Mostly Green, Under Review

Late yesterday evening, Wednesday, April 6, 2022, I sat thinking about Miss Desiree.   At the same time, half a world away, our Miss Desiree sat for an interview before a representative of these Untied States of America at the U.S. embassy in Manila.  For her, the day was Thursday, April 7, 2022.  And morning had just found Manila.

We have been waiting for nearly 2½ years for this day.  The interview is the final step in securing a U.S. visa for Desiree:

How did you meet your fiancée?  What does he do for Work?  What does he do for fun?

 After a five-minute interview, Desiree handed over several documents.  The consulate representative extended documents to Desiree.

Not quite a green light.  Government does not operate that way.   The case is “under review.”  Mostly green.  We must abide by formalities.  Normal.

Within a few days the case (and Desiree) will undergo a “status change,” and a visa will be issued.

Green light!

—Mitchell Hegman

Matinicus Island to the Rescue

As I write this, a wave of book banning is sweeping through libraries around the United States.  We are not talking about works of pornography.  We are talking about classics.  Following is a list of just a few targeted books (all of which I have read): 

• The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
• The Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger.
• The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck.
• To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee.
• The Color Purple, by Alice Walker.
• The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding.

Thankfully, there exists a literal island of sanity in all of this.  A tiny library on Matinicus Island, several miles off the Maine coast, is filling its shelves with books that have been expunged elsewhere.

This is a pretty big undertaking for a small island with a population of only 100 year-round residents.  In fact, the Matinicus Library doesn’t even have a librarian.  Patrons borrow books using the honor system. Books are checked out by writing the book’s name in a notebook.

According to AP News: “For years, islanders just traded books among themselves, but they decided to create a grassroots library in 2016 in a donated storage shed. It expanded in 2020 to add a second shed for a children’s library with help from a grant from the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation.”

The islanders, by nature of remote living, are free thinkers. Actually, I see them as downright heroic.  I find nothing more hideous than banning books—especially classics that have defined us.

—Mitchell Hegman

Source: apnews.com, ala.org

Beauty in Sparsity

As David Hume said: “Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.”

In find a certain beauty in sparsity.  From this vantage point, the pair of wind-propelled tumbleweeds I witnessed crossing a long expanse of blonde grass was beautiful.  So, too, the flock of white seagulls tumbling along behind a red tractor tilling a field—the gulls constantly rotating in overtop one another to feast on grubs and whatnots freshly exposed in the overturned earth.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Job Isn’t Finished Until the Butterflies Are Fixed in Place

Thanks to a helping hand from my brother-in-law, Terry, I finally replaced the last of my home’s original windows.  I completed quite a bit of preparation before Terry arrived.  As soon as he appeared, I finished sawing free the last corner of the old window and we removed it.

Within an hour or so, we completed fastening the new window in place.

We followed that with a celebratory beer (Terry’s of the non-alcohol variety).

At my house, a window project isn’t finished until stickers have been affixed to the glass to discourage birds from crashing into the reflections of sky.  Odd as this may be, I make a habit of always keeping a modest stock of stickers for my windows on hand. 

After Terry and I finished our beers, I fixed a few stickers on the window.  For this window: butterflies.

Old Window Gone

New Window in Place

Butterfly Stickers From the Inside

Single Butterfly

—Mitchell Hegman

Soft Hail

Desiree, along with never having seen snow in person, has never experienced a hail storm.  Yesterday, just when she called to video chat with me, a storm of “soft hail” swept across the lake and fell across my house.

Some people call this sort of snow graupel, snow pellets, or corn snow.  By whatever name you prefer, the collective sound of the pellets striking the exterior of my house translated into a hiss on the inside.

“I need to take you outside so you can see this,” I told Desiree.  “Little snowballs are falling from the sky.”   I scampered out onto the back deck while holding the phone before me so Desiree could witness what I saw.

“Is that hail?” she asked.

“Kinda.  A soft version of it.”

“Cool!”

No matter what you call the soft hail, it’s unusual, and I enjoyed watching the little balls popcorn against the hot tub cover and deck.

The storm dazzled Desiree.

The Storm’s Arrival

Desiree Watching Storm

Pellets Collected on My Hot Tub

—Mitchell Hegman

A Good Day

I got to thinking about a sunny and warm Sunday afternoon in April some years ago.  On a whim, Uyen and I drove into Helena for brunch at the Mediterranean Grill.

We found ourselves sitting next to some friends.  Our friends had been joined by another couple with a five-year-old girl.  The little girl smiled the whole time we were there.   And she poked at her own flowery dress because she knew the dress made her look pretty.

As you might imagine, watching the little girl made Uyen smile, too.  For the whole time we sat in the sun-washed restaurant, I basked in sunlight and the smiles of two pretty girls. 

“That’s a good kind of day,” I thought to myself as I reflected on that afternoon.

I could use more of those. 

—Mitchell Hegman

Small World

You know that old cliché “it’s a small world?”  Well, I have a story.

After my oldest sister passed away a couple years ago, my bother-in-law, Tony, a fancier of warm weather, traveled to the Cebu in the Philippines.  Cebu impressed him when he had taken military leave there many years before.

Eventually, Tony ended up in a small town called Bayawan on the island of Negros.  As fate would have it, he found himself stranded in Bayawan at the beginning of the pandemic.  He ended up having to stay much longer than expected.

But Tony really liked Bayawan and he met a girl.

Partway through the pandemic, he made his way back to Montana and suffered through our weather.  While back in Montana, Tony made arrangements to return to Bayawan for the long term.  He even managed a long-distance marriage to Erica, the island girl he met.

A couple weeks ago, I rode to Great Falls with Tony to ship some boxes of his belongings to the Philippines.  Later that same week, Tony flew finally back to Bayawan.

Let’s do some math here.

First, Bayawan is 7,300 miles from Butte, where Tony originated.  Secondly, we are talking about one island amid more than 7,000 comprising the South Pacific nation. 

This is how small the world is: Bayawan is the very little town where my girl Desiree grew up.   More astonishingly, Tony now lives within two miles of Desiree’s father, a brother, and two bazillion other relatives.

Two days ago, the gap between all of us closed.   Desiree, back on her home island to visit family, stopped to meet Tony and Erica.  Desiree video-called me while there and we all chatted.

—Mitchell Hegman