Livingston, I Presume

Mayberry

I appreciate the helpful comments on my last cryptic post. I think I had confused even myself by the end, though I must admit I'm no closer to actually dealing with the situation that prompted the post. Maybe someday.

Tonight is the first Farmers' Market in Livingston, which in this small town is a bit like someone from Vienna saying, "Tonight is the Opera Ball." Everybody turns out, even though the growing season around here means that there are very few actual farmers until later in the season. There are craftspeople and bakers and charities and live music and giant plates of roasted pork and everybody you haven't seen since last summer.

When I'm at the Farmers' Market, I never wonder why I live here. The market is nestled between the Yellowstone River and the duck pond at Sacajawea Park, which has to be one of the only parks in Montana with a full-time, live-on groundskeeper. Every direction has a mountain view. Kids run around in packs, but not the scary kind. Older kids keep an eye out for younger kids. Some of them go and dance on the bandshell. It's small-town life of the kind that is actually fairly new to me.

Livingston is by far the smallest town I've ever lived in, and some days that gives me fits. Not today. Today is the first Farmer's Market.

Update: The Opera Ball has been rained out. Stupid rain. Good for the farmers, not so much for the Farmers' Market.

Hypothetical

So let's say that you really love baseball. Let's say that you love it so much that you were willing to give up a pretty good life in a country with no baseball in order to return to a place that had baseball. All your relatives love baseball too--have for generations--and that's partly why you just couldn't live in a place with no baseball anymore.

Now your whole life is predicated around the notion that living near baseball is worth the sacrifice that you made to do it. And while you don't require others to share the same fanaticism about baseball that you do, you hope that they wouldn't actively denigrate your choices. After all, you love baseball. Your family loves baseball. Other people in the world like baseball, so you know you're not completely insane.

So what do you do when you have to deal with someone who not only doesn't like baseball but is so openly contemptuous of it that attending a baseball game is like hell to him/her? He/she can't even find a nice thing to say about the roasted peanuts, and everybody flippin' loves the roasted peanuts. Do you take it personally? Or do you just move on and hope that you never have to attend another baseball game with this person?

Way #294 to give me a freakin' heart attack

Call my house at 11:09 p.m. two days after my dad has surgery.

I don't know who "Private Caller" is, but if I find out, you know I'm going to be calling his/her house every morning when I get up at 5:30.

It's 9:00 a.m. and I'm pretty sure that my heart has only know stopped beating at twice its normal speed. Thanks for the workout, Private Caller! Guess I can skip the gym today.