The "Why" Mysteries of Life

Across the Fence #402

Albert Einstein said, “If at first an idea does not sound absurd, then there is no hope for it.”

I love that quote. It opens up all kinds of impossible possibilities. Last week I wrote about robotic milking. When I was born, the thought of robotic milking sounded absurd to most people and they thought there was no hope for it. Thanks to a few visionary thinkers who dared to dream the impossible and decided to give it a try, today it’s a reality.

Even though my columns deal mainly with the past, nostalgia, and how things used to be, I don’t live in the past. I work in the fast-paced, highly technical, telecommunications world. I also like to look to the future and wonder what life will be like 20, 50, 100, 500 years from now.

We live in one of the most exciting periods since the creation of the universe. The technological advances we’ve seen in the past 100 years are staggering and mind-boggling. For people who are afraid of facing changes in their thinking, beliefs, and way of life, this can be a very confusing and frightening time. For those of us who love exploring the mysteries of life, this is an exciting, mind-expanding time.

In the last few years we’ve learned that the world is much larger than the tiny Planet Earth we’re traveling through the universe on. A few years ago we thought our Milky Way was the only galaxy. Now billions of galaxies have been discovered in our rapidly expanding universe. The mathematical possibility of other intelligent life in the universe, that could be a million years more advanced than we are, has much better odds than of my winning the lottery.

I realize most of the subjects that fascinate me have a common thread… mystery and a search for the unknown. If you’re a regular reader of Across the Fence, you know I love to ask questions and don’t accept everything someone says as gospel. I want to know how this universe began and where it’s all headed. I want to know what was there before the Big Bang when the universe was created? With the recent discovery of the Higgs Boson, those questions are closer to having possible answers. 

The subjects I like to read about and study reflect my thinking. The study of history and archeology, where we came from, and what we’ve done along the way, are of great interest to me. Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of the Species” first caught my attention when I was a teenager. I’ve studied mythology through the writings and lectures of Joseph Campbell and realized how much mythology has influenced modern day beliefs. When it comes to mathematics, the bus left without me. Even though it’s hard to understand, I love the study of theoretical physics through the writings of Michio Kaku, Stephen Hawking, and Brian Green. Astronomy and the study of the universe have always fascinated me. I’ve followed the writings of Carl Sagan who said, “Science is not only compatible with spirituality, it is a profound source of spirituality.”

All this brings me to the present, as I once again search for answers to several events that have occurred the past couple of weeks. Sometimes the biggest questions with the least answers boil down to only three letters…W-H-Y. 

Why does a young girl with her whole life ahead of her die in a tragic auto accident? Why did 12 innocent people attending a movie have to die? Why did a brilliant young man turn into a mass murderer? Why did a father murder his three children? Why did over 100 innocent people die in car bombings in Iraq one day this week? Why is there suffering? Why are some people born with handicaps? Why is there war? Why was my life spared in a war, while many of my friends were not? Why is the human race so in love with killing? Why does it always rain when you wash your car? Not all the questions need to be serious ones. But most are tough questions. Simple, easy answers are hard to find when you’re dealing with the “WHY” questions. I’m sure every one of you have your own Why questions.

All I can say to you is don’t be afraid to ask the Why questions and try to find answers that help you deal with them. I think an inquiring mind, questioning, and seeking answers, is a much more honest approach, than merely accepting what other people say you should think.

As I said earlier, this is an exciting time to be alive. There’s so much to learn, so much to do, so many things to see and experience. I find it hard to understand people who say they are bored and there’s nothing to do. I won’t tell anyone else how they should live their life or what they should think, and I don’t want someone telling me what I should do or think.

I don’t want to waste a day of this life. There’s so much to do and so little time. We’ve all seen how quickly it can be snatched away from us. Don’t be afraid to ask the Why questions and keep looking for your own answers to the mysteries of life. 

*

Milking Cows - The Robotic Way

Across the Fence #401

A farmer is sitting by a cow, milking by hand. The year is 1944, the year I was born. He’s milking the same way his father and grandfather did before him. Nothing much had changed in milking cows over the years. Mechanical milking machines had been invented, but most farmers were still milking by hand. Even S.M. Babcock, (of Babcock test fame) wrote in an 1892 issue of The National Dairyman that “milking machines would result in poorer quality of milk and lower the standards of dairy animals.” Other dairy experts warned against resorting to machine milking. They were afraid that mechanical milking would destroy the udders.

If someone had told my father in 1944 that his new son would see the day when robots milked the cows, he’d have accused them of hitting the bottle or losing their marbles. “Robots milking cows! Never happen!”

A person talking about robotic milking would definitely have been a dreamer and visionary. It’s no longer a dream or science fiction. Last week I watched as cows were milked with no one there to handle the milking machine. It’s a reality and far removed from the days when I helped milk.

By the time I was old enough to sit under a cow and help with the milking, my father had purchased a milking machine. The only time I had to milk by hand was when the power went out. Milking machines won’t work without electricity. Farmers didn’t worry about power outages when they milked by hand. Things were pretty simple then.

The main things a farmer needed to milk cows when I was born were a milk pail and flexible knees. Before each cow was milked, a disinfectant solution, mixed with lukewarm water, was used to clean the cow’s udder and teats. We used a rag dipped in the solution to wipe the teats.

When the disinfecting was done, you squatted beside the cow and applied each teat cup by hand. Not all cows stood quietly chewing their cud as you milked them. Some cows liked to kick. Sometimes they kicked the milk bucket, and the milker, into the gutter behind the cows.

When the bucket was full, it was carried to where the milk cans were sitting and the milk was poured into a stainless steel strainer. It filtered out any debris and flies that may have ended up in the pail while you were milking.

A farmer could milk two cows at one time if he had two milking machines. You were constantly moving, disinfecting a cow’s udder and teats, attaching the teat cups from the milking machine, disinfecting another cow, attaching the milker to her, checking the first cow to see how she was milking out, removing the milker, and dumping the milk into the strainer on a can. Then you headed for another cow and did it all over again. That routine went on morning and night, seven days a week, 365 days a year. There were no days off. There were no sick days, or “I don’t feel like working today” days. The cows needed to be milked twice a day. Being a dairy farmer was more than a full-time job.

Enter robotic milking and the farmer is no longer tied to the milking process morning and night, 365 days a year. I saw the system in action at the Dennis and Maureen Amundson farm on Highway 27 north of Westby. It was a real eye-opener for me and I can’t even imagine what my father would have thought of robotic milking. It really frees up a farmer’s time so they aren’t chained to the cows morning and night for milking. The cows are housed in free-stall barns and trained to enter the milking area whenever the urge strikes them. They enter a narrow chute with a metal gate that opens automatically. Once they enter the milking station, an overhead scanner detects a collar or ear tag worn by each cow. It then dispenses some feed for that cow. As she eats, a robotic arm cleans the teats with rotary brushes and they are automatically rinsed and treated with a disinfectant. An optical scanner then guides the teat cups into place. Teat coordinates for the cows have been recorded in the computer. When milk flow is no longer detected, the teat cups drop off automatically. When all four quarters are done, the front gate opens and she walks out.

I watched other cows come into the milking station expecting to be fed, but when the scanner detected they had already been milked earlier, the front gate opened and they had to exit. Only when the scanner detects that a cow is ready to be milked, does the robotic milking process go into action. The milk goes from the robotic milker, through a pipeline, into a large milk holding tank.

Even the hay that is fed to the cows in the free-stall barn is automated. Every hour a rotating machine goes down the aisle and pushes the hay closer so the cows can reach it.

Times have certainly changed. Now a farmer has more free time to go places and attend events without having to rush home and milk. Dairy farming is an exciting, high-tech occupation to be involved in. Milking cows has really changed in the last 68 years!

*

Thoughts From An Overheated Brain

Across the Fence #400

I think this long, dry stretch of heat and humidity has not only fried our lawn and surrounding crops, but has fried my brain too. Temperatures in the 90’s and even into the 100’s, day after day, is not what we’ve come to expect here in the Frozen Tundra.

Thank goodness for all the dandelions and white clover in our lawn or it would be as brown as everyone else’s lawn. It’s still quite green from all the dandelion leaves, and the clover adds a nice touch of white. I can really tell how many dandelions occupy our lawn now that the grass has turned a wonderful shade of brown. The only growing things that don’t seem to be affected by the heat and lack of moisture are the weeds. They continue to flourish. It makes me think we’re going about this lawn care stuff all wrong. We need to start growing weeds. It would really simplify our lives, and think of the money and time we’d save by not fertilizing, watering, and mowing. That goes for the gardens too. The weeds seem to rule. You’ve got to admit, many of those weeds are a lot more colorful than the grass we try to nurture and care for. I told you this heat had affected my thinking.

On the bright side, we haven’t had to mow the lawn for a long time, so we’re saving gas money. But we’ve been running the air-conditioner and I can just feel that saved gas money being sucked out of the house through that air-conditioner. I’m gonna’ hate to see our next electric bill. Does anyone else think air-conditioning makes the heat seem all that much worse? I sure notice it. I tend to sweat a lot but soon get acclimated to the heat–just like those days back in the haymow on a hot, humid day. I think we survived those days on cold water pumped direct from windmill and ice-cold Kool Aide, enjoyed while sitting at the picnic table in the shade of the maple tree. I haven’t had a glass of strawberry or grape Kool Aide, poured from a big, glass pitcher, for a long time.

But I digress. I was talking about air-conditioning. When I walk into some businesses and offices, its like being hit with a blast of cold air. It practically takes your breath away. I’ve seen people go out to their cars and bring in a sweater or jacket to put on. It feels like the middle of winter and the business forgot to pay their heating bill, and had their electricity shut off. Then when I walk out of the place, the hot air hits me, my glasses immediately fog over, and I stumble around the parking lot trying to find my car. I have to wait until my glasses clear up before I can drive out of the lot. I think we go to extremes with air-conditioning and it can’t be healthy. It’s also imprisoned many people in their houses in the summertime because they don’t like to go out in the heat and humidity. I told you this heat was playing with my mind.

I got thinking about the loss of small town post offices too. I’ll blame the heat for this thought too. Remember when a letter arrived with a postmark from the town it was mailed in? As a collector of postal history, I miss those old postmarks. Now the few personal letters that are mailed go to a distribution center for sorting, postmarking, and distribution. In our case it’s La Crosse. A letter may get mailed in Westby, but it gets a La Crosse postmark. The reason I got to thinking about post offices, besides the excessive heat going to my brain, is that I received another unsigned letter this week, critical of something I wrote. It didn’t have a return address either, and of course had a La Crosse postmark. So it could have come from any community in Wisconsin where people read my column. At least the writer had a P.S. that said they liked my writing and were glad I wrote for the paper. This letter also brought up another question in my mind. Why is it that people who don’t like something a writer says will voice that opinion in a letter to the editor or a letter to the writer, but people seldom write if they like something. I do get a lot of verbal comments and I appreciate all of them.

As long as we’re talking about heat and lack of rain, I hope everyone is putting water out for the birds. They need water too. Most of their water holes and places to find water have dried up. Here on the prairie, it’s really hard to find any running or standing water. That brought up another thought in my heat-parched brain. Why did my ancestors settle here on the prairie where there is no water nearby? They couldn’t just drill a hole and strike water. They had to go by horse and wagon to nearby springs and creeks and fill buckets and jars with water. That can be several miles in our case. Just wondering how and why they did these things.

It’s funny what strange thoughts you can have when your brain is overheated and you’d give anything for a cold drink of water from the windmill. Stay cool, everyone!


*

We Lived Green and Didn't Know It

Across the Fence #399

My story about life before the green thing seems to have struck a memory nerve with many readers. It got me thinking about many other things that could have been included. It looks like I need to take another journey down the road before we had the green thing.

How many of you now pack stuff away in large plastic containers and store them in the basement or a closet? Back before the green thing, we stored, and still store, things in empty apple boxes and boxes that held reams of paper. We got many of the apple boxes from Linda’s father. He worked in the food service area at UW-Platteville and retrieved many empty apple boxes that they threw away. They were perfect for storage. We were all able to recycle those boxes and we still make use of them. They were also free as opposed to buying plastic containers. I also stored stuff in the empty boxes that paper came in that I used in my advertising business. I still use them. Saving empty cardboard boxes to store things in, has always been a way of life for most rural people.

When our socks got holes in them, we didn’t throw them in the trash and buy new ones. Ma or Grandma Inga would “darn” the socks–patch the hole using a needle and thread. This was done by hand. It didn’t need to be the same color thread as the sock you were repairing. Nobody was going to see the sock except us. I have no idea why it was called darning socks. Maybe someone once said, “Darn it, I have to patch those darn socks again.” I know someone out there must have the answer for me. Does anyone still take the time to darn socks or have we become a throw-away society these days?

It’s too bad we didn’t know about the go green thing and recycling back then.

Lets talk about feed sacks. Yes, those sacks that came filled with calf feed. When I was young, they came in colorful, patterned sacks. When they were empty, Grandma Inga cut the sacks apart and sewed shirts for us kids. She also made colorful dresses­–those weren’t for us boys. I wonder if kids today would wear a feed sack shirt or dress? Maybe if we stitched a designer tag on it, we could make a fortune.

I guess wearing those shirts was doing our part for the green thing even if we didn’t realize it at the time.

When my great grandfather, Hans O. Sherpe, was married, his wedding suit was made from burlap feed bags. The Sorenson family who owned the farm where we now live, made his suit for him by cutting apart burlap bags, dying them black, and sewing the pieces together into a suit. I imagine my great grandfather never felt prouder than when he wore that handsome suit. Jacob Sorenson, the son of that family, later sold their farm to my father. That family story makes a nice connection to recycled feed sacks. Looks like they were living the go green thing back then.

My parents didn’t throw coffee grounds or ashes from the stove away. They were dumped in a pile that was spread on the garden in the spring. It made great fertilizer. Now we buy expensive fertilizer that comes in sacks that we throw away. And just think, we didn’t know about the green thing in those days.

We also saved the empty shells from eggs and crushed them up. They were then fed back to the chickens as a source of calcium to form good, strong shells on their eggs that would stand up to the stress of laying and handling without breaking. It sure beat throwing the shells down a garbage disposal as people do these days.

I looked up on the Internet, ways to go green and save money. One way was to take shorter showers to reduce water use and save energy. I guess we were way ahead of our time. We didn’t have indoor plumbing until I was a sophomore in high school. Needless to say we didn’t take showers. We took a bath about once a week in a tub. We got to share the water until it got too dirty to get clean in. At least we were saving the planet from running out of water by only taking one bath a week. Talk about conserving water and energy. We definitely did our part.

They say that air-conditioning can be the largest expense on your electric bill. We didn’t have to worry about that because most people we knew when I was growing up didn’t have an air-conditioner. I think it seems hotter these days because we’re always going from cool air-conditioned buildings and cars to the hot outside air. It makes the heat seem much worse. I think it also leads to summer colds. We used to open up all the windows and hope a breeze would take some of the heat out of the house. It was kind of nice drifting off to sleep with the sound of the wind in the trees, the windmill pumping, and the crickets serenading us.

We may not have been aware of the green thing, but we were living it.

*

The First Day of the Rest of My Life

Across the Fence #398

The 4th of July, the birth of our country, is a special holiday for me. 45 years ago, was the first day of the rest of my life. More about that later.

When I was young, the 4th was an exciting time. We were able to buy firecrackers and cherry bombs and it wasn’t against the law. Now you could get in trouble for exploding those things. We keep enacting new laws to protect us from our own stupidity. Granted we did some stupid things too. We thought blowing up fresh cow pies was fun. We were careful and the worst thing that ever happened to us, was getting splattered by an exploding cow pie if we didn’t run fast enough.

I would hate to think that we were the only kids who blew up cow pies. Admit it, you blew up a few in your day too. I hope everyone knows what a cow pie is. I realize society has a lot less contact with those meadow muffins than back when I was young. To put it into a scientific explanation fit for a family newspaper, a cow pie, also known as a meadow muffin, is the undigested residue of plant matter that passes through the digestive system and becomes the waste product of bovine animal species, in our case, cows.

Now back to blowing up cow pies. We would stick a firecracker in the center of a crusted cow pie with a soft center. Then one of us brave, or stupid, souls would light the fuse and run. The object was to get far enough away so you didn’t get splattered with manure when it blew. After a while, that seemed too tame, so we would light the fuse and count to three before starting to run. Then we tried counting up to four, five, or six before running. Unless you counted really fast, you got splattered. That didn’t go over very good with Ma, who had to wash our soiled clothes. After we were able to acquire cherry bombs, it made life more interesting. Those little buggers could really mangle a cow pie.

I was just thinking, maybe if I had told the army I used to blow up cow pies, they’d have made me a demolition specialist instead of a medic. On second thought, they may have questioned my sanity and decided anyone dumb enough to do that wasn’t needed by the army. Darn, why didn’t I think of that sooner?

  

The 4th of July and all the fireworks aren’t the same for me any more. It will always be linked to Vietnam in my mind. That was the day I arrived home from the war. I should have written a story, “Reborn On the 4th of July,” but that title had already been taken. July 4, 1967 was truly the first day of the rest of my life.

When we landed in Minneapolis, I wondered if anyone would be there. As I entered the airport, I saw my father, sister Janet, brother Arden, and a family friend, Lincoln Stafslien. My father didn’t like driving in cities and had recruited Lincoln to drive. I’ll always be grateful to him for dropping his family holiday plans and being there!! Meanwhile, Ma was waiting back at the farm, along with my fiancé Linda, and her folks, who had driven up from Platteville. They sat on the lawn watching the fireworks in Westby, two miles away. Every time a car came down the highway they wondered if it was us.

The ride to Westby is a blur in my mind. I wasn’t functioning on all cylinders at the time. A week earlier I’d been sitting out in the boonies on an ambush patrol waiting to kill people!

As we drove past towns celebrating the 4th on our way to Westby, I didn’t like the fireworks we saw exploding in the evening sky. I still don’t like fireworks. We finally arrived at the farm around 11:00 that evening. The first to greet me was our old dog, Duke. As soon as he heard my voice he came running and jumped up on me.

When I walked into the kitchen, it seemed so bright. I’d just spent a year living with little or no lights at night. As we sat around the kitchen table talking, nothing had seemed to change while I was gone, and yet… everything had changed for me. I’d lost 40 pounds, my innocence, my idealism, and even a part of my soul. The pounds were easy to get back. The other parts will never be the same, but I keep looking for them. The old Howard who had left a year earlier was gone, and July 4, 1967 became the first day of the rest of my life!

Today’s another day and if I could find some firecrackers or cherry bombs lying around, I might be tempted to find a nice cow pie and blow that muffin up. Trouble is, I can’t run very good these days. I think I’d come home smelling like I rolled in a manure pile and Linda wouldn’t appreciate that. Some adventures are best left to the young and fast of feet. This old guy will sit back and be satisfied with savoring the memories, innocence, and excitement of the 4th of July that I enjoyed as a kid.

*