Feds take aim at organic farmer in Pennsylvania

“Corporate America is taking over and putting people in our government. They have the government on their side and they’re making it harder for farmers to be farmers.”

ajh

June 6, 1944: D-Day

The front page of The Salt Lake Tribune from the next day, reporting on the invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe.

ajh

A modern comedy classic

And it’s on YouTube!

Locust Plagues (1873-1877)

The timing of easterners’ migration into the Great Plains coincided with devastating swarms of locusts. The insects, really a species of grasshopper in swarming phase, mainly stayed in the Rocky Mountains until the jet stream facilitated movement to the Plains, where heat helped them breed.

The hungry scavengers devoured all crops in their path and sometimes, fences, blankets, and wool. When the food was gone, the swarms moved on in a flying cloud. Insects caused an estimated $200 million in crop damage in Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, and elsewhere. In Minnesota, where author Laura Ingalls Wilder witnessed the plague as described in On the Banks of Plum Creek, locusts destroyed more than 13 million bushels of wheat and 7 million bushels of oats. “The rasping whirring of their wings filled the whole air,” wrote Wilder, “and they hit the ground and the house with the noise of a hailstorm.”

The largest swarm, recorded in 1874, covered 198,000 square miles. A report that year showed only one family in 10 had enough food for the winter. The government relaxed Homestead Act residency rules so settlers could seek temporary work elsewhere. In 1875, Uncle Sam spent $30,000 on seeds for farmers. Less than 30 years later, locusts mysteriously died out.

A throwback, with delicious hate mail

SOPHOMORIC AND IMMATURE, THAT’S ME
After seeing a pic of Rachel Maddow from high school years back, I provided some brief commentary. A Maddow fan did not find it amusing.

“Maddow has more intelligence and class than you could ever fathom. Your immature, sophomoric comments tell us all we care to know about you.”

ajh

Luis Palau moves on

Since first hearing him speak years ago, I have admired Luis Palau. Sadly, he passed this morning after a long fight with cancer.

Is there an afterlife? He and I both think so.

ajh

God bless America

AND THANK GOD FOR HAMBURGERS, TOO

Obviously derogatory against America and Americans, I do love this imagery, especially Lady Liberty stuffing her face with a burger. This is from some European newspaper. Damn, I love this country! God bless America, and thank God for hamburgers, anyway you like ’em.

ajh

Unassuming bits of stick

When Italian immigrants poured into U.S. port cities in the late 1800s, they brought seemingly unassuming bits of stick. These were fig trees, which took root in unexpected cities, where cold-weather climates seemed hostile to the plant. Yet the trees grew.

Today, you can still identify historically Italian neighborhoods by the presence of backyard fig trees, and the Italian Gardens Project, a living archive of Italian-American gardens and their keepers, is on a quest to create a living library of these backyard gardens.

ajh

Starting Over

INSPIRATION DURING TRYING TIMES

“I’m going to start all over again. It’s not easy but it’s not impossible either. You have to be a little tough in situations like this,” says Artemio Guterrez, a single father of four who just returned to Oregon from his mother’s funeral in Mexico only to have his home burned down by a wildfire.

ajh

Challenging PROPAGANDA in the news media

Sadly, reporting by most national news outlets is primarily propaganda these days. Thankfully, there are some who are challenging these narratives.

Every day there are news articles with mass misinformation. One such recent instance is that bikers converging on Sturgis, South Dakota has been confirmed as a coronavirus super-spreader event. But the facts refute the smear.

When I first came upon this story, I wondered how could this information possibly be tracked. How do these people know that the event is responsible for 250,000 new coronavirus cases? This immediately triggered my bullshit radar. We can’t even track the pandemic accurately.

These idiot researchers are merely speculating using cellphone data. This is not SCIENCE! An embarrassment to data scientists everywhere. And the fact that many in the news media carried the story without any critical thinking, even just a bit of digging, further shows that reporters and editors are pathetically lazy.

ajh