up and put on reservations? How about the Inquisitions? God, I was a Republican once. I thought G. Gordon Liddy had all the answers to the countries problems. Remember him? Never heard of him? Hated him? Loved him? I never missed his daily radio shows. I even thought, a couple of times seriously, that the answers to our problems could be solved by the right politicians in the government. And at the time, I meant "right" as in right-wing. I even voted once for a Democrat because he was pro-gun and soon found out that his word on that issue quickly changed upon being elected. Surprise! Imagine not trusting the word of a person. That wasn't how I was raised.

Truly the lightest of people when character matters, similar to pond scum, seem to find a way to float to the top. Now you might think that this may seem kind of harsh, but it constantly shows itself to be true every time one of those empty vessels of a politicians--Senators, Congressmen, and President--open their damn mouths. Their words are a shell game and I think most of the time there is nothing under any of the shells but air--hot air. And what do we do when the shell is lifted up and nothing of substance is there? A collective sigh. It must be like the emperor's new clothes fairytale, the disbelief of it all paralyzes us.

And this isn't just in politics where we are being subjected to downright misinformation. Take for example a resent assertion that was made by the actress Suzanne Sommers regarding her thoughts on a salt ban being floated in New York City (Surprise, only on the east coast). She claims that a simple switch from table salt to sea salt can make a difference in peoples health and, I quote, "sea salt can actually lower blood pressure rather than raise it." Has this "expert" on alternative health ever had a chemistry class. Seriously, does she not know that table salt is Sodium Chloride (NaCl) and sea salt is Sodium Chloride (NaCl)? Billy Mays couldn't have got me to buy that! She needs to go back to being the bad actress that she was good at and leave medical advice to people that have earned some trust.

Finally, remember P. T. Barnum said that "There's a sucker born every minute." Work hard to avoid the bait and keep the hook out of your mouth and you stand a great chance of staying out of the frying pan. Even Malcolm X ended up in a pool of his own ideological blood. One zealots life ended by another zealot.

Who are these kids…and why are they calling me Papa?

Here was the question for the ages, my ages, at the least. It sometimes seemed to be a deafening scream inside my skull. Sometimes a dull ache like a bad tooth. Who are these kids and why are they calling me Papa?

What a responsibility it becomes when you start to wonder what you need to do. I was never prepared for the changes that twisted my mind to start thinking about little beings and their many “needs.” You want to do everything they ask, take care of every hurt, and answer all the many questions that form in their mind. They consume you and your time and you shelve yourself in the process.

You are reinvented as a new type of vessel that is constantly drained by children yet seems to be eternally full. When you collapse in moments, rare moments, of peace and quiet, those grave-silent moments seem to be filled with a new found wonder and joy. A sacred laughter fills my memory, a sort of humorous, chattering, noise-filled space. I can't even remember what used to be there.

Now, I know who is the person that they called Papa…he is a man who they helped to shape and form to what they needed to move forward into the world. They didn't try to do it, it just happened. And if I succeeded in recognizing my role in their lives, they will have the gift to someday ask themselves the same question.

My 2 "no longer" children...that I am still the "Papa" too.