Stepping Stones

5:03 in the Morning.  The constellation Orion stands on the roof of my house.  I saw him there at 4:31 when I went out to set that girl’s pot of mums outside after a night indoors.  At present, the sounds of the song of White Room, by Cream, fills my living room.  20 pounds of housecat is sprawled across my lap.  For no particular reason, I have been thinking about a day when I was not very nice to my late wife.

She had made a series of brick stepping stones on the hillside at the back of our house.  I thought the stepping stones were silly and of no use where they were.  She had worked all day to bed them in the earth alongside blue grama grass and blue flax.    

“I don’t like it,” I said.

5:12 in the morning.  20 years later.

The stepping stones are still out there and I hate myself.

--Mitchell Hegman.

A Dust Devil Meets a Powerline

Drawn up like a snake charmed from a basket, a dust devil rises into an empty sky before swaying off across the open stubble of a wheatfield.  The last of summer’s sun has bleached the wheat stubble to an undeniable blonde color.  The dust devil scours through the rows of cut grain, growing darker, directing itself toward certain collision with high tension power lines strung between two purple, high-bucking, mountain ranges.

You might think catastrophic failure would result where these two powerful forces meet.  But the dust devil ghosts right through the thrumming lines; leans right through them and does not thin until abruptly turning in a new direction.

At once, the dust devil dissipates.

Watching, as I do, I am always trying to seek a point in all of this.

--Mitchell Hegman.

Crow Creek Falls (2017)

Three years ago, on September 26, that girl and I met for our very first date.  Our date was a six-mile round-trip hike into Crow Creek Falls.  The falls is the largest in the Helena National Forest. 

For a century preceding this date, the waterfall lay on private land as part of patented mining claims.  In the 1980s a miner moved in to remove placer gold deposits from the deep pool below the waterfall.  At the end of his venture he left behind a heaping junkyard.  Rusting bulldozers.  A battered crane.  Empty barrels in various states of repose.  Small bits of refuse strewn from end to end of the claim. 

Thanks to the combined efforts of the American Land Conservancy and Montana Fish and Wildlife Trust, the area around the falls has been cleared of junk and the property is now in public holding (purchased by Helena National Forest in 2004).

Yesterday, we repeated the same hike.  The hike in is gorgeous.  The first half of the hike follows along Crow Creek.  The creek is perfectly clear and ever active, bounding through smooth boulders and spilling whitely over deadfall.  The forest there seems as ancient as any I have seen.  The shadows are deep and tree moss hangs from all branches of the tallest trees.  Thimbleberry, snowberry, and chockecherry bushes grown tall alongside the trial.  The sun remains a distant jewel hanging above.

The sound of the waterfall reaches you long before you arrive there.  By the time that girl and I found ourselves at the edge of the deep pool at the base of the falls, we were yelling to carry on conversations.

We did stop our blasting conversations long enough for a kiss in celebration of three years together.

--Mitchell Hegman.

One More Thing

I am a dedicated maker of lists.  I love them.  Nine out of ten times, when I drive to town, I will have with me a list of stops I need to make.  I make lists of upcoming work projects, details about classes I am currently developing, home projects I need to complete, and materials I need to take to the cabin when I go there.

I have even posted a few lists on this blog.

Lists are the nearest to a living thing words on paper can be.  They grow and evolve over time.  They are never complete.  When I see an open line at the bottom of a list, I think to myself: “What’s the next thing?”

Yesterday, while visiting with my sister and brother-in-law, I noticed a list on the countertop.  I could not help myself.  I had to sneak one more thing onto the list.  I have posted a stealthy photograph I captured of the completed list with my smarter-than-me-phone.

--Mitchell Hegman.

Brain Functions

For once, I have the jump on all those fancy-shmancy scientists linking together syllables until their words become barreling freight trains.  Not only that, my (somewhat controlled) study did not cost anyone else a dime.

Here it is: I have successfully mapped the function of the human brain.

Well, my brain, specifically.

Looking around my office yesterday, I suddenly realized my office and my brain have similar memory functions.

Sticky notes!

That’s right.  Sticky notes.  My office is filled with sticky notes.  Yellow notes flagging pages of books.  Purple, yellow, blue, and pink notes fixed like the scales of a reptile to my desktop.  A sticker on my computer keyboard.  A sticker on my monitor.  And on.

Point is, my brain is exactly the same.  Just a pile of sticky notes I have assembled together.  If I see them enough, I remember something.  As I kick around during the course of an average day, the notes catch my attention in a more or less random manner:

“Don’t forget that girl’s birthday!”

“Arc flash study for batteries.”

“80080.”

“Call (illegible name).”

To be fair, the last note was written in the dark late at night.

And my brain is not perfect.

Perhaps Robert Frost put it more succinctly than anyone else: “The brain is a wonderful organ: it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.”

--Mitchell Hegman.

Don’t Touch That Fuse

I woke from a dream in which I was surrounded by three offended, if not angry, electricians.

In the dream, I had done a bad thing.

I had walked up upon three electricians—all of whom were gathered around an electrical control box operating a series of conveyer belts located immediately behind the box.  “Kinda quiet around here,” I joked.  “Normally I can’t hear myself think.”

“Belts crashed,” the nearest electrician, a bearded man, told me. “We’ve been troubleshooting to see if we can fire up the belts again.”

I appraised the rows of contactors, motor starters, timers, and rainbows of bundled wires connecting all the components together.  At the bottom of the controller, I saw a small fuse block holding a single fuse.  I noticed that one of the other electricians was holding a digital multimeter in his hands.  “Mind if I borrow that?” I asked.

Using a screwdriver, that somehow appeared in my back pocket, I pried the fuse from the holding clips.  I tested for continuity with the multimeter.

“There’s your problem,” I announced.  “Fuse is shot.”

“Hmmf,” said the electrician as I handed him his meter again.  I also handed him the fuse.

"Why don’t you to see about rustling up a fuse,” the bearded man told the other electricians.  After they had walked away, he turned to me.  “You did a bad thing here.  You checked the fuse.”

“Why is that bad?  The fuse was blown.  I fixed the problem.  I was taught to always check the fuse as a first step.”

“That’s not the point.  The point is, you never check another man’s fuse.  You might make him look bad.”

--Mitchell Hegman.

Another Day in Montana (With Bears), Part II

Weird.

Yesterday, the blog I posted was about a bear some dude here in Montana found injured on a highway.  After posting my blog, I drove to Butte to teach a continuing education class for electricians.  During my early evening drive home, while negotiating one of the back-to-back curves along I-15 where the highway trickles through the dense mountains between Butte and Helena, I spotted a black bear just sitting there on a mountainside immediately off the highway below a strand of jade-colored pines.

Not long after arriving home, I picked up the newspaper and found an article about grizzly bears that have been pushing their territory onto the plains on the eastern side of the Front Range of the Rockies.  Some of the bears were recently involved in killing cattle near Dupuyer, Montana.

Apparently the “something’s afoot” around these parts applies to bears.

--Mitchell Hegman.

Another Day in Montana (With Bears)

I can think of several reasons not to haul around an injured and unconscious bear in the back of my truck.

First, it’s a bear.

Second, it’s an injured bear.

Actually, that’s enough reasons right there.

I have experience with this sort of thing.  Not with bears.  With a big bull snake.  I once flipped one I found on the road into the back of my truck with a stick and drove down the road a short distance to show my buddy.  I mean, this thing was big!

When I got to where my buddy was: no snake.

Oh, dear.   Where was it?  Had it climbed down and wrapped around something on the undercarriage of the truck?  Was that possible?  Had it dropped itself back on the road again as I drove along?  Just to be safe, I parked my truck outside the garage that first night.

Now, back to Bear World.

Seems a would-be rescuer, chanced upon a black bear that had been struck by an automobile near Polson, Montana the other day.  Somehow, the man managed to hoist the bear into the back of his truck.  He then drove to nearby Confederated Salish and Kootinai Tribal Complex in Pablo, hoping to find help for the injured bear.  That’s when the bear became not-so unconscious.

Remember…first, it’s a bear.

Just to remind ourselves, let’s go down the bear list here:

1. Giant claws (check)

2. Mouth filled with long, sharp teeth (check)

3. Deep growl (check)

4. Six-times stronger than the Terminator (check)

5. Standing upright in the back of the pickup (check)

6. Really, really angry (double-check).

The folks in Pablo were more than a little concerned about the angry bear in back of a pickup.  In just the last few weeks we’ve had a couple grizzly bear attacks.  It didn’t take long before a tribal law enforcement officer arrived.  Sadly, the officer had no choice but to dispatch the bear.

Me?

It’s been years, but I’m still on the lookout for than darned snake.

--Mitchell Hegman.

Making Sense

Life started making sense when I figured out that some of our bath towels are intended for decoration (not use), the upside to pleasure is generally the downside to personal finance, straight trees fall harder than crooked trees, spiders can walk backwards, and sugar is poison.

--Mitchell Hegman

A Verse for Everyone

Richard Brautigan, oddball, drinker, poet, thought a poem should be written for everyone.  Not everyone in the crowded, general, all-encompassing sense.  He thought each person should have a poem written about them.

I think he actually tried to do that for a couple days—tried to write a personalized poem for every person.  A few of those poems landed in his collection of poems titled Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork.

I guess the lofty idea of personalized poems petered out at about a dozen poems.

Brautigan refused to drive a car, partied at every opportunity, and, frankly, poets are not great at getting shit done.

At this point, you may need to write your own poem if you want one.

--Mitchell Hegman

Note: Richard Brautigan is the closest equivalent to Scotch I can think of.  If you don’t like his writing immediately, you never will.

The Big Dipper

Each morning now, as I step outside to assess the sky, wind, and earth at my feet, I see the Big Dipper up-ended before me.  Hanging there like a bright bunting over the cobalt vault of night beyond, the Big Dipper is the first asterism recognized by all the children slowly wobbling under the Northern sky. 

Somehow, fetching as it is, the Big Dipper is not an “official” constellation.  Instead, the group of stars comprising what we call the Big Dipper are considered an asterism: a readily recognizable cluster of stars.  The Big dipper is, strictly speaking, only part of a hot mess of stars in the constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear, which looks like a bear in the same way a box looks like a sphere.

Yes, it really is that bad.

You need to work a lot harder than I am willing to work, to find a bear in the shotgun splay of stars comprising the Great Bear.  You might find a kind of angular mouse in the stars, but not a bear.

But here we are.  The ancients presented Ursa Major to us—just the same as they did mayonnaise and the common cold and four-way stops—and we remain stuck with that.

--Mitchell Hegman

Photo: Wikipedia

Self-Assessment

All of us self-assess.  Early on in life, as round-faced infants and toddlers, we arrest ourselves at mirrors.  Look there!

Discovering our me in a mirror, we quickly go nose to nose, poke, offer our hand to a hand that unfalteringly offers a hand back.

At some point—I suppose this varies greatly from person to person—each of us begins to study ourselves from a point of vanity.  Picture a young girl over-smearing lipstick on her lips and scribbling caterpillar eyebrows on her own face.  Picture a shirtless teenage boy flexing his biceps, grimacing—his mind fixed on the concept that brutal is beautiful.

Maybe we fall in love with the immeasurable depth of our own eyes.

Perhaps, contrarily, we clinch our fists and shudder at a crooked smile.

Then, over many years, we slowly age in front of ourselves.

I have now aged beyond most standards of vanity.  Any particular reason for pride has by now wrinkled or sagged.  Trying to flex a muscle might cause permanent injury.   A stone tumbling down a steep hill will more likely change course at this late date.

I could easily allow myself to become distressed at the aging of me, but I try, instead, to remain swimming at the clear end of the pool.

It is what it is.

Bright spots of pride do still exist.  For one thing, I still have the fingernails of a young man.  

--Mitchell Hegman

Ain’t No Reason

A song by Brett Dennon

--Mitchell Hegman

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amwVyRH2B8A

Drive-By-Shootings

I call them “drive-by shootings,” the camera shots I capture while driving.  Taking photographs while driving is a fairly unique form of distracted driving, but I am certainly not alone in the practice.  Ten years ago, I recall a friend of mine, Jeff, asking if I wanted to see some of the photographs of his trip from Seattle to Montana for a visit.  “Sure,” I said.

He grabbed his digital camera and we browsed through screen images he had taken though his windshield.  We clicked though shots of the hood of his car climbing a mountain pass, swooping down near a glittering river, dropping into a wide glacial basin, and approaching various road signs.  Driving, for sure.

I must say, I loved his work. 

On one occasion Jeff emailed me a particularly unique drive-by.  While overflying Montana between Seattle and the Midwest, his flight took him almost directly overtop my house.  He managed to capture an image of my house and the surrounding countryside from thirty-thousand feet as he flew past.

The spirt of drive-by shootings is the thing.

Today, I am posting some drive-by-shootings from a trip to my cabin yesterday.  We have experienced a dramatic change in weather patterns over the last few days.  A moisture laden cold front plunged down upon us.  Came with it, rain and snow.  Some of the drainages near my cabin pulled down two inches of moisture.

We abruptly switched from smoky skies and fires prowling though the forests like flaming lions to blue skies filled with cotton candy clouds and an unparalleled clarity of view.

After a long drought, the air is once again sweet.  Perfect for drive-by-shootings captured with my smarter-than-me-phone.

--Mitchell Hegman

My Technical Training Take-Away

Technically, I attended a technical training class presented by a technical-minded applications engineer.  The class explored the manufacture and function of solar photovoltaic inverters and various types of storage batteries in stand-alone and grid-tied systems.  As with all such training, at the end of the day, you walk away with one big take-away, something about the class that will always stick with you.  My take away was this: the instructor had a bum knee that popped whenever he rose from his chair—which, by the way, he sat in because he had a bum knee.

--Mitchell Hegman

A Good Man

Yesterday, I finally received a return phone call from a man I called a few days back.  The man apologized for not returning my call.  He said he and other members of his volunteer fire department had suddenly been deployed to defend some structures threatened by the Alice Creek fire.

I assured him he did not need to apologize for that.  Far from it.

Good work, that.

He went on to tell me that he had witnessed when the fire underwent a 5,000 acre, wind-driven blowup.  The fire positively raced across open grasslands and caused trees to explode like firecrackers when it reached them.

The Alice Creek fire is the wildfire nearest my cabin.  Too near.  From what I see on the latest incident maps, one arm of the fire has reached to within eight miles of my cabin.  As of yesterday, the fire has ripped through a bit over 29,000 acres of forest and grassland.  Structures have been lost.

After we talked about the fires a bit more and spoke about the business prompting my initial call, I thanked him for standing against the fire.  “I really appreciate what everyone up there is doing,” I told him.  “Means a great deal to me.  Do you get paid for your time?”

“We could get paid,” he answered.  “It’s not much.  The money comes from FEMA.  All the guys on my crew talked.  We figured, with what’s going on in with the hurricanes in Florida and Texas, they didn’t need to worry about us.  None of us asked to be paid.  We just want to help.”

I am something of a softie.  I almost teared-up when he told me his crew turned down money.  Okay, maybe I did tear-up a bit.

Makes me proud to know such a good man.

Makes me proud of Montana. 

We might be on fire, but we are not burning up.

Photos of Alice Creek Fire: InciWeb

--Mitchell Hegman

Below a Billion

J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, has a problem with money.  She was the first author to reach billionaire status.  In 2012, however, she was dropped off Forbes’ billionaire list, because she had eroded $160 million from her fortune—enough to drop her below the billion-dollar mark.

Rowling has a particularly glaring spending habit.

Perhaps “spending” is an inappropriate term.

She fell off the billionaire list because she donated $160 million to charitable organizations.  She is particularly fond of giving to organizations whose mission is helping single parents and disadvantaged children. The famous author was once a single mother trying to raise children on her own.  She made it through that stage of her life with the help of welfare and charitable groups.

--Mitchell Hegman

Irritabelle

Given a choice between playing the part of Cinderella or playing the part of a hyperactive colon, I suspect most women would choose the part of Cinderella.   Not so Ilana Becker.  She fell in love with the idea of playing the part of Irritabelle from the start.   Her undaunted enthusiasm fills the screen when the ads for combatting diarrhea she stars in play on television.

If you are in my demographic, you have seen the ads or Viberzi featuring Ilana.

Surprisingly, I found myself immediately attracted to a stomachache—I mean the girl playing one—the first time I saw one of Ilana’s ads.

She glows.

And I am not the only person to think so.  When Ilana auditioned for the part (by Skype from her bathroom, nonetheless) she was the unanimous choice out of hundreds of people who auditioned.  Fluttering her eyes, flouncing about, she was perfect for IBS (irritable bowel syndrome).

In spite of a natural reluctance, I find myself attracted to Irritabelle every time I see the ads.  She's pretty hot for an upset stomach. 

Who knew?

--Mitchell Hegman

Source: Roger Schlueter, www.bnd.com

Packing Up

Our houseguests are busy packing up and preparing for an early morning departure.  People are knocking about in every overly-lighted room of our house.  My 20 pounds of housecat is sitting on the deck just outside the screen door, watching the come-and-go activity inside.  He is not unhappy these always-laughing folks are leaving.  He would also like to thank all you other sons-a-bitches for not showing up here at his house.

--Mitchell Hegman

Sunset, September 10, 2017

Yesterday, for the first time in many days, our sky remained relatively free from the thick haze of wildfire smoke.  At the end of the day, a three-alarm sunset washed across the clouds above us.

--Mitchell Hegman

Watching

My 20 pounds of housecat, Splash, has been spending his summer nights outdoors.  As a daily ritual, I usher him inside and feed him first thing in the morning.  Then I make my coffee.  I have noticed considerable change in him since my other cat, Carmel, passed a couple months ago.

He has become decidedly needy.

It’s almost as if he wants to be permanently attached to me for the first hour or so he is in the house. If I sit, he quickly finds a way into my lap.  If I wander from room to room, he follows.

Not today.  Splash is a bit out of sorts this morning.   We have houseguests (that girl’s friends) who overnighted.  They are just now beginning to stir in the spare bedrooms.  Splash is presently hunched in a corner of the living room where he can watch down the hallway.

If one of the guests makes a false move he will be there to see it.

And if one of them emerges from the second spare bedroom with the vacuum cleaner, intent on murdering him with it, he will be off to the utility room and under the dryer in an instant.

--Mitchell Hegman

Something Aesop Said

—After all is said and done, more is said than done.

—Better to be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own.

—He that is discontented in one place will seldom be happy in another.

—Our insignificance is the cause of our safety.

The Ugly Sky

Rumbling and low, a plane circled over my house.   I ran outside after the first pass and watched the plane bank a circle above my house three more times.  Boxlike, slow, I could tell it was a smokejumper plane.

On the third pass, I clearly saw a man peering out from an open door near the tail of the plane as the plane banked directly above me.  Following the same pattern established on the first flight, the plane looped over the hilly section of nearby State-owned school trust property and headed back toward me again.  Just then, I noticed a streamer trickling down to the ground on the state land.  At the same time, that girl came driving down our road after a trip to Helena. 

I pointed up to the sky as that girl approached the house.  She brought the car to a firm stop amid a cloud of dust.  “I think that plane is going to drop some jumpers!” I exclaimed.

That girl climbed from the car and stood by me.  “I saw two Forest Service trucks at the bottom of the hill before our turn,” she told me.

“That’s weird.  We don’t have any National Forest property around here.”

Both of us saluted against the midday sun and smoky sky, following the plane overtop the house and across the prairie again.  Shortly after passing over the hills where the streamer dropped, two small shapes fell from the plane and within a few seconds became men under parachutes.

Let’s stop here for a second.  Montana burning up this year is an actual thing.  Given the huge hurricanes and North Korea, you don’t hear much about it.  But it’s real.  Just this morning, our local newspaper noted that Montana has seen over a million acres scorched by wildfires.

So there we stood, watching two jumpers drifting down to the hills from an ugly sky.

“Do you think there is a fire over there?” asked that girl.

“I don’t think so.  I am thinking this is just practice.  I don’t think Forest Service jumpers would fight fire here.”

After watching the plane circle and drop jumpers two more times, we hopped in my truck and drove up the road for a quarter mile and parked at the nearest junction.  We watched the last two jumpers land; watched the jumpers mustering on a hill.  They were close enough we could hear their voices.  We had not been there long before a truck drove up.  The man inside drew down his window.  “What’s going on?”

“Not sure,” I responded.

“Might just be a practice exercise.”

“That was my thought.”

The man, Buck, by a later introduction, told me he was going to find out for himself what was happening.  I gave him my phone number so he could call me with information.  After Buck drove off, that girl and I watched the jumpers milling around the hill where they had mustered.  My phone chirped no more than a minute later.  Buck was calling.  “Just an exercise,” he informed after our greetings.

“Good to know,” I said.  “Thanks.”

Practice is good.  Given our present fire season and our ugly sky, watching was a little scary, but practice is good.

Posted are a few photographs I captured with my smarter-than-me-phone.

--Mitchell Hegman

Dancing in the Congo

There exists, deep in the Congo, primitive tribes of hunters.  Small people.  Pygmies.  They are nomadic hunters and gatherers, living off only what the jungle provides them.  They know the names of thousands of plants.  They can tell the size and sex of most animals by reading hoof prints in mud.

The small people dance to bring forth flowers and bees.  They dance to promote love.  They dance to bring success in their hunting.  They have no word equivalent to “war,” and resolve all conflicts with dancing. 

Last night, I watched a documentary about the small people dancing in the Congo.  Only after watching the documentary did I fully grasp the depth of savagery we endure living as we do outside the Congo.

--Mitchell Hegman

Thoughts That Extinguish Other Thoughts

—Vultures make a handsome living eating the dead.

—By all accounts, we appear to be standing on the cusp of the Earth’s sixth mass extinction of species.

—Silver is rarer than gold.

—Dung Beetles.

--Mitchell Hegman

Wildfires (Bigger Than Us)

Problem is, our wildfires are not dying down. At present, over 40 fires are still listed as “active” here in Montana according to InceWeb.  Most of these fires have been prowling deadfall forests and rugged mountain terrain since mid-July.

Do the math.

This is September.

That’s too fucking long.

All this time—while Texas had been lashed silly by rain—we have experienced record drought and heat.  In Eastern Montana, the Lodgepole Complex has officially devoured 270,723 acres of farmland and rangeland.  Here in Western Montana, our fires, in some cases, have grown large enough to connect together.  After creeping around in thick timber and spewing smoke for a month or so, the Arrastra Creek Fire and the Park Creek Fires joined together and fully scoured a beautiful high mountain valley.

Sunday was bad.  Really bad.  Two of our fires got angry.  The Alice Creek fire (started by lightning on July 22^nd), crossed-over the Continental Divide less than a dozen miles from my cabin and on Sunday experienced a blowup.  Something near 6,000 acres were lost to fire that day alone.  Cabins and homes were evacuated.  Part of Highway 200 were shutdown.  At last report four cabins burned down.  That is the active fire nearest my house.  When we woke on Monday morning, that girl and I discovered ash and soot on floors, counters, and tables near the windows we’d left cracked open for the night.

But that’s not the ugliest fire.  One of our wildfires has the dubious distinction of now exploding into the fire of “number one priority” in the nation.  On Sunday, spurred by strong winds, growling, spitting fire, and leaping from treetop to treetop, the Rice Ridge fire scorched through more than 50,000 acres in one day.  The fire doubled in size.  The Rice Ridge fire has swept clean through the Swan Mountains and is now forcing evacuations some 30 miles from where it originated on July 24 following a thunderstorm.

There is a possibility that the Rice Ridge fire will ravage through another swath of mountains and forest and eventually reach the Arrastra Creek and the Park Creek fire lines.   

Our present 10-day forecast?   No real rain.  More extreme heat.

Yesterday, while at the cabin, I watched a Boeing 747 Supertanker (slurry bomber) loop directly over our small mountain valley on four occasions as it thundered low across the mountains to make slurry runs along the ever-moving front of the Alice Creek fire.  The lumbering jet was not far beyond reach of a bow and arrow shot.

We are awaiting what firefighters and weathermen call “a season-ending event.”

This is way bigger than us.   

--Mitchell Hegman

John Smith, a Practical Man

John Smith was not a particularly religious man, though he enjoyed the pleas of Southern gospel music and once prayed to Mother Mary when his knee failed him.  A practical man, John Smith could think of no figure of authority larger than Mother Mary. 

One evening, while sitting in his leather evening chair, John Smith looked down and saw in some disturbed weaves of his carpet, what seemed the face of Jesus.  To be fair, John Smith only knew Jesus as he’d seen him in a flowing painting at his grandmother’s house.

But there he was in the carpet.

Jesus.

Why Jesus?  Why now?  What if he accidentally stepped on Jesus on the way to the bathroom?

John Smith, the practical man, hobbling on one crutch, retrieved his vacuum cleaner from the hall closet and quickly vacuumed Jesus into plain-old carpet again.

--Mitchell Hegman

Perspective

While driving home from my cabin yesterday, I thought about my time thus far.  I have reached slightly beyond the age of 60.  Put in perspective, I have seen the occurrence of two full human generations.  738 generations of houseflies have set forth in my lifetime.  A total of 12 men have walked on the Moon.

I have been subjected to living with seven housecats. 

I have witnessed the rise and fall of one Robin Williams.

According to most estimates, I am currently livening with well more than 30,000 John Smiths here in the United States.  The average John Smith has a life expectancy something near 460 times longer than your average mosquito.

As I finish this blog, I am drinking my third cup of coffee, which, according to at least one study, reduces my chances of developing cirrhosis by 20 percent.

--Mitchell Hegman

Sparks

If there were no dark side of the Moon, we would have had to invent one, or something less obscure.  Perhaps we might have broadly legalized rooster fighting.  More war is always an option.

For a time, we were guided by the Moon.  We capered around the fire and scooped sparks into the night, convinced the sparks were the seeds of stars.

When darkness dissolved the Moon, we threw more sparks.

When clouds crossed, we chanted and blamed our children for some unknown transgression.

When the Moon failed us, we invented civilization.

--Mitchell Hegman

My Goal

I have a goal.  My goal is fairly simple and not based on something I want to see in the future.  Instead, my goal is this: each time I stop and look back on my life, I wish to see mostly stepping stones of charity and temperance along the path that got me here.

--Mitchell Hegman