Before we get going on the highlights of last weekend’s Loganberry Festival at the Greenbank Farm, please enjoy this tongue and groove e-mail submission by Patti, one of our regular-irregular Internet readers in Bisbee, Ariz.

Her e-mail subject line reads: Three Things to Ponder — Cows, The Constitution and The Ten Commandments.

Cows: Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amazing that our government can track a cow with Mad Cow disease, born in Canada almost three years ago, right to the stall where she sleeps in the State of Washington? They even tracked her calves to their stalls. Yet they are unable to locate 20 million illegal aliens wandering around our country.

Maybe we should give them all a cow.

The Constitution: They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don’t we just give them ours?

It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it’s worked for over 200 years, and we’re not using it anymore.

The Ten Commandments: Here’s the real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse. You cannot post “Thou Shalt Not Steal,” “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery,” and “Thou Shall Not Lie” in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians.

It creates a hostile work environment!

OK, so you are a retired notary public and you take offense at the above sarcasm.

Please fast-forward to this “You-Logy.”

Did we have fun, or what?

The sights, sounds and smells of Logy Fest 2006 will be remembered by many smiling attendees.

Is there a more beautiful place than the Greenbank Farm to sip Ken Bloom’s wine with a bite from Nadya’s gyro?

Where else can you see a dedicated board of directors synchronize their shovels while two-stepping like the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes to the Goose Poop Scooping Boogie?

Where else but the Greenbank Farm can you find a forklift operator named Greenbank Hank guest guitaring with a blues band as talented as DA Sharks?

Maybe I am prejudiced. Maybe I am biased. Maybe I am amazed.

Last Sunday’s Loganberry Festival closed with a rocking assemblage of locals who joined DA Sharks for an improvised, electrified cover of Junior Wells’ classic “Snatch it back & hold it.”

What a treat to hear and see Janie Cribbs’ vocal magic sail off the stage as the rhythms and percussive rhymes of Roger Bennett and David Malony escalated our heartbeats per minute to three figures left of the decimal.

What a joy to watch the kids’ loganberry colored faces buried in pie tins laced with Jan Gunn’s pie crust.

One of my favorite teachers, Dr. Robert H. Bitzer, presented a lecture on Armistice Day in 1992. I listened to the tape again last night as I was removing a cedar splinter from beneath the nail of my ring finger.

I had picked up a bit of a Greenbank Farm offering last Sunday morning while sliding my left hand on the banister while walking upstairs to the office above Chris and Laurel’s wine shop.

Removing your own splinter, deeply imbedded, is not unlike trying to do your own root canal. Yet, after remembering that I had completed two years of pre-med in the ‘60s, as well as being a trained killer in the ‘70s, I quickly knew that I was the boy for the job.

Listening to Dr. Bitzer’s November 1992 address soothed my senses as I stretched my skin, lifted my nail, and slowly slid one tine of Dad’s German tweezers toward my digital debris.

As the tension dismounted, I realized that if I slipped with the tweezers I might never play the clarinet again.

Dr. Bitzer’s words rang true throughout the caboose as I patiently captured cedar chiplets from beneath my cutaneousness.

“We are at peace when we are at peace with ourselves.”

“Being ourselves gives us peace.”

“We must express ourselves to be at peace.”

No wonder this year’s Loganberry Festival was so comfortable, so peaceful, so well-received.

Look at all the folks who were expressing themselves.

Look at all the people who were being themselves, creating life and joy and wisdom.

Artists, craftsmen, gourmet food creators, local vendors, famous poets, skilled musicians, pie-makers, pie-eaters and guys selling calendars for the Soroptimists.

“You see, life is not a period of testing. We need to get that out of our mind. Life is not a period of seeing how much we can stand or how much we can take. Life is a matter of seeing how much truth we can express. Get a positive concept in there. You are here to express the truth. That’s all. You are not here to see how much suffering you can take, how much sickness, how much antagonism you can take or stir.

None of those are a part of what you are about, or what life is about. Life is about you, being yourself, rising above all circumstances and rising above all circumstances and creating that which is consistent with your expression. We’re not here to see how much we can learn. We’re here to see how much we can express.”

Thank you one and all for sharing your gifts of self with the neighborhood.

Maybe we can join together again tonight at the Bayview Hall for some more self-expression with a few hours of 4-H fundraising country fun, line dancing and two-stepping.

Walter Dill and Donna Hood will be teaching the latest moves like the Cowboy Cha-Cha and The Smooth. You know — Xavier Cugat meets Hoot Gibson and Sam Perkins.

From 8:30 until 11 p.m., I’ll be on the scene, with a stack of shellac and my record machine, spinning the hits of yesteryear, yesterday and yestermonth.

Anything to keep the peace pounding!