Basketball, Zen, and Gardening

Fall 2016 Thoughts

2016-08-08T19:47:00.001-06:00

It's early August, and time to make my best guess at life after the fall election.

First, barring a serious 9/11 style terrorist attack on American soil, God forbid, Hillary walks to an election. Weakest Democratic nominee since Mondale, only to be paired with quite possibly the least likable Republican ever. Those are the breaks.

The R's lose the Senate, keep the House. Her first nominee ensures a hard left turn to the Court, especially gun rights. My advice? Buy lowers, at least 2 per family member. They're cheap right now, and unless something drastic changes, you'll still be able to buy additional parts after the election, though I do expect a full blown run on all ARs, AKs, etc as the election picture becomes clearer. If I'm wrong, you're out less than $500, if I'm right there's a good chance that selling one of those will net you more than $500 at some point in the near future.

Whoever inherits this economy is probably going to inherit an instant recession that's going to take years to get out of. I hope we're still years away from a real reset, a la the Soviet Union 1991, but who knows.

I saw a line on Twitter that stuck with me.

"You can't govern a country you've never visited." Flyover America, the folks who shop at Wal-Mart, who go to Church because they believe deeply, coal miners, stay at home moms, rough men who have known violence are every bit as foreign to DC as trying to govern Martians.

I think you're going to see more states going the route of Irish Democracy, as they have with marijuana. You may still see some folks get caught up in the Federal gears if they get too big for their britches, but black markets will continue to increase in direct correlation to the corruption in D.C.

I think you're going to see more pressure put on local law enforcement. Failing pension plans are going to make any officer who can make comparable money elsewhere leave if they don't see a pension in their future. You're going to see less federal dollars to supplement the drug war. More communities, not just black, think poor, see LEOs as tax collectors instead of keepers of the peace.

As with the President Obama, I don't think you'll see martial law, or FEMA camps, rather a continuation of the pursuit of Utopia with borrowed money. Everything will remain more or less copacetic until the EBT cards do run dry, then my friend Venezuela may very well be the best case scenario.

Stay frosty.

Winter is Coming

2015-10-05T10:18:00.003-06:00

"Governments go broke slowly at first, then all at once." - Earnest Hemingway

I'm a lucky man. I have a wife who loves me, my health, a job I enjoy that pays the bills, and better friends than I could have ever imagined as a young man.

I'm blessed, but I can't stop thinking, as I speed towards 40 and the second and final half of my life of the troubles that await those who come behind me.

The Baby Boomers, and to a much lesser extent Gen X, have left the Millennial Generation, and those behind them a pretty rotten balance sheet. $18 trillion in federal debt, $4 trillion in debt at the Federal Reserve, +/-$100 trillion in unfunded liabilities in the form of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The numbers are even more frightening when you look at the promises made to retirees by the States, Counties, and Cities that are several trillion dollars more in monies that simply can't be paid. http://www.usdebtclock.org/

I was lucky enough to have lived during the time of leveraged prosperity. Though I can say that I have voted against every single tax hike since my mid-twenties, that's not going to provide the lifestyle that these retirees are going to demand in the next 15-25 years. I fear it's going to get ugly, especially after looking at Greece and realizing we're going to make them look Switzerland by comparison.

This realization of unsustainable debt is a big reason I've headed down the homesteading path. My family and I are striving to live sustainably. Not in the Hipster/Hippie way that's come to define the word, but in the sense of feeding ourselves healthy food, not being in debt, and not oppressing others by voting to allow any additional taxes (tax is just another word for taking someone else's earnings/property at the barrel of a loaded gun).

There will be no voting our way out of this, there aren't enough people who care more about their children or grandchildren to make hard decisions. Instead we'll go the way of Greece, simply on a more violent, more austerity (rhymes much with misery) dominated path.

I don't see a Mad Max future. Americans, outside of DC and major metropolitan areas at least, are still decent people at their core. I think we'll see more multigenerational family living arrangements, which isn't a bad thing, as Granma/Grandpa looking after the children isn't a bad thing.

Without the money flowing from Uncle Sugar to local Police Departments and Sheriff's Offices the availability of locking up/ticketing everyone is going to go down, though it's going to be interesting to see how retired law enforcement officers are going to react when they realize there is no pension like they've been promised. I think we'll see more and more private sector law enforcement as time goes by, as the public money dries up.

Technology really is the wild card in all of this. Solar power gets cheaper everyday, we're ten years away from it being on par with utility companies prices at which point the whole country may start to look at the way Texas has deregulated it's power grid.

Robotics will continue to affect manufacturing, which may very well push manufacturing back to the states, as you don't have to pay a robot any more in South Carolina than you do in China. Then there's 3-D printing which very soon will allow manufacturers to outsource parts making to anyone with a 3-D machine. Imagine any part on any machine ever made available in the most remote small towns in America on a machine that costs $25,000. Amazon couldn't compete with a business model where you order the part from your neighborhood Maker Shop in the morning and it is ready for pick up or delivery next day if not just a few hours later.

Ride Sharing, imagine Uber for a set price per year for unlimited rides to and from wherever you want to go. Willing to ride in a small van with random strangers? Super cheap. Want to make it just folks who share common interests, or income levels, that's a step up in price. Want to ride alone with no one to bother you, just a few dollars more. As someone who drives 30,000 miles a year my vehicles still sit idle 90% of the time, I could buy a new vehicle every couple of years if there was software that made ride sharing easy, safe, and worth my time financially.

Winter Is Coming my friends, but as we always have, we'll find a way to survive it and thrive.

Refrigerator Pickles

2015-08-08T21:08:00.001-06:00

Cucumbers are in full production right now and there's nothing better tasting and easier to take advantage of that bounty than refrigerator pickles.

I used wide mouth Bell quart jars. I quartered the cucumbers lengthways, put them in helter skelter until the jar is more or less filled. 1/3 cup of vinergar, 3 teaspoons of kosher salt, 1 teaspoon of black pepper, 3 cloves of garlic, and 1/4 cup of dill. I put a ripe jalapeno in each one for a little heat and color. After the ingredients are in fill to the top with water. If you don't like super hot pickles, you may want to pull that jalepeno out after a week or so.

Let it rest in the fridge for at least 24 hours. They're good for about 3 weeks, but usually they won't last that long.

For what it's worth, one of the ladies I work with shed a tear saying they were the best pickles she'd ever had... :-)

Bee Friendly

2015-08-08T17:54:00.000-06:00

Who knew that turnips could set a bee's heart a flutter? The turnips self seeded, we'll see how many generations they can produce on their own. Building a top bar bee hive is on the list for this fall. I'll post pictures as the Snow Farm adds to it's bee habitat.

The Prescott Fond Blanc Melon - It's Not Your Pappy's Cantalope

2015-08-08T17:45:00.000-06:00

I picked the Prescott Fond Blanc Melon seeds up from Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company early 2015. I put them in the ground late in mid-April, due to being away at yet another tech school, but thought I'd try them anyway... The one pictured here was first to begin to ripen. Sadly it was struck down in it's prime by a gnawing rodent of some sort. All was not lost though. The dirty rodent didn't manage to penetrate the rind into the flesh.

Upon opening it up the scent was amazing. Delicate is the first word to come to mind. Sweet, mild, and it's flesh exquisitely firm. Though not completely ripe, it was still a lovely tasting melon. I'm excited to see the other's ripen. (By the way, I've gave the cat a stern talking to about being lax in his duties.)

Every time I open up an heirloom seed catalog, I'm amazed at how many varieties of fruits and vegetables there are that I've never seen. Baker Creek is an amazingly beautiful catalog. I keep mine as a coffee table book, it's that well done. Order a catalog and plant some of their recommendations that you've never seen before! Happy planting!

Brewing your own… Laundry Detergent

2015-06-17T14:30:00.001-06:00

So, the last time Andrea made laundry detergent I was in Kuwait. She did pass along to me that it was a miserable experience, especially grating the soap. That stayed in the back of my mind, but the 5 gallon bucket of liquid laundry detergent seemed to last forever. ..

Last week, I had a close friend and his family drop in to visit, and because I know how to show a buddy a good time I set off to make some powdered laundry detergent using my food processor instead of hand grating the soap. I read in multiple places on-line that the best way to do it was to first microwave the bar soap. Sounded crazy, but it worked like a champ. The picture below is of me about to knosh on the Fels-Naptha bar of soap after it’s been nuked for almost 3 minutes. The entire process from start to finish took less than 10 minutes. In the months to come I’ll report on how the homemade concoction is holding up.

Here’s the ingredient list:
Fels-Naptha Bar Soap (to be nuked 2-3 minutes) $0.99
2 cups 20 Mule Team Borax Laundry Soap $3.97
2 cups Arm & Hammer Washing Soda $3.97
½ cup Oxi-Clean powder $8.00

Wal-Mart has all of these ingredients on the shelf at their “Neighborhood Market” stores. I wanted to see how I like the Fel-Naptha bar before I went buck wild and made a huge batch. I will admit that the microwaving of the soap made me a tad nervous but it was painless, no explosion, and the microwave has never smelt better!

After nuking the soap I cut it into eighths, just to make it easier to fit into the food processor. I pulsed it until the soap looked to be just a smidge bigger than normal looking laundry detergent crystals, then added in the 2 cups of borax, 2 cups of washing soda, and ½ cup of Oxi-Clean. I turned the food processor back on for about 30 seconds to mix the ingredients, dumped the new invention into a Rubbermaid container, and that was that.

I am using 1-2 tablespoons per load. This should get me somewhere in the 75 load range. In breaking down costs, it cost me $4.08 before tax. The Fels-Naptha bar does add a distinctive “laundry soap” fragrance that I liked more than I thought I would. We’ll see how it works and I’ll write more later on performance.

The next batch will be made with Ivory Soap bars, stay tuned for that.

Thoughts on the Desert

2015-05-28T08:25:00.001-06:00

Anytime you have a three hour layover you find yourself either bored or complentative...

It's so easy to forget how hard a place the intermountain West is. A foot of rain a year, highs well above 100, lows routinely well below 0. It's a hard place, full of good hearted, hard people and vast places a man can be alone with his thoughts.

The West for much of the year is a study in hues of brown. Coyote brown, earth brown, sand brown, and 60 more I recognize but may not be able to put a Crayola Crayon name to. I appreciate the relentlessness of Nature. This time of year the hues of green battle bravely the harshness of the world they've been born into to not go quietly into the night of those shades of brown.

Mountain sides lush with growth, fighting the growing heat rising from the valley and the snow filled valleys above to complete the cirlce that is life.

Swale Results

2015-03-02T20:26:00.001-07:00

Just wanted to show the differences between the orchard with swales, and my neighbor's land without. I've grazed the cows through a half dozen times or so for 6-8 hours each time. The difference is pretty great.

Now only 9 more acres to dig in... :-)

Getting Ready for 100 Trees

2015-03-02T20:09:00.001-07:00

So today I dug 35 holes as the weather looks to be breaking this week. These trees (black locust, honey locust, seedlings from a local thorny locust, and mimosas) will serve as a windscreen, privacy screen, nitrogen fixers, bee fodder, and future fence posts.

The rest of the seedlings will go in as nitrogen fixers in the orchard. Within a couple of years they'll be coppiced and supporting the fruit trees.

Snowpacolypse 2015

2015-03-01T20:33:00.001-07:00

So we had several peach trees, nectarine trees, and one cherry tree in bloom when Mother Nature decided to break my heart and freeze those early blossoms. I was planning on heavily thinning each tree this first year to encourage maximum growth, but it still just killed me. The trees will be fine, and thankfully there's always next year.

On the positive side, all the mint, thyme, and rosemary seemed to make it through covered just fine. The Swiss Chard and strawberries though uncovered seemed none the worse for wear. Only time will tell. :-)

Belted Galloways for the Small Homestead

2015-02-22T17:38:00.001-07:00

After reading, and reading, and reading about what breed of cattle would work best for our little farm we honed in on the Belted Galloway. They're highly adaptable from their original Scottish wet and cold to Texas heat. They're very efficient (just behind the Longhorn) in converting marginal pasture into weight gain. The final thing they had going for them was that their meat, even when fully finished on grass is highly marbled.
From the Joel Salatin school of farming we'll be paddock shifting the ladies and doing our best to repair the pasture and ultimately improve the soil itself. Full grown they'll tip the scales around 1000 pounds, roughly half of most modern beef cattle. As time progresses we should have about 1.5 beeves to sell, hopefully by early 2018.

Onion sets

2015-02-22T17:36:00.001-07:00

I dug in a shallow trench for asparagus, put them in, and then covered them in 3 bags of soil and 2 bags of Miracle-Gro. 40 sweet onion sets and 40 red onion sets went in around the asparagus along with 6 strawberry plants. The strawberries didn't survive first contact with the free range chicken, but as of 21 February a good number of the onions are starting to peek through. Hopefully the harvest wil be bountiful.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

2015-02-21T16:23:00.001-07:00

Getting ready for another cow to be added to the herd, and if things go well she'll be calving shortly after she gets here and we want to keep her and the calf safe. I'm planning to set up a paddock shift system after the calf is born to help manage the pasture (preven over grazing) and repair the damage that was done to the pasture in the past.

The Mighty Turnip

2015-02-21T15:15:00.001-07:00

In the fall of 2014, after planting all the trees, shrubs, vines, and bushes there was quite a bit of bare soil to cover. I went to the Co-Op over in Mertens and noticed a big bag of turnip seed on the shelf, and if memory serves, it was about $8. Brought it home and handbroadcast the seeds onto the open dirt, no muss, no fuss, no raking, no watering, a couple of weeks later turnips popping up everywhere. Great ground cover, great soil penetration, and lots of bio-mass to pile up in the swales in the spring, or so I assumed. Fast foward a few months (and a mild winter) and the biennial nature of the turnip had other plans.

When I think Turnips, I think Russian peasants, and finally growing Turnips made me better understand why the Turnip was so important to so many. The greens can be plucked and eaten early, though they do taste like turnips... :-) The root crop is winter hardy, the mild Texas winter never even touched the greens, they grew taller and fuller until beginning to bloom in early February. I had no idea what was to follow, bee heaven. Today was the 21st of February, and walking through the Turnip flowers today I was surrounded by 1000's of bees happily working and hopefully they'll remember where we're at when the fruit trees start blooming.

Bob Wells Nursery

2014-12-16T16:36:00.001-07:00

After much research I packed up the Suburban and headed off to Lindale, Texas and Bob Wells Nursery. As a cantankerous, contrarian curmudgeon, anytime I have so many people saying good things about a company I usually go in with lowered expectations. Happily my expectations were far exceeded.

I went in on a Monday in mid-October and had the place basically to myself. I spent almost an hour just walking through and getting a feel for their inventory. The employees were friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful and gave me plenty of space to just wander around like a poor kid in a toy store. I ended up buying a plethora of trees, bushes, and vines. The guys loaded up my trailer, happily gave me my TSP discount (it paid for the next several years of membership with Spirko by the way) and I was on my way.

If you're anywhere nearby go in and talk with the guys there, they'll tell you what will grow and what won't. Amendments you need, and those you can do without.

The Trees Go In

2014-12-15T16:11:00.001-07:00

Well, the swales are in so the next step is to get the trees in the ground. I ran up to B

The Snow Permaculture Farm

2014-12-15T16:05:00.001-07:00

"There is no greater act of rebellion than growing a garden." -Unknown-

Hello Hill and Ellis County! Welcome to the Snow Farm!

I had a small 1/3 acre suburban homestead before moving back to Texas. I found my passion in life is growing tasty, healthy, safe food free of pesticides and petroleum based fertilizers.

I bought this little 11 acre farm because I want my kids to know the joys and hard work that come from living on a farm. I want as much money as possible to stay in the local area with locally owned small businesses.

I know you're busy, but still want to give your family the best food you can. As we ramp up production here my hope is to find 5-10 families over the next 3-5 years that we can serve.

There's still a lot of work to do, but my goal is to help you feed your family the best food possible.

Whole chickens will be available in spring of 2016.

Heritage breed turkey orders for Thanksgiving 2016 will be taken in spring 2016.

Free range chicken and duck eggs will be available in the summer of 2016.

Right now there are 36 trees in the ground that will start producing an excess in 2016. The grapes and blackberries we planted should be coming on-line by then as well.

The two Belted Galloway heifers will be producing there first grass fed beef in 2017. As the herd grows so will our offerings of paddock shifted, grass fed beef.

There are so many other things that we hope to do, and I'm sure as the farm matures we'll find products that we've never dreamt of. Honey, fruit trees for sale, garden starts, lavender, hogs, and rabbits are on our radar right now, but who knows what the future holds.

As the site grows I'll be posting recipes involving the food we grow. My thoughts on gardening, and as much as I can what I've learned from all the mistakes I've made with my prior gardening attempts.

I can't wait to meet you, answer your food and gardening questions, and share our humble homestead's progress with you.

Your friend,

Russ Snow

Bob Wells Nursery

2014-11-22T15:17:00.001-07:00

If you're anywhere nearby go in and talk with the guys there, they'll tell you what will grow and what won't. Amendments you need, and those you can do without.

Swales - Just a Ditch on Contour

2014-11-09T12:24:00.001-07:00

For those of you who've owned a house already, you understand the time/money pit they can be. Setting up a homestead adds another level to that, in addition to the electric bill etc, you have the additional costs of trees, bushes, animals, feeding troughs, feed, tools et cetra.

Some of these are simply sunk costs, like renting the excavator to dig the swales, while others like the fruit trees themselves will give me at least 100% ROI per year for 10 years (if I can keep them alive, 50/50 that.) I get that ROI number based on assuming $25 paid for tree, and getting at least 25 pounds of fruit valued at $1 per pound for at least 10 years of the trees life.

The first big project that I had to get out of the way was getting the swales dug in. I dug in three, the first one ended up being in really poor soil. The next two swales were in beautiful black clay/loam and that's where I ended up planting a majority of my trees/bushes/vines. In the row that was poor soil, I only planted three trees, two Advacados and a plum. We'll see how they do.

Bob Wells Nursery

2014-11-09T12:21:00.001-07:00

If you're anywhere nearby go in and talk with the guys there, they'll tell you what will grow and what won't. Amendments you need, and those you can do without.

The VA as model for Nationalized Single Payer System

2014-07-14T12:26:00.001-06:00

While I was in Ground Radar tech school in Mississippi, I had A LOT of time on my hands, so I turned to Facebook to reconnect with some friends from high school. One of the topics turned to the ACA, and how the VA was THE model to emulate. This was early 2014, February or March, and the suggestion came from one of the smartest women I've ever met. Which is what disturbed me most.

Now she's a great person and I'd describer her as a libertarian leaning Democrat. College educated, well read, independent in her thinking, and completely ignorant of the realities present in the VA. I'd seen some shenanigans in my time with Uncle Sugar as a Rater for the VA, but even I had no idea how bad it really was at the time with the scheduling fraud that was rampant around the country. In hindsight I truly wonder how close the counrty was at the passing of the ACA to having a national single payer instead. Had the ruling party simply have trotted out what most people thought was fantastic care at the VA as how it would be, I wonder if they could have passed it...

Hopefully more and more people are waking up to the reality that an incentive based model is always going to offer better care than a non-profit. That's Profit, for those who don't like dirty words or Charity for the religious amongst us who worry about how they treat their fellow man more than how many cars they can fit in their garages.... All men are created equal, but all men are not the same. Some win in the lottery that is life, genetically, financially, or simply in where they're born. To punish any for this in my mind is no different than discriminating against someone for being born a certain color, handicapped, or gay. To take from them as punishment for success no different than holding another down to prevent them from their Pursuit of life, Liberty and Happieness.

It's going to be interesting moving forward to see how the big problems facing our nation play out. As Winston Churchill reportedly said, "Americans will always do the right thing when they've exhausted all other options."

The Journey to a Homestead

2014-07-14T12:07:00.001-06:00

In the fall of my last year coaching women's basketball (2008) I took a step back and began to take inventory of my life. I had a dozen nice suits, a Honda Del Sol, and a sweet Jeep Rubicon (that I owed roughly $15,000 on) and no real assets to speak of other than a few thousand dollars in my retirement account. All told I was right at $60,000 in debt.

I'd been exsposed to enough successful people by this time that I knew I had to make a change in my life, but I had no idea how or where to start, so I do what I always do when I have a question, I turned to Google and begun to research how to get out of debt. I found Dave Ramsey's plan which can be boiled down to this:

1. Pay cash, if you can't pay cash you can't afford it, whatever it may be.

2. If you have a bank loan on the car sell it and drive a beater. (I stupidly fought this for a year.)

3. Attack the smallest debt with all your money, and progressively, ruthlessly, and unwaveringly start paying off from one to the next.

4. Get a second job and be even more heartless in killing the cancer that is debt. I was already a drilling guardsman, so I had another avenue, GI Bill cashola.

5. Get a savings fund of $1000

6. 6 months expenses

7. Start putting away 15% of your monthly income, and then pay off your house as fast as you can.

It really is that simple. It's a matter of how much do you want to be free?

I was a motivated young man. I had a plan, and I worked that plan. I decided that I was going to give being an assistant one more year, and if I didn't get a head coaching job it was time for me to find a job with real earning potential. Knowing what young coaches are supposed to look like I got up at 5:00 three times a week and lifted my guts out. I messed up a ton, ate out too much, cared about not wearing the same shirt twice in a month at work, but I was still searching.

My mom had always kept a garden when I was growing up, I knew how much better I could eat if I was raising it myself, but I didn't have the skills. In the Spring of 2009 in the midst of my search for gardening knowledge I found Jack Spirko and The Survival Podcast. He was Dave Ramsey with a country twang, a healthy bit of profanity that I could appreciate, and a man working a plan. I was hooked. For what it's worth and for the faint of heart, he's not leaving in a bunker (nor his mother's basement) wearing a tin foil cap, he's good ol' boy who was in the rat race, and decided he was going to get out.

This Is Still Who We Are

2013-12-07T16:37:00.000-07:00

http://www.businessinsider.com/john-kellys-speech-about-marines-in-ramadi-2013-6

Read this today. I was sad and proud. More than anything I was given hope. I don't believe non - lovers of freedom make this decision.

As a better man than me once wrote, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13

EDC Leatherman Surge

2013-12-02T20:01:00.001-07:00

Leatherman with Bit Kit and Extension

I picked up the Leatherman Surge before my deployment to Kuwait in early 2013. I didn't know how I'd feel about it since it was so much bigger than The Gerber Multi-Tool I was issued almost a decade prior for my first all expense trip to an equally exotic locale.

I went to Kuwait this time thinking I was going to be the CSA for the Delaware and Texas Air Guard (I filled a slot for Delaware). Much like my last trip to the desert this one wasn't exactly as advertised... I ended up being a jack of all trades this trip. Was there a lot of computer work, yes, but I was also the building custodian, cell phone guy, bird predation Alpha team member with SMSgt B (best gig ever, BTW), Plaque Maker, and the First Shirt's Officially Designated plow horse. I had a blast this deployment. Part of it was the fact that no one was trying to kill me, and the other part of it was my attitude was ask me and I'll say yes! Weird what age and perspective will do for you.

At my going away dinner the Colonel described me as the Chewbacca of the Squadron, didn't say much but could fix anything. Computers, plumbing, raining death from above on pigeons, metal work, scrounging semi-truck wheels for the Shirt to turn into a bitching barbecue pit. So what does any of this have to do with the Leatherman?

I used the heck out of that thing, the extension, and the bit drivers. Need your reading glasses tightened Chief, I'm your Huckleberry. Need to tear apart a computer so that you can prove to a Lt. Col. that there aren't scorpions in their computer stealing their reports? Check. Adjust water flow to a sink whose Hadji handle has broken off, Sure.

This piece of kit has been used every day. The bit kit gives you Torq bits, flat heads, Phillips, Robertson, and Pozi bit heads. The extension gives you a screw driver without having to get the Leatherman clear of the case, and combined with the Leatherman slot allows you a ton of torque on whatever you're working on.

The Leatherman itself has been a workhorse. The finish has held up to a lot of hard use and remains tight to this day. Can't recommend this piece of kit enough.

Gay Marriage - AKA Questioning Why Anyone Has to Ask Permission of the State to Marry

2013-11-30T20:56:00.000-07:00

I remember my senior year English teacher saying in class my senior year that one day, in our lifetime we would see gay rights viewed as we viewed race. I had never thought such a thing possible at the time.

My first real memory of the adult world was the Carter-Reagan election in 1980. The one television we had in the house in Arkansas was upstairs and tuned to PBS, the sole channel we received out in the hinterlands. My parents had sent me upstairs to find out who won the election. When I returned with news of Reagan's victory, I remember my father's disbelief that a man from the "Sodomite" state of California was now President. Now I didn't know what a sodomite was at the time, but I knew it wasn't good. (Strangely enough 4 years later, both my parent voted for Reagan, but as always I digress.)

I spent my formative years as a boy in Pentecostal churches in the rural, poor south. I never met an Out person during that time. Yet, for all the sermons, you would have thought that we were about to be over run at any moment by roving hordes of Gay Bikers with magic dust that could make every young man a wanton cock gobbler.

From this I moved to Idaho, land of the Mormons, and funeral potatoes. I met my best friend, one of six brothers and one sister. I was eleven, and we've been thick as thieves ever since. I've watched his attitude evolve as well through time. One of the things I love about the West is, for the most part, people do not feel the need to be involved in other peoples business. Adam watched me fall in love with a girl, who broke my heart when she broke up with me by coming out to me. All my life I'd heard how evil "the Gays" were, and here was this wonderful girl who was brave enough to tell me the truth, to be true to herself, and who was hurting, and scared of what her friends would say.

I left Idaho for Utah, then SoCal and eventually Corvallis, Oregon. I was in the OSU ROTC when I got a call from a buddy who had just taken a head coaching job in Eastern Oregon and needed a white assistant coach who would work for $800 a year. Three years later, and a side trip to Iraq, I took a job coaching women's basketball.

I still remember the conversation that crystallized my position on love being equal. One of my favorite girls on our team was Out and comfortable in her own skin, finally as a senior. We were talking one day about how it was for her to be Gay in Idaho. She said, "Coach, I'd give anything to be straight, it would be so much easier. I've tried dating guys, and kept trying, but it's not who I am."

I watched another girl, who had a great relationship with her folks by the way, hide who she was and who she loved, because they were LDS, and she was terrified they would disown her. It still hurts my heart to this day. I've been impressed that the LDS Church (updated from one of my former players' FB pages) has really softened their stance on gay kids. Hopefully it helps.

So here ends my rant. The state should have no role in who can and cannot marry. Free Men and Women don't have to ask the King for Permission on Who They Love. Staight, gay, whatever. Herein lies my problem. Religions, churches, sects, cults, should be as free to set there standards for performing marriages as I am not to give a sh!t as to what they think if our beliefs do not coincide. I see conflict coming in the area in the future, centered around tax exempt status if they're exclusionary.

Churches should have every right to call whomever they want sinner and "Sodomite", and no duty to perform a ceremony they feel sacred for some one they don't consider worthy. Somehow I don't think there would be a big waiting list for gay folks to express there commitment to one another in the unfriendly confines of an institution that publicly sentences them to hell. As hard as I try to not judge others, defending "Offensive Speech" and free exercise (not freedom from) religion is also the bedrock of the First Amendment.

As for me I saw the harder road that my Gay friends have to walk. Smaller dating pool, social stigma, self image issues, fear of family rejection, and a myriad of other challenges that straight folks get to take for granted. As someone who felt estranged from G-d for the better part of a decade, I still can't feel that I'm worthy to judge anyone else with all the sin hash marks I have on my heavenly chalkboard.

There's my two cents on a subject no one wants to talk about.