Livingston, I Presume

Connie is so tie-tie...

Poor Con-man Burns. Now he's falling asleep at a hearing in technicolor glory atop the Daily Kos. However, as a Semi-Narcoleptic American, I have to take exception to this footage. If there were a camera trained on me at such an event, I can't promise it wouldn't record similar results. Hell, if someone had been following me around in college and grad school just taking pictures of the drool marks and note trail-offs in my binders, I never would have graduated. Falling asleep in a field hearing? That's no challenge at all. Try it in a Russian class with only seven other students and the world's most sadistic professor. Apparently, I'm ready for the Senate!

In Defense of Bozeman

NB: A version of this first appeared as a column in Tuesday's edition of Business to Business, a monthly publication of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.

Bozeman-bashing seems to be in vogue this summer. In his farewell column last month in Business to Business, Parker Heinlein lamented the creeping big-ness of Bozeman and cited a battery store as the last straw in his exasperation with what Bozeman is becoming. He’s not alone, at least if the blogosphere is to be believed. On Internet sites from BobcatNation to New West, posters decry the loss of Bozeman to roving hordes of yuppies demanding McMansions to live in, chain store to shop in, and Starbucks to drink.

Maybe if I lived in Bozeman, I would be joining the angry mob, too. As it is, I find myself somewhat bewildered by the venom heaped on a town I consider still friendly, accessible, and convenient. Sure, it’s not all those things all the time, but compared with other places I’ve lived or worked, it ranks pretty high.

I just can’t see the downfall of an entire city’s culture and lifestyle based on the national chains it attracts or the irritation of the afternoon commute—or even the number of new residents who show up. Given the alternative—which many a shrinking Montana town can demonstrate—I’ll take the growth.

I’d much rather witness the debate over whether a new high school should be built with or without a performing arts space than take sides in the divisive rancor over which undersubscribed neighborhood school should be closed. Or which rural schools should be consolidated.

I’ll take a few downtown stores that fall squarely outside of my income bracket, if it means that part of Bozeman continues to thrive. I’d rather have to hunt for parking spots there than face the acres of free parking—is there anything sadder?—in a dying downtown like the ones you can see in far too many communities in Montana.

Even the traffic doesn’t ruffle me unduly. The worst traffic in Bozeman is no match for some of the places I’ve called home, and at least here I can look at the mountains while I idle.

I understand the fears of longtime Bozemanites that their town could become a place they don’t recognize in 10 years—it may be a place that they will say they don’t recognize now. Nobody wants Bozeman to become Denver or Salt Lake or Spokane. As a lifelong Montanan who took a decade-long break from Big Sky Country before moving back, I agree. I don’t want Montana to become Colorado.

But I also don’t want it to be the place that everyone has to leave when they graduate high school or college because there are no decent jobs, a situation for which Montana has long been known. Growth can’t guarantee good jobs, but neither can a lack of it guarantee that a place won’t change. Towns that aren’t retaining their residents and aren’t attracting any new ones must endure shuttered stores and schools and the decline of needed services such as medical care.

If it’s a choice between growth and slow demise, I’d rather fight with traffic and contend with a battery store any day. Besides, no one can say Bozeman is completely yuppified at this point. At the very least we’ll need that stand-alone Starbucks and some Indian takeout to make that claim.

Hating the weather

Can't... Blog... Must... Restrict... Movement... Even... Fingernails... Sweating

Yeah, when it comes to hot weather, I'm pretty much the biggest whiner who ever lived. When I moved into the Yale-Owned Roach Motel on Prospect Street in New Haven in August 1996, I considered dying rather than continuing to live in such an inhospitable climate. Six feet under would have been cooler, right? I'm having similar thoughts now. Yesterday was our respite day from the heat--a mere 91 degrees.

Please don't tell me that where you are is hotter. I know that in the grand scheme of things, I would be even more miserable in Texas, London, or even Prague. I don't care. I'm hot now. I'm delicate. I'm allergic to the sun. My Swedish/Scottish ancestry does not equip me to deal with this kind of weather.

The central air conditioning project just moved WAY up on the list.

Where's my weapon?

When we lived on the 5th floor of Coolidge Tower at UMass-Amherst during our first two years of marriage, I wished for one thing above all others: a shoulder-fired, sound-guided ballistic missile. When the students would come back from the bars at 2:30 a.m., I would wake up and mumble my fond desire for it. When the delivery trucks started back-beeping the food into the dining hall at 4:30 a.m., I would wake and wish again. Once we moved away from from UMass, my ardor cooled. In Prague, it tended to be pretty quiet where we lived, occasional construction notwithstanding.

Now, in Livingston, I find myself again longing for a convenient way to take out loud stuff for good. Naturally, there are the trains. Since we live only a few blocks from the tracks, we get to hear them all hours of the day. They are occasionally bothersome--especially at 3:30 a.m. when the driver seems to get a special high from sounding the signal extra long (he's thinking, "If I gotta be up, YOU gotta be up!")--but nothing compared to the construction equipment that rolls up our street more or less all fricking day long recently.

As we speak, my son--only recently recovered from the stomach flu--is trying to get his much-needed nap. I don't mess with this nap for anything. Not for a play date. Not for a doctor's appointment. Not for a state dinner. He needs it, and heaven knows I need it too. But instead of napping, Connery today is being kept awake by the approximately 3,529 pieces of heavy machinery that have decided to rumble down North 7th Street this afternoon. Where are they all going? What are they all doing? And, most importantly, where is my damn missile???

Prague-on-the-Yellowstone

It's not very often that Livingston reminds me of Prague. After all, it's hard to find parallels between a 7,500-resident Montana mountain town and one of Europe's great capitals. It's less like comparing apples and oranges than diamonds and daffodils. Both occur in nature, and beyond that, they're not much alike. I should also be clear that I like both diamonds and daffodils, and one city does not represent one, etc. It's just a simile.

But today, in the Park County Clerk and Recorder's Office, I had the clearest flashback yet to Prague, and it wasn't even to someplace good. Although I was technically in Livingston, and everyone was speaking English, it was as if they were channeling the best bureaucrats at the Foreigner's Police at Olsanka. All I wanted to do--a phrase with which I started many a story while living in the Czech Republic--was turn in our voter registration cards. We hadn't yet changed our registration from my parents' house in Great Falls and wanted to make sure we get to vote in the upcoming primary. Sounds simple enough. Chip and I had filled out the cards last night while turning over every tiny detail of our life to a mortgage broker, so all I should have had to do was drop them off.

Not so fast.

It started because the cards I had picked up (from the library, I think) were missing the upper proclamation portion that attested to our age and gave our driver's license numbers and so forth. The woman at the counter informed me of the missing portion, brought me two cards, and handed me a pen to fill them out. I called Chip at work to get his driver's license number, and then I told the counter lady that I needed to run out to get my license.

Not so fast.

"You'll need to present both of those licenses," another woman in the office said.

I blanched. "But my husband is at work."

"It doesn't matter. You need to present his license."

Just then I noticed that the original form was a folding mailer.

"Um, couldn't I mail this in without your seeing our licenses?" I asked.

"Of course," she answered. "But you're not mailing it, are you?"

She had me there. I was standing right there, and clearly I had not mailed myself.

"Don't you think it's a little odd that it would be OK for you to accept this without seeing a license in the mail but you can't when I'm here?"

She did not think it was a bit odd.

Muttering something about being deprived of my ability to do my goddamn civic duty, I headed to the post office to buy a stamp, put both in an envelope, and sent them off.

I remember the day that Chip and my obstetrician spent after Connery was born trying to get the Czech national insurance company to accept a month-old HIV test from me as a guarantee that Connery was AIDS-free because the hospital decided to close the lab early the afternoon that my results were supposed to be in. I remember the time the Foreigner's Police promised Connery's residency permit would be done on April 30 so that we could go to Vienna the next day and then they closed the whole office mysteriously and we had to get an emergency replacement passport from the U.S. Embassy. I remember the millions of little inconsistencies and here-today-gone-tomorrow rules that bedeviled our daily lives.

It says something that I haven't had an experience like this in the U.S. until now, more than 18 months after we've been back. Still, it galls. I'm a persistent and interested political observer. I'm not going to let stupid bureaucracy stand in my way of voting, but someone else who may not be as committed could be turned off by something like this. We need fewer obstacles for voter registration, not more. I hope the lady behind the counter channeling the bored, passive-aggressive Czech bureaucrat today believes that as well.

Running on fumes!

Yesterday we drove home from Great Falls after a delightful Easter weekend involving all the standard holiday delights: eggs in abundance, Easter grass underfoot, children hopped up on sugar, and parents swiping the good peanut butter eggs. It was such a delightful weekend, in fact, that neither Chip nor I gave a second thought to filling the  tank before we headed out with a quarter tank of gas. In a "normal" state, such an oversight would not have been a problem. In Montana, on Easter Sunday, it was a problem. We didn't discover our blunder until we were turning south to go over the Kings Hill Scenic Byway, which the Montana Tourist Board split-infinitively describes as "allowing travelers to leisurely savor the rugged beauty and fresh air that are part of the Montana experience."

"Stretching 71 miles along US Highway 89," the description continues, "the Byway winds its way along pristine mountain streams and is home to an abundant variety of wildlife." Perhaps not unexpectedly, the Visit Montana website fails to mention that there may not be a single open gas station on that 71-mile excursion, or indeed, more or less from Belt to White Sulphur Springs. It's true that "Stretching 71 miles along US Highway 89, the Byway will terrorize families who were stupid enough to leave civilization without a full tank of gas in the minivan" is probably not going to attract the same number of tourists. Nor would, I'm guessing, "The abundant variety of wildlife and pristine mountain springs may prove to be your only sources of food and water should you run out of gas atop the 7,393-foot Kings Hill Pass." Of course we would have survived on Easter candy, hard-boiled eggs, and a disturbing rabbit-shaped loaf of bread.

When we headed up the actual pass portion, our helpful onboard computer told us that we had 31 miles until we would run out of gas. The distance to White Sulphur Springs' Exxon oasis was 41 miles. Employing every trick we'd ever heard about fuel efficiency (slow to 55! turn off the fan! coast in neutral on the downhill!--OK, maybe not that last one), we crawled our way to the top of the hill. Chip had to turn off the onboard computer to keep me from hyperventilating when the computer said we had less than 20 miles left and we were still 30 miles away. We managed to make up some ground on the downhill section and thought we were sunk when we hit another hilly portion, but in the end we were coasting into the Exxon when the computer said we were at zero. We promptly put 17.882 gallons in our 18-gallon tank, said a little prayer of thanks, and went to have lunch at EAT, the only restaurant in White Sulphur, to celebrate.

Friends, fasting, and Fiddler

Given our normal weekend plans (stay home and watch DVDs, perhaps visit Bozeman, grocery shop), this weekend was jam-packed with activity. On Friday night we had dinner with Jen and Duncan and their two kids and thoroughly enjoyed watching the kids interact. Connery later told us that they had been in the tee-pee to "hide from the parentses." It's good to know that has started already.

On Saturday, Chip and I were trying a "spring cleaning fast," an idea borne from the concept that springtime is a perfect time to take a break from food and detox your body from the many pesticides, additives, and other all-around yuckiness that daily life provides. The plan was to do a modified juice fast for 36 hours starting Friday night in which we would consume numerous 8-ounce glasses of "master cleanser" made of water, lemon juice, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper and nothing else. Let me just say that as bad as that sounds, it tastes worse.

We managed to choke down two glasses before we headed to Belgrade to look at neighborhoods. If the lack of food and lingering taste of cayenne wasn't enough to make us depressed, Belgrade was. I've never seen so many connecting driveways and so few trees in my life. True, there was evidence of young families everywhere, and it seemed safe enough, but I don't think we left Prague to find ourselves cheek-to-jowl with every other young family in the Gallatin Valley. By the time we got home, we were hungry, dispirited, and suffering from caffeine headaches, but more fun awaited.

Part of the spring cleaning was to do a half hour in the sauna to encourage those toxins to flee. Chip went first, and he came back looking pretty good. I had fallen asleep while he was there--my body apparently unable to function without food--but I headed to the sauna anyway. When I first got in there, I was feeling pretty good. I mean, it was only 80 degrees! How bad could it be? Then I noticed it was 80 degrees CELSIUS, i.e. 160 degrees F. I managed to make it 22 of my scheduled 30 minutes and got out with the express intention of not fainting and possibly hurling.

By the time I drove home in my fog and stumbled into the house, I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to make our 36-hour mark, especially as I contemplated drinking more of our master cleanser. It didn't take too much to convince Chip to throw it over, so we nibbled on some pita and hummus and started to feel immeasurably better. So much for detox...

On Sunday, we had planned to take Connery for a little swim, but we woke up to snow and so decided against it. That afternoon we dropped him off at Chad and Amy's to play with their two little boys while we went to see Fiddler on the Roof in Bozeman. It was nice to see live theater, and the production was really impressive, except for the performance in a certain key role. I don't want to turn this into a local review site so I won't say anything more, except to add that if I had been in the cast, I would have tried very hard to arrange an accident for that player before opening night--non-fatal and not serious of course, but big enough to prevent that person from taking the stage. Given the accomplishment of the rest of the production, it was a shame to have it sullied. Overall, though, it was still an enjoyable few hours, and it seemed to go by very quickly, except when that person was singing.

When we returned to Chad and Amy's to pick up Connery, he had decided he wanted to stay there and be adopted so that he could play there forever. He had a great time and was more or less ready to collapse from exhaustion the second we got home. Mission accomplished!

Fashion plate

Much like his father, Connery is something of a clotheshorse. It doesn't hurt that he has two grandmothers who love to buy him great duds and a mother who delights in dressing him in said duds. Still, perhaps we've taken things a bit far. This morning, I was getting him into a new sweater vest/polo shirt combo, festooned with colorful sailboats. He's been excited about wearing this sweater all week. As I was adjusting it, he said to me, "I think Kendall is really going to like this sweater." What two-year-old predicts the impact of his attire on the older girls at school?

Meanwhile, we're desperately trying to figure out oh, say, our whole lives. We've decided not to buy my grandfather's house from my parents, which means that my parents will be selling it before the end of the year, which means we need to find someplace new to live. That decision has all the predictable ramifications--do we stay in Livingston, where Connery has a safe and happy pre-school but where there are few opportunities for me to find traditional employment? Do we move to Belgrade, a growing community much closer to Bozeman, where we would need to find a new school for Connery but where there would also be more opportunities for enrichment? House or condo? Rent or buy? Paper or plastic? And then there's the overriding question of whether we can make it longterm in Montana. There are so many advantages to being here, but are we leveraging our future by settling for far lower wages in an area in which living expenses are no longer notably lower?

I told Chip the other day that adulthood sucked. There are just too many variables, too many compromises, too many worries. I try to tell myself that things will work out as they are supposed to, but it's hard to trust in that.

Luckily, I have a small, persistent toddler to keep me from dwelling on it too much.

Speaking of the Code of the West...

I was also thinking about the Code of the West last night, when Chip, Connery, and I attempted to go out to dinner. I say attempted because we had to go to four different restaurants to find one that was open and that would take our debit card! I know that I'm not in Big City USA where I can expect to get all manner of food at all times of day, but I would have thought 6:30 p.m. on a Wednesday night wouldn't be too much of a challenge.

The irritation was compounded by our decision while at the gym to walk to one of Livingston's many downtown eating establishments. The restaurant we had in mind was just around the corner and down the block, but when it was--inexplicably--closed, we walked to the next block and tried a restaurant there. We speed-walked Connery through the smoky bar portion only to see the big sign saying, "NO PLASTIC!" You know, if we can pay for a Big Mac with a debit card, why can't we buy a good burger at Stockman's? So around the corner we went to the next bar/restaurant on our list, only to find it dark as well.

Am I missing something? Is the Wednesday night-church night thing so strong in Livingston that businesses close to take their kids to CCD and other religious instruction? Or is it just because we're a tourist town? Whatever the reason, it was a bad night to be out looking for sustenance on foot. The temperature sign on the bank read 10 degrees, and not one of us had mittens. We were glad to see the welcoming light of the Mexican place, even if tacos were not what we had had in mind for dinner.

Just call me the cowardly lion

I wrote a column that was published Tuesday in which I heavily cited Zane Grey's  Code of the West. I thought it was pretty good for a first local column effort, and I had hoped that I put the blame where it deserved--not really on the business or home owners but on the zoning boards and County Commission. I had a message from my editor this morning that there was a phone call from the owner of said business wanting to talk to the author.

Frankly, I'm feeling a little cowardly. The last time I had to deal with irate readers was at TOL when we got the panties of a bunch of Azeris in a...well...bunch. While those emails were indeed unpleasant, they were also entertaining in the manner of former Soviet state citizens whose English insults tend toward the pig-dog, lackey of the capitalist state variety. I'm guessing my phone conversation with this guy will not involve such amusing ill will. This is, of course, in addition to the fact that I did not *write* the TOL article. I merely edited and posted it. There's some ownership there, but not like there is when you loose some text fully formed out of your forehead. And then there's the notion that all those irate Azeris were either in Azerbaijan or spread out around the world in a great diaspora. This guy is in a neighboring town.

So I'm psyching myself up. I've written the requisite whiny plea for mercy to my editor, but in the end I'm going to have to call this guy. Maybe I'll do it on a cell phone. The nation's most reliable network is never that, so if things get really unpleasant, I can crackle some paper into the phone and say I dropped the call.

Perhaps this is why I could never pass the oral exams for the Foreign Service...