My Mental Junk Drawer

Most of us have at least one “junk drawer” or “catch-all drawer” somewhere in the house, typically in the kitchen. A few useful items are typically found there: screwdrivers, a flashlight, a lighter or matches, and a few random screws. But then you get stuff ranging from marginally useful to not useful. Mine has keys for things I no longer have, a small tape measure that no longer retracts properly, rubber bands, etc.

I also have the equivalent of a junk drawer in my brain. It’s a place that stores memories and information that are not entirely helpful. And the drawer is always falling open and dropping stuff into my normal thinking.

Spoonerisms are stored there. For example, I may say it’s a “lack of pies” instead of a “pack of lies” when the drawer is open. A rainy day becomes a “dainy ray.”

My old landline phone number is kept there.

And then there are those useless memories. One of the more recurrent ones is of the time a class of apprentices let me go the entire day with my shirt inside-out. And there is that momentous day when I literally hit myself in the head with my hammer.

I really don’t need that stuff, but it remains rattling around in the junk drawer.

—Mitchell Hegman

Friendly Solar PV Arrays

I am a proponent of solar energy. It has a role to play in our energy production and has, in fact, become relatively inexpensive and quick to deploy and commission. At the same time, energy storage, mostly in the form of batteries, is becoming more feasible. My biggest beef has been the footprint required for large-scale solar PV arrays. In my way of thinking, we had to essentially subtract the land used for the array from all other uses.

Fortunately, this may not always be the case. I read, for example, that in some places, communities use the shaded area under PV arrays as garden plots for plants that don’t appreciate full sun. I also just read about an array constructed in Nevada’s Mojave Desert that provided surprising benefits to the ecosystem there.

The Gemini Solar Project adopted a different approach during the construction cycle. Rather than scraping the land clean in a “blade and grade” fashion, developers preserved much of the native soil and its dormant seed bank. Years later, researchers discovered that life had responded. Beneath the modules, a rare desert plant known as the three-corner milk vetch began appearing in numbers far greater than before construction. Instead of sterilizing the landscape, the array altered it in ways that allowed certain species to flourish. This suggests that design choices matter and that, under the right conditions, a solar installation may influence its surroundings in ways that extend beyond electricity production.

My PV Array

—Mitchell Hegman

By Way of Introduction

I was born on a planet where rainbows appear following rainstorms, and we construct houses from wood and stone. We’ve developed technology to melt rocks but still hide when the wind blows. Our waters flow downhill, our sky never stops roving, and we have a single moon waxing and waning as it circles about us. We regularly celebrate something called a “weekend,” which defines a two-day period in which beer tastes better.

—Mitchell Hegman

Alice Street (The Hard Edge of Town)

Yesterday, I taught a class at a facility on Alice Street in Helena. Alice Street is unusual because it is literally the edge of town. A hard edge.

On one side, you find a standard cityscape: paved streets, parked vehicles, apartment buildings, commercial properties.

On the other side runs a seemingly endless strand-wire fence. It stands as an absolute demarcation, like glass holding back water. Beyond it lies undeveloped prairie stretching for miles.

It’s strange to drive along Alice Street with the city shouldering against you on one side and open land rolling away on the other. The two worlds meet, but they do not blend.

I’m sharing two photographs today. The first was taken through a window in the facility where I was teaching and shows the fence and prairie on the undeveloped side of Alice Street. The second is a map-view capture from above.

The Edge of Town

Map View of Alice Street

—Mitchell Hegman

Something Albert Einstein Said

 — “If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.”

— “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.”

— “Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.”

It’s Not a Mistake

It’s not a mistake to stand in the sunroom in the late afternoon on a winter day. The sun is especially friendly in the fading hours, as if it knows it is being granted only a short visit. On the back wall, the hoya plant is a solid listener, less judgmental than the orchids, which, truth be known, strike me as a bit too self-aware.

The geranium is just hanging on and whispers.

The palms are appreciative but absolutely quiet.

The lemon tree is sturdy but not producing. Still, the lemon tree and I enjoy a shared moment or two in a final embrace of full daylight, me with a Cold Smoke beer in hand.

It’s not a mistake to sip a Cold Smoke beer in the sunroom’s sunlight on a winter day.

—Mitchell Hegman

Creepy Dead or Alive

A while back, Desiree and I stocked up on paper towels. I lugged a couple of packs into the house and stored two others on a set of shelves in the garage. The day before yesterday, needing to replenish our indoor supply, I retrieved a pack from the garage and plunked it down on the kitchen countertop to break out a few rolls.

That’s where a plot twist occurred.

A rather large, albeit dead, black widow spider tumbled free from the plastic wrapping and landed on the counter.

Live black widows pretty much top my list of creepy things. Dead ones still rank very near the top, barely conceding the difference. A dead black widow is proof, which I do not require, that black widows consider my garage a suitable address. And they remain entirely scary-looking even when dead. The too-deep black is still black, and their legs pull up tight, forming what looks like a grim, grisly birdcage.

All I wanted was a couple of rolls of paper towels.

—Mitchell Hegman