The Great Thanksgiving Hoax

Richard J. Maybury

Each year at this time school children all over America are taught the official Thanksgiving story, and newspapers, radio, TV, and magazines devote vast amounts of time and space to it. It is all very colorful and fascinating.

It is also very deceiving. This official story is nothing like what really happened. It is a fairy tale, a whitewashed and sanitized collection of half-truths which divert attention away from Thanksgiving's real meaning.

The official story has the pilgrims boarding the Mayflower, coming to America and establishing the Plymouth colony in the winter of 1620-21. This first winter is hard, and half the colonists die. But the survivors are hard working and tenacious, and they learn new farming techniques from the Indians. The harvest of 1621 is bountiful. The Pilgrims hold a celebration, and give thanks to God. They are grateful for the wonderful new abundant land He has given them.

The official story then has the Pilgrims living more or less happily ever after, each year repeating the first Thanksgiving. Other early colonies also have hard times at first, but they soon prosper and adopt the annual tradition of giving thanks for this prosperous new land called America.

The problem with this official story is that the harvest of 1621 was not bountiful, nor were the colonists hardworking or tenacious. 1621 was a famine year and many of the colonists were lazy thieves.

In his 'History of Plymouth Plantation,' the governor of the colony, William Bradford, reported that the colonists went hungry for years, because they refused to work in the fields. They preferred instead to steal food. He says the colony was riddled with "corruption," and with "confusion and discontent." The crops were small because "much was stolen both by night and day, before it became scarce eatable."

In the harvest feasts of 1621 and 1622, "all had their hungry bellies filled," but only briefly. The prevailing condition during those years was not the abundance the official story claims, it was famine and death. The first "Thanksgiving" was not so much a celebration as it was the last meal of condemned men.

But in subsequent years something changes. The harvest of 1623 was different. Suddenly, "instead of famine now God gave them plenty," Bradford wrote, "and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God." Thereafter, he wrote, "any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day." In fact, in 1624, so much food was produced that the colonists were able to begin exporting corn.

What happened?

After the poor harvest of 1622, writes Bradford, "they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop." They began to question their form of economic organization.

This had required that "all profits & benefits that are got by trade, working, fishing, or any other means" were to be placed in the common stock of the colony, and that, "all such persons as are of this colony, are to have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provisions out of the common stock." A person was to put into the common stock all he could, and take out only what he needed.

This "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" was an early form of socialism, and it is why the Pilgrims were starving. Bradford writes that "young men that are most able and fit for labor and service" complained about being forced to "spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children." Also, "the strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes, than he that was weak." So the young and strong refused to work and the total amount of food produced was never adequate.

To rectify this situation, in 1623 Bradford abolished socialism. He gave each household a parcel of land and told them they could keep what they produced, or trade it away as they saw fit. In other words, he replaced socialism with a free market, and that was the end of famines.

Many early groups of colonists set up socialist states, all with the same terrible results. At Jamestown, established in 1607, out of every shipload of settlers that arrived, less than half would survive their first twelve months in America. Most of the work was being done by only one-fifth of the men, the other four-fifths choosing to be parasites. In the winter of 1609-10, called "The Starving Time," the population fell from five-hundred to sixty.

Then the Jamestown colony was converted to a free market, and the results were every bit as dramatic as those at Plymouth. In 1614, Colony Secretary Ralph Hamor wrote that after the switch there was "plenty of food, which every man by his own industry may easily and doth procure." He said that when the socialist system had prevailed, "we reaped not so much corn from the labors of thirty men as three men have done for themselves now."

Before these free markets were established, the colonists had nothing for which to be thankful. They were in the same situation as Ethiopians are today, and for the same reasons. But after free markets were established, the resulting abundance was so dramatic that the annual Thanksgiving celebrations became common throughout the colonies, and in 1863, Thanksgiving became a national holiday.

Thus the real reason for Thanksgiving, deleted from the official story, is: Socialism does not work; the one and only source of abundance is free markets, and we thank God we live in a country where we can have them.
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This article originally appeared in The Free Market, November 1985.

Ranchers frustrated as wolves run wild Loren Giem's ranch manager, Ken Wigen, first heard the howling Sept. 20 near a pasture in the Big Hole River valley. The wolves' chorus made the hair on the back of Wigen's neck stand up. His dogs went nuts. Giem was nervous. But like his father and grandfather before him, Giem is a rancher and rotates almost a thousand head of black Angus cattle through the pastures they use on 20,000 acres here. Most of it is Giem family land, bought throughout the years since his grandfather moved here in the early 1900s. Last week, slowly bouncing his Dodge truck east down the ranch road toward his pastures, Giem pointed toward the mountains. Up ahead, in a corner of one of his pastures about a mile off the main road, the sagebrush was trampled into dirt and the fence is pushed outward. “The cattle were balled up on the fence. We were sure we had wolf activity,” Giem recalled. They called Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks' wolf management program, looking for advice, and a site visit turned up wolf tracks. Three days later, on Oct. 9, Wigen found the first dead mature cow. A government trapper, Graeme McDougal with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services, confirmed wolves took it down. “Numerous wolf tracks, various sizes indicated a pack, i.e. adults with YOY (young of year) at carcass and immediate area,” McDougal wrote in his report. “Torn and uprooted sagebrush, several areas of blood indicate a struggle, attack, of approximately 30 yards in length. “Canine marks present on external surface of hide on left front elbow region and right rear above fetlock Hindquarters and internal organs totally gone from feeding and scavenging. All signs consistent with wolf predation.” Within two weeks, Giem lost five more cows to wolves, and one was seriously injured....

Scientist spends days delving into carnivores' decomposition Deep inside Lubrecht Experimental Forest, death lies inside an electrified fence. For more than two years, a pack of carnivores has been decomposing under the watchful eye of Carleen Gonder. Piles of maggot casings rim shiny skulls, fangs bared before mummified fur faces. Yes: There's a field manual showing how to tell the time of death for most major game animals. It's full of stomach-turning photos showing how quickly insects start laying eggs, how soon flesh starts bloating and when it stops. There are bizarre tricks for hooking muscles to car batteries to see if they're less than four hours dead, and charts to test the reflectivity of drying eyeballs. A good investigator can get almost the hour of death on a carcass less than 4 or 5 days old. The only thing missing from the field guide is whether all these techniques also work on the carnivores that hunt game animals. The potential cases are limited only by experience. There's the rancher who claims that he shot a wolf that was harassing his cows. Does the time of death match the time he was running cattle in that area?....

Farmers evaluate Klamath agreement to remove four dams Depending on their water source, farmers and ranchers near the California-Oregon border have differing views of a recent decision by Oregon-based hydroelectric power company PacifiCorp to remove four of its dams along the Klamath River. For Klamath Project irrigators, the agreement comes as a critical step, whereas irrigators downstream in the Scott River and Shasta River valleys see it as a potential threat to their own water supplies. PacifiCorp, the state of California, the state of Oregon and the federal government agreed in principle on Nov. 13 to remove the dams, to give threatened coho salmon and other fish species access to 300 miles of habitat in the river and improve water quality. The agreement would dovetail with a plan by 26 Klamath Basin stakeholders released in January-- the proposed Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, a comprehensive solution for the region's water needs that expressed support for dam removal. Stakeholders include irrigators represented by the Klamath Water Users Association, as well as environmentalists, tribes, fishing groups and government agencies....

Feds not liable in Hayman fire Terry Barton acted as an angry spouse — not a government worker — when she started the 2002 Hayman fire in the mountains west of Colorado Springs and the government can't be held responsible for her actions, a federal judge in Denver decided Tuesday. Attorneys for several insurance companies that covered the losses from the Hayman fire sued the U.S. Forest Service, asking for more than $7 million in damages and claiming that Barton was negligent in her duties as a Forest Service employee. Chief U.S. District Judge Wiley Daniel denied that claim in a written decision. "When Barton violated the fire ban, she was not doing the work assigned to her, what was necessarily incidental to that work, or what was customary in the Forest Service's business," Daniel wrote. "Barton violated the fire ban and contravened the established policy of the Forest Service when she lit the letter or grass in the campfire ring. Thus, she acted outside the scope of her employment."....

Greens fear last push by Bush After eight years of government that unabashedly placed development over conservation and recreation over environment, watchdog groups say the Bush administration’s last-gasp efforts likely mean more of the same for the northern Rocky Mountains. While this flurry of presidential maneuvering is far from unprecedented – Clinton was accused of similar actions in favor of conservation – environmental groups say Bush’s last-minute changes could have an inordinate impact on public lands in Greater Yellowstone. These changes include efforts to delist the gray wolf, attempts to relax gun laws in national parks and changes to weaken the Endangered Species Act, just to name a few. Ruch said one good candidate for the Congressional Review Act is a regulation that would allow power plants and other big polluters to affect the air in Class I airsheds such as national parks and wilderness areas. But lawmakers might avoid hot-button issues such as guns in parks for fear of political consequences from voters or pro-gun lobbies....

N.D. ranchers file suit against Colo. feed company Two North Dakota ranchers say a Colorado company sold and mixed a liquid feed supplement that poisoned their cattle and led to the deaths of two cows and two calves. Lonnie and Todd McPeak, of Sterling, N.D., have filed a civil lawsuit in federal court against Cattleman's Choice Loomix, accusing the business of negligence. The Johnstown company denies the allegations and says the suit should be thrown out. The McPeaks said one of the dealers for the company improperly mixed the feed and caused the release of dangerously high levels of sulfur and nitrogen. Cattleman's Choice said any damage to the cattle was caused by "misuse or abuse" of the product by the ranchers and was not the company's fault. The lawsuit said the reaction to the mixture stunted the growth of about 350 calves, causing an auction house to advise people against buying the cattle.

Obama Transition

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I meant to post this Sunday but for some reason didn't. As a result, it is already slightly dated.

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The following are excerts from a memo prepared by a Washington DC group. I don't have the date of this memo, however I just obtained it today and AP is reporting that Governor Richardson will be the Sec. of Commerce. The memo covered all Depts. plus White House and VP staff. Here are the excerpts relevant to the issues posted on The Westerner:


...The Transition Team is divided into two areas: Personnel and Policy. The Personnel division will be tasked with finding, vetting and hiring Cabinet Secretaries, sub-Cabinet appointees and other Obama Administration staff. The Policy division will consist of policy experts from across the country, who will advise President-Elect Obama during the transition period and develop policies to be implemented following Obama's Inauguration.

We understand that the transition effort has been organized into roughly a dozen teams. The ethics code governing the process prohibits staff from working on subjects that could be deemed a financial conflict of interests, either to that member or that member’s family....

The following is a compilation of top Obama campaign operatives, Senate staff and names floated in press circles as likely participants in the Transition Team and potential high-level appointees in an Obama Administration.

This list is, by no means, official, definitive or exhaustive. Although the Transition Senior Staff has been finalized, all other names are merely educated guesses.

The phone number for the transition headquarters is 202-540-3000. The official website for the transition is www.change.gov...

• Energy and Natural Resources Team Leads
o David J. Hayes. (LEAD)
o Bart Chilton. Department of Agriculture
o Carole Jett. Department of Agriculture
o Elgie Holstein. Department of Energy
o Elizabeth Montoya. Department of Energy
o Sue Tierney. Department of Energy
o Cecilia V. Estolano. EPA
o Lisa Jackson. EPA
o Robert Sussman. EPA
o Rose McKinney-James. FERC
o Keith Harper. Department of Interior
o John Leshy. Department of Interior
• Energy and Natural Resources Team
Department of Agriculture, Douglas Jake Caldwell
Department of Agriculture, Carol Clifford
Department of Agriculture, David Lazarus
Department of Agriculture, Mary McNeil
Department of Agriculture, Karen Stuck
Department of Agriculture, Michael Taylor
Department of Agriculture, Dallas Tonsager
Department of Agriculture, Christopher Wood
Department of Energy, Henry Atkinson
Department of Energy, Lucy Blake
Department of Energy, Carolyn Green
Department of Energy, Skila Harris
Department of Energy, Cynthia Quarterman
Department of Energy, Gregory Watson
Department of the Interior, Robert Anderson
Department of the Interior, Deanna Archuleta
Department of the Interior, John Echohawk
Department of the Interior, Edward Farquhar
Department of the Interior, Molly McUsic
Department of the Interior, Shirley Neff
Department of the Interior, Renee Stone
Department of the Interior, Mark Van Putten
EPA, Julie Anderson
EPA, Kenneth Berlin
EPA, Jonathan Cannon
EPA, John Darin
EPA, Daniel Esty
EPA, Jonathan Fox
EPA, Janice Mazurek
EPA, Amelia Salzman
EPA, Nancy Sutley
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Phillip Niedzielski-Eichner

Possible Cabinet/Department Appointments

Agriculture
• Tom Vilsack. Former Governor of Iowa
• Collin Peterson. Congressman from Minnesota
• Tom Buis. National Farmers Union.
• Charles Stenholm. Former Congressman from Texas.
• Jim Leach. Former Congressman from Iowa.
• Calvin "Cal" Dooley. Former Congressman from California.
• Stephanie Herseth Sandlin. Congresswoman from South Dakota
Environment/Energy
• Carol Browner. President Clinton's EPA Administrator.
• John Podesta. Executive Director of the Center for American Progress; former Clinton Chief of Staff
• Ed Rendell. Governor of Pennsylvania.
• Daniel Esty. Yale environmental law professor; EPA under Bush.
• Daniel Kammen. U of California (Berkeley) energy & public policy professor
• Elgie Holstein. Campaign senior energy policy advisor.
• Robert Sussman. Center for American Progress; EPA under President Clinton; Latham & Watkins.
• Jason Grumet. Heads campaign environment policy committee; president of Bipartisan Policy Center; former Executive Director of the National Commission on Energy Policy.
• Howard Learner. Executive Director of Environmental Law and Policy Center.
• Ken Berlin. Attorney at Skaaden, Arps.
• Julie Anderson. Bipartisan Environmental Policy Center.
• Kathleen McGinty. Chair of Pennsylvania State Department of Environmental Protection; Former Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality.
• Jonathan Lash. President of the World Resources Institute.
• Brad Campbell. Former Commissioner of the NJ Department of Environmental Protection; EPA under President Clinton and White House Council on Environmental Quality.
• Frank Loy. State Department under Presidents Clinton, Carter and Johnson; boards of several national green groups.
• Heather Zichal. Former Kerry Legislative Director and Energy policy advisor.
• Todd Atkinson. Senator Obama’s energy policy aide.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger. Governor of California (Possible Secretary of Energy) (Has said he will not accept position).
• Jeff Bingaman. Senator from New Mexico (Possible Secretary of Energy) (Has said he will not accept position).
• Lincoln Chafee. Former senator from Rhode Island. (Possible EPA Administrator)
• Dan Reicher. Former Assistant Secretary of Energy under President Clinton.
• Steve Westly. Former California State Controller.
• Jim Rogers. Duke Energy CEO.
• John Leshy. Former Department of the Interior Solicitor.
• Donald J. Barry. Former Assistant Secretary of Fish, Wildlife and Parks at Interior.
• David B. Sandalow. Former Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans, Environment and Science.
• Kathleen Sebelius. Governor of Kansas.
• Al Gore. Former Vice President.
• Jennifer Granholm. Governor of Michigan.
• Mary Nichols. Chair of California's Air Resources Board.
• Lisa P. Jackson. Commissioner of New Jersey EPA.
• Philip Sharp. Former Congressman from Indiana; president of Resources for the Future.
• Jerry McNerney. Congressman from California.
• Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
• Ian Bowles. Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs of Massachusetts.
• Franz Wuerfmannsdobler. Aide to Senator Dorgan.
Interior
• Jay Inslee. Congressman from Washington.
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
• George Miller. Congressman from California.
• Tony Knowles. Former Governor of Alaska.
• Bill Richardson. Former Energy Secretary under President Clinton, Governor of New Mexico.
• Ken Salazar. Senator from Colorado.
• John Kitzhaber. Medical doctor and former Governor of Oregon.
• John Leshy. Former Department of the Interior Solicitor.
• Brian Schweitzer. Governor of Montana.
• Jamie Rappaport Clark. Executive Vice President of Defenders of Wildlife.
• Mike Thompson. Representative from California.

In Alaska, The Drill Is Gone Remember those 68 million acres House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the oil companies had to use or lose? According to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, they can't drill there either. When President Bush lifted the executive order banning oil and gas exploration in federally protected offshore areas, Speaker Pelosi called the action a giveaway of "more public resources to the very same oil companies that are sitting on 68 million acres of federal lands they've already leased." We thought it was nonsense to accuse the oil companies of sitting on profitable oil resources waiting for sky-high oil prices to rise even higher. We still do. With gas prices having fallen back to earth, her vast oil-rig conspiracy theory seems to have fallen flat. Proving it was so much hot air was Royal Dutch Shell's recent expenditure of $2.1 billion to acquire oil leases in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska and spending $84 million to buy leases in the Beaufort Sea. Clearly they weren't sitting on anything and wanted to drill and wanted to get these oil and gas reserves into the hungry American economy. Last Thursday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a major drilling effort in the Beaufort Sea, ruling that federal officials failed to properly address environmental concerns when they granted permission to Shell Oil to drill there. The decision followed a temporary order issued last year that halted Shell's drilling at Sivulliq, 16 miles off the coast of northern Alaska....

The Water Authority's Cash Cow In the fertile fields of the Spring Valley, the Southern Nevada Water Authority is a colossus. It spent $80 million in public dollars to buy up most of the ranches in the valley at prices three to four times the going rate for land, and millions more in support of the operation. In acquiring these 23,000 acres, SNWA also acquired 4,000 sheep, 1,700 cattle and an alfalfa farm. Four full time employees were hired. They in turn hire subcontractors. SNWA is operating the ranches so it can legally hang on to the water rights while waiting for the pipeline to be built. "SNWA did not buy these ranches to operate them as a profit. They are a tool to manage the environment and the watershed," said SNWA Deputy General Manager Richard Wimmer. The water authority's Dick Wimmer says the plan is to pump thousands of acre feet of groundwater but to leave the surface water without harming the land. If the plan is to not make money, it's working. Records obtained by the I-Team show the ranches spend an average of more than $45,000 each month to operate, sometimes more than $80,000 a month. In the first year, the overall loss was a projected $731,000. SNWA expects a small profit in the coming year. Area ranchers who were already critical of the pipeline plan are not impressed. "They are in over their heads, that it takes more than a belt buckle and a new pair of boots and a Stetson hat to run one of these ranches," said Hank Vogler. "This is going to be a financial disaster, but money doesn't mean anything to them down there," said Dean Baker. For example, when SNWA learned it needed its own brand for livestock, it assigned the task to its staff which considered 17 different designs over nine months at a cost of more than $5,000. Not exactly how a typical rancher would do it....

Property rights guru fathered unlikely wilderness bill Supporters of Sen. Mike Crapo's Owyhee Initiative Bill are going to have to wait at least another few months before the brainchild of Fred Grant finally comes to fruition. Grant, an adviser to Owyhee County, had worked alongside the late Rep. Helen Chenoweth fighting federal control over public land ranchers. He worked with her husband, the late Wayne Hage, in pushing federal courts to recognize private property rights on public lands like water, fences and other improvements. Owyhee County dodged a bullet in 2001 when President Clinton decided not to turn more than a million acres of the county's breathtaking canyonlands and valuable sagebrush steppe habitat into a national monument. but Grant knew the issue wouldn't go away. The Western Watersheds Project headed by Jon Marvel was successfully forcing ranchers to cut back their grazing to protect endangered species and water quality in court. Even with Republicans in control of the White House and nearly in control of Congress, Grant was doubtful they could protect Owyhee County's ranchers and keep them in business. So he persuaded Owyhee County commissioners to convene talks between willing environmental groups, cattlemen, local officials, outfitters, motorized recreationists, the Air Force and eventually the Shoshone-Paiute Tribe. He took his idea to the Idaho Congressional delegation. Only Sen. Mike Crapo answered....

Rahall Statement on Chairmanship and Committee Agenda for the 111th Congress This week, the House Democratic Caucus re-elected Rep. Nick J. Rahall (D-WV) to serve as Chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources for the 111th Congress. Rahall released the following statement on his goals for the 111th Congress along with a copy of a new agenda entitled "America the Beautiful - Our People, Our Natural Resources - Fulfilling Stewardship and Trust Responsibilities", intended to guide the work of the Committee over the next two years. The text of Rahall's statement is below, followed by the agenda....

Shoshone Indians Sue to Stop Barrick's Nevada Gold Mine Five tribal and public interest parties filed a lawsuit in Nevada Federal Court on Thursday, seeking an immediate injunction to stop one of the largest open pit cyanide heap leach gold mines in the United States - the Cortez Hills Expansion Project on Mt. Tenabo. Canadian Barrick Gold, the world's largest gold mining company, plans to construct and operate the mine in an area that the lawsuit states is "located entirely within the territory of the Western Shoshone Nation." The permit was granted on November 12, and the $500 million mine construction project could begin as early as this week. "After years of determined opposition from Western Shoshone, the U.S. Department of Interior, through its Bureau of Land Management approved one of the largest open pit cyanide heap leach gold mines in the United States on the flank of Mount Tenabo," the plaintiffs said in a joint statement. The Shoshone maintain that Mt. Tenabo and its environs are part of the ancestral land of the Western Shoshone, which has never been legally ceded to the federal government. Nevertheless, U.S. politicians and multinational corporations ignore the 1863 treaty between the U.S. government and the Western Shoshone, treating sacred land as a public resource to be mined for gold, the tribe says....

BLM, Park Service renew ties Utah Bureau of Land Management officials said they made a mistake in not keeping the National Park Service in the loop on an upcoming oil and gas lease sale. The two agencies decided Monday to renew a 1993 document that stated that they agreed to meet annually to discuss common interests and concerns. The so-called memorandum of understanding stipulated that the BLM must give the Park Service advance notice of oil and gas developments on public lands near national parks. That advance notice didn't happen with an oil and gas lease sale planned for Dec. 19 in Salt Lake City. After getting last-minute notice about the BLM's plans, the Park Service objected to the BLM's offering of parcels that border Arches and Canyonlands national parks and Dinosaur National Monument. BLM state director Selma Sierra and the Park Service's regional director Mike Snyder are expected to announce Tuesday which of the more controversial parcels bordering the parks and monument will be pulled from the sale....

Final version of federal energy corridor plan released Federal agencies involved in designating the proposed West-Wide Energy Corridor have scaled back the number of national wildlife refuge and wilderness area crossings contained in the 2007 draft, but total acreage has increased from 2.9 million to 3.3 million acres in the final version released Thursday. The four-volume Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement analyzes the environmental impacts of designating more than 6,112 miles of energy corridors on federal land in 11 western states, including New Mexico and Arizona. The final document indicates the total corridor length increased by less than 60 miles, the number of national wildlife refuge crossings dropped from 12 to two, wilderness area crossings decreased from 27 to zero, and roadless areas from 17 to five. The overall 12 percent increase in corridor area is due largely to an increase in the width of some corridor segments. In Arizona, 16 corridors covering 650 miles would encompass 386,567 acres. Of that, 579 miles are located on existing utility or transportation rights of way. In New Mexico, four corridors encompass 293 miles and 121,064 acres, with 256 miles located on existing rights of way. The agencies chose a standard corridor width of 3,500 feet as a starting point to provide flexibility for siting multiple rights of way, though some corridors could take in more or less footage depending on a specific project....

Technology reduces ag’s environmental footprint The efficiencies American farmers and ranchers have implemented in the last 60 years have done more to help the environment than hurt it, said an American Farm Bureau Federation environmental specialist. Our ability to increase our efficiencies in feed conversion, our ability to in-crease the genetics of our herd and increase the meat per animal, has basically reduced our environmental footprint, rather than increased it," said Don Parrish, AFBF Senior Director for Regulatory Relations at North Dakota Farm Bureau Convention and Exposition informational session. Compared to 1948, across all production in agriculture, animals produce 25 per-cent less manure. At the same time, each animal we raise produces 700 percent more meat than it did in 1948. “That’s phenomenal,” Parrish said. “We’ve got to be able to articulate that message.”....

"I Donated My Life to a Cow" Have you ever known a good storyteller? A good storyteller can captivate the attention of anyone within listening distance – and then make them want to hear more and more. Dean Walck, author of “I Donated My Life to a Cow,” possesses this rare kind of storytelling talent, and has taken it a step further by translating his stories into a book about his experiences as a long-time cattleman and rancher on the Western Slope of Colorado. Walck, born of a pioneer family who homesteaded on the Western Slope in the late 1800s, has ranching in his blood. He has lived and breathed it all his life, working alongside his brother, Scott Walck, who has also written articles for the Fence Post on occasion. The title page of Chapter 2 states the intent of Dean’s book in true “Dean Walck style”: “Remembering special people, places and moments from 60+ years of following an old cow around the Plateau Valley and elsewhere.” The entire book is written in this delightful style, straight and to the point, but is filled with humor, tenderness, excitement, and above all, recorded history of the hard work involved with running cattle over the years....

Lake Valley offers look at silver mining life There is one ghost town tucked away on the back roads of Sierra County that shines like the silver in the hills that put it on the map. In fact, few folks had even heard of Lake Valley until 1878. Today, it is one of the best preserved ghost towns in America, one that people from all over the world make a special trip to see. What happened in 1878 is the stuff legends are made of. A blacksmith named John Leavitt took out a lease on a claim and two days later discovered one of the largest lodes of silver the world has ever known. He called it the "Bridal Chamber." It was a hollow in the hillside with walls of solid horn silver. A railroad was constructed to the Bridal Chamber to haul out the loot. The find turned out to be worth almost $3 million, quite a sizable chunk of change today, but especially so in 1878. Well, it's a sure bet ole George W. Lufkin was crying in his beer. That's because he sold the claim that the Bridal Chamber was found on to the Sierra Grande Mining Co. for a hundred grand. The company later leased part of the claim to Leavitt, and it's also a sure bet he hung up his blacksmith tools for good after the discovery. As the story goes, Lufkin died broke and is buried in the Lake Valley graveyard. Lake Valley was first called Daly, named after ancient lake beds nearby. The town grew into a fairly lively place with about 4,000 folks, 12 saloons, three churches, a couple of newspapers, stores, hotels, stamp mills and smelters....

Environmental groups optimistic, industry wary about Obama Here's the question: What does a community organizer from Chicago who spent four years in the Senate before being elected president know about spotted owls, endangered salmon, mountain bark beetles, Western water rights, old-growth forests and the maintenance backlog in the national parks? The answer: Probably not much. President-elect Barack Obama has offered only scattered clues as to where he stands on the most pressing public lands and endangered species issues. In reading the tea leaves, however, environmental groups are optimistic, timber industry and land-rights groups are wary, and an influential lawmaker is excited about having an ally in the White House. "This guy is a quick study and I'm sure he will find competent people," said Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., who as chairman of the House Appropriations interior subcommittee oversees nearly $28 billion in annual funding for the Interior Department, the U.S. Forest Service and the Environmental Protection Agency. "We will be able to work with him. Anything will be better than (President) Bush." When it comes to the environment, Obama has focused his attention almost exclusively on global warming and clean energy. There are few references on his campaign Web site to on-the-ground issues, especially those specific to the West. Obama received an 86 out of a possible 100 in the environmental scorecard for members of Congress published by the League of Conservation Voters. He was also a co-sponsor of a bill that would have protected about 58 million acres of federal lands....

Green Obama’s official limo is a gas guzzler On the campaign trail, Barack Obama promised to get a million plug-in hybrid cars on the road by 2015. His own new presidential limousine will be far from green, however. The Obamobile being prepared for the president-elect is said to be a monster gas-guzzler made by General Motors, the troubled car giant. It will look like a black Cadillac but is built like a tank. A spy photographer who tracks down future car models for magazines snatched pictures of the heavily disguised first-car-in-waiting when it was being road-tested last summer. While security is paramount - the car is built to survive roadside bombs as well as gunfire - there are hybrid four-wheel drives on the market, such as Ford’s Mercury Mariner, which some critics believe could have been adapted for the president....