Opinion

My favorite holiday of the year is Dr. Seuss’s birthday, which was March 2. Yes, Theodor Seuss Geisel would have been 117 years old this week. He and his 60 plus books have inspired young readers since 1937 when To Think I Saw It All on Mulberry Street was published. There have been attempts to cancel Dr. Seuss by calling him racist, sexist, and every other “ist” imaginable, but his wit and wisdom have survived for generations of children to enjoy, and I hope that we can keep his legacy of freedom of expression alive despite the Cancel Culture mentality we are battling. I hope that he would have approved of my attempt to champion life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in this poem!

I am very grateful that we weren’t calving during the 200 hours of below zero weather we just experienced. I am getting way too old for calving in 34 below weather and 2 feet of crusted snow. My heart goes out to the tough ranchers who worked day and night calving and lambing through that weather, because there just wasn’t another option. I know the level of exhaustion that can be reached during calving season. The miracle of birth loses some of its varnish when the thermometer dips far below zero. The only thing you can do is get every baby in the barn to get warmed up and dried off as soon as it drops. There is no time to sleep, because if you do, some critter will die. You are literally in a fight for the lives of those babies and sometimes their mothers against Mother Nature, who can be quite cruel.