Selenite

Mark Susag, my good buddy of forever, asked me to attend Helena Mineral Society’s Gem and Mineral Show with him again this year.  We have attended this together for the last dozen or so years.  While there, he always buys me a fossil or pretty rock of some sort for my birthday.

One year, while hunting elk, mark found a strikingly orange and red twenty pound stone and carried the thing for over a mile (back to this truck) just so he could give that to me on my birthday.

This year, Mark arrived earlier to the event than me.  When I met him at the entrance to the show, he said, “I already have something picked out for you.  I think you will like it.”

Mark led me back to a table filled with geodes, crystals, and various highly polished stone specimens.  He pointed to a display of selenite carvings with light shining up inside them from their bases.

I think my exact quote upon seeing the display was “Oooh-Wow!”

Selenite, according to the paper I got with the stone, “instills deep peace.”  This is also a stone thought to enhance mental clarity and flexibility.  Additionally, selenite is a “sweet angel stone.”  According to the literature, I can contact angels with the selenite.

I can always use that.

And even if none of that is true, it’s still a spectacular gift from my buddy Mark.

Posted is a photograph of my selenite with my Buddha light in the background.

—Mitchell Hegman

April 13

From 1900 until the present, April 13, has fallen on a Friday 18 times.

This matters to me because, well, Happy Birthday to me!

More importantly, I was born on one of the years (1956) when April 13 landed on a Friday.

That’s something.  Especially when you consider that April 13 will generally land on a Friday only one or two times each decade.   Furthermore, three or four times each century these April 13^th Fridays will see a span of eleven years between them. The nearest year before 1956 (my year) when April 13 struck a Friday was 1951.  The nearest after: 1962.

Since—and including—my year of birth, my birthday had fallen on the 13^th ten times.

Today is a Saturday.

—Mitchell Hegman

Leaving Yellowstone

Posted today are a few photographs of wildlife I captured in the morning before leaving Yellowstone National Park for Helena.

A pair of elk

Bison on the road

A young buck pronghorn antelope

—Mitchell Hegman

Ten Thousand Times

If I knew I had to strike a stone ten thousand times with a hammer before the stone emitted a beautiful sound, I would do so.  I might strike the stone ten times one day.  Fifty another.  I would work every day hammering at the stone until I struck the stone ten thousand times because I want to make beautiful sounds.

—Mitchell Hegman

Bison and Scotch

That girl and I drove to Gardiner, Montana, yesterday so I could set up for a class I will be teaching to Yellowstone National Park employees today.  While the day was filled from end to end with brooding clouds and storm squalls in the high mountains, we saw hundreds of elk and dozens of bison as we crossed Paradise Valley and then climbed into the park.

That always does my heart good.

When we finally settled into our room along the Yellowstone River, the clouds parted for an hour.  We were immediately drawn to the deck outside our room.  We sat there in the sun sipping a drink before walking out to dinner.

Posted below are a couple shots of bison and a shot (pun wholly intend) of Scotch along the Yellowstone River.

—Mitchell Hegman

Radical Honesty

I bumped into the term “radical honesty” the other day.

I wondered: What is that?

Radical honesty, I discovered as I drilled down, is quite simply telling the honest and brutal truth at all times.   While you might think this is a brilliant way to live, practitioners of this often leave in their wake a lot of bruised and disillusioned people.  At a certain point (constant) honest criticism will be perceived as an attack.  You cannot always be radically honest and polite at the same time.    

Love often requires a blind eye or a white lie.

I don’t want to be radically honest if it hurts.  So I give you this: “You are all looking lovely this morning!”

—Mitchell Hegman

Gone Country

Rap artist Lil Nas X did a funny thing.  He wrote and recorded a hip-hop song that not only went viral, it soon landed on several Billboard Charts, including the Hot Country Song chart.

The single debuted at number nineteen on the country chart.

The song, Old Town Road, is definitely not your grandmother’s country music.   The producer called the song “country trap.”  Lil Nas X’s label called the song a “country-inspired rap track.”

As Old Town Road began to chart slightly higher, some people on the “industry” side on country music became a little nervous.  In late March, Billboard quietly removed Lil Nas X’s from the country chart.  The song, they explained to his label was “not country enough.”

I must admit, I have no firm grip on country music.  I am not a regular listener.  I do know country music has been drifting toward pop music in recent years.  If it drifted far enough to fall into hip-hop…well, I guess that would be fine.  And Billboard yanking Lil Nas X from the country chart has done little to slow the rise of Old Town Road.    

Just the other day Billy Rae Cyrus stepped into the music studio to record a new release of Old Town Road with Lil Nas X.  As of this writing Lil Nas X and Billy Rae Cyrus are number one on the iTunes country chart.  Blake Shelton rests in the number two slot.

I have posted the new version of Old Town Road.  I must admit, I rather like this mix.

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ysFgElQtjI