Category Archives: Politics

The 2nd Annual Raw Milk Symposium

April 13, 2010

I got up before dawn on Friday, grabbed my bags and my husband drove me to the airport where I boarded the first of three planes, stopping first in Denver, then Chicago, and finally after hurtling through the air at 450+ mph over what looked like a beautiful patchwork quilt in a plane that felt as rickety and made as much noise as I imagine a tin can would at that speed, I landed in Madison WI at 3:55 PM. As I walked out the door the air smelled like grassy farmland and I could see the horizon stretching out for miles – not the usual for a girl who has spent the last 20 years of her life at the foot of the mountains in Utah.

Rosanne Lindsay from the Wisconsin Alliance for Raw Milk (ARM) picked me up and took me to the Hilton where the symposium would be held the next day, and I got to spend some time with some of the folks there for the symposium, caught some really good Italian with Augie Augenstein, the founder of the ARMi, and then Rosanne picked me up from there and I stayed at her home that night.

The next morning, Rosanne made sure I got plenty of raw milk to drink with breakfast and filled our thermoses for the day and then we headed out to the symposium, where we were able to meet Cathy Raymond from the fund, Gene’ Walls and her absolutely DARLING little boy, Michael Schmidt, David Gumpart, Mark McAfee, Scott Trautman, Sally and John Fallon, Max Kane, fund attorney Elizabeth Gamsky, Kathryne Pirtle, Kimberly Hartke, Jackie Stowers from Manna Storehouse, Andrew & Rebekah Sell, Annette Kohn-lau, Micah Taair, and many other great people (I am terrible with names!)

Some of my favorite bits from the symposium:

(Paraphrasing) This isn’t about milk, we are at war! Food can turn you into a perfect slave . . . We have a new form of dictatorship – a dictatorship of our own consent . . . To be silent is to consent . . . and creates a mockery of those who died to establish freedom.  . . we are for the government an unlimited natural resource if we are sick, because when we are sick, they can milk us to death. ~ Michael Schmidt

Real milk and Cod Liver Oil would solve 80% of our health problems. . . . (paraphrasing) This isn’t about milk, it is about freedom and it is about our children. It shows God’s sense of humor in that it’s all coalescing around a glass of milk ~ Sally Fallon

After the panel discussion, there was a wine and cheese tasting bar. I really loved the cheeses – there was a really wonderful gouda, some cheddar and colby, blue cheese, a fantastic chevre, (which I am going to try making myself) and some really yummy herbed cheese with parsley – none of it was labeled so I had to try to figure out what each one was, and since I’m not a cheese maker (maybe when I grow up :) ) so I could possibly be wrong on some of them. One thing is for sure they were all really good!

At the end we wrapped up with a sneak preview to Kristin Canty’s upcoming film documentary Farmageddon. It is a very touching and personal glimpse into farm raids and the trials that many of our small family farms have been experiencing as the FDA is amping up their enforcement of gray areas in the current food safety laws – I strongly encourage everyone to go see it once it comes out!

Sunday morning I was up at 4:30 am, and off to the Madison airport to catch a 6:30 am flight back in to Salt Lake City. Thank you to everyone who made the trip possible for me, so that I could go and represent our group and make connections that will allow me to continue to be an advocate for raw milk!

Also posted in Whole Food – 7 Comments

Snow

December 12, 2009

Snow:

I hate it. I loath it. I can’t wait for it to just go AWAY!

Yet, supposedly this is the warmest winter known to earth in the last 100 years according to global warming advocates as reported by planetark.com, and according to the results of the Climate Conference in Copenhagen this year.

What is that all about??? I think we have more snow, and earlier, than I have seen here in the last 10 years. 2 years ago, I wondered if we would even have snow for Christmas, but this year we had snow in November. So, according to global warming experts, 2009 is a record high temperature in spite of the fact that Australia had a continent wide record low in April this year with a record breaking -13 degrees at Charlotte Pass and “Hobart had its coldest April night in 46 years, recording a low of 1.7 degrees, seven below average,” according to Brett Dutschke from Weatherzone. Last year, record lows were recorded in cities all across America, reported by Prison Planet with IceAgeNow showing that record lows were being matched and broken on an almost daily basis in states throughout the U.S. in 2008. This week in the Salt Lake Tribune, Jason Bergreen reported in his article Baby, it’s Cold Outside in Weather » Temperature hits a bone-chilling minus 31 at the Bryce Canyon Airport, that “Wednesday’s low temperature was a Dec. 9 record for Bryce Canyon and broke the old record of minus 22 set in 1951, according to the National Weather Service in Salt Lake City,” and that “northern Utah isn’t exactly going through a warm spell this week either. The low Wednesday at the Salt Lake City International Airport was 2 degrees. The high was only 22. Normally during this week of December the high is usually 39 and the low is 23.”

So, we can’t have both global warming and global cooling. I remember in grade school in the 70′s we were being terrified into recycling efforts to help stop an impending ice age. Now our kids are being frightened into “green” living by teachers who say the earth will eventually become a hot dead planet like mercury if we don’t stop killing it with our carbon and methane emissions.

Don’t breathe or pass gas! It’s killing the planet.

An ice age is coming!

The planet is going to burst into flames and explode!

Stop using fossil fuels, we are going to run out and they are toxic to the planet.

We should be developing nuclear power, which is known to have highly toxic and radioactive waste because it is more efficient and emits less carbon.

We can’t use wind power, it’s killing bats.

Wind power is all the rage! It’s super clean and the costs are prohibitive.

Man creates climate change.

Sun spots create climate change.

The science is solid, so don’t question it.

So, people, we can’t have our global warming and our cooling too. Where’s the real science?

I am growing increasingly skeptical about all of this, especially after the recent Climategate fiasco. I am not proposing that we trash the planet, but at the same time, it would be nice to see some real science without cooked data and hidden agendas. Are we all supposed to just rush to the altar and worship at the recycling bin without any real transparency?

Also posted in Random Rants, Science – 1 Comment