Missoula Notebook

A Walk in the Woods With Guns

Considering that hunters are supposed to be a dying breed, there sure were a lot of pickup trucks jammed into the pullouts along route 200 east of Missoula last Tuesday, and a lot of men in camouflage-patterned orange vests standing around next to them.

It was Veteran’s Day, and my neighbor Vin and I were headed out to some Forest Service land near Nine Mile Prairie Road to hunt for deer.

Missoula Notebook

Hoping To Hunt

Rubber gloves.

Knife.

These are the last two items listed on an index card that’s been lying on our kitchen table for the last few days. My eyes fell on this part of the list Sunday morning as I was making some oatmeal, and I pointed out to Amy that the only way to make it sound more ominous would be to add “duct tape.”

Missoula Notebook

A Poll Worker’s Notes

Instead of wasting Election Day in front of my computer, pretending to work but actually studying last-minute political prognostications while waiting desperately for the first returns to start rolling in, I spent 14 hours in an elementary school gymnasium, chatting with white-haired retired women and serving as what Missoula County Elections Clerk Vickie Zeier calls a “champion of democracy."

In other words, I was a poll worker.

Missoula Notebook

How I Cracked My Skull

Soon not only an ambulance but a fire truck were stopped on the street in front of me, their whirling red lights looping and crawling across the darkened storefronts and not exactly helping me feel normal again. Men and women in blue shirts crouched on the sidewalk around me, hooking me up to a portable EKG, taking my pulse, and posing existential questions about what day it was and what city I was in.

Missoula Notebook

National Campaign Powered by Local Volunteers

On Wednesday afternoon, a contingent of Barack Obama supporters were standing in a hallway on the second floor of the Missoula County Courthouse. They had walked down from the campaign’s headquarters on Front Street to vote early as a group, and now they were waiting for the last stragglers to reemerge from room 201, which is serving as the county’s early-voting polling place through noon on November 3rd.

“Three more weeks,” sighed James Anderson, 25, an Army veteran and one of the volunteers who had organized the event.

Missoula Notebook

Story of a Stolen Bike

Julie wheeled her bike through the open door, navigated her way around some standard-issue garage clutter she’d been putting off straightening up, and headed for the bike hooks to hang hers up.

That’s when something else struck her as odd. Over by the row of bikes on the wall, Julie noticed her husband’s helmet, which he normally kept hanging from his mountain bike, sitting on the floor.

Then she saw the gap in the row of bikes. Where there should have been four bikes hanging, there were only three. Her husband’s Specialized Stumpjumper Expert, a $2,500 purchase two years ago, was missing.

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Breaking: Financial Crisis Not The Fault Of The People In Charge of Everything

The "Democrats caused the financial crisis" meme has now spread to the Missoulian letters page. Most recently, Mike Nordquist of Stevensville weighed in with an opinion along these lines, arguing that “in the 1990s, under Clinton, the Democrats, with their chicken-in-every-pot ideology pushed to make homeownership available to minorities, those with low incomes and those who could not qualify for conventional home loans”; this put us on the edge, Nordquist argued, and bad decisions by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (who supposedly bribed Congress to be allowed to destroy their own businesses) pushed us over.

The only problem with this story is that it's not true.

Missoula Notebook

Yes, We Have No Bagels

The phrasing of the sign struck me as imprecise and perhaps even a little sinister, kind of like the announcements we keep hearing from the federal government about the financial crisis. Either you are closed today, or you are closed until you can get your oven fixed, but ovens are complex devices and it could conceivably take more than a day to fix one. Likewise, either we need to spend $700 billion buying distressed mortgage securities, or we need to nationalize the banks, but maybe next time you could make up your mind before giving the first panicky press conferences?

Missoula Notebook

Detour Ahead—I Hope

An automobile traveling at 70 miles per hour along a winding two-lane blacktop seems as good a place as any to think about inertia. The "bodies in motion staying in motion" part feels most obvious, particularly when a tight inside curve is tugging the car close to an oncoming dump truck and I remember that the odds of our continued survival are at least slightly decreased by the blown rear struts we are planning to get fixed as soon as we can find a spare $500.