To all you city slick'n sluckers!

So, did you know that baby chicks are delivered through the United States Postal Service!

My uncle Ron and I have, like the vanguard-ians that we are, ordered and received our baby chicks (25 a piece this year), carrying on a dying tradition that my Grandpa Bailey lived for.
At quarter to six this past Tuesday morning the local mail man called my Uncle saying that he had a truck full of peepers. These 'lil fellers had been born two days before, shoved in a box and mailed to Fort Benton Montana! And they all survived...amazing, peeping their tunes to the letters and packages.

I admit that i am a bit more of an idealist than a realist... shouting from the hill tops that I think all should turn back to the small farm - then I myself feel confined to the little lives that my idealism has made me responsible to.

Instead of letting a huge corporation sling slices of chicken from cage to MacDonald drive-thru for me to buy and eat with such minimal time that my engine doesn't even need to be shut off...I must feed the dang little things everyday, slowly and meticulously caring for them. Water too!

I must be there for them every single day!

Within that I feel there are so many deeply GOOD things that cannot be gained by shooting through the fast food drive through - this of course goes way beyond health to the roots of our humanity
(I hope someone is laughing at how lofty I can even make raising a chicken - but laugh on! And be a shallow-fast-food-eating-lifeless-ninny!).

My wing flapping idealism knows that being linked to the disciplines that come with life, the constraints that come with the mailed box of chick, are part of that which our society is loosing and is being injured in the process.

So, in my idealism, I will proudly proclaim (I think my uncle Ron would agree) that our world would be a better place if more people participated in the process of life, the process of raising animals - and know that that is where their food comes from.
Essentially if more people were connected to their own food, kicking the feet out from under their idealism with the necessary scoop of the chicken poop, I think a lot of our world problems would simply go belly-up.

This especially for those damn theologians out there!

(PS: Theologian Eric Meyer and I are having back room theological email debates...soon to be posted - i'm sure you are all sweating with suspense!)

So, spring has sprung again!
After my last spring sprunging email it snowed a foot! Good 'ol montana.

But I took the long way from Great Falls to Fort Benton this evening as the sun was setting - this path goes through the town of Highwood skirting the Highwood Mountians, and I'll say again that spring is kick'n in. It is one of my favorite drives - things are greening up and the mountians themselves are still covered in snow - lots of wild life and absolutely no cars - not one in 60 miles.