It’s amazing the difference a few weeks of rain can make. The Zumwalt Prairie that was dusty and getting low on drinking water is now verdant and ponds are full. I haven’t moved sprinklers or irrigated for three weeks and the grass is getting ahead of the cattle.

It looks like the drought in Texas and Oklahoma is broken. Half of Oklahoma and most of Texas is under water. See what happens when the Bible Belt prays for rain? I hope they have learned their lesson. I talked to my friend Ace Berry who now lives just south of Oklahoma City and he is on high ground but received 17 inches of rain in May and it is still coming.

I can’t figure out whether living in this beautiful county spurs creativity and talent or whether it attracts talented people. I lived in a county about this size that has a population of over 500,000 people. I knew one guy that could play a guitar. I didn’t know anyone that had written a book, I knew a couple of people that were artistic but that was the extent of talent I knew about. I had the opportunity to attend the spring Wallowa County Music Alliance program held in the Odd Fellows hall a couple of weeks ago and am still amazed at all the musical talent here. The fact that the program covered old country music was a plus. Everything from Jimmie Rodgers music to Hank Williams and the Sons of the Pioneers. The musicians that performed represented only part of the vast local musical talent.

In addition to the musical talent we are blessed with many artists, writers and sculptors. All this talent crammed into an agricultural county of 7,000. When I told my family I was moving to Wallowa County they told me it would be a cultural wasteland. Every time they visit I rub their noses in that idea.

I don’t fly very often anymore, thank God. Being put into a lead-up like we are a bunch of cattle to finally be processed by TSA adds a lot to the misery of traveling. Then to find that TSA fails 95 percent of the tests they run on them to find guns and explosives, makes you wonder if there isn’t a better way. I suggest issuing a loaded .45 to all passengers when they board. That would put a stop to terrorism and also make the flying public more courteous during the flight.

I see that some Muslims are demanding that the welfare food they are given be of Islamic code, whatever that is. They also insist that their women must wear a face covering even for driver license photos.

It seems that all minorities want to have their own set of laws. Chris Rock, who is Black, has a great YouTube film that should be mandatory for everyone to watch. I think the title is “How not to get beat up by the cops.” Not only is it succinct, it is very funny. It seems that we are not getting much better at being tolerant of each other’s differences and races, and political parties have agitators within them that love things polarized. Like Rodney King said, “Can’t we all just get along.” In Wallowa County the hippies and cowboys seem to do a good job of tolerating each other.

The situation in the Middle East continues as it has for centuries. Stupidly, we think we can throw money at their problems and fix the unfixable. We continue to ship state-of-the-art weapons to Iraq so their army can abandon them to ISIS as soon as they show up with a few zealots. It appears that our foreign policy is to arm both sides so we can keep things in an uproar. This is a windfall for the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about. They get to sell us arms to distribute to both sides of a never-ending conflict. All this money leaving the country and I live on a dirt road.

Open Range columnist Barrie Qualle is a working cowboy in Wallowa County.