I'm not good at this.
I've been neglecting this poor blog, which is bad for at least two reasons. First, my vast multitudes of readers are left in the dark. They've probably resorted to making up stories around the campfire about what I'm doing. And though I rather like the idea of being a mythical figure, I think I'm a bit young to be put into songs and verse. The second reason, which will come as no surprise to anyone that knows me at all, is that I forget stuff. So writing it down is smart.
I was in Kalispell and Glacier National Park August 9-13. It was my first time to the park and it surpassed all expectations. I saw grizzlies, and grouses, and a real live glacier that is melting away: see it while you can. We stayed at the Many Glacier Lodge, built in the style of a Swiss chalet on the shore of a glacial lake. The rooms were modest and the common space was huge, which is exactly how I like it. Even better, it was right at the trail head. On the way back from the park we had a culinary adventure at an unassuming campsite. This campsite happened to have a great chef (and professor of culinary arts, the one waving from the stove) offering up tasty delights such as savory mushroom cheesecake and huckleberry bread pudding. While not in the park, my mom and I stayed with our friend Dennis, who just finished building a beautiful house on one of the many lakes around Kalispell.
Our drive home was smoky, but seeing the signs in Salish (like this one) made it kind of worth it. I had fun trying to pronounce the names, which are in an almost completely phonetic alphabet. Highway 93 was like running the phonetician's gauntlet.
A few days of work on the house and one fantastic fiesta de tamales silvestres (our name for our elk tamales) later, my dad and brother arrived from California. They drove the most obviously un-Montanan vehicle conceivable, a gas-guzzling Lexus SUV. I laughed as they described stopping every two hours for gas (to be fair, they were also pulling an aerodynamically-challenged horse trailer). Tuesday the 21st, car loaded with Nick's clothes, sundries, and high-powered computers, we headed to Missoula to move his newly collegiate self into Knowles Hall of the bee-oo-tee-ful UM campus. Missoula, and the campus, is insanely picturesque. But Missoula's appeal is more than skin deep. It somehow manages to combine everything I like about college towns (culture, food, books, bars, bicycles) with everything I like about Montana (a zeal for the outdoors, strong localism, unassuming and unpretentious people). The alchemy of Missoula is special and massively, compellingly attractive. Can I live here?
So it probably goes without saying that I am excited for Nick to be starting school here. I've been peppering him with advice (mostly of the "ride your bike alot" sort), but I know he's going to rock it here. He's so damn smart, and quick to befriend. I am so proud of him.
Missoula was also a chance for me to catch up with lots of old friends. Almost everyone I care about (outside my family) ended up there (coincidence?). I saw: Ryan D., multi-instrumental musician and teacher extraordinaire, former bandmate, and a very tight friend from high school; Annie, his adorable and incredibly sweet girlfriend that I finally had the treat of meeting; Renée T., college mate of the awesomest caliber and native Missoulian; Pat Duganz, high school comrade in teenage agitating turned journalist for Missoula's alt-weekly The Independent; Sarah D., member of the inner circle of band geeks at the annual Red Lodge Music Festival which we both religiously attended as younglings, who, what luck, I managed to find scooping Missoula's very own Big Dipper ice cream.
And, deserving of their own paragraph, Amanda H. and Tom B. These two to me define hard work, independence, and generosity. They are the kind of people you could trust with anything, no matter how sensitive, personal, even dangerous (Tom especially is somewhat legendary for smoothly handling all manner of Montana mishaps involving guns, trucks, bucks, and drunks). Amanda is carving a niche for herself in the world of Montana broadcast journalism astonishingly fast, reading for NPR and producing the nightly news at KPAX, Missoula's CBS affiliate. Tom worked all of 6 months at an Albertsons and now basically runs the place. These are the kind of friends you love, and are proud to brag about.
Also, their coming together was a really funny, at first slightly odd, joining of Nick and I's worlds. Tom is Nick's friend from school -Eagle Scout and Dungeon Master- and Amanda is mine -speech team and music. Great thing about getting a little older is now Nick and I have a common set of friends. The little tyke just needs to turn 21 and we'll be all set.
And turn 21 he must, for his elder brother has already made quite an impression on, and had quite a big one left on him by, the Missoula bars. Ryan, Annie, Pat, Renée, Amanda, and some other folks and I hit the town Wednesday night. It got loud, we all got effusive (lots of "you'll be the greatest teacher EVER!" and "I'd ask you out, if I lived here"). A good time and a severe hangover was had by all.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Mountain animal returns to habitat
On Sunday, August 5th a twin-engine jet aircraft set down in Billings, Montana. Aboard, among the screaming babies and firefighters and tight Wrangler-ensconced butts, was I. Returning to my native climes. Well, not quite -- Billings is a few hours from Anaconda, the sleepy little slice of postindustrial America where I grew up and whither my mother has returned to make a home. On the way home we stopped at Wheat Montana outside Bozeman, which last time I checked could bake a loaf of bread from raw ingredients faster than anybody else in the world. Okay, I just check again and its true: 8 minutes, 13 seconds y'all. Someone told me the record-breaking loaf was microwaved and mostly unleavened. Probably looked like cougar poop. We picked up some rye, of the non-speed-baked variety.
In addition to being able to bake a loaf of bread faster than your state, Montana has a distinguished history of industrial labor. Traces of that were seen in Butte at the former Socialist Hall, which now rather incongruously houses a tackle shop. Things just ain't like they was back in '16. Incidentally, we ended up by Socialist Hall looking for Blockbuster. We had listened to some Brazilian music on the way home and I wanted to get Central Station. Anyway, a bit in the homeward direction, there's Anaconda's Washoe Smelter, the once-massive copper ore reduction works whose legacy in the region's skyline is a 585-foot smokestack.
I'm reading historian Laurie Mercier's book on labor in Anaconda, and working on a short piece of writing about the history of working people in this part of the country. It's a fascinating and little-known part of this country's history that so much and such effective labor organizing took place in the West. All cowboys and rugged individualism it ain't, boys and girls.
The drive to Anaconda was beautiful, though somewhat less so towards the end due to the nasty forest fires that have smokified the air.
I really like our house up here. Its in a great location and my mom has done tons to exorcise the disco-era demons (shag carpet, burnt orange everything, etc.). But there are a lot more things we want to do with the house this summer: new exterior paint, putting down carpet some places, tearing it out others. I shan't be freeloading this month! We got right to work tearing out carpet upstairs and yanking the many, many pesky tacks left behind. But the rewards are vast -- hidden beneath are 3/4 inch solid oak!
These floors raise the value of the house and are just plain gorgeous. Mostly, yanking the carpet has been a straightforward process of pull, roll, remove. See, intelligent self-respecting homeowners that decide to carpet over their hardwood stretch the carpet out and tack it down only where necessary. On the other hand, the sadistic antisocial bastards that put down the carpet (entirely unremarkable carpet, mind you) in my mother's bedroom applied a tar-based adhesive directly over the entire surface of the floor. Expecting the sunny greeting of bright oak we had experienced in the rest of the house, imagine our disappointment at discovering a crusty 1/4-thick layer of soot. Nothing to do but scrape. That, and discover after the fact that the shit your angry scrapes have spat into the air very likely contains asbestos. True story. Apparently this tarry devil sludge is called "mastic" and, hey, why not put asbestos in your carpet adhesive when you're putting in every other goddamn thing. I insisted we wear masks from the beginning, which hopefully reduced our exposure. Sucking on both forest fire smoke and possibly asbestos-tainted air all in the same day, I've had quite enough lessons in environmental irresponsibility for this trip!
Other things done today (when not scraping tar and cursing our house's previous owners): bought a horn for mother Debra's tricked out golf cart, caught up with parents of a friend at auto part shop (every shopowner here is someone or other I know's parent), helped the painters by trimming a path in the bushes for their ladders. The painter bathing our house in a lovely soft green is Connie. She is German, and beautiful in the way only a paint-covered woman with a soft pink bandana holding back her hair can be. I thought she was Irish until I asked about her accent.
It is Tuesday. Tomorrow we work some more on the floors and get the accursed bedroom (sealed up by me in a paranoid frenzy) checked for asbestos. My grandparents, bless their odometers, drove here from Southern California yesterday for some odd piece of business and we'll have coffee with them in the morning. Coffee: friend of mother Debra's, Fay, Lebanese proprietor of a cozy local motel, has invited me over for coffee, prepared in the traditional way of her homeland. I.e., boiled to soup-like consistency and drunk out of tiny glasses. I am super excited about that.
Thursday we head to Kalispell, near Glacier National Park, to spend some time with a friend of the family and soak up the sublime grandeur of that part of the state.
I am tired and don't want to update Flickr with photos of today's adventures, but I will soon!
In addition to being able to bake a loaf of bread faster than your state, Montana has a distinguished history of industrial labor. Traces of that were seen in Butte at the former Socialist Hall, which now rather incongruously houses a tackle shop. Things just ain't like they was back in '16. Incidentally, we ended up by Socialist Hall looking for Blockbuster. We had listened to some Brazilian music on the way home and I wanted to get Central Station. Anyway, a bit in the homeward direction, there's Anaconda's Washoe Smelter, the once-massive copper ore reduction works whose legacy in the region's skyline is a 585-foot smokestack.
I'm reading historian Laurie Mercier's book on labor in Anaconda, and working on a short piece of writing about the history of working people in this part of the country. It's a fascinating and little-known part of this country's history that so much and such effective labor organizing took place in the West. All cowboys and rugged individualism it ain't, boys and girls.
The drive to Anaconda was beautiful, though somewhat less so towards the end due to the nasty forest fires that have smokified the air.
I really like our house up here. Its in a great location and my mom has done tons to exorcise the disco-era demons (shag carpet, burnt orange everything, etc.). But there are a lot more things we want to do with the house this summer: new exterior paint, putting down carpet some places, tearing it out others. I shan't be freeloading this month! We got right to work tearing out carpet upstairs and yanking the many, many pesky tacks left behind. But the rewards are vast -- hidden beneath are 3/4 inch solid oak!
These floors raise the value of the house and are just plain gorgeous. Mostly, yanking the carpet has been a straightforward process of pull, roll, remove. See, intelligent self-respecting homeowners that decide to carpet over their hardwood stretch the carpet out and tack it down only where necessary. On the other hand, the sadistic antisocial bastards that put down the carpet (entirely unremarkable carpet, mind you) in my mother's bedroom applied a tar-based adhesive directly over the entire surface of the floor. Expecting the sunny greeting of bright oak we had experienced in the rest of the house, imagine our disappointment at discovering a crusty 1/4-thick layer of soot. Nothing to do but scrape. That, and discover after the fact that the shit your angry scrapes have spat into the air very likely contains asbestos. True story. Apparently this tarry devil sludge is called "mastic" and, hey, why not put asbestos in your carpet adhesive when you're putting in every other goddamn thing. I insisted we wear masks from the beginning, which hopefully reduced our exposure. Sucking on both forest fire smoke and possibly asbestos-tainted air all in the same day, I've had quite enough lessons in environmental irresponsibility for this trip!
Other things done today (when not scraping tar and cursing our house's previous owners): bought a horn for mother Debra's tricked out golf cart, caught up with parents of a friend at auto part shop (every shopowner here is someone or other I know's parent), helped the painters by trimming a path in the bushes for their ladders. The painter bathing our house in a lovely soft green is Connie. She is German, and beautiful in the way only a paint-covered woman with a soft pink bandana holding back her hair can be. I thought she was Irish until I asked about her accent.
It is Tuesday. Tomorrow we work some more on the floors and get the accursed bedroom (sealed up by me in a paranoid frenzy) checked for asbestos. My grandparents, bless their odometers, drove here from Southern California yesterday for some odd piece of business and we'll have coffee with them in the morning. Coffee: friend of mother Debra's, Fay, Lebanese proprietor of a cozy local motel, has invited me over for coffee, prepared in the traditional way of her homeland. I.e., boiled to soup-like consistency and drunk out of tiny glasses. I am super excited about that.
Thursday we head to Kalispell, near Glacier National Park, to spend some time with a friend of the family and soak up the sublime grandeur of that part of the state.
I am tired and don't want to update Flickr with photos of today's adventures, but I will soon!
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