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MatterOfEnergy

Starting to think about columns for the fall campaign, does it show? G

Sour Grapes and Saddle Sores

George Hirst

A Matter of Energy July 31, 2008

The other day, Wyoming Chamber of Commerce put on its annual corn boil. I went up town to buy ear corn and pork chops. I had to walk about two blocks to get where the food stand was. There were people everywhere, some sitting and looking on, some cooking and selling food and drink, saw Denny Rewerts doing "garbage duty", and there were several kinds of entertainment. I looked around at all of that activity and was amazed at the amount of energy being expended. "Old folks" like me remember the days when we did some of those kinds of activities, but nowadays we have to appreciate the effort that provides the activities.

The political activity going on these days is amazing: the amount of time, energy and money that is being spent on the election of office holders. I especially watch the activity around the presidential campaigns because every day the two presumed candidates are in a different place meeting with other people, escorted by a bevy of media personnel and an assortment of persons who work with the candidate, writing speeches and arranging for a meeting with the assumed voting public.

It occurs to me that there are all sorts of energy in this little blue ball on which we live in the galaxy of ours that is in the Milky way Universe. NASA reports locating a "Baby Boom" galaxy in a very distant universe identified as the record holder for the brightest starburst galaxy. The brightness is due to the production of stars at the rate of 4,000 a year. The galaxy is 12.3 billion light years away, which our eldest son, Steve says is 6 million million miles from our universe. Astronomers say that huge amount of energy is seen in a time when our universe was 1.3 billion years old (our universe is now 13.7 billion years old). About now, I get lost in all that time and all those millions of miles along with trying to comprehend what the experts tell us is going on in that universe. This is number three of the mind blowing expenditures of energy that we know about.

In our back yard is a vegetable garden about 3 yards square. In part of that garden is a bean patch which consists of three rows of beans, each ten feet long. Since the first of the month, those three rows have produced meals for six families plus we have put up ten one quart packages, and the beans are still producing. The plants are three inches apart in the row which means180 plants.

Put your mind around how those 180 beans, grown in soil enriched with compost have produced all that energy that grows the vines, produces the beans and the energy provided to those who eat the food. Of course, being an old farmer, there is another energy production going on across the road from our house . There is a sixty acre field of corn that looks marvelous, it looks like hundred bushel per acre corn. Think of all that energy that it took to prepare the soil, to plant the crop, to harvest the corn and of the energy produced in the processing of the corn as animal food or fuel.

It seems to me that energy among voters is stronger than previous years, I am aware that people who intend to vote and have pretty well decided how they will vote are bored with the endless campaign. If spending the effort and money brings out the undecided voter or the non-voter then the expenditure will be worth while. This is what this "Sour Grapes" is about. Get out and vote.

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Created by KKris. Last Modification: Friday 01 of August, 2008 10:20:56 EDT by KKris.