Missoula News

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

I love art. You love art. John loves art. We all love art. But a vehicle’s license plate is no place for art. That’s what I’ve been bitching about for years in Montana, as the debate periodically bubbles up about the ever-fancier license plate design. “I want more clouds.” “I want more buffalo.” “Too much blue.” “I don’t like the slogan.” “It needs to be 3-D and have a vampire.”

Wise up, critics. Look, if you need to drive around with a Dolack displayed on your vehicle, put one on the rear window. Or paint some ducks in a tub on your hood. Or, better yet, express yourself with a clever vanity plate. How’s this one: UB6IB9. Or this: 4NIK8R. Don’t like those? Well, UPURZ2. That takes a whole lot more imagination than plopping down an extra fifty bones for a license plate that looks like something out of an Eddie Bauer catalog.

Plant One on Us

Camelina isn’t a household word. Neither is biofuel. But the two words combined add up to an eco-friendly, Montana-grown commodity that can help feed livestock and ease the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels.

Camelina sativa, a sleeper oilseed crop, is rich in omega-3 fatty acids, the heart-healthy nutrients that many humans these days ingest via fish oil supplements. Camelina also produces relatively low-cost biofuel while requiring less use of fossil-fuel-laden fertilizers and toxic herbicides, supporters say.

With that as a backdrop, here’s the news: the Food and Drug Administration has decided to approve camelina concentrations of up to 10 percent in cattle feed. And Montana growers are celebrating.

Missoula Notebook

The lot across the alley from my house is subdivided in half, with one house facing the street and another smaller one facing the alley. We were all glad when the previous resident—a woman who used to stand in the alley for half an hour at a time, trying to get her dog to come home by screaming profanity at it—moved out.

But soon after the new owner moved in, we noticed what I’m only now realizing were the early signs of naked aggression. First, much like Hitler did to the Sudetenland, our new neighbor quickly annexed the dead end of the alley between our properties as his own personal parking lot. 

Community Service

President Barack Obama’s call for volunteerism is being heard loud and clear in Montana. But long before the president came to office, the Treasure State was a bastion for community service. Now, with Obama’s plan to triple the size of AmeriCorps, Montana could be gearing up for a considerable increase in its already sizeable volunteer base.

Montana perennially has one of the highest rates of community service in the nation. A study by Volunteering in America states that 36.6 percent of Montanans volunteer for some form of service, giving the state the sixth-highest rate in the nation.

But beyond the leanings of its own residents, Montana is also a foremost destination for volunteers. 

After Grace: Libby, Montana Fights On

New studies and health initiatives are unfolding in Libby this fall, all of them tied to the former vermiculite mine operated by W.R. Grace & Co., which left the town contaminated with a uniquely dangerous form of asbestos.

Back in June, federal officials announced a public health emergency Libby, Montana, helping pave the way for the town to get a $6 million health care grant to deal with the extraordinary number of people in the area who suffer from asbestos-related diseases. Today is the grant’s kickoff date, which means the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will now start spending the money to identify and treat people who have asbestosis (a scarring of the lungs), mesothelioma (a rare and agressive cancer), or other medical problems due to asbestos exposures.

New West Book Review

Best of the West 2009: New Stories from the Wide Side of the Missouri
Edited by James Thomas and D. Seth Horton, foreword by Rick Bass
University of Texas Press, 268 pages, $19.95

Best of the West 2009 is a welcome revival of anthology series that ran from 1988 through 1992, collecting outstanding stories set in “the Wide Side of the Missouri” that previously appeared in literary journals.  Unlike some recent one-off Western story anthologies, such as New Stories from the Southwest (also edited by D. Seth Horton) and Forge Books’ Best Stories of the American West, Volume I, the editors plan to make this an annual publication, and in the 2009 edition, the quality of the stories is just as high as those in the well-known national Best American Short Stories series.

In the foreword, Rick Bass tries to put his finger on “what constitutes a Western short story,” and although he notes, “Is it my imagination, or are there extra teaspoonfuls of loneliness in these stories, extra pinches of desperation?” and “a good many Western short stories tend to possess a kind of intensity or power of the felt physical senses,” he decides, “I’m not convinced there is a Western short story, yet.” Bass doesn’t remark on it, but in this year’s anthology, the overwhelming common theme is sex: the people in these stories might be lonely, but they manage to partner up pretty well.

Two men sit with their legs stretched across the sidewalk, backs against the green doorway near the Oxford Bar and Grill. A younger woman with a dog stands beside them.

“So this is where they are sticking us,” says a man who identifies himself only as Joe, as chalk lines closed around him.

Joe watches with a look of disgust on his face as a curious visitor uses a tape measure and chalk to identify the spaces that will remain available for sidewalk sprawlers once Missoula’s pedestrian interference ordinance takes effect on Thursday. 

From the Flathead Beacon

A request by the Northwest Montana Association of Realtors calling for a special session of the state Legislature to address “current inadequacies” in the property tax reappraisal carried out in the 2009 regular session was immediately swatted down by Gov. Brian Schweitzer last week.

The letter, written by NMAR President Barb Funk, states that 11 counties, including Flathead and Lake, will be “disproportionally affected by higher than expected residential property values,” and asks Schweitzer to convene a special session to immediately adopt a “stop gap” measure to solve current reappraisal problems, and establish an interim committee to deal with long-term property tax issues and draw up a bill for the 2011 session.

In an interview with the Beacon, Schweitzer criticized NMAR’s letter for using inaccurate figures and questioned why the reappraisal legislation, HB 658, received the broad support of Realtors during the session and afterward, citing a story that appeared Sept. 29 in NewWest.Net where a lobbyist for the Montana Association of Realtors called it, “a pretty darn good bill.”

The governor also took aim squarely at Republicans, who led the Senate Taxation Committee in crafting the final iteration of the reappraisal bill, saying he would not spend taxpayer dollars at a rate of $80,000 per day, the rough cost of a special session, to bring lawmakers back to Helena when there wasn’t a plan in place beforehand to fix any shortcomings in the current bill.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Finally, some good news about drinking and driving.

Car and Driver magazine reported that texting while driving is more dangerous than drunken driving, thanks mostly to self-absorbed teenagers and undisciplined technodorks behind the wheel. Texting and talking on cell phones while driving resulted in almost 6,000 deaths on U.S. roads last year, according to DOT officials gathered for a “distracted driving summit” last month. Although that’s only about half the number of people killed by drunk drivers, it’s an alarming—and fast-growing—statistic. And that doesn’t even include the hundreds killed while trying to dig out a warm hunk of Dunkin Donuts sausage biscuit from deep in their crotch. (As far as the five-second rule goes, that remains a grey area. So to speak.)

NEW PROGRAM NEEDS MORE PRIORITY

Open Fields was a “major victory” for hunters and wildlife conservation, according to the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP) and many other green groups that lobbied for it. It passed back in December 2008, but almost a year later, this innovative hunter access program is still mired in the administrative rule making process.

Now, predictably, conservationists who struggled mightily for the program are asking Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack for a little more priority.