We have seen a remarkable turnaround in the world order in the twenty-first century. China moved into the world market as a seller and buyer of large quantities of products. The singular focus of the Chinese communist government to grow their economy has been so...
I am writing this wearing a fleece vest and shorts; I am determined to get into the spirit of summer even if I have to freeze to death to do so!This has been a strange year and made worse by how different it is than last year?s premature spring and blistering summer...
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This week I?m attending a major farm show in Iowa where thegiant combines, tractors, and trucks adorn each block and theair-conditioned tents beckon in thousands of visitors.This ?farm city? is teeming with growers, managers and consultantsstudying every new piece of...
Doomsayers and survivalists have predicted ?Big Brother? will know all about us and watch us constantly. Technocrats and futurists predict that our lives will be made easier by machines that do everything for us. Science fiction writers have proposed a world where we...
Oren Root would have been 105 Friday. He lived to be 92 and died in 2000. He saw most of the twentieth century from a washed away, blown away part of Oklahoma. He combined forces with my mother in 1929 and they literally made something out of nothing in the most...
For a state with so few electoral votes, it's amazing how much political force is brought into this state to win a presidential election. It may be the fact that Iowa is schizophrenic in its politics; no party has a lock on the presidential vote here.This week,...
Good Morning.The word "gleaners" is biblical, and refers to those who go through the fields after the reapers to "glean" what remains so they can survive. It was an act of charity to allow the poor to do so in my interpretation of the scriptures.This year, there are...
Do you like the feel of 60-degree mornings lately? North central Iowa had the coolest temperatures, down into the high 40s. It indicates that the heat of summer can be broken and Fall will come. We get hints that the rainfall pattern is changing, with the eastern Corn...
I walked outside this morning and felt a coolness that hasn?t existed for months. I witnessed rainfall this weekend that fell for longer than the ?snippets? of showers we?ve seen during this drought. It felt good. It gave me hope that the harvest is not lost and the...
