Livingston, I Presume

Field trip

 

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Apple-picking time

This is the only time of year when I miss New England.

For me, summers there involved much sweating and general unpleasantness--when we did get a lone air conditioner in our bedroom, I spent the bulk of one summer holed up in that bedroom, even eating meals there--so I generally thank all available deities to be in the Rocky Mountain West when the summer heat and humidity makes its first appearance. (Ask me about New Haven, my bedroom, and the frozen peas sometime!) Which brings me to spring in New England. Perfectly lovely, yes, for the week and a half that it appears between the end of winter snow and damp cold and the start of the Residing In Someone's Armpit season.

Winter wasn't too bad--I come from Montana and am therefore hard to scare or freeze--but the whining and general panic that accompanied each and every winter storm was amusing at best and annoying at worst. Schools closing! Cars piling! Teeny, tiny amounts of snow falling! In Montana, it takes an act of God to close the schools. Snow day? Hah. In my 13 years of Montana public schooling, we had a snow day exactly once. It was -40 degrees Fahrenheit, but that wasn't what caused the powers-that-be to close schools. Nope. It was because the power had gone out and they couldn't heat the building. But I digress. I was talking about why I liked New England.

It's a cliche, but fall in New England really is spectacular. The weather cools down (and, more crucially, dries out), and the trees actually do turn these unbelievable colors that I've never seen anywhere else, especially not in Montana. And it's time to go to the orchard and buy way too many apples .

I remember the first time my friend Kristyn--a Connecticut girl--told me that she was going apple picking over the weekend. I have to admit that I mocked her. That's a great racket, I told her. Instead of paying people to harvest your crops, you get silly people to come and pay you so that they can do it for you. Makes perfect sense. But when Chip started working at UMass, and I started spending a lot of time in Amherst, we were invited on such a trip, and I was totally converted. That year and the next two years that we remained in New England, we made the pilgrimage and had apple dessert competitions afterward with our friends. The "judging" involved lots of warm beverages, fireside conversation, and scrumptious apple desserts.

In Bozeman, we have Rocky Creek Farm, where you can indeed pick apples, but it's just not the same. Going there for pumpkins is a lot of fun (I'll post pictures of Connery's Montessori field trip there this week), but I think it is the community that gathered after the picking that I miss more than the actual produce. Funny how just the smell of fall in the air can bring back so many happy memories and nostalgia for a place that I didn't necessarily appreciate fully while I was there. I guess it's time to redouble my efforts to enjoy being exactly where I am now, instead of finding fault. Now, I need to go find some doughnuts to go with my cider.

Real Americans* discuss potential election outcomes

Me, looking up from the kitchen table: "I've planned our grocery list so that we should be able to make it to payday without having to go to the store again."

Chip, regarding the listed meals, with an unusual enthusiasm: "You've got meals for us all the way through election night!"

Me, quizzically: "I guess."

Chip, in explanation mode: "You see, we'll be ready until then. And on election night, we'll either be going out to celebrate or committing ritual suicide. Either way, well have enough groceries."

*Hard to say if we qualify as "Real Americans." On the one hand, we clearly live in a Real American State, where people hunt and drive pick-up trucks. On the other hand, we do neither of those things. And we use words like "neither".

Both sides

Via Cute Overload comes this little gem of short animation. If you're a mom--or if you have or had a mom, which should cover just about all of you, barring my alien readership--you may want to grab a delicate hankie for viewing.

Chicken or s***?

Via Dooce comes David Sedaris' essay for the New Yorker about undecided voters. He says exactly what I was trying to say with this entry, but in a way that doesn't require readers have a Silkwood shower afterwards to wash off the acid bath I spewed forth:

I look at these people and can’t quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

Out of the closet

Do you think anyone driving by our house will be confused as to where we stand in the upcoming election? Although there really ought to be a sign that reads "Pinko Commie Liberals With Mild OCD Live Here" to finish it out.

There is a longstanding joke about the family that I married into, the Ritters. The Ritters--whose ancestors hailed primarily from Ireland and Germany--love to party, but they're very organized about it, and every so often, Chip likes to unleash his inner Teuton. I knew it was coming out when we returned from the Park County Democrats dinner on Tuesday evening and Chip disappeared into the darkness of the front yard to arrange the many, many yard signs he had procured at the dinner.

Still, there's no denying it now. All of our (mainly Republican) neighbors will be well aware of our political leanings. Guess that puts us right out of the running for Harvest King and Queen.

Almost better than CuteO

Yes We Can (Hold Babies):

"YES WE CAN (HOLD BABIES) IS THE INTERNATIONAL SOURCE FOR PICTURES OF OBAMA HOLDING BABIES. THERE ARE OCCASIONALLY SOME KISSES INVOLVED, SOMETIMES THE BABIES ARE A LITTLE TOO OLD TO BE CLASSIFIED AS BABIES, AND SOMETIMES WE JUST POST PICTURES OF OBAMA STANDING UNDER A DINOSAUR (AND BY THAT WE DO NOT MEAN JOHN MCCAIN)."

Have fun!

Montana's universities benefit everyone

Apparently it’s time for me to go back to college. After all, if the opponents of the 6-mill levy—the property tax that provides about $13 million a year to the University System at large—are to be believed, it’s all champagne wishes and caviar dreams on Montana’s university campuses. And I love me some champagne.

But things must have changed a lot in the decade or so since I left the University of Montana, because I never experienced “grandiose country club gyms” in “billion-dollar empires” or any of the other excesses that those who would have Montanans cut off a key source of funding to its higher education sector have described.

In fact, things must have changed a lot in just a few months, since the last time I visited my alma mater. The professors I visited with in Missoula were still working hard for a lot less pay than they would receive elsewhere; the administrators were still making do with less, and the students continued to work way more hours than they should have to while trying to get their education. Guess they missed the memo about the lifestyle they’re supposed to be living.

Putting aside the sarcasm for a moment, I have to say in all seriousness that I don’t buy the idea that Montana’s universities are living high on the hog on the taxpayers’ dime. The “fat” that could be trimmed has been. And the share of the higher ed budget provided by the Montana taxpayer has shrunk dramatically. In just the time since I graduated, the state’s share of the bill has fallen from 73 percent to 39 percent, according to the nonprofit coalition Stand Up For Education and a recent Chronicle article. Moreover, the Montana Legislative Fiscal Division found that among its peer states, Montana makes the lowest investment in the per-student cost for higher education—in fact, nearly 40 percent less than the average.

The idea that facilities—“fancy” buildings—should stand as proxy for excessive funding is, quite simply, ludicrous. Many new construction projects are funded by donor bequest or by grants, or—in the case of the so-called “country club gyms”—by the students themselves through voted-in fees.

I will grant the levy opponents one thing: They are absolutely correct when they say that Montana’s universities are not “bare-bones, modest colleges,” as they might have at one time been envisioned. Nor should they be. Students seeking higher education in the Montana university system expect and deserve better than that. When they graduate, they will have to compete not only nationally but internationally, and I can guarantee that universities in Asia and Europe are not scaling back to return to some romantic notion of history when higher education required nothing more than a lecturer and some slate tablets for note-taking.

Higher education in Montana requires taxpayer support to survive, but Montana’s future depends on maintaining quality colleges and universities. Luckily, the investments we make in the system pay dividends quickly. Stand Up For Education noted that the university system attracts more than $100 million annually in “externally funded grants and research that help businesses and agriculture,” adding that “technologies developed at Montana universities have helped create over 30 Montana businesses in recent years.” One need only look at Bozeman’s high-tech and biotech sectors to see examples of such cross-pollination.

In fact, when I look around, it’s a lot easier to find examples of ways that Montana’s universities benefit the state as a whole than it is to find the abuses and waste (or the oppressed conservative professors and students) that opponents claim are rife in the university system. Perhaps those who would have us vote against the levy could stand to take spend some time in the Economics department—and step away from the Mythology classes.

Steal this post; I did

Looky, Daddy is lending his creative talents to defeating California's Proposition 8. The funny is strong with that one, as is the fight for social justice.

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