A Paradox

To be successful at anything you must be willing to take time and to hurry.

-- Mitchell Hegman

Fidelity

Paul Newman, the famously laconic actor, racecar driver, and philanthropist, was also known for unwavering fidelity in his marriage to Joanne Woodward.  The couple married in 1958 and remained together until his passing in 2008. 

Mr. Newman admitted to having once stormed out of the house through the back door after he and Joanne engaged in an argument.  Standing outside, he considered his life for a few moments. He then walked around the house, knocked on the front door, and explained to his wife how he had nowhere to go.

I find myself amazed at how refreshing, if not astonishing, simple acts of commitment such as this seem these days.

Mitchell Hegman

Fall Art Walk

Evening last, that girl and I ate dinner in downtown Helena and then strolled through the walking mall to participate in the Fall Art Walk.  A very recent winter impulse left the whole of Helena and especially the mall shawled under fluffy new snow.  Though a bit colder than normal, Last Chance Gulch glowed and sparkled against the cobalt of night—the city lights washing partway up against Mount Helena towering above

We browsed several shops.  At Birds and Beasleys, we found a young woman holding an owl.  I have posted a photograph of the owl, as well as a few other photographs captured with my smarter-than-me-phone.

After leaving the mall at around 8:30 PM, I stopped to fuel the car at the north edge of town.  While standing there alongside the fuel dispenser, I heard a constant hubbub above.  I knocked on the car window and motioned for that girl to step outside.

“Listen to that,” I said while pointing up at the over-bright white canopy immediately above us.

“What is that?” she asked.

“Has to be geese,” I answered.

Just then, a bit over stone’s throw above us, the geese cleared the obstructing canopy looming overtop the car.  They were flapping in a southeasterly direction.  Not hundreds of geese.  Thousands of them.  Thousands in raucous, honking flight, their V patterns joined together and looking like a massive blanket patterned with fish scales being drawn overtop us.

That girl and I stood there in awe as the geese flew over and then slowly dissolved into the darkness again.

I have never in my life seen so many geese at once.

Mitchell Hegman

Customer Support

Dear Customer Support,

Last year, I replaced three windows with your Xxxxxxx brand vinyl windows.  The windows are lovely.  The screens, on the other hand, are really mismatched.  I am talking Bambi versus King Kong mismatched.   With the first puff of wind from the outside, the screens pop free and land on my floor, leaving my house wide open and exposed to anything hanging about outside, which, since I live in wild Montana, could be anything from a grizzly bear with poor people skills to a mob (pack, swarm, pod, murder, flock, whatever!) of common houseflies.

I contacted our local Xxxxxxx dealer (by the way, we also call people who sell illicit drugs “dealers”) and got new replacement screens.

Guess what?

Pop!  Pop!

The brand new screens similarly flung themselves to the floor at the first hint of wind. 

The screens are super-flimsy and the spring-loaded tabs for holding them in place are wholly inadequate.

Here is my thought: “Let’s fix this.”

I am of a mind that the number one big boss should know about the screen problem.  I assume such a catastrophic flaw would be something the big boss would really want fixed.  I am guessing a lot of other people are having the same issue with screens.  Surely we can devise a retrofit solution.

Does the big boss know about fly-away screens?  Do you ever talk to the big boss?  If I talked nice, could I talk with the big boss?

Please contact me at your earliest convenience.  I would appreciate the opportunity to resolve this problem before something bad climbs into my house through an open window and stomps on one of your screens.

Sincerely,

Customer Mitch

Mitchell Hegman

NOTE: I sent this message off to “Customer Support” yesterday.  I have redacted the manufacturer’s name.  More later…

Two New Friends

Years ago, when my daughter was about eight, she came home still excited from a summer’s day of playing throughout the neighborhood in which we lived. “Guess what?”  She said to me.  “I made two new friends today.”

“Oh, really!” I said.   “And from what, exactly, did you make them?  I certainly hope you made them out of something that will last.”

Mitchell Hegman

Planning Our Leave

The Moon, cold love that she is, continues to slowly drift away from the Earth, increasing the space between by something near an inch-and-one-half each year.

Consider this, without the Moon’s gravity clasping us steady, we and our blue planet would soon rotate wildly, wobbling without control as a top spinning down just prior to crashing to the floor and skittering to a stop.  Climates here would shift entirely in only years or months—ice ages coming and going with the rapidity of our present seasons.

And if that is not enough change for you, then contemplate our Sun as it gradually consumes itself and fizzles down.  Near the end of days, it will reach out, as if in final desperation, abruptly superheating and enveloping, consuming all of the solar system and the planets still circling as beads swirled in a salad bowl.

The Moon is fixed only in our best dreams, those softly lighted, and others where words come easy.  Dreams in which white doves flutter down bearing pure sugar cubes—ours for the taking.  The Moon pulls tides over us like blankets.  She strolls quietly though the tall trees along the mountains.  All the time plotting her eventual departure.

The Sun, now bright, but caught in a self-consuming waltz.

We, too, plan our leave.  Our strategy not nearly as inexorable as that of the Sun.  Our plans for departure alarmingly recent.  With rockets we climb the thin black skies.  In the Apollo missions we left at 35,000 feet per second.  But we came back again.

Someday we must leave for good.  We must go because the Moon and the Sun conspire against us, because we cannot stay here forever, because even lowly rock doves scatter as we reach for them.

Mitchell Hegman

NOTE: This is an entry from my 1999 journal.  I no longer recall what triggered me to write this.  I also have a nagging suspicion I may have posted a version of this previously.  Nonetheless, here we are. 

Invitation to a Barbecue

I bet most of us live our lives more cautiously if we had to coexist with big ogres who set out sticky human traps near our patios on warm summer evenings.

Mitchell Hegman