Farms and Ranches May Be Forced to Sell—to Pay Death Taxes Two recent news reports contained troubling year-end news for farm and ranch families. Farmland values are booming. Minnesota farmland prices are nearly 30 percent higher than a year ago, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. It’s a similar catastrophe in Iowa where, an Iowa State University survey … [Read more...]
The Lives of Captive Wolves
You Can Take the Wolf Out of the Wild, But You Can’t... BY CEIRIDWEN TERRILL When we started the 2 o'clock tour at the Colorado Wolf & Wildlife Center in the mountains above Colorado Springs, the wolves were napping, just as wild wolves do in the middle of the day. A woman in jeans and cowboy boots served as guide for our group—eight random travelers, most of whom … [Read more...]
Black Panther Sightings
At What Point is Seeing Believing? While we’re on the subject of predators and big cats (see Deadly Powers, this issue), let’s explore the prevalence of black panther sightings around the country that have come to light, in part, because of the ease of communications these days, and through which ordinary people have described seeing, and even encounters with, large black … [Read more...]
Russia to Montana
The Karl Hepperle Story—Third in Our As I Remember Series From As I Remember, by Gladys Kauffman. See as-i-remember.com BY GLADYS KAUFFMAN You will starve to death over there! wailed his mother when Karl Hepperle, thousands of miles from Plevna, Montana, the site that was to be his homestead, announced sixty years ago [in 1968] that he was going to America. She was much … [Read more...]
Into the Cosmic Weeds
A Brief Retrospective on the Last Great Year BY DAVID S. LEWIS As our readers know, we often deal with history, what went down in the past, so that we might understand the foundation upon which we now stand. But what about prehistory—that’s history too, just not recorded, at least not in the conventional sense? A lot happened in prehistory (obviously) and we contend here … [Read more...]
Paul Trout’s Deadly Powers
Animal Predators Stalking Prehistory and the Human Mind BY DAVID S. LEWIS Imagine a world, if you dare, where huge vicious predators of differing and fearsome varieties constantly prowled the night (and day) in search of prey, in search of food, and you were on their menu of delectable appetizers. Quite a stressful scenario. Consider, to put this in a modern context, … [Read more...]