Country Home

Last September I did a whirlwind tour of two research locations in eastern Oklahoma and two in Arkansas. We were putting together a new team effort that would combine their research efforts to find ways for those land owners who have small farms but have to work elsewhere to make a living because they cannot make enough off other their own land. While driving on a freeway between Fayetteville and Booneville, I thought about the concrete trail cut through the mountains was the result of Federal highway funds - appropriations - that knitted together our interstate transportation network - if it wasn't for the Federal government, where would a small state like Arkansas get the resources to build its share. Earlier in the day I had met with various administrators at the University of Arkansas and discussed research with scientists at their laboratories. The next day I toured the facilities at another research center that served the needs of rural communities with small-scale farms. Here too the state participates as a member of a larger country.

In the spring of 2006, I had visited similar facilities in West Virginia - again, with a mission to serve the needs of farmers and ranchers who may not be as advantaged as those in the big agricultural states, or those states that have access to ports and a large industry base. Common to those places were researchers who are motivated to make a difference with their work - to help farmers and rancher make a better living off of the land their families may have owned for generations.

The way the founding fathers devised our government representation - two Senators from every state, the number of Representatives based on a state's population - has made it possible for those states that do not have as great a population or as great a resource base as the those with coastlines to move forward together with the rest of the nation - pro and con perspectives - the intent of the Constitution's drafters and the unforeseen consequences. Today Senator Robert Byrd died. He was one of those members of Congress who watched over his state - saw to it that West Virginia benefited from the bounty of our greater nation - a price of and value from membership for all states in the Union. The hand prints of long-term representation continue, just as the music that may still echo through the mountains where ribbons of concrete reach around mountains and bridges of steel ford rivers.