"Technology making outlook tough for ranchers" by Dan Frosch | New York Times, January 26, 2014
DENVER — For more than a century now, the National Western Stock Show has been a proud totem of the old frontier — a place where rodeos, ranching, and cowboys still live and breathe, even as Denver’s cow town roots have long since faded.
These days, as lofts and breweries spring up in the once blighted industrial neighborhoods near the old stockyards, the show has also become a colorful illustration of just how strikingly life on the range has changed. And there is perhaps no greater example of this shift than cattle ranching.
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Newley Hutchison, a sixth-generation rancher from Seiling, Okla., whose ancestors were original homesteaders, talked of the mounting pressure ranchers feel to keep up with all the advancements, like the newest genetic markers being used for herds and the latest computerized equipment to maximize the efficiency of land.
Still, Hutchison said, some aspects of ranch work will never change.
“A cow still eats grass, and she always will,” Hutchison, 40, said with a chuckle. “You still have to have devout faith in the creator because there are a lot of variables you have no control over.”
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To be sure, beef cattle prices have risen sharply of late, driven in part by historically low inventories.
The other part is that Fed printing pre$$ propping up Wall $treet.
But the increasing costs of feeding and caring for cattle have prompted more ranchers to get out of the business, said Mike Miller, a senior vice president for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, which has its headquarters in Centennial, Colo., not far from the stockyards.
See: Boston Globe Slaughterhouse
Fifty years ago, Miller said, a family of four could make a decent living off 250 cows. These days, it would take more than twice as many for the family to earn the same amount of money, he said.
“Generationally, things change,” Miller said. “We’ve got kids that grow up on farms and ranches. They watch their mom and dad work extremely hard, and in some cases not make very much money. And they decide that’s not the life for them.”
Kyle Schnell, one of the few men in the crowd without a cowboy hat, watched the competition with his wife and two children. Schnell, 35, grew up on his family’s cattle ranch in western Nebraska. But at 17, he decided he wanted to do something different.
“Honestly, it was too much work,” he said with a grin. “I’m in the technology field. It’s a little easier than waking up at 4 in the morning and staying out until it’s dark.”
He must be working for the government.
Every year, though, Schnell and his family travel to the stock show from their home in Windsor, Colo., to support Schnell’s younger brother and father, who still run the ranch and show their cattle here.
“It’s still something I want to keep around my kids, for sure,” Schnell said.
Yes, the Promised Land.
Just another broken promise, huh Globe?
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This guy has done his last roundup:
"Philip Seymour Hoffman, 46; Oscar-winner took edgy roles" Globe wire services, February 03, 2014
NEW YORK — Philip Seymour Hoffman, perhaps the most ambitious and widely admired American actor of his generation, who gave three-dimensional nuance to a wide range of sidekicks, villains, and leading men on screen and embraced some of the theater’s most burdensome roles on Broadway, died Sunday at an apartment in Greenwich Village. He was 46.
The death, apparently from a drug overdose, was confirmed by the police. Mr. Hoffman was found by a friend, David Bar Katz, who became concerned after being unable to reach him, according to The New York Times.
I have no reason to believe anything conspiratorial here, but who knows? What I do know is I will never get the whole truth from my paper.
Investigators found a syringe in his left forearm, at least two plastic envelopes with what appeared to be heroin nearby, and five empty envelopes in a trash bin, a law-enforcement official told the Times.
What a horrible way to go.
Mr. Hoffman was long known to struggle with addiction. In 2006, he said in an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that he had given up drugs and alcohol many years earlier, when he was 22. But last year, he checked into a rehabilitation program for about 10 days after a reliance on prescription pills resulted in his briefly turning again to heroin....
The REAL GATEWAY DRUG!
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Related:
"Hoffman’s body was discovered on Sunday in his apartment in Manhattan’s West Village; drugs, with which the actor struggled on and off through much of his life, may have played a part. If that’s true, he’s only the latest in a long line of artists and celebrities doomed by the appetites that may have fueled them, and good luck finding nobility in that. Yet.... What will we do without Philip Seymour Hoffman?"
Honestly, I was never very impressed with his work. What little I saw of it. Now I know why.
