Chewing the Cud

  • Sidle Up To The Fenceline

    April 5, 2015 Ray and I spoke across the fenceline for fifteen years. Each Christmas, whether we needed to or not, our families got together. When Rebecca and Andy’s wedding came, Ray and Mary were there. Ray and I didn’t see eye to eye on everything and I am glad we didn’t—made life a little…

  • The Richness of Suicide, The Lack of Sin, and Robin Williams

    March 29, 2015 (The media is deliberating if this weeks tragedy of Germanwings Flight 9525 is a suicide. Having written prior to the crash, I don’t deal with the tragedy. However, I will say at this early moment after the crash, I believe when one takes the lives of others along with their own, it…

  • Across Border Impacts of the Doctrine of Discovery

    March 22, 2015 Last week’s entry Reestablishing Heritage Languages: Sustainable Thinking brought about a question. “Let me or us perhaps know Dave what you know about whether the DOD operates in some way south of the border with Mexico to the extent it does on the other side.” The question comes from the writer of Erasing…

  • Reestablishing Heritage Languages: Sustainable Thinking

    March 15, 2015 At the Winter Talk conference in Tulsa in few weeks ago, I found myself listening to Dr. Richard Grounds, founder of the Euchee Language Project. He spoke about how the Doctrine of Discovery encouraged the loss of indigenous languages. This loss, he noted, is more than the loss of words and phrases,…

  • Replacing Gates And What They Have To Say About Us

    March 8, 2015 A while back I brought a steer onto the place who could not or would not settle down. Before I sent him down the road, he successfully bent the hell out of one of the corral gates. With longer days settling in (though it is going to take some time for me…