Where I learned critical thinking, argument, and lecturesome commentary.

When I was growing up on the farm, I noticed my dad had a lot to say, while he worked. And work hard, he did. He had bought and old farm with run-down buildings and in the process of about 25 plus years, he had slowly replaced every rotting, falling down structure on the place. Times were always hard and money was short. We lived hand to mouth. Our well-being depended on our work. And my dad was always working on something, whether it was spring planting, fall harvesting, fixing his own farm machinery, building the barn or the shop or welding his own scaffolding so that he could build the silo. He was always working and additionally he was either giving a lecture or whistling a tune. He would talk about foreign policy. He would give critical commentaries on what he had been reading recently. He would also talk about people and give interesting sermons. Sometimes my brothers and sisters would listen in on some of the more fierce lectures. Usually, we already knew or had heard the advice he was dolling out freely to the empty field or to the docile cows. Yet if we didn’t, we soon found out, for my father didn’t seem to care if we heard him or not. Sometimes I feel like my father must have. So much to say and nobody who will hear it—except a child or two pressing an ear to a thin wall...and docile cows. Sometimes I wonder if this is the place that blogging fills in my life. So you my gentle reader...Are you my docile cow? Or my empty field? Or do your knees knock behind a thin wall as I give my fearsome lectures.