challenging times demand a challenging response

When reality sets in

 It was a beautiful fall day here in the Bozeagneles metroplex, and little Goat and I played hard at Dinosaur park . Lots of happy employed family's there and little signs of the economic turmoil in the city and the country.

  however this evening we went to the park near Town and Country and the story was quite different. it was 6:30 or so and two family's had staked out camp sites near the picnic tables by the creek. Suitcases and grocery carts  reserving their spots. the older kids were playing with the younger ones. One mother was washing underwear in the creek. The other mother was putting food into some dirty plates. One man was sleeping under a shade tree. It was obvious they were planning to spend the night.

  Now I can't  know their history , but if families are forced to camp out in a fairly nice park . there are problems to be solved . We must all b great full for what we have . And we must press our leaders to do more for us instead of the special interests that pad their bank accounts.

   

Remember when we dreamed we could fly ?

  Check out the the attached video

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-15057234

Where the buffalo roam

  Why not Give back the middle of our country to   Nature


 Humans are disappearing from Great Plains as bison and other wildlife return

People  first noticed it a few years ago. The game was coming back.

It was subtle in the beginning - a few more sharp-tailed grouse along the section roads than usual, more deer peering from the margins of the hayfields at night. Then people started noticing there were larger numbers of pronghorn antelope than had ever been seen, and they were hanging around closer to town.
"Even 10 years ago, you never heard of mountain lion or elk around here," said Meirs, a state game warden who works the vast plains and mesa country around Buffalo. "Now they're pretty common. There are even occasional wolf sightings. It's like the wildlife was back there in the shadows, waiting for a change."

The change has been building for decades. The western Great Plains contain the country's greatest demographic anomaly: Its human population is emptying out. The trend, the 2000 census shows, has really gained force over the past decade with the drying up of the ranching economy.

But as people move away, wildlife is starting to fill the vacuum. In an unexpected way, a vision of the Great Plains as a wild commons is taking hold.

"It's funny - Buffalo Commons is really happening," Meirs said, as he sat in his truck on the main drag of Buffalo, a thoroughfare framed by abandoned storefronts. "Not like people thought it would. But it's happening."
The concept of the Buffalo Commons was floated by New Jersey sociologists Frank and Deborah Popper in 1988. The Poppers observed that agriculture had failed miserably on the Great Plains, and noted that the region would probably be almost wholly depopulated save for a few cities by the mid-21st century.
The highest and best use for the area, the Poppers argued, was in its pristine state: A restored prairie cleared of fences and abandoned ranches, reseeded with native bunchgrasses, teeming with wildlife. And foremost among these resurgent animals would be the emblematic beast of the Plains: the buffalo. Back by the tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands.

Plains residents, both white and Native American, would earn their money through ecotourism and franchise hunting, not punching cows and growing dryland wheat.

Back to the Museum

  Another stormy , cool day yesterday so the Goat family went back to the Museum of The Rockies . The Museum of the Rockies is known for its dinosaur exhibit and they've stepped up its teaching technology and rotated some of the exhibits , its worth while going back just for that.

  However the big new exhibit  deals with   Inca and Moche gold artifacts, ( which explains the stepped up security ) The exhibit will be open completely on Saturday but the Goat family  got to see a lot of Gold Jewelery and solid gold art work  as it was being set up. If you like gold and you like mezoamerican history its worth while taking the family to see it. I was not allowed to take pics of the gold but here are a few pics of the new and improved dinosaur exhibit.

whats in a Name ? Millions if its a web address

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when insults were a sport

  Those of you who know Mother Goat and I , know we enjoy a good insult . I am a fan of Groucho Marx he could deliver an insult and you'd want to thank him for it. These days we seem to have lost that ability. As Americans we have the admiration of most of the world. We should each d our part to at least be #1 in .delivering a good insult. If you can't say something nice about somebody at least insult him or her with class.



"We've been through so much together, and most of it was your fault."
            Ashleigh Brilliant

"Why don't you bore a hole in yourself and let the sap run out?"
            Groucho Marx

"Well, I think we ought to let him hang there.  Let him twist slowly, slowly in the wind."
            John Ehrlichman

"What you said hurt me very much. I cried all the way to the bank."
            Liberace

"Why are we honoring this man? Have we run out of human beings?"
            Milton Berle

"You're a parasite for sore eyes."
            Gregory Ratoff

"Some people stay longer in an hour than others can in a week."
            William Dean Howells

"Either he's dead or my watch has stopped."
            Groucho Marx

"Sometimes I need what only you can provide: your absence."
            Ashleigh Brilliant

"The higher a monkey climbs, the more you see of its behind."
            Joseph Stilwell

"I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members."
            Groucho Marx

"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure."
            Jack E. Leonard

"They don't hardly make 'em like him any more - but just to be on the safe side, he should be castrated anyway."
            Hunter S. Thompson

"I'll bet your father spent the first year of your life throwing rocks at the stork."
            Irving Brecher

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
            Groucho Marx

"You're a good example of why some animals eat their young."
            Jim Samuels

"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."
            Irvin S. Cobb

"If you ever become a mother, can I have one of the puppies?"
            Charles Pierce

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
            Groucho Marx  (so it's not an insult, I still liked it)

"In her single person she managed to produce the effect of a majority."
            Ellen Glascow

"I've had them both, and I don't think much of either."
            Beatrix Lehmann (watching a  wedding.)

"Pushing forty? She's hanging on for dear life."
            Ivy Compton-Burnett

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."
            Mark Twain

"I married your mother because I wanted children, imagine my disappointment when you came along."
            Groucho Marx

"I feel so miserable without you, it's almost like having you here."
            Stephen Bishop

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure."
            Clarence Darrow

"I never liked him and I always will."
            Dave Clark

"I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me."
            Fred Allen

"I regard you with an indifference bordering on aversion."
            Robert Louis Stevenson

"I thought men like that shot themselves."
            King George V

"Remember men, we're fighting for this woman's honor; which is probably more than she ever did."
            Groucho Marx

"He hasn't an enemy in the world - but all his friends hate him."
            Eddie Cantor

"He looked as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food."
            Raymond Chandler

"He's completely unspoiled by failure."
            Noel Coward

"He's liked, but he's not well liked."
            Arthur Miller

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."
            Mae West

"I can't believe that out of 100,000 sperm, you were the quickest."
            Steven Pearl

"I could never learn to like her, except on a raft at sea with no other provisions in sight."
            Mark Twain

"Don't look now, but there's one too many in this room and I think it's you."
            Groucho Marx

"Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome."
            Oscar Levant

"Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others."
            Winston Churchill

"Fine words! I wonder where you stole them."
            Jonathan Swift

"From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it."
            Groucho Marx

"Gee, what a terrific party. Later on we'll get some fluid and embalm each other."
            Neil Simon

"You had to stand in line to hate him."
            Hedda Hopper

"You have a good and kind soul. It just doesn't match the rest of you."
            Norm Papernick

"You take the lies out of him, and he'll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he'll disappear."
            Mark Twain

"You're a mouse studying to be a rat."
            Wilson Mizner

"Why was I with her? She reminds me of you. In fact, she reminds me more of you than you do!"
            Groucho Marx

"You were born with your legs apart. They'll send you to the grave in a Y-shaped coffin."
            Joe Orton

Ever Wonder what that bug on your windshield is ?

  Its Dinner !

  Was very surprised to see the toy store in our local mall had  a supply of  Freeze dried Crickets for food consumption. Since we are having a dinner party here at the Goat house tomorrow night I had to pick some up as  a first course . The also have lollipops with bees and crickets in them.  Of course a lot of things we here in the first world consider as pests or waste food or part of the daily diet in the 3rd world. shouldn't we at least give it a try.


  Below is a link that talks about the need for using insects as a protein source




http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/01/insects-food-emissions

I have eaten , Nutria ,
Musk rat , possum and snake in the past. And none of it has caused me any harm. Except for the Urge to pull over when I see fresh roadkill 

Billings Mt.

  The Goat Family went to Billings on Monday to get away from Bozeangles and the Smoke filling the valley. Billings is a much bigger town ( or is it a city ? what makes a City a City ? ) it is very busy and has all the opportunities and problems of a wealthy town. We went to a real Mall and little Goat enjoyed her first shopping  binge, we swam in an indoor pool and spent time with a friend we had not seen in a while. But for us Billings is a nice place to visit but not to live.

                                 Midnight is a Billings Hotel  9/12/11
                                   
                                 Midnight and the trains whistles blow,
                                  Billings city of  Industry, refineries and Mines.
                                  Man coughing uncontrollably in the room next door,
                                  black lung ?
                                 

9-11 ten years, don't forget but move forward

okay every one is writing about 9-11 and I really can't add  to that but there  is s a group of pictures by Magnum over on Slate worth looking at

http://todayspictures.slate.com/20110909/


And One that I go back and look at again and again. It reminds me of an old Shinto/ Buddhist saying

If the house burns down in the Morning ,
you still eat lunch in the Ashes






Life goes on , don't forget but move forward

Fly Fishing , an Evil addicting sport

  Having grown up on the Gulf Coast before fly fishing for Red Drum became common, I learned to fish by either bating a hook and opening a beer or casting a shad rig into the brackish bayou and fairly often catching the Cajun limit on Specs and Reds.

              Fly fishing in comparison is a frustrating time consuming sport and more often than not I either see no fish or they rise, tap my fly and return to their hole after laughing at my lack of skills. It is still a bit of good therapy for me as is any opportunity to get away from people.

"I look into... my fly box, and think about all the elements I should consider in choosing the perfect fly: water temperature, what stage of development the bugs are in, what the fish are eating right now. Then I remember what a guide told me: 'Ninety percent of what a trout eats is brown and fuzzy and about five-eighths of an inch long."  Allison Moir

"Angling is extremely time consuming. That's sort of the whole point." - Thomas McGuane

"In every species of fish I've angled for, it is the ones that have got away that thrill me the most, the ones that keep fresh in my memory.  So I say it is good to lose fish.  If we didn't, much of the thrill of angling would be gone." Ray Bergman

"The best fisherman I know try not to make the same mistakes over and over again; instead they strive to make new and interesting mistakes and to remember what they learned from them."  John Gierach "Fly Fishing the High Country"

"A trout is a moment of beauty known only to those who seek it." --Arnold Gingrich

"It is impossible to grow weary of a sport that is never the same on any two days of the year."  Theodore Gordon

"There's more B.S. in fly fishing than there is in a Kansas feedlot."  Lefty Kreh

"If I'm not going to catch anything, then I 'd rather not catch anything on flies"  Bob Lawless.

                                        

Time to take a deep breath and Relax

 All this week we are going to be reminded of the horror of 9-11,The economy is in shambles, Politicians say we are all going to hell if we don't vote for them, the west is on fire the East is under water. Our parents are getting feeble, our kids are  getting ripped off in school and beaten up on the play ground. The rest of the world hates us  and our soldiers die  for stupid causes.

           Sometimes we need to just shut our minds down and relax
                          

bozeangeles Economics , politics and Derelicts

  Economics , Politics and Derelicts

  Today the   Bozeangeles Commical posted an article on the Economy. Perhaps in response to the Magpies post on the struggling 7th avenue economy.  It said though weak the economy was showing signs of growth. Siting Lawyers as an area of profitably  and improvement of the economy .... ? I wonder if that is Divorce lawyers or bankruptcy lawyers ?

http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/economy/article_98eed89a-d74b-11e0-9cf6-001cc4c002e0.html

  I don't see any way the general labor population  benefits from the growth of Lawyer fees do you ?



The Bozeman Police Department reports for

• Two men were seen leaning against an East Main Street building drinking alcohol at 9:59 a.m. The caller said the two looked worse than panhandlers and do not “contribute to the image of a clean town.”
• A brown-haired woman in jean shorts was running around fuel tanks with a lighter on West Main Street.
• A man was passed out on the grass at North Seventh Avenue and Durston Road. Officers woke the man. His girlfriend eventually showed up to give him a ride.

Finding Art all over

Okay I admit I am as blind to a lot of things that go on around town and I'm sure this sculpture has been up for a while, but next time you go to the  Bozeman Library (That's the place where  you borrow books Right wingers  you would call it socialism ). Check out the sculpture about the seasons in the parking lot.

                  

                 They are in the process of erecting several additional sculptures along the path from the library to the trail to Peets hill .  Even if you can't   get out of town on  this labor day  weekend there are a lot of things outside to see and do.       

check out the current post over on the Bozeman Magpie as well,  Its about the neglect and opportunities offered by 7th Ave .  Its not all Walmart, Cats Paw and Pawn shops. There are other businesses there and there is opportunity to re vitalize this neglected part of town. I just hope the City does not figure out a way to raise our taxes to  do it.

http://www.bozeman-magpie.com/index.php
                                             

running away or running to something

Early  in this blog I wrote about how Bozeman and a lot of western towns were either a refuge or a jumping off point for those looking to escape the restrictions of  civilization and social mores and morals. A few weeks ago I listened to a  interview on NPR about a new book on  life of explorer and artist Everett Reuss who disappeared into the Utah desert in 1934. The NPR interview struck me because its story line closely   followed that of Into The Wild, by Jon Krakauer
  So I picked up a copy today and saw that Krakauer had done a introduction to the book.  I'm several pages in all ready and would recommend it to fans of either  exploration, western lore and tragic deaths of writers before their time.

The Fires of Fall

If you live on the Gulf Coast  you watch the weather for Tropical storms, If you live in the mid west you keep a radio on to listen for Tornado watches. Up here in the Northern Rockies in the late summer early fall its dry lightning and forest fires.. We had a long wet spring here so we are not as dry as places down south , but we have fires burning and crews out there fighting them..

   Its hot and dangerous work and , all sorts of technology is thrown at these fire storms.
There is not a shortage of young women and men willing to work these fires. The pay is a lot better than any job a normal teenager or college kid can get . A lot of Colleges in the West will let  Students start the semester late if they are on a fire Crew.

The Indian Reservation fire crews  are famous for fighting fires all over the west. They work harder and longer than most other crews and have saved a lot of small towns and farms . They pay they get is better   most jobs even offered to them in the white mans world and it helps support a lot of people we chose to  ignore when we drive through Indian country.
  When we complain or listen to some talking head complain about the government taking our rights and freedoms away don't forget about those Indians out on the fire line.