John Ingraham

John Ingraham writes from Bouquet, New York.

I have been raising poultry for 50 years, and the changes I have witnessed are amazing, testimony to the intelligence and dedication of those involved in U.S. agriculture. It is also a tribute to the efficacy and efficiency of the free market. There are statistics in this story, but I think it will be more interesting if I recount my own experiences first (although I raised laying hens and turkeys, this account will be about meat birds - fryers and broilers - only). In the past, setting hens and home incubators were the methods used to procure chicks, but nearly all the chicks raised today come from hatcheries, where eggs are incubated in their thousands. Fifty years ago there were many more hatcheries than there are today, and as they always have a surplus of unwanted chicks, i.e., an egg-laying breed produces as many males as females, and since such males make poor meat birds, what do you do with them? Also, production doesn't always match up with orders, so what do you do with extra chicks? They were offered for sale very cheap, and in spring there were always ads for them in farm papers and country weeklies. I got some chicks that way in the first couple of years. They weren't really much of a bargain because they didn't put on much weight; if you want to produce meat, you must start with a breed developed for that purpose.

We lived in Massachusetts for nine years, and each year we raised 100 layers, mostly Golden Comets, and 100 meat birds, Barred Rocks, but when we moved to the mid-West in 1971, our practice changed in response to demand: we raised fewer layers and more meat birds. Gradually I built up a business in young chicks from 4 to 6 weeks old (the buyers would then raise them to the desired size), so each spring I raised hundreds of birds bought as day-old chicks, by mail, from a hatchery in Pennsylvania.

Handling so many birds year after year, I was bound to notice differences and developments. We dropped Barred Rocks in favor of White Cornish, a bird that grew faster in a plumper, more compact form, and as time passed I saw that they were growing faster, but they also had problems: sometimes their legs would fail them, and once in a while one would keel over with a heart attack. Then there were a couple of years when they wouldn't go out in the yard but would just sit by the feed trough, stuffing themselves. I wrote to the hatchery, not to complain, but to ask about these developments, and I received an illuminating reply. The man explained that fast food outlets created such a demand for compact, deep-breasted chickens that could be grown quickly to 3 pounds or so, dressed, (good fryer size), that breeders were on their mettle, and what I had been observing over the years were signs of work going forward. Soon, as breeders continued their work, problems like weak legs and hearts and stick in the mud chicks disappeared. Today we grow day-old chicks in 6 weeks to 3 or 4 pounds dressed, a plump, flavorful fryer. All our chicks of whatever breed are much healthier, more robust, and we have far fewer losses, which used to be quite common in the first couple of weeks.

Here are statistics to back up my experience: per-capita consumption of chicken rose from just 1 pound in 1900 to over 80 pounds today, probably because of the relentless decline in production costs from $2.10 in 1945 to 25 cents today. Going back to 1925, the average chicken took 112 days to reach a market weight of 2.2 pounds (live). Feed conversion was 4.7 pounds of feed per pound of gain and mortality was 18 percent. Today a chicken reaches slaughter weight of 5 pounds (live) in 42 days. Feed conversion is 1.8 pounds of feed for 1 pound of gain, and mortality is 5 percent. Improved genetics, poultry health, and nutrition caused most of this, but grain genetics is important, too, because it increased the nutritive value of corn and reduced its cost of production.

As I said before, I think this is an amazing story, and because it has acted itself out in my life I am all the more impressed. What's even more amazing is that there are people who look upon this story with horror and disgust, and they are not merely cranks but a menace, not only to agriculture, but to our freedom and prosperity. I did not write this essay just to tell you about chicken-raising; I want to describe and analyze these reactionaries because they are significant, and I don't think most of us, with our focus on politics and Washington, know much, if anything, about them.

When I first met them in the late 1960s I thought of them as Country Fakes, pointing to a salient characteristic: whether living in the countryside or not, they think of themselves as countrymen or identify themselves and their interests with the countryside. An imagined place, that is, because they know nothing about it and do nothing in it (aside, perhaps, from a garden). They know nothing because, if they live in the countryside it is always in a fake place, a stage setting in places like Vermont. In the second place, they already hold strong beliefs about the countryside, beliefs which bolster their egos. An example: the CF believes that the countryside, in its proper state is "natural" and "organic," so he regards the farmer spreading fertilizer or spraying crops as a despoiler. Of course, it inflates his self-esteem (always high) to look down at the benighted farmer in this way.

CFs are usually well-off, with trust funds or fluff jobs with outfits supported by government subsidies, so they have plenty of time for causes, of which there are legions. Greenism is the most important cause, so CFs are always opposed to development, especially of energy sources (Vermont is the first state to ban fracking). Their defining cause is condemnation of modern agriculture in favor of a mythic past before, supposedly, hybrids and genetic modifications. That agricultural developments are swayed by market forces makes them even more detestable. All food co-ops and country magazines are full of propaganda like this.

Although not doctrinaire lefties, CFs share with them ignorance of basic economics: that we live in a regime of scarcity where we cannot pluck trees for bread but must establish priorities to guide economic decisions, and those priorities are largely determined by demand in the marketplace. Fast food outlets wanted a certain size and shape of chicken, and they wanted it faster and cheaper, so the breeders obliged. CFs condemn not only the market incentive but the result: such chickens are not, cannot be as "healthful" (always big with these people) as chickens bred and raised the old-fashioned way. Such nonsense is preached all day, every day in places like Vermont and in famed agricultural journals like The New York Times.

Do not conclude that they're just a bunch of nuts; they are determined enemies of modern farming (as well as of everything else important to a developed economy, like energy). And they are having an effect: fast food outlets like Burger King have decided, pressed by CFs, to buy eggs only from hens raised outside of cages, meaning more stress on hens and higher costs of production. They have intimidated farmers from growing genetically modified crops. Once-great agricultural colleges, like Cornell, are now full of Green propaganda. It behooves us to pay attention to these reactionaries, to learn all that we can about these issues, and to expose and to confront their dangerous and destructive courses. *

Robert DeMuro

The Occupy Wall Street phenomenon and the nonsense arising from it has made it apparent that too many of us are ignorant of our fellows' working lives, so we are inaugurating a series, "Americans at Work," which will, in the words of the workers themselves, explain their jobs, their motivations, and their satisfactions.

As a child growing up on a dairy farm I felt medicine was about as far away as the moon. We hardly saw a doctor because there was nothing existing such as Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and it was cash for visits. Not to say my parents neglected us. They just realized, unlike most of the country today, I did not need to go see a doctor if my nose was stuffy. I think my daily toil in the garden and hours of canning did more for my health than any government check.

I look back at my childhood on the dairy farm with very fond memories and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I learned what the word "work" truly means. Physicians may think they work hard but they don't compare to the dairy farmer. Up to milk the cows at 4:30 a.m. and by 4 p.m. it was time to get ready to milk them again. Dad would be in by 6 p.m. on a good day to have dinner and then fall asleep on the couch. Vacations? Those did not exist unless the cows could milk themselves. Sure there were times he tried to hire somebody to milk while we went one state over for a long weekend, but it almost always led to a disaster that brought us home early.

There were a few things in medical school that really made me wonder how I lived beyond the age of five. For one, we learned of all the terrible organisms in unpasteurized milk such as bovine tuberculosis. That class had you thinking that if you just drove past a dairy farm you would have 10 days of bloody diarrhea. To think we drank that stuff three times a day! Not only did I beat the odds, but it seems my brothers and sister were also very lucky. Wait . . . what about all the people who came to the farm to get milk? Surely one of them must have suffered this terrible fate? I guess my parents must have just hid this terrible incident from me.

During the second year of medical school we started to get out of the classroom in small groups with clinical preceptors assigned to teach us physical exam skills. I was assigned to the VA with an elderly retired physician who practiced in Buffalo his entire career. Along with physical examination, he was also supposed to teach us how to "act like doctors." He made a point of telling us that we need to stay calm and in control at all times. "A doctor never shows emotion," he would say. Along those lines he felt the physician should never have anything but a physician-patient relationship with his patients. If the patient were to ask you anything such as "How is the family?" you were

not to answer. At the time it seemed to make sense but that was only because that guy was supposed to know everything while I knew nothing. As far as giving a patient a hug . . . well that would be reason enough to just turn your license in and move to a commune. It turns out in the rural area it would be a little odd to act in this manner, considering I sit next to my patients in church, I bring my kids over to play with theirs, I have them over for dinner or God forbid even vacation with them. I guess the proper way would be to only accept patients that are not friends also. That might make it a little tough to pay the bills.

The practice of medicine is full of contradictions - both the practice and the patients' expectations. Everyday somebody makes a sly remark about how I might be 10 minutes late for their visit. Of course, when it comes to the end of my time with them they are more than happy to ask 10 more questions, and then pull that list out of the back pocket from "the spouse" to double check that they covered everything besides the sore throat they came in for. The list is, or course, always written by a wife and given to a husband. After thousands of patient visits I have yet to have a woman pull out the list of concerns that her husband had written for her.

I see many children with the diagnosis of "ADHD" and this was a very new thing to me as a doctor. Growing up on the farm if one was hyperactive it would have been a real plus because it might have given us that boost to get all the chores done in time. To even think that by the end of a summer day putting in hay one would be labeled as having too much energy would be unfathomable. I only wish I needed to take a pill in the morning to slow down. I never recall any friend from all the other farms needing a pill because he wouldn't sit still. I do recall that ALL of us couldn't sit still in a classroom, but we were, after all, kids.

During my 13 years practicing medicine I have seen more change than I would have expected for 30 years. As anyone can see by watching the nightly news, healthcare change is inevitable and as physicians we will either help lead the charge or lay down and have it shoved down our throats. When I hear an old-time physician lament about the "good old days" I realize that we will never see them again, but importantly, it was some of the abuses of the good old days that got us where we are. It is quite fascinating, and disturbing, to see the daily recommendations coming out of the government on how I can be a better doctor. Those that have not practiced are fairly convinced that my 70-year-old retired miner with abdominal pain can somehow be fit into a neat little algorithim of care that will also work for his neighbor and his brother. We are heading towards cook-book medicine, but no patients fit the recipes given. When I have to make mashed potatoes the "thought leaders" say I can just use the baked potato recipe.

We are entering into a day and age of "pay for performance" which is another wonderful term that would make any layperson think that I will only get my paycheck if I give good care. The reality is that they will only be tracking a few indicators such as if I looked at the feet of my diabetic patient. Let me correct that . . . . if I DOCUMENTED that I looked at the feet. I am not saying that it is a bad idea to look at diabetic feet but I can tell you that if I make a poor choice in picking a medicine for this diabetic while also ignoring her concerns about the major family stress that is causing her to eat poorly I will not get a low rating. The fact is that at every office visit there are many intangibles that determine the quality of the visit and these cannot be measured. We have a major problem with overprescribing narcotics in our area, as do many rural and urban areas, but I can tell you I have seen no major "pay for performance" measures that will look at this. As it stands I can walk in the room and tell my diabetic patient that I don't want to hear anything about what is going on at home, document the foot exam, send them to an eye doctor yearly, order some labs and then give them 120 percocet pills and many groups that measure my performance will say I hit the indicators and congrats on doing a great job.

One could take this rant as coming from a pessimistic, burnt-out physician but I assure you that is far from the truth. I have at least another 20 years of medicine ahead of me and look forward to the challenges. I guess I just wish the challenges did not come from physician "leaders" who could not do what I do on a daily basis, so instead they got themselves into a position where they think they know what I should do. *

Fayette Durlin and Peter Jenkin

Fayette Durlin and Peter Jenkin write from Brownsville, Minnesota.

Our readers must be familiar, all too familiar, with the recent outpouring of conservative books and articles claiming to analyze American's present deplorable state, and to outline appealingly simple, feasible reforms. They begin with the Founding - we should think every literate conservative must know the Constitution and the Federalist Papers almost by heart now - quickly traverse the 19th century to land in 1932 with the iniquity of the New Deal, then the Great Society, and finally the blatant grossness of the Obama years, followed by a list of must-do reforms. Some of these diatribes are more convincing than others, but on the whole they are unimpressive. They bay at the moon, they preach to the choir, they tell us nothing that we do not already know, and their solutions are wishful thinking.

Occasionally, however, perhaps two or three times a year, we read an essay in one of the many magazines we get that profoundly reorients our thinking about these matters, and in the June issue of The New Criterion, James Piereson's "The Fourth Revolution" shows us a way of considering the contemporary scene in an illuminating way. His argument about our "revolutions" is based on the observation that because our constitutional system "resists preemptive solutions to accumulating problems," and because our dynamic society constantly creates "new challenges to which the political system cannot easily respond," we seem to resolve our "deepest problems in relatively brief periods of intense and destabilizing conflict."

The first revolution was Jefferson's in 1800, caused by the Federalist's 1798 passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts, seemingly outlawing political dissent. It led to all-out political warfare against the Federalists and the entrenchment in power of the Democrats until their repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854 helped to create the Republican Party and its dominance until 1932, when the Depression effectively ended Republican hegemony. Piereson discusses the times of each dominant era (FDR's: national regulation, public spending, internationalism) and shows how each era has a "regime party" and a "competitor forced to adapt to its dominant position." Even though the latter may win national elections, it is forced "to accept the legitimacy of the basic political themes established by the regime party." That is certainly the history since 1932 of the GOP, despite Reagan's presidency. Note that Democrats still control all the leading cultural and educational institutions, another perquisite of a regime party, forcing conservatives to create their own magazines and institutions. His description of the Democratic party as a coalition of "rent-seekers" (public sector unions, government employees and contractors, beneficiaries of government programs), interested in the distribution of wealth rather than its creation, is no revelation of course, but his analysis of the way such a coalition paralyzes the political process is compelling.

The first part of the essay is about the history of the three "revolutions" and the current standoff between Democrats and Republicans, and it ends with this:

This impasse between the two parties signals the end game for the system of politics that originated in the 1930s and1940s. As the "regime party" the Democrats are in the more vulnerable position because they have built their coalition around public spending, public debt, and publicly guaranteed credit, all sources of funds that appear to be reaching their limits. The end game for the New Deal system and for the Democrats as our "regime party" will arrive when those limits are reached or passed.

The next part of the essay explains why the "endgame" will not be long in coming and these reasons we know: debt, unfulfillable obligations, stagnation and slow growth, political paralysis. There follows a clear, concise discussion of these reasons, familiar to any conservative reader, but not usually set forth with such clarity. By political paralysis he means "the parties will fail to agree on any preemptive solutions . . . . until they reach a point of crisis." So he holds out little hope for proposals like the Ryan budget because he does not think politicians (who helped to create the problems in the first place) will be able to face the necessary economics. What, then, will happen? Because of our spending and debt difficulties, the U.S. is "vulnerable to any number of unforeseen and uncontrollable events." And then "Congress would have to slash spending and renegotiate promises it has made. At that point the U.S. would enter uncharted political territory." And what of the outcome?

If the three previous revolutions offer any lessons then there is every chance that the U.S. will emerge from this crisis with new momentum to develop its economy and provide leadership for the world.

Most of our readers, we presume, are hoping for Romney's victory in November and the swift enactment of presumptive solutions like the Ryan budget, and repeal of Obamacare, and so on, and we join in that hope. But James Piereson may be right - there is a convincing sense of realism in his prognostications - and that vision while immediately grim, is ultimately hopeful. It is certainly obvious that the liberal ideology of the last 80 years is defunct, that it has no answers to our dilemmas except more of its disastrous policies, so however it may come, we are betting on the fourth "revolution."

Those books we mentioned at the beginning are what we call "grumble" books - grumble, grumble, grumble. Their point is that they confirm the reader's feelings, they make him feel he's not alone in his disgust at current affairs. The great value of Mr. Piereson's essay is intelligence. He covers similar ground as the grumble books but with a penetrating analysis focusing sharply on what he deems relevant, bringing our political history to life by revealing patterns we never saw so clearly before, dispassionately and succinctly making the case for regime change. In conception and style it is brilliant. We recommend it to our readers. Send $1 to Fayette Durlin at 12 Angier Hill Rd., Essex, NY 12936. We'll send you a reprint.

*

Jigs Gardner

Jigs Gardner is an Associate Editor of the St. Croix Review. Jigs Gardner writes on literature from the Adirondacks, where he may be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Our first task was haying, with scythes. If you know what you're doing, and if you can keep the blade razor-sharp, and if your back is strong, you can mow a lot of hay with a scythe. A few years later I learned the skill from an old Irishman who had learned it in the old country, but then I was wholly ignorant, as were Paul and Momo. Nevertheless, we shouldered our scythes and went out to the Big Meadow. We must have tried every possible way (except the right one) to swing a scythe, and each one had as a consequence the jamming of the tip into the ground every few strokes. We'd bend it back and try to sharpen it (another skill we did not have), and then go at it again. In the end we cut a fair amount of hay. It was hauled to the barn in an old buggy, Momo in front steering (the easiest job, naturally), Paul and I pushing. Do you need to be told that Momo treated us to "work songs" as we labored in the field?

Woodcutting was the next big job. By now I was much more proficient, and we went at the work systematically. I would make the undercut with an axe, Paul and I would fell the tree with a crosscut saw, the three of us would limb it with axes and swede saws, Paul and I would saw the trunk into blocks, and Momo would split them while Paul and I cut up the limbs on a saw buck. Since we were felling in an area near the road, we would stack everything at roadside to be picked up in Paul's station wagon at noon and hauled to the woodshed. Momo was the only flaw. To split the big blocks he used steel wedges and a fourteen-pound sledgehammer - not for him the six-pound splitting maul. I didn't care what he used, but staging the grand wallops, hammer raised high overhead, was apt to result in near misses and broken handles. Since it was always broken near the head, I'd saw off a few inches and refit the shortened handle, but I could do that only so many times before I'd have to fit a new handle. During the winter I had taught myself to carve serviceable white ash axe handles, but the production of durable maul handles, able to withstand heavy shocks, eluded me. I also had some used truncated handles in the shop. Momo broke every one several times, and I could foresee the day when I would have to go to the store in the village and buy a handle - and another and another. They cost a dollar in those days, but by then all our money was gone, every penny of it. Going to town every few days to buy a new handle (with money borrowed from Paul) so Momo could flail around in the woods with a sledgehammer, all the while roaring out Pete Seeger ballads, didn't fit my idea of the Simple Life. That day had not yet come, but it loomed.

With the exception of haying, an all-day job, we worked only in the mornings. Afternoons were given over to study for Paul and me, and of course I had gardening and other chores, like refitting sledgehammer handles. What was Momo doing, you ask? In his role as Revolutionary Artist he was writing seamless imaginative fictions for the enrichment of Proletarian Culture. As a writer myself, I envied the speed at which Momo could turn them out, but even more I marveled at his self-assurance. How much doubt I endure, how many difficult choices I must make, how much crossing-out and rewriting I must do, how many drafts have been used to kindle the kitchen stove! Not Momo. Clackity-clack, clang clang, and another smasho manuscript was reeled from the typewriter ready for us to peruse, for we were all expected to read and make admiring comments (all beginning writers, including myself, subject their friends, relatives, and even passing strangers to this ordeal). The pretense was that we would criticize the stories, thus helping him to improve them, but when I pointed out that his first effort, "The Socialist Mayor of Danville," lacked the finer touches of verisimilitude when the main action of the plot depended on small-town voters electing as mayor a man whose only campaign pledge was the recognition of Red China, the resulting sulks lay heavy on the household. We bought peace after that by heaping on praise. Even on the tale in which Momo and his guerilla band attack a nest of fascist reactionaries in the Vermont hills only to discover, with mingled surprise and contempt, as Momo enters the wrecked farmhouse, BAR in hand, that it is his old mentor Jigs Gardner he has had to kill. Jo Ann's corpse lies across the kitchen sink. Ha ha. Very good, Momo. Terrific irony. Love the ambiguity, boffo surprise, keep up the good work.

Oh, I could tell you stories - but I'll forbear. To get the feel of the atmosphere, keep this in mind: Momo whipped off those dreadful creations in no time at all, just as you or I might do a grocery list. The sound of the typewriter haunted us. I recall one afternoon when Jo Ann and Paul and I were in the raspberry patch at some distance from the house, but we could hear the infernal machine. Paul looked up at the open window. "God! How I dread that sound!"

We had a funny visit one evening from Fred Brown (whose truck was stuck in the ditch in the fall) when he stopped in on his way home from a dance in Woodbury, full of gaiety, demonstrating dance steps, his bright blue eyes snapping. With him was Hank, his brother-in-law, who sat on the couch staring dully at the new shoes he had bought that day, wiggling his toes, in whom I recognized the drunk I'd helped out of a mud hole last spring. We were drinking rhubarb wine, and we gave them some. Fred enlivened the gathering for a quarter of an hour, sketching vivid glimpses of the dance and the dancers, and then he was off, taking the arm of his reluctant comrade and dancing out to the pickup, singing a raffish tune.

Mrs. B dropped in occasionally, but her timing was off. She was forced to content herself, as she stood by the kitchen counter while we were doing the dishes, with foraging in the scrap bucket we kept there for the hens. There was never much there, but Mrs. B would try to make a meal of it. One afternoon when Paul and I were having a tutoring session on the porch, she appeared and, as was her wont, launched into a mad monologue about blackstrap molasses, eight-grain bread, and Lord knows what else. I was sitting on a bench with my back against the wall, Paul was lounging on the porch rail, and Momo, who had come downstairs when he heard the jeep, was standing in the doorway. Mrs. B had stopped at Otis's yesterday when he was at supper (I'll bet he liked that), and the things that man was eating! Since I thought the biggest problem with Otis's nutrition was the amount of it he was taking in liquid form, I couldn't get stirred up about his sins against Adelle Davis. I looked down at my book, Paul yawned and stretched, and Momo was turning away when she suddenly declared emphatically, socking her fist into her palm, "What this country needs is a revolution!"

Momo turned back, Paul lowered his arms, I looked up. Was Mrs. B a secret sympathizer? A top cat in disguise? We leaned forward to catch her next words.

"Yes!" Again she smacked her fist into her palm. "A Vitamin B12 revolution!"

Paul went over the railing into the flower bed, Momo vanished, but I was stuck where I sat, unable to have the release the others were enjoying - I could hear Momo laughing his way upstairs, and Paul's giggles were only partly muffled by vegetation. I did what I could: stuffing my handkerchief in my mouth, I laughed inwardly while tears rolled down my cheeks. Mrs. B, oblivious, rattled on.

Aster was still straying. She didn't seek other cows, and she wasn't "bullin'" now she was settled, but she liked to wander. I would look up in the pasture and she would be gone, and then the work of tracking, at which I became quite skilled, would begin. She would travel for miles through the woods following old logging roads, once all the way up to the High Meadow, but usually she would wind up on the other side of the hill. Once she was gone for a day and a night, and when I finally found her she had managed to go through a fence of five strands of barbed wire. Whether that extraordinary effort did it I don't know, but I saw hanging from her vulva the embryo, not much larger than a mouse, of her aborted calf. Sadly, I led her home and put her in the stable while Paul went out to call the vet. Jo Ann had just received a check from a friend with the admonition to spend the fifteen dollars on herself. She gave it up to pay the vet. He told us not to try to breed her again; she was really too old to carry a calf. She continued to give milk, not much in winter, more in summer, until we left the Corbin place and sold her to a slaughterhouse. She maintained her wanderings to the end, and I tracked her through woods and fields many a day. There may be some old people still living in that town who remember a bearded young man trudging along leading an old cow, placidly chewing her cud, by a bit of old rope.

Momo was becoming more and more preposterous. One hot night we were sitting around the kerosene lamp reading, sweating, swatting mosquitoes, and listening to Jo Ann express her yearning for cooling drinks, iced sherbert, and other bourgeois frivolities unavailable to those without refrigeration, when Momo, absorbed in a Bolshevik polemic, suddenly slapped it on the table and bellowed, "What this country needs is a Lenin!"

"Yes, damn it," Jo Ann added sourly, "A Lenin ice."

Massive sulks ensued. But what was worse, far worse, was that Momo, in a transformation more deadly than Count Dracula's emergence from his tomb at sunset, put away his prosaic self to don the mantle of Revolutionary poet.

Yes the people the workers I am with you

Black yellow red I am with you

The machine guns stitching red kisses

On the bloated bodies of the bourgeoisie and its running dogs

Yes I am with you . . .

Line after line, page after page, canto after canto, he turned it out even faster than the wretched stories. Clickety-click bang bang, the typewriter poured forth the wholesale lots of this stupefying stuff, oppressing our spirits, driving us out of doors, anywhere to flee the fatal sound. When God shuts a door, however, He sometimes opens a window. Momo broke the last handle for the last time; it was too short to refit. Well, Momo, I said, I guess you'll have to go down to the village to buy a new one. That evening he announced his departure in a phrase, a non sequitur still a byword in our family: "When I see those hills, I gotta go." Planning to hitch hike, he said he'd sleep in barns and haystacks en route. His traveling costume: jeans, chambray work shirt, red bandanna, a sack of Bull Durham in his shirt pocket, ticket hanging out.

A few years later, driving along a back-country road in Virginia late at night in a downpour with Paul and his brother, looking for a place to put up, we saw a ramshackle barn beside the road. Investigation revealed ample hay and no roof leaks. As we settled in our sleeping bags, Paul said, "I knew it'd be O.K. - there's a sign outside that says 'Momo approved.'"

Our second year in the Corbin place was quite different from the first in nearly every way, although it looked much the same as we went about our chores in the stable, garden, field, woods, and house, moving in accustomed paths of familiar routines, carrying pails, pushing the wheelbarrow, splitting wood, leading the cow to water. The most striking difference was the sense of ease and security attendant on success. We had endured, we had survived, and now we were much better off - except for money - than we had been a year ago. I would not exaggerate: words like "endured" and "survived" can be used only if it be understood that our hardships, trifling as they were in any larger perspective, could not seem trivial to us, used as we were to a physically and mentally insulated way of life. Now we knew what a winter on the hillside was like and we were prepared for it; the woodshed, rebuilt and enlarged, was filled with seasoned wood; the pantry, which had frozen on the coldest nights, was tightened up and insulated, its new shelves laden with jars of beans, tomatoes, corn, rhubarb, pickles, raspberries, applesauce, jams and jellies, as well as bags of onions; cellar drainage had been improved, the stone wall was repaired and every dubious crack and cranny stuffed and patched. Now shelves and bins were built, filled with squash, apples, pumpkins, cabbages, sixteen bushels of potatoes, and carrots and beets in kegs of sawdust; two barrels of cider were on cradles in sawbucks in the middle of the floor. Areas of the barn left unfinished by Corbin were completed and improved, and up in the sugar bush I cut wide paths to and around every maple, stacked firewood, well-covered, next to a new stone fireplace. Harvest accounts are invariably smug, but the achievement and consequent security were undeniable.

During the summer, Jo Ann opened a campaign to secure busing for the children in the fall. The school board was unwilling to pay the four hundred dollars it would cost, and we wouldn't let Nell endure that long walk. Letters went back and forth, bureaucrats from Montpelier came out and measured the road, and there was a stalemate. In her last letter Jo Ann had tentatively suggested that we might educate the children at home, not because we had any interest in the idea, but as a way to put pressure on the board, but the district superintendent jumped at the idea and brought us the textbooks for the first three grades (later, the board would spread the lie that we had withdrawn our children because we thought they were too good for the local school, a lie that circulated widely and dogged us for years). Those desperately playful books were so repetitive, so idiotic, so boring that we went through them as rapidly as the children's progress would allow and then turned to our large collection of classic children's books, perfectly adequate for teaching primary grades. The best thing about it was the brevity of the school day once we realized the work could be accomplished in no more than a couple of hours each morning. Once again, as in the move to Vermont, our timing would be off. Home schooling would be respectable later; at the time we were widely condemned by people who knew us - it was more of our almost criminal folly. What mattered was the children were learning and happy, and so were we.

The change of greatest moment was in the people we met and associated with, but at first we saw it only as an addition, not a change, and its consequences and significance were not apparent for some time. One afternoon in August I was mowing around the potato patch when Fred Brown wandered into the field and sprawled on the grass. I had not seen him since the evening when he'd been to a dance in Woodbury. Glad to rest my back, I dropped the scythe and stretched out. Fred was leaning on his elbow, picking at the grass.

"Danville Fair's next weekend," he said in a considering tone.

"Umm."

"You goin?"

I shook my head. Fred picked at the grass. "I was thinkin," he began, and stopped.

"Umm?"

"I was thinkin I gotta have sumpin for the Fair, an whyn't you sell me a coupla jugs o' that dandelion wine?" in a thoughtful, speculative tone. Before I could even think of an answer, he sat up and said with great earnestness, "I'll keep it secret, Scout's Honor, nobody'll know but down in Toonerville, promise, cross my heart and hope to die!"

I sat up and picked some grass myself. Selling alcohol was dangerous, and if I were to do it I should be very careful and should charge plenty. In later years I sometimes pretended that it was so, and I have even bragged about my "bootlegging days," posing as Mr. Worldly Wiseman, a front to shield my soft-headedness from the sharp-eyed contempt of the truly worldly. The truth is that after a moment or two I agreed to sell him wine because I liked him and was amused by his solemn appeal, the kind of thing a kid says and you want to believe him but know you shouldn't. Nor did I charge much, a couple of dollars for a bottle of wine or cider, and I forget how much for a pint of beer, maybe a quarter. I trusted Fred, and he never let me down. From then on, I saw Fred or his brother-in-law Hank (an abject drunk) nearly every Sunday morning, and I'd sell them something, no great quantity but enough to establish a regular relationship. Alcohol was not all of it; there was more to my dealings with these men, then and later, and if I did not charge much for my wares, in the end I got much more from them than they did from me.

Not least in funny stories. Ernie and Martha Moore had sold their place to some summer people, and they conned Fred into agreeing to mow the field around the house. "I'm not payin nothin for it. All I gotta do is cut it, bale it, an haul it away. It's all gravy, pure gravy."

"Who'll do the mowing?"

He stroked his moustache. "I got a deal with Eldon," throwing out his arm in an expansive gesture. "We're going halfies."

"Eldon doesn't have a baler."

Fred was suddenly mysterious. All he would say was that he had a "lead" on one, as if a baler were an exotic rarity. This took place at the end of October, nearly two months after the first frost - and there had been several since. That grass, growing in a field that had not been seeded, manured, limed or mown for years, must have had slight nutritional value to start with, and what would it have now? Anyway, Eldon mowed it one morning, and that afternoon he passed our place hauling what looked like an old fashioned stationary baler. That night there was a full moon, and when I came out of the stable after milking I heard a steady thumping sound from down the hill. Evidently they were baling by moonlight. When I went to bed at eleven, they were still hard at it.

Fred got me out of bed next morning. He wanted wine, he wanted cider, he wanted anything I had. How'd the baling go? After all that work - and remember, it was stationary so they were carrying the hay to it - all the baler did was throw the hay out the back! He was on his way to find out from the farmer who sold it how to make it work. As he was carrying the last of the jugs out to the truck, I reminded him that I wanted the empties back sometime. "In a minute," he said, as he proceeded to poor hard cider, rhubarb, dandelion, and beet wines into a milk can. "There," handing me back the jugs.

I loved all seasons on the hill for their clarity in the dry air, for their sharp distinctions, and in retrospect, far away now in space and time, they coalesce into one symbolic cycle of Ideal Types: a specific spring becomes generalized, and so on. It is only by patient thought that I can bring back certain times and weathers. But the fall that year was such a clear, dry, bright contrast to the soggy, lowering fall of the year before that I have never forgotten it or merged it with the others; it stands out distinct in memory as in life.

Throughout the woods and copses and in the hedgerows along the road, the rich yellow shades of rock maple ruled, punctuated by slender flame-red soft maples, toned down by the pale dry yellow of birch and the beige of beech. Day after day we walked the woods in a golden haze that seemed to hold its climax even as the leaves were falling, even as the colors were gradually dimming, even as the season was consumed by the slow fire of the inexorable year. The pitilessly poignant autumn sunlight, softened for a time by the huge gesture of the leaves, now asserted the power of its thin clarity, drily painting each diminishing hue, limning with an unsentimental eye the exact shapes of things, marking what will pass and what will stay, confirming mortality in a voice of light.

When winter came in November it was comparatively moderate, not nearly so severe as the previous winter. There were sledding opportunities all around us: from the top of the pasture down through the gate and along in front of the house; across the road in the field streaking down to the gorge; the long length of the Big Meadow. When the snow was fresh and powdery, only toboggans on a steep slope would do, and then the gorge field was best. It dropped sheer right from the edge of the road, a concave slope whose gradient only lessened toward the bottom in a long easy curve sweeping to a stop at a stone wall. But it was such a long, hard climb back up that we didn't slide there much. Once the snow was packed, the pasture was for sledding, a run, long enough for a good ride, but not too long or too steep to discourage a child from climbing back up right away. It was a challenge, because you sped straight down the pasture like an arrow towards the gate, and once through, you had to turn sharp to go flying by the house right out to the snow bank at the road. The Big Meadow was a long, classic convex hill, so you began slowly at the nearly level top, gradually picking up speed as the descent steepened, until you were really flying at the bottom. Corbin's was the best place for sledding I've ever lived, and that winter, with the children free of schooling after mid-morning, we did a lot of it. *

Haven Bradford Gow

Haven Bradford Gow writes from Greenville, Mississippi.

Haven Bradford Gow (at age 8): Dad, what does it mean to die? If you die, can you still come back to me? Otherwise, I don't want you to die.

Joseph Gow (my father): When you die, you close your eyes and go to sleep and don't wake up again. When I die, all you have to do is close your eyes and think about me and I will come back alive again for you.

Haven: Aunt Lena, please don't leave us (my handicapped sister, Sally, and myself). I don't want you to die; you promised me that you would live to at least 100 years old.

Lena Wong Yee (my aunt at 94 years old): I don't want to leave you, but someday everyone has to die.

A few years ago I discerned a glimpse of God's love and what heaven must be like as I watched my father die a noble and courageous death from a cancer that had spread from his liver throughout his body and brain; my father purposefully came home from the hospital that particular day, just so he could prove to me and my handicapped sister how much he loved us.

Fearing that he would die in a dreary hospital room without having had the opportunity to say goodbye to us, my father ordered the doctor and nurses to permit him to accompany us home, despite the fact he would have to endure excruciating pain.

As I was driving him home, I kept looking at him in the rear view mirror and thinking about how noble and courageous my father was and how precious was each second that he remained alive.

In his own bed, with me and my sister by his side, my father died with peace of mind and soul; he understood that one not only must live nobly but die nobly as well.

I thanked God for inspiring and giving my father the strength, nobility, and generosity of mind, spirit, and character to show us his unselfish, effusive and sacrificial love. And then I experienced a flash of insight: my father's love was a reflection of God's love for me. God made my father for eternity. And when it is time for me to go, God will reunite me with my father. *

William A. Barr

William Barr was an aviator with the U.S. Naval Air Corps during W.W. II, and flew in the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Pacific regions.

"War is hell." These very words came from the lips of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman as his Union army cut a sixty-mile wide swath of devastation across the state of Georgia on its march to the sea to seal the surrender of the Confederacy in the Civil War. Once any war is raging, the means of stopping its carnage justifies whatever it takes to end its horrors.

Most historians and statesmen hold to this principle and accordingly Sherman is revered as a great General, yet there always will be a compassionate few who focus on the ruthlessness of battle as they deplore it in abstraction.

Then there are those who contend that the Japanese Empire was on the brink of defeat before the big bombs, having lost their aircraft carriers and skilled pilots; lost their fuel tanker route to the oil fields; even lost Iwo Jima and Okinawa nearby. These same people point out that Japan's Axis partner, Germany, had surrendered on May 7, releasing masses of Allied might ready in all haste and concentrated against beleaguered Japan.

Such theorists would contend that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unnecessary and avoidable.

The Bombs of August

Playing on historian Barbara Tuchman's book title, The Guns of August, which expertly analyzed the events and implications of the first month of the World War in August 1914, we find ourselves doing the same in accounting for the key events and implications of the last month of World War II with its full array of ironic and dramatic twists and turns.

We must consider the sudden death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, America's Commander-in-Chief, who passed away on April 12, 1945, some eighty-three days after taking the Presidency for his fourth term. His Vice-President, Harry S. Truman, was a political ploy holding his office for FDR's advantage and with no thought to this actual turn of events. Roosevelt had not exposed his running mate to any details or crucial decisions of the war itself before his sudden death. Truman, somewhat in shock and overwhelmed, was required to be briefed overnight by the counsels of the military and the state department with the Potsdam summit meeting coming up with Stalin and Churchill and with a momentous agenda concerning the disposition of postwar Europe.

Then another fateful event: on July 17, 1945, at the Potsdam Conference, it became necessary for Winston Churchill to humbly excuse himself from the conference when it was learned that the British Conservatives had lost the recent election to the Laborites. The new British Prime Minister, Clement Atlee, joined Harry Truman as an uninitiated newcomer to the Allied conference table when huge and vital decisions were in order on many matters concerning post-war Europe and the world leaving Joseph Stalin of Communist Russia as the one remaining experienced Allied leader. (Insight from hindsight tells us that this was the start of the Cold War that was to persist for the next forty years.)

Their business at Potsdam was to create occupation zones, set reparations, and arrange for peace treaties, but our new A-bomb capabilities were never disclosed there. Instead, Truman invited and encouraged Russia to declare war on Japan and invade Manchuria, supposedly to shorten the war.

Back from Potsdam, President Truman authorized the use of the atom bombs and so "Little Boy" (our uranium bomb) and "Fat Man" (our plutonium bomb) were shipped from the New Mexico proving grounds to Mare Island, put aboard the Cruiser Indianapolis, and delivered to Tinian Island in the Marianas where our B-29 Long Range Bombers were based.

* On August 6, 1945, Col. Paul Tibbets' Enola Gay released the first A-bomb that inflicted death, destruction, and suffering on Hiroshima, Japan. The intense heat of fission burns to the bone and its mega-powerful concussion levels everything in all directions - a description of Hell to the ultimate.

* On August 8, 1945, Russia declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria and the Sakhalin Islands, complying with their Potsdam commitment, but injecting Communist influence with profound future consequences in the Orient.

* On August 9, 1945, the Japanese city of Nagasaki was cremated in the same way with "Fat Man."

Who can deny that our two A-bombs ended World War II once delivered, dropped, and detonated? On August 10, the next day, Japan opened peace negotiations and on August 14 our terms of total surrender were met and World War II was finally over, three years, eight months, and twenty-two days after Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor by those 360 infamous warplanes.

Our Lives or Their Lives?

So now we ponder how many American lives were saved as a result of our fateful decision to employ our atom bombs against Japan? Historians do well by digging for relevant facts rather than speculate from hearsay.

Tarawa, Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Hollandia, Saipan, Peleliu, Leyte, Luzon, and Lingayen landings were deadly and costly in American lives. Few if any Japanese soldiers ever surrendered. We captured virtually no Japanese prisoners of war. They were trained to fight to the last man, even in futile charges at the last moment. But Iwo Jima and Okinawa were closer to the homeland and the ferocity became even more intense. On Iwo Jima we were forced to kill 20,000 Japanese soldiers at the cost of 5,000 Americans. On Okinawa, still closer to Japan itself, 6,000 kamikaze suicide pilots sank 36 naval vessels and seriously damaged 332 others. Our leader, Lt. Gen. Simon Buckner was killed along with 40,000 other American fatalities during the fighting which lasted more than two and one half months and brought death to 109,000 Japanese defenders.

Rather than speculate on the human cost if we had been compelled to invade Japan proper, we now have access to the actual declassified plans for more invasions without the use of our Atomic weapons.

Our Plans vs. Their Plans

Planning for Operation Downfall was completed by the summer of 1945. It called for two massive invasions even greater than the scale of Okinawa in April in which 2,200 amphibious vessels were deployed. The first assault was code named Operation Olympic in which American combat troops would land on Japan proper by amphibious attacks before dawn on November 1, 1945. Fourteen combat divisions would land on heavily fortified and defended Kyushu after heavy naval and aerial bombardment.

The second invasion, code named Operation Coronet, would happen on March 1, 1946, employing 22 divisions. This force would be met by one million defenders on the main island of Honshu which had in it the Tokyo plain. This final thrust has the unconditional surrender of Japan as its goal.

Operation Downfall called for using the entire Marine Corp, the entire Pacific navy, elements of the 7th Army Air Force, the 8th Air Force (recently redeployed from Europe), the 10th Air Force, and the 14th Air Force from China. More than 1.5 million combat soldiers with three million in support would be needed. More than 40 percent of all servicemen still in uniform in late 1945 would be involved in the two amphibious assaults and casualties were expected to be severe.

Adm. William Leahy estimated that there would be more than a quarter of a million Americans killed or wounded on Kyushu alone. Gen. Charles Willoughby, Gen. MacArthur's Chief Intelligence Officer, reckoned that there would be one million American casualties by the fall if 1946.

Whereas a thorough naval blockade was to be employed, it was not thought to be sufficient to bring down Japan. The planners came to realize that naval blockades choke, but fail to kill. (Witness Great Britain from 1939 to 1945 after seven continuous years of U-boat constriction.) Furthermore, the same planners thought strategic bombing might destroy cities and yet leave whole armies intact.

After extensive discussion, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on May 25, 1945, issued a top-secret directive to proceed with the invasion of Kyushu to Gen. MacArthur, Adm. Nimitz, and Air Force Gen. Henry Arnold. The target date would be after the typhoon season.

On July 24 President Truman approved the plans for the invasion. Two days later the United Nations issued the Potsdam Proclamation that called for Japan to surrender unconditionally. Three days later the Japanese officially broadcast to the world that they would not surrender, would ignore the proclamation, and defy invaders. It was later learned that during July of 1945 Japan closed all schools and mobilized all school children, began arming civilians, fortified tunnels and caves, and began building underground defenses in their homeland.

Operation Olympic called for four separate assaults on the island Kyushu in order to gain control of the southern part where naval and air bases could be established. Once done by Seabees, the naval blockade around all of the rest of Japan could be tightened and close aerial support given to the next invasion, that of Honshu and the Tokyo Plain.

The invasion of Kyushu would take place on October 27. The 40th Infantry Division and the 158th Regimental Combat Team would land on and gain control of the small offshore islands west and southwest of Kyushu. Seaplane bases there would be the first to operate radar and advanced air warning for the invasion fleet, render fighter direction for carrier-based aircraft, and emergency anchorage for the invasion fleet. Meanwhile, the Third Fleet under Adm. Halsey would unleash the massive firepower of its big guns and carrier planes, composed of battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and three fast carrier task groups. No less than 66 aircraft carriers would send forth several thousand fighters and bombers to strafe, bomb, and send rockets against enemy defenses, gun emplacements, and troop concentrations among the landing zones, all in preparation for the invasion force to be delivered ashore by the Fifth Fleet's 3,000 ships under Adm. Raymond Spruance.

Recently declassified war plans reveal that Operation Olympic was more than a plan for invasion, but also for conquest and occupation. Four months would be required to subdue the entrenched and tireless Japanese forces fighting on home turf, so three fresh American infantry divisions per month would be ready to support or replace our embattled troops from month to month. With this operation gaining planned success, Operation Coronet would be carried out on March 1, 1946 requiring up to 28 divisions, twice the size of the Kyushu invasion.

Post-war interrogations of Japanese military leaders and captured documents reveal that there were many Japanese warplanes held back during and since Iwo Jima and Okinawa for home defense, leading to our false belief that Japanese aviation was defeated. The Japanese leaders also had a home defense plan, called Ketsu-Go, which, in part, called for building 20 kamikaze take-off strips on Southern Kyushu, underground hangers, 35 camouflaged airfields, and nine seaplane bases. In addition, the enemy had 58 more airfields in Korea, Shikoku, and western Honshu from which they would launch continuous suicide attacks by 2,000 suicide planes in waves of 200 to 300 at a time against approaching American ships. Japan's 40 remaining submarines were reserved to launch their Long Lance torpedoes with their range of 20 miles.

Ketsu-Go plans would sink ships approaching the homeland, kill invaders at the beaches, and fight to the last man in the homeland laced with bunkers, booby-traps, pill boxes, and making use of familiar terrain. All these measures were calculated to kill so many Americans that our "Unconditional Surrender" terms would be abrogated or modified by the reality of unexpected slaughter.

Their defense plans counted on the fact that our naval and land-based planes must return to refuel, our antiaircraft guns will overheat, and our men will succumb to exhaustion, but the kamikaze waves could continue with great effect for up to ten consecutive days.

To Bomb or Not to Bomb?

By the numbers, we see that the invasion death potential dwarfs Hiroshima and Nagasaki fatalities. The actions of President Truman and Col. Paul Tibbets actually caused the saving of millions of lives, both Allied and Japanese. Instead, those millions of soldiers and civilians were able to live out their lives, raise families, and participate in the peaceful and prosperous reconstruction that history has since recorded. *

Barry MacDonald - Editorial

The Amateur, Barack Obama in the White House, by Edward Klein. Regnery Publishing, Inc., pp. 277, ISBN 978-1-59698-785-2, $27.95.

Americans still believes in heroes. If we didn't Barack Obama would never have been elected president.

Paul Bunyan and John Henry reflected our need for effort and great strength while the American frontier was a vital force in our collective conscience. Babe Ruth's was a rags-to-riches story, showing how anyone with enough talent could make it big in America; and everyone was attracted to the Babe's good-natured, devil-may-care ways.

Americans have been digesting too many awful narratives about America for too long. Since before the Vietnam War our moviemakers, entertainers, publishers, and artists have made a fashion out of tearing down America. In their eyes we are warmongers, polluters, oppressors, thieves, liars, bigots, racists, blah blah. And they beguile us with hidden and overt messages constantly.

Our heroes used to rise from the grassroots, from the countryside or cities where people were close to a fight for survival. Now our heroes are bestowed upon us by political operatives and movie, T.V., news, and entertainment studios - and the messages imparted are usually corrosive of any pride we would take in being Americans. There is a cheap and inauthentic air about these manufactured from above heroes.

We have lost a sense of being a joyous part of the vast adventure of living in a great and growing nation. And we have lost pride in being a free people.

Obama's campaign manager, David Alexrod created a masterful myth about Obama. Obama was appointed to redeem America. Because his mother was white and his father was black he would heal our racial divisions. Because he was a politician unlike any other he could rescue us from economic, class, and political divisions. Listen to Obama's words and see whether he or Paul Bunyan looms larger:

I am absolutely certain that generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.

Are you kidding me? Is he talking about himself? Who does he think he is?

He believes he is the American Messiah. But the nature of this American hero is new. He is not an individual who raised himself up through hardship wresting happiness from life (usually the end of the story) - reflecting a common American aspiration. He was born heroic, who at the moment of his election, would reach down to rescue America. His purpose is to dispense government blessings to a nation of helpless wretches. The ego is nauseating. The ego should be nauseating to free-born Americans.

To Obama the myth is real; he does believe he is an epic hero. And why shouldn't he, as Edward Klein, in his book, The Amateur, records the fawning praise heaped upon him. Micah Tillman, a lecturer in philosophy at the Catholic University of America: "Barack Obama is the Platonic philosopher king we've been looking for the past 2,4000 years." MSNBC's Chris Matthews: "This is bigger than Kennedy, [Obama] comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament." Newsweek editor Evan Thomas:

In a way Obama is standing above the country, above the world. He's sort of God. He's going to bring all the different sides together.

Film director Spike Lee: "You'll have to measure time by 'before Obama' and 'after Obama' . . . Everything's going to be affected by this seismic change in the universe."

What does Obama think about America? Edward Klein writes that Obama is "in revolt against the values of the society he was elected to lead." Could Barack Obama have attended Trinity United Church of Christ for twenty years, and not have absorbed the words of Reverend Jeremiah Wright?

Fact number one: We've got more black men in prison than there are in college. . . . Fact number two: Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run! . . . We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional KILLLERS. . . .We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. . . . We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. . . We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means!

These words are knives meant to kill American culture. They inspire hatred, and a desire to destroy. There is no compromise with this depiction of evil. This is the language of warfare - encapsulating leftist loathing of America. This atmosphere sustained and nourished Barack Obama over twenty years.

Edward Klein believes Obama is "temperamentally unsuited" to be commander in chief and chief executive; is "inept" at management and governance; doesn't learn from his mistakes; repeats policies that weaken the economy and national security; blames his difficulty on those who disagree with him; discards friends and supporters who are no longer useful; complains constantly about what people say of him; does not enjoy the "cut and thrust of politics" but "clings to the narcissistic life" of the presidency. Klein quotes an old Chicago acquaintance: Obama has "delusions of grandeur," and is

. . . afflicted with megalomania. How else can you explain the chutzpah of an obscure community organizer who began writing his autobiography before he was thirty years old?

Klein quotes Robert Dallek, historian and author of Hail to the Chief:

Barack Obama has been unable to earn the trust of his countrymen because he is, at heart, predominantly concerned with his own thoughts and ideas and feelings rather than the thoughts and ideas and feelings of the people he was elected to serve. He believes that he was chosen as president to save a wayward America from its dependency on free-market capitalism. This has led him to push clumsy and unpopular far-left policies - universal healthcare, Wall Street bailouts, cap and trade, green jobs, and renewable energy - at the expense of rational policies aimed at putting America back to work.

A top aid to the Republican House leadership told Klein:

Not only is [Obama] self-assured, the smartest guy in the room, but in his estimation all he has to do is state something and the scales will fall from your eyes. Despite the storyline people create, that he is a thoughtful, non-ideological compromiser, he has a distinct leftist ideology and can't make a decision that takes him out of his comfort zone.

If you challenge him, he's furious. He gives you the death stare. He has no close relationship with any member of the Senate. And certainly not in the House.

All this goes back to the fact that Obama is a leftist. He doesn't understand that the way to make this town work, both sides have to get up from the table thinking that they've won something. This White House is incapable of doing that.

Obama's conduct has even frayed relations with black Democrat members of Congress. During an incident in 2010 Shirley Sherrod, a black Georgia state director of rural development of the Department of Agriculture, was forced to resign by the Obama White House. Andrew Breitbart, the late conservative blogger, selectively edited a speech Sherrod gave to the NAACP. Breitbart made it appear that Sherrod had refused to help a white farmer who asked for help, because he was white. Breitbart portrayed her as a black racist when the complete tape showed that she had worked hard to save the white farmer's land.

Black elites came quickly to the defense of Shirley Sherrod. Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina said "I don't think a single black person was consulted before Shirley Sherrod was fired - I mean, c'mon." Eleanor Holmes Norton, representative from District of Columbia said:

The president needs some advisers or friends who have a greater sense of the pulse of the African-American community, or who at least have been around the mulberry bush.

Obama spoke to Shirley Sherrod for a "grudging seven minutes" on the phone, said he thought the incident had been blown out of proportion, but refused to apologize for her humiliation. He offered her another job in the Agriculture Department but she declined politely.

Complaints from the Congressional Black Caucus about the president's conduct escalated after the Sherrod incident. The Black Caucus warned the president that blacks were frustrated by inaction over black unemployment which is more than double the national average, and is as high as 40 percent in cities such as Chicago and Detroit. Stung by the criticism Obama told attendees at a speech to the Black Caucus, "Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes." . . . "Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying!" Maxine Waters, representative from California responded "I've never owned a pair of bedroom slippers."

The president's choice of advisers reveals much about how he wants to communicate. An adviser is an extension of the president's personality. In Valerie Jarrett, who is black, president Obama's has chosen a shield and a sword, keeping out people with differing perceptions, resulting in strained relations and isolation.

Klein writes that everyone he has interviewed, Republicans and Democrats, African-Americans and Jews, all complained that Valerie Jarrett has kept him apart from those whose good opinions he needed. He quotes a former high-ranking member of the White House staff of Jarrett's influence:

There is a tremendous amount of jockeying in the White House under Barack Obama, people hoping to push other people out of their positions, fights over stupid stuff. . . In all this Valerie Jarrett is both the arsonist and the fire-fighter. . . . She has been able to spread her tentacles into every nook and cranny of the executive branch of government. She creates problems so she can say to the president and first lady, "I would do anything for you; I would put everything at risk to show you how trustworthy I am.". . .

Valerie creates fear. She keeps the Obamas off-balance and keeps them coming back to her. She makes sure that a lot of other people don't have access. She keeps old friends and supporters away. If she can't control you - what you're going to say to the president and first lady, the issues you're going to push - then you're not going to get in.

Jews are loyal voters for Democrats, and are a weighty source of campaign donations. Yet Obama's relations with American Jews are strained, due to his rough treatment of the government of Israel. Robert Lieber, professor of government at Georgetown University said:

The problem is naivete in the Obama administration. . . . The president came into office with the assumption that the Israel-Palestinian conflict is by far the most central urgent problem in the region - which it is not - and that it is the key that unlocks everything else in the region. And he and his advisers believed the [Israeli-Palestinian] situation was ripe for progress, which it absolutely isn't

Richard Z. Chesnoff, a veteran journalist with more than forty years of experience reporting from the Middle East believes the problem is not his advisers but rather

. . . from his one-man style and his inflated view of his own leadership talents. Obama believes that no matter what the odds against it, he can bring everyone together, kumbaya style, so that we can solve hitherto insoluble problems. Perhaps even more egregiously, he seems to have an exaggerated sense of his own depth of understanding of the Middle East, which is simply not borne out by his background or experience.

In May 2010 the president found himself under heavy pressure to meet with the Jewish members of the Democratic caucuses of the House and Senate. Obama said:

There are legitimate differences between the United States and Israel and [between] me and Prime Minister [Netanyahu]. . . . Everyone knows two states is the only solution. I can't impose a settlement but I may outline a solution for the parties. Our public disagreement with Israel gives us credibility with the Arab states and compels them to act.

What upset the Jewish members of Congress were his last words: by publicly upbraiding Israel, by portraying Israel as the "villain," the Obama administration gained credibility and influence with the Arabs. No one attending believed that, in fact, the members thought the feuding between Washington and Israel encouraged the Arabs to be more intransigent: why should the Palestinians make concessions while Israel was receiving all the pressure? Representative Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat from Illinois (one of Obama's supporters) said: "He doesn't understand that ally-to-ally differences should not be aired in public. He's isolating Israel and putting Israel in a weakened position."

Obama's attitudes about America are revealed in how he handles America's relations with the world.

Traditionally American interests determined foreign policy. America led, America acted, to promote American interests and the interests of our allies who are fellow democracies. American power was considered a force for good in the world. American presidents cherished, and vigorously defended, American sovereignty, by preserving the ability of use our forces independently to protect the American people.

Robert Kagan, foreign policy commentator at the Brookings Institution and author of The World America Made, writes:

International Order is not an evolution, it is an imposition. . . . It is the domination of one vision over others - in America's case, the domination of free-market and democratic principles, together with an international system that supports them. The present system will last only as long as those who favor it retain the will and capacity to defend it.

Obama does not believe that America has been a force for good in the world. American power has done more harm than good. In Obama's view global interests and international law should dominate American policy and American courts. The U.S. should hesitate to act without the blessings of the "world community. And America is obligated to extend an olive branch to every nation, including belligerents such as Iran and North Korea.

A central Obama's adviser is Samantha Power, a "glamorous" Harvard professor with a "mane of lustrous red hair," who hobnobs with Hollywood stars and liberal celebrities. Powers has been explicit in her views:

U.S. foreign policy has to be rethought. . . . Instituting a doctrine of mea culpa would enhance our credibility by showing that American decision-makers do not endorse the sins of their predecessors. When [then German Chancellor Willy Brandt] went down on one knee in the Warsaw ghetto, his gesture was gratifying to World War II survivors, but it was also ennobling and cathartic for Germany. Would such an approach be futile for the United States?

She is equating America's conduct with Nazi Germany's.

Obama's posture, "down on one knee," seeking pardon for American aggression, emerged in his speech to Arabs in Cairo. He blamed Western colonialism for denying rights and opportunities to Muslims (not the brutal behavior of Arab dictators - the Ottoman Empire ruled the Muslim world for 600 years). He blamed Americans who "view Islam as inevitably hostile . . . to human rights" (not mentioning Sharia law's brutal treatment of women). He confessed that the 9/11 attacks and George Bush's response ". . . led us to act contrary to our ideals." He said that America would no longer be a swaggering power, because "any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail."

Obama has implemented a diminished role for America in world affairs:

* Obama failed to give a word of support to the Iranian protestors gunned down by Iranian Mullahs in 2009.

* Obama abandoned Poland and the Czech Republic after they braved Russian threats by agreeing to install American missile-defense batteries on their soil: Obama cancelled President Bush's agreement, acquiescing to Russian demands and receiving nothing in return.

* Obama's "lead from behind" strategy during the Libyan upraising, is a one-of-a-kind rational for the deployment of U.S. armed forces.

* During Obama's tenure the Navy has been halved, and is growing smaller. The Army and Marine Corps have 600,000 fewer troops, and will soon have fewer.

Obama fails to recognize that American arms, at great cost in lives and treasure, have mitigated suffering and frustrated tyranny worldwide. Without the U.S. military the earth would be much darker.

Obama's recent words betray him. They expose an ugly condescension at odds with the American spirit:

. . . look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on you own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something - there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business - you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.

America's first black president was an inspiration to many Americans, showing how far we've come in defeating racism. Barack Obama was a culmination of left-wing aspiration, the perfect hero, to enact their agenda. But now Obama's words and deeds have revealed his true character, and he is out of tune with America's ethic.

We Americans need to believe that we stand or fall due to our own intelligence and hard work. I'm betting that "generations from now" people will remember little of president Obama, while Babe Ruth will remain embedded in the American mind. *

The following is a summary of the June 2012 issue of The St. Croix Review.

In "Saul Alinsky - Premier Community Organizer," Barry MacDonald describes the principles and actions of America's most powerful Leftist revolutionary.

In "Ideas Have Consequences," John Ingraham responds to an article by Herbert London about exorbitant college tuitions and diminished curriculums.

Mark W. Hendrickson, in "Yo-Yo Economics?" explains how Obama's view of a "we'll always take care of you" economy will lead to misery; in "The GOP: A Party in Flux," he shows how the Tea Party has been dominant in the primaries, but GOP establishment remains formidable in Washington; in "Reflections on the French Election," he says the newly elected, socialist President's economic platform cannot work, and sadly, people believe in fairy tales; in "The Tax Rate Scandal," he reveals how capital benefits wage earners, and how both parties are unwilling to face the dire consequences of out-of-control spending - the real scandal; in Economics: The Cheerful Science," he shows how economics points the way to prosperity, if only we can get politicians out of the way.

Herbert London, in "When Choice Justifies Murder," considers the implications of a new proposal "after birth abortion"; in "The New Defense Posture for America," he considers the implications of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's testimony before Congress: Congress' war powers authority is irrelevant the U.S. needs the approval of the UN to go to war; in "The Chinese Strategic Vision," he considers the implications of massive Chinese investment in Latin America and Africa; in "From Religious Fragmentation to National Unity," he writes that people who want to take God out the Pledge of Allegiance "eviscerate" our national heritage.

Allan Brownfeld, in "Demagoguery and the Trayvon Martin Case: Denying Dramatic Progress in Race Relations" sees the rush to condemn George Zimmerman and discerns self-interested motives and inability to accept that conditions have improved; in "Serious Thought Should Be Given to Unintended Consequences of War with Iran" he presents arguments against a pre-emptive strike; in "Efforts Grow to Restore Private Property Rights" he writes about successes in the battle to keep government from seizing private property without just cause; in "Understanding the Reasons for America's Growing Class Divide" he writes that the loss of blue collar jobs for less educated males and the breakdown of marriage account for a grim economic outlook for poor Americans; in "Students Are Not Learning What They Need to Compete in Today's Economy" he cites many studies that show American universities are producing too few graduates up to standards American employers require.

In "On Hope and Hate: Week One of Obama vs. Romney," Paul Kengor cites polls showing that team Obama's first use of class warfare backfired; in "Obama, the Russians, and Missile Defense: Historical Parallels," he shows how Obama's eagerness to abandon missile defense and mollify Vladimir Putin harkens to past betrayals; in "On Ozzie Guillen, Fidel Castro, and Baseball in Cuba," he repeats the foolish comments made by the manager of the Florida Marlins, and Fidel Castro's monstrous crimes.

Jigs Gardner, in "Versed in Country Things - Spring and Summer," relates the new chores of spring (plowing and planting), describes neighbors impossible to find anywhere else, and depicts a very odd, left-wing boarder.

In "A Novelist of Manners," Jigs Gardner writes about the short stories and novels of Edith Wharton, who portrayed the upper-class society of New York some decades after the Civil War.

In "Survey of Conservative Magazines: Books and Book Reviews," Fayette Durlin and Peter Jenkin write on Charles Murray's book Coming Apart, a book on the Civil War, an article on "after-birth abortion," and more.

In "Americans at Work Series: Horticulturist," Nellie Call describes how she came to know everything possible about farming, and producing flowers for sale.

Cornelia Wynne relates the life and times of Bertha Marshall, along with her recipe for fricassee chicken and biscuits, in "The American Pantry."

Cornelia Wynne

Cornelia Wynne explores the cooking traditions of Americans through their distinctive foods and dishes and through their stories. These assert our defining traits of independence, resourcefulness, and a can-do spirit.

Bertha Marshall: A Pioneering Spirit

Bertha traces her family's roots back ten or eleven generations to the English Twinings (the tea people), from whom her father was descended. The first mention of Twinings in the New World is in 1640 on Cape Cod. She had begun her studies as a nurse (following in her mother's footsteps) when she met Roger, who later proposed marriage. Now she had to choose: become a nurse, or marry Roger and join him as caretaker of a gentleman farmer's rural estate. For a city girl, this could have been a difficult choice, but Bertha was not afraid of work, nor of the unknown. She consented, and as she says looking back, it was a wonderful life and she never regretted moving to the farm.

They had three boys, all of whom helped with the work. There were cows, chickens, sheep and lambs, pigs and horses to care for. While Roger ploughed, Bertha planted. She made vegetable gardens to support not only her family but that of the estate. She would freeze 42 quarts of peas just for the Marshall family alone. She loved picking and shucking them.

"Waste is want," was always a guiding precept. An irrepressible zest for life and a sunny disposition to see the positive side of every situation, kept her on an even keel. It was a real shot in the arm, she said, when she discovered wild raspberries at a "blowdown" (an area of fallen trees). It was an opportunity to put away fresh fruit for the winter, and she would pick 25 quarts of wild raspberries, as well as 25 quarts of wild blueberries a season. Nothing about the farm work deterred her. It was she and the boys who raised rabbits, and it was she who saw to the chickens, raising them from day-old chicks, and when they weighed from 31/2 to 7 pounds, fryers and roaster size, it was she who slaughtered and dressed them. She lugged a big pot of hot water from the house to the chicken pen, where she kept her slaughtering ax. After chopping off their heads, she scalded them in the hot water, pulled off their feathers, then disemboweled (or dressed) them until, under her hand, she had a clean poultry carcass, the kind you might see in a meat market (and never dreamed how it got there). She raised fifty meat birds at a time, half of them for the estate owners, the other half for her family.

And of course, Bertha cooked the chickens, too.

Now in her 80s, she still loves to make chicken fricassee, doing all the work herself just as she used to do. For this she gets older hens from one of her sons. They need the long, slow cooking that makes perfect fricassee.

How American is Chicken Fricassee? The term fricassee is derived from Middle French for stewing meat, usually chicken, in a sauce made of its own stock, often served with noodles, dumplings, or, in the American version, biscuits. There are variations of this dish in many cultures: Germans call it Huknerfriskassee; in Puerto Rico and Cuba it is Fricase de Pollo.

Bertha's Fricassee Chicken and Biscuits

1 4- or 5-pound chicken

Bay leaf

Onion, cut up

Celery leaves

Clove garlic

Salt, pepper

Cut up chicken if not already in pieces. In a Dutch oven, brown chicken in fat, then almost cover meat with water, add other ingredients, and set temperature on low, cover. Cook until tender. Don't forget the bay leaf, Bertha says, it's essential for flavor.

Biscuits

1 3/4 cup flour

A little salt

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 cup shortening

About 3/4 cup milk

Cut shortening into mixed dry ingredients until the consistency of peas. Stir in milk until consistency of dough. Pat out to 1-inch thick. Cut out and bake at 400 degrees F for 15-20 minutes until medium-brown. They should be about 2 1/2 inches tall.

Make gravy using liquid from chicken; Bertha makes a paste first, then thins with the liquid to desired consistency. Cut biscuits in half, pour gravy over them. Serve chicken on separate platter. *

Nellie Call

The Occupy Wall Street phenomenon and the nonsense arising from it has made it apparent that too many of us are ignorant of our fellows' working lives, so we are inaugurating a series, "Americans At Work," which will, in the words of the workers themselves, explain their jobs, their motivations, and their satisfactions.

Growing up on a self-sufficient farm I spent many hours behind the handle of a hoe, a scythe, an axe, a pitchfork, a shovel. We spent most of our time working to grow and preserve food, cut and split wood, care for the animals, and other jobs that produced food and fuel for life.

I was fascinated with the science of everything, my mind questioned everything, how, why did it work like that? What was the science behind the way cows give milk, moss and mushrooms grow in the woods, rennet makes cheese curdle.

After studying Animal Science in college and doing just about every menial farming task there was to work my way through school, I faced the world of work with an Associate's Degree in Animal Science. Coming to New York State was my dream as I saw it as the agricultural state, able to grow alfalfa and grain corn, as well as the home of Cornell University. I worked a variety of agricultural jobs from tractor driving, milking cows in a parlor, and Dairy Herd Improvement Association milk tester. None of them were very well paying or satisfying, so I determined to go back to college to earn a Bachelor's degree.

I worked on large commercial farms during the summer, driving tractors and farm equipment, and at the Cornell farm during the school year. After graduating from Cornell, my first job was working for the Integrated Pest Management Program (IPM) at The New York State Agricultural Experiment Station (NYSAES) in Geneva, scouting farmer's fields for pests. The programs were developing then and I enjoyed working with Cornell researchers and farmers to establish scouting methods and thresholds.

I went on to work as the Assistant Vegetable IPM Specialist at the NYSAES in Geneva. Being familiar with the program I found it easy to learn the job, and I felt at home at the Station. I worked with many professors, adapting their research for practical use by farmers. I worked all over the state supervising field scouts, educating farmers, and helping researchers to come up with better scouting methods, pest thresholds, and disease prediction systems. It was the early days of IPM and I was able to contribute in substantial ways. I felt however that the IPM program was too narrow, leaving soils, fertilization, and knowledge of varieties up to the farmer. I wanted to learn more and know the whole system in order to help farmers adopt more IPM techniques.

A job came up in Genesee County as a Tri- County Vegetable Specialist as well as running the Master Gardener Home horticulture program. I approached this job with gusto and enjoyed learning the farms, farmers, soils, crops, pests, as well as all the home gardeners' problems. I got great satisfaction from diagnosing and solving problems for farmers and used field demonstrations, trials, newsletters, and meetings to disseminate information.

I left extension work to start my own consulting business, as I knew I had enough work to be able to make a decent living. I had three large farms signed up and several smaller ones, and I set about setting up a full service consulting business. I developed my own field record forms and crop recordkeeping. I bought the first "laptop" computer that was as big as a small suitcase and I went to farms to record and organize their crop rotations, pesticide use and prices, pest activity, weed problems, soil sample results, etc,, so farmers could easily see where they could make or save money and what improvements could be made.

I walked miles every day in the hot sun looking for pests in various vegetable and field crops. This was somewhat satisfying work, however I had limited control and it was difficult trying to get farmers to change their practices in any significant way. Many fields were biological deserts after years of intensive vegetable production and were dependent on chemical inputs.

I decided I would keep consulting for several growers and train other consultants to take over some of my accounts so I could start my own small flower farm, partially to test some of my growing methods. I enjoyed setting up the farm and shop and studying markets, varieties, production methods, etc. I learned a lot about the industry by joining the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers and selling both retail and wholesale.

I found that I needed to sell a percentage of my flowers for the maximum amount possible, which was the wedding market. This is a stressful market but I became good at it and sales at my retail shop and to florist and farm stands was enjoyable and made the wedding work bearable. After twenty years I still have the three main customers I started with.

The industry went through a major contraction during the 1990s and many florists and wholesalers went out of business. Major retailers and grocery chains contracted directly with South American co-ops to buy directly from very large growers who could supply year-round flowers at very cheap prices. Middlemen were cut out as company-owned trucks met the airfreight shippers in Miami.

Labor was another issue because dependable help was hard to find as kids prioritized sports and social activities in their summers off. I had my share of employees not showing up for work at critical times (wedding days, for instance) so decided that going forward I would only do what I could do myself.

I kept scouting and consulting for twelve more years while I developed my flower markets. I sold the consulting business to another consultant and trained him to do the job. Recently I moved the flower business to a farm which has better soil and that is closer to my markets. It is highly seasonal and I have made the most of season extension products such as wreaths for Christmas, early season weddings, etc. The wedding market is huge but has become increasingly difficult with the internet, magazines such as Martha, and television shows, advertising lush and inviting pictures of everything wedding-related. It has become very difficult to meet the demands of most brides without importing flowers from every corner of the globe. Wholesalers are all but gone, so buying small quantities of any quality is very difficult.

On a side note: Back in the early 20th century, right up into the 1960s, local growers took their cut flowers from the field and their greenhouses to the wholesale houses in the city on a daily basis where flower shop owners met the wagons and trucks and purchased what they needed.

The work of growing flowers follows the seasons and has intense peak times of planting and harvesting. Spring is always nerve wracking as the annual production field has to be tilled, planted, and mulched, irrigation laid out, and deer fence put up. I plant 130 flats of annual flowers, about 8,000 plants and 500 tubers and bulbs. The perennial patch needs to be mulched, weeded, and renovated, replacing unproductive varieties with new ones.

While I maintain the annual field of flowers, weeding, watering, and pinching back, I also pick and sell flowers from the perennial patch in arrangements for weddings and orders. I make sure to keep the self-service stocked with bouquets. Having a steady supply and meeting customers' needs can be demanding, but the cash supplement is important to my income.

By fall I really need a break from the relentlessness of caring for the flowers, keeping them producing, spraying for pests, picking, dealing with customers, etc. Before I can rest I have to do a final harvest of anything I can dry, then dig all of the bulbs I planted in the spring, mark the colors and store them in the basement. Then of course there is wreath making and workshops for the holidays that are labor intensive.

The fact is that under ideal circumstances of not having the pressure of making a living at growing flowers, I would enjoy it immensely. I work with the rhythms of the season, spending time in a field of beautiful flowers, my cozy shop, and trips to the "city" twice a week where I talk to the shop owners who buy my flowers, sharing stories and news of the day.

Under the pressure of maximizing sales to make a living with increasing customers' demands, the work can be difficult. When my friends ask me when they stop to visit, "Nellie, are flowers still pretty today?" I want to always say "Yes, of course," but when my arm is throbbing from tendonitis, my back aches, and I've had no decent meal all day, I wonder, if the grass is greener in an office. Then I remember that there is no grass in an office, and I go back to work!

People see the beauty of the flowers and always say how wonderful it must be to be working in all that beauty. But the reality is, it is a business with all the entailing headaches.

In the final analysis of my career in agriculture I would say that I would like to grow flowers half time and work half time in horticultural and agricultural problem solving. The flower production and marketing is satisfying as you produce a beautiful product and the challenge is doing a better job every year and learning all the details of new varieties and better production and marketing techniques. Consulting is interesting and challenging (and less physical) as I like to solve problems that combine the chemistry and physics of the natural world and depend on good interpretation and communication of results. *