EDITOR'S NOTES

Google may have all the answers, but it doesn’t mean it always has the right answers.

I learned this lesson last summer when I asked the popular search engine to diagnose the round, red rashes on my shins that itched like a pup with fleas.

“As kids, my brother and I took dynamite into the desert and blew up sagebrush.” That statement came from my grandfather in 1978.

“You did what?” Surely I hadn’t heard him right.

There are plenty of hay producers I’ve visited this year who, although they’re concerned with export tariffs, congressional partisanship and immigration wars, are still taking care of individual customers – every day. They still put their boots on and go to work. They still provide the product and service their customers require. Although global chaos may reign, they’re still taking care of business at home.

As any producer would tell you, sometimes the only way to get a job done is to pull on your boots and get to work.

It’s my professional duty to pry.

Quite often, someone will say, “You’ve got to come see my …” – meaning their new invention, their operation, their business model or their product. It runs against my editorial grain to promote any element, so we (as an editorial team) are pretty careful in the writing approach to these “front” stories, as I call them.

I’m sorry to interrupt. Excuse me. Pardon the interruption.

A story is told of Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise, who was asked to speak at an anti-Nazi meeting in Brooklyn, whereupon he received numerous threatening letters, stating he would be killed if he attended or sought to address the rally.