The original post was cut to a third in order to appear as a guest column in the Des Moines Register.  What follows is the text of that column.

Whether I suffer from Depression, I can’t say. I don’t have any qualms about a stigma. I just don’t know where the line is. Some fight the good fight every day.

My interest in mental health is due to periods in my life. I’d call them funks, but they’re more than that. Adrift in deep, cold water, enormous waves would come and take me with them, letting me go in time for the next.

The first time I was adrift, I wanted perspective from someone. Someone who had seen it not just once, but every day with others. I sought out a therapist.

I talked about feelings. We came to talk about ideas. Those ideas made their way into my thinking. They made their way into blog posts and book pages. They made their way into relationships with those I love.

It wasn’t a cure-all. A few years later, they hit again. I became preoccupied in thinking I was trapped.

Some talk about this ocean as self-pity, or lack of faith, or some refusal to grow up and get on with it. It’s none of that. It is fear, and it’s what you and I are up against.

I dreaded facing the waves again. I began to think of ways out. The one I took was in my commitment to try and talk with my therapist about it. Eventually I began to think again.

I still go. I still talk about my thinking. Sometimes I hear the bit that opens up a new door. A few I’ll share below. I sometimes wonder how long it would have been to find those thoughts otherwise, of if I would have found them at all.

Mental health is simply the ability to adapt and self-manage. Mental health is health. Faith and mental health are like faith and health.

Some of us are sensitive. Those who manage it, tend to live longer lives than those not sensitive at all. Pursuit of purpose trumps pursuit of happiness.

Emotion is powerful. It’s great to have it acknowledged, but it can keep us from thinking. Most of us can solve our own problems if we can get to thinking about them again.

What the future will look like has less to do with whatever happened and more to do with what you are doing with what happened.

Thinking about how we can make a thing talkable decreases our sense of isolation.

Thinking about what another person is up against decreases isolation. Telling them what to do increases it. How can we think something through with someone else and let them take it the rest of the way?

Over the last few years, I’ve built a better boat. I picked up some sailing tips. I’ve learned to bail water like a sonofabitch. The waves need to be bigger now.

A few months ago, in the dark, my mind found the lose thread of a sweater. I knew pulling it would cause things to unravel. I pulled anyway.

In the morning my girlfriend and I talked about it. I put on a different shirt. I got out in a new day.

We sail our own ship. What are we going to do about it?

Back in 2017 there was a common narrative concerning Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture.  I’m sure it still exists today.  The Des Moines Register hit upon it in an article at the time.  The Center had lost 1.7 million in funding from the Iowa Legislature.  Many were offering opinions as to why.

A few lines from the article contain the best synopsis of the narrative I referred to.  “Sometimes, its research had been controversial.  It’s not always going to say what people want it to say.  ….it put a target on the Leopold Center’s back.”

As part of a Madison County Farm Family, and as an Iowa State University graduate of Agronomy, I knew very little about the Leopold Center.  A friend I knew through conservation work the was passionate about the center’s potential loss of funding when the issue was being debated.  Passionate enough, it made me look into whether or not I would get involved.

I went to the center’s website and downloaded their 2015/2016 Annual Report.  It began with a piece I could relate to as a farmer.  It talked about a bleaker economic outlook for farm families in the state.   It spoke about the environmental challenges we face.  Then it the piece pivoted.

These very challenges is what the State Legislature originally funded the Center to address in 1987, as part of the Iowa Groundwater Protection Act.  It was tasked with “finding new ways to farm profitably while conserving natural resources as well as reducing negative environmental and social impacts.”  That opening piece seized on those facts and pivoted on optimism.  In those challenges was the center’s very purpose.

Realizing that within the challenges you face your own purpose awaits is a sign of maturity.  What could be controversial about that, I wondered?

Then I started on the next piece in their annual report.  It was written from a different perspective and didn’t pivot at all.  It didn’t begin with any sense of compassion for the farmers the center proposed to help.  In fact, it seemed to position them as the adversary, and lamented that the center was hamstringed in being able to take policy positions opposed to them.  It openly wondered whether the center was serving its purpose or not.

As a general rule with regards to maturity, if someone can’t find their purpose, it is unlikely you are going to give it to them.  Often the best you can do is to continue on your own.

While the second piece did contain a line that the “Center has a deep appreciation of the challenges faced by producers” it rang hollow to me.  Perhaps it was due to the context mentioned a couple paragraphs above.  Or perhaps because even it was only the second  half of a statement which began by attesting to the “broad knowledge” of agricultural practices the center has.  It appeared as though the only purpose the “deep appreciation” served was to reinforce the thought that only the Center has the proper perspective.

With regards to perspective, as I wallowed through despair, I couldn’t help but wonder in my role on a Soil and Water Conservation Board why it hadn’t mentioned the tremendous advances made using largely voluntary conservations practices to address soil erosion since the Center’s establishment.

I opted to do nothing when the debate was on in the Legislature.  In fact, I think most farmers opted to do nothing.  Most were probably in the same boat as I:  relatively uncertain about what the Center did in the first place.  Maybe the Center had lost its purpose.

While supporters of the Center maintain pieces like above created a target on their back from powerful farm groups, in all actuality they alienated the most important partner the Center had:  the producer they were tasked to help.  By being unable to decide whether common farm families in the state were either a friend or a foe, no one worked against the Center as much as the Center worked against themselves.

Reporters and even Pulitzer Prize winners have written about the center.  They fool themselves in their belief that they are writing a story about what no one wants to here.  In the tale of Corporate Agriculture, Industrialized Ag, Big Ag, and the Chemical Cabals, they are oblivious to the fact that they created boogey men under the public’s bed.

The real story, the that few really want to hear, is that we tend to oversimplify our challenges.  Usually those involved in the issue are much more like you and me than anyone lets on.  And while many of us, including myself, are tempted to be the martyr, true heroism for most of us usually doesn’t involve our figurative dying for a cause.  In fact, doing so sets us back.  If you really want to champion a cause, you ought to resolve to live for it.

When it comes to conserving the greater sage-grouse, there’s a saying many are familiar with. “What’s good for the bird is good for the herd.” The pitch made is that management practices which enhance the bird’s habitat are in the best long term interest for ranchers.

Some make the pitch by arguing the management required to meet these goals increases a rancher’s profitability. Some make the pitch that the management required to meet these goals is small potatoes compared to the regulations in store if the species got an endangered species listing. People argue whichever case they are passionate about.

Some argue for less consideration of the rancher perspective. Some, it turns out, argue for more. They would go so far as to turn the original saying around.

The University of California, Santa Clara, recently took part in a study published in the Journal of Applied Ecology. Their work found that policies that seek to restrict grazing on western public lands for the sake of the sage-grouse, may unintendedly wind up causing more damage to the bird’s population long term.

If it sounds laughable, perhaps you aren’t familiar with systems theory: the idea that if everything was as easy as we thought it was, the world would look a lot differently. Unintended consequences usually hatch from the eggs of our best intentions. We seldom seem them in that light, generally convinced they hatched somewhere else, from someone else’s intentions.

The UC Santa Clara study found that restricting grazing would harm rancher profitability, placing them in a spot where they would be even more likely to make financial decisions that would be destructive of critical grouse habitat. When compared to the conversion of range acres for crops or development, cows could actually be the grouse’s best friend.

In other words: what’s good for the herd is also good for the bird.

The picture has often been drawn that conservation and profitability are at odds to one another. You can find someone peddling it anytime you turn around. A more accurate portrayal of the world that exists, however, would paint them linked. The existence of the latter is of great help to the former.

In portraying it otherwise our best intentions could have some significant unintended consequences of their own, leaving our prairie chickens to come home and roost in a space hardly as welcoming as we had hoped.

Shannon had to work until 7 on Good Friday. The church of St. Francis of Assisi is near her work, and they had a 7 p.m. Good Friday Mass. So I went early, got us a seat, and she made it in the nick of time.

In all the homilies I have heard given that day, this year was the first time I ever heard what Barabbas meant, “Son of the father,” or that Barabbas had a first name, “Jesus.” It sent me scrambling to Wikipedia when I got home.

There, I found this: “Barabbas’ name appears as bar-Abbas in the Greek texts of the gospels. It is derived ultimately from the Aramaic בר-אבא, Bar-abbâ, “son of the father”. Some ancient manuscripts of Matthew 27:16–17 have the full name of Barabbas as “Jesus Barabbas” and this was probably the name as originally written in the text.^[13] Early church father Origen was troubled by the fact that his copies of the gospels gave Barabbas’ name as “Jesus Barabbas” and declared that since it was impossible he could have had such a holy name, “Jesus” must have been added to Barabbas’ name by a heretic.^[14] It is possible that later scribes, copying the passage, removed the name “Jesus” from “Jesus Barabbas” to avoid dishonour to the name of Jesus the Messiah.^[15]”

The Deacon delivering the homily this year remarked it about the tale of two Jesus’.  The first, Barabbas, was the one people wanted in their Jesus:  a revolutionary who would restore power.  The second, Christ, had an approach different than that.

It seemed a topical message that day.  Perhaps it has been topical all days.  Perhaps it always will be.

Two and a half years ago, I wrote one of my last posts on dating. It was a post called Getting Out of the Box. All in all, posts on the subject had been popular, and it was sort of a trip in going out on dates with people who would stumble across the fact beforehand that I would write about my experiences.

The posts had garnered a small readership, getting a couple hundred views or so depending on the day. People seemed to enjoy the exploits of a middle-aged male back in the midst of it. Where possible, I’d find humor, and there was no shortage of places which made it possible.

In the particular post mentioned above, I made a joke, one I thought readers would find funny. It was something about an “old clunker.” It was late in the evening, and I hit post.

It wasn’t perfect. It never is. I find there is something about knowing that someone else has read what you wrote, that makes it flaws stand out in bold neon. A blog post then, isn’t the finished product, it’s simply part of the process.

I woke the next morning, thinking about the other side to that joke. It bothered me. I jumped out of bed to edit it. 75 had already seen it.

I didn’t write a about dating after that. There would be a couple other things that would go with it, pretty well ending my regularly maintaining a blog. It’s hard to believe it was that long ago. It’s hard to believe how time gets away from us.

“How did you guys meet?”

“Match.com”

“I forgot you would write about that. So tell me, did you know right away that it was going to work out?”

“No. I still don’t. She is liable to wise up at any moment.

We had went out once, had a good time, but we weren’t really sure if there was anything there or not. A few months later, out of the blue, we went out again. That time we hit it off.”

“I’m happy for you. It’s good to see people meet the right people.”

“I’m lucky, I guess. But to meet the right people, we need to get ourselves right. Well, we are never going to get ourselves right, but we need to at least get our ass in the right ballpark.”

“How’s that?”

“You wouldn’t believe how us 30 and 40 somethings date. It looks much better in television and the movies than what it is. The idea they present is that we are more mature. Are we really are is more complicated.

Outside of that, we are still teenagers. There’s texting at all hours, hot signals, cold signals, the inability to talk about that we ought to talk about, and intimate conversation is generally the hanging of our heads in the conviction we are broken.

I decided I would try, the best I was able, to do something different and meet those trying to do something different too.”

“Why?”

“Because I found it incredibly depressing to think of living my life incapable of change. The more repetition, the harder it becomes to deny a pattern. The more obvious the pattern, the more depressing it became to think about it continuing.

I figured I would try to simply date people who talked on the phone, and who demonstrated that they could sort their emotions out. People who could talk in depth about who they were, where they came from, and the things real people struggle with. People who weren’t afraid to struggle to get what they wanted from themselves.”

“How did that work?”

“It was terrifying at first. I had this buddy who told me people who decide they want out of a relationship, usually don’t have a real good reason. It’s just a feeling, and it is a feeling that grows. So they pick a reason, any reason, and they grow it themselves until it gets to a point they have to get out or that they can get someone else to tell them it is for the best.”

“You believe that?”

“Absolutely. I’ve done it. I decided no matter how terrified I got, I wasn’t going to do that. I was going to think my way through it.”

“And?”

“I consistently met the people I respected, and still talk to.”

“So Shannon?”

“I felt like I was investing time into the building of relationships. Shannon understood them in a way like no one I had met. I felt like I worked my tail off for it, but for Shannon it was more innate.”

She would talk about her family, and it dawned on me one day that in a large family she was perhaps the most connected. She would talk about her kids, and after a few dates I discovered I was unable to tell who the favorite was. I’m still convinced she doesn’t have one. She let’s them be who they are in a way unlike anyone I have met.

‘Curious interest,’ that is what someone told me once. Curious interest is where we should try to get to in raising kids. As best we can anyhow. I’d know little about it, I guess, but I do remember that. She’s the closest I’ve met to it.”

“You seem to make a good case.”

“As good as I can, for having met someone at 40. Perhaps that makes the case in itself. Mostly what I got was lucky.”

The best thing to break me out of the winter doldrums is the prospect of buying a new bull. It gets me thinking about the future. It gets me thinking about the past. It gets me thinking about part of my family.

My grandfather was fond of saying, “A good bull is half the herd. A poor bull is all of it.” He and his brother were aggressive in selecting bulls for their herd, and they instilled the same in my father and his brother. Yet in going through old photo albums this winter, I find no pictures of any of them with a prized purchase.

The bull was only as good as his calf crop, after all. I suppose the herd is only as good as it’s ability to raise a better set of calves next time. Most my life we strived to do it with a commercial cow herd.

Fascination with those in the purebred business, led us to start doing it with a purebred set of cows 13 years ago. The little herd has steadily grown over that time, though still small. Currently, in a herd of 165 females, 69 are registered.

Along the way I’ve learned a lot. My father, a place I worked, and other producers in the business have all been instrumental in shaping my view of how to try and raise a good bull. Often I go back to what a breeder in Wisconsin, with an incredibly successful program, once told me: “The hardest part of the purebred business is seeing your own cattle honestly.”

Commercial or purebred producer alike would be familiar with that good-looking weaned heifer. For some what captures their interest is her look, for others it is her pedigree, and for yet others it is how she performed. All three perspectives, different, are alike in their inability to predict whether or not she will be a good cow.

That is something not decided on pedigree, or look, or numbers. It is determined by what she raises, and its desirability to those you sell it to. It is the same for her as it is for that bull.

To start a herd, we wanted good cows. Instead of buying young, unproven females, we picked old cows with a production record, that looked the part, and had succeeded in the herds they came from.

In 2009 Craig Conover, a prominent auctioneer, recommended we come up to a dispersal of cows owned by Ray Petersek from Colome, South Dakota. We did. Instead of taking the popular option of picking heifers or young bred cows that day, we picked from the older ones with good ratios and great calves.

We had enough money for four cows. All together they had weaned 23 claves with a 105 weaning ratio. They were good uddered and well-structured. They also made the transition to Iowa fescue look easy.

In 2011 we added more cows to the herd, keeping the ratio of our own cows honest. At the Summitcrest Dispersal we picked up another 5 head. They had produced 19 calves with an average ratio of 107 at weaning.

Then in 2017 we added more, still staying true to our original principles. We purchased 11 cows to go into our purebred herd from Mogck and Sons Angus. These cows had a combined 66 head of progeny with an average weaning ratio of 104. Among their progeny were 20 sons that had sold for an average of $8100.

Buying these older cows has brought no foot or udder problems, and created a group of females that eat grass, raise bulls, and get bred. It’s doubtful any of them will raise an $8000 bull for us. That’s fine. Honestly what we are really wanting is daughters at some point from all of them.

10 bulls, some from the Mogck cows first calf crop here, along with some bulls from the cows before, will be available March 9th on the farm. We only keep what looks like a bull. You are welcomed to have a look at them any time. The base is price is minimal, for the simple reason that if you feel like you underpaid for what you got, you’ll come back.

The bulls average in the top 20% of the breed for $Beef and $Weaning, estimates of profitability both on the rail and at weaning. They also average in the top 20% of the breed for pound at weaning, and top 25% for pounds at yearling and in feed efficiency.

You’ll fine some of the rest of the data here:

2019 Bulls

If you are interested, feel free to message or call: 515-681-4619. Thanks, and here’s to spring and the potential that lies ahead.

Dan

In our texts and conversation the last couple of years, I often referred to Chasen Stevenson as “big guy.”  This was the time following his diagnosis with kidney cancer at the age of 29.  It was a period he and his wife simply called a journey.

He reminded me once that he wasn’t as big as he had been.  Perhaps the term “big guy” was a friendly reminder to him, in case he needed it, that a man is bigger than his circumstances.

His funeral was last week.  He was 31.  Many great tributes have poured out to him.  They said so much, so well.  I’d share a few thoughts of my own.

I once heard a priest give a homily on Doubting Thomas.  Thomas, the priest felt, gets a bad rap.  All he really wanted was the opportunity all the other apostles had.  Who’s to say how any of them would have reacted had they been the ones left out?

According to the priest, the real gist of the story wasn’t about Thomas and his doubts.  The real gist is that you and I, as best we can and in spite of our own faults, are to offer to others that same experience Christ offered Thomas.  We are to try and be His hands and feet.  It is clear in the tributes I’ve read that Chasen offered that chance to many.  He did to me as well.

We get hung up on Thomas and his doubts.  We get hung up on our own.  I think we make them more than they are.  Perhaps faith and doubt aren’t mutually exclusive terms.  Maybe they exist together.  Moments of our greatest doubts can offer opportunities for our greatest faith.

These are the things the big guy has me thinking about.

He was a leader.  When people think of leaders, they tend to think of someone finding a way when no one else can.  How often that actually happens, though, I’m not sure.

More often than not, a leader takes the route everyone sees, but no one wants to go.  They might not want to go either.  They simply understand the need so they persevere.  The perseverance is in the face of the very things that intimidated the rest of us from going to begin with.

This can leave us standing outside the ring, marveling at the big guy all day long.  I think he’s asking more of us than that.  Sooner or later, we’ve got to get in the ring with him so he can show us the ropes.

After Chasen’s funeral, I made the trek that afternoon into part of Iowa Farm Bureau’s Annual Meeting.  It’s where I had met Chasen a few short years ago.  A year ago we caught up in the hallways and shared lunch the last day.  This time, I would only be in the company of his friends.

There they were, leaders in their own right.  Some were being honored with nominations and awards.  Some offered encouragement to others.  All were enjoying the fellowship they found by being called to a noble way of life:  temporary caretakers of a little part of God’s creation.

In celebrating that fellowship something wonderful happens.  I was going to type that you meet the people that change your life.  Maybe you meet the people that inspire you to change your own.

I can’t help but wonder where their own journeys will take them all.  I wonder how many lives Chasen will go on to touch in having touched theirs.  In the end, the questions of doubt raised in me by his death were answered with faith in having witnessed a small part of his life.

I called him “big guy” because it was a term of love.

Tom Hayes wore a blue jack over the top of a cross-hatched shirt and above grayish blue slacks. In a certain light they resembled the denim his audience was familiar with. In another they looked trendy. Even his glasses were hybrids. A partial horned rim extended from the its arm two thirds the way over the arch of each eye. From there a clear frame continued on, bridging the gap over his nose, and climbing up the other side, being both nostalgic and cutting edge. In his attire, Hayes seemed to be offering a little something for everybody.  In his remarks Hayes would cut the same way.

Hayes is the CEO of Tyson Foods, the nation’s largest food company.  They are also the country’s largest meat processor.  In 2017 they had 23 percent of the daily US slaughter capacity for beef.  The crowd assembled to hear him speak were those that raised the product.  In his comments Hayes would keep returning to two topics.  The first was the consumer.  The second was the idea of transparency.

Most of the crowd was eager to hear about one topic in particular:  Tyson’s recent investment in the alternative protein company, Memphis Meats, trying to figure out how to better grow animal tissue in a petri dish.  Hayes, if I noted correctly, referred to this company’s product as ‘future meat.’  The crowd, mostly all cattle ranchers and farmers, was trying to guess where in the future they fit in.

“Tyson is in the protein business,” Hayes explained.  “If we don’t invest in these alternatives, we won’t know what we need to do in order to be sustainable as a company.  We were not engaged in this segment with our consumers.  We feel consumer choice is a good thing to focus on for us to thrive as a food company.”

I was familiar with the phrase that “the consumer is driving the bus.”  I had believed it.  Listening to Hayes, I realized I had been foolish.  The consumer isn’t driving the bus,  the anxiety about what they may someday want is.

The topic of alternative proteins was fitting.  It’s generated a lot of buzz in the industry.  For some it is simply a product that may compete against their own some day.  But like Hayes, there’s a little more to it than that.  Riding along with the product are the practices behind it.

Eventually, Hayes would get to practices in his remarks.  “We don’t like the criticism of not being transparent.  We want to take a leadership stance for the industry.  We want to be able to tell the consumer, ‘Here’s what you don’t know.  Here are the facts.’”

As the words made their way over the crowd, they had some semblance that Tyson was going to help cattle producers tell their story. They also conveyed an urgency Tyson must feel, at a time when companies stock values raise and fall as quickly as the newscycle, that they need to continue to refine their own story. In wedding the two together, they also unveil the fact that Tyson and their competitors are a formidable enough force in the marketplace to refine more stories than their own.

In January 2019, Tyson will require those they buy cattle from to be Beef Quality Assurance certified. The BQA program had been voluntary, helping set guidelines for industry best practices meant to encourage trust with the consumer. It has been a good program, well received by producers, and with good participation. Tyson’s requirement of certification seems to be relatively well received, and at least one of Tyson’s major competitors will require the same.

Where will it go now?

Many in the room might not have known that an environmental activist group in 2017 started the “Clean it Up, Tyson!” campaign. It was a national effort directed at a company whom the activists felt “had left a trail of pollution across the country, and have a responsibility to their customers to clean it up.” It gained a little traction. Here in Iowa, for instance, in the fall of 2017, the Des Moines Water Works Board fresh off the loss of their water quality lawsuit hopped into the fray. 18 other central Iowa business joined them. Tyson vigorously defended itself, but in spring of 2018 Tyson announced a Sustainable Grain Commitment to support improved environmental practices on two million acres of corn by the year 2020.

Hayes is right. They don’t like the criticism. They are going to do something about it. How will it interplay with producers striving for the same thing?  I suppose it depends on how the investment producers make in telling their own story.

I am not talking dollars and cents towards practices.  That commitment has been there and continues to be.  I’m talking about telling others what they do and why.

On one hand, I like the idea of industry-led stewardship. I like the idea of industry-wide collaboration. I like the idea of getting away from cumbersome, government-driven regulation. But somewhere, in the deep folds of bureaucracy, I have some representation as a producer and there is a debate that takes place on how things stand and how they should.

As it becomes more industry driven, we will be represented by the story we tell.  It will be that story that shapes the debate.  It will be that story that will balance against the anxieties of consumers not yet realized.

“We want to share that with the producer, and tell them, ‘decide how you want to participate.’ Where we have the best results is when we have those producers talking about change and improvement with us,” Hayes said.  In a certain light I find the comment to mean they already know we are doing it.  They want us to understand the need to tell the story.

There’s a debate going on about lab grown meat. A lot of the discussion is devoted to what we are going to call it and whose jurisdiction it will fall under. This discussion isn’t without merit.

If you haven’t heard about lab grown meat, it’s an effort to create a product similar to traditionally raised beef. In fact the goal is to make it indistinguishable. This product won’t come from a pasture on some rolling Iowa hills. This product will come from a laboratory. Poultry and pork will likely follow, but given their lower price point it will take longer.

In 2014 a Pew Research Poll asked 1000 U.S. adults if they “would eat meat that was grown in a lab?” 78 percent responded no.

In 2018, Michigan State University’s Food and Literacy Engagement Poll, in an effort to get past the perception of how the product is labeled, asked 2100 Americans, “How likely would you be to purchase foods that look and taste identical to meat, but are based on ingredients that are produced artificially?” They found a third of Americans would be willing to try such a product.

Then in August of this year came a Faunalytics survey. They prompted respondents with statements on the role of antibiotics and hormones in traditional animal agriculture. They used the term “clean meat” and defined it as real meat without the need to raise and slaughter animals. Their survey reported that 2/3 of Americans would be willing to try this product, although it is in essence the same as those above.

On the surface, these polls seem to reinforce the importance of what it is named. I wholeheartedly support the effort of agriculture to defend it’s own terminology and fend off disparaging attacks (what does clean meat imply about its traditionally raised counterpart?) from others.

An example I hear, again and again, is that the dairy industry lost control of the term “milk.” The implication is that they could have done something different. We should ask ourselves to what extent they really could have? It would help us frame the efforts of our own.

Does milk or meat mean what we think it does? Yes, milk is lactated from a mammal, but we also use it in other ways. Take a coconut. From it comes a white liquid we sometimes refer to as…. and it leaves behind a white flesh some call its…

Again, I do believe with nomenclature there are some things we can and ought to do to protect our product. But I also believe advertising executives pulling in six and seven figures probably make it because they are better in the name game than I am. Take Silk’s almond milk for example. What name did they settle on? Almondmilk. Kind of has nice ring of litigation to it, doesn’t it?

Go back up to those polls, though. I’d suggest they are telling you something else besides the importance of a name. They are telling you about the importance of a story. They are telling you about the importance of who tells it.

We have a great one. We have herds of living solar panels converting sunlight into protein. They can do so on a land area unfit for any other type of agricultural production. They can be managed in a way that is far more beneficial to soil health than if we had left the acres idle, scrubbing carbon from the air and getting it in the ground. Animals whose byproducts are used entirely, making them sources of rural vitality and part of an honorable way of life.

Names will come. Names will go. Stories tend to stick around. We should continue to learn to better tell our own.

There must have been a hundred of us making our way through the United ticketing counters at the west terminal of Denver International Airport. The parents tried to keep tabs on their kids. Spouses argued. Beyond that none of us really paid attention to each other.

I did notice the profane brashness of a bearded twenty something ahead of me. His attention, in turn, was on a meek and mild twelve year old boy United’s own staff had missed at the ticketing kiosks.

“You trying to check that fucking bag man?” I was unable to tell if his accent hailed from Jersey or the Bronx. “Naw, naw, man. Don’t check that shit. You can carry that on, Dude.”

My eyes finally found the boy he was talking to.

“Take that ticket and your bag and head to TSA.”

“TSA?”

“Shit, dude. Haven’t you ever flown before?”

The boy, overwhelmed, shook his head no.

“TSA. Down this hallway and then down the stairs. Be hundreds of people waiting in line. Can’t miss it. They’ll search your shit, and then you can be on your merry fucking way. You don’t need to check that, all right? You’ll be able to carry it right on, assuming you didn’t pack your Boy Scout pocket knife. You ain’t got one of them boy scout pocket knives in there do you, bub? All right then, off you go.”

Most of us carve out an identity by becoming whatever we feel we are supposed to be. Some inhabit it so fully as to become characters. Some become a caricature. It’s hard to figure out most times which is exactly which.

“Whoah, look at you my man. You must fly alot,” came the uninvited and unwanted voice from the kiosk beside me.

“Just sometimes.”

“Could have fooled me, man. You look like you got your shit together.”

“You should get to know me better,” I replied in an terse effort to create some space.

“I mean you look like you got it together just the right amount, ya know? Nothing I hate more than those sonsabitches got their shit too much together. Makes me nervous, you know what I mean?”

When I walked away he was still talking. And as I made my own way through TSA, standing in stocking feet without a belt to keep my pants up, I thought about the way he had adjusted the conversation. Perhaps he was lonely, I thought. Who in this world isn’t at times?

Perhaps he was nervous. Who isn’t that either? What a better way to slay both than to convince someone else you know something for certain this madhouse that is anything but. I tried to find that boy. I could not.

Later, on the second story of the B concourse, having a cold beer, a sole seat separated me from a fellow patron at the bar. The television was on, and the Yankees were down three runs in the ninth, about to loose to Boston.

“Anyone fucking sitting here?” came a familiar voice. I looked and saw the face of a bearded kid, not very old himself.

“Suppose he made it?” I asked.

“Who?”

“That boy you helped.”

“Oh my God, it’s fucking you. Dude.”

Over the next few minutes the Yanks would load the bases, only to finally succumb to the inevitable. Profanity flowed embarrassingly freely, as the kid I would find to be from Jersey spoke to anyone that would listen. During it all, a twelve year old was boarding his first flight.

God works in mysterious ways.

I said little, but in the end I extended my hand, “What’s your name?”

“Name’s Mike.”

“Good luck, Mike.”

“Thanks, man. You too, you know? We fucking need it. It’s a madhouse out there.”