Missoula Notebook
Missoula Notebook
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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.
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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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Missoula Notebook
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.
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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? [more]
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. [more]
Missoula Notebook
Life May Be Short, But Summer Is Shorter
At 5:45, as we rattled at high speed along the gravel road that serves the put-ins north of Johnsrud Park, returning the other drivers to their cars, I felt frustrated partly at the river conditions that had slowed us down but mostly at myself for trying to pack more into the day than could reasonably fit. I felt stupid for having overlooked the obvious: I am not the center of the universe, and nature will not be contained in the little squares of a day planner. [more]
Missoula Notebook
Election Season, or Twilight Zone Episode?
As the month limped to a close, operatives of the party of alleged fiscal responsibility began appearing on camera, tugging at their collars and licking their lips as they admitted that, yes, maybe it would be prudent for everyone to convert their savings to gold, just for the time being anyway. In more than one case, the whine of a helicopter engine warming up could be heard from just off camera, as could the sound of fancy silver being scooped off of tables into pillowcases. [more]
Missoula Notebook
A Field Guide to the Yellowstone Tourist
Of course, if the volcano were to erupt at its full potential force later in the evening, you’d be vaporized instantly — not to mention that everyone in the western U.S. would be burned to death in the following minutes, a five-inch layer of lava would spill across the entire country, the world would be plunged into epochal winter, and almost every other living thing on Earth would die within a few years of ice, drought, starvation, and turmoil — but does this really sound so bad when you consider that the alternative is sharing the world with the kind of people who prefer Tech N9ne to the bugling of rutting elk? [more]
Missoula Notebook
Stopping for Bikes is Like Teaching a Pig to Whistle
You don't have to bike in Missoula for very long before you start to notice confusing and contradictory reactions from drivers. It might happen at a four-way stop, where some drivers will wave you ahead out of turn, or at a busy cross-street, where some drivers will come to a stop to let you cross, even when you have a stop sign and they do not.
As a result, it’s easy to start thinking that bicycles have right of way over cars, like pedestrians do. The only problem is that this is wrong.
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Missoula Notebook
Did Bristol Palin Get Abstinence-Only Sex Education?
First, let me make clear that I could care less about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy vis a vis the election.
However, there are some arguments going back and forth in various places on the ‘nets, concerning the case’s relevancy to ongoing debates over so-called abstinence-only sex education, and I became curious as to just what Alaska’s policy is.
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