A drive down Stockyards Expressway is like a field trip for your nose.
American Walnut smells like a forest on an autumn day. The chemical manufacturers generate a sweet, sticky odor. The St. Joseph Stockyards smell like farm-fresh manure. Triumph Foods gives a whiff of singed hair on rendering days; other times it’s more like a [...]
Archive for April, 2009
Margin Call: Industry Stinks
Posted in Margin Call, tagged Ag Processing, National Beef, Prime Tanning, stockyards, swine flu, Triumph Foods on April 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Margin Call: Power up the electronic age
Posted in Margin Call, tagged Ameren, electricity, wind farm on April 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The bronze age required bronze; the iron utilized iron.
Living in the electronic age takes a lot of electricity.
Yet there seems to be an urge to live in denial of this. Across Missouri, an attitude persists that opposes the construction of new power plants.
Why the school bond failed
Posted in Margin Call, tagged Altec, American Family Insurance, BlueScope, Gray Manufacturing, Ivy Steel and Wire, Johnson Controls, Prime Tanning, Smurfit Stone, Snorkel, St. Joseph School District on April 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Follow the lively online discussion here
Bravely, I will bear the burden of being proven right.
One week ago this column predicted the St. Joseph School District proposals would be defeated. I thought the levy renewal, which required only a simple majority, stood a decent shot at passage. But alas, 170 people spoke very loudly.
The reasons [...]
A flutter of bluebirds
Posted in Ministry, tagged John 15:11 on April 6, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
It snowed today. Again.
When winter stretches into April, the cold seeps deep into your bones and spring seems an unlikely promise.
These are the days I long for the sight of bluebirds.
It was a February few years ago that I saw them. It had been a difficult fall. Several important relationships had been cut out of [...]
Margin Call: Time for tea and taxes
Posted in Margin Call on April 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
With April 15, as well as the April 7 election, breathing down our necks, taxes have been in my thoughts a lot lately.
Law-abiding citizens have fear struck in their hearts at the thought of dodging taxes and having G-men knock on their door in the dead of night, demanding payment.
That makes it hard to understand [...]
