Mirage By Bill Vaughn
Sometimes the here and now gets mixed up with the there and then.

IT MUST BE A COW, this stubborn thing hiding in a tangle of scrub. At least that’s what I figured was the source of my mare’s wild eyes and racing pulse. As we walked our horses down to surround all but the thicket’s lowest side, Kitty took the left flank, and Jerry Hamel, owner of this ranch, the right. You’d think three mounted people would be force enough to convince an ordinary heifer to flee. Especially since she could see that the other strays we’d extracted along this ridge were leaving her behind as they plodded toward a holding pen at the intersection of two fence lines below us in a meadow. But after we hollered and whistled and flapped our coils of rope nothing happened. A magpie yelled back, then flew away in a huff.

With a click I urged Timer forward, expecting the same enthusiasm for the work she’d shown all day. Instead, she balked. Then she balked again. After another of these lateral moves at the line of scrimmage I stopped pushing. Whatever was lurking inside these junipers and chokecherries, it wasn’t a cow.

While I waited for something to happen an autumn breeze began hissing through the crowns of the Ponderosas. North across the National Bison Range and the Flathead Indian Reservation a higher wind was shredding a few bright clouds against the rocky tops of the Mission Mountains, a row of dinosaur teeth already gleaming with snow. [read more]

Notes from the Squalor Zone  By Bill Vaughn

Boycott China. We avoid buying things made in China. Most of their stuff is junk. And some of it is downright dangerous. Look at the dogfood that killed all those dogs, the toothpaste that killed all those old people, and the pharmaceuticals that have made people sick across the globe. Double plus, Chinese products aren't made by Americans.

So we were bewildered to learn that Montana State University accepted $141,000 in Federal “stimulus” money to send nine paleontology students to China on a six-week junket to study dinosaur eggs. The all-expense paid trip, which put money in the pockets of thieves and corrupt capitalists (is that an oxymoron?) was funded by the National Science Foundation.

While the matter has been used as political fodder by shameless Goper losers such as John “Crash” McCain, we wonder why Montana students couldn’t have done just as well studying Montana dinosaur eggs. There’s a whole bunch of them at Egg Mountain in Teton County, a leisurely two-hour road-trip from Bozeman.

Euphemism. The idiots of the New Right have forced the idiots of the center to duck and cover. For example, they don't call themselves liberals any more, because neoconservatives and Tea Baggers have attached the odor of shit to the word. So they call themselves "progressives" and hope no one notices that their corporate, business-as-usual politics, camouflaged under a veneer of frosting, still stink.

Tea Bagged. Everyone knows by now that those Tea Party cultists are white, middle-aged, bourgeois, semi-educated, xenophobic racists pissed off for reasons they can't quite put their fingers on but has something to do with what their skinhead friends call "Mud People." One of our local groups is even advertising its bad taste by calling itself Montana Shrugged, named after one of the ten worst novels in the English language (okay, one of the thirty worst novels, if you count Danielle Steele as a novelist.)

Great Leaps Forward. We believe our garment, the Amazing and Versatile Food Suit, was the most innovative fashion invention of the late Twentieth Century. Although it never progressed from the beta version to actual commercial production, it quite simply revolutionized the way sporting events, concerts, and long, boring speeches were experienced. That it seemed to appeal more to guys than dolls probably had something to do with unavoidable aspects of its internal plumbing.

Now comes another tipping-point invention. This one promises nothing less than to shore up the foundations of an American institution: the marriage bed. Yes, friends, it’s the Better Marriage Blanket. Are you ready to disavow your vows because your mate is ruining your bedtime together with foul smells? Is uncontrolled flatulence from your partner keeping you up at night? Suffer no more. The Better Marriage Blanket contains the same type of material used by the military to protect against chemical weapons. It works like this: The silent and unseen but deadly fart molecules pass through the sheet and into a layer of activated carbon that neutralizes smells. It’s as simple as that. The device is only $19.95 and makes a great wedding or anniversary gift.

Why didn’t we think of that?

Unresponsive
Content Farms harvest words arranged in sentences
in order to fill the spaces between ads on websites. By Bill Vaughn

AS A WRITER I’m always trying to sell to new markets. Sometimes it’s a magazine (Audubon, The Atlantic, the New Yorker and the New York Times Book Review have never bothered to respond to my pitches, although I did sell two pieces this year to a new magazine, at least for me—American Cowboy). Sometimes it’s a book publisher (I’ve begun shopping a crime novel I just finished to a few agents, none of whom have bothered to  respond, even though I was represented at various times by two power hitters in the biz, Kris Dahl at ICM, and Brian Lipson at Endeaver). And sometimes it’s a website (neither Slate nor Huffington Post has bothered to respond, although I’ve written for their competitor, Salon).

Maybe it’s the challenge I like. More probably, I need to have my feelings hurt just to see if I have any feelings left (um, apparently not).

When I heard about content farms plantations I knew I had to throw myself at them. These are outfits that buy words in order for websites to put something besides ads on their pages.

Associated Content puts words on websites that Yahoo owns. Demand Studios resells words to a number of online outlets such as eHow. And Seed supplies words to AOL websites such as Wallet Pop and Pop Eater.

When I say words, that’s pretty much what I mean. Words in English arranged into sentences, with punctuation. Most of this “content” reads like something the Hollow Men would write. You know, “Our dried voices when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless, as wind in dry grass, or rats’ feet over broken glass in our dry cellar.”

I decided to try Seed because it pays better than the other farms. This is to say, almost nothing. I went through their list of suggested topics. Most of them were along the lines of “Best Public Restrooms in Breckenridge, Colorado” (1000 words for $50), and “Five Best Photo Ops in Boise, Idaho (again, 1000 words for $50).

Instead, I chose “My Favorite Party” (500 words for $40) and churned out this wretched doggerel in about a half hour. I knew I was competing with other writers to win over the little black heart of some unseen editor, who probably just graduated from journalism school with one of those worthless degrees journalism schools award. I posted the essay, and waited for a response. Seed promised to yea or nay it in three days.

That was 56 64 days ago.

Dear Diary: Booyah! Seed finally responded to my party essay! Although sadly my work won't be appearing at any AOL website, meaning I won't be getting my $40, they said they loved what they saw! (Heart, slow down!) This is almost as exciting as when I got published in The Best American Magazine Writing!

Here's what SEED said:

Thank you for your recent SEED content submission, My Fave Fete.

We're writing to tell you that we liked your content submission, but that it was not an exact fit for publication on one of our AOL network's sites. But we strongly encourage you to try again-we loved what we saw, and hope that we find an opportunity to work together in the future. Please visit SEED (www.seed.com) to find some new assignments that may be a fit for you.

Thanks,
Your SEED Editorial Team

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Dog days at Dark Acres with Lyndon Baines Johnson and Clara

If a tree falls in the forest . . .  The mammoth black cottonwood that finally died of old age three years ago at Dark Acres had invaded our dreams. More than 100 feet tall, it stood in a confusion of wild rose and dogwood bordered by a slough on one side and a fenceline on the other. To get from our front pasture to the Clark Fork River people, dogs, horses and wildlife had no choice but to pass under the towering crown of this behemoth.

Cottonwoods are beautiful and aromatic when alive. But dead ones are nightmares, hurling down huge branches and eventually keeling over, exploding when they hit the ground and driving parts on themselves deep into the earth. It’s too dangerous to fell a big one like this with a chainsaw because the wood is always rotten, making the direction of the tree’s descent unpredictable.

We always looked up reflexively and put our arms over our heads whenever we passed under it. After storms we ran to the spot where it flanked the path hoping it had finally fallen. But time and again it survived the windiest winds. The fact that when the end came it would smash a couple sections of our two-rail fence was a minor price to pay for being rid of the monster.

This morning I took the dogs for a swim. When we rounded a bend in the path there it was. Finally brought to earth. No one heard it fall. And no one saw it fall. I looked up at the empty space in the sky where it had lived, and then died. I couldn’t help myself, and covered my head with my arms.

Dog Show. For no defensible reason we’d like to know what the most common dog names are by region. Well, yeah, we know that the most common American names for boy dogs are Max, Jake, Buddy, Baily, Sam and Rocky; and the most common girl dog names are Maggie, Mollie, Lady, Sadie, Lucy and Daisy. But is Gumbo a common dog name in Louisiana? And in state such as Georgia, with its strong military culture, do dog owners choose names like Fubar and Hooah? How would you go about finding out? Well, most veterinarians keep records of their patients. Is there some way to collate this information into a state-by-state database? Don’t we have anything better to do? During these dog days of summer, um, no, not really.

Highest Bid. Uh-oh. The hapless Missoula, Montana daily, the Missoulian, has lost its bidding war with the Missoula Independent, a giveaway weekly, for the City of Missoula's legal advertising. According to the city clerk, Marty Rehbein, the Independent has won a one-year contract to publish this source of steady revenue. In 2009 the contract was worth $10,200. The high bid comes after a law passed in the 2009 Montana Legislature that overturned a requirement that legal advertising can only be published in a periodical with paid advertising (gee, why?) Now the Missoulian will be forced to pay its excellent reporters with revenue one could only suppose is derived exclusively from its apparent remaining source of income, rummage sales ads.

Twister. The tornado that destroyed the Metra Events Center in Billings, Montana on Father's Day is captured eloquently by a young couple who happened to be driving by, and happened to have a videocamera. The footage exudes a sort of hand-held Blair Witch Project terror that only gets more riveting as you watch it again. There's something ripping apart the roof of the massive building, and then the camera is turned sideways, and we see the ominous gray funnel snaking into the evening sky as rain falls, lightning strikes and the roar of the beast and its debris fills the air.

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The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly  
As election day looms in Montana we’re taking a look
at some of the candidates. By Bill Vaughn

THE GOOD is the Democratic candidate from House District 100. Willis Curdy is a retired high school teacher who’s been a firefighter, a smokejumper, and a commercial pilot. As a newcomer to politics in 2008, he lost by a mere 79 votes—a fraction of one percent—to Bill Nooney, who outspent Curdy $26,000 to $16,000. A petroleum fat cat with a shabby attendance record in the 2009 Session, and an even shabbier voting record in the 2007, Nooney sided against his constituents more often than not, supporting measures written by the Montana Contractors Association and the usual list of industry suspects, from oil and gas to insurance. For example, he voted for a failed measure that would have stripped local governments of their power to site gravel pits, thus leaving rural residential homeowners with no way to protect their neighborhoods and their property values from ruin.

Curdy, who’s running unopposed in the primary, will face off in November against a Goper nobody knows named Champ Edmunds.

The Bad is Bill Carey, a Democrat running unopposed for his third six-year term as Missoula County Commissioner. While Carey has lived up to the largely nonexistent job description for Commissioner by not doing much of anything, he’s voted for all thirteen of the subdivisions that have been brought before the Commission since Jan. 1, 2009.

We’re opposed to more subdivisions because the urban sprawl furthered by Carey and his fellow Commissioners—Michele Landquist and Jean Curtiss—is destroying productive agricultural land. Hey, you might argue, that land isn’t being used to grow anything right now, and it’s worth more as tracts of housing than fields of wheat. We say that when the gathering international crisis in food production begins to hit Montanans with full force these subdivisions will look as stupid and short-sighted as using asbestos for insulation. So why during a severe recession is Missoula County granting permits for developments sprouting houses no one can afford? Because the government of Missoula County makes a ton of money from the process of issuing permits.

Although Carey won’t be opposed in November we’ve already voted against him in the primary—with our write-ins that say “No more subdivisions.”

We think at least one of the subdivisions, the so-called “Blue Heron Estates,” will actually put homeowners in harm’s way. To see visual evidence the Commissioners ignored click here. 

Oh, and The Ugly? That would be the local daily, the Missoulian, for failing to report the proceedings of most County Commissioner meetings, where these bone-headed decisions about land use are being churned out with very little public scrutiny.

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More Notes from the Squalor Zone  By Bill Vaughn

Another Turd Farm? On Feb. 3, 2010 the Missoula County Commissioners rubber-stamped a 75-acre subdivision called “Blue Heron Estates” in Grass Valley near the Clark Fork River ten miles downstream from ground zero in Missoula. The actual rookery of Great Blue Herons nesting in a pair of enormous cottonwoods a stone’s throw from this subdivision will not be amused. While the Commissioners were gushing about the “no-build zones” provided by the owner, “protections” for the “riparian area,” and the lovely “path” that was promised, they ignored evidence that showed extensive flooding on this property in 1997. In fact, a flood relief channel of the Clark Fork River divides the property, which would be more aptly named "A River Runs Through It."

Images captured by Montana Aerial Photography reveal how much surface water is flowing through the property. And this was the result of a minor cyclical event, which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers categorized as a ten-year flood.

But even this minimal amount of overflow easily breached the county lane the developers intend to use as access (the county promises to “build up” this lane, which will have the same effect as constructing a dam).

Little wonder the Commissioners decided to forbid homeowners from digging basements at Blue Heron Estates. They remembered another pair of subdivisions they approved along Grant Creek, where basements filled up in 1997 with raw sewage, leading wags to describe these neighborhoods as “The Turd Farm.”

CCC Redux. In the same breath that Teabaggers and other elements of the lunatic right whine about encroaching government, and accuse the White House of being “socialist,” these dimwits attack the feds for doing nothing to deal with the Gulf oil disaster. In fact, besides the military, the government doesn’t have any organization that can be mobilized immediately to deal with emergencies affecting the natural world. Well, yeah, there’s FEMA. We know a guy who travels all over the country working as a FEMA administrator, and even he admits that the Agency is a joke.

What we’d like to see is the resurrection of the Civilian Conservation Corps, FDR’s enormously successful and popular program that put men ages 18-24 to work on public projects ranging from roads, bridges, and fire lookout towers to planting trees and stocking fish. The new CCC would require mandatory and universal service from every 18-year-old male and female in the U.S. for two years, except those who join the military. During emergencies like that in the Gulf this vast army of civilian soldiers could be dispatched immediately to do what needs to be done, whether it’s building barrier reefs or rescuing wildlife, or saving people stranded by flooding.

Evergreen. The more things change the more they stay the same. For example, here's a recent news squib from Florence, Montana: "A resident on oxygen who was smoking caused his trailer home to catch on fire and completely burn down."

Off With Their Masks. The era of the anonymous post (that is, flame) is coming to an end on several major websites, including that of the New York Times, Politics Daily, The Washington Post, and the Huffington Post.

The flesh-eating bacteria that infest our local sites here in Montana, such as that of 4&20blackbirds, leftinthewest, and newwest, should take heed and compel people who want to spout off to use their real names and give up a street address the editors can trace. That also means that commentators at these sites should stop hiding behind noms des plumes.

Here at darkacres we’ve avoided getting soiled by nameless mud-slingers because we refuse to publish any comments at all. Do we still get hate mail? Once in a while. But because we know how to track down IP addresses, and it’s a federal crime to intimidate someone with anonymous email, these cowardly, right-wing jerk-offs have been frightened away.

Bay Watch. May 27 marked the launch of The Bay Citizen, a nonprofit online journal that will cover news and culture from San Francisco and environs. This new venture is edited by Jonathan Weber, the founder and publisher of New West, a regional online magazine based in Missoula. With a relatively modest budget of $5 million and a small staff of 15 journalists, The Citizen is largely funded by private equity gazillionaire Warren Hellman.

The Citizen has sent a shot across the bow of the San Francisco Chronicle, which, like newspapers everywhere, has ceased doing the sort of expensive and time-consuming local reporting that used to make newspapers indispensable. (For example, the lame and hapless Missoula daily, the Missoulian, rarely sends a reporter to County Commissioners meetings any more, thus allowing these autocrats complete opacity when it comes to land use outside the city).

The Citizen joins a growing trend in U.S. journalism—the elimination of the printed edition, which is an enormous waste of paper, physical plant, and distribution resources.

To see other examples of the new generation of online reportage check out voiceofsandiego, Texas Tribune and MinnPost in Minnesota. In April a similar non-profit called ProPublica, which covers national news, won a Pulitzer Prize.

We wish Weber luck in his new venture, and fondly remember him for paying us to publish at New West a very long article about a computer game called Sim City.

Tubers. Because Thursday night earns NBC its best ratings of the week you’d figure that local advertisers in Missoula, Montana would be swarming all over each other to flaunt their wares on KECI during shows such as Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock. But Thursday after Thursday, and several times every Thursday, this local NBC affiliate runs the same tired house ad featuring the station’s news anchors. Here’s Steve Fetveit, world-weary and exhausted, droning on about the news “profession” as the camera pans in on the copious liver spots adorning his hands. And here’s Heidi Meili, once the most beautiful Heidi in the valley, droning on about the news “profession,” looking like she just emerged from a three-day fraternity party at which she was the main attraction.

The beat goes on. Assistant  University of Nevada football coach Ty Gregorak has been sacked. The  Las Vegas Journal Review reported May 12 that the reason has nothing to do with his on-field performance. The former University of Montana assistant football coach was arrested in Boulder, Colorado last week after being turned away from a strip club. According to a bouncer, Gregorak was just way too drunk. Friends, we’ve heard of being too drunk to fish, but too drunk to enter a titty bar?

It gets worse. According to the Journal-Review, later that night Gregorak went back to a parking garage near the club, broke into the bouncer’s car, and stole his wallet and a loaded .45 caliber handgun, which he later returned to the bouncer’s home. Gregorak will face formal charges expected to be announced May 13.

Gregorak followed former UM head coach Bobby Hauck to UNLV last fall. And his alleged malfeasance puts him squarely in the gangster culture that Coach Hauck seems to inspire. During Coach Hauck's tenure in Missoula a dozen varsity football players were involved in crimes and misdemeaners ranging from kidnapping, thievery and assault with a weapon to drunk driving .

Equine Infectious Anemia Reported. The Montana Dept of Livestock announced May 2 that a horse south of Gallatin Gateway has been diagnosed with Montana’s first case of Equine infectious anemia (EIA) since 2007.

Also known as swamp fever, EIA is potentially fatal viral horse disease spread by blood-sucking  insects such as horse and deer flies. No vaccine or treatment exists for the disease, which is characterized by intermittent fever, depression, progressive weakness, weight loss, edema (fluid under the skin or in body cavities) and anemia.

The disease was discovered when the owner of the horse, who was planning to transport the animal out of Montana, had a Coggins test administered. The results came up positive, and were confirmed by the USDA-APHIS National Veterinary Service Laboratories in Ames, Iowa.

Owners infected horses have few options. These include euthanasia or a lifetime quarantine with a minimum of 200 yards distance between the quarantined animal and other equines. Infected animals can also be used for research—some scientists believe such research would contribute to a better understanding of retroviruses such as EIA, AIDs (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) and Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

The owner of the sick horse is considering the options.

Evergreen #2. There is an obscure subspecies of writing that takes as its subject the “vast, sweeping landscape of Montana.” For decades the hacks who write this copy, which is commissioned from time to time to promote the interests of the tourism industry, have gone to the same box of alphabet blocks and returned with the same clichés (that fine French printer’s term for bound strings of words you set in type again and again). For example, here are some sentences from a four-page ad supplement in the April 19 New Yorker, for which the Office of Tourism shelled out $65,000:

“They found the sense of wonder that can only exist in a land so close to its untamed past.”

“Maybe you crest a rise and suddenly see five different mountain ranges, blue and unknowable, marching toward different wild horizons.”

“Rivers are born of towering peaks raking snow from the sky and powered by steep ravines tilting into broad valleys.”

Of course, no commercial gush about Montana would be complete without someone saying “last best place.” This trite and incomprehensible phrase is uttered by Walter Kirn, the literary carpetbagger who wrote Up in the Air, a novel in which Montana only appears as Flyover Country.

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Gravel Goons By Bill Vaughn
Industry fat cats use scare tactics to try and squash zoning designed to protect rural landowners in Gallatin County.

ACCORDING TO A PIECE in the April 16, 2010 issue of the Belgrade (Montana) News, “a concerted effort is underway to kill four recently proposed zoning districts in the Gallatin Valley, as a group of concerned citizens and the gravel industry this week mailed anti-zoning information to most every large land owner in the valley, urging them to file written protests.”

What these industry goons and their meat puppets are trying to prevent are minimal safeguards for ranchers and rural landowners against the ravages of gravel pits, asphalt plants, cement factories and the heavy truck traffic that services these massive industrial schemes. The imposition of zoning would require gravel miners to undergo a reasonable permitting process before they start digging.

The gravel industry is taking no chances that Gallatin County will end up like Missoula County, where gravel pits in two rural neighborhoods were nixed by the Board of Commissioners, who used the righteous power of zoning to protect homeowners from a dangerous and dirty industry that ruins the property values of everyone else.

One of these neighborhoods is Grass Valley, home of Dark Acres, on the right bank of the Clark Fork River ten miles below the city. In 2006 the owner of a hobby ranch here decided he could make more money from gravel, asphalt and cement than he could from cows. So he appealed to the County for permission to ruin this beautiful expanse of grassland and forest. The Board of Commissioners, an extremely political body of three elected officials swayed in almost every matter by the squeaking wheel, listened to the protests of neighbors, environmental groups, and the Indian tribes who regard Council Grove State Park in Grass Valley as a special place. (Meanwhile, the ranch owner claimed he was only trying to create ponds for the children of a summer camp to play in.)  

Still, because the Commissioners rarely reject subdivisions, despite expensive lawsuits brought because of badly planned ones that got flooded, the neighborhood expected the worse. But the Commissioners surprised us and told the gravel industry, no way, Jose. The gravel industry was not amused, especially when the County later snuffed a similar gravel scheme outside Lolo by imposing interim zoning on the neighborhood. That case ended up in the Montana Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the Commissioners.

In Gallatin County the gravel goons are playing rough, even lying to people about how zoning is the first step on the road to government confiscation of their guns (that came as news to my redneck neighbors, whose land is heavily zoned and are the proud owners of numerous weapons, which they enjoy firing at all times of the day and night).

The lies and distortions compelled the Belgrade News to issue an editorial. “Using tactics reminiscent of the days of the Anaconda Company, representatives of the gravel industry and others opposed to zoning have launched an aggressive campaign to stop a county effort to create four gravel-zoning districts in the Gallatin Valley. . . . We urge land owners in the four districts to learn the truth before deciding whether to protest; and to take with a grain of salt the many myths, legends and lies about how the county's ‘top-down’ zoning efforts affects (or don't affect) the citizens' ‘bottom-up’ neighborhood planning efforts.”

Update: On April 27 landowners killed zoning in one of four areas of the county imposed by the Gallatin County Commission to regulate gravel pits. Protests are still being counted in three other districts. State law dictates that if protests are filed by either 40 percent of the landowners in a district, or owners of 50 percent of the agricultural or forest land, zoning regulations can be overturned. In the case of the Southern Valley district, home of the town of Gallatin Gateway, the owners of 63 percent of the agricultural land—13,992 acres of a total 22,354 acres—successfully protested. Of the 1,467 total property owners in the Southern Valley district, according to officials, 123 filed to overturn the district, about eight percent of the property owners.

Although anti-zoning sentiment springs from the pea-brains of Teabaggers, tax protesters, right-wing Christian zealots and other marginalized loons who think they’re serving the U.S. Constitution but in fact are serving big business, a state law allowing big landowners to impose their will on a family that owns a home and a couple of acres is hardly a democratic measure, and ought to be struck down. And it's time to put zoning in Gallatin County on the ballot and let the majority have its way. Meanwhile, people who live near a potential gravel pit in Gallatin Gateway now have no protection against the contracting industry, which could give a shit about the property rights of individuals in rural residential neighborhoods.

Update Redux. District Judge John Brown issued a temporary restraining April 30 order stopping the Gallatin County Commissioners from taking any further action on proposed gravel pit zoning. According to the Bozeman Chronicle the order was requested by the Gateway Opencut Mining Action Group, an environmental organization based in Gallatin Gateway, and four local residents who have filed a lawsuit against the county. Their lawsuit claims Montana law denies those who don't own property the right to participate in the process, a violation of the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Brown scheduled a hearing on the restraining order for July 12.

Then, on May 3, Judge Brown ordered that interim zoning be extended until at least the July 12 court date, thus preventing the gravel goons from doing their dirty business in these districts.

On May 7 one of these gravel goons filed an intervention suit whose aim is to derail the efforts of the Gallatin County Commissioners to protect small landowners from this rapacious industry. TMC, which already operates two gravel pits, claims the county's effort to enact permanent regulations would hamper the company's ability to mine gravel in the future. Boo hoo.

Woncha Be My Neighbor? Meanwhile, the industry wants the public to believe it’s going to regulate itself in the matter of disrupting and ruining rural residential neighborhoods. On its  sand and gravel website the Montana Contractors Association says it’s encouraging its members to enact a “good neighbor policy,” whatever that means. “We do not believe that firms seeking redress through the courts are attempting to skirt regulations or to make political end runs,” the MCA says. “The companies have been unfairly stalled and delayed by state agencies, and the courts are now agreeing with them. This in no way changes commitments of our members to be responsible, good neighbors.”

The MCA, of course, sponsored a bill in the 2006 Legislature that would have stripped county commissioners of the power to use zoning to regulate gravel mining. Thanks to Democrats in the Senate this odious measure was squashed.
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More Notes from the Squalor Zone  By Bill Vaughn

Swapping Names. If you visited Google on April Fools Day you saw that the monster search engine and money machine had renamed itself Topeka. No, not as an homage to the local Indians, whom city fathers would soon do their best to exterminate. It's said that the word "topeka" in the Kansa language means "to dig good potatoes." (Hmm. Had the tater made it's way to the Plains from South America by the time Topeka was founded in the 1850s?)

At any rate, Topeka is one of 600 communities vying to become the laboratory for an advanced fiber optics experiment Google is planning to build next year in an effort to dramatically increase the speed of the Web. The winner will be announced at the end of 2010. To get Google's atention Topeka renamed itself Google for the month of March. Although Missoula, Montana is one of the other hopefuls it missed the chance to suck up. But there's still time. How about changing its name from the Salish Indian word for "this water is really fucking cold" to Sergey? Or Brin? Or maybe even Larry?

Speculations. Because some analysts are saying the prices for new homes have bottomed out and have even begun to rise again, speculators are looking around for opportunities to buy low and sell high. According to Money magazine, two of the top 25 cities in the country for making money in real estate are in Montana. The magazine says home prices in Billings will rise 2.7 percent in 2010, and in Great Falls 2 percent. (The best place in the U.S. to buy an investment home is in Santa Clara, California, where the average price of a new home is predicted to rise by a whopping 6 percent by the end of the year.)

The only problem with the magazine's list is that although the Magic City and the Electric City have fun nicknames, no one wants to live there. Billings offers all the grandeur of Fargo, and a visit to Great Falls is like falling down a time tube into 1954. If you think we're exagerrating go have a cup of coffe with the cops who hang out at Tracy's near the Civic Center.

Vanilla Gorilla. It doesn't come as a shock to anyone who’s been following the career of Monster Garage star Jesse James that he’d eventually cheat on Sandra Bullock. The only surprise is that it took him five years to do it (that is to say, so far his only public indiscretion has been his alleged year-long affair with a self-described “evil cunt,” a tattoo model called Michelle  'Bombshell' McGee.) After all, James is tough, successful and charismatic in that smoldering James Dean sort of way that compels certain women to throw themselves at him.

When I flew to Austin a couple years ago to interview James for the cover of the Men's Journal his publicist warned me that the one thing I couldn't ask him about was "Sandy." In fact, when I arrived at the noisy, frenetic garage where James was rebuilding a car, the former high school football standout and juvenile delinquent from L.A. didn’t want to talk to me at all. Not having much else to do I just kept hanging around, sweating in the July heat, and eventually he opened up.

I thought he was honest and unpretentious. Plus, he had the sort of physical and mechanical skills that most men only dream about. As I walked back across Austin to my hotel after the interview it struck me that James didn’t like to talk to reporters about Bullock because her presence, unseen or not, would always take over the conversation. And now, alas, the conversation will probably never be about the career of Jesse James again.

Purse Snatcher Update. On March 12 a suspect was arrested in connection with numerous cases of purse snatchings this winter in Missoula and Ravalli Counties. The thefts were reported by equestriennes whose vehicles were entered while they were working their horses at one of the numerous indoor arenas in the area. The thief then used the victims' credit cards to buy gasoline, in one case only ten minutes after the theft was discovered. Evidence against the suspect includes surveillance camera footage of a stout, blonde female using one of these purloined cards at a fuel pump, filling a vehicle that looked like the green Chevy Tracker pictured here.

Missoula Sheriff's Detective Rick Newlon said the suspect was arrested after the owner of an arena noticed a suspicious vehicle that resembled the one shown on flyers circulated among Missoula's horsey set, wrote down the license plate number and called the cops. The alleged perp is expected to be booked into the Missoula Detention Facility March 12.

Ghost World. Websites and blogs that publish anonymous posts and comments have no right to complain about harsh reactions to their content, no matter how racist, sexist, uneducated, xenophobic or hate-mongering. The operators of these sites, in fact, must take responsibility for any comment they allow to be posted under a pseudonym for the reason that there’s no one else to hold responsible. And who’s to say that the operators themselves are not, in fact, writing these snarling snarks and drooling diatribes in order to whack the hive and drive traffic their way for reasons rooted in narcissism, if nothing else?

If you want your website to become a place for civil discourse demand real names from your commentators, and real email addresses. Or dispense with the whole annoying cacaphony altogether, and refuse, like Dark Acres, to publish any comment (unless, of course, someone wants to pay for it).

Patsies. All March we were holding our breath and crossing our fingers, hoping that three of Missoula’s most hapless Gopers filed to run again for Montana legislative contests they lost by massive landslides in the 2008 general election.

First, there was Kevin Blackler, who got out-voted by his Democratic opponent, Diane Sands, by a margin of 3144 to 1710 in the race for House District 95. Then there’s Steve Eschenbacher, who got walloped by Teresa Henry 2720 to 1777 in HD96. Finally, our fave punching bag, Carol Minjares, was savaged by Michele Reinhart in HD97 by 3693 votes to a pathetic 1559.

Although these perennial punching bags decided not to get in the ring again a pair of fresh Gopers entered the fray at the last minute, filing just before the deadline on March 15. Matt Stevenson filed for HD96 against a new Dem, Carolyn Squires, and Matt Stevenson will go against Reinhart.

Why do we care this year whether Republicans gets thumped in traditional Democratic strongholds? For the same reason we want Sarah Palin to run for president in 2012. The more that Gopers expose their failure of imagination during this, our fleeting era of the Tea Party Cult, the less Americans will want anything to do with them. For example, opposition to “big government” is a reaction, not an idea, another way of saying: I’m not interested in any society that uses taxes to elevate the conditions of people I don’t like, which turns out to be most everyone. And what about the right-wing notion that the way to solve the health care crisi is to remove all regulations on the health insurance industry? This is an idea?

Happy as a heron in a heron tree. The first week of March always marks the return of the great blue heron colony from its winter digs in Latin America, to its condominium of nests in a massive cottonwood at Dark Acres, on the Clark Fork River below Missoula.

We always know exactly when the herons are back because they announce their arrival with a chorus of grating Jurassic screeches that stampedes the dogs through the dog door into the house.

Actually, a heron has at least seven words in its vocabulary, including one made by clacking its bills together. Their most common expression is the one that sounds like the unword “Fraunk!”

When you see these big birds out on patrol, with their crooked necks, six-foot wingspans, long legs stretched out behind, fraunking like a pack of maniacs, you always feel a twinge of the terror that sent our miserable little mammal ancestors fleeing for cover as the Pterodactyls passed over, staring down with the scrutiny of old people scanning an Early Bird menu.

Talisman. Like our Irish ancestors, at Dark Acres we believe hawthorns can influence events in the world of the unseen. No, really. Why not? Lots of people hedge their bets with lucky charms. You know, rosaries, worry dolls, Pawnee spirit bracelets, a funny-colored pebble they found in a Vegas parking lot before hitting a fine payout on a slot.

Lucky for us the largest black hawthorn in Montana grows on our land, between the house and the river. We named her Maeva, after the fabled Irish queen who liked to fight in battle. Over the last couple of years we’ve placed significant items in the thorny branches of Maeva, hoping she’ll hear our pitiful supplications. Here’s a dollar bill, a Powerball ticket bearing a one-dollar payout, jewelry from Kitty’s dead grandmother, a letter written by my dead mother when she served as an army nurse in the Philippines during WWII, and ribbons of different colors we hope will bring continued decent health and freedom from irrational anxiety.

Hot ticket. Some men’s college basketball conferences are more equal than others. For example, the Big East will place as many as nine teams in the NCAA National Championship Tournament later this month (including our fave, Villanova), while the lowly Big Sky Conference will field only one. That’s not the only disparity. While a good seat at the Big Sky conference playoffs in Ogden March 9-10 will set a fan back $25, the average price of a ticket to the Big East tournament at Madison Square Garden is $140 $196.

Furless. The grassroots organization circulating petitions for an initiative that would ban trapping on public lands in Montana is claiming its first victory. According to spokesperson (and our pal) Connie Poten, Footloose Montana has gathered the 299 signatures needed to qualify House District 92.

Footloose must now gather the signatures of 5 percent of the registered voters in 33 more House Districts by June 18 in order to put the measure, I-160, on the November 2 ballot. Although HD92 includes much of Missoula’s

Upper Rattlesnake, the “Valley of the Liberals,” the Secretary of State’s office reported that Footloose has already collected more than 4,000 4800 signatures of the 24,337 it needs across Montana.

Opponents of the measure include the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, whose president and CEO, David Allen, said in a recent press release that “I-160 appears to be a backdoor anti-hunting measure backed by out-of-state financiers trying to change Montana values and lifestyles.”   

“We're not heavily funded by anybody,” Poten countered. “We're operating on a shoestring. The bulk of our money comes from small donations from people around the state."

Dr. Tim Provow, a Footloose Montana board member, hunter, and member of the National Rifle Association, told the Great Falls Tribune that most trapping on public lands is at odds with hunting ethics.  “The first rule of hunting is to ‘Be Sure of Your Target!,’” Provow said.  “Trapping violates this rule by its indiscriminate killing of many species, including endangered, threatened and sensitive species, such as Canada lynx and American bald eagle.”

And backers of I-160 point to the scores of cats, dogs and other pets that have been maimed and killed by traps set on public lands.

The Black, and The White By Bill Vaughn
Did Teedle have a stroke, or was he trying to tell us something?

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN and the E Street Band were rocking the house with “Glory Days” during halftime at the 2009 Super Bowl when, out of the blue, our ancient TV went berserk. The Boss turned chartreuse. Patty Scialfa morphed into a large Cheeto. Stevie Van Zandt was glowering with the skin tones of someone choking on a wad of calzone. My response, as it is to all appliance insubordinations, was to give the set a good whack. This accomplished nothing. My wife, Kitty, calmly lifted the remote and tried adjusting the buttons that control color and tint. Again, nothing.

We decided the producers were making a statement about the inauguration of Barack Obama, the message being that our skin, be it black, white, purple or green, is only incidental to who we are. Or something. But when we called a

neighbor he told us we must be hallucinating. On his massive flat panel screen there was nothing unusually weird about the band.

As the Steelers went on to edge the Cardinals, garish auras appeared around the players the colors of gee-gaws produced by a plastics factory. We surfed around to other channels, but the virus had infected them all. The next morning, when we switched on the news, the MSNBC announcers were as obnoxious as always in their eagerness to interrupt the people they were interviewing. But we couldn’t concentrate on the day’s events because everyone was cast in day-glo. The most aggressive of these newsies, Contessa Brewer, was painted in layers, like a radioactive slab of Neopolitan ice cream. [read more]



More Notes from the Squalor Zone  By Bill Vaughn


Mental Health News. Although Montanans ranked themselves the third happiest people in the union, according to a recent Gallup poll, the National Centers for Disease Control have consistently placed the land of oro y plata in the top five states as defined by rate of suicide. In 2005, for example, Montana was ranked first in the nation for the number of people per capita who pursued the question “to be or not to be” to one of is ultimate conclusions.

Why the disparity? Why do a people who say they’re “happy” kill themselves at a rate much higher than the national average? Well, everyone lies to each other, themselves, and pollsters all the time. If you believe America actually has a “culture,” one of the precepts of that culture encourages us to believe that the revolutionary inclusion in the Constitution of the right to pursue happiness means that we must be happy, whatever that is, whether it’s freedom from fear and want, an excellent cell phone contract, or some sense of well-being based on emotional intangibles.

So why do Montanans kill themselves at a rate twice as high as that in most other states? Is it our long, Irish love affair with alcohol? Is it our long Irish love affair with firearms? Is it related somehow to world-class literary critic and University of Montana English professor Leslie Fiedler’s analysis of what he called “The Montana Face?”

“What I found seemed, at first glance, reticent, weary—full of self-sufficient stupidity; a little later it appeared simply inarticulate, with all the dumb pathos of what cannot declare itself; a face developed not for sociability or feeling, but for facing into the weather.”




Couch Trip
The old Mercantile has finished her life at the age of 144,
but at least we have something to remember her by. By Bill Vaughn

THIRTY YEARS AGO we made our membership in the middle class official. First, we stopped shacking up together and got married. Then we bought our first piece of furniture. It was a simple and understated couch the color of a palomino. Although it was on sale, at $999 it was still unbelievably expensive, by our impoverished standards. But the store where we found it was willing to let us take it home right away and pay for it in installments of $30 a month. There wasn’t any other major furniture in our little rent house on La Vasseur Street in what we called the French Quarter, but at least we had a nice place to sit.

The store was the old Missoula Mercantile in the heart of what is now Montana’s largest city. We’ve always liked to wander around this warren of odd-shaped rooms and mezzanines, because there’s a surprise around every corner (for example, between the first and second floors is an ancient photo booth). Plus, the atmosphere is from another century; it’s quieter and slower-paced than the Big Box Stores out on Reserve, with natural light that streams in from plate glass windows facing Higgins Avenue and East Front Street.

The Merc was established in 1866, long before Montana was even a state. In 1882 it moved into its current eccentric quarters, which would continue to expand with additions for the next nine years. Like most of the old buildings in town it was constructed of red brick fired from a local clay so inadequate for construction purposes it had to be veneered with a sturdier clay shipped in from out of town.

We moved from the French Quarter to Bonner Park and from there to what everyone called The Pony Ranch, in the Rattlesnake Valley. The couch went with us, of course. When we started spending more time in our downtown office on West Broadway than we were spending at home we moved the couch again. We put it in front of the television in what we called The Big Room, which housed our massive typesetting machines. Since we usually worked from 9 a.m. to midnight and our office was in the center of downtown friends wandered at all hours to sit on the couch, watch television and gossip.

We were sorry to hear that the old Merc, which was absorbed into the Macy’s chain a few years ago, would be closing its doors this winter. Nothing good lasts, we told ourselves, feeling lame because the only words we could come up with to describe our nostalgia and melancholy was a cliché.

But at least we still have the couch, parked in our living room at Dark Acres. It’s still in excellent shape, although it suffered a cosmetic ding. When it was downtown one of our employees, working out at lunch break on our exercise bike, got preoccupied with the soap opera she was watching, and failed to notice that she had moved the bike too close to the back of the couch. When smoke suddenly filled the air she realized her mistake and shrieked, prompting people to run into The Big Room from all over.

We don’t sit on the couch much anymore. That mostly because it’s been appropriated by our dogs. Clara, our Border collie, has a special love for the couch. Besides spending her nights and some of her days on it, she enjoys having raucous sex with the cushions. Don’t ask us why.

 

 

 

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