Guest Blog

This article was #1 of the Top 25 most well-read articles on www.progressivedairy.com in 2012. to jump to the article. It was published in the November 21, 2011 issue. Click here for the full list of the Top 25.

When we put Leontien VandeLaar on the cover of our 2011 “Women in dairy” issue, we knew she had a powerful story – but we were blown away by just how many connected with the Indiana dairywoman.

Post-Civil War, the nation’s industry rapidly grew and expanded throughout the continent. Telegraph lines linked every corner of the country, providing nearly instantaneous spread of news.

Railroads brought distant places within a few days’ train ride. Railroads required steel, coal and money. In the center of that expansion, geographically and financially, was Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh’s most notable citizens included the contemporaries William Thaw (Pennsylvania Railroad), Andrew Carnegie (U.S. Steel), Andrew Mellon (banking) and Henry Frick (all three).

The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration held a hearing on Oct. 4 that focused on the agricultural labor crisis and the existential threat American agriculture faces by efforts in the House to pass mandatory E-Verify laws without addressing the immigration status of the current agricultural labor force.

Mandatory E-Verify legislation, H.R. 2885, was passed out of the House Judiciary Committee on Sept. 21. Pending E-Verify legislation has also been introduced in the Senate (S. 1196).

In March of 2011, at 0200 hours (2 a.m.), I stood at a forward operating base near Mosul, Iraq, with about two dozen soldiers. We lined up, adjusted our Kevlar vests and helmets, our fragmentary eye protection and noise headsets, and in the flurry of dust, the womp-womp of rotors and the darkness of night, we boarded a CH-47 Chinook helicopter.

Americans talk skinny but eat fat.

No matter that First Lady Michelle Obama has been on a crusade for a year and a half to slim down the country. Never mind that some restaurants have started listing calories on their menus. Forget even that we keep saying we want to eat healthy. When Americans eat out, we order burgers and fries anyway.

"If I wanted something healthy, I would not even stop in at McDonald's," says Jonathan Ryfiak, 24, a New York trapeze instructor who watches his diet at home but orders comfort foods like chicken nuggets and fries when he hits a fast-food joint.

In the nearly 20 years of writing this column, I often have written about science and art: what they are to me and how we might describe their role in our public space.

For instance, I have written that science is a methodological approach of testing ideas or premises. We start with little knowledge and use inductive reasoning and empirical evidence to arrive at understanding.