By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

The news: The H.J. Heinz Co. may take over Campbell Soup in order to save money, increase profits and boost the stock of both firms.

The reaction: Let’s hope the Campbell people don’t start fiddling with Heinz Tomato Ketchup, and that the Heinz people don’t start fiddling with Campbell soups, or knocking them off grocers’ shelves to make room for Heinz soup brands.

Heinz Tomato Ketchup is one of those perfect products you never should fool with. Heinz Ketchup is for a lot of people what Bernaise sauce is for some — the perfect disguise for ordinary-tasting food.

The advantage Heinz Ketchup has is that it comes ready to pound out of a glass bottle or squeeze out of a plastic one. It always tastes the same — just exactly right. The blend of tomatoes, spices and a little sugar is perfect for those Americans whose pallates never got beyond the 4th grade.

Bernaise sauce, on the other hand has to be stirred up and cooked from scratch, and it takes a steady hand on the spoon. If the cook is not careful, the sauce will curdle, and all of one’s guests will look down their noses. Curdled bernaise sauce is worthless. Most recipes call for egg yolk, clarified butter, white wine vinegar, tarragon and shallots. The big debate is whether onealso should use chervil.

With Heinz Ketchup, the only debate might be whether one stirs a little Tabasco or Worchestershire sauce into the ketchup puddle on the plate.

You can enjoy ketchup even on soda crackers. Bernaise sauce is awful on soda crackers.

Some say you can improve on Campbell Tomato Soup by stirring a little Heinz ketchup into it, and maybe that is what the companies are counting on, I don’t know.

But leave my ketchup and tomato soup alone, please.

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

The news: It is possible to buy for your home office a combination desk and treadmill — if you have $5,000 to pay for it.

The reaction: There must be 5 million better uses for $5,000, including having that old treadmill in your garage hauled away and replacing it with a hot tub on your back patio.

I think I have mentioned before that during the walks I have taken around our neighborhood, I see many a treadmill in many a garage serving as everything from tables on which to pile old clothes to racks for lumber.

Never have I seen anybody use a treadmill in a garage as an exercise device, unless they are pushing it around to make room for more boxes.

Mrs. Doud and I used to have a treadmill in our garage. It came with the house when we bought it. Mrs. Doud, who exercises more than I do, said she was going to use it, and she did — maybe three or four times. I used it once.

It was one of those treadmills without a motor. You had to use your legs to make the belt go, and it was quite a lot of work, much more so than merely taking a walk.

The Walkstation, which is what its maker calls the desk-treadmill, will go 2 mph, which is a leisurely walking pace, but when one is seated probably makes one feel like Olympic sprinter Usain “Lightning” Bolt winning the 100-meter dash. If you are seated on an office chair as you read this, try walking it around at 2 mph and see if you haven’t worked up a sweat by the time you make it to the water cooler.

Besides, using a treadmill while working would interfere with nap time, and if one caught one’s pant cuff in it, one could be in real trouble.

Here in Madera we are fortunate to have something that is quickly disappearing across the country — an independent bookstore. I’m writing to urge those who buy books to try Cole’s Books & Bagels first.

If what you want is not on the shelf, Linda Cole will order it for you. Patronizing chain and discount stores may save a few dollars, but in the long run we will be left with whatever they choose to make available.

Please recognize what a gem it is and patronize your local independent bookstore.

Gail Garson,
Madera

All of you who read this will probably think that I am crazy. You might be right. I have lived most of my life in this valley and have put off writing for over a year now, but I believe the time is right now.

We all know that we have a serious water problem in this state now, and there does not seem to be a logical answer to solving it. Well I have a nephew who works in a sewer plant and he has told me time and again that the technology is now available to use the sewer water after it has been treated and filtered to make a purer than the water that we pump out of the ground. I believe him and think all of the cities in this state should be forced to do this to their sewer plants. Just think how many millions of gallons of water could be used on farms and in the rivers all year round. It would probably make some people very mad but in the other hand how many would not go hungry?

The solution on where to store it would another problem, but if it is as pure as he claims, it could be put into a pipeline from each town to the farmers in the area, plus the Tulare Lake basin could be reclaimed from the Boswell Farms and that would hold most if not all of the water.

That would not only store the water but would also raise the underground water table in some areas to allow water to be pumped again for the farmers. Whatever excess water that still would be over what the lake could hold could then be put into other ponds or basins, or into the rivers if it is as pure as he claims it is.

Now when I said cities I mean all of the cities large and small. Just how many millions of gallons of water do the larger cities like Fresno and even the small ones like Cholame just send each and every day to be evaporated into the air or just sent from one pond to another until it is all used or evaporated daily? It is way up into the billions of gallons of water I am sure.

Just something that the experts might look into and maybe get the farmers some water down the road and the sooner the better.

David D. Smith,
Madera

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

The issue: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says he wants the California State Board of Education to require that all 8th graders be tested in Algebra 1. In answer, State Superintendent of Schools Jack O’Connell, who doesn’t like the idea, says it could cost $3 billion more a year than we spend on math education now.

The reaction: It would make just about as much sense to require all 8th-graders to learn how to tap dance.

Unlike the basic skills of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, which can be learned by practice and memorization, learning algebra requires the ability to think analytically using numbers, letters and symbols. Let’s face it, not everybody has that ability. If you don’t believe this, ask a math teacher. Only about half the 8th-graders take algebra now, and most math teachers probably think that is too many.

I know of what I speak. Even though I was a better-than-average student in high school and college, I had a devil of a time passing algebra. I’m still a math klutz. I have to use a calculator to figure out how old I am.

When I was in college, I took a physical education class in tap dancing and did pretty well, although I knew I’d never make my living at it. But many who signed up for the class kept stepping on their own toes and tripping, and dropped out. The instructor wasn’t sad to see them go.

Algebra teachers probably feel the same way when the poor performers in their classes drop out.

It makes better sense for math teachers to spend more time helping math-talented students, especially at the algebra level and above, than it does trying to pound it into the heads of slug-nutties like I was and still am.

Heading reads, “Budget woes may shift gas tax holiday to gas tax hike,” yet, in the year 2005 the Federal Highway Trust Fund had a $10 billion surplus. Where did it go?

There is no such thing as a surplus of money in government. Surplus just seems to get redirected or misused, like Social Security that we have been paying into our entire working lives. Can’t you just envision the politicians in their plush offices jumping up and down, clapping their hands and saying “surplus, surplus, oh boy, oh boy!” Now we have to figure out what pet project to use (waste) it on.

They are quietly talking about raising gas and diesel fuel taxes by 10 cents a gallon of the highway trust fund (I don’t know where the term “trust” came from). And they threaten us with the loss of jobs so we will bow down to it, and they do not even have to put it to a vote. I think we should start at the top when it comes to job loses. Politicians are supposed to represent the people but they only represent themselves, and their special interest projects. Why else would they spend $200 million in special interest groups’ donations to get a $250,000 a year job?

Government should have to live on what moneys they have, like the rest of us, excluding those people who abuse credit cards and buy homes that they can ill afford. People work their whole lives looking for the light at the end of the tunnel but the government keeps dousing that light.

The term “trillion” was made up to describe our national debt and that it has. If businesses where run the same way as government there would not be any businesses. But the government just keeps going back to the well for more money, like the well will never run dry. The whole world knows that the United States of America is the world’s bleeding heart, sending money, food, and medical supplies to every natural disaster around the globe, with most of it not getting to the intended recipients; instead it’s raked off by those nations to feed their military while their people starve.

What about FEMA kicking Katrina refuges out of their trailers in Louisiana and Mississippi or the refuges of the Midwest floods and victims of the California wild fires? I think its time to do most of that “bleeding” at home where it should be a priority.

Quit spending billions upon billions of dollars in the Middle East wars trying to stop or change what has been going on since recorded time. So long as there are religious differences in these areas, nothing will change. It’s nothing more than a money pit, and none of it is worth our young men and women dying for. They haven’t been dying for their country since WWII.

Take care of the home folks first, after all, isn’t that what our government is for? Osama bin Laden once said, “ we cannot beat the Americans but we can bankrupt them.” Well just look around at our economy, its working! This country used to be world’s most powerful industrial nation. What are we now?

Just for the fun of it and curiosity’s sake go into a Wal-Mart, K-Mart, or a Target, to name a few, and look for the shortest aisles you can find, those are the made in USA aisles. There will only be two and they will be filled with, no-food-value junk snacks, and various soft drinks that are mostly water, oh yeah, bottled water, and candy bars. Products in the rest of the aisles will be the made somewhere else. We have become a nation of “let someone else do it.” We have become a nation of pencil pushers and paper shufflers. Take a look at health insurance for instance, there are more people administering it than there are doctors and patients. The IRS will spend $100 keeping an eye on $10. Maybe government should seek professional credit counseling.

Larry Turner,
Madera

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

The news: The court-appointed overseer of the state’s prison health care system asked a federal judge in San Francisco Wednesday to seize $8 billion from the state bank account over the next five years so he can use it to build new health-care facilities for California prison inmates. He also would build new dental care facilities and would renovate existing medical facilities.

The reaction: That’s goofy. He ought to turn the project over to private enterprise, which could do it for less, and probably do it better.

The overseer, Clark Kelso, says the new prison medical facilities would cost $6 billion and have 10,000 beds. That means he proposes spending about $600,000 per bed. He’d also spend $1.1 billion for the dental facilities and $900 million on renovations of existing medical facilities, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Prison hospitals have problems other hospitals have — mainly that greater attention must be paid to security issues. But even at that, $600,000 per bed seems outrageous. The state has about 173,000 prison inmates. At $8 billion, that’s about $46,242 per prisoner — even more outrageous.

The typical upper-end hospital costs about $300 per square foot to build, which means a 100,000-square-foot hospital would cost about $30 million to construct and possibly another $30 million to equip. Then, let’s throw in another $20 million for security measures. That’s a total of $80 million per hospital for people who won’t be paying a nickel for the care they receive, and who already are receiving care, although that care has been deemed of poor quality.

The state has 33 prisons, and at $80 million each, to build a new hospital for each would cost $2.64 billion, less than half of what Kelso wants to spend. What is this guy smoking?

Well, we find out after 10s of millions, perhaps 100s of millions of dollars in damages to the Florida tomato industry that the real culprit in the salmonella outbreak was a Mexican chili. Why is it that the American farmer is held to a higher standard on food safety and regulation than the rest of the world?

As consumers, we should demand that all food sold in the United States be held to the same standards. Other countries should not be able to use pesticides on our food that we do not allow to be used in this country; it puts the American farmer at a disadvantage to have to compete with low wages and no regulation.

A similar disaster is just waiting to happen right here in Madera. We as farmers are checked relentlessly on our chemical applications, safety training, heat stress training, container storage, tractor safety, pruning safety and the list goes on — but the big one is toilet inspection. We get checked weekly, sometimes twice, we have to have cleaning records available on the toilet, and they must be cleaned every 24 hours. If not, we get a citation.

Yet, the same inspectors that check on me drive right by the roadside fruit stands that are camped out on every four-way-stop intersection in the whole county. These people have no toilets, no wash water, and many times no chairs or shade. I have seen them coming out of surrounding fields with a roll of toilet paper in their hand, and I have seen women changing diapers and then go right back packing cherries and strawberries.

When an e coli outbreaks happens, and its only a matter of time, the news will report it as a cherry or strawberry problem, and the California farmers are going to suffer 100s of millions in damages, and these nonpermitted, unregulated, cash-only businesses will keep right on selling.
Why doesn’t our local ag commissioner protect not only the legitimate farmers of this county and the state but the consumers as well who don’t realize what they could be getting in that little cup.

We as farmers want to deliver the best product possible to the American people, we work on a very uneven playing field and still we produce the best food in the world. It’s very frustrating to play by the rules and then have your livelihood devastated by those who would just move on to oranges or corn or whatever they can get, while we the farmers would be left to rebuild trust with the consumer so that they would once again buy our product.

So I ask you to buy American grown, and get it from a legitimate source, don’t reward those who do not play by the rules.

Mike Schafer,
Madera farmer

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

I know some people who don’t care for children, and I often think that is because their experiences have been limited to children who are sticky and ill-mannered.

Children who are not sticky, and who have good manners, are a credit to their parents, and even pleasant to be around if they aren’t talking too much. That is because it is the nature of children to be sticky and ill-mannered unless they are taught to behave otherwise and keep their hands and faces washed.

I don’t mind children talking if they have something to say, such as “How about those Coyotes?” But they quite often mumble.

I the lack social skills for getting along very well with children, even though I have reared a few myself. When I was a hands-on parent, it seemed I always had something to say to my children, such as, “Stop doing that!” or “Go wash your face and hands!” or “Stop playing with your food!”

Having me as a father must have been awful, because I never said things like, “Why don’t you get food all over you, and get it on the furniture, too?” or “Forget about washing your face or your hands. Play with something dirty, and then eat something with your fingers.” I took parenting very seriously. I was quite an old fogey, and still am.

I never offered my children a smoke, or a beer or a glass of wine until they were adults.
Of course, they couldn’t wait to leave home when the time came, and they did.

They are now pretty good adults who treat their children much as I treated them. When we talk to one another, usually by phone, we always exchange the words “I love you,” which I don’t think you can say often enough to the little tykes, or to the old fogeys.

“The best in the West.”

I refer to the July 23 report by the Tribune on Madera County’s 2007 Crop Report. I commend the Tribune for such info; thank you.

The good news on the agriculture of our county, plus and when one counts business done in stores, gas stations, etc. — all in all I would venture to estimate $2.1 billion total.

If we did not have the labor to perform all that is needed in our county’s economy it would collapse. The labor force we depend on for the most part is aliens, legal and not legal, the vast majority of Mexican descent. We live in the way which most people only dream of.

For the most part we are Maderans that get along better than most.

Joe Urena,
Madera