Chewing the Cud

  • Thanks for Brown Teeth and Straggling Geese

    November 24, 2011 Native American Heritage Month Board with music I pushed the scan button.  The next voice I heard was that of the radio when I walk into the local steel supply.  A steady rant on why it wasn’t Indians who were hurt in the selling of Manhattan.  The voice went on and on…

  • Balancing Circles

    November 21, 2011 Native American Heritage Month Balance does not always mean same.  Grandma stepped up the ladder time and again picking fruit.  Prepared on the porch and cooked in the kitchen it ended up in mason jars—shelf after shelf stacked with tomorrow’s pies and cobblers.  A walk through the hen house each morning led…

  • The Curious Local Faded-Sign-Out-Front Diner

    November 18, 2011 Wood is curious.  Like sun-dried tomatoes, if you didn’t know anything of its earlier existence you wouldn’t have a clue where it came from.  Attentive folks looking at a burl may picture a knotty growth on the side of an oak tree, but you have to go a long way to look…

  • Stop It All

    November 15, 2011 Native American Heritage Month We all do it.  We eat our animals without knowing.  Knowing them or ourselves.  It makes it easier, doesn’t it?  Easier to let others raise our food in confined feedlots where manure piles up so high the last days of our food lives are lived out on what…

  • Going

    November 11, 2011 Native American Heritage Month As the fall morning sun crests the southeastern slope of the ridge and begins today’s journey across frosty landscape, I wonder.  I wonder, where are we going today?  We—the people, who have known war and who have not, who have walked our land and who have not, who…