That’s the question posed by Shirley Stubbs in her excellent letter in today’s Daily InterLake. We have two large high schools in Kalispell, Stubbs observes, high schools that frequently ask the voters to approve a bond or levy, yet when Independence Day arrives, neither high school band gives a toot about appearing in the parade.
You’ll notice some changes in the blogroll. Perhaps the most important is the addition of Montana Cowgirl, a Helena based blog of political gossip. It will inform and entertain you, and if you’re not a liberal, it probably will send you lunging for a double Old Crow and an extra blood pressure pill.
I learned to kick soccer style 45 years ago — my “instructors” were college classmates from Iraq and Iran — but I never learned to love the game. It always struck me as unsophisticated and boring. That’s why I’m relieved that the World Cup is over and we can return our attention to the finest game ever invented: baseball. The all star game is tomorrow night, and however badly it is played, it will be infinitely more entertaining than the most exciting soccer match ever played.
Aficionados of soccer allege that the sport has grace, organization, and strategy, an allegation that speaks well of their imagination and poorly of their judgment. Actually, soccer is playground kickball without the innocence of youth, and most certainly is not an activity that advances civilization. It’s as primitive as hunting with a stone-tipped spear. Soccer players run fast, kick hard, lower their IQs with headers, and in the rare event that a goal is scored, raise their hands, throw back their heads, and run around the field howling like freshly castrated baboons. Their fans, hooligans all, get drunk and brawl following games.
It’s a game for knuckleheads. I prefer a game with knuckleballs.
If you need further proof that President Obama and the Congress bungled health care legislation, and bungled it to what I consider a morally criminal extent, read Mike Dennison’s story on the Montana Affordable Health Care plan.
Yesterday, a single engine aircraft (Piper Arrow), took off from the Kalispell City Airport. It has not been heard from since. Unless something very odd or nefarious is occurring, the aircraft is down, and probably crashed.
A search is underway, but no one knows the pilot’s intentions, so the searchers are flying grid patterns, hoping to spot the Piper, or pieces thereof, or to detect a signal from the aircraft’s transponder. One hopes the aircraft is located rapidly and that its four passengers are found unhurt.
But this kind of wide area search should not be necessary. Global Positioning System technology has progressed to the point that all aircraft, from hang-gliders with chainsaw engines to Airbus 380s, could be equipped with a tracking transponder that sends the aircraft’s bearing, speed, altitude, and position, to a central receiver every few seconds. The point at which the transmission stopped would be the point at which the search began. In a case like this, that could save a tremendous amount of time.
He thinks Montana has the right to secede from the United States of America. Glenn Beck and Ron Paul are the most influential human beings in his life. He’ll say no to federal stimulus money, and yes to legislation empowering Montana to nullify federal health care laws. He turned off his television in 1998 (but I think he left his radio on). God, he reports, gave him the gift of a “great memory.” Jim Dupont and Ray Thompson are financial backers. Yet he considers himself to be dead center on the political spectrum.
North from the summit of Sixmile Mountain. The Alpine Trail does not traverse the next few miles.
Is competitive recreation compatible with designated or proposed wilderness? That’s the question arising from a proposal for a 100-mile-long footrace — the Swan Crest 100 — along the Swan Range east of Kalispell, beginning at Napa Point and ending at the bottom of Columbia Mountain. The Flathead National Forest is taking comments on the proposal, and needs to hear from you by June 18.
I’m familiar with the area. I’ve hiked every inch of the way from Napa Point (and points south) to Columbia Mountain, a lot of it more than once, including the gap in the Alpine Trail north of Sixmile Mountain. It’s a wonderful place for a hike, but no place for a footrace.
Almost 640,000 Montana voters registered for the primary. And as we know from past elections, the state is pretty much split 50-50 along liberal-conservative lines. There were primary contests for Congress on both the Democratic and Republican ballots, yet twice as many Republicans as Democrats voted in the Congressional primary. The Democratic turnout was abysmal despite a whole month of opportunities to vote. What can account for this other than a weak sense of civic obligation and a loss of faith in the democratic process? I was taught that good citizens always vote, no matter how many or few are on the ballot. What were Montana’s Democrats taught that causes so many to not give a damn about voting?
Dennis McDonald won the Democratic nomination for Congress, receiving perhaps 40 percent of the vote (a lot of precincts are still out, but the trend is clear). That’s no surprise: McDonald had union support, always useful in a low turnout election.
I’m voting for Tyler Gernant tomorrow. He’s a young man with considerable intelligence and promise who the strongest — and the strongest by far — of the four candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for Montana’s sole seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Karen Longhart, friend, neighbor, mathematics educator extraordinaire, died on 1 June after a long, courageous battle with cancer. She was only 49, far too young to reach the end of life. Her husband, Fred, their friendly dog, Monty, and a large extended family survive her.
Endorsing Joe Brenneman for another term as a Flathead County Commissioner is an easy call. By temperament, experience, judgment, and accomplishment, he is by far the best choice for the job. It would be foolish to replace him with a tyro.
Yesterday, Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester joined with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Wall Street Republicans in defeating the “break up the big banks” Brown-Kaufman amendment to the financial “reform” bill being debated in the U.S. Senate. Only one conclusion is possible: they prefer banks that are too big to fail, which means they support using dollars from Main Street to rescue nefarious derivatives traders on Wall Street.
Where do Democrats Dennis MacDonald, Tyler Gernant, Sam Rankin, and Melinda Gopher stand on Brown-Kaufman? Would they have voted for it, or against it? I will consider any attempt to avoid a clear answer as a tacit admission of a vote for Wall Street.
Updated, 7 May 2006. Police officers did not exhibit a joyous disposition following an altercation at last evening’s rally outside the Flathead County library. The rally was organized by local human rights advocates who took umbrage at calls for white nationalists to settle in the Flathead. I’ll have more on this, and the civil liberties issues it raises tomorrow in the near future.
Dodecatheon amethystinum (Amethyst Shooting Star). This is a small flower, not much larger than a man’s thumbnail, and they’re rife in the field of my next door neighbor, who graciously allows me to shoot his flora at will. For this, I used an APS-C DSLR and a 55mm f/2.8 manual focus micro lens, but many digital point-and-shoot cameras, Nikons especially, can do as well. The DSLR’s advantage is the large sensor and RAW format.
The fellow with the name tag on his shirt and the big iron on his hip is Dane Clark, candidate for the Democratic nomination for HD-8 in Kalispell. One might suppose he was among friends — after all, this was the Tea Party’s 15 April 2010 tax protest in downtown Kalispell — but Clark said that rumors of agent provocateurs bound on disrupting the festivities made packin’ heat prudent.
At some point, I suspect we will learn that Flathead County is dumping Jeff Harris as planning director because he became controversial, and thus inconvenient and expensive. Whether or not Harris was doing a good job seems to be irrelevant. What his bosses wanted, and want, is a low profile planning director.
Updated. Is the Flathead County Fair a rogue operation? That’s a legitimate question given this damning paragraph from Lynette Hintze’s story, Supporters want fair boss reinstated, in today’s InterLake:
Updated. Loren Kreck, friend, fellow hiker and wilderness advocate, naturalist, cartoonist, and above all, humanitarian, died on 26 March 2010. He was 89. That’s Loren on the left, next to Geoff Harvey, admiring the Canadian Rockies in the distance while taking a break before finishing our climb of Mt. Thompson-Seton in the Whitefish Range.
In Washington, D.C., rowdy tea party protestors roamed the halls of Congress, hurling racial slurs at members of Congress. But 2,000 miles to the northwest, in Kalispell, Montana, tea party protestors displayed a sunny disposition — and signs with darker messages — as they gathered for a wave-and-honk on both sides of Main Street on Saturday afternoon.
I voted for Mike McGrath for chief justice of Montana’s supreme court. It was not a hard decision. But I’m beginning to wonder whether he enjoys politics too much to be suited for a position in which one’s credibility and perceived impartiality require avoiding involvement in matters that provide, to the average citizen, even the appearance of a conflict of interest or a lack of good judgment.
Martha Coakley (that’s Martha on the right, smug instead of senatorial) is trailing in the polls and expected to lose to Republican Scott Brown. The more I learn about this election, the more I’m convinced that Coakley, as Jason Linkins astutely observes in today’s Huffington Post, is losing because she’s smug, lazy, and doesn’t know enough about baseball:
Tomorrow is the first day candidates can file for the 8 June primary in Montana. I’m betting that one of the first to submit his paperwork will be Chuck Curry, who is challenging incumbent Mike Meehan for the Republican nomination for sheriff of Flathead County. On his website, Curry promises he will be….
That’s my position on Senator Jon Tester’s 84-page Forest Jobs and Recreation Act of 2009. Provided some fixes are made, the good will outweigh the bad, and the bill should become law.
Technical information: 24mm f/2.8 lens on an APS-C DSLR. The horizontal field of view is 52.4 degrees. Ten seconds at f/2.8 and ISO 400. Each laser beam was switched on for 3 seconds.
