Ecclesiastes Revisited

There is a device for everything,

and an app for every activity under the sun:

a time to text and a time to call,

a time update and a time to reboot,

a time to Instagram and a time to Tweet,

a time to connect cables and a time to link wirelessly,

a time to use Windows and a time to use Apple,

a time to save files and a time to delete them,

a time to Google for facts and a time remain unknowing,

a time to take up your smartphone and a time to put it down,

a time to embrace electronics and a time to push them aside.

  --Mitchell Hegman

Treasure

Yesterday, that girl and I spent the better part of our afternoon gleaning for sapphires.

Hunting for sapphires is much like picking huckleberries in that your mind clears out all rubbish and troubles and focuses entirely on the task at hand.

Between gold and sapphires, it is no accident we are known as the Treasure State.

The gravel and fines we processed came from Gem Mountain Sapphire Mine of Philipsburg, Montana. 

The first gem-quality sapphires discovered in the United States were found in 1865 along a Missouri River gravel bar located within a dozen miles of my present day home.  In 1991, following a rainstorm, I actually chanced on a respectable green sapphire glinting in the piles of stone and earth we excavated to build our home.

Lewistown, Montana, is famous for blue Yogo sapphires.

Posted is a photograph of our found treasure I captured with my smarter-than-me-phone.

  --Mitchell Hegman

These

Give these:

heirlooms    seeds    sanctuary     

Take these:

advice    smooth stones    keys

Find these:

love    time    clear water

Lose these:

broken arrows    scars    greed

  --Mitchell Hegman

A Lion in the Figures

Allen was certain he saw a lion.

One by one, Allen drew his fellow researchers into his cubicle.  “Do you see it?” he asked them.  He pointed at the graphics on his monitor created by the computer model they were working with.

Most of his coworkers politely nodded or mumbled bromides.  

They did not see a lion.  They saw only the convergence of lines and trajectories prescribed by hard math.

Finally, Allen dragged his supervisor before his monitor.  “Do you see the lion?” Allen asked.

The supervisor answered bluntly.  “Our math doesn’t build lions.  We are building a bridge to our future.”

“No,” insisted Allen, “we are building antelope.”

  --Mitchell Hegman

Something John McCain Said

—We are Americans first, Americans last, Americans always.

—In prison, I fell in love with my country. I had loved her before then, but like most young people, my affection was little more than a simple appreciation for the comforts and privileges most Americans enjoyed and took for granted. It wasn't until I had lost America for a time that I realized how much I loved her.

—We live in a land made of ideals, not blood and soil.

Dundee’s Barber Shop (Celebration)

Yesterday afternoon, I attended the 25-year business anniversary celebration for Dundee’s Barber Shop.  Dundee, in addition to regularly cutting my hair, is a dear friend. 

The celebration was held in the tiny park at Reeder’s Alley, the oldest neighborhood in Helena.  Her shop is located on the brick inclines of the alley.

We could not have asked for a more perfect day.  The temperature remained in the mid-seventies.  The park was filled with many friends.  A live band performed from a covered deck on the alley just above the park.

All afternoon long men walked up to one another and greeted each other with the same refrain: “Nice haircut!”

  --Mitchell Hegman

Note: There’s that girl holding the Dundee’s Barber Shop sign, and that’s Curt Cochran standing on the bricks just below the live band.

Paint Chip

I will begin by admitting I named the chipmunk living near the door of my cabin “Chip.”   In fact, I will go so far as to admit that I name every chipmunk I see Chip.

Not very original, but the chipmunks don’t seem to mind.

Yesterday, I painted a sheet of plywood just outside my cabin door.  While allowing the first coat to dry for a bit, I placed my paint pan on the ground (partially covering the roller and pan with a plastic bag).  I even recall thinking to myself: Nothing will bother with that.

Now, please examine the photograph I have posted.  What you see are Chip’s tiny paw prints on the concrete pad just outside my cabin door.

So, if you happen to see a white chipmunk in your travels over the next few days, I think I can explain that.

  --Mitchell Hegman

Breaking Up (Is Hard To Do)

X: “I love you madly.”

Y: “What did I do to make you mad?”

X: “Not mad.  Madly. It’s an adverb used to qualify how much I love you.”

Y: “Are you saying it’s over between us?”

X: “No.  It’s not over between us.  Wait a minute.  It just occurred to me that ‘over between’ doesn’t actually make sense in English.  How can you be over and between at the same time?”

Y: “So…you are mad at me because of the way I speak?”

X: “Apparently, I am.”

  --Mitchell Hegman

Lesson Learned

It’s going to require more than two cups of coffee for me to follow a subtitled French movie at 5:30 in the morning.

  --Mitchell Hegman

The Jade Plant

The jade plant was hers.

Plunked down in good light, the plant grew fiercely,

almost volcanic as it spewed forth heavy arms

and chunky leaves.

In the days after she left me,

I found myself curled into a question mark

on the floor looking up at the underside of the jade.

I had questions.

Why did the plant look heavier from the underside?

Why did the dead leaves turn silver?

Why did she leave me?

I adopted rituals.

Follow the dust bunnies from room to room.

Allow dishes to stack into Buddhist temples before washing.

Water the plant every other Sunday.

Recently, the jade has been dropping whole fat arms onto the floor.

Some with gigantic clusters of leaves.

I fling the arms out the door

and slam the door when I’m done.

“That’s what you get for staying here with me,”

I tell the plant.

  --Mitchell Hegman

Mistakes

You know how sometimes you find yourself in one of those moods where you spend the whole day stewing about all the mistakes you have made in the past?

I did that all day yesterday.

And I didn’t even get through the mistakes I made the day before.

  --Mitchell Hegman

Refrigerator Art

I’m not certain how this happened, but somehow the household refrigerator has become a repository for the works of nearly all budding artists.  To point, every house I visit displays, on the resident refrigerator, crayon drawings or finger paintings produced by children related in some manner to the occupants of the house.

Last week, I traveled from Butte to Helena in a vehicle along with my nephew’s two daughters.  One of the girls had brought along several coloring books and an assortment of colored pens, pencils, and markers.

Naturally, I asked if I could color something from one of the books.  As we wended our way through the mountains separating the two cities, I colored away using some plump markers that smelled like various fruits associated with their colors.  Yellow was banana scented.  Red smelled of strawberries. 

Once I finished with my coloring, I jotted down my name and then added my age (which seems important for such art).

Yesterday, I discovered that my art had somehow landed on my sister’s refrigerator.

Today, I proudly share my coloring with everyone.

 --Mitchell Hegman

To Break a Spaghetti Noodle

I have been a little worried that nobody has been applying math to do good work in recent years.  No need to worry anymore.  The other day, I chanced on a Live Science article written by Brandon Spektor that completely allayed my fears.

Before we dive into this, however, I would like to engage in a brief side discussion with any Italians or chefs in the mix.

Here is the deal, Italians and chefs, we are about to break uncooked spaghetti noodles in the name of science.  I realize this is a touchy, if not traumatic experience for you, but this is all in the name of good science.

For as long people have been breaking spaghetti noodles, both scientists and commoners have wondered why you cannot simply snap the noodles into two pieces.  Invariably, the noodles will splinter into three or more pieces.

Charged with solving this mystery, researchers at MIT applied some math-heavy physics, and a bit of old-fashioned ingenuity, to the process of breaking uncooked spaghetti.  The nature of the physics involved forced them to invent a machine that could bend and break spaghetti, one noodle at a time, while an ultra-high-speed camera captured the event.

After hundreds of ugly pasta shattering snaps (some that would make the most hardened chef cringe), the researchers found the formula for snapping spaghetti into only two pieces.  The key is to tightly grip the noodle on each end, twist the pasta at least 250 degrees, and bend slowly until the noodle reaches its breaking point.

The 250 degree twist is important.  Twisting the noodle enables energy to be stored and released in more than one mode within the length of the noodle.  Without the twist, the snapped noodle pieces fling apart with too much kinetic energy, causing secondary fractures at other points of stress    

I will admit, I found this study fascinating.

Some good work right there.

I am not very good at math, however, and I don’t have time to invent a pasta breaking machine.  So I am wondering if producing half-lengths of spaghetti at the pasta noodle plant might be a simpler solution.

 --Mitchell Hegman

In Simple Terms

Water has but a single thought: seek lower places.

If you are human, don’t think like water.

--Mitchell Hegman

The Last Three Huckleberry Bushes

Huckleberries are quite finicky by nature.  The bushes are particular about where they will grow.  In short form, they only grow in beautiful places.  For the last month or so, I have been taking whole days to drive up into the mountains and harvest berries.

Huckleberry production in my normal haunts was surprisingly spotty this year.  I have found berries only in patches here and there.  I have done a lot of clawing up and down timbered slopes to find them.

Yesterday, however, I landed in a pretty decent patch of berries.  At the very end of my pick, I stumbled across three bushes that were loaded with hundreds upon hundreds of big, black berries.

We are talking about the proverbial motherlode here.

I try to be a “gentle” picker.  I often tell people I tickle the bushes until they release berries.  Not so, those last three bushes.

If those last three plants had been people, I might be jailed for how I tore into them.  I didn’t hurt the plants, but as one of my buddies often said, I went about my business “like a one-armed man killing snakes.” 

--Mitchell Hegman

Man versus Child

Will Rogers famously said: “I never man that I didn’t like.”  I don’t think I can make that claim. But I will say this: “I never met a child that I didn’t like.”

--Mitchell Hegman

Wood Lathe

Yesterday, while passing through the power tool section of a hardware store, I came upon a wood lathe on display.

I stopped and looked the lathe over.

Way back in my days of high school wood shop, I thought having a wood lathe would be a pretty cool retirement thing.  I imagined myself turning out all kinds of fancy widgets in a small hobby shop.

After staring at the price tag on the lathe for a second, I walked away and purchased a paintbrush instead.

Paintbrush: the new cool!

--Mitchell Hegman

Three Rules for an Effective Business Lunch

1. Don’t order food with long messy noodles or hard shells.

2. It’s acceptable to engage in personal conversations, but business should always remain the focus.

3. Don’t lick food off your plate while humming “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

--Mitchell Hegman

The Reason

The common adage is this: There is a reason for everything.  While most adages may be more clever than accurate, I think this one holds true for the most part.  Yesterday, for example, I proved (once again) that I can be judged an idiot by what I say.  While talking about that girl’s identical twin sisters and their similar habits regarding how they respond to phone calls, I said this: “They are so much alike.”

--Mitchell Hegman

Rainsmell

Came rainsmell to this dry land in the last hour of darkness.  Came a tense silence to the houseside crickets and their jittery choir.  Up, then, with the scent of grass recalling a certain June shower.  And out with the ancient—every exposed sedimentary stone recalling the river bottom whence it first settled as purple mud.  And, finally, more vital than all else, the sharper perfume of sage fanning across the open prairie.

--Mitchell Hegman

Reds

Given the stress of a July without rain and a normal propensity to drift into autumn colors early, parts of the high mountain huckleberry patch have already started to display red.   Posted are a few photographs I captured with my smarter-than-me-phone.

--Mitchell Hegman

20 Pounds of Flying Housecat

For whatever reason, my 20 pounds of housecat is highly annoyed by fluttering moths of any size.  A few minutes ago, an acrobatic moth no larger than a grain of rice looped through my living room.  My cat immediately launched from my lap and took after the moth.

If acrobatic is one end of a scale, my cat is on the other end of the scale.

That crashing sound you just heard from my den?

Moth: 1

Cat: 0

--Mitchell Hegman

A Cabin on the Lake

That girl and I spent a night in a cabin located not more than twenty feet from the shores of Lake McDonald inside Glacier National Park.  The lake’s water is notably clear and the mountains there spare no angles in stacking against the sky.  Throughout the afternoon and again in the morning, the lake and mountains shifted in lighting patterns and color composition.  I found myself scrambling down to the lakeshore every few minutes to capture an image in my digital SLR camera.

--Mitchell Hegman

Rustic Cabin Spiders Don’t Take Showers

That girl and I overnighted in a somewhat rustic cabin.

For those of you who don’t exactly know what a rustic cabin is, I will give you a quick rundown.

Our rustic cabin was located deep in the woods and made of stacked logs.  The cabin listed wholly to one side, and the logs were assembled in such manner as to let slices of daylight through at various points.  Additionally, our rustic cabin had exactly three receptacles placed strategically where you didn’t need them.  It also featured a bathroom with a spongy metal floor and a rusting metal shower stall I would guess to have been manufactured in the early 1950s.  As an added bonus, the showerhead inside the stall was fixed someplace between the neck and belly button of most people.

In a word: splendid.

Anyhow, I learned some things while taking a shower early in the morning.  First, constantly showering your belly button is not nearly as satisfying as showering your head and face.  Also, showering with a spider is a bit confusing.

That’s correct.  A spider.

There are a lot of dynamics at play here.  For one thing, you are naked with a spider.  Another factor to consider is the spider’s view on taking a shower.

Turns out rustic cabin spiders are not fond of taking a shower.

By the time I noticed the spider, it was on a web-held pendulum swing back and forth between the shower spray and naked me.

In a word: #@*%#!

I really wanted to stay in the shower.  At the same time, I really, really dislike spiders—especially spiders swinging like “freak show” Tarzan around my naked body.

Though my first, second, and third instincts were to shriek loudly and stomp around in place in unmitigated panic, I managed to silently back out of the shower.  I then reached back in and turned off the spray.   The spider quickly sucked itself back up into a rusty hole in the universe directly under the soap dish affixed to the side of the shower stall.

In the end, I walked away unbruised.  At least, at a minimum, my belly button was clean.

--Mitchell Hegman

The Outlands

Not certain this post will make it from my smarter-than-me-phone to my blog, but I will try.  I am presently in and out (mostly out) of service as I skirt along the various fringes of Glacier National Park, Montana.  The mountains I so love are the reason for my communication difficulties.

I must admit, this is a great way to be blocked in!

--Mitchell Hegman 

Ugliness

Beauty is where you find it, but ugliness is your own invention.

--Mitchell Hegman

Please, Don’t Molest the Bison

I see on the front page of our local newspaper where a man from Oregon was arrested for harassing a bison in Yellowstone Park a few days ago.   The man, Raymond Reinke, appeared in a video that went viral shortly after the bison incident.  Several of my Facebook friends posted the video.  In the video, Reinke clambers out of a vehicle and “challenges” a bison on the roadway.

Let’s put this in perspective.  Challenging bison is stupid.  There is your perspective.

The first time I watched the video, I found myself yelling at the bison on my computer screen: “Get that dumb bastard!”

I was hoping the bison would charge the man and flick him up into a tree where he might remain for all eternity.

Apparently, Reinke has a habit of stupid.  He was arrested for being drunk and disorderly in Grand Teton National Park three days prior “challenging” a bison on a roadway in Yellowstone.  While in Yellowstone National Park, the vehicle in which he was riding was pulled over for a traffic violation.  Reinke, took it upon himself to be argumentative with the officer involved and ended up with a citation for not wearing his seat belt.

Good work right there.

In the days following the scuffle in Yellowstone, Reinke was involved in an argument with another man in in the Many Glacier Hotel at Glacier National Park.

Officials finally took Reinke into custody after the altercation in Glacier Park.

I am still wishing the bison would have exacted justice on him.

I have posted the infamous bison video below.

--Mitchell Hegman

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

What do you call a Gathering of More than 20 Pounds of Housecat?

A gathering of crows: a conspiracy.

A gathering of lions: a pride.

A gathering of blackbirds: a murder.

A gathering of rabbits: a colony.

A gathering of zebras: a dazzle.

A gathering of owls: a parliament.

A gathering of elephants: a memory.

A gathering of cormorants: a gulp.

A gathering of more than 20 pounds of housecat: a catastrophe?

--Mitchell Hegman

NOTE: In recent years, Americans have referred to a gathering of baboons as a congress.   A deeper look reveals they are correctly called a troop.

The Heat of Summer

The heat of our northern summer is definitely here.  Yesterday, it was hot enough that a grasshopper immediately jumped inside our air conditioned car from the dry grass when that girl opened the door.

--Mitchell Hegman

Quandary

Imagine you are like me.  No, not the hating mayonnaise part.  Not the squirting toothpaste all over the sink part. 

You loathe spiders.

Now imagine your yard is a haven for creepy-looking black wasps.

But here is the quandary: The wasps are the kind that hunt down and kill spiders.

Do you try to discourage the wasps from living in your yard?

--Mitchell Hegman