Eight days of the Ozarks

The Springfield News-Leader reports:

The 2007 Ozarks Celebration Festival will expand to eight days, featuring music, crafts and presentations on the campus of Missouri State University.

The festival, which kicks off on Sept. 7 with a 7 p.m. ice cream social and a 7:30 p.m. concert by Big Smith, will include the customary music and craft festival on Sept. 8-9, featuring traditional crafts people, commercial artists and five stages of traditional Ozarks music, storytelling and dancing.

This year’s event will add a guest lecture series on Sept. 10-13 and will culminate on Sept. 14 with an old-time music concert at 7:30 p.m. and a festival auction beginning at 6:30 p.m. at Juanita K. Hammons Hall for the Performing Arts.

The event is co-sponsored by Ozark Adventures and the Ozarks Studies Institute. Tickets may be purchased by calling the Hammons Hall Box Office at (417) 836-7678.

Festival hours begin at 7 p.m. Sept. 7 and from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sept. 8 and 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sept. 9. All events are free and open to the public.

Free parking for all events will be available in the lots near the corner of Monroe Street and National, and in all lots south of Grand Street. Shuttle service will be available Sept. 8 and 9.

Complete performance and lecture series information is available at http://ocf.missouristate.edu <http://ocf.missouristate.edu/>

What caused glaciers to melt 8,200 years ago?

I'm no scientist--I'm a hardware salesman, an ad salesman and a magazine editor--so my views of science are rooted in ignorance. I will concede that. So please help me by informing me.

This article about climate change 8,200 years ago has piqued my interest. In part, it says:

Canadian scientists studying ice core records are questioning current theories about the rapid cooling of the Northern Hemisphere 8,200 years ago....
Instead, the scientists said the data show the 8,200-year-old cooling event was generated by several factors, including melting of North American continental glaciers and a subsequent rapid sea level rise that induced a large-scale reorganization of broad oceanic circulation patterns.
The study appears in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Am I reading this wrong? I think it says the hemisphere cooled because the glaciers melted and the sea level rose.

What caused the glaciers to melt? It wasn't modern civilization and the burning of coal and oil. Was there a natural warming trend? Are natural warming trends possible? If the melting glaciers caused the hemisphere to cool 8,200 years ago, could that happen again now? Could it be that cooling and warming is a cyclical and natural process?

This is why I didn't major in science.

The decline of the family-owned farm

Here's an interesting story on the last family farm in an Illinois community.

As we see more Ozarks farmland devoured by urban sprawl, we wonder how long our own family farmers have.

All out of whack

The loud mouths in government, the media and the liberal activists groups have got us so out of kilter that we're doing this foolishness: Can't See the Forest for the Biofuels.

The story notes:

According to a new study, cutting down forests to grow crops for fuel causes more environmental damage than using biofuels can ever offset.

It's a sobering message at a time when energy crops, once a hippie dream, have gone mainstream green. Around the world, governments and industries have pledged to replace climate-fouling fossil fuels with fuel made from plants. But is it possible that we can't see the CO2 forest for the trees?

Writing in the journal Science, Renton Righelato of the World Land Trust, a British conservation group, and Dominick Spracklen, an environmental researcher at the University of Leeds, compared the carbon dioxide savings offered by using land for biofuel crops or forests.

The worst practice for the environment, they found, is making space for biofuel crops by clearing forests. Inevitably, forests absorb more CO2 than is saved by biofuel crops grown where they once stood.

Let's just use our resources in ways their best suited, i.e. let's burn oil and coal for fuel, let's grow corn and soybeans for feed and food and let's leave the rain forest alone. Meanwhile, let's plant as many trees and native perennials as we can our individual properties, and simply be good stewards of our resources.

Under the sun

Has it ever been so hot? According to the national news media it never has. The temperature is higher than it's ever been. There are more hurricanes than ever before. Tornadoes are more violet than ever before.

More laws, regulations, fees and taxes are the answer, I suppose.

I tend to be skeptical of these reports. One national news media outlet that I ran across on the internet had to admit that it has been warmer in the past.

Yes, I'll grant you it has been hot this summer. How hot has it been? Another ole hillbilly friend of mine sent me an e-mail in which he noted the following:

It's So Hot...........

The trees are whistling for the dogs.
The cows are giving evaporated milk.
The birds use potholders to pull worms out of the ground.
Farmers are feeding their chickens crushed ice to keep them from laying hard-boiled eggs.
The potatoes cook underground, all you have to do is to pull one out and add butter, salt and pepper.
You can make instant sun tea.
You learn that a seat belt makes a pretty good branding iron.
You notice the best parking place is determined by shade instead of distance.
Hot water now comes out of both taps.
Your biggest bicycle wreck fear is, "What if I get knocked out, end up lying on the road & cook to death?"
You realize that asphalt has a liquid state.
I saw a dog chasing a cat and they were both walking.

We've had some days this summer when the temperature climbed above 100 degrees. I remember days of summers past when it did the same, so I tend to disbelieve the pronouncements of the national news media.

I believe the scripture that says this: "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is no new thing under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

Jesus on the Mainline

I was listening to an old Rounder compilation disc of bluegrass tunes that Bluegrass Now put out a couple of years ago while driving to and from work today. Two tunes stick out.

One is "Echo Mountain" by James King, from his album The Bluegrass Storyteller. I'll tell you what, if you are a dog lover, you'll mist up (or maybe even start bawling) when you hear this one. This is more heart-tugging than Elvis singing "Old Shep."

The other is "Jesus on the Mainline" by Dry Branch Fire Squad. That song is a spiritual experience. It's just 2:12 long. That's 2 minutes and 12 seconds, but it is better than 2 hours and 12 minutes of church. You know, I've watched some church services on TV where they have a "praise and worship team" performing Christian rock music on stage. Those "praise and worship leaders" ought to get a copy of Live at the Newburyport Firehouse, listen to this song and try to capture that feeling.

Web site updated

The August issue of The Ozarks Chronicle has been mailed and received by subscribers. If you're a subscriber and haven't received your copy yet, call us at (573) 426-2229 and let us know. We'll get a copy out to you immediately.

The cover story by Holly Atkinson tells about a trip she and husband Steven made to Hercules Glades Wilderness Area. If you're a subscriber, you're familiar with Holly's poetic style, displayed each month in her Out My Back Door column, available only in the print version, as is the Hercules Glades story.

The web site has been partially updated. Check these pages for new reading material:

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Good bluegrass on KOMU

Jerry Rosa informs us that the Rosa String Works Band will perform a couple of tunes on the Pepper and Friends TV show Monday, Aug. 27, which airs from 10-11 a.m. on KOMU-TV channel 8 out of Columbia. Check your cable guide to see which channel your cable system is using.

Rosa reports:

The reason we are going on the “air” so to speak is to promote our 5^th Annual American Heritage Bluegrass Concert at Historic Arrow Rock, MO on Saturday September 1^st. I know many of you will be at the Dixon Festival that day, but if you are in the area, we would love to have you attend our show. The show nearly sells out every year. We have already sold about 25% of the tickets available for the afternoon show. Click on the link (above) to see a flyer for that show.

P.S. We will be back in Dixon playing that festival on Sunday afternoon September 2^nd.

Hope to see you soon.

Thanks

Jerry L. Rosa, Sr.

www.rosastringworks.com

Rosa String Works

21102 County Road 7560

Newburg, MO 65550-9320

(573) 762-2828

Owner of Ozarks newspapers reports losses

The gigantic corporation that owns many of the small-town dailies in the Ozarks, as well as some of the weeklies, has announced a loss in revenue for the second quarter of the year.

Gatehouse Media's stock price has also reached a 52-week low.

Here's a report on the second-quarter revenue. Here's another one. Finally, here's a report on the stock price.

Here from the company website is a list of the daily newspapers Gatehouse owns in Missouri:
Boonville Daily News
Camdenton Lake Sun Leader
Carthage Press
Chillicothe Constitution Tribute
Kirksville Daily Express
Macon Chronicle Herald
Maryville Daily Forum
Mexico Ledger
Moberly Monitor Index
Neosho Daily News
Rolla Daily News
St. Robert Daily Guide

Racing privies in the Ozarks

Having grown up in a home without indoor plumbing until I was in fourth grade, I fondly remember the old outhouse. Well, fondly probably isn't the best way to describe my feelings for the two-holer. I think about the outhouse every now and again, especially in summer when I have to use the bathroom. If you've never experienced an outhouse in an Ozarks summer, you have not experienced life fully.

Now, in all the time I spent in an outhouse as a lad, I never dreamed of transforming the privy into a racing contraption. Some other folks have, though, according to this article in the Camdenton paper.

Beyond Columbia

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Sunday the University of Missouri-Columbia wants to get rid of the city in its name, just as the University of Missouri-Rolla is in the midst of doing. Here's some of what the P-D says:

The University of Missouri-Columbia is the latest player to join the name change game.
School leaders want to drop the hyphen and "Columbia" to make absolutely clear that it is the state's flagship campus.
"Our aim is to properly brand it as the major university in the state," said Chancellor Brady Deaton. "It should be the University of Missouri, period."
In the minds of some, the regional designation represents a limitation, Deaton said. He said the national steering committee of the fundraising campaign For All We Call Mizzou began talking about the issue last year. That group, as well as the Mizzou Alumni Association, presented him with resolutions this year supporting the name change.
"Why should we have anything that impedes the ability of people to understand the mission of the university?" he said.
Besides, he added, "It's really a restoration of the original name of the university."
The school was known as the University of Missouri before the four-campus university system formed in 1963. After that, each campus was given its regional designation — Rolla, Kansas City, Columbia and St. Louis.

The University of Missouri-Rolla will become Missouri University of Science and Technology, or Missouri S&T or MST, on Jan. 1. The public radio station has already changed its call letters from KUMR to KMST.

Organic vs. regular food

The Denver Post in late July had an interesting op-ed piece about organic vs. regular food. According to the writer, regular food wins hands-down over USDA Organic food for a number of reasons, such as animal cruelty and environmental protection. The writer is so adamant about it that she claims she will go out of her way, literally driving past a supermarket, to avoid organically grown foods in favor of traditionally grown food.

I'm not doctrinaire on either side. If I go to a farmers market, I like to buy produce grown organically and locally. Locally grown is probably what I'm more interested in than organically grown. For instance, I don't mind if someone has sprinkled Sevin dust on tomatoes, but I want tomatoes grown in the Ozarks. There's nothing wrong with tomatoes grown in Georgia or southern Arkansas. In fact, the soil that nurtures tomatoes there is better than the soil we have here. Nevertheless, when I go to an Ozarks farmers market, I want to buy produce grown by Ozarks farmers, not produce driven in from somewhere else. I can get that at a supermarket.

I'm not an organic gardener. I have to use some dusts and sprays, because I don't have the time or patience to go through and pick off bugs one at a time. I will try a homemade organic remedy first, but if it doesn't work quick enough for me, I'll zap the bugs with pesticide.

Same way with my roses. We had some severe fungal infection on a hybrid rose. Delaine has always used a homemade mix of dishwashing soap and vegetable oil (I think), and she told me how to mix it. Instead, I went to Sands Farm and Home and bought a commercial mixture in a spray bottle. After a couple of applications, it cleared that fungal infection right up. (By the way, the heirloom old garden rose that also grows in that bed has never had a fungal infection, so I'm a firm believer in heirloom plants, as well as native plants.)

Back to organic: The author of that Denver Post piece has some stuff wrong and some stuff right. It boils down to this: It's silly to be adamantly opposed to all traditional agriculture or gardening and it's silly to be admantly opposed to all organic agriculture or gardening.

It's smart to grow as much of your own food as you can, buy local produce and meat from local farmers and gardeners and then buy from the supermarket.