Farm News 02-27-05

Farm News
Sunday morning, after chores, 48° and cloudy

Duck and Goose Eggs Appear
The first duck eggs appeared, lying in the hay or grass here and there. It takes ducks a few days to get it all organized and start laying in a nest. The first duck egg I found was a nice blue-green color. Some ducks lay white eggs, some lay green eggs, and some lay blue eggs. They all taste the same and look the same once you take them out of their shells.
Duck eggs are good to eat, so good, in fact, that it makes one suspect that they are loaded with cholesterol or something. My favorite duck egg recipe calls for mixing them with some goat milk, diced Spam, and green food dye. Scramble and serve with toast. My children called it 'Horrible, Awful, Yuck!' and ate it frequently. Now my son accuses me of juvenile cardiac abuse.
Wednesday the first goose egg appeared. Good old Beth is always the first goose to start laying and on Thursday I saw her sitting on her nest. Thursday evening, when doing chores, I found her egg. It was a monster, 4 7/8” long, and definitely a potential art object.
Converting an egg into an art object begins with 'blowing', removing the contents, of the egg, leaving an empty shell. Use a Dremel tool to drill holes in each end of the egg. Then stick a wire in and stir up the contents. Hold the egg over a bowl and blow the contents out one hole into the bowl by blowing in the other hole. Blowing goose eggs is respiratory therapy from hell but it can be done. The remaining shell can be filled with plaster if it is fragile, but a goose egg shell is pretty rugged.
I remember reading in Popular Mechanics many years ago something about cutting duck and goose egg shells with a Dremel tool. One could cut an egg shell lengthwise, creating something similar in shape to a bathtub, which could then be set on end in a one of those glass dome snow scenes with a tiny statue of some saint inside. Bathtub shrines were once considered very cool in some areas around here and a miniature version with snow might be a real moneymaker.

Tinkerbell Finds an Egg
Tinker is a goose who hatched in the incubator late last year. When she hatched she had a foot folded the wrong way. It took her a long time to learn to walk and she was generally a nuisance, but I never did the sensible thing, and Tinker is growing up. She has crooked legs and a pronounced limp, but she gets around. Right now I would compare her to an early teenager.
When I decided to hand raise her I knew that she would have difficulty being accepted into the goose flock. Geese are exceptionally clannish; even though Bebe and Butch are her parents, they wouldn't accept her for a year or more because she wasn't raised in the flock. Sarge and Beth, who were also raised by a human, would be more likely to accept her than would Bebe and Butch. So, the two pairs of geese, Sarge-Beth, and Butch-Bebe, live in the pasture and Tinkerbell lives in the barnyard.
Don't misunderstand, they aren't fighting. Tinker has spent the night in the pasture with the big geese many times. The problem is that she spends the night sleeping away from the adults and is more vulnerable to predators. In another year or so I might be able to peacefully integrate her with the other geese but for the moment it isn't really much of a problem.
Tinker likes to hang out in the chicken yard whenever the gate is open. Several times each year we put a big round bale of hay or straw in the chicken yard and let the chickens turn it into compost material. The chicken yard is covered several feet deep in nice fluffy, scratched up hay, perfect stuff for a gimpy goose to relax on.
Friday I noticed Tinker staying in the same place in the chicken yard. After an hour or two I went by to check on her; she wasn't caught on anything and didn't call when she saw me, meaning that she was happy. Later that afternoon she was still there, so I tried to figure out what was going on. She would walk around near her spot, but wouldn't stray very far from it. Finally, after I had watched her for a while, I saw her reach out with her beak and roll an egg over in the hay.
Tinkerbell had found an egg! When chickens came close to her egg she would make threatening moves and drive them away. Christmas, the tom turkey, would come by and strut for her occasionally, but Tinker, like every other bird in the yard, generally ignores him. Three our four times an hour she would reach out with her beak and roll the egg a little way, and then go back to standing guard. She never tried to set on the egg but simply watched over it most of the day.
Several other times, with young geese, I've seen them become fascinated for a while by an egg. Most birds either ignore or eat eggs, but today Tinker was like a little kid with a doll. She didn't really know what to do with it, but she like it a lot, until she finally got tired and walked off.

Book Review
Animals in Translation, by Temple Grandin, Ph.D.
A lot of people know who Temple Grandin is, she's the woman born autistic who has a Ph.D., teaches at Colorado State, and is the world's leading expert on livestock handling facilities. Dr. Grandin designed the livestock handling facilities in over half of the slaughter houses in the United States. When McDonalds decided to require that their suppliers use humane livestock handling procedures, they went to Dr. Grandin.
Dr. Grandin proposes that animals, and some autistic people, think in pictures instead of words. In this book she fits her theory into evolutionary psychology, offers some guidelines for animal training, and provides a wonderful tour of the mental life of a brilliant autistic person.
This is a pretty good book; whether you keep pets or livestock or are an animal rights partisan you will take away more from this book than you expect. About half way through the book the social relationships of the barnyard animals began to stand out starkly for me. The difference wasn't that I understood the relationships, it was that I suddenly, clearly, saw them.

The Strange Behavior of Nyn
Sunday afternoon Nyn displayed some very strange behavior. When I entered the rabbitry Nyn was hopping around in her cage with a mouthful of straw, looking like she was preparing to have bunnies. When one of her bunnies, who were still with her, got in her way she would nip at it and roughly push it aside.
I took the bunnies out and put them in their own cage. They were 5 weeks old by that time and could be weaned without a problem. Then I put a nest box in for Nyn. She put some straw in the nest box and pulled a small amount of fur. And then, nothing else. She went back to normal. A few days later she pulled some more fur in the nest box, but then, back to nothing. The bunnies are doing fine on their own and Nyn is due for breeding again next week, I think. We'll see what happens.

Ayte's Bunnies: Wiggly
Ayte did an amazing thing: she had eight bunnies! Wednesday morning Calvin and I counted them and found eight nice healthy, wiggly bunnies. Most of them are white with brown spots, but we did notice one that appears to be black with white spots.
It's amazing how fast bunnies develop. When we counted them they were only three days old, but most traces of their umbilical cords were gone. At ten days they will open their eyes and by two weeks of age they will be hopping around exploring their world.
When we finished counting Ayte's bunnies we sexed Rosie's and Nyn's bunnies. All the males went into one cage and the females in another. Six of the ten were males; only one of Rosies bunnies was female, a nice little brown one who has been to the city several times and is very easy to handle.

A Promise to the Squirrels
Last year the squirrels ate every single hazelnut I grew. I don't know where I was when they started to ripen but I know where the squirrels were, they were collecting hazel nuts. Hazel nuts bloom early with long catkins. There are four hybrid hazelnut bushes in the orchard and the earliest blooming is now in full flower with three inch catkins hanging all over it. Alas, it is probably in vain, for there is nothing else to pollinate it. Two other hybrid hazelnuts are ready to bloom, but the wild hazelnuts are not yet starting.
Skinner might have been somewhat extreme, but some of his methods worked well. Humans, being smart, should be able to design a Skinner mechanism that will train wild squirrels to bring hazelnuts to a hole connected to a collection bin. They can have the wild hazelnuts, we just want them to bring the crop from the hybrid bushes, which bloom earlier and bear nuts later than the wild ones, usually. If the squirrels don't like the idea of collecting hazelnuts for us, we could remind them that the alternative is to let the squirrels eat the nuts and then we eat the squirrels.

Farm News is available by email. To subscribe, unsubscribe, contribute stories, complain or send a gift subscription, send an email to FarmNews@GeezerNet.com . The editor reserves the right to steal ideas submitted, rewrite submissions, and sign false names to them whenever it strikes his fancy to do so.

Farm News

Farm News
Sunday morning, after chores, 55°, gray and damp

Ayte Bunnies
Ayte received her name because Calvin doesn't name livestock but numbers them, and I, being the holder of the pen, perversely change the numbers to names. Currently there are four breeding age does in the rabbitry: Rosie, Svenn, Ayte, and Nyn. Calvin just shakes his head and mumbles something about, “Old people . . ..”

Sometime between 9:00pm Saturday and 7:00am Sunday Ayte had bunnies. Wednesday or Thursday we will check the nest box and try to count the bunnies. Their eyes should open on March 2nd and after that they will be able to leave the nest for several hours at a time to go on adventures with friends.

These bunnies were born in a nest box lined with shredded paper, thanks to a reader who answered my call for shredded paper. Ayte greatly appreciated the lining and has her babies tucked in carefully at the back of the box.

'Fro and the New Trick
Have you ever had the pleasure of putting up with a street hustler? These guys are capable of provoking violent urges in goldfish. A street hustler once put his head on my shoulder and cried because he was on his way back to prison. He had wanted to get high, and just because he stole some money from a guy in a wheelchair, they were going to send him back to prison. He hadn't hurt the guy in the wheelchair, and all he wanted was some money to get high on. And, he was trying to get over wanting to get high because he was in a treatment program as part of his parole, so he hadn't really violated parole, and on, and on. . .. Well, 'Fro is a street hustler with ratty feathers.

Trusty is a good puppy: hyperactive, fixated on oral stimulation (he chews everything), alert and ready to bark at every movement of the dog on the other side of the road, and under foot a great deal of the time. For years I have said that stupidity is a wonderful trait in domestic animals. Smart animals get in trouble, but dumb ones just follow along and keep you warm on cold nights. Trusty is a fine example of the kind of problems an intelligent domestic animal can bring to the place. At fourteen months he is a fully grown, hyperactive idiot equipped with an 'intelligence' closely resembling that of a seventh grade kid in its misfitting connections with reality.

Trusty has discovered that male poultry react to having something run back and forth in front of them. In the case of 'Fro, the reaction is that eventually 'Fro starts chasing whatever is running back and forth in front of him. 'Fro is a bird, dumb in some ways and brilliant in others. Particularly, he's dumb in brains and brilliant in feathers.

Anyway, 'Fro reacts by starting to chase Trusty, which is just what Trusty wants. Trusty leads 'Fro out away from the barnyard, where, eventually, 'Fro realizes he is a long way from safety. Quickly, he turns, as does Trusty, and the chase resumes, with the participants reversed in order, 'Fro now being chased by Trusty. As they approach the hen house 'Fro, being back on home turf, turns and faces Trusty, who also turns and starts running away, with 'Fro, of course, in hot pursuit. If these guys weren't so stupid they could learn to be Keystone Kops.

The back and forth dog and rooster race has been occurring daily for a week or more, now. Recently, Christmas, the tom turkey, has been joining in the fun. It takes Christmas a while to relax his feathers, which are normally sticking out as he struts, and he can't run well until his feathers are flat. Then he can go like a streak. By the time Christmas has changed from heroic to high speed configuration the dog and rooster may have done two laps and be ready for a break. As they come galloping into the barn yard, apparently on a collision course, a disturbance occurs and a blue streak comes flashing out of the general cluster of poultry, heading straight for the dog.

Christmas would like to give Trusty a good hard peck on the butt, but he knows that Trusty could take his head off with one snap, so he is cautious. Christmas enjoys dancing around Trusty, waiting for a moment when Trusty isn't looking at him, waiting for the moment to jump at Trusty, almost peck him on the butt, and jump back before Trusty can react. Christmas never actually pecks Trusty, that would be entirely too dangerous.

When the relays start up, and Christmas finally gets his gears shifted, he heads straight for the dog, but never actually touches the dog. At the last moment each veers off a bit. This change in direction keeps the dog from intersecting with the rooster, and all of them dash off into the sunset or whatever it is shining in their eyes.

It wasn't until this week that I realized that as they ran back and forth, their paths were tracing out Feynman diagrams. There used to be a bunch of ducks here who were interested in astrophysics. The astrophysical ducks all left on conference tours and have not returned. It's nice to see cultural interest in the fundamental nature of nature has developed in the barnyard. The hyperactive adolescent puppy, the balding flashy dude rooster, and the testosterone soaked turkey are, individually, dumber than weeds, but, by working together, they can trace out Feynman diagrams. It's amazing that anyone could see such a thing happen and not believe in Intelligent Design.


E-mail Subscribers: Subscriptions are free until 2036, when they will increase to $5 per year. To subscribe, unsubscribe, contribute stories, complain or send a gift subscription, send an email to FarmNews@GeezerNet.com . The editor reserves the right to steal ideas submitted, rewrite submissions, and sign false names to them whenever it strikes his fancy to do so.

Farm News

Sunday morning, after chores, 52°, light drizzle
A faint flush of green in the grass
'Fro's Future Funebrial
What does one do with a rooster that has far outlived his usefulness? 'Fro is one of four Polish Crested chicks I raised from some very expensive eggs. The chicks grew up to be three hens and a rooster, all uglier than I thought possible for a Polish Crested. The eggs were supposed to hatch bantam Polish Crested but the chicks were standard size. So, lesson learned, I put them in the hen house with the laying flock. There was no rooster in there at the time, Nero, the beautiful Black Australorp rooster, having died of old age the previous winter, and 'Fro immediately became better off than Colonel Sanders.

'Fro fancies himself to be a very tough street dude, a black guy with an attitude, hence his name. He's actually a wimp and the fancy crest of feathers on his head is mostly bald from being pecked out by young cockerels and uppity hens. He's noisy, he's useless, and he chases the bantam hens. He's about to get fired.

Would anyone like to adopt a retired rooster? They're cleaner than retired cowboys in most respects and they don't whine when you make them sleep in the barn. They do raise a fuss in the morning, especially they if live where they can hear another rooster. Roosters have loud voices, excellent hearing, and spend a lot of time saying the same thing back and forth to each other.

'Fro was the barnyard marshal for a short time. I hung a plastic star around his neck and told him to go enforce the peace. Nothing else paid any attention to him, though, and he lost his star somewhere after about twenty minutes. When I saw him wearing that star I thought of the parking lot guard at a nudist beach, a guy wearing a cowboy hat on his head, a star hanging around his neck, and flip-flops.

There are several other roosters on the place, including Claudius, Golden Sebright bantam rooster and the Chief of all Chickens. Unfortunately for Claudius, his Chief status suffers whenever he tries to tackle 'Fro; Claudius always ends up hiding somewhere. While Claudius hides to plot a new strategy, 'Fro acts like a rooster and inseminates all the Golden Sebright hens and tries a few ducks, too. 'Fro is the man, all right.

“Oh! That's easy,” you may say, “Just lock up 'Fro in the chicken house yard.” That might work if 'Fro didn't have the skills of the Thief of Baghdad and the Pink Panther rolled together. 'Fro can escape from any confinement, period. Just before he hatched his egg was accidentally touched by the wand of a careless passing fairy and 'Fro was given some interesting “strange powers”. If you decide to adopt 'Fro you must be ready to accept the fact that he will escape any facility you build to contain him, and, if you challenge him sufficiently, will make his way into your house before sunrise and announce the same from the foot of your bed.

'Fro thinks that his job is mating with hens and he pursues that job with great vigor. The problem is that he is about as ugly as a high-rise in a wilderness and allowing him to pass on his genetics would be a real insult to the Polish Crested gene pool. Nor will the Golden Sebright gene pool gain from any injection of his genes, at least not by any measure of benefit that I can imagine.

“He's pretty much no good for anything.” That's what I was starting to think about old 'Fro. Then, one day, 'Fro walked up to me and said, “'Fro likes children! 'Fro can do tricks and entertain children. 'Fro become traveling entertainer, visit kings and castles.” 'Fro always talks sort of funny, like he's got a piece of chicken stuck in his throat.

The Family Farm is pleased to announce that 'Fro the Crested, Hero of the Battle of Twisted Hedge, Star of more than One Thousand Dawn Productions, will be accepting invitations to reside and perform at suitable Castles and Palaces. If you would like to have 'Fro visit your castle, please contact his tour agent, trash@FarmNews.

Last autumn Calvin and I put some of the Polish Crested eggs, the product of 'Fro and his hatch mates, in an incubator. As a result of that act, there are now two half grown Polish Crested chickens, a cockerel and a pullet, both ugly, living in the barn and being a nuisance. The pullet is okay, but the cockerel has what B. F. Skinner called an “animal superstition.” For some reason, known only to the cockerel, he feels compelled to peck my shoes whenever I am within range. It doesn't hurt, but it does become annoying to have a chicken underfoot all the time in the barn. I've accidentally stepped on him a half dozen times or more but that has done nothing to inhibit his desire to peck my shoes.

These two Polish Crested teenagers are beginning to realize that, for some reason which must be related to my incompetence, I consider them to be a nuisance. They think I don't appreciate them, which is true, and are threatening to follow in their father's footsteps, which I would appreciate, and leave home. They call themselves The Somerset Twins, which they aren't, and claim they sing, dance, and do impersonations of waterfowl, which is true. Their tour agent is also trash@FarmNews.

When I announced that 'Fro would be replaced soon, the hens in the hen house responded by doubling weekly egg production. Old 'Fro has lots of talk and strut but no slow and easy pleasure slipped in on the side. They want a real gentleman in their hen house, they say. The trouble is that they are a bunch of cranky old hens and Antonio Banderas probably couldn't get a cackle out of them.

Women (and Men)
I can't remember where I picked this up, but there is an interesting difference between the sexes. For most measures of psychological characteristics, the normal distribution curve for women tends to be much higher and steeper than the curve for men. The median lines for the two curves might be offset slightly from each other occasionally, but the differences in curvature are there for most measures.This is used to explain why so many more men than women enjoy being serial killers. The flatter curve for men means that there are many more men out on the extremes than there are women.

The optimism-pessimism scale might be a good example. On a 1-100 scale, most women are going to be close to 50 with practically no 1's or 100's, but men will spread out more on the scale so that way overly optimistic, or pessimistic, men will outnumber their female counterparts by several orders of magnitude.This whole thing is subtle but important. Women don't always understand men because they don't live their lives out on the edges as much as men do. Men are on the edge more. All those flat curves mean that probably every male is a good distance from the median in at least one measurable category.

FOOL Bake Sale Makes Chief Look Foolish
As Chief FOOL my first big event to manage has been the Valentine's Day Bake Sale, Death by Chocolate. Friday, February 11th, was the big day. The FOOLs, by the way, are the Friends of the Oskaloosa Library, who honored me with the office of President this year.

For the last two years I have been taking orders from various merchants and professionals to have Jeannette's Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pies delivered for $25 each. Last year Jeannette's pies accounted for about half of what we made. Jeannette wanted to make a big splash this year and I was supposed to sell the pies. I failed miserably at my task and by Wednesday noon we had orders for just six pies.

Jeannette took over, made some phone calls, and then baked eighteen pies. She gave two of them to Mark, the nice guy who runs the grocery store in Osky, in return for the supplies, and, adding the ten she sold to the six I sold, made $400 for the bake sale. It's like a Brit country village sitcom around here, sometimes. Quiet Jeannette, an aging spinster, suddenly became a high-speed hustler, doubling the bourbon content of her Chocolate Bourbon Pecan pie recipe and selling the resulting pies to fundamentalist teetotalers for $25 per pie. If I hadn't failed to sell pies, Jeannette wouldn't have turned hustler, and our local culture would not have had the shining moment of rising to the sitcom level.

My job was to deliver the pies, some in Lawrence, one in Perry, and some in Oskaloosa. Jeannette decided that I was not a responsible adult (a responsible adult would not be the Chief FOOL), and sent David with me to tell me where to go and what to do. Spinsters can develop interesting ideas about men, such as thinking that two men will be more responsible than one man. Nevertheless, David and I delivered the pies and collected the money. We took two of Nyn's bunnies with us to guard the money and drive the car while we looked for coeds in Lawrence.

Two dentists, one in Lawrence and one in Oskaloosa, each bought two pies. Dentists like gooey, sticky, sweet stuff, I think.

The final figures are not yet computed, and probably never will be, but it looks like the FOOLs 2005 bake sale made $580, a new record. How in the hell can the bake sale come out with a record return and I still end up looking like a fool?

Letter to the Editor
The following was written in response to a sentence in a friend's letter, "It is time for the reawakening of the populist movement to throw some control over these corporations."
Read John Lukcas: The Hitler of History
Read it again.
The enemy is populism and its successful great nephew – nationalism.
The common people stayed with Hitler to the bitter end.
The real political danger to FDR was not A. Landon of W. Wilke, but Huey Long.
McCarthyism was a populist movement and as such had to be taken a great deal more seriously than it merited.
The homegrown populist movements in this country (as in all others) are racist, anti-Semitic and irretrievably ignorant.
“Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel” Dr. Johnson
The genocide of the Amerindians was populist in inspiration.
Populism and nationalism are the driving force of the Republican hegemony. The divers complexities which govern civilized interaction simply cannot compete. Try to imagine George Marshal as secretary of state for our beloved obersturmbahnfuherer.
The good new is that such ideologies invariably overextend themselves.
The bad new is that they eventually wreck the polity they have captured – but they do so without sacrificing the support of their chief victims.
Observe the attempts to rehabilitate Hitler and Stalin. Observe the implicit denigration of reason and knowledge in contrast to power. Observe that no responsible person can claim to be unpatriotic or to observe that our troops (through perhaps no fault of their own) need, as did their fathers in Vietnam, to get their asses kicked. The heroism of the wermacht in 1941 was exemplary, but it remains the case that their cause was a bad one and its results inevitable.
Fasten your seat belt. Civilization was amusing while it lasted, but there was a range of idiot emotions it never learned to domesticate. The Krupps of this hemisphere have rediscovered them.

Peter Rabbit

Well, that is all pretty interesting, but it has nothing to do with chickens, rabbits, turkeys, garlic, sunflowers, or anything else. I know, I started the political raving, but from now on the rule is that, to be published, any submission must make some mention of things associated by mainstream society with living in the country. If nothing else, sign it “Peter Rabbit.”

E-mail Subscribers: Subscriptions are free until 2036, when they will increase to $5 per year. To subscribe, unsubscribe, contribute stories, complain or send a gift subscription, send an email to FarmNews@GeezerNet.com . The editor reserves the right to steal ideas submitted, rewrite submissions, and sign false names to them whenever it strikes his fancy to do so.

Farm News 02-06-05

Farm News
Sunday morning, after chores, 46°, light rain

Downy Downys?
On coming back from morning chores I was greeted at the bird feeders by two Downy Woodpeckers, both acting more expectant than fearful. That generally indicates either a young bird or a bird that has been trained to eat out of someone's hand. These two allowed me to approach within three feet of them before they flew up into the tree and I could clearly see down showing on their backs. They were fledglings, birds taking their first flights from the nest. Apparently, their parents are satisfied with the quality and availability of the food supply here.

Nyn's Bunnies Open Their Eyes
Sunday afternoon, after last week's Farm News had been published, Nyn's Bunnies started showing fully open eyes. One of them appeared to be blind in one eye, something that Calvin will scold me over. I stuffed the nest box with straw for nesting material. He says that straw has sharp ends and will poke out the bunnies' eyes. The straw is a bit dusty which might irritate their eyes, but I thought that by the time they opened their eyes they would be old enough to know better than poke out their eyes.

Calvin was right, it seems. I don't know if it was the sharp ends, the dust, or a combination of both, but several bunnies had some eye problems. Shredded paper over a 3/4” layer of course sawdust seems to be about the top end nesting material for bunnies. With all the paper shredders in the world one would think that I could find a ready source of shredded paper, but, so far, I haven't.

Anyway, Nyn's bunnies are like all bunnies: delightful. At the moment they look like their heads are too big for their bodies and they seem to be sort of clumsy. Actually, when activated, they can run, jump, and dart about quite well. They have no trouble jumping over a board twice their height to get into the nest box.

On Saturday I moved Rosie's bunnies to their own cage and bred Rosie to Fluff again. If she becomes pregnant she will have bunnies in the first week of March. Gestation for rabbits is generally 31 days but can vary three or four days in either direction. Dr. 'M', would you care to write a short essay on rabbit reproduction for us? Am I correct in thinking that the mating act stimulates ovulation in the female?

Editor in a Snit
The Kansas Legislature has me in a snit. I tend to think highly of anyone who holds elective office and is obeying the law, even if their political views are contrary to mine. Having served about ten years on the local school board, I consider myself a politician; I ran for the office four times and was elected the last three. So, when people say, “All politicians are crooks,” or, “You can't believe a politician,” I am offended.

Given that, I am still in a snit about the behavior of a majority of the members of the legislature. Before they took their seats they held up their right hands and swore to uphold and obey the constitutions of the United States and Kansas. Last year a court found the legislature in violation of the Kansas Constitution in that they had failed to provide sufficient and equitable funding for primary education. Thus, the legislature opened this year under the cloud of being in violation of the state constitution.

Their response has been to place a constitutional amendment to prohibit same-sex marriages on the ballot for voter approval. That is a hell of a way to get yourself out of failing to carry out your constitutional duties with regard to education.

Kansas already has a law against same-sex marriage. The constitutional amendment is redundant and serves no legal purpose. What is the deal? Why is it suddenly so important that Kansas pass a constitutional amendment this year? The statute prohibiting same-sex marriage is not due to expire, nor is the Kansas Supreme Court likely to overturn it. The law could be overturned by a federal court, but it makes little difference to the federal court whether they are overturning a law or a state constitutional provision. The federal constitution is the basic law of the land and sets the rules for anything we might do as a state.

There is no urgent problem. For some reason the legislature is spending time and energy on a non-existent problem while many real problems, such as their violation of the state constitution, await their attention. There are few fools and fewer knaves in the legislature, I hope, and it seems unlikely that they should all spontaneously decide that this year it is imperative they symbolically spit in the faces of our homosexual citizens. I don't know why this constitutional amendment is being placed on the ballot, but I do know that prevention of same-sex marriage is not the primary goal, because that has already been done by the law.

Before I vote for a constitutional amendment I would like to know why it is on the ballot. I know what the amendment says and what the sponsors purport it will do, but, when a constitutional amendment is proposed for no obvious reason, I smell a rat. I am concerned that the Kansas Legislature has been deceived by a group of people who hide disdain for secular government behind a facade of fervor to protect the family.

When an elected public official takes office that person must first give an oath of office,
a statement that the official will act in accordance with the Constitution of the United States, and so on. Usually the words, “obey,” “uphold,” and “protect” are prominent. The Constitution of the United States is the law of the land, the document that sets the rules by which we shall govern ourselves. It does not set the rules by which we will behave, it doesn't forbid drunk driving or serial murder, instead it sets the rules we follow while making the laws against drunk driving and serial murder.

Elected public officials swear, implicitly or explicitly, to accept a hierarchy of authority that begins with the Constitution of the United States, then federal law, proceeding through the Kansas Constitution, and state law. The key here is that it begins with the Constitution, the agreement by which we govern ourselves.

Some people think that God or the Bible should be at the top of that hierarchy. They see some divine source of moral authority and feel that it should be the highest political authority, also. The Constitution forbids this. The Constitution also forbids the political authority from dictating religious beliefs. The divine source of moral authority can advise but not dictate to the political authority, and the political authority cannot dictate to the moral authority. The sunshine on a desktop illuminates but does not dictate what is written at that desk, and what is written does not make the sun shine.

In Kansas, same-sex marriage has been dealt with by a law. Legislation resulting in law is the correct way to address this issue. It is not a problem with how we govern ourselves, but instead is a problem with how we behave. Amending the state constitution would amount to nothing more than a vain and boastful declaration of our superior morality. The law says what we want the government to say and does not require that something new be stuck on to the rules of how government functions. Will the next campaign be to append all of Leviticus to the state constitution? This whole campaign is shameful and does not deserve one vote.

So there! Thank you for your time while I rage.

I would like to point out that the above argument is about the issue of a constitutional amendment and has nothing to do with the rights or wrongs of same-sex marriage. That is a whole group of issues, but the constitutional amendment issue is not one of them. The issue with this amendment is whether we try to embody individual laws within the state constitution, or try to keep it as a set of rules for making laws.

But who cares, anyway, if a couple of difficult women (or flaming faggots) marry each other? Better them than me. Speaking of marriage, if you liked The Da Vinci Code you might enjoy Three Marys by Paul Park. The three Marys of the title are Mary, mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, wife [in the book] of Jesus, and Mary, sister of Lazarus. I think this book takes a byway that misses the gnostic heresy.

Letter to the Editor
If They want to ban something, they should ban marriage.
After all, as the Good Book says, “Marriage is an Abomination unto the Lord.”
Living together is fine, people SHOULD live together, but marriage - same sex, opposite
sex - should definitely be outlawed/unavailable as an option.

What would Freud think of someone who writes uncentered opinions in centered text colored bright red? The editor is including this note for its moral value in teaching younger readers what might happen to their minds if they do not choose their friends carefully. And I'm not making up any part of these letters, generally. This email actually came in red print and centered text.

E-mail Subscribers: Subscriptions are free until 2036, when they will increase to $5 per year. To send a gift subscription, send an email to FarmNews@GeezerNet.com with ‘gift’ in the subject line and the email address to which it is to be sent in the body of the message. Gift subscriptions might be acknowledged in the newsletter.

To subscribe or unsubscribe send an email to FarmNews@RuralNet1.com with either subscribe or unsubscribe in the subject line. If you wish to contribute a few paragraphs or address complaints to the editor, put them in an email and send them to the same address with something else in the subject line. The editor reserves the right to steal ideas submitted, rewrite submissions, and sign false names to them whenever it strikes his fancy to do so.