Mattingly

Book Reviews

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Topic of Capricorn
By John C. Mattingly
Illustrations by Judith Penrose Mattingly
Published in 2011 by Mirage Publishing
ISBN 978-0-9710430-4-6

Reviewed by Ed Quillen

There’s an old saying that “Goats can live on nothing and a man can live on goats.” Given that observation and the dismal income level of certain portions of Central Colorado, it’s kind of surprising that we don’t see more goats around these parts.

The critters do have remarkable appetites. A couple of years ago, the Jumpin’ Good Goat Dairy in Buena Vista entered a float in Salida’s boat-race parade. It was a long flat-bed trailer with a corral full of goats. The corral was decorated with plastic flowers. The goats kept jumping to eat the polyethylene blooms.

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Free Love

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by John Mattingly

I broke into adolescence in the middle 1960s, a time that became reknowned for free love. The concept of love being “free” capitulated to certain fiscal rigors by the 1980s, but there was a time when (call Ripley) a typical conversation between a young man and young woman went something like this …

“Hey, what’s happenin?”

“I’m like, freaking out over this tree. I mean, check out the way the branches go out, one after the other.”

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A Farmer Far Afield – Crazy Christmas Past

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By John Mattingly

We had a crazy Uncle Bob in our family. He wasn’t clinically crazy, he was just odd. My mom said he turned “funny” when he was born and never straightened out. He visited us at Christmas for many years when I was a kid. I actually thought Bob was pretty cool. He could rile my parents in ways I couldn’t.

One time Bob declared at the dinner table that he was coming out as an atheist. My mom, who could swordplay with the best of them in conversation, quickly informed those of us at the table that Bob wasn’t really an atheist, he just didn’t like to go to church.

To which Bob said something like, “Whaddaya you mean, I love churches,” and my mom shot back, stabbing him with her eyes, “Yeah, from the outside.”

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Farm as Solar Collector: Part 2

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By John Mattingly

Last month, I waved goodbye to my last commentary column by saying:

But why should farmers get higher prices for their crops? Isn’t food already expensive enough? That good loaf of bread that used to cost a buck is now crowding six. What if I told you that loaf should really cost you a twenty?

Next month, I’ll discuss why higher commodity (and thus food) prices are not only inevitable, but necessary.

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A Farmer Far Afield – The Elephant in the Room , Part 1

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by John Mattingly

Four blind men describe an elephant: one at the trunk, one at a leg, another at a side, and the fourth holding the tail, resulting in radically different accounts of the pachyderm’s anatomy. So it is with those of us offering descriptions of The Economy. In this four part series on Economic Growth, Debt, Accounting, and the Stock Market, I confess to being one of the four blind men.

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A Farmer Far Afield – John Mattingly

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The Power of Negative Thinking

Martha Q’s piece in the last issue, in which she touched on the negative consequences of too much positive thinking, reminded me of a few things. Her writing often has this effect on me.

The approach of a new year has brought a lot of curious optimism into our circles, as friends and family are making resolutions and offering theories for future success. Some of these include: positive visualization, putting out what you want back (a variation on “what goes around, comes around”), The Secret (aka: the power of abnormal obsession with focusing on your goals), reach for the sky, climb every mountain, be all you can be. In addition to these are a whole tribe of relentlessly cheery notions.

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