My Services Are No Longer Required

Yesterday morning, while walking down the hall toward the kitchen after taking a shower, I heard that girl say: “It’s a number eight for aluminum or copper-clad aluminum.  Number ten for copper.”

I continued down the hall, wondering why she would be engaged in electrical speak in our otherwise empty house.

In the kitchen, I found that girl hovering over my opened National Electric Code book (which is always nearby in my house).  She was holding my smarter-than-me-phone against her ear.  “That’s correct,” she affirmed to something asked of her on the other side of the call.  “Oh, here is Mitch,” she said upon seeing me.  “Do you want to talk with him?  Are you sure, Love?  Okay.  Bye-bye.”

I watched her end the call and place my phone on the countertop.  “Is that two-fifty dot one-twenty-two you just read from?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Was that Steve?

“Yes.”

“Did you just size an equipment grounding conductor?”

“Yes.”

“And he didn’t need to talk to me?”

“Nope.  Your code is just like the medical coding I did.  He told me I could handle it.”

“Okay.  Good work.  Now you are sizing equipment grounding conductors.”

-- Mitchell Hegman

Two Things I Learned Early This Morning

Learned from accidentally landing on Americas Funniest Home Videos while flipping through channels:

No matter how hard you try, you can’t fall up.

Learned from the internet:

Pole dancing accidents tend to result in serious injury.

-- Mitchell Hegman

Happiness

I didn’t find happiness until I started looking for it.

-- Mitchell Hegman

New Word

“Exceptional” is an interesting term.  This is a word capable of describing something usually good, say, an “exceptional dancer.”  But you might also see “a riot of exceptional violence.”  In this second illustration, the same word has corrupt connotations.

I would like to propose a companion word possessing but a single positive bent:

Acceptional

adjective

            —the quality of accepting.

“He is an acceptional man and has gladly taken on every challenge presented to him.”

“She was acceptional in her love for everyone.”

-- Mitchell Hegman

The Bob Dylan Method

I suspect more than a few of us suffer from getting a song stuck in our head.

For a good stretch of my life, I woke to a radio alarm clock in the morning.   Waking to a music was generally pleasant and tended to knock the edge off of crashing from sleep.   On the downside, the song that dragged me awake often stuck with me for the entire day.  All day long I would be humming or outwardly singing the tune.

Often, songs I did not particularly like would get stuck in my head.

There is a simple cure for this affliction.  The trick to stopping a song from replaying endlessly in your brain, I learned from my neighbor, Kevin, is to imagine the song sung by Bob Dylan each time it pops into your head.

I assure you, this trick works.

Try this right now: Imagine Bob Dylan wailing away at Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.”

How did that sound?

Yesterday afternoon, Kevin stopped by my house to discuss some upcoming work we are planning on our country road.  While we sat on my back deck chatting, the Bob Dylan method came up in conversation.

“It definitely works,” I said of the method.  “But what do you if it’s a Bob Dylan song that gets stuck in your head?”

“I have thought about that,” Kevin admitted.

“Maybe if you tried singing it like Roy Orbison,” I suggested.

Kevin thought for a spell.  “I can’t even begin to wrap my head around that,” he said.

“Well, in that case, I think it will work.  You’re welcome.”

-- Mitchell Hegman

The Choice

I once left Montana because out there, in cities with tall buildings, rock bands roved freely, girls stood planted on white beaches like a forest of rouge trees, cars flowed along in great twining rivers, and the nights came alive with neon, and sometimes with gangs.  Once, while living in a finely polished city, I recalled another place, a promontory lurching into Montana’s widest and wildest sky, a childhood place where, at an elevation of eight-thousand feet, I knocked free a slab of stone embedded with dozens seashells and other ancient twisted things, and I held the stone out, and below it, four-thousand feet lower and a dozen mile across a valley floor, I saw my little town, smaller in the distance than the biggest shell in the stone.

The ancient and the new.

At nineteen I left that place.  At nineteen I returned.

I was nineteen and a little afraid of my own mortality when I lived in the city, when I very first considered the matter of what living really meant for me.  We all have our choices.  Our choice of place, of where we desire to live out our lives, might be most critical of all.  I made my choice then.  Have you really made yours?

-- Mitchell Hegman

Beyond the Autumnal Equinox

We are two days beyond the autumnal equinox.   Fall colors—red, yellow, and orange---are now advancing on our trees from the north.  I once read where winter approaches us from the north by something like seventeen miles each day.

Or, perhaps, my mind invented this.

Either way, the predawn has become quiet.  The songbirds have stopped squabbling.  Some have packed up and moved on.  Starlings have swept together and now engage in great murmurations above the valley floor.

That girl heard an elk bugling from across the lake a few days ago.

This morning, I stood out front in cool air and watched as a cloudfront advanced against both moon and stars above the prairie.

Everything around me is moving on.

Last night, I had another dream about my grandfather.  Those are my favorite dreams.  In more than one way, I am advancing toward him.

-- Mitchell Hegman

Octopuses on Ecstacy

Here is the conversation I imagined:

Research Scientist: “I have an idea for a new research project.”

Lab Supervisor: “What sort of research?”

Research Scientist: “I want to give dope to octopuses.”

Lab Supervisor: “Dope?”

Research Scientist: “Yes.  MDMA…you know, ecstasy, Molly.”

Lab Supervisor: “To what end?  What do you expect to learn from this research?”

Research Scientist: “We are talking octopuses on ecstacy!   I think that stands alone.  We are breaking new ground here.”

Lab Supervisor: “You make a good point.  I’ll seek some funding.”

As it turns out, neuroscientists from Johns Hopkins University did manage to get some octopuses high on Molly.   They were curious to see how the normally solitary and shy sea creatures would react.

One of the researchers, Gül Dölen, noted that the brain of an octopus is built completely different from the human brain. “It’s organized much more like a snail’s brain than ours,” Dölen noted.   

On a personal note, more than a few of my old high school buddies also have brains organized like a snail’s brain, so I’m not quite understanding the significance of that.

After much experimentation, researchers discovered that high doses of Molly “freaked out” octopuses and made them go through a bunch of weird color changes.  When given the “proper” dosage of ecstacy, the octopuses became playful and openly friendly toward other octopuses.  They became touchy-feely.

Pretty good stuff to know, I guess.

And your average octopus has the potential for a lot of touchy-feely; so you might consider that if you ever get the chance drop Molly with an octopus.

--Mitchell Hegman

Big Coat

I have downloaded several songs by Wiretree.  This band has a unique, somehow uplifting sound.  Posted today is a song of theirs titled Big Coat.

--Mitchell Hegman

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dsdvCUlIPY

Extreme Skiing

I am not a sports fan in any regard.  The nearest I come to following any regularly scheduled events is watching American Ninja Warriors.  I will also watch extreme skiing whenever I chance upon it on television.  For those of you unfamiliar with extreme skiing, it’s a sport where you purposely fall off cliffs with a pair of skis strapped to your feet.

--Mitchell Hegman

Mean Birds

Some birds—in particular jays and magpies—can be buttholes.

Once, as I stood at my bay window, I observed a doe mule deer strutting across the prairie in front of my house.  The deer suddenly stopped cold as I watched.  She tilted her ears forward peering off in the distance.  Following her gaze, I spotted a magpie flying across the prairie at deer level, aiming directly toward the doe.  Just to be mean, the magpie held course.   The deer was forced to quite literally drop to the ground and allow the magpie to swoosh directly overtop her.

The magpie buzzed that deer simply to be naughty.

For a couple years I kept bird feeders at my house.  The feeders quickly attracted crossbills, goldfinch, pine siskin, western tanager, chickadees, and a host of other birds.

I very much enjoyed the birds.  The chickadees were quite friendly.  I soon had those eating seeds from my hand.  Sometimes, they would follow me from tree to tree as I walked among the scattered pines below my house.

I would still feed the birds today, but for pinion jays.  Pinion jays, for those unfamiliar, are robin-sized and powder blue.  They are quite bold.  Pinion jays travel in marauding hordes, squawking like crows the whole time.  Once the jays found my feeders, they set upon them every morning and every evening.  They came in like a bunch of rowdy teenage boys on a sugar high.  They squabbled at the feeders and set them to swinging wildly.  They chased each other about.  They spilled all of the seeds to the ground.  At times, more than fifty jays would crash against my naturally landscaped yard and stay until the feeders were empty.

So much for feeding the songbirds.

Yesterday, I witnessed another incident of jays being mean.  While at my cabin in the dense woods at the base of the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains, a flash of motion caught my eye.  A Steller’s jay vaulted into the thick boughs of a fir tree just outside the windows of my cabin.  The boughs were heavily festooned with old man’s beard.

A great deal on commotion occurred within the branches of the tree.  Pretty soon, a camp robber (grey jay) popped out of the branches and flapped off to another tree.  A second later, a chickadee fluttered free and ascended to higher branches.  Immediately following that, a squirrel ejected from the boughs and ran down the base of the tree to take shelter in flush of fall colors in the understory.

I have no idea what that mixed crew was doing in the tree.  But once the Steller’s jay had forced the other critters from the tree, it hopped around among the branches for a few seconds in something equivalent to a victory lap and then flew off—apparently sated that the crew was broken up.

     

--Mitchell Hegman

PHOTO: Stellar's Jay (Wikipedia)

Long Live the Cat

I have a tip for all you pet owners out there.  If you want your cat or dog to live longer, send them to live in Montana.

According to a 2013 report from Banfield Pet Hospital, a nationwide entity, Montana cats live more than two years longer than the national average, while Montana dogs are tied with South Dakota dogs with living 1.5 years longer than average.

--Mitchell Hegman

Specialized

This specialized world so often astounds me.  Take the snake in Africa that eats nothing but the eggs of birds.  The wasp whose sole prey is the tarantula.  And there exists, in this valley of mine, people whose only purpose in life seems to be to pull out in front of me and drive slowly when I am in a hurry.

--Mitchell Hegman

A Woman Named Andi

“You will meet a woman named Dawn,” a psychic with pink hair told Paul.  “Your instincts will be to walk around her, but to get to the rest of your life, you must walk through her.”

Paul met, instead, a woman named Andi.

Andi wore long dresses, had hollow cheeks, and spoke softly.  Paul soon found himself walking with Andi.  After a few weeks of dating, Andi insisted that Paul attended a breakfast with her mother.

“What’s your mother’s name?” Paul asked.

“Try to guess,” Andi suggested.

Andi was shocked when Paul guessed her mother’s name on the first attempt.

--Mitchell Hegman

Something Milton Berle Said

—My doctor told me that jogging could add years to my life. I think he was right. I feel ten years older already.

—Money can't buy you happiness, but it helps you look for it in a lot more places.

—If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door.

--Mitchell Hegman

The Drummer Dude

For the record, I want everyone to know I am still thinking about that dude in Washington State who goes out into the forest, sets up his drum kit, and plays his drums in the hopes he will attract a bigfoot.

Why is that a thing?

--Mitchell Hegman

Glacier under Perfect Light, under Storms

Yesterday, I and my three traveling companions explored the eastern half of Glacier National Park, Montana.  Our day started under deep blue skies and a mix of high cirrus clouds and much lower cumulus clouds tumbling through the mountains.

At our first pullout, overlooking Two Medicine, a gentlemen from Great Britain joined us as we stood taking pictures.  “Wow,” he remarked, “the sky actually is different here.”

As the day went on, the clouds gathered and then began sacrificing themselves against the mountain peaks.  The lake waters stirred themselves into deeper colors.  The mountains turned into dark ghosts before entirely fading behind white and grey curtains of rain.

We saw both grizzly and black bear, but I was not able to capture photographs. 

Posted are a few photographs of Glacier under changing light.

Two Medicine in the morning

Wild Goose Island on St. Mary Lake

The girls on Going-to-the-Sun Road

One the way to Many Glacier

Swiftcurrent

Two Medicine in the evening

--Mitchell Hegman

Howe Ridge Fire

On the evening of August 11, a mostly dry thunderstorm stabbed lightning into the trees on Howe Ridge, just above Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park.  A fire soon resulted.  Driven by wind, the fire raged at first, scouring down through heavy timber to the shores of the lake.  The fire destroyed cabins and out structures when it grasped them.  The west half of Going-to-the-Sun road was forced into closure.

Now, a full month later, in cooler and wetter weather, the fire is still creeping through heavy forest and issuing smoke on the east end of Lake McDonald.  To date, Howe Ridge fire has scorched some 14,499 acres of wildland.

The west half of Going-to-the-Sun remains closed.

Yesterday, that girl, two of her sisters, and I drove into Apgar on the west end of the lake.  Apgar and the lake were markedly quiet, if not somber.  We could see smoke rising from the blue timber above the far end of the lake.

Even given the fire, the lake and the mountains remain beautiful in a moody and blue way.

--Mitchell Hegman

Lights: One On, One Off

At one time, I was a faithful watcher of the Ghost Hunters series on the Syfy (formerly Sci-Fi) Channel.  I am also a full-fledged space cadet of the can’t-remember-what-I-was-doing-thirty-seconds-ago variety.

The other day, while working alone at my cabin, these two seemingly disconnected traits merged together to (pun fully intended) haunt me.

Two incidents involving lights occurred.

First, upon arrival at the cabin in morning’s half-light, I flipped on a light in the basement as I hauled some building materials from my truck, through the basement, and up the stairs to the main floor.  This required several trips.

Okay…my cabin is two and a half levels and is more a second house more than a cabin.  So, we have that going for us.

Anyhow, I distinctly remember thinking to myself, as I passed by the switch to grab my last handful of supplies, I would leave the light on until the arrival of full daylight.

An hour later, when I stomped down the steps, I found the light off.

Had I habitually turned the light off without thinking when I returned with my last armful of building supplies?

I didn’t recall turning off the light.

At the end of the day—as is always my ritual—I circled within the cabin, locking doors and making certain all lights were off.  After double-checking the doors from the outside, I climbed into my truck to drive away.

That’s when I saw the outside light at the sliding door to the deck was on.

Important note: I was nowhere the switch for that light all day.  Nowhere near it!  Not that I recall.  And I know for certain the light was off when I arrived.

Frankly, I was a bit rattled as I opened up the cabin and trotted up the stairs to turn off the light.

One light off.  One light on.  And me without an explanation.

--Mitchell Hegman

Reflections

That girl, two of her sisters, occasionally my neighbor Kevin, and I spent that last two days either on the lake or at her shoreline.  We searched gravel for (and found) green and pink sapphires.  We studied the blossoming stars as daylight blued and melted into darkness.  The girls dragged their bare feet through the water.  A bald eagle circled our boat as we skittered across wind-riffled water.  We watched deer walking through the water at the lake’s edge so they could access sweet greens overhanging the waves.  We eased to shore at a quiet place of soft earth and wove on foot through old trees and crosshatch shadows.

Posted are a few reflections from our time at the lake.

--Mitchell Hegman

The Message inside the Wall

I have previously written about my long-held habit of writing notes inside walls or dropping such items as photographs, recent magazines, newspapers, or even a trinket or two inside a wall before the drywall is applied.  My house and cabin walls are veritable depositories.  Just two weeks ago, I stuffed a newspaper inside a wall at my cabin before I closed it in.

Yesterday, I received a text and two photographs from a friend.

A little background.  My friend’s son (now an adult) called me “Muutch” when he was a small boy.  Back in the early 1990s, I helped my friend when he remodeled his house.

Here is the text I received:

Hey Muutch- so I'm remodeling the kitchen at home (AGAIN) and as I exposed the back side of this wall and looked at the wiring- I thought - I must have asked Mitch to wire this-(as it was so perfectly straight and square) but I thought, I'm not sure he did. I first saw the note - "backing" see other side- I opened up the other side only to read " FRONTING" (see other side) only then was I convinced!!! I now remember my good buddy pointing out to me it's called "fronting" on the side that flushes to the face of the studs, and "backing" on the backside (obviously)!!!! It's been a fun morning now- thinking back on the good old days! Hope you're doing well - and "BAAAIIISICLY " retired!!   Hi to Blondie-

Here are the Photographs:

--Mitchell Hegman

Grizzly Bear Spider?

I am a known quantity regarding spiders.  Pretty much everyone knows they give me the creeps (mathematically squared).

In the vernacular of my hometown of East Helena, Montana, I’m a “big baby.”

Yesterday, while double-checking my cabin door (from the outside) to make sure I had locked it, I found a spider clinging the wall nearby.

Not just any spider. 

This spider was quite a bit bigger than your average Joe Shmoe arachnid.  I would estimate a leg spread of about two inches.  We are talking a big bull spider with long spikey hair and huge boxing gloves (palps).  A grizzly bear kind of spider.

I captured a couple images with my smarter-than-me-phone and then quietly backed away so the spider didn’t pounce on me.

  

--Mitchell Hegman

Good to Know

—Moths don’t have mouths and cannot eat your clothes.  But their caterpillars will munch on pink colored clothes made of animal fibers, such as silk and wool.

—The direction of spin for your flushing toilet is not governed by the hemisphere in which you live—it’s determined by manufacturer’s design.  This necessarily means that someone is getting paid to engineer the direction in which your excrement spins when you flush.

—As bananas ripen, they release the hormone ethylene.  Ethylene will trigger mature fruit to ripen.  An unripe avocado, if placed in a closed paper bag with a banana, will ripen much quicker.

--Mitchell Hegman

Voices

This morning, while sitting alone in my hot tub in the blue darkness before dawn, I thought I heard voices.  Naturally I was a little freaked out.  But then I realized it was just those same voices in my head that are always telling me Houdini is alive and well inside my bottle of dish soap under the sink, and I felt much better.

--Mitchell Hegman

Twenty Virtual Frenchmen

I will admit to sometimes being annoyed by the French.

Before I get to the annoying French stuff, however, I would like to thank Napoleon for providing the United States with the Louisiana Purchase.  Living here in Montana, I have greatly benefited from that.

Back to the annoying stuff.  I often find myself irritated by things done by the French.  There was that time, for example, when French designer Coco Chanel first introduced bell-bottom pants into everyday fashion.  That definitely came back to damage me during the 1970s. 

I was also annoyed by Jean-Luc Godard’s film: Sympathy for the Devil.  French movies are confounding by nature, but this movie, featuring the Rolling Stones, is just plain weird.

Now I have a new beef. 

For the last few months, occurring about once a week, and lasting for only a minute or two, I am getting twenty probing taps on my blogsite from French bots.  The bots, according to my Analytics data, are originating from Paris.

No real harm comes to my blog, or my computer, but the bots skew my collection of sight visitation data.

Simply annoying.

--Mitchell Hegman

Space Station

While soaking in my hut tub a little after 5:00 this morning, I watched the International Space Station drift directly overtop me.  The station, catching the sun from far below my predawn horizon, was bright and conspicuous as it slipped through the array of stars fixed above.

The gravel road I drive to access our more private spur into the ranchlands is well traveled.  Over time, the roadside collects a fair amount of cans and bottles.  Every so often, I make a point to clean up the roadside.  I grabbed a couple of stray cans just yesterday afternoon on a drive home.

Space is another thing.  The orbital shell of our planet is filled with our junk.  We spray junk into space as we fire rockets into space conducting our explorations and making our heavenly platforms. 

At present, more than 500,000 pieces of space junk are being tracked by NASA.  These scraps of metal and whatnots travel at speeds up to 17,500 mph.  At such speeds, a bolt small enough to be clutched in your hand could tear apart a satellite if it struck one.

Fortunately, the space station drifted through the junk unscathed this morning.

And I would gather up and discard the space junk if I could.

I have posted a short video about the space junk.

 --Mitchell Hegman

Video Link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVov8o9x0y

Something Frank Zappa Said

— “You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.”

— “There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.”

— “It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice. There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia.”

My Brain on Holiday

I overslept today and did not crawl out of the rack until 5:19 AM.

Yes.  That is oversleeping for me. 

For whatever reason, oversleeping has a daylong slowing effect on my thinking processes.

After flopping out of bed this morning, I let my 20 pounds of housecat inside and fed him.  Somewhere in that process, the thought occurred that I should eat a carrot. 

I fished a carrot from the refrigerator vegetable drawer and then, while crunching away at the carrot, wandered into the yet darkened living room to peer out through the bay windows.

Here is where my brain went on total holiday. 

I peered out two windows before finally realizing the blinds were fully closed.

…Good work, Hegman.

--Mitchell Hegman

Wiretree

I have been filling an iPod I gave to that girl with some of the various songs I have purchased over the years.  While driving along a beautiful stretch of Montana highway yesterday—with an oversized blue sky above and a clear river running from the mountains beside us—the song I am posting today began playing on the iPod.

“I really like this,” that girl said.

--Mitchell Hegman

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dsdvCUlIPY 

The Crows are Counting

Crows generally are credited with having the ability to count up to four or five.  A crow's counting, however, is not precisely the same as that of, say, an investment banker's, and falls more into the realm of 'feelings' and 'intuition,' instead of actual tallying.  If, for example, a crow witnesses three hunters entering a wooded area, the crow will steer well clear of the woods until three hunters are seen leaving again.  The same holds true to a count of four or five hunters.  But beyond a count of five, crows appear to lose all numerical sensibilities and can be fooled into entering the woods when lesser than the full number of hunters that entered the woods leave again.

This sort of intuitive counting lends itself well to the idea that mathematics was not invented by man, but, instead, was included in nature's initial cornucopia of wonders. Under this clearly directional light, most achievements we tend to credit ourselves with inventing become mere discoveries

In a sense, the simple crow knocks a leg out from under us.

Still, the belief that mathematics transcends—in fact, wholly founds—our existence further excites some scientists into thinking we may yet uncover a theory for explaining everything, a great and encompassing formula that, when applied, can account for absolutely everything.  Imagine a formula that ties together all things—from the fantastic cling and twirl of atomic particles, right up through the migration of blue whales, but still leaves room enough to explain why your cat's breath smells like his ass (though, actually, that can be explained easily enough with a little observation on your part.)

The assumption here is, for those needing to stow things in boxes, that God is a mathematician more than magician.

So much needs explaining.

How did bees come by such complex social behavior?  Why are sharks so singular?  Why sex?  Why do birds fly against my windows?  Will we crunch numbers until we discover a creator?  Evolution?  Or will the falling numbers land someplace between the two extremes?

I like to think about the questions, but wonder if we'll be any happier finding all the answers.  What then?  What beyond the formula that explains everything?  I sometimes think that total understanding is equivalent to total annihilation—a sort of killing frost that makes brown summer's green grasses.  I sometimes imagine total understanding exactly that way, and I hear from the porcelain branches bare trees the cawing of crows as they count down from as high as they can go.

--Mitchell Hegman