Farm News 02-24-08

Sunday morning, after chores, 34°

Weight: 208 lbs., this is becoming embarrassing, down is that way ↓.

Problem

Sending Farm News out by email has become a BIG problem for various technical reasons. I publish it as a blog at http://idfaFarmNews.blogspot.com/. Please click on this link and save it, because I am going to quit sending Farm News by email. If you are having a problem or don't understand, send me an email at JamesL.Ware@gmail.com.

Barn News

Wednesday morning the temperature here was 7° and there was a strong breeze. During the day it warmed up to about 10° and then started dropping again when the sun went down. Days like that make it hard to keep the livestock watered.

A Note from Dr. M.

Before I started vet school, I worked for a mixed animal practitioner. One day we were called to see a cow that had been seen with a hoof sticking out her back end. Of course, the farmer had first noticed this 3 days previously. No hurry to call the vet there.

We spent HOURS trying to capture that bloody cow. We FINALLY pulled an enormous bull calf out of her. He wasn't breathing when he hit the ground, so I started calf CPR. I pounded on his chest, I blew on his nose, I pulled on his tongue and tickled his ears. He finally drew a breath, stood up, and promptly fell on me. I ended up with blood, amniotic fluid and of course the ubiquitous manure ALL over me. Ah well, all in a days work.

On the way home, we were starved, and decided to stop at the fancy new Mall of Georgia, for fresh made doughnuts. The line clearing power of two people who have just helped a calf live and are covered in the detritus of the effort is amazing. Never breezed through a line so fast!

Dear Dr. M., human births are almost as messy, but lack the cow manure, usually. Isn't your first baby due soon? You can think about cows while in labor. When your baby is about two months old and demanding a late feeding, you can think about cows some more.

Tripping to Chicago

Let's see, when I left off we were at Illinois Beach State Park and Zion, Illinois. The park was lovely and Zion was a pleasant town, but we weren't making any progress on our Quest, not that we were aware that we were on a Quest, we were simply pawns that cosmic forces were moving around the country. The cosmic forces put us back in the Aztec Ambulance and pushed us northwest.

Northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin are beautiful in a quiet sort of way. There are no great mountains or endless deserts, just nice farms and small towns. Somewhere along the way we found and adopted a lost kitten. As the sun was dropping below the horizon we came to Madison, Wisconsin, home of the University of Wisconsin. We were sure that we would soon see some long-haired people with flowers in their hair who would provide us with a place to spend the night.

We looked but we didn't find them. Madison is squeezed between two lakes, Lake Mendota and Lake Monona. The parts of the lakes we saw were about 2” deep and covered with a dark, whining cloud of mosquitoes. We spent the night at a park along Lake Mendota, slapping mosquitoes and generally miserable. The next morning the kitten died. We blamed the whole thing on mosquitoes and lack of hippies, and left going south, headed for Kansas City, intending to drive non-stop to get there.

Tom was wanted by the police in Kansas and Wisconsin for skipping out after posting bail. He had a driving license but didn't care to use it, for obvious reasons. He also had a tendency to self-destructive behavior. While driving south through Illinois Tom insisted on taking a turn at driving. About twenty minutes after he sat down behind the wheel we were sitting at the side of the road talking to a Sheriff's patrolman about Tom's lack of a license.

I took over the driving and followed the patrol car, in which Tom, handcuffed, was sitting in the back seat. When we got to the county seat Tom was charged with driving without a license, booked, and put in a cell. I parked the Aztec Ambulance in front of the courthouse, where it attracted considerable attention because (1) the occupants were hippies, (2) the paint job was great, and (3) it was an old vehicle in perfect condition. The 'hippie girls' spread a blanket on the grass in front of the courthouse, we bought some picnic food, and settled down for lunch.

That was when the sheriff arrived. He parked his car in the reserved spot next to the Aztec Ambulance, got out, opened the back door, and released his big, dangerous, police dog. The dog charged straight for us, stopped a few feet short of us, and stood there momentarily, hair on his back standing up. It was secret weapon time for us. One of the women was menstruating. The dog walked over to her, stiff-legged, stuck his nose in her crotch, took a deep sniff, and started wagging his tail. He sat down, smiled at everyone, gave a friendly “woof,” and we rewarded him with a few snacks.

Meanwhile, back at the courthouse, the sheriff was screaming the dog's name, strutting around stiff-legged, and turning from red to purple in the face. The sheriff wasn't willing to come over to retrieve his dog, so he continued to shout at it, which attracted attention from some of the local folks. There were ten or fifteen people standing around the courthouse square enjoying the excitement, when one of them, with a loud, “Haw, haw,” pointed at the sheriff.

I would have kissed that guy, but I figured he would probably misinterpret the gesture. The sheriff, a savvy politician, saw the guy pointing at him and quickly retreated into the courthouse. Two hours and $50 later, Tom walked out of the courthouse, climbed into the Aztec Ambulance, and said, “Let's get the hell out of here.” A sheriff's deputy followed us all the way to the county line, where a deputy from the next county picked up the task. Thus, driving at 50 mph all the way, we reached the Mississippi River, crossed it, and said goodbye to Illinois.

Books

The Appeal by John Grisham

I made it halfway through the book before I quit because of boredom. Legal novels about important constitutional issues can be fascinating. This one counted the number of leaves on the trees, it had way too much extraneous detail.

Lone Star Silver by Jackson Cole

A good book about straight shooting Texas Rangers defeating bad guys. In addition, it was a large print edition.

Ask the Parrot by Richard Stark

This is the first book by Stark I have read. It was pretty good and in large print. Apparently Stark has written several books featuring Parker, a master criminal who wiggles out of tight situations, taking other people's money with him. I'm going to try another Stark book, soon.

Farm News 02-17-08

Sunday morning, after chores, 34°, After raining all night, 3” of heavy, wet, snow and still falling
Weight: 207 lbs., no progress

Barn News

Suzette Rabbit recently spent a night with Bucky, so we can expect bunnies sometime after the 5th of March. Suzette was her usual sweet self: she doesn't like me, she doesn't like Bucky, she doesn't like the rabbits in adjoining cages, she doesn't like the weather, and she dislikes everything else, too. Suzette is the grouchiest rabbit in the county, but she is generally a good mother.

Secondhand Smoke

It was cigarette smoking that got me fired. Almost everyone in the office smoked, including me, but I was the only one who rolled my own with Bull Durham. Every Monday morning we'd have a staff meeting in a small room with all the windows closed. Now, I smoked, but I lived outdoors (Paula and I were living in a tipi in a pasture), and I couldn't handle the air in the room where we met. The boss and her assistant were both chain smokers, often during the meeting lighting a new one from the butt of an old one. I complained, I asked if I could open a window, but none of it seemed to register with the two women at the head of the table. If I opened a window all the delicate city folks, who didn't have enough sense to wear long underwear in the winter, would start squeaking about freezing to death and demand that the window be closed.

It was winter, and I was hand milking three cows and five goats every morning before I went to work. When you hand milk a cow, especially in the winter, you get cow shit on you. Given any opportunity, a cow will lie down in mud and cow shit before going in for milking. Then, just as you get going, she will swing her tail around and smack the side of your face with a club of half frozen mud, shit, and cockleburrs. There is no way to avoid cow shit in the winter.

Each morning I would arise before sunrise, go to the barn, milk the cows, milk the goats, take the milk to the house where the farm owner lived, and five days a week I would then change clothes and leave for work, forty miles away in Kansas City. I was tired of the drive, tired of the two crazy women running the project, tired of Kansas City, and completely fed up with spending two hours every Monday morning slowly asphyxiating during a pointless meeting. Then I had a brilliant idea.

On Monday mornings, when we had the staff meeting first thing, I went as I was when I left the barn. I changed from boots to shoes for the drive, but then put my boots back on before going into the building. I wore my chore coat, which always had brown streaks and splotches on it, my bib overalls, which always had brown streaks and splotches, and my chore boots, which had many layers of brown streaks and splotches.

On the way to work I would turn on the heater in the car and revel in the waves of organic odor roiling through the car interior. I tried to arrive just in time for the staff meeting.

Five minutes into the meeting the air would be thick with both smoke and cow fragrance and everyone was wanting a window opened. After the window had been open for five minutes they would decide it was too cold and close the window. Five minutes later people would start complaining and want to open the window, and the cycle would continue for the entire two hours of the meeting.

This was the kind of organization where the boss decided we should have a two hour staff meeting every week, so we met for two hours, even though there was seldom anything to discuss. I thought that I had helped us take a step forward, because we were now spending two hours opening and closing windows, something much more productive than sitting around the table talking about nothing. The boss, though, thought that it was a problem, because opening and closing windows was not on the agenda, and, thus, was inappropriate for the staff meeting.

They solved the problem by firing me. I was quite happy, having saved enough money to live until spring, when I got a decent job outdoors and in the sunshine, building a bridge.

Target Practice

The government has announced that they are going to shoot down a malfunctioning satellite to protect us from possible hydrazine pollution. Nonsense. Hydrazine is nasty, but not that nasty. The press is speculating that it is to keep secret technology from falling into the wrong hands. Again, nonsense.

My explanation is that the malfunctioning satellite provides us with a chance to show China and India, and anyone else who is watching, that we can shoot down a satellite with a missile fired from a ship. If China should become irritable again and start threatening Taiwan, we might shoot down all the Chinese satellites. That makes more sense than spending a couple of million dollars to avoid a small release of hydrazine.

Right to Life

How is it that many people who loudly proclaim their support for the unborn do not support leaving them an environment in which they can live?

Books

If you hang around old women, they will find things for you to do. That is how I became Chief FOOL, I was the only male at a meeting of the FOOLs and the old women elected me Chief. Now one of them has decided that I should write a book review every month for the FOOLish News, the monthly newsletter, which you can receive every month by email for a $5 annual membership. A $50 check will get you a lifetime membership plus a certificate, suitable for framing, which proclaims you to be a Complete FOOL.

Anyway, back to book reviews. I don't write book reviews. I write book reports, just like the ones for which I always received an 'F' in the sixth grade. Some years ago my wife, who is the Library Director, (used to be Librarian, but they changed the title), talked me into keeping a record of each book I wrote. I did for several years, but looking at it was depressing. So many books, so little time. For some reason I quit keeping a record, but I've decided to start again and use it both as my monthly submission to FOOLish News and space filler for Farm News.

Bangkok Tattoo by John Burdett

Saichong Jitpleecheep is a Bangkok homicide detective and devout Buddhist. His mother and his boss are co-owners of a bar called The Old Man's Club, specializing in providing recreational sex for aging American hippies. Chanya, whom Saichong loves deeply, one of the girls working in the club, is discovered to have a dead CIA agent in her room. What follows is an account of the path traced by Saichong as he tries to avoid accumulating bad karma while producing a believable account of the events that led to the death of the CIA agent, weaving his way through the official corruption and unofficial sex trade of Bangkok.

This book is not about the Buddhism of sitting around in incense filled temples, it is about the ethical dilemmas faced by a devout Buddhist trying to live in the modern world. Good stuff and highly recommended. Burdett has also written Bangkok 8, which I haven't yet read, but is now on my list.

The March by E. L. Doctorow

Doctorow has written a fictional account of some of the human detritus swept up in Sherman's march across Georgia in the Civil War. I had some trouble keeping all the characters straight and found the descriptions of an army moving through mud tiresome after the first 200 pages. The horror of the Civil War stands out in almost every page. His portrayals of Sherman and his staff help the reader understand the emotions behind the cruelty.

Doctorow has an interesting style. He is very conservative with punctuation, seldom using quotation marks, and I don't recall any colons or semicolons. He has a lot of sentences that take some time to decipher. All in all, though, it was an interesting book.

Dark of the Moon by John Sandford

Generally, I like Sandford's books, but this one, although readable, needed more careful editing. He had a crescent moon rising at an impossible time, which always irritates me. The big trap that was set for the killer was set for different times in adjacent paragraphs. Still, I enjoyed it. It's set in western Minnesota and he shows an appreciation for the high plains and the butts of young women in tight blue jeans.

Farm News 02-10-08

Sunday morning, after chores, 16°
Weight 207, moving in the right direction, finally

A Dirty Little White Dog

Every barn needs a small terrier, an industrious little dog that will crawl into every tight space, seeking and driving out the varmints. Scotch Terriers, the well-known black 'Scotties' are good barn dogs. Our son had a Scottie that did a great job in the barn for many years until he died. When we put up our new barn we began to look for a good terrier to keep it free of varmints. What we found was a West Highland White Terrier, a dog that looks somewhat like the Scotch Terrier but is white and smaller.

We went to a breeder near Whiting, Kansas, actually something of a puppy mill, in the expectation of buying a mature female who hadn't worked out as a breeder. They had such a female, just under two years old, and a very nice dog. Then the woman who ran the place brought out a puppy, a little white ball of fur that would just fill two hands cupped together. She put the puppy down on the floor and it immediately ran to the older female, grabbed her tail, and, growling fiercely, started pulling on the older animal's tail, almost shouting, “Let's play.” Who could resist a puppy like that?

During the trip home our new puppy alternated between sleeping in Paula's lap and wiggling with pleasure at being held and cuddled. By the time we reached home we were convinced we had made a good choice. While driving we discussed a name and decided to call her Tessie.

When we reached home I put a small warm light, a 75 watt bulb in an aluminum reflector, about a foot off the floor in the corner of a stall, covered the floor with a deep bed of fresh straw, and shut Tessie in the stall for the night. She whined a bit when I left her, but quickly settled down beneath the light and went to sleep. I checked on her several hours later and she was sleeping quietly.

The next morning I went out to do morning chores and opened the stall door to let Tessie out for her first morning in the barn. There were so many new smells! She was under my feet half the time, and sniffing new smells the other half. Her new barn was the most exciting place she had ever found. And, the barn had more lessons to teach her than she could ever have imagined.

Tessie had to learn that chicks, ducklings, goslings, bunnies, and kittens are to be protected, not harmed, her teachers being the mothers of those various baby animals.

Puppies want to get along with everyone, not just the humans, and achieving friendship with everyone is a puppy's primary social goal. They watch the other animals and quickly learn their signals for alarm, defiance, welcome, and unfriendliness, just as they watch human faces to learn something of the effect of the latest cute trick. Terriers are bred to integrate quickly and smoothly in a barn environment, and Tessie was a fine example of her breed.

When I came into the barn for morning chores I let her out of her stall for the day, and after evening chores I shut her back in her stall, this time with food and water, and turned on her warm light, and I continued to shut her in her stall at night for the rest of the week. After four or five days I turned off the warm light. For the next eight or ten weeks I kept food and water in her in her stall, and also fed her fresh goat milk at the milk stall during chores each morning and evening. Soon, she shared the water bucket with the cats and had a dish of dried dog food in the milk stall.

One evening, after she had been in the barn for about three weeks, I heard her barking. I went out to see what the fuss was about, for she was barking up a mighty big fuss for such a small dog, and discovered that she had two half-grown raccoons treed in the barn. Each of the coons easily weighed two or three times her weight and could probably have killed her with a single snap, but Tessie's bravado kept those coons up in the rafters and worried. That was when she completely won my faith in her ability to be a great barn dog.

One winter we had a possum invasion of the barn. She would start barking, I would go to the barn, and there would be Tessie, with a possum cornered somewhere. It took a while for us to learn to work well together and, at first, we let a lot of possums get away. Before the winter was over, though, we had caught and killed seven possums. She caught them and I came and killed them, working together like a dog and human team. After that winter and for many years after we had very few varmint problems.

Tessie liked to run around me in circles when I walked across the yard, swinging out in a wide sweep and then running past inches from my legs. As she passed a few feet in front of me she would drop down and roll over, sometimes two or three times, then roll back up to her feet and begin swinging out on the next circle, calling out, “Let's play.”.

She liked kittens. When a litter of kittens became old enough to start exploring the barn all of them would have rough, stiff fur from being slobbered on by a dog. Tessie would carry them around in her mouth and, in cold weather, it was common to see kittens sleeping snuggled up to their nice warm friend. She was the same way with bunnies, she like them and never hurt one. Wild rabbits, though, she would kill whenever she could catch one, which was not very often, for Tessie had short legs and was not speedy.

Tessie loved little kids. She learned not to jump on them and, when a kid came into the yard, she would run up and sit down in front of them, tail wagging and eyes shining, saying, “Let's play.”

In the last few years Tessie slowed down. She became completely deaf and her vision was never very good. She had learned to respond to hand signals for, 'Come to me', 'Sit', and 'Stay', so her deafness was not a big problem, although in her later years 'Stay' was obeyed only if she felt it was a reasonable request. Left with her nose as her primary sensory organ, she would stand in the yard and sniff the air, checking for intruders. If she smelled something suspicious she would bark for a little bit, and then amble off to one of her favorite napping spots and lie down.

Monday morning Tessie failed to appear for morning chores and I knew something was wrong. The dirty little white dog, who always showed the grime she accumulated in sniffing out varmints, had died.

Tessie radiated the joy of a prefect spring day. When I think of her I see her galloping across the yard in a rocking horse gait, laughing and calling, “Let's play.”

Farm News 02-03-08

Sunday morning, after chores, 38°
Weight 211 lbs., off to a terrible start, I gained three pounds

Barn News

It was a computer error, that's all, but I've still been bombarded with comments:

I am astonished that you only weigh 118 -- I would have guessed that you were more like 138! More power to you! I am envious.

You've lost way too much, way too fast.

You weigh 118 pounds? Not possible! did you mismatch a number ... 811? no 181? Too much..??

I'll join your diet group and have started a couple days ago with an assist from the stomach flu. Already lost 2 pounds!

How tall are you ? As I recall, I’d put you at about 5’10.” If that’s anywhere NEAR correct, I’d say you need to GAIN some weight, not lose it ! Of course you don’t want to just gain FAT, but mostly muscle – more a matter of TONE, probably, but it sounds like you get enough activity to be in reasonable ‘tone.’ We can’t keep someone alive by just making them thinner and thinner, or ALL the “supermodels” would still be around. But then, I’m not a physician, just a physicians assistant. Best of luck !

Okay, okay, the number should have been 208.

Dr. M. was the only one who was reassuring:

Well, if your MD doesn't make it for another 43 years to keep you alive, I'll step in!

When I reach 110 a DVM would probably be a better choice for health care than an MD. By the way, for those of you who have been wondering what happened to Dr. M.'s occasional commentaries, she's pregnant. You'd think a Vet would know what causes that, but maybe she likes being that way.

Nothing of interest is happening in the barn. I borrowed a buck goat to breed Lucy, but I think I was too late. Lucy is showing no signs of coming into standing heat, it's too late in the year.

Several strange tomcats have been hanging around, so we might be preparing to start a new crop of kittens.

There are only five hens in the chicken house, but they are laying five eggs most days. What excellent chickens!

Tripping to Chicago – part 3

Illinois Beach State Park is an almost 3,000 acre strip along the west side of Lake Michigan running south from the Wisconsin border, bounded on the west by the city of Zion. We stopped there to rest after we fled from Chicago. Zion was founded in 1901 as a utopian community built around the Zion Tabernacle of the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church. After Chicago, a garbage dump would have felt utopian, but Illinois Beach State Park and Zion were both quite pleasant without being compared to their noisome neighbor.

The only thing we lacked was pot. How can you be good hippies on a road trip without pot? We all put flowers in our hair (I had hair, then), smiled a lot, and, sure enough, a nice young man with long hair showed up and offered to share a joint with us. Peace, Love, and Brotherhood meant something real in those days.

Peter, the nice young man, was the younger son of an Israeli mother and a Palestinian father who had fled from the Middle East to find peace in Zion. He was a senior in high school, very mellow, and an altogether delightful person. He invited us to his home, where we met John, his older brother, who was a student at Shimer College, very mellow, and a delightful person. John was the author of a wonderful book, Edifying Tautologies, which occupied twenty or so four inch square pages. I don't remember a single word of it, but I distinctly remember the effect it produced, especially when one smoked a good joint before reading it.

Shimer College was, and is, an excellent Liberal Arts college. Their students graduate with degrees in Liberal Arts, there are no majors or electives. Shimer had another characteristic, the student body consisted of people who were seeking both academic and spiritual growth. In the yearbooks of that time there are no pictures of a football team, but there are many pictures of students sitting outside on the lawn, smiling at each other, and discussing the meaning of Peace, Love, and Brotherhood.

Peter and John had created a great little trip room in their house. Their bedrooms were in the attic, with vertical walls about four feet high on the sides. The trip room was in the little triangular space left under the roof outside the bedroom sidewall. It had oriental rugs on the floor and the ceiling and walls were covered with India prints. It was cozy, comfortable, and an excellent environment for getting high.

Our second day at Illinois Beach we decided to express our disdain for Chicago by attacking the city from the air. We went to Zion and purchased some colored tissue wrapping paper, a small bottle of Elmer's glue, and we scrounged up a few feet of wire from somewhere. We glued eight sheets of the tissue together to form a square tube, about two feet on each side and six feet high. We cut triangular pieces to make a peaked top to the tube, and another set to make a peaked bottom, but we left the center of the bottom unglued. With the wire, we made a ring about eighteen inches in diameter, with a few spokes radiating toward the center. The ring of wire was then glued to the bottom peak to form a round opening. We tore a strip of old tee shirt about two inches wide and two feet long, soaked it in melted candle wax and then rolled it into a tight cylinder. Using the spokes of wire, we secured the cylinder of waxed fabric in the center of the wire circle.

That evening there was no moon, and a very gentle breeze blowing toward Chicago. Two people held the tissue paper balloon, for that is what it was, upright, while another lit the wax wick. The flaming wick quickly filled the balloon with hot air, and, after a few minutes, we released it. It floated into the air and out over the lake, glowing in different colors as it turned. It was a beautiful thing, and it slowly drifted away toward Chicago. It finally drifted out of sight. If the power had gone off in Chicago that multicolored thing in the sky probably would have created a panic. The power didn't go off, but we were happy, for we had expressed our feelings in an appropriate manner for hippies who believed in Peace, Love, and Brotherhood.

Book: Touchstone by Laurie R. King

The 1920's were not one of my favorite eras. That is the decade in which gangsters became a part of the society, thanks to prohibition. The people who wanted to force us to follow their standard of morality ended up producing something even worse. The whole decade seemed to be shallow and without ideals. Then Laurie King writes a book about idealists in the 1920's.

Her idealists are the union sympathizers, socialists, communists, anarchists, and similar weirdos, whose ideals lead them to throwing bombs (actually, the bomber hides them in various places). On the other side is an American FBI agent who both hates and sympathizes with them. And, the whole thing takes place in the English countryside.

Once, in Kansas City, I received an anonymous phone call, and the caller said, “Be sitting outside at around 7:00 pm.” I forgot to go outside, so I missed hearing the bomb go off, but I did understand why he set off the bomb. Touchstone reminded me of those days. It's far from being her best book, but it's worth reading.

Music

Have you heard Daft Punk's Technologic? It's interesting, but the video is creepy.

Farm News 01-27-08

Sunday morning, after chores, 42°
Weight 118 lbs

Barn News

Notice that I have added a new measurement to the heading. I try to remember to check the temperature each Sunday morning as I come in from morning chores, somewhere between 8:00 and 9:00, usually. Now, when I come in from Sunday morning chores, I will also check my weight and record it in the heading of Farm News. Sharing the progress of my diet project with the rest of the world might help me remember to restrain myself when faced with Paula's chocolate chip cookies.

Paula makes cookies and I make Birdie Burger. A batch of Birdie Burger starts with two to five pounds of lard warmed to room temperature. To that I add, for each pound of lard, about a half pound of 17% protein poultry mash, a half pound of sunflower seeds, a half pound of poultry mixed scratch grains, some cheap peanut butter, and a quarter pound of Elderberries. All that stuff is then mixed together by hand, a process which gives me purple fingers from the Elderberries. I then make it into patties that will fit into the woodpecker feeders, wrap each patty in waxed paper, and store in the freezer.

We seem to be out of the polar weather for a while. Perhaps the birds will begin finding their natural feed more. I am feeding sunflower seed and Birdie Burger. The birds here are eating a lot sunflower seeds and going through the Birdie Burger at a record rate. Jeannette, a friend who lives about ten miles away, has fed a hundred pounds of sunflower seed this month, a quantity that usually would have lasted all winter at her feeders.

At my feeders are Chickadees, Tufted Titmice, Nuthatches, Cardinals, a few Blue Jays, and a few Starlings. The same mix is visiting Jeannette's feeders, along with a great many Gold Finches and Purple Finches. Jeannette has White Breasted Nuthatches but no Red Breasted Nuthatches. We both have Downy and Red Breasted Woodpeckers. The Woodpeckers, Starlings, and Red Breasted Nuthatches feed most heavily on the Birdie Burger. On Thursday a flock of House Finches showed up and then disappeared again on Friday.

Tripping to Chicago – part 2

The Aztec Ambulance had plenty of room for two people. Carrying six people required four of them to ride in the back. When all six of us piled into the back we resembled a litter of oversize puppies in a small nest, crowded but perfectly happy.
We left Lawrence in the morning, successfully navigated through Kansas City, and started across Missouri on US 24. Kansas was uptight, but Missouri was uptight and trashy. The highway was poorly maintained, the roadsides were weedy, and there were derelict automobiles littering the landscape. Missouri is a state best crossed at night.

Before we came to the Mississippi we turned north and followed the river to Davenport, Iowa, where my parents were living, arriving in time for my mother to provide us with a good, home cooked dinner. We spent the night on my parent's living room floor and had a hearty breakfast before we left on the next leg of our journey.

Somewhere in this part of the trip we discovered Road Songs. Road Songs are similar to Zen koans, inspired by roadside billboards, and delivered to a Country-Western sounding tune. They also have the quality of being impossible to remember, so I can't repeat any, especially this many years later. I do remember that some of them were about the Marlboro Man's pants smoking after he dropped his cigarette. A little bit of pot made them sound terrifically witty. What the Road Songs probably indicated was that we had already run out of anything interesting to say to each other, so we rode to Chicago on silly songs.

We stopped at the outskirts of Chicago and smoked the last of our pot. We had heard that we wouldn't enjoy being put in a Chicago jail, so we burned the evidence and had a good time doing it. Then, high and happy, we headed for the heart of the city. We found a place to park, stepped out the truck, and were stretching out the kinks in our backs when a long-haired guy rode up on a bicycle. “Just get here?” he asked.

He said he had an apartment near by and invited us to spend the night with him. That sounded good to us, and we put his bike in the back, along with five hippies, he got in the passenger seat, and we drove to his place. He even had off-street parking where we could put the Aztec Ambulance. So, we all settled down in his apartment, he put on some brown rice to cook, and the only thing we lacked was pot. Our host said his dealer would probably be by later.

About the time the brown rice was ready there was loud bang on the door, and then the door crashed open, and a half a dozen cops came barging into the apartment, all with their guns in one hand and night sticks in the other. Shit! It was a raid, a raid without the niceties of a search warrant. Somebody had reported a bunch of hippies going into the building and, in Chicago, that was sufficient grounds for a raid.

Those cops weren't interested in enforcing any laws, they simply wanted an opportunity to kill us.

When I'm facing a bunch of people with guns who want to kill me, I prefer to be armed with more than beads, bells, and brown rice. I was angry and scared.

The cops finally left after pushing us around a bit and making various sorts of threatening growls. We thanked our host for an enlightening evening, went back out to the Aztec Ambulance, and left Chicago, heading north along the west side of Lake Michigan.

A Reader Responds

The physician who has promised to keep me alive to 114 responded to this paragraph:
I saw the physician last week for an annual checkup. The appointment was scheduled so that I would have baby bunnies of just the right age to act as attack rabbits.

Unfortunately, Suzette lost her last litter, so I had no bunnies. The physician took advantage of my lack of defense-bunnies to tell me I had to go on a diet and lose weight. I haven't noticed him losing any weight, but I kept my mouth shut and accepted his orders.

His response was: I'll work on it too.

I'm glad to know that he is taking care of his own health because he needs to stay alive and active for another 43 years if he is going to keep me alive to 114. Running around outside doing chores in cold weather has taken two pounds off my oversize waistline in the past week.

Farm News 01-20-08

Sunday morning, after chores, 17° with a cool breeze

Barn News

Jesse, who works for me occasionally, asked if he could keep a rabbit or two in my rabbitry until he made a set of hutches for himself. I happily agreed, and last week he showed up with a very pretty Red Satin doe. He hadn't named her, so I called her Sally, after a pretty red-haired reader. He hopes to purchase a buck soon, and then breed Sally. I'm delighted, and he can keep them here as long as he wishes, for baby bunnies attract children, who amuse me.

I saw the physician last week for an annual checkup. The appointment was scheduled so that I would have baby bunnies of just the right age to act as attack rabbits. Unfortunately, Suzette lost her last litter, so I had no bunnies. The physician took advantage of my lack of defense-bunnies to tell me I had to go on a diet and lose weight. I haven't noticed him losing any weight, but I kept my mouth shut and accepted his orders.

It's COLD. Saturday morning it was 4° when I did chores, and the thermometer I checked is on the porch, where it generally reads four or five degrees high in the winter. That means that all the water containers were full of ice. Water doesn't cool below 32°, below that it turns into ice. Ice, however, can be as cold as the air temperature. If you put 55° water into a bucket that has ice in it, the ice rapidly cools the water and the bucket freezes over again quickly. So, it is best to break the ice on top, pour out any water under it, and then knock out as much of the ice as you can without breaking the bucket. All the time you are doing that you are shivering and have, if you aren't careful, wet gloves. Where is global warming when we need a little bit of it?

Finally, Something from Our Asian Correspondent

The following dispatch has been edited to improve intelligibility:

I'm going to Vietnam and China for a visit. My base remains here in Sihanoukville. I'll be traveling for a month. I will be mainly in Hanoi. I guess I'll have to buy a Ho Chi Minh t-shirt. I want one with a big hammer and sickle on it.

Gonna check out Shanghai, China. At last! All the Chinese food I want and then some.

No bad guys here. Only poor and very desperate people. I was leery of cops when I got here, but they don't bother me at all. I buzz right by the cops on my rented 250 cc Honda: no helmet, no license, no insurance, no problem. The 250 cc bikes are incredibly powerful and fast. Today is my fourth day on it and only 25 years since I last rode a motorcycle. It ain't no motorbike, it's a kickass motorcycle. I am getting the hang of traffic around here. It is treacherous and terrifying, but I'm catching on. So far I've skinned my thumb and ankle (but I only dropped the bike once), and burned the inside of my ankle on the hot engine. I just picked that bad boy up off the ground and rode on with a cop looking on. No problem, this is Cambodia. You gotta love it.

Tripping to Chicago

Early in 1968 I decided I needed an automobile, not just any auto, but one that suited my station in life as an Acid Priest. What I found was a 1940 Chevrolet Panel Delivery truck. It was shaped like a station wagon, but there were no side windows behind the front seat, nor were there any seats behind the front seat. It had two doors at the rear that opened to either side and met in the middle.

When I purchased it, the body showed neither dents nor rust, but the blue paint was faded and discolored. A few hours with a couple of cans of paint and brushes, and I had a panel truck with a white body and black fenders. On each side, where the side windows would have been if it had any, Dixie, an artist, painted rows of small pictographs in various colors. Bingo! It became the Aztec Ambulance, a vehicle fit to carry an Acid Priest on his appointed rounds.

I found a mattress that would fit in the back, and then covered the interior with a an excellent hippie collage of flowers, peace signs, butterflies, and album covers. I installed an incense holder, an essential accessory for pot smokers; rigged up a couple of small interior lights; tossed in an assortment of pillows, cushions, and quilts; added a picnic cooler; and the Aztec Ambulance was ready to rock and roll.

It was spring, I had a fine vehicle, so the only sensible thing to do was to take a road trip. Road trips are more fun with companions, so I mentioned to a few friends that I was ready for a road trip. Marilyn and Becky quickly said, “Yes, and we have a friend, Julie, who will want to go.” Fred and Tom looked at Marilyn and Becky and immediately said they wanted to go.

Many hippies feel that making plans denigrates The Force which leads all of us to where we need to be. I'm of the opinion that The Force can guide planning as well as it can guide us at highway intersections. I wanted to choose a destination and study a map to determine the best way to reach that destination, 'best way' meaning the most interesting path, not necessarily the most direct.

The six of us piled into the back of the Aztec Ambulance, lit a stick of incense, fired up a joint, and started discussing a destination. Fred and I had recently made a trip to the West Coast, none of us were interested in the south, north of Kansas there is a lot of road but not much else, so we decided on east. The Democratic National Convention was to be held that summer in Chicago, which is to the east, and Abby Hoffman was calling on hippies to attend, so we set Chicago as our destination. Yippee!

Before on departs on an important journey that is supposed to be both spiritual and spatial, it is wise to have a religious service. The six of us all retreated to a nice old stone farm house where friends lived and, early one morning, sat down together, smoked a joint, and took a hit of LSD. For the next six hours or so we sat and laid around, occasionally saying, “Wow,” or “Ruuushh.” It was pretty decent acid.
The next morning we all piled into the Aztec Ambulance and headed into the rising sun.

Velvet Underground

A reader writes:

The first Velvet Underground and Nico album is now widely considered the most influential rock album in history, even though it was never conceived as a rock album. The Velvet's didn't give a damn what anyone thought of it and that's the only way it could ever have been made. Any young band musician now is familiar with the entire Velvet Underground oeuvre, even if they may or may not be familiar with anything by Elvis or the Beatles.

I used to listen to it while injecting heroin as a teen. You could time it perfectly to get off during the crescendo. Some real artistry there. Most junk heads just preferred soft blues background sounds. There was a later VU album for that too just called The Velvet Underground. I listened to all four VU albums on an iPod driving across Kansas a couple of years ago. Got me all the way across the State with no stops, and still sounds as cool as ever.

He seems to be saying that listening to the Velvet Underground will increase bladder capacity. Amazing.

The Kansas Legislature

Waiting for debate is a resolution condemning 'Gangsta Rap'. You will never convince me that a majority of the legislators have listened to, and been able to understand, any kind of rap, but, nevertheless, some legislators think it needs to be condemned. Their action will, I'm sure, have a great influence on the music to which young people listen.

There has never been a recorded instance of an undocumented immigrant trying to vote in Kansas, but we are almost certainly going to have a law against it, if the governor signs the bill once it passes. If the legislature makes enough noise about fixing non-existent problems they hope we won't notice they have done nothing about fixing real problems.

Farm News 01-13-08

Sunday morning, after chores, 28°

Barn News

Keeping ducks is a short path to insanity. Ducks quickly manage to convince you that they are the dumbest creatures on earth. The ducks living in the barn refused to go into the barn tonight, because Weasel was there. Weasel has been sleeping in the barn, less than fifteen feet from where the ducks sleep, for the past three months, at least. She never chases ducks or annoys them in any way. But, tonight, they decided it was too dangerous to go in if Weasel was already there. Arghh!

Bright Things in the Sky

I want to see an Iridium flare, the reflection off the solar panels of an Iridium satellite, sometimes visible during daylight. On January 16, at 7:41 am, 0.6 km east of Oskaloosa, it might be possible to see one. I'm usually milking the ducks at that time, but maybe I'll remember to go look. There should be another the next morning at 7:35 am in the same location.

The International Space Station [ISS] will be visible from here around 6:00 am every morning from January 14th to 18th, and twice on January 19. On the 19th it will be visible at 5:23 and again at 6:55, which gives you an idea as to how fast that thing is traveling around the planet.

If you live in Wichita, Kansas, you might be able to see the ISS in the West North West [WNW] at 5:23 am and 6:55 am on January 19th . Out of bed early, Wichitans! On January 16th you might see an Iridium flare 9.5 km east of the center of Wichita at 5:53 am.

My youngest daughter is working on the SORCE satellite, which just went up. Actually, she works on the data from the satellite, not the satellite itself. My 8 month old grandson would be very upset if his mommy went to space and left him behind. SORCE is sort of a weather satellite for the sun. The prediction is for very high temperatures.

Report from Cambodia

Our Cambodian correspondent is reluctant to submit anything for publication because I made a few changes in his reports to make them more interesting. His daughter, who is twelve, reads Farm News, and he is afraid I will give her the wrong idea about his life in Cambodia. He can't seem to get it into his thick skull that his daughter is a very bright girl, generally able to sort fact from fiction, and, at her age, not all that interested in the sordid stuff, anyway. Of course, I have to remind myself that I occasionally feel the same way about my youngest daughter, who is now 33 and a mother. A note to all daughters of the world: men like to embellish the truth, and I usually do.

He is hoping that his daughter will spend part of the summer with him. Why, I wonder, does he think any intelligent twelve year old would want to spend part of the summer in the tropics? She will want to stay there only if he offers her the opportunity to experience things she couldn't find in the USA, and my embellishments of his reports might make it seem as if such opportunities might exist there.

My little girl now knows, or suspects, that I once visited various Mexican whorehouses. She still trusts me enough to allow me to tickle my grandson, which is what counts, really. Of course, my little girl is 33, not 12, and that might make a difference. Perhaps I should conduct a poll.

Daughters of men, would you love your father less if you knew he once visited a Mexican whorehouse? On second thought, don't answer that question. Oh, what the hell, go ahead and answer. I'll print your responses, without your names, and I won't change them.

Anyway, back to Cambodia, where our intrepid correspondent writes:
OK, ISS stands for international space station, but I find it quite annoying when abbreviations are used with no prior reference. If this is annoying to you, please feel free to tell me off. Lately, it seems everyone is doing it.

I'm in Kampot. Gonna catch a taxi back to Snookie in19 minutes. Gotta go.

Poor Raymond, everyone is telling him off, while he sits around drinking coffee with fellow ex-pats in a tropical paradise. Snookie is probably Sihanoukville. Kampot rates an entry in Wikipedia.

He's right about the ISS. I wrote out International Space Station the first time I mentioned it the week before, but not last week.

Telepopmusik

Music that grabs me, especially when I've been drinking. I wonder if it would have grabbed me in 1957, in Paris, if it followed Whole Lot of Shakin' Goin' On. I drank a lot then. Good pop music generally sounds like it is something for which one has been waiting.

Heroin, done by Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, grabbed me in 1968. I first heard it in Sunshine House, where there is now a KFC franchise. About an hour earlier I had taken a tablet of what was called Orange Sunshine, some excellent LSD. The music completely satisfied any interest I had in feeling like Jesus's son. There are at least three recordings of Lou Reed doing Heroin but the first is the best, I think.