A number of years ago we were exhibiting in the South West U.S. and on our return trip we spent some time at the Taos (NM.) Mountain Film Festival. There we met Dr. Mark Plotkin and watched the premier of his documentary “The Shamans Apprentice”. Dr. Plotkin is an ethnobotanist from Harvard and has spent …

Much of our lives are spent in the moment, we toil, we strive, we engage, we gossip, another month arrives we pay our bills and then we start over again. Much of our society hasn’t the time or patience to consider who we are?, what we do?, where we come from?, where we have been? …

I’ve grown up with a common name for my age group. “Bill”, so common I’ve come to realize that many times at restaurants I get over looked. I’m a fella with a rather mild mannered demeanor and in a large crowd that is waiting to get a table I often seem to be overlooked, more …

I lament for the people that have a quick and simple answer to our societal and political problems. I grew up in a family of people that revered science and they readily acknowledged the notion that there is a lot of grey (gray) in a society that wants nothing more than BLACK AND WHITE. Some …

Part Two – Civil Unrest and the Death of Innocence – St. Paul & Minneapolis The thousands of peaceful protests have ended, the people have gone home.   The looters and rioters have vented their anger mostly in the dark of the night, they too have gone home. The television stations have the option to …

I awake from a sound sleep and I hear gun fire, lots of gun fire. I know what gun fire sounds like and it doesn’t sound like fireworks. It sounds like it is a couple of blocks away… so I fall back asleep. They most likely won’t come my way. I live in the U.S.A. …

For the 22nd year I’m returning from the South West United States and I’ve chosen a route that is slower and far more revealing. The need for seeing places other than interstate truck stops is my motivation. I’m driving on the state highways through the withering small towns on Kansas and Oklahoma. It is the …

BISON WORLD ESSAY Official Publication of the National Bison Association – I’m a small player in the bison industry yet it is an integral part of my life. I am a leather smith by trade, I contract tan perhaps thirty five to fifty thousand square feet of bison hides each year and market it to …

CORN IS OUR CURRENCY and SOYBEANS REPRESENT THE SECOND SISTER, THEY REPLACE THE LOST NITROGEN IN OUR FIELDS. Corn as a religious totem is exemplified in this simple but exceedingly effective logo-DeKalb Seed Corn. We are agrarians , our society has grown, our population is expanding because of mass produced food. There was a time …

I search my library and realize I have more than a few books that reference the plagues of history. The “Ghost Map of London” stands out because it is the most recent. It is a recounting of the cholera plague of 1854. It was a pitiful time but it was also enlightening because it was …