If only she listened.
Credit: Blendon Township Police Department
Views: 48
Yes, Virginia it was a good shoot. You don’t drive forward towards the Police Officer. Sadly, a mother of two and pregnant for some reason would not listen to numerous requests from the police officer.
The policeman was notified by a store employee that a woman had committed a theft. What the officer didn’t know was that the person had put back the stolen items. How could they?
The woman then puts the car in gear and hits the accelerator. The police officer directly in front of the vehicle is hit and staggers for several feet. He fires and the rest is history.
WATCH: This former police chief breaks down what happened.
Hate from the leftists.
Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Views: 14
Oberlin College Lacrosse Coach Under Attack by Woke Administrators for Defending Women’s Sports.
The head coach of Oberlin College’s lacrosse team says she was called “transphobic” and “unsafe,” and investigated by the woke college after questioning transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, a biological male, winning last year in the NCAA. “It is scientific that, biologically, males and females are different,” the lacrosse coach added. “I don’t believe biological males should be in women’s locker rooms. Where is the MeToo movement now? What happened to that?”
“I was blown away that a male was allowed to compete with women in NCAA swimming,” Oberlin College lacrosse coach Kim Russell said in an eight-minute video documentary shared by the Independent Women’s Forum.
Watch Below.
🆕BREAKING: Head Women’s Lacrosse Coach at Oberlin College is breaking her silence in an @IWF documentary after being “burned at the stake” for her support of single-sex sports & speaking out against allowing men in women’s sports. https://t.co/n1MPhiM4D5pic.twitter.com/WgD57sAYxR
“When Lia Thomas won, I reposted a post that said, ‘Congratulations to Emma Weyant, the real woman who won the NCAA 500-yard freestyle event.’ One of my own players took that post and sent it in an email to my athletic director,” Russell explained.
Oberlin College Women’s Lacrosse Coach Kim Russell
School administrators responded to the complaint by calling Russell into their offices for a series of disciplinary meetings, and the lacrosse coach recorded each one.
In one instance, Natalie Winkelfoos, Associate VP for Athletics, can be heard telling Russell, “Unfortunately, you fall into a category of people that are kind of filled with hate in the world.”
“It’s acceptable to have your own opinions, but when they go against, you know, Oberlin College’s beliefs, it’s a problem, for your employment,” Creg Jantz, Senior Associate Director of Athletics, told Russell in another instance.
Russell said school administrators later demanded that she write a letter of apology to the team, and to the Department of Athletics.
“I hope you feel remorse for it,” Winkelfoos said in another audio recording.
The lacrosse coach said she began to write her apology letter, but then stopped herself from doing so.
“I’m not writing a letter of apology, I’m not sorry,” Russell said in the documentary. “I really believe that women should be competing against other biological females.”
Russell, who has been coaching for 27 years, said she was then told that she had to attend a meeting with her entire team, the athletic director, the Title IX director for the Athletics Department, the head of the department’s Diversity, equity, and inclusion (D.E.I.) office, and the Title IX and director of D.E.I. for the entire college.
“There was a very dark energy,” Russell explained of the meeting. “Chairs were set up in a huge circle, I felt like I was burned at the stake.”
“It was, what I would call the ‘mob mentality,’ where a few people on the team spoke about how much they were upset with what I had posted, and how dare I post that,” the coach said. “I love these kids, and to have many of them say all these things that, to me, were attacking who I was as a person, it made me sad.”
The documentary also featured several audio clips of student lacrosse players lecturing Russell.
“Everyone has their views,” one student said. “But what the focus should be here isn’t what the view is, it should be the impact that that caused, the impact that that post had,” one student could be heard preaching in an audio clip.
“I still feel like we’re just kind of, like, justifying your actions a little, instead of, like, a true apology,” another student lectured. “Especially at Oberlin, where there is such a high, like, LGBTQ+ population, I just feel like I would like a little more accountability.”
“It’s not good enough just to work for, like, women’s issues or white feminism, you know? It has to, like, your feminism, has to be inclusive for everybody,” another said.
During the meeting, Russell felt that nobody was really listening to what she had to say. After that, when the season was finished, Russell was called in for yet another meeting, where she was given a letter that informed her she had damaged her credibility and would need to change her behavior immediately.
“I believe that there are so many people who are afraid of losing their jobs that they are just going to do what they have to do to keep working,” Russell said in the documentary. “It is my job to be a voice for everyone who is too afraid, who needs to keep their job.”
“It is scientific that, biologically, males and females are different,” the lacrosse coach added. “I don’t believe biological males should be in women’s locker rooms. Where is the MeToo movement now? What happened to that?”
“Do I believe I’m at risk of being fired, of having a storm hit me?” Russell said. “Yes. Am I ready for the storm? Yes.”
Russell is not the first person Oberlin College has attacked.
As Breitbart News previously reported, the leftist school had to pay $36.59 million in court-ordered defamation damages to a mom-and-pop bakery it slandered as racist — after previously fighting desperately to avoid paying the judgment.
In 2019, Meredith Raimondo, now an ex-dean, had orchestrated a woke mob into slandering the family that runs Gibson’s Bakery as racists for calling the police on three black students for allegedly shoplifting a bottle of wine.
The list of topics on which the government and mass media feel called to protect us from ‘disinformation’ is very long.
Written By: Peter W. Wood for The Spectator Sept 2023 issue
Lying is the great American pastime. We’ve been at it ever since some of the Pilgrim fathers shined on some of the folks back home with tales of the Eden they had found on the barren coast of Massachusetts:
For fish and fowl, we have great abundance; fresh cod in the summer is but coarse meat with us; our bay is full of lobsters all the summer and affordeth variety of other fish; in September, we can take a hogshead of eels in a night, with small labor, and can dig them out of their beds all the winter; we have mussels; and …
As the American Socrates, P.T. Barnum, may once have said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Or he may not have said. The Fort Wayne Weekly Sentinel in 1894 said he said it, but P.T. denied it. Whom are we going to believe: the lying liar of Fiji Mermaid fame or the dissembling deceivers of the Sentinel?
Relax. We don’t have to choose. Men were deceivers ever.
Combatting disinfo is one of the hottest trends on campus these days.
Time’s up. Stop relaxing. We’ve been summoned by our betters to purge America of the scourge of “disinformation.” Or at least the spreaders thereof. A whole new academic discipline has emerged for spotting and discrediting said disinformation. Professor Robert Beckman at the School of Media Studies at the New School, for example, teaches “Fighting Disinformation: A News Media Literacy Video Series.” Beckman is far from alone in this academic quest. “Syracuse University Professors Seek Solutions to the Plague of Disinformation,” declares one headline. Two profs at that institution scored a $600,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security for that little venture. In fact, combatting disinfo is one of the hottest trends on campus these days.
Of course, the academy is only one part of the battlefield. Ever since federal judge Terry Doughty filed an order in the Western District of Louisiana declaring that government officials couldn’t treat Twitter, Meta and other social media companies as their personal playthings, the progressive establishment has been aghast. If Judge Doughty’s order stands, it would mean the moral guardians who protect us from “disinformation” would have to let Americans decide for themselves whom and what to believe. They would no longer be able to set up shop in the offices of Elon Musk’s little enterprise, the New York Times or even the Fort Wayne Weekly Sentinel.
People left to their own devices might fall prey to disinformation about China, Ukraine, or Iran. They might prove susceptible to the idea that America is not systemically racist. They might wonder if there are only two sexes. They might believe the legal availability of firearms drives the murder rate and prompts mass shootings.
When we stop to think about it, the list of topics on which the government and mass media feel called to protect us from “disinformation” is very long. Merely by printing some lists on which damnable forms of disinformation circulate, I may be triggering some readers. The only safe response is to avert your gaze and hum a Taylor Swift song. There is no doubt in bringing these matters up; however, I have already revealed myself as one who indulges in nefarious opinions. Not that I endorse all the heterodoxies hinted at above.
This is a glorious moment for us denialists. Not only has Judge Doughty flung open the windows to let the sunshine in, but Congress has also decided that the time has come to reveal the memos hidden away by the deep state censors, demand the testimony of the agency decepta-crats, and ask some really tough questions.
At the heart of the crusade against “disinformation” are lies and deception tenderly cultivated in our schools and urgently — often solemnly, sometimes indignantly — amplified by compliant news readers, sciencey-sounding researchers, and dignified officials.
What a wonder it is that many Americans take all this in — and just laugh. We know that the establishment is lying to us even if we can’t prove it. There’s just something about the preacher with his pants around his ankles that tips us off. That’s not to say that we so-called “conspiracists” lack solid evidence and compelling arguments. Often, that evidence is as naked as Hunter’s laptop, as heart-breaking as myocarditis among young, vaccinated athletes, and as conspicuous as Lia Thomas at a women’s swim meet.
But we also know that we will get into trouble if we press the point. Castigating us when we refuse to go along with the mandated delusions is the sport of our betters, but every time they do it, we grow more certain that those who guard against “disinformation” are really just guarding their own paychecks and privileges.
Finding new allies
We are, however, finding new allies. Journalist Michael Shellenberger testified to Congress recently about how the anti-disinformation crowd had come together to form what he calls the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” that combination of interest groups that seek to sanitize public life from all those gadfly opinions. Government agencies, social media, and university professors are the three legs of this complex. Shellenberger comes to this topic with the fame and credibility of being one of the journalists entrusted by Elon Musk to review the previously secret Twitter Files that exposed the deep involvement of the FBI and other government agencies in censoring public commentary.
Shellenberger’s fifty-three-page Congressional testimony isn’t the first serious effort to synthesize a picture of how the parts of the censorship regime mesh their gears. Before there was Shellenberger, we had Martin Gurri and Mattias Desmet — neither a household name, but both powerful interpreters of our current situation.
Gurri is a former CIA analyst, noted for his 2016 book, The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium, in which he describes “the slow-motion collision of two modes of organizing life: one hierarchical, industrial and top-down, the other networked, egalitarian, bottom-up.” In a recent essay for City Journal, Gurri offers some observations on Shellenberger’s testimony. “The Republicans,” he writes, “are caught in a circular dilemma: they need the presidency to be heard above the censorship, yet the censorship radically diminishes their chances of getting to the White House.” He also observes that “the establishment Left… can’t survive politically without control of the web — and it dwells in a dim institutional bubble where self-interest is forever confused with the salvation of democracy.”
Mattias Desmet is a Belgian professor of clinical psychology and at first glance too offshore to be a likely source of wisdom on America’s censorial conflicts on disinformation. But his work, especially his book The Psychology of Totalitarianism, has found an eager audience in the States. He is an exponent of the idea of “mass formation” as a kind of collective hypnosis in which the public is manipulated via technology. Our fears become the lever by which government accrues more and more power.
Shellenberger’s testimony is richly detailed, but it is more than a heap of facts. He has his eye on the history of the government’s programs of disinformation-justified-as-combatting-disinformation going back to Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address, in which he warned of the converging self-interest of government contractors and the Department of Defense. In Shellenberger’s view, the new censorship has roots in the post-9/11 War on Terror, but what drove it over the edge into a kind of government insanity were the fateful events of 2016: Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. These were both popular revolts against the security state’s perceived self-interest.
I have said more than enough about Shellenberger’s remarks, which deserve to be read in full. But let me not leave the topic of prevarication in our national life without tipping my hat to some of the other spelunkers in the Great Mammoth Cave of Deceit. I’ve been reading up on the topic, and I will mention three recent works: Aja Raden’s The Truth About Lies, Robert W. Malone’s Lies My Gov’t Told Meand Rod Dreher’s Live Not by Lies. These are works which, apart from the titles, have little in common. Raden is a jeweler, who headed the auction division of an estate jeweler and became a respected jewelry designer as well as an accomplished writer. Her book attempts to explain how and why we deceive ourselves, and her background suggests that she knows a thing or two about how we assist others down that path.
Malone is the physician who invented the first mRNA vaccine in the 1980s but then argued vociferously against the use of mRNA vaccines during the COVID-19 epidemic. His warnings only succeeded in getting him targeted as one of the prime spreaders of dangerous “disinformation.” His book comes with a foreword by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; twelve of its thirty-six chapters are written by others, including one by Mattias Desmet.
Dreher’s Live Not by Lies, subtitled “A Manual for Christian Dissidents,” takes up the topic of progressive attempts “to marginalize conservatives.” Dreher sees the technology-enabled “surveillance state” as part of the new “soft totalitarianism.” His answer to this threat is pietist: stand firm. Refuse to affirm the lies. Learn to live under persecution because that’s what’s coming.
It would be nice if I could conclude with the cheery thought that the Rule of the Censors is itself about to be buffeted by the chilly winds of truth-telling. Perfect candor will never be our lot, but couldn’t we find our way a little north of the line — the one that lies beyond the boundaries of Washington, DC — that separates orchestrated deceit from Barnumesque rodomontade?
Alas, looking at a recent poll of college students, the answer is maybe no. We have raised a generation of students who believe (by a 74 percent plurality) that using official power to silence those with whom you disagree is just fine.
Let’s hope that some of them were lying to the pollsters.
Coal that will be burned to generate electricity moves down a conveyor belt at the American Electric Power Co. (AEP) coal-fired John E. Amos Power Plant in Winfield, West Virginia, U.S., on Wednesday, July 18, 2018. American Electric Power Co., Duke Energy Corp., and others say they can't recoup money they spent to meet requirements to cut mercury and other air toxics from their facilities and therefore want the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to retain the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rule as is. Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images
EDL, a global energy producer, and project stakeholders including Republic Services have started operations at the Carbon Limestone Renewable Natural Gas Facility near Youngstown.
EDL owns and operates a portfolio of 97 power stations in North America, Australia and Europe. It has upgraded an existing landfill gas-to-energy power plant to a renewable natural gas facility near Republic Services’ Carbon Limestone Landfill. It is said to be one of the largest plants of its kind in North America.
Renewable natural gas is biogas that has been upgraded and placed in the conventional natural gas system.
Partners in the venture are NW Natural Renewables and Pennant Midwest. A goal of the project, those involved said, is decarbonizing their energy system across North America and reaching climate goals.
The new facility is designed to process and condition landfill gas — a by-product of naturally decomposing materials in the Carbon Limestone Landfill — and is expected to ramp up to 1.7 million British thermal units of pipeline-quality renewable natural gas in 2024.
Richard M. DiGia, EDL chief executive officer-North America, said EDL is proud to leverage its waste-to-clean energy expertise to drive development and construction of the Carbon Limestone project.
“The limestone facility is one of the largest plants of its kind in North America. It captures landfill gas that would otherwise be wasted and converts it into renewable natural gas that is a clean fuel source for powering vehicles, heating homes through the natural gas system, or electricity generation,” DiGia said.
“This facility is designed to produce volumes of RNG comparable to removing the emissions from 13,170 passenger vehicles from our roads each year. … We’re pleased to be assisting a key customer to progress toward their goal of decarbonizing through renewable natural gas supply.”
Republic Services Inc. provides customers with services such as recycling, solid waste, special waste, hazardous waste, container rental and field services. Republic Services said it has set ambitious sustainability goals to reduce emissions and increase the beneficial reuse of biogas by 2030.
“At Republic Services, our vision is to partner with customers to create a more sustainable world now and for future generations,” Republic Services Area President Chris Nie said.
“Through our partnership with EDL, we are capturing gas that is created by decomposing waste in our landfill. This project allows us to convert that gas into a lower-carbon fuel source that reduces greenhouse gas emissions.”
NW Natural Renewables, a competitive RNG business, has agreements in place for a 20-year supply of RNG produced by the facility. NW Natural Renewables Holdings said it is committed to leading in the energy transition and providing renewable fuels to support decarbonization in the utility, commercial, industrial and transportation sectors.
“We’re excited for this project to begin operations and start providing renewable natural gas to NW Natural Renewables and its customers,” said Mike Kotyk, president of NW Natural Renewables. “We believe renewable natural gas will play a critical role in decarbonizing our energy system across North America and helping us reach our collective climate goals.”
Pennant will transport up to 6,000 cubic feet of RNG per day through its existing system from the landfill, redelivering the gas to EDL’s downstream markets. Pennant is a wholly owned subsidiary of UGI Energy Services
Pennant Midstream operates both wet and dry gas and natural gas liquid gathering pipelines in Mercer and Lawrence counties, Pa.; and Mahoning and Columbiana counties in Ohio. Pennant operates a giant natural gas processing plant located near New Middletown.
Oklahoma Building $2 Billion Theme Park That Rivals Magic Kingdom. Disney is the King of the hill when it comes to theme parks. But a new player has arrived.
It was announced Wednesday that over $2 billion will be spent to open American Heartland Theme Park and Resort in northeast Oklahoma.
The proposed 125-acre park is comparable to Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, located in Orlando, Florida, and Disneyland in Anaheim, California.
“The park will feature an Americana-themed environment with a variety of entertaining rides, live shows, family attractions, waterways as well as restaurant-quality food and beverage offerings,” the release said.
A new entertainment development is coming to Oklahoma! American Heartland Theme Park and Resort will offer a visitor experience rivaling the world’s top resort destinations. Three Ponies RV Park will open in 2025 and the theme park in 2026. pic.twitter.com/bLBNdsCNwV
— American Heartland Theme Park (@AmericanHrtland) July 20, 2023
Available funding for pregnancy resource centers in Ohio has more than doubled for the next two years.
Gov. Mike DeWine signed the state’s budget in late June, allocating $14 million for the Department of Job and Family Services’ Parenting and Pregnancy Program, which distributes grants to nonprofits that assist families, moms, and babies — including pregnancy resource centers, WDNT reported. The state’s new budget for pregnancy resource centers is up by $8 million.
Services provided by pregnancy resource centers include offering pregnancy testing, ultrasounds, clothing and baby supplies, as well as referrals, medical support, maternity housing, and state assistance programs. Their mission is to encourage women to choose life for their child.
“The majority of women who have abortions report that they did it because they lacked resources and they lacked community,” Beth Vanderkooi, executive director of the Greater Columbus Right to Life, told NBC 4. “They’re alone – they don’t have a partner; they don’t have a family; they don’t have that support. Pregnancy centers are there to walk with women.”
The move comes as the state’s six week abortion ban has been blocked by a judge since October.
With more than 200 pregnancy resource centers across the state, a 2021 study by Ohio State University found one in seven women of reproductive age have visited a pregnancy resource center.
However, many on the left mischaracterize pregnancy resource centers as “fake clinics” that “spread misinformation.”
State Rep. Bride Rose Sweeney (D) called this budget appropriation meant to help women “unfortunate.” “It’s unfortunate that we are spending quite significantly – any public money – towards health care that is not trusting women to make their own decisions and get all of the information that they need,” Sweeney said.
Other states have even gone as far as to ban funding for pregnancy resource centers. In April, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed “$2 million in state funding into a program to promote childbirth for unplanned pregnancies,” the Kansas Reflector reported.
“I did the calculation,” testified Steve Kirsch in front of the Pennsylvania State Senate.
Given that five Amish people died in Lancaster County, PA, “the Amish died at a rate 90 times lower than the infection fatality rate of the United States of America.”
“Now, how is that possible?” Steve Kirsch asked. “It’s possible because the Amish aren’t vaccinated. And because the Amish didn’t follow a single guideline of the CDC,” he answered.
“They did not lock down. They did not mask. They did not social distance. They did not vaccinate, and there were no mandates in the Amish community to get vaccinated. They basically ignored every single guideline that the CDC gave us. Ignoring those guidelines meant a death rate 90 times lower than the rest of America.”
The Amish Died of COVID at a Rate 90 Times LOWER Than the Rest of America
“I did the calculation,” testified @stkirsch in front of the Pennsylvania State Senate.
Given five Amish people died in Lancaster Country, PA, “the Amish died at a rate 90 times lower than the infection… pic.twitter.com/qa0EhPfssH
Here’s the video transcript for those who want to read more:
Let’s talk about the Amish. Yesterday, I drove to Lancaster County (Pennsylvania). I drove to Amish country. I drove from house to house to house. I actually went to the house of a relative of Gideon King. He’s the one person, the only known person in the Amish community who supposedly died from COVID — that I’m aware of.
Now, they say there may be up to five people in Lancaster County who died from COVID, but I was unable to get the names of five people. I offered a $2,500 reward on Twitter. Hey, give me the names of more than five people in Lancaster County who died from COVID. Not a single person was able to name more than one person. They all named Gideon King. One guy.
So, I actually went to the house of Sam King, who’s a relative of Gideon King. And I talked to Sam. He doesn’t know if Gideon actually died from COVID or not. He died in the hospital. They think it was COVID, but maybe he died from the COVID hospital protocols. Okay.
So, you look at the Amish. I did the calculation. Let’s say there were five Amish people — because people say, I think there were maybe a few, or maybe there were five Amish people. And then I asked them, okay, can you name them? And nobody can name them.
But let’s say that we could name them — and there were five Amish people who died. That means the Amish died at a rate 90 times lower than the infection fatality rate of the United States of America. The Amish died at 90 times lower rate from COVID than America — than the rest of America.
Now, how is that possible? It’s possible because the Amish aren’t vaccinated. And because the Amish didn’t follow a single guideline of the CDC. They did not lock down. They did not mask. They did not social distance, They did not vaccinate, and there were no mandates in the Amish community to get vaccinated. They basically ignored every single guideline that the CDC gave us. Ignoring those guidelines meant a death rate 90 times lower than the rest of America.
So you talk about taking guidance from the WHO? Why don’t we copy what works? In fact, wouldn’t it be great to say in the next pandemic that Pennsylvania will take guidance from the Amish instead of the WHO? And you will be much, much better off.
Steve Kirsch breaks down the numbers in more detail on his Substack page:
Steve Kirsch’s newsletter
BREAKING: The US COVID mitigation measures resulted in 90X higher COVID deaths
Executive summary On May 22, 2023, I offered a $2,500 reward for anyone to give me the names of more than 5 Amish people in Lancaster, PA (which is the world’s largest single community of Amish people with over 45,000 people) who died from COVID. Nobody could do that. I got a few names. And nobody could name anyone under 50 years old who was suspected of…
OXFORD, Pennsylvania —Despite the wealth of information at our fingertips in the information age, there is a glaring emptiness that plagues us in our storytelling.
We remove nuance and replace it with sensationalism. We shun original stories because they stray too far from the pack. In the process, we miss the beauty, pain, and magic, the simplicity and grace of simple, real-life stories about the ordinary lives of people who work the soil to make America possible. The result is that we lose touch with who we are as a nation.
Bill Hostetter was sitting in the banquet hall of the massive Spooky Nook sports facility in Manheim, Pennsylvania. He was surrounded by hundreds of other farmers, as well as agriculture scientists who do research and development work for the nation’s food supply. They all traveled from across Pennsylvania to attend the annual PennAg banquet, which honors outstanding leaders in the agricultural community.
The Hostetter family has been operating their grain farm for three generations.
(Salena Zito)
Seated to Hostetter’s left was Russell Redding, Pennsylvania’s secretary of agriculture. The lights dimmed as the program began with a video recalling the Hostetter family’s impact in this country; despite most of the audience having experienced the same things, his story of sacrifice, hard work, loss, and success brought much of the packed room to tears. That included Hostetter, who had never seen the video before.
Hostetter, along with a team of research scientists from the Pennsylvania Animal Diagnostic Laboratory System, was here to accept Distinguished Service Awards for their contribution to America’s food supply. PADLS scientists keep track of zoonotic diseases, working hand in hand with farmers to ensure their farms can continue providing a reliable food supply.
Without both the grit of the farmer and the training of these hardworking scientists, we would not have that food on all of our tables every day. Yet their respective contributions are unevenly understood.
Without the hard work of the scientists at the PADLS lab, who work around the clock tracking the avian flu, its ravages could have been significantly worse than the 4 million birds lost locally last year. Hostetter’s impact on our lives is less visible, less understood especially by reporters, who are often drawn more to science than to farming. Science is something they were taught in school; farming was not. Science brings new gadgets to their lives and makes things easier. Farming, without which they could not live at all, is too far removed from where they live and what they do.
Hostetter explained that his father, Wilmer, and his mother, Joyce, started their family’s grain business in 1977, when Wilmer built a grain elevator to support the grain business he had started 10 years prior.
Before that, his parents had a well-respected dairy farm, known not just across the country but also internationally for breeding quality dairy cows.
A truck in a long line of trucks carrying signs in support of Barry Hostetter drives past the entrance of his farm.
(Salena Zito)
Bill said that he, along with his brothers Barry, Bernie, and John, were all involved with the business right from the start as kids. “I learned it literally from the ground up, working long days at the pit, unloading corn trucks and sweeping out the grain bins,” he said.
To this day, he said, he does not ask anyone working around the grain elevator to do anything he hasn’t done.
Hostetter Grain started here in Oxford with a 95,000-bushel storage bin in the spring for the wheat harvest, followed by a 95,000-bushel bin for the corn harvest.
Today, it owns three elevators outright and holds lease agreements with six other elevators with a total capacity of more than 8 million bushels.
“I remember my father and I standing out in the parking lot taking a look at that first bin and saying, ‘That’s a big bin,'” he said. “We were really concerned about filling it. Now, with all the elevators we have and the relationships we have, we fill that 95,000-bushel bin by 9:30 Monday morning.”
Hostetter said that his is a world of trust and relationships. “If you think about what we do, we write grain contracts that could value well over a million dollars, all done with a simple conversation over the phone, followed up by a one-page contract, either by mail or email,” he said. “And it works.”
If it were any other industry, it would be a much more complex transaction, with multiple layers of lawyers, pages of contracts, and hundreds of emails. In the faster, often sterile world outside of agriculture, where relationships are not cultivated, texting is preferred. Handshakes are improbable. It is good to be reminded, then, that there are still places in this world not so detached from the people and things in which they deal.
Hostetter, 64, said that no matter who he is working with in the industry — the producer or the end user — it is a great industry to be part of. “We work with salt-of-the-earth people,” he said, “honest people, trustworthy people.”
For those who would look at this assessment as naive, Hostetter is not that. There is something to be said about anyone who has spent an entire career dealing with transactions this way, and has not only grown the business, but has been arguably very successful. In fact, he now looks forward to his nephews — Jared, Eric, and Jason — taking over from him.
“I guess the greatest accomplishment was not only growing the business but now having it ready for the next generation to lead it forward — the third one in my family to take my parents’ risk into the future,” he said.
Hostetter’s life has not been without loss. Three years ago, his then 60-year-old brother Barry was battling late-stage pancreatic cancer. Like Bill, Barry was in the family business, and like Bill, his list of civic involvement in the community was long. He served on the Chester Co. Holstein Club, the Chester-Delaware County Farm Bureau Board, the Oxford Zoning Hearing Board, and the board of directors for the Lighthouse Youth Ministry in Oxford for over 30 years.
The Hostetter Farm.
(Salena Zito)
Because of Barry’s dedication, the community wanted to let him know what he had meant to them. His health took a sudden turn for the worse, and within days, local farmers volunteered to coordinate the local township, fire company, county sheriff’s department, state police, and PennDOT to close down the road leading to the Hostetters’ house. They put a call out to local farmers who worked with the family and hoped that a few trucks would show up for the prayer parade they wanted to offer for Barry.
Instead of a few trucks, several hundred grain trucks, tractors, and farm vehicles from several different states and surrounding counties came out to offer prayer for the Hostetter family. Many of them taped homemade signs of hope, love, and appreciation to the sides of their vehicles as they lined the road for miles and for hours for Barry.
“The sight of those trucks that just went on and on, and the effort it took to make that happen, with many of them traveling over the back roads to get here, was humbling,” Hostetter said, his voice cracking as tears welled up. “You never really know the impact you have on others. You just try to do your best every day.”
“Barry, well, he sat in his pickup on the farm, waving at everyone,” Bill said. “Barry passed not long after that, but he was able to see the impact he had had on other peoples lives, and he really, really enjoyed that day.”
Hostetter explained that his wife Melissa was also injured in a car accident in 1999. This left her with a spinal cord injury and wheelchair-bound at a young age.
“I admire overcomers, and her zest for life is powerful,” he said.
Hostetter lost his father Wilmer in February.
“He and my mother are the biggest influences on life,” he said. “It was such a great loss. Still ask myself every day, ‘Well, what would my father do in this situation?’”
Then, he smiled. “Why would anyone want to know my family’s story?” he asked. “There are thousands, millions of families like mine across this country.”
A partial answer may lie within a speech given 45 years ago by Paul Harvey at that year’s FFA Convention, when he described the hard work, sacrifice, and sense of community farmers and ranchers have passed down for generations in this nation.
The people who form the backbone of our country, often working from sun-up to sundown, caring for the land and their livestock, placing food on all of our tables, have stories of their own. We need to tell more of those stories.
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“I did the calculation,” testified Steve Kirsch in front of the Pennsylvania State Senate.
