The Stranger Also Smoked Cigarettes

I woke directly from a dream again this morning.  In this dream, I had started smoking cigarettes again.  I sat smoking them in a bar while drinking beer from a mug.   While smoking, I was chatting with the bartended (someone I seemed to know) and a stranger seated next to me.  The stranger also smoked cigarettes.

I told the stranger about someone I knew only a little who had lived his whole life through with no close friends and no meaningful relationships with women.  I sucked on my cigarette, exhaled, and then added: “He lived his life as if he were passing through the inside of a straw while surrounded by the rest of us.”

The stranger drew in on his cigarette.  The end of it glowed like lava.

That’s when I woke.

I lay in bed for a while thinking about that last thing I said in the dream.    

--Mitchell Hegman

Big Sky Country, Calamity Jane, and Castle City

A couple of years ago, a late winter drive took a co-worker and me to White Sulphur Springs, Montana.  The highway from Townsend to White Sulphur Springs ascends the Big Belt Mountains through the ever-twisting Deep Creek Canyon and then delivers you onto high-altitude rangelands.  There are points, when driving across this open land, where you can see the Big Belt Mountains, the Little Belts, the Castle Mountains, and the toothy peaks of the Bridger Range in one expansive radius around you.

The ghost town of Castle can be found in the Castle Mountains.  A silver rush mining town, the small burg formed in the 1870s and rapidly grew to something near 2,000 residents.  Purportedly, the town supported seven brothels and over a dozen saloons at the peak of mining operations.

And, yes, one jail. 

For a time, Calamity Jane (Martha Jane Cannary Burke) resided in Castle.  A professional scout, notorious drunkard, ox team driver, part-time prostitute, inn keeper, kindly nurse for the sick, and always unsettled frontierswoman—Calamity Jane lived in several other Montana towns over the course of her life.  She is best known for her association with Wild Bill Hickok and Deadwood in the Black Hills.  The town of Castle saw its demise when the silver market collapsed in 1893.  The town now (on private property) rests in silence.

Today, in addition to Calamity Jane and Castle, I am posting a photograph of clouds spilling over the high rangeland.  I captured the photograph after emerging from Deep Creek Canyon.  As I took the picture, I marveled at how fast the clouds were drifting over me.  The photo very nearly captures the motion.

I swear, this really is big sky country.    

--Mitchell Hegman

For a view of Castle:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_s4uKYibzM

A Simple Rule

I try to live my life by simple rules. One of them is this:

If there are monsters in the water, I drink wine.

--Mitchell Hegman

The Maltman’s Shiel: Of What Value Tradition?

Balvenie Scotch is made using the very same processes as when, in 1893, in the Scottish Highlands, the Balvenie Distillery Company began the first distillations.  The maltmen at Balvenie continue with floor maltings, using a wooden shiel to turn the barley four times each day during the germinating stage.  Peat is still used in the kiln drying.  Coopers (barrel makers) continue employing the same hammers and hand-struck tools to assemble, seal, and tap the oak casks in which the spirits are aged.

To be labeled as Scotch, a whiskey must spend a minimum of three years maturing in oak casks in Scotland.  Most popular Scotch whiskies are aged at least twelve years.  The process for making Scotch involves malting (germinating) barely, drying the malt (using kilns heated and smoked with peat), grinding the malt into grist, and brewing the grist following the addition of water.  After brewing for a while, the mash produces an active sugared juice called wort.  Yeast is added to the wort to begin fermentation.  After fermentation, which produces the alcohol, the mix is distilled to glean the spirits from the water.  Finally, the spirits are matured in oak casks.  The casks are always second-hand—having been used once in making another product (usually bourbon in America).    

It is not unlikely that some smart young lab technician could synthetically produce a blend of multisyllabic whatchacallits to make a cheap form of Balvenie-like Scotch.  Probably, this could be accomplished at a fraction of the present cost.  Robots might mix test tubes in a “malting zone.”  Sophisticated building automation and Ethernet connections may assure the exact temperature and humidity for the mix.  The whole process might take fifteen minutes and the liquid may not rest for a single second. 

Scotch could be produced inside a converted tire factory warehouse in Detroit, Michigan.

Personally—though I am by trade involved in the installation and design of sophisticated control systems—I prefer an actual maltman and his shiel working on my Scotch and turning the grain against the malting floor.  I appreciate the tradition of the malting, fermenting, and aging process.  With each sip of the half-glass of Scotch that I drink most evenings, I taste a bit of the malting floor, of the barrels used in aging, and the peat used for drying.  I sometimes imagine the Highlands.  I see flocks of sheep slowly stirring—like sea foam—against the green waves of land above the distillery.  I hear the echo of the maltmen walking the distillery floors and pushing their shiels across the wooden planks.

I prefer my Scotch as an adventure, not merely a drink.

--Mitchell Hegman

How Scotch is made:  http://www.whisky-distilleries.info/Fabrication_EN.shtml

For tradition, look here:  www.thebalvenie.com

One Day, I Started Thinking…

If one thing follows another…what will two things follow?

--Mitchell Hegman

More Useless Aphorisms and Thoughts

·         You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot teach a hippopotamus to use a paring knife with any notable skill.

·         Better to be constantly seeking knowledge than to know why the word hemorrhoid is spelled with a double “r.”

·         Everyone deserves a second chance at love, but if you cannot get the dishes clean the first time give someone else a chance.

·         If results are the light that guides men, it must be pretty dark at your house.

·         Even a pretty stupid movie might turn you on to good music.

--Mitchell Hegman

The Cat and the Final Crossing

Most mornings, I wake with 20 to 40 pounds of domestic housecat on my bed with me.

Here is the math on that:

1.      Mitch cats = 20 lbs. per cat.

2.      Therefore, 1 cat on bed = 20 lbs.

3.      2 cats on bed (2 cats x 20 lbs.) = 40 lbs. of cat.

I am comforted by the presence of a cat or two when I wake in the morning.  I am not alone in the universe.  And the cats are hungry.

Not everyone likes cats.  I appreciate that view.  You will not relish a cat if, for example, you like to think you are the boss.  If you don’t enjoy hair clinging to everything, or don’t take readily to being ambushed in the hallway, you likely will not accept living with cats.

And then we have Oscar.

Oscar is a “death” cat.  The claim is that Oscar has predicted the deaths of some 50 patients at a Rhode Island nursing home.  Oscar—normally a very standoffish sort—will for some reason seek out and cuddle on the bed with nursing home patients in their last hours.  Generally, he utterly ignores the patients and nursing home staff, but once Oscar senses that a patient is near death he will go to their room and perform his vigil.  “It’s not like he dawdles.  He’ll slip out for two minutes, grab some kibble and then he’s back at the patient’s side,” wrote Dr. David Dosa, a geriatrician at the facility and professor at Brown University.  Dr. Dosa wrote an article about Oscar in the New England Journal of Medicine.  Eventually, he produced a book titled, Making rounds with Oscar: the extraordinary gift of an ordinary cat.

Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence adopted Oscar when he was a kitten.  The home has several other cats, which are enjoyed by patients, staff, and visitors alike.  Early on, however, Oscar revealed his aloofness for all those accept the patients near death.   Eventually, the staff began to trust in the cat’s judgment.  Once, thinking that a patient was at the end of hours, the nurses placed Oscar on the bed with the patient in question.  The cat immediately fled the room and sought out another patient to sleep with.  Later that night, the patient Oscar slept with crossed over.  If the staff leaves the door of a room with a dying patient closed, Oscar will scratch at the door until he is allowed to enter the room and jump up on the patient’s bed.

How does Oscar sense the approach of death?  A scent?  A change in temperature?  Something in the activity of staff and family?  No one is quite sure.  While you might think people would be fearful of Oscar, many family members, just the same, take comfort in knowing that Oscar is there to be with their loved ones when the final hours arrive.

I have my regular cats.  I wake each morning with 20 to 40 pounds of cat on my bed with me.  They are perpetually hungry and have probably shredded a houseplant during the night.

--Mitchell Hegman