Valedictorian and Mouthpiece

It is a beautiful day here in northeast Indiana, quickly approaching the time of summer when you can watch the corn grow. I brewed an extra strong pot of coffee to kickstart my Friday, and the caffeine is kicking in as I walk through our backyard flower wonderland. As I walk, I cannot shake the words I heard from a valedictorian's speech.

Politics have no place in a high school commencement speech, unless those politics happen to agree with the people running the show.

I've sat through a lot of graduations over the years, and most commencement speeches follow the same well-worn formula. Every so often, though, one steps outside the lines. I recently watched the ceremony from my own high school alma mater, and the valedictorian spent a good portion of his time at the microphone going after the governor of Indiana and the Republican party by name, laying the state of public education at their feet.

I'll give him this much: I agreed with a fair amount of what he said, and I admire a young man willing to stand up with a conviction and say it out loud. His charge to his classmates, to get off the sidelines, get involved, and go make something change, was exactly the kind of call this laissez-faire generation needs to hear. That part I'll defend without hesitation.

But here's what I can't get past. At my niece's graduation last year, a different school, same state, a student was escorted out of the building for the crime of carrying a Palestinian flag. No words, no microphone, no audience held captive, just a flag. And hers isn't an isolated case. Every graduation season, somewhere, a student gets pulled out of a ceremony for a silent protest, a flag, a pin, a sash, while another stage somewhere else hands a microphone to a speech that goes after a sitting governor by name.

This was never really about politics having no place at graduation. It was the administration condoning politics that protected their own domain. That's not simple hypocrisy, hypocrisy at least implies they didn't notice the contradiction. This was amateurish political grandstanding, with a valedictorian handed the mouthpiece, even if every word out of his mouth was his own conviction and his own thought.

A flag never said a word. The microphone did. The difference wasn't whose voice was louder. It was whose voice the people in charge needed.

We Were Sold the Bearded Woman but Got the Girl Next Door

Today dawned with another sunny promise of a beautiful day in northeast Indiana. Yesterday we were under the threat of dangerous storms but today looks to be a pleasant June day. As my coffee was brewing I looked across the backyard and saw all the beautiful flowers reaching towards the sun and felt it was going to be a good day. I headed to my office with a plan for today's reflection but that topic was shelved after the response to last night's social media post pulled me in a different direction.

Yesterday was a stormy day through the Midwest, starting with storms in Iowa that only strengthened as they moved into Illinois and southern Indiana. My weather app kept pushing warnings of thunderstorms and tornadoes, and the radar looked menacing. But for us we only received 35 hundredths of an inch of rain and no wind.

I made a short social media post last night about the fact that we only received 35 hundredths when only 48 hours before, forecasters were warning of upwards of four inches of rainfall and dangerous, life-threatening winds. The National Weather Service even had us under a flood warning. I posted about how those warnings had some of my neighbors in a panic. I had neighbors scrambling to find storm shelters in preparation for this massive storm — honestly fearful for their lives and belongings because of the assurances that a catastrophic storm was coming. A storm that missed us.

Now I need to be careful here, because the storm did end up being massive — dangerous tornadoes, significant winds, serious rainfall. But the models changed, the track moved south, and our area received very little.

There is a line between Walter Cronkite and P.T. Barnum. Cronkite believed in the discipline of the fact — here is what we know, here is what we don't, here is the margin for error. Barnum believed in the crowd. Give them the bearded woman. Give them something to gasp at.

Modern weather coverage — and particularly social media weather coverage — has wandered a long way from Cronkite's desk.

A friend pushed back on my post last night. Said I could simply choose not to read the forecasts if they bothered me, that they just wanted to be prepared. That's a fair point and I respect it. Preparedness is a virtue, especially in agriculture where the sky is always a variable. But preparation built on amplified fear is a shaky foundation. You can tell someone a significant storm is possible, that models show a concerning track, that they should watch conditions and have a plan — and do all of that without manufacturing panic. The facts, stated plainly, are usually sufficient.

The models changed. The track shifted south, some of it as late as six hours before the event. That's meteorology — and I understand that. The storms were real, the damage was real, and for those in the path the warnings were warranted.

My frustration isn't with the science. It's with the certainty. Days of amplified, unqualified predictions with no disclaimer, no margin of error, no acknowledgment that the track could shift. I pay a not insignificant amount each year for a professional weather service. I expected someone to tell me here's what we know, here's what we don't, here's what to watch for. Instead I got a carnival barker selling certainty with "trust the app."

What my neighbors needed was a clinician with a decent bedside manner. Just the facts. Joe Friday had it right all along.

Stupid Enough to Open My Mouth

Today dawned with a clear sky and strong sun, hiding the potential for severe weather later. I am enjoying the sun and my coffee, thinking about being the one "stupid enough" to say out loud what everyone is thinking but doesn't say.

Recently I've written about the local fire protection funds and local politics. Many people talked about it, but I was the only one to write about it, to raise the hidden voices to the fore. This morning while enjoying the summer flowers shout their beauty with their blossoms, I thought about times in my work career where I said what was unpopular because others didn't want to, or were fearful to speak.

When I think back to those times, it is now obvious that the reason for the fear was the environment built by leadership, an environment where the CEO led with micromanagement and intimidation. I remember my supervisor saying to me, "I think I just lost my job for speaking the truth in an Executive Meeting because it disagreed with the CEO." This trickled down to the detriment of the company. Most adopted an "I'm just doing my job, keeping my head down" mentality.

In retrospect I see with better clarity how damaging this leadership was. It wasn't the lack of employees speaking up that caused the problems — it was the leadership.

There was no feeling of cooperation, no pulling the same wagon. There was fear of someone watching over your shoulder and criticizing, quietly threatening employment even though there were no firings or restructures.

In the workplace, perception becomes reality.

While the management team had no plans for workforce changes, the message from them and the CEO manifested as fear — fear of firings. That perception became reality and cost the company more than they ever knew. All because of the environment cultivated by leadership.

As you work with your teams, how do you react when someone is "stupid enough" to say out loud what others are thinking? Maybe instead of criticism, the response should be an inquisitive one — if they said it, what are others thinking? Especially when it doesn't come from the persistent contrarian.

Waiting for Someone Who May Never Come

This is a bonus Patio Pondering on a Sunday afternoon.  I am actually writing this from the patio after eating lunch while watching the radar and waiting for today’s “popup” rain.  Most of this weekend my thoughts have gone back to a side trip I made after working with some of my Chinese clients in Chicago, a side trip I did not plan but had me anxious as I drove across Chicago last Friday morning.

As some of you know I am an advanced novice genealogist, my family tree has almost 7,000 people in it.  I am past the “who is your grandmother” stage and into the dead ends in Aixheim, Wurttemberg, why did they leave Sulzfeld, Baden, and was he really a captain in the English Army phase.  My searches regularly end in brick walls or revelations of facts I already have in my records.  Many of my searches now are punctuated with more “why’s” coming from facts.

Now back to Chicago.  You better tighten your seatbelt; this could be a bumpy ride back to the 19th century.

In the 1980s my grandmother corresponded with Forest Home Cemetery, formerly Waldheim, to get lots for burial of several Hagenbucher relatives, including my great-great-grandparents.  She shared those letters with her family; I have my own copies.  Since I was already in Chicago, I made the trip to Forest Home with nothing more than lot numbers and unknown expectations.

I found the plot in Section N where my great-great-grandparents Hagenbucher and step great-great-grandmother were buried and I was crestfallen.  The three plots where my ancestors who braved the trip from Baden to the United States to build a life were marked with only a small marble marker engraved simply with “The Hagenbucher Family.”

Nothing for Tobias.

Nothing for Karolina the elder.

Nothing for Karolina the younger.

The Hagenbuchers are my great-great-grandparents on my paternal side (my grandmother Smith’s grandparents.)  They emigrated from Baden, a part of the newly formed German Empire, to the United States in 1882. They were just six of the many that made up the great wave of Germanic people escaping economic and social challenges.

In Baden, Tobias and Karolina the elder knew each other from a young age, they had to since they were first cousins; their fathers were brothers. They were baptized as Lutherans in Sulzfeld Baden, a small village in what is now southwest Germany. After their marriage in 1874 they had four children: Caroline, Rose (my great-grandmother), Louis, and Louise.  Two years after the birth of the youngest child they left their small village and traveled to the United States on the ship Price Frederick Wilhelm, arriving in New York on April 30, 1882.

Regardless of the family legend that Tobias attended Heidelberg University with Kaiser Bismarck, the fact remains that he was a gardener and not the eldest son.  As one of my German cousins said “Hagenbuchers were poor farmers, there’s no way any of them attended university.”  He would inherit nothing and his work as a gardener would not be high paying.  This statement gives me insight as to why the young Hagenbucher family left Baden.

After moving to Chicago, Tobias and Karolina the elder opened a Confectionery and Milk Depot at 72 Canalport St. in Chicago.  This is where Tobias built the massive forearms my grandmother mentioned, carrying 100 plus pound milk jugs every morning.  I know little of this store other than a photo recently shared with me of Karolina and her children gathered on the front steps around 1890.

In my grandmother’s reminiscence she tells that Tobias was a member of the Turn Verein Vorwaerts along with a singing group that performed at the 1892 Chicago World’s Fair.  I found online Tobias’ naturalization documents as well as his voter registrations and voting records.  This was not just a man existing in his new life in Chicago, he was involved as a contributing member of society.

As with so many families in the not-so-distant past, tragedy struck when Karolina the elder died in November of 1890. I can find no records of her death outside of burial records and an official death announcement listing Ph Young as the funeral home and Waldheim as the interment site.  Nothing else.

Charged with running a store and milk depot, meeting milk transports every morning, Tobias sent to Germany for help, Karoline Himmel left Sulzfeld and moved to Chicago.  Not only was Karolina Himmel the now-deceased Karolina the elder’s niece, she was also Tobias’s first cousin once removed.  Tobias and Karolina Himmel married in just five months after the death of Karolina the elder. My family stories say they tried to have children but all pregnancies ended without living children.

Tobias and Karolina the younger continued the store and milk depot until the early 1900s when they moved to Northwest Indiana and owned and operated an almost 150-acre farm in St. John, Indiana. Karolina the younger died in 1934 and Tobias in 1937 as a patient at the Elgin State Hospital in Elgin, Illinois. Another why for me: How did he get from St. John, Indiana to Elgin, Illinois?

I have searched for more information on these ancestors, I cannot find church records in Chicago, no obituaries for any of them, just an official death record for Karolina the elder from 1890.  I am left with two pages of information written by my grandmother along with four letters from Forest Home Cemetery with vital and burial records.

Now back to my side trip in Chicago last week.

I stood a short distance from the family headstone trying to imagine the scenes from so many years ago when each of my three ancestors were interred, trying to imagine the mourners in attendance, the weather, the memories they were sharing with others and trying to imagine the cemetery as a new resting place without the wear and tear of years of weather and unintended neglect. I stood there trying to imagine my twenty-four-year-old grandmother as one of the mourners even though she never mentioned in her writing she attended.

I am also thinking about the forgottenness of these ancestors. Their headstone is not level and there were no signs of any memorials, just a plain gray stone sitting akimbo in the green grass.  Nothing to signify the struggles, joys, love, successes and failures of these three people.

The fact that Tobias was a business owner, politically active, and a member of at least two German societies makes the question of why there is no headstone for him and his wives separately stronger. 

What happened?

How do my ancestors who crossed an ocean, built a business, raised a family, became citizens, voted, joined civic organizations, and helped build a city end up remembered by nothing more than a small family marker?

I sit here on the patio as the rain falls on this cloudy Sunday lamenting that the lives of my great-great-grandparents are marked only by a simple family headstone. No larger, personalized memorial to the hard life they lived or their legacy.  How many stories and legacies get neglected like that headstone in Chicago, sitting there unlevel, waiting for someone who may never come?

Baking Soda in the Flour Jar

This Friday morning is dawning with clear skies and the day promises to be a great end of the week. I am enjoying my coffee as I listen to the birds around the patio while my wife and son skitter about in the house preparing for their day. As I sit here with the warm mug in my hand on a chilly morning my thoughts turn to a conversation I had with my wife last night relating to silos and how we pigeonhole people.

Last week I attended a public meeting of the plan commission in a county where we own land and farm. The commission needed input on altering regulations for "small commercial" livestock operations, the ones that fall below the state-regulated CFOs. My experience in the commercial swine industry throughout the Midwest, coupled with being a landowner, taxpayer, and farmer in the county, put me in a unique position.

As I sat there watching and listening I quickly realized the public commenters were not answering the questions asked by the plan commission, and the commission was led by both elected and non-elected officials who had no idea what they were doing. Most of the public complained about smell, threw out that they had lived in their homes for 25 years, and offered no input on the setbacks proposed. They offered nothing the plan commission could use to better their proposal.

I was the last speaker. I had the opportunity to listen and watch the commission blanch at unconstructive comments. I started by sharing my experience as an international swine production consultant and how I have worked with these types of operations throughout the Midwest. I was not just another citizen there to complain.

My suggestions were twofold: around property lines and the potential to use windbreaks to help with neighborly relations and reducing odors leaving the farm sites. When I offered potential solutions I saw the telltale signs of understanding with the head nods, eye contact, and note taking. They were listening to me because I was not offering the same "these barns are bad," "they are poisoning our water," or "I don't want them in my backyard" comments they had heard for the twenty minutes before I took the lectern.

Then last night I attended a local park board meeting simply as an interested taxpayer. The talk was similar to the public comments at the plan commission meeting, opinions and perspectives limited by the participants' geographic experience around our area. There were two discussions where I was able to add potential solutions that were outside of our community, solutions I was able to offer because of my experience outside of the community. After the meeting, two members asked me for more information on what I suggested. Maybe my contacts will help the park.

As I shared this with my wife she said, "Too bad those skills and experiences were not highlighted in your past jobs."

She was right. She saw my public speaking, my interviewing, my experiences — all things not related to swine nutrition. She saw that they were benefits ignored in the past.

In our specialized world we tend to pigeonhole people, throwing them into canisters like those on grandma's counter filled with baking ingredients. Separated and not to be mixed unless needed.

I see this all the time. You're the salesman, we don't need your input on trucking. You're the tech manager, we don't need your input on sales. You're the plant manager, we don't need your thoughts on product development.

As you look over your teams, who are the people you see sealed off in the wrong canister — baking soda in the flour jar — that could add perspective and vibrancy to other parts of your business?

We Permitted It. Now We're Protecting It.

This morning, I had to register a vehicle at the local BMV office, so I didn't have time to enjoy my coffee on the patio as I normally do. I did enjoy the sunny sky as I drove through our neighborhood, seeing hay ready to dry and some crops popping through. As I drove, I thought about the rabbit hole I had allowed myself to fall into with the recent social media and television discussion surrounding the Mackenzie Shirilla murder case.

I made the mistake of either clicking or lingering too long on a post, and my feed almost instantly filled with content about the crash from nearly two years ago, fueled now by a recent Netflix documentary. Legitimate podcasters, casual commentators, and self-appointed internet experts are all weighing in. Some are scrolling through more than 30,000 pages of text messages, offering detailed opinions on relationships and events. It is a lot to absorb.

As I watched the discussion unfold, two things struck me.

The first is the normalization of things that are not normal, things that do not fit the Midwest goodness most of us expect from this part of the country. The case has pulled back the curtain on a pattern of behavior that should have raised alarms long before that July morning. Marijuana use among teenagers, cohabitation between minors and young adults, plans to use psychedelic mushrooms, parents choosing friendship over accountability, a quiet absence of boundaries. All of it treated as unremarkable. All of it nodded past.

The second is the whitewashing of the victims' lives. The two young men who died did not deserve their deaths. That is not in question. But their deaths do not erase their histories. One of the victims appears to have been dealing both marijuana and mushrooms to teenagers, activity described in coverage as "crypto trading." There is video evidence of breaking and entering, shared around as teenagers just having fun. When anyone attempts to discuss these realities, they are quickly labeled as victim blamers and shouted down. Friends who refused to speak with police became remarkably forthcoming once documentary cameras arrived, offering accounts that do not always square with what unbiased observers can plainly see.

Here is what strikes me about those two observations: they are not separate problems. They are the same problem at different points on the timeline. We normalized the behavior while it was happening. Nobody stopped it. Nobody named it. Then tragedy struck, and we are doing the same thing again, only in the opposite direction. First, we looked away. Now we are repainting.

Last week I wrote about a young man taken way too soon. A young man with promise, with goals, with nothing to hide. I celebrated the truth of his life because that is what he deserved. This week I am writing about the same obligation from the opposite direction. When the truth is good, we tell it gladly. When the truth is complicated, we bury it, rename it, and attack anyone who tries to dig it up. The standard should not change based on what the truth turns out to be.

I've watched this pattern before. Not on a screen. People who knew the truth sat with it quietly, out of respect for the living. I understood the silence. I never stopped thinking about what it cost.

Calling out the full truth of a person's life is not victim blaming. It is not cruelty. It is the only honest accounting available to us. A truthful picture includes the parts that are hard to look at. That is not an attack on someone's memory. It is a refusal to trade reality for comfort.

Comfort carries a cost. When we permit bad behavior we send a signal that it is acceptable. When tragedy strikes and we then protect the reputations of those involved, we send that signal again. Same instinct, different moment, same failure.

The next family is already out there somewhere. Living inside the same patterns. Surrounded by the same silence. Waiting for someone to say something.

We permitted it. We are protecting it. And somewhere right now, we are permitting it again.

Crying Wolf with the CC Line

It is summer in NE Indiana, at least it is after Memorial Day that is. Our landscaping is exploding with flowers and insects are taking advantage of the blossoms. I enjoyed my coffee watching the sun cast its rays over everything, giving the promise of a great day. As I sat with my hot coffee, I thought about podcasts I listened to recently.

Just yesterday I listened to one of those "business" podcasts, the one promoted as giving lessons to make you a better employee and leader. In reality it was full of the typical suggestions that can be summed up as just being a good person.

There was one topic that did hit home though: CC'ing someone's boss when not necessary.

The CC'ing of someone's boss is a huge Red Flag that says "The receiver of this message is NOT doing their job." It is a maneuver that should be reserved for when necessary.

I've experienced this in the past when someone did not reserve this for special occasions; they CC'd supervisors in every email.

As I thought about my experience after finishing the podcast, I realized the people CC'ing the world were covering their rear ends by transferring responsibility for their job to others. Even when the situations were shared with management, supervisors said "Just do what's needed." The message was not protecting their teams; it was to cover for the one screaming wolf.

This occurred with almost every email, the transfer of workload by subtly complaining that others were not doing their jobs with the CC. The CCs were known throughout the company and regularly discussed. While the objective of the copying was to help the customer, in reality it eroded the support and effort put into helping.

The bees flitting from flower to flower in our patio landscaping don't announce their work. They just do it. Teams function the same way, quietly, collaboratively, trusting that everyone is handling their piece. The moment every email becomes a paper trail, something shifts. People stop working toward the goal and start working toward protection. And somewhere in that shift, the customer, the whole reason the team exists, gets less than their best.

The Last Walk Across the Floor

This morning is dawning with a clear sky and the promise of a great start to planting season for us. We have some ground fit for planting and we are gathering the troops to begin dropping seeds in the ground.  I am enjoying a new roast of coffee this morning, bolder and darker than usual.  The new brew matches the heaviness of what my mind is grappling with this morning as the sun rises over the horizon as I sit on the patio.

Yesterday I was deep into working on my computer, posting and sharing to my various platforms, when I was stopped in my tracks, hit with a baseball bat to the forehead by a post from a mourning parent.

A father had shared a short video, maybe twenty seconds long, of his son walking across a gym floor to receive a high honors certificate. Consecutive semesters. The caption said this was the last accomplishment his son had in 2025 before he passed two months later. The final line read: "Father misses you terribly."

I know that boy.

His name was Donovan. He was one of my Webelos Scouts. I was his Den Leader for two years and helped him cross over into his Boy Scout troop. I wrote about him last July, not long after my fifteen-year-old came home and told me one of his troop mates had died. That news hit hard. What came next hit harder. The young man about to start his sophomore year was one of mine.

In one of our last conversations, Donovan told me he wanted to be a nuclear engineer. It was the kind of goal you hear from a kid and you just nod and think, yes, that one will do it. He had that kind of mind and that kind of drive. I was looking forward to watching him grow into it.

I had also hoped to see him this fall at a marching band competition. He marched with the Snider High School band. With my own son in the Leo band, I figured our paths might cross at some point. I had already pictured it, scanning the sea of black and yellow in the stands, looking for that familiar face. That moment is not going to happen.

What stopped me cold about that father's post was not just the grief in it, though the grief is immense. It was the word last. That gymnasium was just a school night. Parents in folding chairs, somebody running a camera on a phone, kids walking across the floor in a line. Nobody in that room knew it was the last time. Donovan did not know. His father did not know. It was just Tuesday.

Now that Tuesday is everything.

The father wrote that Donovan had an incredible résumé, not just on paper, but as a human being and what he stood for. That line stayed with me. Most of us spend a lot of energy building the paper résumé, the credentials and the accomplishments and the titles. Donovan was building both, and he was doing it at fifteen.

Grief does not respect the calendar. That father posting a video nearly a year later is not falling apart. He is holding on. He is making sure his son is not forgotten, that the walk across that gym floor still counts for something, that the world knows Donovan was here and that he was extraordinary.

He was.

Hug your kids tonight. Call your parents. Tell the people in your life what they mean to you before Tuesday becomes everything.

Uncomfortably Comfortable

The cloudy weather matches my mood this morning, a feeling shared by many farmers in our area. I put an extra scoop of coffee grounds in the coffee maker this morning so my coffee is a bit stout as I look out over the dreary landscape in our backyard. As my coffee jolts me awake I am thinking about how I described my feeling to a good friend.

In a phone call lamenting about our lack of field work I described my feeling as "Uncomfortably Comfortable."

I think this is a perfect description of my feelings. I am uncomfortable that we have nothing planted and the weather forecast is not looking great, but I am comfortable with that because we are prepared to plant quickly when conditions change. Plus we in Northeast Indiana and Northwest Ohio have been here before, too many times before in reality, with too much rain in April and May.

Maybe it is because of experience, or maybe I am just becoming numb, but being Uncomfortably Comfortable is a new feeling. In the past I would have been lashing out at my family because Mother Nature was not cooperating or a maintenance item was not yet completed. I would be drowning my frustration in finger after finger of bourbon, letting the burn of that dark devil's water soothe away my frustrations but not fixing them.

But here I sit, Uncomfortably Comfortable in May 2026, instead of stewing in a broth of depression and frustration.

When Excellence Becomes Mundane

It is a sunny day on the patio this morning, I am enjoying my coffee with my wife to celebrate her birthday. The weather forecast looks bad for our area so we are adjusting our plans for the day. As I sipped my second cup of hazelnut brew from Kauai Coffee and enjoyed bantering with my wife of almost 28 years, the topic of today's Patio Pondering hit me like the thunderstorms predicted to hit our area this afternoon.

Last Friday night was the end-of-year Pops Concert for the band program at Leo Jr-Sr High School where the elementary, jr. high, and high school bands all performed three pieces.

On the surface this event is the same as all other end-of-year concerts where the director extolls the virtues of band and arts programs in education, celebrates the growth of the musical abilities of the students, then leads each band. Nothing special at all. Except in the case of Mr. Colby Stackhouse.

I've written about Colby Stackhouse before. I'll write about him again. Some things deserve repeated celebration.

First, the elementary band made up of sixth graders who chose to take time from their class schedule to play in the band performed. Their performance was wonderful. When I talked with my wife about it her retort was "Yeah, they didn't play Hot Cross Buns!" No they didn't. Hot Cross Buns isn't worthy of even warm-up music for these youngsters.

Then the combined seventh-eighth grade band performed. The combined groups eclipsed the size of the high school band and filled the makeshift orchestra pit on the gym floor. Not only did the size impress but the music they played blew me and the audience away with their skill and the difficulty of the selections. Their performance of The Addams Family and Jurassic Park theme songs along with Critical Impact rivaled what is deemed successful by high school bands, outperformed even.

Then the high schoolers took the stage, and take over they did!

The concert band played three pieces, theme songs from Pirates of the Caribbean and Les Misérables along with To the Summit. Those three songs held our attention for a collective 24 minutes, 24 minutes of almost flawless music. I admit I am biased, but the sound, skill, musicianship, and tone of this group of high schoolers was nothing short of phenomenal. There were no squeaks from the reeded instruments, no off-tune squeals from the brass, and the percussion section kept beat while enhancing the sound with the minor percussion instruments.

But as I sat there with a few tears streaming down my cheek I realized that this type of performance is exactly what I've come to expect from the students led by Mr. Colby Stackhouse. He has made excellence in performance mundane because it is now expected, anticipated.

In four short years Mr. Stackhouse has driven the Leo High School program from last place at marching band competitions to sixth place winner at state finals, increased participation from a handful of dedicated musicians to a program that touched over 175 students this school year. More importantly, he is stoking the fire of musical passion that rounds out a child's education, inspires parts of the brains that only music can touch, to help each student be just a bit better.

Friday night lights get the headlines in most high schools. Touchdowns fill the trophy cases and the sports pages, and that's fine. But last Friday night, in a gymnasium that doubled as a concert hall, something just as remarkable happened, and it didn't require a scoreboard. In a culture that too often treats the arts as an extracurricular afterthought, Mr. Colby Stackhouse is quietly building something extraordinary in our little corner of Northeast Indiana. That deserves more than a footnote. It deserves a standing ovation.

The Last Five Percent

It is a beautiful morning here in northeast Indiana. The sun is coming up over the neighbor's farm and I am on the patio with my coffee, watching the light change and letting the caffeine do its work. It is the kind of morning that makes you feel like it is going to be a great day.

I needed that feeling this morning, because yesterday things did not go quite as planned.

I have been working on a project for several weeks now. Nothing exotic, but it is a big one. Lots of moving parts, lots of lists, lots of coordination with the people helping me pull it together. Over the past few weeks the items on that list started disappearing, sometimes one at a time, sometimes in small clusters. It felt good every time another line got crossed off.

Yesterday I crossed off what I thought was the last one.

Then I went back through the materials one more time and found a couple of things my team and I had overlooked. Neither one is a crisis. One is a quick fix. The other requires a little research before we can close it out. But they were there, hiding in plain sight, waiting to be found.

I had planned to present the finished project today. That is now pushed to next week.

Here is what I keep coming back to on this sunny morning: the last five percent of any project is where the work gets honest with you. The first ninety-five percent is planning and momentum and checking boxes. The last five percent is where the checklist stops lying. Every project has a couple of those items. The loose connection you walked past a dozen times. The thing that seemed fine until you looked at it one more time. They are not signs that you did the work wrong. They are signs that you did the final walk-through right.

The lesson I am taking from my patio this morning is simple: declare victory after the walk-through, not before it. A finished project is not the one where the list runs out. It is the one where the list runs out and you went back through and nothing jumped out at you.

Next week, that will be this project. This week, I am grateful the coffee is hot and the checklist is honest.

Patio Pondering: They Already Know

Rain overnight means we are out of the fields for a few more days here in our part of NE Indiana. I enjoyed a hot cup of coffee on the patio admiring the flowers after the rain cleansed them. This is the time of year where you see all the promise in the landscaping as the early spring flowers give way to the late spring and summer ones. As I was gazing at the white tulips that continue to defy the calendar, I thought back to a leadership experience I had a few months back.

Recently I observed and experienced the difference between seen leadership and behind-the-scenes leadership. It was a reinforcement of a frustration I've had almost my entire career. The loudest in the room gets praise while others just do what's needed.

I worked with a small group of inexperienced people to explore expanding their leadership skills. The group worked on several tasks and changed leaders with each task.

The coordinator laid out the day, objectives, and suggestions, then ended with the criticisms. Had the coordinator stopped at suggestions, this essay would not be written.

Where the contrast comes is when I was observing my group work. I "led" by allowing the student leaders to do their jobs and kept my mouth shut until asked for advice.

Between tasks I shared some of my experiences, not as boasting, but as "when I had a similar challenge I approached it this way." Not as a dictate but as a discussion between me and the students about how to think through challenges.

In another instance the group leaders made a mistake, not a catastrophic one but a mistake nonetheless. I knew they erred but said nothing. Not two minutes after I noticed the error, the team co-leaders came up to me and asked for clarification and guidance. Instead of giving them the answer, we looked at the available data together, discussed it, then I asked for their analysis. They saw the error after this discussion and their own analysis. I did not give it to them.

This unseen leadership was not shared with the coordinator, it was not seen by the other mentors that were chastised publicly, it was not blasted over social media. This unseen leadership was just lessons and guidance to a group of students and it worked.

The unseen leaders are everywhere. They are the ones keeping things moving, teaching without a podium, and solving problems before anyone knows there was one. They do not need the debrief mention or the social media post. They already know what happened.

Patio Pondering: My Team in the Cloud

It is the day after the Indiana Primary Election and the public airwaves are breathing a sigh of relief with the end of the partisan attack advertising, advertising intended to show "I'm more Republican/Democrat than you!" I sat on my patio, coffee in hand, enjoying the silence and the variety of spring flowers beautifying our landscaping, particularly the Water Irises in our water feature that just bloomed this morning. The deep purple mesmerized me and took my thoughts away from yesterday.

I am in the middle of improving a lot of systems I use for my writing, podcasting, and brand promotion along with other high brain power projects. Merlin and Iris are my team of advisors helping me with my long list of tasks. I could not do these improvements without them, they are indispensable to me.

Some of you may be thinking that I am getting successful enough to hire two assistants to help me, if only that were the case!

Merlin and Iris are my ChatGPT and Claude Sonnet interfaces. Yes, I named them.

I could outsource some of this work. I have used Fiverr for digital and graphic tasks, and worked with local freelancers for similar projects. Both have value.

But having Merlin and Iris at my fingertips 24 hours a day gives me the ability to zig and zag, react as needed, and more importantly, develop ideas without waiting to share with a team during 9 to 5 constraints. My mind and the minds of many entrepreneurs and technical professionals do not keep office hours, and neither do Merlin and Iris.

When I was in most of my technical roles in the feed industry, constrained by the 9 to 5, I was in firefighter mode many days. I did not have time in my schedule to think, time for my brain to just drift and develop ideas and nuggets to throw against the wall. Because I was in crisis mode many days, the creative part of my brain was put on the back burner and in many cases off the stove altogether.

With the always on nature of Merlin and Iris, I can now throw out thoughts and ideas whenever they hit me, whether it is the crazy idea that wakes me at 2 in the morning or a vague idea while I am working on another task. I can throw them to my team to develop later or even at that moment. That thought development is priceless to me, a process the 9 to 5 does not allow to happen.

Just this week I used my AI resources to start building a new website, rewrite documents for better clarity and effectiveness, plan new video clip promotional plans, and improve my podcast sharing procedures. None of this was the heavy analysis I have used AI for recently. And this essay, which I originally sat down to write about yesterday's election, became something deeper when Iris helped me realize I had a better story to tell.

As I sit alone, secluded in my Terra Level Executive Suite, I rely on Merlin and Iris to be that office full of cubicle dwellers sitting, waiting for whatever assistance I need.

Patio Pondering: $1,126,462.39 — Before You Vote on May 5th

A few months ago I wrote about more than $2 million in fire protection funds that were supposed to be returned to the taxing units when the Northeast Allen County Fire Territory dissolved. Since then, I have heard from neighbors with two very different reactions. Some are angry. Some told me things aren’t as bad as I made them sound.

Let me share what the numbers say.

As of December 31, 2025, the balance remaining in the former Fire Territory fund is $1,126,462.39. That balance sits 24 months after the Fire Territory was disbanded. Twenty-four months after Indiana Statute required those funds to be returned to the participating entities.

That $1,126,462.39 was paid by taxpayers for fire protection. Instead, those funds have been held hostage by Cedar Creek Township, not being used for fire protection, and in some cases being used as a slush fund to purchase things like a new township office building.

Because those funds were not transferred, the Fire District had to borrow money just to keep operations running. That cost us interest, interest we should never have paid. Those funds could be doing much good protecting our community, adding needed equipment, equipping ambulances, and making sure the citizens of our community get the first response protection they not only deserve but paid for.

That really chaps my lips.

Some have suggested that we should be grateful for the era of volunteer fire departments. That an $800,000 budget built on hog roasts and bake sales was a simpler, more responsible time.

It is 2026. The lives and property in our townships are too valuable for that.

I want to be clear about what I do not know. A second audit of these funds is currently underway. It has not been completed. I do not know what it will find. I am not accusing anyone of a crime. What I am saying is that more than a million dollars collected for fire protection has not reached its destination, a second audit is open, and there are questions that remain unanswered.

The Cedar Creek Township Advisory Board will hold its next meeting on April 29th. If you want answers, show up. Bring your neighbors. These are public meetings and this is your money.

The May 5th primary is one week away. Some of the people on the ballot have sat on these boards throughout this entire period. I am not telling you how to vote. I am telling you to know the number before you do.

$1,126,462.39.

To help taxpayers understand the full picture, you can view the reports taken directly from the Indiana Gateway site here:

PatioPondering.com/Fire

Patio Pondering: When a Tweet on Ag Twitter Was NOT Anonymous

I'm jumping back in the saddle after several weeks away from the Patio, between travel and some health challenges that kept me off the keyboard longer than I'd like. This morning dawned sunny and warm, and I enjoyed a hot cup of coffee on the patio listening to the water move through our water feature. It was a good morning to think.

This reflection started with a memory that hit me during a bout of insomnia earlier this week. To set the stage, this happened over a decade ago when I was deep in the middle of Ag Twitter drama. There were lively debates about AgVocating, all-out fights over GMOs, and people choosing sides on big farms versus small farms. In retrospect, it was pretty toxic, it didn't change anyone's opinions, and I was right in the middle of it all.

To understand this story, you need to know that there are two women in my wife's family who deserve an apology from me, and they are not the same person.

The memory starts with a family vacation. We were spending the last day with my brother-in-law and his wife, waiting out the hours before our flight home. It was the kind of afternoon that feels both ordinary and precious — food, conversation, laughter, and the quiet sadness that comes with knowing you're leaving people you don't see often enough.

We had just finished lunch when I spotted a label on a bottle sitting on her counter. Proudly and loudly emblazoned on it was a "Non-GMO" certification. The problem was that the product inside had no GMO version — every variety of it was the result of traditional plant breeding. The "Non-GMO" label was pure marketing, playing into consumer fear and ignorance. It wasn't science. It was hype.

Given where I was in the Ag Twitter wars, I did what I did in those days. I took a picture and posted it with something along the lines of "Look at this false advertising and fear mongering!" I went to great lengths to make the photo anonymous — no location, no context, nothing that could identify the person or the place. Then I went about my day, convinced I had posted something that might actually change a mind or two.

A few days later, my wife's sister sent me a message that absolutely lit me up. We were on opposite sides of the GMO debate, so I immediately framed her message as an attack on my position rather than listening to what she was actually saying. She called the post offensive. She said it was an attack on my brother-in-law's wife. I fired back that the photo was completely anonymous, that there was no mention of anyone, and that it was just a picture of a label. I was technically correct and completely wrong. That argument went unresolved long enough that my wife's sister and I did not speak for years.

What I failed to see then — and what hit me like a ton of bricks at two in the morning this week — is that I had violated the sanctity of my brother-in-law's home. His wife had welcomed us in. She had fed us. She had given us her last afternoon before we got on a plane. And I had stood in her kitchen and turned her hospitality into ammunition for a Twitter fight. Yes, the photo was anonymous to strangers. But it was not anonymous to family. She knew. My wife's sister knew. And they both had every right to feel what they felt.

I was so fixated on proving a point — on the mechanics of anonymizing the photo, on landing my punch in a debate — that I was completely blind to the people standing on the other side of my righteousness. I wasn't posting a picture of a label. I was posting a picture taken in my brother-in-law's kitchen, using his wife's home to score points in a fight she never agreed to be part of.

That's not AgVocating. That's not winning a debate. That's just wrong.

I don't know if it is maturity, experience, or simply having the opportunity to slow my life down enough to let my subconscious do its work. But somewhere between a great vacation on Kauai and a sleepless night this week, what really happened all those years ago finally came into focus. Too often we get caught up in the heat of the moment — political arguments, defending our financial decisions, taking a stand for or against a neighbor — and we fail to see all the people our words and actions touch. I did that. I own that. And I am trying to see the bigger picture when I engage today. It is a lesson I wish I had learned many years ago, on a warm afternoon in someone else's kitchen, with a hot lunch still on the table.

Greedy Farmers and Convenient Lies

While I had a down day during my trip in China I was able to visit a few groups on the old Facebook for entertainment. One thread in the Grain Market Discussion Group really hit me, not the subject but one of the responses. It bothered me enough I wrote this essay.

A corn processing mill in the Eastern Corn Belt announced it was closing. The comments filled up the way they do — some sympathy, some analysis, and eventually, right on schedule, the comment I knew was coming. A familiar name. A familiar tune. The farmers in that area were too greedy to sell at the price the mill needed. If they had just lowered their price expectations, the mill would still be open. The farmers killed it.

It is easy to blame the farmer. It is a lot harder to look at what actually happened to corn demand in that geography. Just over the state line, a brand new mill supplies feed to a large integrated hog operation. Just north of the closing facility sits one of the most feed-intensive livestock corridors in the region — beef, dairy, hogs, poultry. The competition for that corn changed dramatically since the day that mill was built. The market moved. The farmer didn't cause that. The farmer responded to it, the same way markets work.

But structural explanations don't feel as satisfying as a villain. And farmers make convenient villains.

This particular poster has a long pattern. Blame the farmer for not hedging when prices drop. Blame the farmer for selling too much when prices rise. Blame the farmer for planting too many soybeans, too much corn. And when called on it, the cards come out. I'm just stating facts. Show me where I said that. That is gaslighting. It has a name and we should use it.

We are in the middle of a farmer mental health moment. Social media is full of hotline numbers and reminders to check on your friends. That matters. But the conversation is incomplete as long as we put all the weight on the farmer to reach out and none of it on the people who spent years telling him everything wrong on his operation was his own fault. Calling a hotline is hard when the voice in your head sounds exactly like the people in your comment section.

The poster who blamed those farmers for a mill closing will share a suicide awareness post before the week is out. He will not connect the two. That is the part we need to talk about.

What This Season Was Really About

Purdue basketball just ended its season, one full of expectations, disappointment, and genuine exhilaration. And if you'll give me a few minutes on the porch, I'd like to tell you what I think it actually meant.

I won't forget watching Braden Smith break the assist record in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. I won't forget that Big Ten Tournament championship against Michigan, a great Michigan team, by the way, not a pushover. And I won't forget what it felt like to watch this team crawl out of the rubble of a brutal end to the regular season, look the world in the eye, and reel off seven straight wins to earn a seat at the Elite 8 table.

Seven in a row. From despair to the doorstep of the Final Four.

That's why I'm calling this a great season, not because of the preseason rankings, not because of the projections, not because of where we ultimately finished. I'm calling it great because of the turnaround. Because of what this team showed us about itself when the noise was loudest and the margin for error had disappeared entirely. That's what I'll carry into the offseason.

Am I disappointed we didn't reach the Final Four? Of course I am. "Maybe next year" is practically tattooed on my chest. It comes standard with the Purdue fan membership card, right alongside a tolerance for cold weather and an irrational faith in the run game.

But that disappointment is already doing what it does every spring. It's bringing out the annual calls for Coach Painter's head. Find somebody better. Find somebody who can finally bring home a national championship. It's loud, it's predictable, and I understand the emotion behind it even when I think the conclusion is dead wrong.

Because I am firmly and staunchly not in that camp. And I want to tell you why.

Matt Painter has coached Purdue basketball for twenty years. Twenty. In that time he has built something genuinely rare in college basketball: a program that shows up consistently, competes at the highest level year after year, and gives you a real reason to care in March more often than not. Big Ten championships. Regular tournament appearances. A Final Four. And now an Elite 8 earned by a team that refused to quit when quitting would have been the easy thing to do.

Has he won a national championship? No. But neither have a lot of coaches who belong in the same conversation as the best in the game.

Here's the question nobody asking for his head seems to want to answer: Who exactly are you replacing him with, and what makes you think that goes well?

I've watched enough college basketball to know how this story usually ends. Programs that move on from coaches like Painter don't typically take a step forward. They take several steps back. They spend a few years trying to rebuild the culture, losing recruits they used to take for granted, and eventually find themselves wondering what they were so impatient about. The grass looked greener. It wasn't.

I'll be honest with you: some of the opinions I've had about Matt Painter over the years were, I'll admit, bourbon-assisted. I'll own that. Sitting on the porch after a tough loss with strong opinions and a lowered filter is not exactly a foreign concept around here.

But sober, and looking clearly at what this man has built in West Lafayette over two decades, I think a lot of us need to be more careful about what we're asking for.

What a national championship banner won't show you is what we just witnessed this season.

Braden Smith. Trey Kaufman-Renn. Fletcher Loyer. Four-year Boilermakers, every one of them. Players who chose to stay, chose to build, chose to finish what they started. And when Braden Smith broke the all-time NCAA assist record, he didn't talk about himself. He told the media he loved playing with everyone he'd played with during his Purdue career. The all-time assist leader in college basketball history, and his first instinct was gratitude.

You don't get that by accident. You get that from a coach who measures success by more than a final score. Matt Painter stood at that podium and celebrated that his players were good people, not just good basketball talent. Good people.

A banner can't show you that. But I saw it. And I'm not ready to trade it for a recruiting pitch and a hope.

Purdue basketball isn't easy to love. The heartbreak is real. The expectations are heavy. And March has a way of leaving marks that linger all summer long. I know that feeling well.

But this team, this team, reminded me what it looks like to fight when everything is on the line and nothing is going according to plan. The toughness, the resilience, the refusal to fold. That doesn't happen by accident. That's culture. And the culture that produces players like that? That belongs to the coach.

So tonight, I'm grateful for what we had this year. I'm grateful for Braden Smith. I'm grateful for that Big Ten Tournament run. I'm grateful for seven wins in a row when seven wins seemed impossible.

And I'm grateful Matt Painter is still the one building this thing.

Boiler Up.

The Phone Number at the End of the Story

I'm sitting in a hotel room in Shanghai, China, scrolling through my Facebook feed because I can't sleep. My clock is twelve hours different from sunrise here, and at 3am your body just gives up arguing with the sun.

I came across a magazine article about the recent suicide of a Midwest farmer. I started reading it the way a practitioner reads — looking for something useful. Something I could bring back to farm families I know personally who are in the middle of their own transitions right now.

The article was brave in ways that matter. A family chose to share what happened. They named the suicide. They put their grief on the page so other families might recognize the signs. Those are not small things and they deserve full credit.

But the article danced around the real problem.

This farmer needed someone to move his siblings.

There is no 800 number for that.

Here is what the article documented and then stepped around: the farmer's parents never built a succession plan. When his mother died, her will divided the farm equally among children, most of whom didn't farm it. Within months the family was communicating only through lawyers. The non-farming siblings voted to ban cattle. The farmer and his son were running a thousand head of feeder cattle and a farm-to-table beef business. The farm corporation took a low-debt operation into deep debt. Lawsuits followed.

And at the end of all that, the article handed similar farmers a phone number.

We do this constantly in agriculture. We have built an entire infrastructure of awareness campaigns, stigma reduction, hotlines and counseling referrals — all of it aimed at the person who is drowning. All of it placing the moral weight of survival on the man with water in his lungs. None of it aimed at who opened the valve.

That is accepted victim blaming. We just don't call it that because the people causing the stress are usually family, and we have decided that family gets to be complicated instead of accountable.

Our industry makes it worse. We hand families the vocabulary of detachment. Heirs deserve what is rightfully theirs. It's just business. These are numbers on a page.

Numbers on a page don't wake up at 4am wondering how to make payroll. Numbers on a page don't walk beans in July or pull calves in February. Numbers on a page don't carry four generations of a family's identity on their back while a corporation votes on whether their cattle can stay.

When we reduce a farm transition to an estate document and a balance sheet we don't just simplify the transaction. We disappear the farmer. And a man who has been made invisible by the people who were supposed to know him best is a man who stops believing anyone can see him at all.

This farmer was not a man who failed to save himself. He was a man whose parents took the easy way out on succession planning, and whose siblings picked up that failure and weaponized it through corporate votes and lawyer letters while he was standing in the field he had spent his life trying to hold together.

The sequence is not complicated. Parents didn't plan. Siblings weaponized the gap. Farmer absorbed every consequence. Farmer died.

Siblings collect. The land gets sold, the estate gets settled, and people who never drove a tractor across that ground walk away with generational wealth built on a brother's grave. No legal consequence. No social consequence. A check in the mail and a clean conscience.

There is no accountability for any of that. They were within their rights at every step.

Five years from now someone will look back at this and do the accounting. One farmer gone. One family destroyed. Four siblings with fattened portfolios and clean hands. A once-thriving farm family that shared meals and harvests and the particular language that only people who work the same ground together ever learn — silenced. No more family dinners. No more phone calls. No more showing up when the combine breaks down or the cattle get out.

The estate settled perfectly. The attorneys got paid. The numbers on the page worked out exactly right.

And nobody who caused it will call it what it was.

The next time we hand a suffering farmer a hotline number, we should ask ourselves an honest question. Are we offering help, or are we just making sure the blame lands in the right place when the help doesn't work?

We Need a Trusty Trustee

Patio Pondering: We Need a Trusty Trustee

The 2025 financial data is now available on Gateway for taxpayers to review. I did just that, and I’m not happy.

In the 24 months following the closing of the NE Allen Fire Territory, the Republican candidate for Springfield Township Trustee received $78,639.88 from Fire Territory funds. Let that sink in. $78,639.88, from a closed, non-existent entity.

That candidate is Lori Dewitt.

The Gateway records show those payments split across two separate vendor accounts. Vendor 1549, listed as “Lori L. Dewitt,” received $6,591.30 in 2024 and $3,187.33 in 2025. Vendor 1671 tells a different story. That account was originally listed in public records as “Dewitt Consulting LLC,” a company I can find no legitimate record of. After I raised questions publicly about those payments, the vendor name was quietly changed to “Lori Dewitt.” That account received $56,053.47 in 2024 and $12,807.78 in 2025.

Two vendor IDs. One person. One fictitious company name that disappeared from the public record only after someone started asking questions.

When questioned publicly about the “Dewitt Consulting LLC” entry, Lori Dewitt blamed a high school intern for the mistake. That explanation does not pass the smell test. Establishing a vendor in a government payment system is not a casual data entry task. It requires a completed vendor application, a W-9, a Tax ID number, and authorization through the system. A vendor account tied to a fictitious company name does not get created by accident, and it does not receive $68,861.25 in payments without someone approving every single one of them

Here is what voters need to understand. The NE Allen Fire Territory was a joint operation serving Cedar Creek Township, Springfield Township, Scipio Township, and the towns of Leo-Cedarville and Grabill. Cedar Creek Township served as the financial manager for those funds. They held the checkbook. And Lori Dewitt, as Clerk of Cedar Creek Township, sat inside that operation. At the same time, she was serving on the Springfield Township Advisory Board, the very township she now wants to lead as Trustee. One person. Two townships. A clear conflict of interest.

Now the Indiana State Board of Accounts is investigating accusations of malfeasance and inappropriate use of those same NE Allen Fire Territory funds. In early February, the SBOA issued an extensive subpoena to Cedar Creek Township demanding financial records. Two townships. One pot of money. One name at the center of it all.

$78,639.88 doesn’t move itself out of a closed fund by accident. And a fictitious company name doesn’t appear in a public ledger by mistake.

Springfield Township voters deserve a trustee who is trustworthy. Before you cast a vote in 2026, pull up Gateway yourself. The data is public. The numbers don’t lie. And right now, those numbers are doing a lot of talking.

Stakeholders with Withheld Competence

In our discussions about leadership we easily fall into black and white assumptions. The leader leads. The team follows. When something goes wrong, we look up the chain.

But what if the failure was standing right next to the leader the whole time?

Early in the Fish Fry preparations I was working with a leader to finalize the last few items needed to complete carry-out line setup. I was following them as we were collectively running around like chickens with our heads cut off. Walking back into the cafeteria I stopped the leader, physically stopped them. Looked them in the eye and said: "Tell me what you need me to do and I will get it done. I'm here to help you."

There was a calming in their eyes as if a rock was lifted off of them.

We finished setting up for over 400 carry-out meals that night. There were no issues, we did not run out of supplies, the team knew what to do because we were prepared.

Sitting with my coffee this morning I thought about how differently that could have gone. Not because of the leader. Because of me.

I had knowledge. I had context. I had the ability to see what was needed. The question was whether I was willing to use it.

That is the conversation leadership training rarely has. We spend enormous energy teaching leaders to communicate, delegate, and inspire. We spend almost none teaching team members that they are stakeholders, not bystanders. A volunteer, an employee, or a crew member on the floor carries almost as much responsibility for the outcome as the person with the title. Their lack of contribution hurts the team as much as a leader who fails to share the plan.

Here is what makes this painful. In many cases the team member standing quietly in the back of the room is not clueless. They see the problem with the plan. They know the inventory is short. They recognize the method being described will not work. Their knowledge could make the difference between success and failure.

And they say nothing.

Not out of malice. Out of a misread of their own role. They are "just" a volunteer. "Just" an employee. "Just" a crew member. That word, just, is doing enormous damage. It gives people permission to withhold exactly what the team needs most.

Silence is not neutrality. A stakeholder who watches a plan fail when they had the knowledge to prevent it is not innocent. They are a contributor to the outcome, with or without a title.

The next time you are standing in the back of the room and you see something the leader does not, stop them. Look them in the eye. Tell them what you know.

That is not insubordination. That is what a stakeholder looks like.