Today in 1956, Elvis Presley appeared on ABC-TV’s “Milton Berle Show” live from the flight deck of the U.S.S. Hancock, moored off San Diego.
An estimated one of every four Americans watched, probably making it ABC’s most watched show in its history to then, and probably for several years after that.
The number one British single today in 1961:
Today in 1969, Jim Morrison turned himself in to the FBI in Los Angeles, on charges of lewd behavior and public exposure from his Miami concert March 2.
Morrison was released on $2,000 bail. He was eventually convicted, but died before during his appeal.
The number one single today in 1971:
Today in 1975, Steve Miller was charged with setting fire to the clothes of a female friend. When police arrived, Miller added resisting arrest to his charges.
Today in 1989, 23 people were arrested after several thousand people gate-crashed a Grateful Dead concert at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena.
The number one British album today in 1993 was Depeche Mode’s “Songs of Faith and Devotion”:
For those who thought Steve Miller’s arrest was strange: Today in 2007, Keith Richards denied that he had snorted the ashes of his late father during a cocaine binge.
The problem is that Richards had told Mark Beaumont of Britain’s NME: “He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow.”
And Beaumont told BBC News, “He did seem to be quite honest about it. There were too many details for him to be making it up.”
Tuesday is the first (or second, if you had a primary election in February) of five (or six) scheduled elections this year.
Tuesday is the correctly scheduled election for municipal officials, county supervisors, school boards and circuit and appeals judges. Oh, and there’s a presidential primary, not that many Wisconsinites have noticed. (More about that later.)
Here in Ripon, our ballot is full — mayor and four City Council seats, three Board of Education seats, and a school referendum, in addition to the presidential primary.
On or shortly before election days, WTMJ radio’s Charlie Sykes runs a segment in which he asks people who they’re voting for. The implication is that the caller supports someone enough to vote for that candidate, instead of voting for a candidate because he or she is the lesser of two evils.
(By the way: What you are about to read represents my opinion, and only my opinion, and not necessarily the opinion of anyone or any organization with any connection whatsoever to myself, past, present or future.)
In Ripon, only one alderman is running for reelection — Ald. Rollie Peabody in District 2. He is running against a challenger of whom I choose only to say that that person should not be representing Ripon in any elective body. And that’s all I’ll say about her.
I can say much nicer things about Rollie, without reservation. I’ve known Rollie for almost 12 years, since we started going to St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. Put it this way: I’m taller than he is, but I look up to him.
Rollie has been on the City Council for four years, which have been, to use the Chinese curse, interesting times. The Boca Grande whatever-you’d-like-to-call-it is in the lawyers’ hands now, and that’s all that appears to be happening with it. Sandmar Village was stalled due to drainage issues, which appear to be resolved, and so construction is slowly starting to take shape.
The Boca, uh, thing notwithstanding, if you walk through downtown Ripon, you notice that most of the storefronts are still full. Positive things have gone on in Ripon, including in downtown Ripon, even though the Boca Grande project isn’t where it should be now. The Treasury building, vacant for years, now has a restaurant in it. The Campus Theatre was renovated, as was, thanks to Boca, Roadhouse Pizza. One Mexican restaurant closed, Dos Gringos, but another has opened, Ocampo’s. One of Rollie’s colleagues on the City Council, Ald. Howard Hansen, spearheaded a downtown skating rink, which is one of the coolest improvements in Ripon in a long time. (When the winter cooperates, that is.)
Rollie is the type of person that the City Council needs — someone with a clear head and sound judgment who seeks solutions, instead of someone who will be a bomb-thrower who will contribute to no solution whatsoever, based on track record.
The Board of Education race is tough to choose because, truthfully, all of the candidates are impressive. Andy Lyke has been on the school board since 2003. Heather Hartling has been quite involved in schools, and Brian Reilly has interesting things to say on his Ripon Commonwealth Press blog. So choosing two of those three won’t be easy.
One candidate I am definitely voting for is Dan Zimmerman. I have argued here before that the biggest problem the Board of Education has, dating back as long as we’ve been in Ripon (which means probably before that too), is its lack of capability or disinterest in properly vetting school administration proposals. One example is the wrongheaded purchase of property on Ripon’s north side for a middle school in 2004 — the wrong school in the wrong place at any time. That is not to say that the schools are bad at all, but the school board is supposed to evaluate administration proposals, not merely rubber-stamp them.
From what I’ve seen of Zimmerman from his Facebook page and his appearance in the League of Women Voters candidate forum, I think you can rest assured that Zimmerman will be no one’s rubber stamp. He is one of the three I will vote for for the Board of Education Tuesday.
I decided to vote for the land purchase referendum. For several reasons, it’s a better option than the north-side site school district voters (wrongly) approved in 2004.
The presidential race has gotten surprisingly little attention in Wisconsin. I don’t believe I have seen a single yard sign, and the TV commercials suddenly showed up a couple weeks ago like, well, use your favorite unpleasant simile.
I believe Mitt Romney will end up with the Republican presidential nomination. That makes Tuesday’s primary not particularly important in the GOP scheme of things. Therefore, instead of voting for any of the four, I’m going to write in my choice of candidate, and suggest you do too:
I don’t know who the Obama administration consulted when it created ObamaCare, but clearly it wasn’t people who have experience working in health care.
Jessica Nickerson of Winneconne wrote this about the implications of ObamaCare becoming law. The views expressed are her own, but I agree with them:
Do you know that more than half of Americans strongly oppose ObamaCare and favor its repeal? Why would our government pass legislation that more than half of us oppose? Who is our government looking out for: us or the party faithful?
Our families and our economy cannot afford the cost of ObamaCare, or the impingement of our freedom of choice, that this legislation will instill. It is imperative that we vote this fall for legislators who will repeal it and will implement a plan that fosters competition and decreases regulations.
Not only will ObamaCare affect the very fabric of our nation, it will drive up the costs of private insurance to the point that private payers will no longer be motivated to provide coverage.
Currently, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) sets the payment rates to providers for services rendered to Medicare and Medicaid patients, which private insurers then utilize to set their own reimbursement rates. When ObamaCare takes effect, CMS, which has complete price control, will be able to lower reimbursement rates to a point that could make it unprofitable for private insurers to offer their products, ultimately requiring them to exit the market and making the public option for insurance the only choice.
Currently, competition among private insurance companies leads to higher quality healthcare. Competition in the market requires insurance companies to find the best doctors, which increases patient visits, ultimately leading to greater profit. Profit drives insurance companies to improve processes and pay for procedures, drugs and services the patients want and need. If a consumer doesn’t like what services are covered, or the quality of care is undesirable, the consumer’s dollars are spent elsewhere.
Another side effect of this legislation will be the reduced supply of quality physicians. Even though we’d like to believe that doctors practice medicine for completely altruistic purposes, the fact is that doctors make a huge investment into their education and ultimately expect, and deserve, a solid return. When the government lowers reimbursement rates to control costs, and competition no longer exists because private insurers have left the market, what monetary incentive is there to become a doctor? Many of our best and brightest physicians may choose a more financially rewarding career.
Included in the ObamaCare plan is the mandate for employers to provide health insurance or face a “substantial” fine. The fine is predicted to be significantly less than the cost of insurance itself, so employers may opt to pay the fine, or lay off employees, as a way to save money. So will you really be able to stay with the insurance plan that you currently have through your employer, as President Obama has recited repeatedly since the beginning of his first presidential campaign? It doesn’t seem likely.
Not only are employers mandated to provide insurance, individuals and families will also be liable for fines. The fine for an individual will be $695 and $2,085 for a family per year. Again, if the fine for not buying health insurance is significantly less than the cost to purchase insurance, individuals may choose the fine. We already see this happening with auto insurance mandates in states all across the country when the cost of the mandated auto insurance exceeds car owners’ ability to pay.
From the standpoint of a healthcare facility, the demand for treatment will undoubtedly increase when ObamaCare is fully implemented. Right now, people with private insurance think twice about going to the emergency room, because they know they will have to make a large copayment. If the new public insurance is like our current Medicaid program, no copayment will be required for an emergency room visit.
Do you think this will increase or decrease the usage of our emergency rooms? The answer is obvious. The increase in usage will lead to increased wait times for patients to see a doctor. The increased utilization would drive up costs, requiring the government to raise its revenue stream, which we all know is code for higher taxes. Let’s not forget the previous point that the supply of doctors may decrease due to a lowered financial incentive. That point, combined with increased utilization, will more than likely lead for the need to ration healthcare.
A better option to Obama Care is the option offered by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R–Janesville). For people currently on Medicare or older than 55, they will see no change from the current system. Americans younger than 55, in Ryan’s plan, will be given a voucher, based on the amount of money they make, to apply to whatever insurance plan they choose. We see vouchers working to improve school systems across America, and we should learn from their success.
Allowing private insurers to compete across state lines, which would give all Americans equal access to the lowest rates, would drive down costs. Reducing regulations on the insurance industry, as well as within the insurance policies themselves, would also drive down prices. Allowing for the implementation of higher deductibles and lower coverage amounts, as well as further expansion of health savings account, is yet another alternative to ObamaCare.
If you are OK with having the government decide which physician you must see and the treatments you are allowed to receive, then the ObamaCare plan is for you. However, if you want to be able to choose your physician, decide how best to spend your healthcare dollars, or at least be given the freedom to choose, than fight with all that you have to elect representatives that will overturn the current legislation this fall and replace it with a less regulated and more competitively-driven healthcare plan.
Today is April Fool’s Day. Which John Lennon and Yoko Ono celebrated in 1970 by announcing they were having sex-change operations.
Today in 1972, the Mar y Sol festival began in Puerto Rico. The concert’s location simplified security — it was on an island accessible only by those with tickets.
Today in 1985, David Lee Roth quit Van Halen.
The number one single today in 2000:
Birthdays begin with Rudolph Isley of the Isley Brothers:
I never thought we had a very musical family, but apparently we do.
Last weekend, our oldest son performed in Ripon Middle School’s “Another Op’nin’, Another Show,” a musical about musical opening numbers, ranging from “On the Town” to “The Lion King.”
On Monday, Michael played trumpet and sang in the RMS band and chorus as part of the school district’s Music in Our Schools Month concert.
Michael is either sitting in the band toward the back of the floor, or in the upper left bleachers.
He’s just the most recent performer in the family. Earlier this month, Shaena performed in a Barlow Park concert, and Dylan sang in a Murray Park/Quest concert. (Apparently the Ripon Area School District takes Music in Our Schools Month seriously.)
I guess I’m the musician, if you want to call me that, of longest standing in the house. I had five years in the University of Wisconsin Marching Band, and for the past few years I’ve played trumpet for various Masses at our church. (Including Palm Sunday and the Easter Vigil next Saturday. I’m supposed to lead the procession into the church, but it’s possible the rest of the congregation could head in the opposite direction if my play is particularly bad. I also play at what I call the It’s-Midnight-Somewhere Mass, which one year meant that the first thing I heard on Christmas morning was myself on the radio from the night before.)
I play a retired UW Marching Band trumpet, and I still have the trumpet I played in high school, which was originally my father’s, or more accurately my father’s high school band director. Jannan played baritone in high school and at Ripon College, and sang in the San Juan City Choir during her pre-Peace Corps days in Puerto Rico. We do not have a baritone (at least not the musical instrument) in the house. Jannan does sing in church; as far as I was concerned, playing an instrument prevented me from having to sing.
Perhaps it’s genetics. Readers know that my father was the piano player on southern Wisconsin’s first rock and roll band. My mother sang as part of the talent competition for the 1960 Miss Wisconsin USA pageant. They met because Mom was looking for someone to arrange piano for her competition. (The rest of the story of how they met involves a dentist, chicken soup, fish sticks and tires, but I digress …) My parents made me take several years of piano; I can’t play it anymore, but either I got perfect pitch from that, or I just have perfect pitch. I’m also a much better player-by-ear than a music-reader.
Jannan and I had different, but similarly fulfilling, high school band experiences. The Lancaster High School band has marched for years in parade competitions. One of her fondest memories is of winning a parade in Belmont over their usual archrivals, Cuba City. (The irony is that we later lived in Cuba City.) The fact that early ’80s UW Marching Bands had members from Madison La Follette and Lancaster meant that, I believe, she and I once attended the same UW Band Day football game. (Neither of us remembers seeing the other, which happens when you have a couple thousand band members in a stadium with 60,000 or so people in it.)
After three years in middle school band, I had one unremarkable year in freshman band. And then the new band director pushed me up into the top band at La Follette, the Wind Ensemble, instead of the middle-level band I was expecting. That ended my run of being a first-chair player, because the players in front of me were better than me. Wind Ensemble, though, was a revelation, musically speaking. We played challenging pieces, including Gustav Holst’s suites in E flat …
… and F …
… Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Folk Song Suite” …
… and two pieces from this guy named Leckrone, “Permutations” and “Intrusions” (which he wrote for us):
High school band was a more cool experience than I could describe. We were playing every day, and while practice is important (or so I’m told, not that I’m an example), there’s a difference between practicing by yourself and practicing with the entire group. Being at high school of 2,000 can be an isolating experience, but I had something in common with 150 at the school, particularly the 50 in Wind Ensemble. (Probably not surprisingly, three of my ex-girlfriends were in band.) Our director gave us a sheet about Holst’s Suite in E Flat that showed that the melody at the beginning was mirrored by a later melody that was upside down from the main melody.
Not only did we have concerts to perform, including a cabaret-type evening in our Commons, but we got to go on tour — the Twin Cities one year, including the musical “Annie Get Your Gun” (along with staying in a hotel with dreadful Hawaiian music and a roommate who fancied himself a rapper), and Chicago the next year, including “Fiddler on the Roof.” (Which was part of Michael’s musical. So was the opening of “West Side Story,” a La Follette and UW Marching Band show, and “A Chorus Line,” which I played senior year at La Follette.) “Fiddler” was at the Marriott Lincolnshire Resort, an evening that followed an afternoon in the hotel pool with a guy who turned out to be Tevye.
I could never have been described as an athlete in high school (which hasn’t changed in the nearly 30 years since then), and even when I was on athletic teams the attributes of athletic teams never sunk in sitting on the bench. I learned those in band — the necessity of preparation, practicing over and over and over again until you get it right, teamwork, the team being more important than you, and most importantly, the importance of performing well whether or not you get recognition for it.
That’s why when I hear people talk about how the only important thing in school is the stereotypical academic subjects — math, English, science, etc. — I start looking for the old trumpet (which weighs more than a baseball bat after several layers of lacquer) to swing at their skulls. Extracurricular activities. including athletics and music, take up 1 to 2 percent of a school’s budget. In addition to the academic benefits, music builds self-esteem not by dubious self-psychology, but by accomplishment and public performance.
Music is an exacting academic field. As the Children’s Music Workshop puts it, “In music, a mistake is a mistake; the instrument is in tune or not, the notes are well played or not, the entrance is made or not.” Performing well whether anyone’s watching was a staple of the UW Band in the bad old days of the ’70s, most of the ’80s and the early ’90s, and I got good preparation for that marching pregames and halftimes of a football team that won nine games in four years. But beyond that, it was good preparation for a professional field that doesn’t include a lot of feedback, a field in which (like any other field of endeavor) it’s important to do good work whether or not anyone recognizes it.
At some point after my UW Band days ended, I came to the realization that I preferred playing in concerts to watching them. I’ve only gone to a few UW Band concerts, and most of them have been outside of Madison, in smaller locations with less grandiose shows. I have not had the Walter Mitty moment of being called out of the crowed at a Chicago concert (I’ve been to three of them, the first with about half of the UW Band) to play.
I had, however, a really neat experience at our church at the end of the All Saints Day Mass Nov. 6. Our priest asked me to play “When the Saints Come Marching In” for the recessional. I asked him how he wanted me to play it, and he only suggested I play as the spirit, or Spirit, moved me. So the first verse was straightforward, and then I swung into New Orleans jazz funeral mode as well as my limited playing and really limited improvisational skills could do. The reaction I got afterward demonstrated I succeeded.
Which means that today is the one-year anniversary of the end of my employment with Marketplace Magazine and Journal Communications. Which, you’ll recall, prompted the creation of this blog.
(The irony is that today I’m speaking at a Ripon elementary school’s Career Day. That is a better activity than what I was doing one year ago today.)
A year ago tomorrow I wrote:
I’ve been told, and it makes sense, that I should start a blog to maintain the discipline of writing. (Rust is a terrible thing, as anyone who owned a 1970s-era car should know.)
And so, here begins, for an indeterminate amount of time, The Presteblog. The Presteblog is likely (though not certain) to read much like Marketplace of Ideas … the opinion column and blog of Marketplace in the 10 years I was the editor of Marketplace. …
The late Marketplace of Ideas blog was usually four days of business/political stuff (and in three years of daily blogging I certainly never lacked for material), along with what I called “Frideas,” on subjects that might be found in the Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Journal — which included everything from cars to pets to parenting to adult beverages to my sons’ Cub Scouting. We’ll see if I can maintain that schedule. …
We’ll all see where this goes.
I have more or less followed that format over the past year. (I violate it when the calendar doesn’t cooperate, such as when the 30th anniversary of your high school’s state boys basketball title occurs on a Tuesday.) Four days a week readers get my views, or others’ views with which I mostly agree, that lurch between conservative and libertarian. (And if you can’t come up with an opinion to express in this state these days, you shouldn’t be opinionating.) Fridays are the date for ruminations on all the aforementioned nonpolitical subjects and others, such as the one coming next hour.
While some readers may conclude that I’m a doctrinaire right-winger and whatever the GOP does is perfect, actual readers know I do not believe that. The Democratic Party’s contribution to our country is overwhelmingly negative, but that doesn’t mean the Republican Party’s contribution has been always positive. (I think there are few members of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy in Wisconsin who criticize Gov. Scott Walker. I do, though probably not in areas of which Democrats would approve.)
I try to be original in what I write, with others’ views to buttress and restate mine. I prefer facts and logical arguments to, calling, for instance, public employee union heads poo-poo heads. (However: Democratic U.S. Senate candidateTammy Baldwin is a socialist. That’s not name-calling; that’s a fact, even if she won’t admit it.) There is enough on which to criticize President Obama without delving into conspiracy theories about his citizenship.
If nothing else, the Presteblog has been a good exercise in the discipline of daily writing. When I started the Presty the DJ blogs, I began to combine Saturday and Sunday entries until they got too large. (And on some days the weekday blogs get large enough to make … the … page … very … slow … to … load …) I am often sitting in the living room at 1 a.m. finishing up tomorrow’s blog, and not always because this laptop is as the as slow as a Chevrolet Vega on bad gas.
The irony is that daily journalism takes up the smallest space in the journalism portion of my career. In order of length, it’s 11 years of quadriweekly (?) business magazines, five years of weekly newspapers, and 7½ months of daily newspapers. And yet here I am with nearly a year of blogging every day, not just every weekday.
This blog also got me onto Facebook, where I somehow have managed to accumulate 298 Friends. (I was on Twitter before, where I have 536 followers.) The person who advised me to switch from Blogger to WordPress also pointed out that Facebook has enough users to count as the third largest country on earth. (Irrespective of the double-counting thing, that is.) I got onto Facebook for networking and to promote this blog. The added bonus has been the number of people with whom I’ve gotten to connect, or reconnect, and in a few instances deconnect, as well as annoy with my disagreeable (to them) political views. I’m also on Google+, though I’m not sure why.
I maintain my skepticism of social media as really being all that unique. It strikes me as merely another way to communicate, with its own particular characteristics, and its pluses and minuses, the latter including the inability to take back something you said or wrote that in retrospect could have been expressed better. Blogs, on the other hand, give one the opportunity to communicate — or, put another way, show off yourself — in multimedia, with photo, audio and video options:
Blogs do, however, require you to promote your blog. This blog gets picked up every so often at wisopinion.com and wisupnorth.com. I also blog at RiponPress.com and at IBWisconsin.com, which give me new audiences to offend. And keeping up my reputation as a media ‘ho I will appear generally wherever someone will have me — “Sunday Insight with Charlie Sykes,” Wisconsin Public Radio, and even the lion’s den, the People’s Republic of Madison.
Obviously the older the blog entry is, the more hits it’ll get. It is interesting, though, that the oldest of the top 10 is eight months old, the second oldest is five months old, and most are from November and December. And if you look at the list, my favorite subjects for others to read are state politics and the associated Recallarama crap, fall 2011 sports, facial hair, my ongoing verbal war with my hometown, and Cadillacs and Chevrolets. (Apparently all I need do to bump hits is to write about the logical next step from Occupy _______: Assassinations.)
The odd thing about this is that I like doing this. I started the blogs when I returned to Marketplace to reach new audiences. I don’t have to be writing two separate blogs at 12:29 a.m. with a body heat-sucking cat in between me and the laptop, but I am. And I see from my blog software that people are actually reading this. As I’ve written before, negative comments are second in preference only to positive comments; the worst is to hear “You write? Never heard of you.”
So The Presteblog continues for, as previously threatened, an indeterminate amount of time. We’ll all see where this goes.
Even though I’m not employed in an agriculture-related field, I make a point to go most years. I also go to what used to be called Farm Progress Days and now is called Farm Technology Days whenever it’s in the area. (This year it’ll be in Outagamie County July 17–19.) For that matter, one family highlight every March is the Ripon FFA Alumni Farm Toy Show. And one of the most interesting farm-related shows I’ve ever attended wasn’t a farm show, at least in name — the Midwest Renewable Energy Association’s Energy Fair, held near Amherst each June. That show could have been called the Alt Fair, since it combined not just alternative energy but alternative building and, yes, alternative, mainly “sustainable,” agriculture.
The WPS Farm Show price is right (free plus $3 for parking). The food selection includes ribeye steak sandwiches, pork chop sandwiches, baked potatoes and cream puffs. There are also giveaways — for instance, recipe cards from the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board — as well as an FFA silent auction and contests. (I chose not to enter the contest for free bull semen.)
If you’re a gearhead, you should be able to appreciate the technology on display, including sprayers large enough to walk underneath.
No, this is not a new model of crop duster.
I admit to being more interested in cars than in other pieces of transportation, which doesn’t stop me from going to, for instance, the EAA AirVenture. (Which has a substantial collection of Ford vehicles, including Shelbys.) So imagine my surprise to see …
… a real live Chevrolet Volt, the first I have ever seen. WPS had it there to promote electric vehicles, as an electric utility. WPS is driving a Volt in partnership with General Motors and the Electric Power Research Institute. Its results are supposed to be at www.wisconsinpublicservice.com/volt, though the site doesn’t appear to be up.
(I didn’t drive the Volt, but my impression that it is inadequate for families remains. It seats four, not five, so we won’t be buying one. The front seat room was adequate, but the trunk doesn’t appear adequate. You may not know that because of the materials used for the gas tank, it requires premium fuel. Maybe you won’t use much, but when you do, you’ll be using the most expensive gas out there.)
Going to farm shows always makes me pine for a pickup truck. I’ve never owned one, though I’ve driven a few, and I know owners of trucks. I don’t have a particular use for one, but, you know, a large Ford Super Duty 4×4 with a diesel engine and manual transmission might be fun to point in the direction of the next driver I see with an objectionable bumper sticker. (You can guess from reading this blog what I might find objectionable.)
It makes sense for farm shows to have farm animals, particularly unusual ones:
I asked the alpacas how they were enjoying the Farm Show. The brown one kept saying “Mmmmmmmmmmmmm,” and I can’t tell you what that means because I don’t speak alpaca. The white one kept eating the whole time. He must be related to me.
Part of my interest in farming (beyond my interest in eating) may be my indirect farming heritage. My godfather was a farmer (though he worked full-time off the farm), and my grandfather owned a farm implement dealership and then sold farm implements on the road. (He owned a succession of Chrysler Corp. station wagons packed from behind the front seat to the tailgate to the roof with three-ring binders and folders of his stuff. Had he ever been rear-ended in his wagons, he would have been decapitated.) He would stay with us while attending the World Dairy Expo or other farm expos at the Dane County Exposition Center.
Then after three years of living in Grant County, I married a farmer’s daughter; her father was a beef and dairy cattle farmer, and her brother now owns the farm. My mother-in-law has fed me farm food for more than 20 years — beef where you know the source, side pork (think of it as super-bacon), chickens the size of turkeys, elk, tongue, and other things I would not have been otherwise fed. The weight gain I’ve had since I met Jannan is a small price to pay, and as you know a waist is a terrible thing to mind.
Obligatory photo of the official farm tractor of the in-laws.
I think agriculture’s role is also underappreciated in the American economy and in Wisconsin specifically. Agriculture and farm equipment are two of the major exports of this state. You would have never gotten me to believe this 25 years ago, but I ended up doing a fair amount of ag reporting in my rural newspaper days, and I insisted on a yearly look at agriculture and food processing in my business magazine days. (My own experience in working agriculture is limited to manual labor tied to the farmer’s daughter’s gardening.)
Other than parenting, farming is the most 24/7/365 job there is. Dairy cattle have to be milked twice or three times every day. Other farm animals have to be fed every day. Cows and pigs do not recognize vacation. Farmers get to deal with the weather’s being too cold or hot, too dry or wet, or any of those at a specific time in the growing season. Farmers are better off repairing their own equipment if they can, because given how much we pay to get cars repaired, one can only imagine the equivalent per-hour repair costs of tractors and combines. Wisconsin’s famous work ethic started with farmers.
Farmers have to deal with everything businesses do, because farms are businesses, but they also get to deal with the various edicts of the state Department of Natural Resources, along with whatever idiocy the U.S. Department of Agriculture comes up with. (That is thanks to one of the worst U.S. Supreme Court decisions of all time, Wickard v. Filburn.) And if you wonder why food prices are going up this year, go down to your favorite gas station and look at the big digital numbers.
One of the great unremarked-upon innovations of the American economy is the opportunity to eat foods formerly considered out-of-season all year. Last night I made salads of spinach and tomato, neither from a can. If you buy peaches or watermelon in February, they won’t be the quality of peaches or watermelon purchased in August, but I’m old enough to remember when they weren’t available at all outside their traditional seasons.
My eyebrows start dropping in a scowl when I start hearing about the concept of farmland preservation well away from urban areas, because I think the purpose of farmland is misunderstood. Farms are factories, places where food is manufactured. Farms have become so efficient that much less farmland, and fewer farmers, are needed to feed more people, Americans and others. Farms are not there to prettify the rural landscape or to contribute to your sense of aesthetics. The people who have the most to lose by overgrazing or not otherwise taking care of their land is, duh, the farmers. (Not to mention their farm animals.)
One of the most interesting stories I wrote in stint number two at Marketplace was about Northeast Wisconsin specialty farms, which included free-range beef, dairy and chicken farms. The meat I sampled from two of them was great. It was also considerably more expensive than what you get in your favorite supermarket. Of course, in a free-market society, you should be able to choose food based on your standards of quality and value.
The WPS Farm Show was about farming (duh), but it was also about its sponsor. While farmers get to choose their suppliers for their inputs, the state Legislature chose not to give us the ability to choose our supplier of electric power and natural gas.
There were displays about electrical safety and energy conservation (including one of the coolest in-state inventions of all time, the Orion Energy Apollo Light Pipe, a combination hemispheric skylight and light). It’s a bit ironic that a power company has a show that includes displays that promote using less of its product. There were also some “green energy” companies, mainly solar power firms.
Except for those willing to pay the extra cost of “green energy,” users of electric power are agnostic about its source. Business runs on energy, whether it comes from coal, natural gas, nuclear power, wind power, solar power, hydropower, geothermal, biomass or whatever. Growing economies need more power, and will always need more power. Neither farmers nor anyone else enjoy the consequences of a non-growing economy.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 