However, Anthony Fauci’s pardon is not the first of this type. President Gerald Ford famously pardoned Richard Nixon in 1974 for “all offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed” during his presidency. That certainly was broad enough to ensure that Nixon could not be prosecuted for crimes known or unknown while he was in office.

According to Legal Clarity.org

The U.S.AU.S. Supreme Court confirmed [in Ex parte Garland] in 1866 that the pardon power “may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment.” That means a pardon can legally block prosecution before it ever begins, as long as the underlying conduct already happened….

The Supreme Court stated in Burdick v. United States (1915) that a pardon “carries an imputation of guilt; acceptance a confession of it.”...

Here is where preemptive pardons create an unexpected trap. The Burdick case arose because a newspaper editor refused a pardon precisely to preserve his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Once someone accepts a pardon for specific conduct, they can no longer invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying about that conduct, because the pardon has removed any risk of criminal punishment. A prosecutor could then compel the pardoned person to testify before a grand jury or at trial, and refusal would mean contempt of court.

Those paying attention during the COVID era and the subsequent revelations know that Fauci spoke out of both sides of his mouth, saying and writing one thing in private and quite another in public. The harm his policies did is probably unknowable, but we do know that under the NIH’s royalty rules, both he and Francis Collins received considerable remuneration. Whether individual scientists and leadership should be receiving royalties at all is an ethical question that I believe should be addressed. If you have a stake in a particular solution, it seems to me that it’s much easier to overlook any other.

I was baffled at first as to why Dr. Fauci refused to answer any questions until I realized that a presidential pardon covers only federal crimes. State governments can still file charges and at least 4 states (Florida, Louisiana, West Virginia, and Alabama) have already indicated their intention to do so. Florida, Louisiana, and West Virginia have jointly issued subpoenas to Fauci regarding financial incentives, grants, book deals, and his COVID-19 guidance’s impact on their states.

The question for me is, “Why is this a political issue, with a clear division between the two major parties?”

It is clear that Senator Rand Paul has made several extremely impolitic comments, stating that he wants to see Fauci “behind bars”. That is a definite appearance of bias, no doubt about it. Yet, the policies and vaccines that Dr. Fauci pushed were harmful, causing unnecessary suffering and death, and no matter why Senator Paul called the hearing, there are questions that need to be answered, issues that must be addressed if we are to avoid government overreach of this type again.

• The entire technology on which the mRNA vaccines were based is faulty, according to its inventor, Dr. Robert Malone.

• Vaccine injuries affected at least 7% of recipients. That includes myocarditis, pericarditis, neurological issues such as tremors, as well as injuries outside these categories. VSAFE, a program which followed 10,000 voluntary users, notably did not have “click the box” categories such as myo- and pericarditis, even though these were known side effects. Instead, they had to be reported in a free-form box. Though the results of the check boxes were obtained after a court judgment, the free form data have still not been released, in spite of several FOIA requests.

• Senator Ron Johnson’s hearings have revealed a shocking pattern of gaslighting of the vaccine injured. The lack of attendance of the hearings by Democratic Senators was particularly perplexing.

• Medical doctors lost their licenses for stating an opinion contrary to the government (both federal and state) narrative. That included informed consent; i.e., the doctors telling patients both the benefits and the risks of the vaccines and the policies. Informed consent was the very standard set by the Nuremberg Code, for which the United States of America played a central role In creation and enforcement.

• Depression and suicide rates rose dramatically.

• Freedom of speech took a giant hit as the federal government pushed tech giants such as Meta, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram to remove accounts that did not comply with its definition of truth. Dr. Robert Malone was removed from Twitter for criticizing the mRNA platform, which he had invented, as being unsafe. Three categories were defined to remove dissenting voices: misinformation, disinformation, and (my favorite) malinformation, which was defined as ”based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.” The greatest purveyor of malinformation turned out to be the U.S. government.

• All cause mortality remained stable until the COVID injections were released, after which excess mortality jumped and is still being observed.

• The definition of “pandemic” was changed in 2009, just before the H1N1 flu epidemic. Where a pandemic formerly referred to the mortality of a worldwide epidemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) changed it to refer to the number of cases, regardless of how severe. During the COVID pandemic, the number of cases became the fear-mongering tactic without any reference to lethality or even severity.

• The definition of vaccine was changed to allow what was clearly a gene therapy. This reclassification allowed mRNA products to bypass stricter regulatory requirements mandated for genetic therapies. Reclassifying them as vaccines made them subject to far more lenient regulations, thus enabling approvals that ignore the established safety assessments, studies, and long-term follow-ups typically required for gene therapies.

• Useful medicines such as ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine—both of which are termed “essential medicines” by the WHO--and various steroids and antivirals, which were used in other countries with outstanding success, were denigrated and even outlawed in the United States of America. Early treatment, successful early treatment, was eschewed and doctors such as Dr. Vladimir Zelenko and Dr. Sayed Haider using such treatments were not only ignored, but attacked and vilified. People who were sick were told to come to the hospital only when they couldn’t breath, denied access to effective medicines that were out of patent and far safer than both the COVID jabs and Remdesivir. Could that be because EUA authorization could not be given to these jabs if other effective medicines were already at hand?

• The release of the “vaccines” launched almost cult-like promotions. I looked upon them with disbelief and thought, “Why would you have to push this so hard if it worked?”

• Free fries with your hamburger—for a vaccine? Skits on TV to promote uptake of a government sponsored medical intervention?

• As well as businesses, churches were shut down, a clear violation of the First Amendment. There is no exception in the Constitution for epidemics of any kind. Rest assured the Founding Fathers knew about epidemics. The most shameful thing is that so many churches buckled under government pressure.

So, exactly what is the truth about COVID-19, the vaccines, and the policies, and why is the truth political? Shouldn’t every person want to know what actually happened and the consequences of the decisions made?

I was dismayed—and yes, very surprised—to see this hearing split over party lines. I was astonished that Democratic Senators claimed they hadn’t seen any documentation, that they’d been purposely shut out, and then learned that they had all been notified of the site of the documentation over a year ago, and yet not one of them had ever requested a login. I was flabbergasted that not one of the Democratic Senators had a meaningful question for Dr. Fauci, instead taking their designated time to laud him on his long service in NIAID. I was led to ask, “Don’t they even care? Is political party more important than truth?”

Was the party division because most of the damage was done under a Democratic President? The “vaccines” were developed during the previous Republican President, Donald Trump, under the ill-conceived Operation Warp Speed, which threw safety testing right out the window. A vaccine normally takes several years and trials to prove its safety; the mRNA “vaccines” were approved after months. Any meaningful long-term conclusions went by the wayside in the rush to get to market. The very product that both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris vilified as untrustworthy because it came from the Trump administration became mandatory under the Biden administration.

The COVID-19 “pandemic” caused only a fraction of the harm that we saw. The damage was primarily from the policies that came from public health officials, of whom Anthony Fauci was the leading voice, the voice over two administrations. Those policies were, astonishingly, lock stepped across most of the world. Shouldn’t we want to know how that happened, who made the decisions, and why?

Government exists to protect our rights , not our health. Partisanship has no place in proper government, and government has no legitimate role to play in what we put in our bodies. I look forward to the day when our elected officials care more about truth than the political party they belong to.

The concept of “best friends” is probably as old as human history and there are many classical examples, and it is not the exclusive province of women. Of course, the examples I cite are culture oriented; if I were in India, they’d be very different.

David and Jonathan were like brothers to each other, and every Biblical historian knows of it. Jonathan remained loyal even when his father, Saul, wanted David dead, warning him to leave when the king plotted to kill him.

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were close friends, sharing a complex relationship. Politics, as so often does, caused a 12 year rift between them; yet they reconciled and exchanged over 170 letters, dying within hours on July 4, 1826, unaware of the other’s death.

In everyday parlance, a friend is someone with whom you share intimate moments, BFFs (Best Friends Forever) are close friends who don’t have to hide their true self from the other. Yet the term BFF is used mostly by girls of preteen and teen years, and diminishes as they go their separate ways.

So what, then, is a friend? Does one have to be a “best friend” to be a true friend? As I consider it, I don’t think so.

A friend is someone who always has your best interests at heart, knows when to say something and when to bite their tongue, yet is not afraid to tell you when you’re heading into murky waters. The person who hasn’t seen a close acquaintance in a week or so and checks on them is still a friend. The thing about friendship is that one can be a friend to someone without its being reciprocated.

King Saul was an enemy to David even though David had always been a friend to Saul, soothing him with his harp, leading Saul’s armies to great victories, and even when Saul turned against him, never betraying the loyalty he had shown Saul during their long acquaintance.

What guided me on this pathway is this:

I have often read that verse and thought, “A friend must obey? How is that being a friend?” As I read through it again, I read it in context and deeply pondered it.

The word “friend” in the Bible comes from the Greek word philos which is brotherly love rather than a master/servant relationship. Up to that time, the disciples called Jesus Rabbi, or teacher, which was translated from the Greek didaskalos, which designates the master/teacher relationship.

Now he was changing the relationship to something very different.

Friendship is built on actions. Jesus is telling his disciples that he is laying down his life for them. By that exceptional deed, he is asking us to show our own love by our actions. When he says “Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you”, what is the commandment he just gave? To love one another as he has loved us. We show our love by our actions, we don’t just feel a warm fuzzy.

And finally, he invites us to enter into a new relationship; not a master/servant or teacher/student dependency, but an intimate relationship where he lets us know what he is doing. We are informed, not just directed.

What I finally realized is that whether or not I believe, Jesus is indeed my Friend, since he laid down his life for me. I become his friend in return when I accept his friendship.

That, for me, should be the basis for all friendship, and it’s a glorious concept, one that I hope I can live up to.

On July 14th, the French will celebrate Bastille Day. They don’t say they’re celebrating the day, July 14th, they’re celebrating the event. And so are we!

We don’t celebrate December 25th; we celebrate Christmas We don’t celebrate January 1st; we celebrate the New Year, on New Year’s Day. July 24th is dear to the hearts of Latter-day Saints, but they celebrate Pioneer Day to commemorate the first pioneers to enter the Salt Lake Valley, a place of refuge for a persecuted people.

Today I am celebrating INDEPENDENCE DAY, the anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, and this year the Semiquincentennial of our nation’s birth. I’ll go to the waterfront tonight and watch fireworks over Penobscot Bay. Let me never forget what the day means.

Happy Independence Day!

I was looking up the origins of a nautical phrase, which led me to a website on common phrases that have nautical origins. One of them, “Another day, another dollar” attributed this to a Joseph Conrad novel. Intrigued, I kept reading and—I kid you not—found this: “Joseph Conrad referred to the form of payment in his seafaring novel ‘The [N-word] of the ‘Narcissus: A Tale of the Forecastle’, 1897”. Unbelieving, I looked for lists of his books and on another site, found the same book listed as “The N*gger of the Narcissus”. FINALLY, I found, on Wikipedia, of all places, the book listed with its actual title.

It is true that Conrad was upbraided for the title even in his day, but to call avoiding mention of the title absurd doesn’t even begin to name it. We are now to deny and relegate one well-know author’s work to the dust-bin of history, because he did not respect the sensitivities of the victim class of 125+ years in the future.

This, of course, completely overlooks the fact that “nigger” was a mispronunciation of “negro”, also now a banned word--which is merely a Spanish word that means BLACK. Negro, of course, was a perfectly respectable word used by Martin Luther King. How quickly we forget.

We are all idiots, both those who insist on these political niceties, and those who hurry to observe them. How is this any different from the pronouns that we are demanded to use, or the insistence on nodding our heads sagely in agreement that yes, indeed, trans-women are women, even though to be a “trans-woman” is to admit that you are a man?

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at the retrospective moral judgment on Conrad, as we’ve seen statues pulled down, a clear assumption that people in the past should have thought like us, because of course, we are morally superior.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that some websites actually refuse to print the name of the book. After all, Huckleberry Finn, a classic, is now forbidden or hidden away in many school libraries. Heaven forbid anyone should be offended while reading a classic that accurately portrays the speech of its day! The irony, of course, is that Huckleberry Finn is patently anti-slavery.

Yet another book that comes to mind for political correctness is Flowers for Algernon, a book I read many years ago, whose protagonist, Charlie, is described as “retarded”. Not allowed! Yet banning the book overlooks its richness and its scope. It is brilliant, profound, and profoundly sad, but it’s a book I would recommend to anyone.

All this posturing. I, for one, am heartily sick of it. Can we wake up now?

I get it. I’m picky. And one of the things I’m picky about is language. I love language. Used both wisely and clearly, it’s a medium for understanding, for communication, for debate, for explanation, and it can be beautiful. It can flow.

I have some hangups, I admit it, but I am dismayed at the lack of ability to speak clearly and correctly in one’s native language: In the United States of America, that’s English. I am surrounded by evidence that our schools are failing us, and probably have been for decades if the current crop of podcasters and journalists is any indication. A few examples;

Sierra Nevada Mountains: Sierra means mountains, or mountain range. Nevada means snow covered or snowy. So saying Sierra Nevada Mountains is redundant. Snowy Mountains Mountains? Hmm.

Rio Grande River: Rio means river. Grande means Big. So...Big River River?

Nuclear is pronounced new-CLEE-are not new-CUE-lar. This one makes me cringe. I had a professor, a physicist no less, who tossed that out often, assaulting my very ears.

And then there are words like exquisite. When I was younger, it was EXquisite. Now it seems to be exQUISite, as if yaa gotta squiz that syllable out. Aargh! My ears hurt!

The Plague of Verbal Tics

Verbals tics make me a little crazy, too. The worst is “like”. I had always thought the word “like” was a comparative word, when it isn’t a verb. This is like that, that is like this, but no more. Now it’s a hesitation word, a filler, and so badly overused that I feel like all I’m hearing is “like like like”. “It was, like, a wonderful day, like, we were just walking along, like, and I saw these friends and we, like, stopped to like, say hello. And I was, like, ‘I haven’t seen you in so looong!’ ”

Is this an exaggeration? Well...sadly, only sometimes. The worst thing is that even people I like listening to, people who I think have their pulse on things of import, liberally sprinkle their comments with “like”.

Howie Carr of Boston radio fame and the author of a couple of books on Whitey Bulger, a notorious Boston gangster who disappeared in 1994, used to make fun of Ted Kennedy, calling him “the wizard of ‘ahs’”. If you ever listened to Ted Kennedy giving a speech in Congress, you would understand why. Uh, ah, um, these were all fillers back in the day. Now we are stuck with “like…..like…..like”.

To be sure, there are other filler words. I doubt that that anyone who uses them is even aware of it. One of my teenage nephews—I’ll call him James—certainly wasn’t until I said, “like what?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said, ‘it was, like’... Is it like that or is it not?”

He gazed at me for a long minute. Then he started talking again and each time he said, “I was like” or “it was like, I stopped him and asked him again. Abashed, he admitted he’d never realized he said it so much.

I am happy to report that in his 30’s, there’s nary a “like” to be had, at least when speaking to me. One small step for mankind!

I love listening to or watching “The Highwire”. The topics are timely and important. Here, too, verbal tics invade the room. In Del Bigtree’s case, it’s “y’know”. Another person I enjoy is Eric Weinstein. He also has a filler or two. And mine? Uh...I don’t know. Maybe someone will tell me, because I don’t notice my own speech.

My Linguistic Bête Noire

One of my greatest linguistic irritants is the loss of the subjunctive mood, where what is expressed is not necessarily real, or when demands or wishes are made. Sadly, it’s falling out of use, with only a few exceptions that are an integral part of the language, such as “If I were you…”, “Be that as it may”, or “Truth be told”. There are many more, but most speakers have no idea that the phrases are subjunctive, and many haven’t ever heard the words “subjunctive mood” before. Granted, the use of the subjunctive is now labeled “advanced” or “formal” English, but it behooves anyone who wants a clear grasp of language to both learn and use it. Lately I've noticed that the subjunctive mood is becoming an endangered species, often absent from books that appear never to have encountered a competent copy editor.Some examples:

• It was required that each of its parishes keep records of the baptisms

  (Not keeps (or kept) records…)

• I demanded that she walk away.

  (Not walks (or walked) away.)

• It is necessary that she leave immediately.

• I suggested that he take the offered position.

• If I were to do that, I’d have to leave tomorrow.

• I wish I were able to start all over again.

The Vagaries of Meaning

Did you know, there are darker sides to language usage. Words get co-opted, the meanings change, people are loath to use them in their proper form! Oh, the shame!

Words have history and some of it is very surprising, as I learn when I investigate the etymology.

As I was reading my scriptures one morning, I noticed on the lesson plan for the First Book of Samuel that “Saul was a keeper of donkeys”. Now, the King James translation, which we use, never shows the word donkey. It says ass, and why should it not? That’s what they are. A male ass is a jack, or a jack ass. A female is a jenny. I remember during one scripture study, the person who was reading came to the word ass and hesitated, hemming and hawing, refusing to say it, and finally changed the word to donkey. I just rolled my eyes.

Looking at the etymology of ass is pretty interesting. In British English, the word arse means buttocks and it’s a word still in use in most English speaking countries. That’s what the term was in the American colonies and early United States, but language develops, pronunciations slur,, so we now have arse morphed to ass.

Another explanation, I suppose, is a shortening of the word asinine. c. 1600, “obstinate, stupid, offensively silly,” from Latin asininus “stupid,” literally “like an ass.”

So originally, calling somebody an ass just meant that they were stubborn and unwilling. The use of the word ass to mean anything but donkey is very much dialectical, and yet here we are, people getting in a tizzy, refusing to say the word lest they be thought to be using foul language.

The loss of -r- before -s- is not uncommon (burst/bust, curse/cuss, horse/hoss, (burst/bust, curse/cuss, horse/hoss, barse/bass (Barse? Bass? Whoda thunk it?), garsh/gash, parcel/passel), it just seems no one gets upset over the other words.

The publicly correct (or politically correct, however you want to look at it) way to say it has even infected Bible translations. You know, the word donkey was actually a slang word that entered the English language sometime around 1785. That’s also about the same time that arse and ass became equivalents, and ass became a vulgar term for buttocks. Donkey emerged as a polite, neutral alternative, and starting in the late 19th to early 20th century, newer Bible translations began using it instead of the historical word ass. (Did you know that “vulgar” actually means “common”?)

I see the same thing talking about dogs. Just as with horses a female is a mare and a male is a stallion, and with cattle a female is a cow and a male is a bull, so with dogs a female is a bitch, a male is a dog,. However, the word bitch, like the word ass, has been co-opted by people who use it in ways that were never intended.

Or maybe they’re just talking about the personalities, because an ass can be a rather stubborn creature and a bitch, especially one protecting her puppies, can be vicious.

Breeders call them what they are. Why this reluctance to name something by its real name in the correct context?

No breeder worth his (or her) salt, is going to call a female dog anything but a bitch, and in dog shows, a female is always called a bitch, and a female dog might get the honor of “Winners Bitch”. No one bats an eyelid.

Of course, as is my wont, I became curious about the etymology of the word and discovered some fascinating facts. For one, the word bitch as applied to female humans is much more of a swear word in the United States than in Britain. (Y’know there’s actually no surprise there. For a people who brag about their freedom, we Americans remain in some ways surprisingly puritanical.)

The more interesting thing, though, is that the history of the word as a slur is about a thousand years long. I was surprised to find so many websites expounding on its history. Apparently, I’m not the only one fascinated by words and their history.

Accord to The Conversation the word bitch has always been about power.

[It] began as a straightforward term for a female dog.

Almost immediately, though, it leapt into figurative use as an insult for women, comparable to calling someone a “slut” today. Interestingly, around the same time it became an insult for men as well.

Aimed at a woman, it usually implied disobedience, immodesty or shamelessness. Aimed at a man, it referred to human vices such as greed, arrogance and cowardice.

So the word was thrown at powerful women, comparing them to men. Men, instead, were branded as powerless, comparing them to women. Talk about the vagaries of language!

Could I close this conversation without mentioning that in the 1960’s in California, “bitchin’” became a word for best thing ever?

And if you find this conversation uncomfortable, don’t forget that ubiquitous idiom “Life’s a bitch, and then you die.”

The first indication was about two weeks ago. As I walked across the yard to the chicken coop, I was delighted to see crocuses peeping through the dry grass. A week later they were gone, replaced by daffodils and paper-white narcissus.

Tulips are just pushing up but mostly not in bloom. Soon though! Soon!

Everywhere I looked this week, signs of spring abounded. After several rainy days, temperatures rose into the high 50’s and even into the 60’s! Grass is growing quickly now, and I’ll soon have to pull out my mower. I can’t do it quite yet, though, because it’s full of wildflowers. It’ll just have to stay messy for a while.

Forsythia displayed riots of yellow blooms, seemingly on every back road and the edge of every yard.

Surprisingly I also saw a pink flowering tree. This was so unusual, I had to retrace my drive of a few days ago and take a picture of it, just so I could make sure I wasn’t imagining it! Magnolia—of course.

Color appears even when no leaves or blooms are evident.

I love the emergence of color everywhere. I love the sweet scent of the earth as it wakes up. I even love filling my wheelbarrow with wood mulch, spreading it over that pesky grass that insists on growing in my flower garden and ignoring those bare spots in my lawn.

Of course, I had to run out and buy pansies and ground cover. What is spring, after all, without pansies?

The same day I set them out in my boxes, I planted celery starts, interspersed with garlic and onion. My kale had already been interplanted with allium the week before.

Inside, I have basil in pots, parsley and cilantro encouraged to grow in a small hydroponics unit (and NOT sprouting yet), and several seed packets laid out, waiting for the right moment to urge them forward.

One of the bonuses of spring flowers is that you can eat many of them. Dandelion leaves are sweet before they bloom, but the blossoms themselves are both sunny and delicious. There’s such abundance, I’ll get many meals before they’re gone—and they are yummy, tasting much like mushrooms if they’re sautéed. They can also be used for syrup, in salads, in brownies, in jelly, only limited by the imagination.

Pansies and violets can be added to salads, as well, both blossoms and leaves.

Spring is a time of bounty, a time of rejuvenation, a lifting of spirits and a welcome to joy within. After the long winter, I embrace it.

I’ve had several dogs, but the one that comes to mind the most is my wee Smooth Fox Terrier looking steadily into my eyes while waiting for her bedtime carrot, her tail in a blur her whole aspect one of delight and anticipation. Then there are other memories, like Samantha covered in muck, head raised, her woo woo woo telling my all about it; my Samoyed/Shepherd cross darting into a bush and coming out with a skunk in her mouth; my Sheltie, Chance, my little shadow, sitting, eagerly looking up at me, wanting all of my attention all of the time. I’ve had several dogs and I have a special place in my heart for all of them. Because they are so dear to my heart and close to my memory, I decided to share with you what wonderful dogs that they really were.

Now it’s possible that because this is a far cry from my usual fare, you may find yourself already becoming bored or impatient. That’s fine, just put it down, come back the next time. In fact, I know there are people who don’t like dogs. That’s baffling to me, they act as if dogs are the devils of the world. Perhaps they’ve been frightened when they were very young; perhaps they’ve been brought up that way; perhaps there’s a terrifying experience that they can’t forget.

Those are not the dogs that I knew and loved.

My first memory of a dog was the one Christmas when I was a very small child. A puppy! Under the tree! My mother claimed him to be a Wire Haired Fox Terrier, He most likely was a crossbred; a terrier, definitely, with the size and coloring of a Fox Terrier. My mother promptly named him Shakespeare because she said he would have a beard. I remember a photograph of me perhaps around three years old, Shakespeare in my lap, my head thrown back, laughing joyously. Shakespeare is very mellow. He’s just lying across my lap, not caring about anything. That portrait is gone now, burned in a house fire like so many other memories that disappeared that day, but I had examined that photo and oddly, I don’t remember him having a beard, nor do I remember his coat being full and wirey.

I don’t know if it was the same Christmas or a later one, but I do recall a very happy puppy that had eaten a slew of chocolates when no one was looking. Since chocolate can be toxic, even lethal to dogs, I assume he was taken to the vet for a stomach pump, or (more likely) given some Ipecac to help him bring it all back up.

I don’t have a lot of memories about him because one day we came back from playing and Shakespeare was gone. We looked everywhere, called his name, expecting him to come running. Finally, we asked, “Where’s Shakespeare?”. At the time, my mother’s father was visiting. We were told he really wanted the dog, so my mother agreed to let him take Shakespeare to Maine with him.

We anticipated with joy our reunion when we went to visit the farm in the summer. Unfortunately for us, when we got there, no dog. My grandmother said he liked to snap and bite, and she told my uncle to take him out and shoot him.

I was heartbroken, and as any good child drama queen would do, for weeks I sang

Then I would sob uncontrollably. My mother tells me I was not fun to have around, and my father refused to get another dog for years.

I wonder now if that’s why he was sent to Maine. I don’t remember him snapping at any of us, nor do my siblings, but truly, why else would my mother have agreed to send the family pet, the Christmas present for the children, away?

“The establishment of world order depends not only on its intrinsic desirability and viability, but also on the support of men and groups who decide to dedicate themselves to the completion of such a goal.

“It is incumbent upon the intellectuals to play the decisive role in the formation of pressure groups in favor of world order ... the establishment of world order demands the mobilization of groups dedicated to international pressure [emphasis added] for the gradual implantation of that world order ... the negotiated establishment of world order is theoretically possible and practically feasible since, in the last analysis, the probable effects of nuclear conflagration have made way an impractical alternative to the peaceful solution of contemporary problems.”

Thus, the movement toward a world governance plan was instituted.

Three years later, in April, 1968, the Rockefeller estate hosted a meeting to put a plan into action. A new institution was formed, called The Club of Rome, and consisted of 75 members, consisting of scientists, industrialists, and economists from 25 countries. Who these members were is telling in and of itself. Many were drawn from NATO and the Council on Foreign Relations, and have been able to push their own policies into government and military institutions.

Pay special attention to the first sentence:

“In searching for a new enemy to unite us we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.”

The Club of Rome is outlining their strategy: not pointing out real problems, but how humanity can be manipulated to serve their ends.

“The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.”

Could that be any clearer? Those who would change the world in their own image think that humanity itself should be cleared away. They ascribe to the Malthusian idea that the world cannot sustain a large population, that population control is essential. Since humanity itself is the enemy, dogs, cats, fish, and birds have more right to life than homo sapiens.

In the same New York Times article of April 15, 1976, the following quote stands out:

“In the conditions of the coming times, the necessity of re‐establishing a viable world balance between population and resources—if the present generation is not able to timely adopt the necessary corrective measures—will inevitably tend to bring about a technocratic version of oriental despotism, of which Stalinism and Nazism have already given us an anticipated view,” Professor Jaguaribe said.

In their view, the world needs expert overseers to guide those who are not as informed, not as intelligent as they. We need their steadying hand, their direction, to keep us on the proper path. If they have to create a crisis to bring us into line, what is that to them? They believe that the earth doesn’t have enough resources to support the billions of people who are already here, never mind those still to come. What is more, because they are the ones who are more enlightened, they get to set the agenda and their lives are more valuable.

The goal is depopulation. The means is climate change and all it encompasses.

And what does it encompass? Essentially, it covers everything from agriculture, both livestock and plant, to gender dsyphoria and biological “solutions”such as Covid 19. “Eat insects, they’ll give you enough protein.” “Stop breeding livestock; they contribute methane to the atmosphere.” CO2, which is the foundation of life on earth, is cast as a villain, something to be feared. Ignored are the data which show that climate has always fluctuated, and that carbon dioxide changes always follow other changes. Ignored are such things as the greening of many desert areas since CO2 increased, or that global weather-related deaths are decreasing—not unsurpisingly, since cold is a much greater threat to human life than heat.

Ignored also are the many distinguished scientists who dispute the climate narrative. Many scientists have decried the lack of quality in scientific journals, noting that studies that don’t support the current narrative, regardless of rigor, remain unpublished.

A large part of the agenda that we see rapidly unrolling right now is speech control. During the Covid “pandemic”, anyone who questioned the narrative, including (and perhaps especially) well-known physicians and researchers in the medical field, were silenced by deplatforming, attacks, loss of medical licenses and funding, and thus loss of livelihood.

Today we’re seeing a plethora of international laws, such as Ofcom seeking to silence voices, all done, of course, under the banner of “saving children” Other countries are following suit at an alarming rate. Australia has already passed age verification laws, Spain is on its way, and several states in the United States have followed suit.

John Kerry, the former Secretary of State of the Biden Administration, famously said

“... if people only go to one source, and the source they go to is sick, ... our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence.

“So what we need is to win the ground, win the right to govern, by hopefully winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to implement change.”

“The First Amendment is a “major block” to government control of information and governance. Let that sink in. The web of global control grows tighter and tighter.

Does that mean we throw in the towel? Not at all. The way to overcome lies is with truth. The way to overcome censorship is with discussion. The way to overcome tyranny is with an insistence on freedom, whatever it takes.

The taste is so good and the nutrition so exceptional, that I’m always at a loss why anyone would drink pasteurized milk. Skim raw tastes better than whole pasteurized, and now with “Ultra-Pasteurized”, I wonder how anyone gets nutrition from milk at all. The nutrition is touted as being the same, but really, does anyone look at availability? How many of those nutrients are bound up and pass right through? There may be exceptions, but every lactose intolerant person I’ve ever met can drink raw milk without fear, proving that the problem is pasteurization and homogenization. Our commercial milk supply is anything but natural.

Another raw milk plus is colostrum. The first milk that a mammal produces, it is full of nutrients. One company, 4Life, sells a colostrum derivitive, Transfer Factor , as a health booster. (Disclaimer: I have no financial interest in 4Life. I’ve never used this product but have known people who swore by it.) In fact, the only drawback for colostrum is that until the milk no longer contains it—some 5-7 days—you just can’t can’t make cheese with the milk. It refuses to coagulate. Why that is so remains a bit of a mystery, but colostrum is vital to the health of newborns as it imparts maternal antibodies.

Show me a nursing mother and I’ll show you a raw milk fed infant. I did have an interesting exchange a while back with a woman who was inveighing against raw milk. I pointed out that she was nursing, and most certainly she wasn’t pasteurizing her own milk. She became very upset with me, demanded that I acknowledge that “it’s not the same thing.” I think it is.

I live in Maine, where raw dairy is legal and available locally. Since I stopped raising dairy goats (Oh, how I miss my goats!), I’ve been drinking raw Jersey milk and cream. Sometimes I go to the farm, but often I just pick it up at the local food coop. Supermarkets don’t carry it, of course. (”Omigosh! Someone might sue us if they get sick!”) Not a problem, we have plenty of options—local coops, on-farm sales, small grocery store.

Sadly, Maine’s dairy farms are disappearing. The number has been slashed by at 97%. In 1954, the state boasted 4600 dairy farms. According to Leo AI, in 2024 the number had declined to 147 active dairy farms. This cannot be laid only at the feet of government. Much of it is the result of large dairy operations. Even Horizon, that much touted organic behemoth, has left organic dairies in the lurch when they canceled contracts with 14 Maine dairy farms, some of which had been supplying Horizon for decades. While Organic Valley took up the slack for some, Maine’s dairy farms are still struggling.

I can’t think of a downside to raw milk, except perhaps federal and state government regulations. When raw milk is criminalized and farms are attacked, as they are in states like Pennsylvania and Minnesota, government overlords who are supposed to protect our rights, instead dictate what we can and cannot put into our bodies. Pennsylvania, for example, targets raw milk sales, closing down dairies for “suspected” contamination which turn out not to have been raw milk after all. Amos Miller, an Amishman, has been fighting the PDH for years, and they haven’t been able to find any buyer who is unhappy with his milk

Then there’s “enforcement action” in Minnesota, which clearly outlines in its constitution the right of farmers to sell their products on farm. For some baffling reason, milk produced on farm doesn’t come under that definition. Of course, the MDA and MDH work hand in glove with federal agencies when it comes to raw milk sales.

The CDC calls raw milk “one of the riskiest foods,” saying when milk isn’t pasteurized to kill harmful bacteria, it can cause serious illness or even death. Odd that bacterial outbreaks from pasteurized milk are not given the same press coverage, especially since their reach is typically farther and more serious.

The history of the attacks on raw milk is worth looking at. At the turn of the 19th century, immigrants were pouring into cities. Many came from farming backgrounds and set up shop, so to speak, with livestock. The conditions were deplorable. Cows were stabled in filth, fodder was poor, and sanitation was absent. As happened with infections such as measles and chicken pox, when the medical establishment urged better sanitation, clean water, and better nutrition, conditions improved immensely and raw milk became much more healthful.

According to RealMilk.com, “In 1945, a magazine called Coronet published an article, “Raw Milk Can Kill You,” blaming raw milk for an outbreak of brucellosis in a town called Crossroads, U.S.A., killing one-third of the inhabitants. The Reader’s Digest picked up the story and ran it a year later.” The problem was that Crossroads didn’t exist and there was no outbreak of brucellosis. The whole story was a fabrication, a lie, but the public didn’t know that.

The article also points out several seriously flawed studies relied on by the FDA and CDC in 2024. Other articles point to bacterial outbreaks attributed to raw milk, later found to be from other sources, with absolutely no acknowledgement.

Obviously, lies about the dangers of raw milk didn’t start with government agencies. In the early 1900’s, as now, purveyors of pasteurized milk lobbied to protect their share of the market by declaiming any virtues of raw milk. Better to capture market share with lies than to lose it with truth.

If Maine ever decides to outlaw raw milk, I’ll get myself another couple of “poor man’s cows”--dairy goats. They’re much easier to milk than a cow and easier to clean up after, too! Many breeds give more milk pound for pound than cows. I raised dairy goats for over a decade, showed them, milked them, made cheese, watched the antics of the kids, and thoroughly enjoyed them.

In today’s world, where chemical contamination of our food supply is rampant, and sloppy handling can be an issue, I understand why milk testing should take place. Farms should be clean and milking itself should be sanitary. To my mind, one of the pluses of raw milk freedom is that buyers can visit the farm and see first hand what the conditions are. What I don’t understand is how the human race has survived for all the eons that raw milk was just part of the diet.

I saw one spin calling this “CIA Deep State being overthrown.” Yes, the CIA has overthrown governments for decades, and not once has it turned out well. We’ve installed dictators and then taken them out.

Let me count the ways: In 1953, the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown by a CIA operation, and the Shah of Iran was reinstated. Why? Because we didn’t like the leanings of Mossadegh. In 1979, a revolution overthrew the Shah’s autocratic and corrupt rule and installed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had been one of the foremost critics of the Shah and the Westernization of Iran.

Who knows what could have happened if we’d left Mossadeh in power? Could it have been a worse outcome? The people of Iran rose up again a corrupt government backed by the U.S., which tells me that a people who are fed up with a corrupt government will take matters into their own hands.

And then there’s Manuel Noriega of Panama, who worked closely with the CIA. He went down ostensibly because of drug trafficking, but he had the audacity to defy U.S. policy. In 1989 he was captured and imprisoned in the U.S.

How about Saddam Hussein? Supposedly the CIA didn’t install him, but there seems to be quite a bit of question about that. What is true is that he was U.S./CIA backed until he, too, fell out of favor. He was overthrown in 2003 in a U.S. led invasion. Our once ally, now the bad guy.

And then there’s Augusto Pinochet of Chile and Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, to name only a couple more.

Even Africa has seen our fingers stretched out. Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo, was hastily replaced

by U.S. backed Joseph Mobuto, after Lumumba gave a speech highly critical of Belgium, from which they had just gained independence. Lumumba, a charismatic, eloquent speaker, was a strong nationalist. Important to recognize is that Congo had vast mineral wealth which the West wanted. Once strongman Mobuto was installed, the West had what they wanted. His rule was so brutal that eventually the U.S. withdrew their support and allowed him to be taken out. That seems to be the pattern: The U.S. installs or backs brutal dictators, as long as they’re “friendly” to our government. How the people fare doesn’t seem to be a concern.

With or without the CIA, we’re doing it again, but this time overtly instead of covertly. Worse, this operation was done without Congress being apprised. Clearly this raises constitutional issues, and I for one want to see them pursued. It’s not “just a goddam piece of paper”, as George W. Bush snapped. It’s the foundational law of the United States of America.

I don’t care what the provocation. We have no business trying to tell the rest of the world how to live. Until they come to our shores, it’s their problem, not ours. Interference just gives them an excuse--no, a reason, an excellent reason, to retaliate. As Ron Paul famously remarked after the Twin Towers were attacked in 2001, “They came here because we’re over there.”

We haven’t learned a thing. We’ve been at war somewhere in the world since Truman sent our troops, without congressional approval, to Korea. Democrat or Republican, promises notwithstanding, we get embroiled in other people’s conflicts, or worse, bring conflict to them. We haven’t won a war (oh, wait! These are called “military actions) since World War II. We’ve flexed our muscles, roared a might roar, and tried to dictate how the rest of the world governs itself.. Is it any wonder they don’t like us? It has nothing to do with “they don’t like our liberty”; it’s all about our meddling in their affairs. And we’ve just done it again and are rejoicing in our supposed moral superiority. Keep the masses entertained, whip up the latest brew of patriotic fervor, and no one will see the man behind the curtain.

One last note. I’ve seen comments that Venezuela was trying to influence elections. That may be true, as it’s true of other countries that see us as the enemy. I can’t help thinking, though, that if we stayed home, would they even care about our elections?

I loved that mare. She was my dream horse, everything I’d been looking for. I’d owned her for 3 years, had paid for a trainer, and had personally shown her successfully in hand locally, and under saddle with the trainer. She was the last daughter, the last foal, of Erzsand, a grey elite stallion. I bred her to Mozart, another elite stallion, dark bay, and it turned out that she was the last breeding before he died.

I was preparing to show her in hand at the Rocky Mountain Horse Expo in Denver when news of an outbreak of vesicular stomatitis in southwestern states was announced. My veterinarian encouraged me to vaccinate my mare, in case she were exposed to animals with the disease. I consented. After all, weren’t vaccines safe and effective? Within a day, Letzte (or Lessa, as I affectionately nicknamed her) began to flag. Her trainer noticed she wasn’t responsive, her head was hanging low. Within three days she was down in her stall, unable to rise. After calling my vet, we managed to get her loaded in my horse trailer and trailered her to Littleton Large Animal Clinic. When we arrived, we had to get her off the floor of the trailer, as she’d fallen again.

Lessa was there for two days. The younger vets insisted it was—it must have been— meningeal worm (brainworm). Nothing I said to them would make them look at the timing of the injury and the vaccine. Only the older vet who had been around for a much longer time and had probably relied on his own experience rather than vet school propaganda, diagnosed vaccine injury. Within hours she began to convulse, and they put her on large doses of Valium, starting every 4 hours, and progressing to every 2 hours around the clock.

After less than two days, I got a call at home: She was getting steadily worse. They recommended that I put her down; her seizures were so severe that she’d kicked out the sides of her stall. Heartbroken, when I arrived I made my way to her stall, where she was lying flat, breathing heavily. As I stroked her beautiful head, I said goodbye to my 5 year old Trakehner mare.

I was devastated. Not only had I lost my mare, but her foal as well. It took three years before my vet would admit that Lessa had died from a vaccine injury. “Why?” I asked her. “Why wouldn’t you admit it before?” “I was afraid of being sued,” she replied.

It didn’t take three years for me to look into vaccines, though. I’d lost two cats to vaccine injuries previously, but they had been ill anyway. My mare, though, was 5 years old and in perfect health. This was the proverbial straw that broke my back. The more I investigated, the worse the news became. I had lost animals to vaccines, but I learned that children were also suffering from vaccine injuries—and everyone was denying it! What happened to doctors listening to what mothers were telling them?

Fast forward to the present.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been under particularly vicious attack lately, not surprisingly for those who have an eye to see. Under Kennedy’s direction, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has embarked on a mission to determine how multiple vaccines given to the same individual interact. This has never been done before, despite the requirements of The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986.

The history of that Act, in a nutshell, is this. In 1986, The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act was signed into law by President Ronald Regan, and removed liability from vaccine manufacturers for any approved vaccine, with an emphasis on vaccines listed on the CDC’s Childhood Schedule. The question should arise (but often doesn’t, for some strange reason), why was the bill even needed? The short answer is that vaccine manufacturers were being sued at alarming rates for egregious damage to the children who were given the DPT vaccine, and they were losing big. They came to President Ronald Reagan and threatened to withdraw from vaccine manufacture altogether unless they were given immunity from liability. Given my history with vaccines, I don’t think that would’ve been a bad thing, but of course, that’s not what happened

The carefully crafted bill made the federal government liable for damages, and required the HHS to do studies to assess the safety of every vaccine, and established a federal court system where the parents had the choice of suing the manufacturer directly or going to “vaccine court” with their claim. A few years later, a case went before the U.S. Supreme Court and any remaining liability was taken from vaccine manufacturers. Pharma was ecstatic. No more chance of being sued! Of course, loss of liability means no incentive to make them better. Can you imagine the state of other goods, say automobiles, if no one could take them to court? Think Ford Pinto’s court case, Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Co. What would have happened if the victims of the design flaw had not been able to sue.?

A budget bill was approved in the California legislature.in January 2025. In September 2025, during the usual “fine tuning” of approved bills, the budget bill was gutted. Everything about budget was replaced with clauses about vaccination and public health. The budget bill that had been approved in January had been replaced with a completely different subject—and agenda. Thus, the vaccine agenda continues.

Recently, Senator Ron Johnson held a hearing to discuss vaccines. During the hearing, 637 studies were presented by Jake Scott, MD, Infectious Disease Specialist at Stanford University School of Medicine, “proving” that all childhood vaccines had undergone strict testing. However, as it turned out, none of the studies were relevant to childhood vaccines, as Aaron Siri, the lead attorney for Informed Consent Action Network, revealed. He carefully took apart the list and demonstrated, to the great chagrin of Dr Scott, that not one of the studies addresses any vaccine on the CDC’s childhood schedule. That seems to be the way of the “hundreds of studies” proving that childhood vaccines don’t cause injury.

The question remains, though, why mandates at all?

The United States signed the Nuremberg Accords, which proclaimed that no medical procedures should ever be given without informed consent. That flies in the face of any mandates, as well as the principles upon which the United States of America were founded. And ask yourself this: if the vaccines are so good, why would they have to be mandated? Wouldn’t everyone be rushing out to get them?

Secretary Robert F. Kennedy also fired every one of the seated members of The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—at last! I doubt that one member of that committee didn’t have a conflict of interest. For example, one noteworthy member, Dr. Paul Offit, a well-known vaccine advocate, has developed vaccines. Why would he vote against his own vaccine? Many of the members were researchers receiving grants from the companies who were presenting vaccines. Some of the members worked directly for Pharma. The thing I found egregious, though, after watching a couple of committee meetings is that if a question was raised, it was always after the vote!

The new ACIP consists of experts who have no financial ties to vaccine companies, though some, like Dr. Robert Malone, have done trials previously. They know the system, they know the pitfalls, and none have developed vaccines.

Drug companies have lost billions of dollars in lawsuits for fraud and deceptive practices. Please explain to me how they are the bad guys, despised and distrusted, EXCEPT for vaccines? Do they suddenly become altruistic because vaccines are in a different category? To believe that is to wear self-made blinders.

Yet the media, who are funded by Pharma, are making a concerted effort to make Kennedy, an intelligent, highly knowledgeable man, look like a moron, and there are factions within the HHS that are perfectly willing to throw him to the wolves. They hint that all the changes are unnecessary and the product of incompetence. This is a far cry from the hard-hitting journalism before the 1986 Act,

It’s a terrible thing when the lust for power puts aside human compassion, yet that’s what we’re seeing daily in the news. Reports are twisted, and those receiving the news by mainstream media, instead of reading the reports for themselves, believe what they’re told like good little sheep.

So tell me, all who are screaming about the things that Secretary Kennedy is doing, what is so bad about cleaning up the cesspool in the HHS? How is doing the actual studies on vaccines, required by the 1986 Act, a bad thing? How is getting chemicals out of our foods a mistake? How is putting an emphasis on health instead of illness an error? Inquiring minds would love to know.

I have great memories of my grandparents’ farm, learning to milk cows, clean stalls (not my favorite things, but part of the deal), collect eggs, help to bring in the hay, and, reluctantly, weed my grandmother’s garden and help harvest and prepare the harvest for canning.

Later in life, I raised horses and dairy goats, geese, a calf or two, and I always seemed to have chickens.

I had a hen a few years ago that never laid an egg. Nevertheless, she raised several broods of chicks, and not just chicks she hatched, but chicks I bought and gave her to raise. She was a wonderful mother, and while she never laid an egg the whole time I had her, there was gain only, not loss. Who else would I have used to raise chicks? She even raised a few Guinea fowl. They were the only ones that made it to maturity. (Guinea fowl are notorious for being bad parents, losing their keets in the tall grass.)

With one brood, I enclosed the hen in a large pen with 6 foot sides, a former buck pen. I well remember the day I heard her raising the alarm to her chicks and, looking out of the barn, I saw them all scatter, hiding themselves in the long grass and weeds along the sides of the fence. The feisty little hen was flapping her wings furiously and challenging the red-tailed hawk that was sitting on top of one of the tall fence posts. She could have run into the small hutch that she and her brood stayed in at night, but that wasn’t her style. She was a momma, and was going to protect her chicks come hell or high water or red-tailed hawk.

Who knows what might have happened had I not been there! I ran out of the barn and chased the hawk away. When the coast was clear, she called all her chicks to her. I kept my eye out for the hawk for several days but it never came back. When the chicks were feathered, I let them all out into the barnyard so they’d have more places to hide.

Now I have four ISA Brown hens. A production breed, ISA Browns are known for producing up to 300 eggs their first year. I’d never had them before; in fact I’d never heard of them before a friend called me to see if I wanted a few.

Now the thing to remember about production hens is that they don’t go broody. Except one of them did. I tried for a week to break her broodiness. I sent her out into the fenced area again and again so she’d have to think hard about going back to the coop. I put her in chicken jail, and she made a nest out of the feeder. I took her off the nest and locked the door so she couldn’t get back in (after the others had finished laying, of course). After a week or more had passed, I gave up.

Calling a friend with many hens and a rooster or two, the same who’d gotten me the ISA Browns, I begged some fertile eggs from him. Ah! The joys of friendship!

I put 7 eggs under the broody hen—then made the mistake of moving the nest box. She had been nesting in the middle box where they all usually laid their eggs, so to keep things easier for the other three, I swapped the left box and the middle box. Big mistake.

Broody hens get off the nest once a day to relieve themselves, eat, and drink. The first day I found her setting in the middle box again. I removed her and put her on the eggs. The next day she got into the correct nesting box. Yay! The third day, I had to move her again. By now I was watching her like a hawk so I was able to get her back on her eggs quickly.

For the next few days, she went back to the correct spot. Then I relaxed, too soon as it turned out. One day I went out and found her on the middle box again. Her eggs were cool but not cold, and I moved her, kicking and screaming, onto the eggs again, and realized that the middle box had eggs in them that the other hens had laid that morning. Only two eggs. Hmm. I lifted her gingerly and, sure enough, there was an extra, unmarked egg underneath her.

Time to start watch again. The next day, she was in the middle box again and her eggs were cooling. I don’t know if they’ll hatch. I only know that I’ve confused the heck out of that poor hen.

She’s fascinating, though. When I go out and find a hen on the nest ready to lay an egg, she settles down into the nest box, but nothing like the broody hen. (Compare the picture below with the broody hen above.)

The body of the broody hen spreads out over the entire nest box, her feathers enveloping every egg, warming and coddling. She clucks softly, over and over, reaches with her beak and gathers the eggs under her, turning them now and then. I imagine her chicks learning her voice while they’re forming. I imagine them knowing their mother just by her voice.

Ducklings impress on the first moving object, but chicks impress more by the sounds and actions of the hen and the other chicks. Keep clucking softly, little hen, and lets hope you hatch some chicks.

October 1, 2025

My broody, who I call 4-Spot because of the marks on her head, is a proud momma. I’d been going out to the coop every few hours each day to talk to the hen and pat her, telling her what a great hen she was and what a good mother she was going to be. I’m not sure that does anything; I just wanted to get her used enough to me to not attack me on sight, the way so many hens do.

On the 28th, I went out to collect eggs and check on her and just happened to look in the nest. A tiny chick, still wet, was showing under her wing. A few hours later, I looked again and saw another tiny head. Whoohoo! Two chicks! She’d actually hatched something even though those eggs had cooled a couple of times. That’s nothing short of a miracle!

I left her on her nest and prepared a separate area for her and her chicks. This was not because the other hens wold be a problem, but because my fence is a welded wire with 2” x 3” openings, a perfect size for chickies to run through. With a Mighty Hunter dog on the other side of the fence, I didn’t want to chance it. I knew the first day out of the nest because of the commotion in the chicken yard. The other three hens were announcing a change and they were very vocal. As I approached, I saw one of the hens come racing out the small door like a fire was lit under her. Sure enough, when I went inside, mama and chicks were inside scratching around.

Yesterday she had them outside and last night I moved hen and chicks to their new digs. Just in time, too, because one of the neighbor’s roosters had decided to come visit. But that’s a tale for another time

I’ve not been as concerned as many with the “ethical” problems of eating meat. Frankly, there are a lot of places not good for farming that are excellent for raising livestock. Not that I don’t have ethical concerns. If I were to start eating meat again, I’d avoid feedlot cattle and CAFO pork. I have a real problem with animals being shoved cheek by jowl into a small area, fed unnatural foods, and then hauled away to slaughter houses in cramped trucks, fear infusing each animal and some ending up injured on the way. Then when they arrive, the smell of blood and death is everywhere. How can an animal go into a place like that and not be terrorized. Is that really what we want our meat animals to experience?

When I was a child, my grandparents raised their own livestock. The calves and kid goats were on pasture until the time of their ending, and that end was quick and sure. The animal never saw it coming. My grandfather would take a gun, it would drop instantly, and with our thanks, the calf or goat or pig would be bled, butchered, and the meat canned or frozen. Until the time of their demise, they lived a natural life, with no fear at the end.

I had a very pragmatic view of the whole process. One memory that returns to me with a smile again and again is when two kid goats were to be slaughtered. Against all advice (“Don’t you make pets out of them!”), I played with them, loved them, named them—and when the inevitable day came, I stood in front of them in defiance of my grandfather, shouting, “You can’t do that! You’ll have to shoot me first!”

Admittedly, I was being pretty dramatic but then I was only 6 or 7 years old. My grandfather didn’t hesitate. He put me over his knee, and when he was done told me to get out of the way. When all was finished, with tears streaming down my cheeks, the dirty deed done, I asked, “Can I help?” I was a pretty pragmatic kid, y’know?

But I grew up and my views changed. Not that I thought there was anything wrong with eating meat, for I didn’t. I just didn’t want to eat it myself. I’ve always enjoyed vegetables more, always thought they tasted better.

Things got interesting, though, when I started reading about experiments with plants, how they responded to stimuli, how trees communicated through their root systems, how one tree that’s being attacked by, say, pine borers, puts out messages through the “wood-wide web”, I.e. the mycorrhizal (fungal) network that permeates most of the soil and connects the trees. It’s been observed that surrounding trees produce a chemical that often repels the borer or other attacker.

Various studies have tested plants in various ways. One study exposed plants to anesthetics and found that not only do they react by becoming unresponsive, but when the anesthetic is removed, the plants return to normal. Other studies have shown plants respond to light, and of course, we know that they respond to touch (think about the Mimosa or the Venus Flytrap). Even thoughts seem to affect them. A polygraph expert tested plants and found that they responded to his thoughts and emotions. There have also been reports of researchers having two sets of plants, one of which they insulted and the other expressed love to. The first set was stunted while the second thrived.

Now all this is fascinating, but you may ask “Why is this even on your mind, Joy?” Ah, life should be so simple. All I can say is it’s a good thing I have no ethical problems eating meat, because what would I do if it were absolutely proven that plants have consciousness?

Thanks to Dr. Robert Malone for bringing this to my attention. Enjoy!

It’s an incredibly lovely state and an outdoorsman’s delight. Here’s the problem: we also get lots of tree huggers.

Why is that a problem?

First, let me point out that I would call myself an environmentalist. I believe in being a good steward to the land, honoring it, loving it. However, Maine does not need to preserve its trees. Given the opportunity, every pasture and field will quickly become overgrown with brush and trees. What we need is to preserve the fields and farmland. My family have been battling encroaching forest since before I was born. Photographs from when I was very small show a very different picture from now; trees and brush have pretty much taken over much of our pastures.

My grandparents had a 160+ acre farm bordering a large pond, with a view of Penobscot Bay to the left. I spent many happy summers and holidays there and learned to love Maine, love the farm, love outdoor life, and love the land.

Oh, I can live in a city, I’ve done it, even enjoyed it, but it’s not where I want to be.

Several years ago, before the farm passed from our possession, as I was cutting the lawn at the farm, I noticed—again—a few little trees trying to sprout up. When I went home, as I was pulling weeds in my flower garden, I realized I had to recover part of it from oaks and wild cherry that had taken root, not to mention alders and aspen that sprout up everywhere.

Maine’s forests cover about 75-90% of the land, compared to the mid-1800’s when the number was more like 50%. I love trees; I love their many shapes, their many barks, the shapes of the leaves, the colors in the spring and the autumn; but really, we need to protect the pastures, meadows, and fields, because they are rapidly disappearing.

When I was a child visiting my grandparents, we would drive by the Barton farm on Beech Hill Road, where cows, geese, and chickens freely roamed on lush pasture. From the road, we could view Ducktrap Mountain and Penobscot Bay.

That farm is broken up now. When Old Man Barton, died, his heirs divided and sold the land. Out-of-staters moved in with their ideas about preserving trees. The pastures are gone. Trees have filled almost every bit of open land, and the view of Penobscot Bay from the crest of the hill has been claimed by the new owners. While I’m busy lopping whatever I can to keep the forest at bay, they’re letting the trees move in, thinking they’re being environmentally friendly.

I’d love to see the return of beech, hickory, ash, and birch trees. Unfortunately, that’s not what’s growing back. Instead, poplar, aspen, and other long-fibered trees are quickly reforesting the land as first growth forest. I’d like to invite the newcomers to Maine to give some thought to what kind of trees are growing. I’d like to say to them, “If you really want to grow more trees, plan more, and maybe preserve some fields, while encouraging growth of the hardwoods that are fast disappearing.

There’s an old saying, “You can’t go home again”, and perhaps that’s what’s ailing me. I want to recapture the Northport of my youth. I want to see a return to a love for the land as land, as farmland; a pastoral place that soothes the soul. A beautiful house is a pleasure, to be sure, but the land is everything.