All is Calm, All is Quiet" on the Farm

This week on the farm?
   "All is calm, All is quiet."    Except the guys who went out to check the onion beds and got stuck in the mud and needed to be rescued.. [It really is hard to take a vacation when you farm.]

   The men are all of with their families, as they should be. 

We celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas. For many years this was our only vacation. But, the Twelve Days of Christmas is not just a song. Mr. Shakespeare wrote a play titled 'Twelfth Night.' It is said George Washington celebrated Christmas at church, but Twelfth Night with feasting.

In local history, the Kings River is so named because it was discovered by Spanish explorers on Twelfth Night, January 6th, 1805 the Day of the Kings. This is the traditional day the Three Kings actually found and kneeled before the New Born King. Lt. Gabriel Moraga originally named it, El Rio de los Santos Reyes (River of the Holy Kings). Kings County and Kings Canyon are named from the Kings River.

I know many of you have gotten past Christmas and are on to the next adventure. I want to encourage the rest to enjoy the moment. There is a beauty and a peace in celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas instead of rushing on. I'll close with an excerpt from one of my recent Christmas sermons-

How about if we just let the Grinch win? What if there was no Christmas? Let’s consider a world without Christmas.

               First, if we didn’t have the hoopla of Christmas this would be a dark time of year wouldn’t it? These are the longest and coldest days of the year. Without the hoopla of Christmas what would we do with ourselves from Thanksgiving in November until at least Valentine’s Day? Oops, without Christmas there would have been a St. Valentine would there?

Hospitals

               The Encyclopedia Britannica says the modern age of hospitals began with Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor in the Fourth Century.

 Another source says,

“A nursing tradition developed during the early years of Christianity when the benevolent outreach of the church included not only caring for the sick but also feeding the hungry, caring for widows and children, clothing the poor, and offering hospitality to strangers. This religious ethos of charity continued with the rapid outgrowth of monastic orders in the fifth and sixth centuries and extended into the Middle Ages.

                                                                           Barbara Mann Wall

So, without Christmas, there probably wouldn’t be hospitals.

Education

               While there were schools in the ancient world, education in the West is rooted in the great monasteries and universities run by the church since medieval times.

Science

               The first men of science in the modern era were practicing Christians who used their scholarly abilities to discover the laws used by God to create the Universe. For example, Gregor Mendel, the founder of modern genetics was a monk. Michael Faraday the discoverer of electromagnetism was an elder and deacon in his church.

If we take Christmas out of the world- we take the key motivation for untold generations that built  great schools and hospitals or made  fundamental discoveries of science.

All the best in the New Year.

P

Remember When the President said...?

We got a good soaking this week. I have had over 2.7 inches this season. We only had 3.3 all of last year. Things could change, but we are off to a good start. 

   Do you remember last February when President Obama came to the Valley? He said the drought was caused by climate change, shrugged his shoulders and flew off to Palm Springs to play golf with the King of Jordan. The President gave the King a billion dollars in aid while we, the tax payers, were left to twist in the wind.

   The National Oceanic and Atmospheric  Administration, NOAA, caught something I hadn't noticed. A NOAA report this week says our current drought is not caused by climate change. It was caused by a La Nina weather pattern. 
   The NOAA report builds on another report. In September, "the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, which found no conclusive evidence linking human-caused climate 

change and the California drought."

 (http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2014/20141208_californiadrought.html)

   In the past advocates claimed that under climate change California will actually get more rain, not less. I remember reading those reports and never put two and two together.

   In my book, Ten Reasons: Finding Balance On Environmental Issues I make the point that liberals politicize everything. The example I use is when the President Obama promised his daughters an dog and that promise set off a national debate about rescue dogs, pure bred dogs, etc. It was a promise from a father to his daughters. Even the Mafia leaves your kids alone. My point was, if they will politicize a pet dog, they will politicize just about anything. I think climate change may another of those issues and the NOAA report supports my position.
   If you want me to care for the environment, I'm in. You don't have to scare me with the boogey man, or threats of global catastrophe. Let's stick to the facts and a little common sense when we make public policy. 

A reminder-If you are looking for Christmas gift ideas, my books "Ten Reasons: Finding Balance on Environmental Issues" and "This Week on the Farm" are available at the Clovis Book Barn and online at Amazon.com. They fit well in Christmas stockings.

[Yes, that was a little shameless self-promotion. But, as I tell people, if you don't toot your own horn, no one will toot it for you.]

I hope you all have a great week.

P

So, What Happens with the Recent Election

   I love Fall colors. I took the bike in to town this morning and all the vineyards were glowing.
This is a photo of the wisteria in the back yard. 

   On the farm, the wheat is sprouting. We are working in the orchard and getting ready for the holidays.

So, What Changes With the Recent Elections?

By Paul H. Betancourt

Copyright December 2014

            A lot of money was spent campaigning and a lot of ink was spilled analyzing. The question still remains-What changes with the  recent elections? Probably not much.

            Yes, the Republicans now have the House and Senate. The Republicans have a majority of the governorships. But, the fact is the public is still very evenly divided. If the Republicans think they have a massive mandate they are going to be surprised.

            The Republicans won, in large part, because one thing voters agree on is that our government is not looking out for our concerns. The Republicans have two years to show they can work on behalf of the public or they will face voter frustration themselves in two years.

A Quick Reminder About the Constitution-

            The most common word to describe Congress in recent years is ‘gridlock.’ There are a lot of comments about how they don’t get along with the President and how bad the partisan bickering has gotten.

            For starters, if you remember back to your high school civics class the system was created this way on purpose. Founding Fathers designed the separation of powers because they had lived under a king and the really, really, really did not like the king. More specifically, they did not want a system where one person had all the power.

            Now to this notion that Congress has grown more partisan, I don’t know how that could possibly be true. I have a picture in my files of a political cartoon showing President Lincoln with the face of a baboon. If you remember your Congressional trivia before the Civil War one Congressman almost beat another Congressman to death on the floor of the House with his cane. That’s pretty intense and we haven’t had anything like that in quite a while.

Now, if you are concerned that these people seem to be working for their own interests instead of the greater good, I agree with you whole heartedly. But, you have to realize their number one job is to get reelected not get along. A key part of my education when I ran for the Legislature ten years ago is there are two parts to being a politician; one is campaigning and the other is doing policy. There are those who can get elected, but may not be any good at policy. There are those who may be good at policy, but we will never know if they can’t get elected.

Back to 2015

            So, what changes in the coming year? We actually have a small sliver of opportunity. The 2016 campaigns for the Presidency and Congress will begin about this time next year. We do have a few moths for ‘Them’ to get something done before they go back into campaign mode.

The President has fired off the first salvo in the next round of immigration reform. There are really two issues in this case. First, the obvious need to reform a broken immigration system. The public wants to see reform. If we do not get anything done this year it will be 2017 before we have another chance.

The second issue here is the use of Executive Orders. Each side hates when the other team’s president does it. The Constitution clearly allows the President this power, but changing laws cannot be done by the President alone.

The next step in National Health care takes place this year and with divided government will cause fireworks.

            Water-we are still out numbered. Getting a national Congress to focus on something important to farmers in CA is a long shot.

            We did pass the water bond. We’ll see if they can implement that without squandering all the money.

In California we face a news fuel tax. I am kind of expecting a firestorm when fuel prices go up January 1 to cover AB32’s carbon tax. IT’s all fun and games until some one has to pay for Sacramento’s foolishness. Like the choo choo AB32 is another mandate sent from on high that has not caught the favor of the general public who is just trying to survive day to day.

I’m sounding a little cynical aren’t I? I don’t mean to. Just realistic. These are complex issue with many different interests.