Guest Author: Kelly Bennett

Thought I'd throw in a new element to the blog and feature a guest author, Kelly Bennett. For those suspicious of the Bennett part of her name: yes, we are part of the same family. She's married to my oldest brother Curtis, and they currently reside in Jakarta, Indonesia. She has many books to her name that you can check out on her website, www.kellybennett.com, AND she has been to the Rodney Street Laundry. The following is part of a series of email entries that Kelly periodically sends out describing her experiences in Jakarta. Someday soon she'll have a blog but there isn't any pressure, really, Kelly.

Jakarta News—Nyepi, March 7, 2007

Today is Nyepi. Nyepi is the Balinese "Day of Silence." It is a day set aside for fasting, and meditation. From sunrise today until sunrise tomorrow everyone is expected to maintain silence. The day is reserved for self-reflection, prayer, meditation. No one lights a fire, works, travels, no one talks or eats. Imagine on an island that is usually crackling with activity, buses, taxis, bikes roaring past, honking, music, tourists and hawkers yakking, laughing, completely silent. The roar of the surf, waves, wind and gulls squabbling provides background music along the coast. Inland,in the forests and rice terraces, the insects provide the only sound track. Occasionally, a baby's cry or a toddler's giggles break the silence, these interruptions only magnify the quiet. Although most of Indonesia is not Hindu, Nyepi is a national holiday. Indonesia recognizes five religions, and everyone must subscribe to one: Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Catholic and Christian. As a nation, Indonesia recognizes major religious holidays of all five of these. Which translates to a lot of national holidays, and perhaps a higher level of religious and cultural awareness than is evident in other countries. Interesting how when we are given a day off as a result of a holiday, we are more inclined to take notice of the event. Here in Jakarta, where there are few Hindus--none that I know personally--the streets are uncommonly empty. And, if it's possible, the few cars and motorcycles on the road seem to ride quieter and the vehicle horns--honking is a favorite pastime of Jakarta drivers--are still. It's Thursday, but the air has that Sunday afternoon feel I remember from when I was a kid--that relaxed, lazy feel that came after church, after a belt-stretching lunch, after we'd changed out of our good clothes, and theTV was turned to the golf channel. One has to admire the conviction of the Balinese people. Imagine how difficult it must be to observe Nyepi. This island, where tourism is the mainstay of the economy, cancels all air, sea, and road traffic, demands that shops, restaurants, and even the beach shuts down for 24 hours. Tourists and non Hindu are exempt from observing the holiday--barely. Within the confines of resorts and hotels restaurants are open and the pools available for swimming, but no splashing allowed! Exceptions to the vehicle/silence code are made for emergency vehicles carrying people with life-threatening conditions and women in labor--they are allowed to scream. (I guess even on Bali no one is willing to confront a woman in transition.) One thing about the day seems grossly at odds with the sprit of Nyepi: Throughout the holiday, a select group of men called Pecalang (pronounced Pe-cha-long) patrol the streets. These men are selected by the community to patrol the streets making sure that no one dares to ride, or talk, or watch TV, or light a fire--even a cigarette--during the 24 hours of Nephi. Iwonder what a silence keeper does if he catches people breaking the rules?He can't yell at them? Maybe he thinks at them until they behave?Sssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

For more about Kelly Bennett and her books visit www.kellybennett.com
Kelly has authored or co-authored 12 books for children—both fiction and non-fiction. Her titles include Not Norman, Spider Spins a Story: Fourteen Legends from Native America and the just-released Strangers in Black.

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THROUGH THE WINDOW

I have an amazing spot where I write at home. My study has windows on two sides, the old kind with three vertical planes of glass in wood frames on top and solid glass below, circa 1930. I haven’t opened them lately, but this summer, Andrea, who painted all but two rooms of the house, worked wonders with a sharp blade to break them free from being painted shut. They slide along a thin rope pulley on the inner frames to open and close. On the south side of my room, I look out through three of these beautiful windows onto the backyard, beyond that to Mount Ascension. To the west, I look out on a side yard that once served as a dog run or at least has a three-foot wooden fence on one end with a gate to usher the dog in. The other sides are six foot. Now you know Ms. Em is not going in there so instead we imagine a stone patio with hot tub under the fine towering tree that is in charge right now. The woman who measured for the blinds had French doors where these west windows are for easy flow out to the patio. She had it all figured out down to which closet the towels would lodge. But right now, it is a bank of two windows and a view of Mount Helena in the background. The room is sunny and a very happy place to be. My desk faces out to the big backyard that hosts a small 350 sq. foot rental cottage on the right side and a small garage on the far side in front of me, both in matching dark yellow wooden siding with burnt orange trim. The rest of the back fence line is filled with trees kept with an old wire fence. On the left is more of the 6-foot wooden fence, encasing the yard from the street on the other side.

This is anything but a quiet little place, one can see by the variety of scat present: deer, rabbit, cat (lots of cat), birds, and dog. The deer’s was mystifying to me as I couldn’t figure out how a deer was getting in so I had settled on an imagined monster rabbit. Until the evening when I opened the door to let Emma out and there was a large doe digging around in the snow under the crab apple tree. She looked at me, me at her, Emma for the smell of cat excrement, and then she easily jumped over the wooden fence and took off down the street. I thought my apparition-seeing moment had come, but the next day upon investigation, I found her scat. I didn’t spot her again for a long time, but a few weeks ago as I drove up to the house I saw two young deer by the fence. One trotted across the street but the other looked at me and then into the back yard. Pretty soon a doe jumped over and the two trotted away. So much for the false sense of protection for a summer garden. I knew that a few herds traveled through the neighborhood, often following the same trail as the postman across the front yard at an angle to cut the corner. I’ve seen him; I’ve seen their “calling cards,” as Mammaw used to call them, large scat-terings.

There was another party interested in the crab apple tree, this time a huge flock of Bohemian Waxwings. There were at least a hundred of them that descended on the back yard with their playful chirping. I hadn’t seen this type of bird before. I knew they weren’t sparrows or robins and all the other ones I know were on sunny vacation and weren’t due back for a few months. I did the only thing I knew to do when faced with feathered questions; I called my mom. I couldn’t offer her much, “They’re bigger than sparrows and finches. There is a whole bunch of them. They’re mostly gray black, have some rust color on their heads, and yellow on the tip of their back wings.” She did what birders do: sorted the information, compared and contrasted in her mental bird book, and spit out the answer, “Cedar Waxwings.” Well, she had the waxwing part right. I was following her suggestions on the internet and was happy with that answer even though she suggested I look at Bohemian Waxwings too, which later I found out that’s what they were. Mom said that she had searched all over Michigan for some of these Bohemians but never found them. She called their visit “wondrous,” I’d have to agree.

The greatest activity in the yard surrounds the cats. In fact I’ve come to call the cottage the “cathouse.” Emma calls the flowerbed, bordering the front of the small house, “treat land.” I sit at my window, see the cats dig around in the bed’s soil and do they’re business, and shudder at seeing the production of Emma’s treasured snacks. That sight is just too fresh and vivid when Emma comes inside with THAT breath. Every now and then a cat will brave coming over to her. I wonder if she recognizes it as “the source.” The other night she was doing her own pooping by the bed. Even while she was in the dog’s awkward poo stance, she had her nose turned to the treat box, multi-tasking.

There is a little cat door in one of the windows of the cottage. Three cats live inside. Two out of three are often outside; the third is venturing out more now that the weather is warmer. The longhaired black one often sits on the roof peak over the door looking down on the yard. One day I came home to that cat on his perch, the other black feline resident climbing the nearby tree (best bird-hunting tree during spring and summer), and a loud crow in another tree cursing the cats. That’s what I imagined the noise to be; it sounded so stern. A giant gray tabby also visits the house. I’m waiting to hear howling and find him stuck in the door after eating the cat food inside. There are at least two other cats that visit on a regular basis.

The weather has warmed up and most of the snow has melted in the yard. I’ve enjoyed seeing all the various paw/hoof prints (the snow also covered the less desirable scat). We had some mighty windstorms in the last month or so. I looked out one day to see the plastic Adirondack chairs copulating. But there were some really, really cold days. I checked the weather conditions on the internet one morning, the day after a snowstorm left 2 feet of sparkling snow but lots of sunshine. The blue sky was deceiving, it was minus 15 outside, that’s Fahrenheit. On the Weather Channel listing where it reads “Feels Like:” it had “N/A.” No fucking kidding. Once you’re at minus 15, what’s it take to figure what it feels like, bloody hell frozen over.

On April 2nd I will have lived here 4 years. Clearly that’s not long enough to become jaded to the urban deer herd. They still surprise me when I drive by them as they trail down the sidewalk. Yesterday was no exception as I sat here at my computer and looked up to see a doe running down the alley, pass behind the garage, and cross the street. Soon a second doe came barreling through. I waited but that was the end of it. I wondered if I should have set up a water stand by the garage for the deer marathoners but socializing with the deer is frowned upon. Plus, they’re wild animals in an urban jungle. I still think they are the graffiti bearers.

Another window that I love looking out of is the one over the kitchen sink. It has a wonderful view of the big Montana sky, great for full moon watching, and more cat antics. I watched one of the neighborhood cats trying to act nonchalant, as cats do, when after crossing the snowy street, its paws, legs and belly sunk into deep snow. It backed up, sat down, scratched, and decided to go back to where it came from, all the while bluffing, “I meant to do that.”

Last week’s blog had a picture that was taken from my office window at the Myrna Loy Center which is across the street from the county courthouse. The caption read, “What’s in the pick-up.” It was a stuffed mountain lion and a mounted deer head. When the lion was being brought out, human arms under the belly, I thought it was a very old live dog. As it got closer and the man carrying it turned around, I thought with alarm, “It’s a mountain lion!” My brain then eased into, “ It’s a stuffed mountain lion.” Yesterday through the same window I watched a Golden Retriever/Yellow Lab mix puppy playing on the courthouse lawn. When the dog walker tried to take it back into the courthouse, the pup sat down and refused to budge. It’s only 2-3 months old and belongs to one of the judges –a good one that always talks to Emma when we see him on the street. He once borrowed Draco (one of the Hounds of the Myrna), when Draco was a young pup, for the day to hang out in his courtroom.

Windows offer a frame for life’s constantly moving picture. Not only do they allow us a view on the world but also a focus at a particular sight. Over the years when my dad was sick with cancer, especially toward the end, I remember thinking that someone watching through the window from across the street could have followed the whole story of his illness: his slowed walk during chemo treatments, the boxes being brought home after early retirement, the arrival of the wheelchair that propelled him once his legs became weak, then no sight of him leaving the house but the sense that he was still in there, cars lining the street, adult children arriving from the airport, a shroud of silence during the last days, a pastor ringing the doorbell, a hearse pulling up, and a body taken out on a stretcher (the jogger going by when this actually happened looked rather shocked). Later it would be the limousines driving up to carry the grieving family to the funeral --lots more of the family there by then, hours pass and back the cars come accompanied by more people, neighbors bringing casseroles to the door, flowers being delivered, and days later, cars taking the same adult children back to the airport. This might be a dreary sight but it is still there frame by frame and tells a story. We see these all the time if we look and keep looking. It is an honoring in a sense, witnessing of life unfolding, sometimes all the way to the end, a tender wave hello and goodbye.

In memory of Mary York, dear friend in Chicago, and Martha Gilmore, lovely woman mentor and friend in Dallas. I imagine you with Molly Ivins and Ann Richards. When the wind is right, I hear all y’all laughing.

Also in memory of four lovely four-legged creatures: Willy, Girl, Joshie, and Lily.

COMING SOON
Guest blog by Kelly Bennett, more e-says, and news of Rodney Street Laundry.

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AROUND THE NEIGHBORHOOD

Okay, forget that whole plan of writing more often with fewer words. Whatever. That’s just not my temperament and that’s that. Several of you wrote and told me that the number of words doesn't matter. I like you. Today, though, will not be an essay but a brief hodge-podge of items about the neighborhood.

(You can read the comments on the last posting by clicking on "Comments" just below my last posting.)

Capital City Perks
Months back I mentioned that the owners of Main News, James and Sandy Rojo, were taking suggestions for a new name for their store. Soon after, James came up with their new identity, Capital City Perks. The store is truly “more than good coffee” as their tagline promotes and good coffee gets high marks already. The Rojos are the wonderful people who bring the Sunday New York Times to Helena on the Sunday of publication AND they sell cigars AND comic books AND other interesting merchandise. Nice humidor and you can’t say that about just any store. Check out www.capitalcityperks.com. They aren’t officially in the Rodney Street neighborhood though they’re only 3-4 blocks down the hill. One good drop and roll and you’re there.

Side note: Big thanks to the “New York Times Fairy” who paid for last Sunday’s paper. When I picked up my paper from the Rojo’s front porch (the store isn’t open on Sundays anymore but we can still get the paper if we work it out in advance and put the $5 through the mail slot), there was a note that said the NYT Fairy had paid for my paper. What a fabulous and happy surprise, one of those little gifts that mean a lot. I now believe in fairies.

Jailhouse Sandwich Shop & Soup Kitchen
Big news about the Jailhouse Sandwich Shop & Soup Kitchen, it has now moved across the parking lot to B&B Market. It’s a nice fit as B&B already has a deli feel to it with their meat and cheese case leftover from when the building was a meat market. Plus the merchandise in the small grocery store already reflects the neighborhood’s diverse tastes: Pabst Blue Ribbon to Rogue Microbrews, lemon pies of old (also come in cherry and apple, one serving per yellow, red or green wrapper) to half-loaves of heavy wheat bread from a local bakery. I haven’t tried the coffee.

Snow Sculpture Contest
The 2nd annual snow sculpture contest was held a few weeks ago. First place went to Timber with his King Kong creation. He built back in a cold, shady corner and with the temperature in the 40’s, he also gets the award for the longest-surviving sculpture. Timber won last year as well. He has an advantage being a stone carver by trade. In fact, he carved the stone crosses that grace the Helena Cathedral. I asked him if he carved them on the ground and someone else put them up, but he said that he was the one up high on the steeple installing them. Made my knees weak just thinking about that kind of height. The sweet smell of dryer sheets at the drifted across the parking lot from Rodney Street Laundry where the machines were in full use. There is BIG news coming from the laundry too, but can’t tell it just yet.

MANY READERS HAVE HAD PROBLEMS WITH POSTING A COMMENT. HERE ARE STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS:

TO POST A COMMENT OR RESPOND TO A COMMENT, DO THIS.
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2) In the screen that pops up, write your comment in the box, like the text of an email. You can add your name at the end or not. Up to you.
3) Below that box is “Choose an identity,” click anonymous.
4) Click on “Publish your comment.”

TO READ COMMENTS, also click on “Comments.”

TO RESPOND TO COMMENTS, go back to the same process as posting (above).

INTRODUCING E-SAY

Recently I read an article on what makes a successful blog. I went through the checklist of three:
1. Keep blogs to 300 words or less.
2. Do not include cutesy pictures.
3. Write every day.

Clearly I have failed all three. My shortest blog was 800 words, longest over 2,000, and they are usually in the 1,200 to 1,400-word range. I like pictures and am an admitted softie for cutesy dog ones. I last wrote on January 6 and today is February 18 (points for both dates being in the same year).

According to the author of the article, I am completely on the wrong track. If I tighten up the wordage and write more often (I’m keeping the pics, they make me laugh), then the formula predicts I will have more readers and they will come more often (unless they are turned off by the said pics). I suppose that makes sense and is important information to know, maybe I could even experiment with the ideas, but I’d have to keep such ramblings like this particular sentence out because I’m already to 186 words. So I keep the pics, some rambling, and most importantly, I now officially change the name from blog to e-(s)ay. Because, really, these are essays not little tid-bits. I’m not made for the changing world. I still like erasers though I have grown overly dependent on spell-check and I wonder if Google has become our collective memory. They could do some weird shit to us (252, not good, 255).

Here is my plan. I will write my wordy e-says and cut them into bite-size (no pun intended, I’m not that kind of clever) parts, and I will post more often, maybe every day. Numbered, serial e-says. Okay? Better be, I’m out of words. 300

Dancing with Fear

A million years ago –say, like 22, a few of my lifetimes ago-- I decided that I would do one thing a year that I was afraid of. The first thing that I learned was that I was afraid of a lot of things. I was working at Bridger Bowl Ski Area near Bozeman, MT, teaching day care kids how to ski. Carolyn and Del (now owners of the chicken ranch where I lived for the first 6 months in Helena, to whom I’m forever grateful) hired me with the main qualification that I could pick up 4-year olds flailing in their snowsuits on the ground. I had only learned to ski the year before and that was with the careful teaching of Carolyn. Skiing itself was something I was afraid of. Also driving to and from work on the snowy roads. Also taking CPR training. Also cooking for dinner guests. Also meeting new people and engaging in small talk at parties. And countless others. Once I started the challenge, it was clear that I would have to take on more than one fear a year because there were so many. I could write a lengthy essay even a whole memoir on how this decision to face my fears has shaped my life and personality and physicality (of the preservation kind, I have never bungee jumped or been sky-diving), but I won’t here. Blessed be.

HOWEVER, this is where I begin my story of how I have come to be teaching Nia Dance Technique every Tuesday morning at 7:30 a.m. (Dancing Lotus Center on the walking mall next to the Parrott). For those that know me well, there are two facts that stand out from that sentence: dance and 7:30 a.m., both share the essence of being out of my comfort or capability zone. But there they are.

I started attending Nia classes in April, 2006, when my health was taking a dip. (Note: I started 2006 with the goal that it was the year to get healthy. My body responded with being hospitalized in the second month with diverticulitis and in the fifth with a hysterectomy. The body took me at my word, I suppose.) I was adamantly urged/instructed by spiritual director Kathryn to go. At the time, my general and inflexible feeling was that “my people” of peasant stock were intended to push ploughs not move with fluidity. The polka might get speedy but not so mysterious as the inner workings of free dance. Actually I can’t take all the peasant stock down with me to this stereotype so I’ll just say that my family is tall, big-boned, upright, and immovable unless playing basketball, which obviously requires movement but values tall and upright. So to say that I was reluctant, hesitant, nervous, and/or misguided would be an understatement. It was a fear and therefore fell into the category of facing it, the annual thorn.

Okay, I actually liked it even though I felt extremely (really, really, really) self-conscious. I could follow the leader (Kathryn) but the notion of the free-form dance, gliding around the room during some routines, almost lost me. I moved with downcast eyes. If I can’t see them, they can’t see me. Over time, I started to “get” the whole notion of Nia or at least a founding principle of “The Joy of Movement,” feeling the physical joy of moving the body, being aware of moving the ribcage from side to side, getting the pelvis to do the Elvis, sensing the side of my hands in the chopping motions, and feeling the strength on the back of my forearms when blocking out. I made it clear to Kathryn that I didn’t do sounds, no “ha” or “ya” for me. There was a limit to the movable.

Time went on and I started going three times a week and my body loosened up. I got less self-conscious, felt freer to shake my shy booty, recovered my sense of rhythm that I thought I lost after putting away my clarinet in 10th grade, and found more emotional openness inside myself. Most of all I laughed and laughed. Not that laughter has ever failed me; I just got to do it a lot. Fast forward to about a year from when I started, now Kathryn was encouraging me to take the white belt training, the first level and the prerequisite for teaching. That familiar shot of fear zipped around my body landing in my throat and stomach. Oh for f---‘s sake. The damn seed was planted. Then the irresistible Britta, the Black Belt certified, White Belt trainer came to town in April and taught a 4-hour playshop. I was sunk.

And that’s how I came to be sitting with five other women –two from Billings, one from Chicago, and another two from Helena- in June, 2007, nervously waiting for Britta to begin our White Belt Intensive (we’ll call it The Intensive after this). I was the only one that was undecided about teaching. I had the clause of taking the training for “personal growth” to cling to. What followed was 40 hours of training over 7 days and an experience of renewal that I’d forgotten existed. The main thing I had held onto weeks prior to signing up and attending was that it was okay to be “caught learning.” I’m of the sub-conscious belief that I must know how to do everything. Once I abandoned the notion of perfection, I had a lot of room to embrace foolery. Which was good because it quickly became very clear that there would be fears within fears to face. Dammit to hell. On the first full day we had to do our solo free dance. I had caught wind of this exercise but wasn’t prepared for it to be the first day nor that the music would be randomly selected. I did check to see if curse words were allowed before using them. My body was tingling and hands sweating, even right now as I remember it. I knew that this was better to get over with sooner than later. I had youth do this kind of thing at the beginning of camp every year to break the fear/reluctance/good-sense ice, so I knew that this was necessary, probably recommended by 4 out of 5 doctors, but f---ing hell. I didn’t close my eyes completely but sure enough didn’t look up at the other six sets of eyes though I couldn’t have had a more sympathetic, I mean supportive, group of people to experience this with. It was over in less than 6 minutes and eventually my palms dried off and my body quit quaking. The Intensive had truly begun.

Now a word about Nia: it is a combination of dance arts (Jazz, Modern, and Duncan —thus the gliding around the room on tippy toes), martial arts (Tai Chi, Tae Kwon Do, and Aikido), and healing arts (Feldenkrais, The Alexander Technique, and Yoga). Each one is a stream feeding into the greater flow of movement so within in one song various practices are intermingled yet with intention. For example, one routine has a song that juxtaposes the soft fluidity of Tai Chi with the powerful structure of Tae Kwon Do; another mixes funk with the sensation of melting. (Disclaimer: I am risking being caught learning at this very moment and have the option of correcting in future posts whatever information I’m getting wrong.) Foundational is the practice of letting go of the mind and sensing what is in one’s body, changing pain to pleasure, opening up to a universal joy of movement.

Britta came back this past October to teach another Intensive. I attended some of the sessions for refreshers and like many times in my life, I found that I have a dyslexic sense of learning or fall under the Law of Distraction. She was teaching us about tapping into Universal Joy and all I could think about was Universal Suffering. Of course, I was thinking rather than feeling but I am still confused on this which leads me to believe that I’ve got more to learn or communicate or digest or ingest or embrace --the joy of bewilderment. That and learning how to shimmy are my growing edges.

Onward, as regular readers would know, I’ve been absent from the blog. Not as obvious would be that I’ve had good reason and been really busy. More to come on that in other postings, but for now it is enough to explain that it took me six months before I taught my first class. By then I’d faced the fears of doing 30-minute radio interviews in San Antonio and returning to a past life of activism when I attended an event in Boston. Finally back in Helena for most of November, I was able to get to the nuts and bolts of learning the first routine to teach (for those interested it’s called White Belt Dreamwalker). The night before my first class I experienced what my actor friends have told me about dress rehearsals: I lost all sense of knowing the choreography and was most upset that the next morning I would cry in front of the class. I went to bed. The next morning, 5:30 a.m. (had to get a new alarm clock because my old one couldn’t be set for that early), my first thought was, “why the f--- did I say I was going to do this!” Coffee, meditation, and lucky charms (not the cereal kind) came to my aid and I showed up and set up. Lynn my cohort, training-mate, and sister teacher arrived first with her vibrant enthusiasm and put me at ease. If nothing else, we would laugh. Clare got there, brand new to Nia and one of the instigators for having an early morning class, and again I knew it would be fine. We were there to have fun and I know fun. The class went very well. I didn’t look to the side of the room where Lynn and Kathryn danced but I could hear them hooting and hollering, ha-ing and ya-ing. I did it, I taught a dance class, and still continue to do it and that’s that. I’m grateful that my fears led me down this path even though I can’t imagine where it’s going to continue to lead me.

I’ll end with a line from a friend of mine’s blog. LG and her partner Mary have been fighting cancer that is warring with Mary’s body. I admire their courage, love, and persistence. Here are LG’s words:

“Even when I don't feel right, I try to act as if until it changes. Emotions are energy and energy always changes.”

Fall Art Walk

Calling all Rodney Street neighborhood or the vicinity writers for a night of readings at the Rodney Street Laundry and Jailhouse Sandwich Shop & Soup Kitchen. The laundromat and other neighborhood landmarks have joined in on the 24th Annual Downtown Helena Fall Art Walk on Friday, November 9, from 6 to 10pm. During the evening, we will have readings every thirty minutes as well as tasty refreshments and an exhibit of visual art from neighborhood artitsts. Please let me know if you are willing to read something. Pull out something old, try out something new, just have fun with it. Can't find a better "crowd" (there isn't a lot of room for the masses) to rise to the occassion and give it a go. The rest of you Helenans be sure and put the laundromat on your walking list.

HOW DID IT GET TO BE FALL?

Saturday, September 29, 2007
I’m sitting in the Seattle-Tacoma Airport in a semi-quiet spot with floor to ceiling windows looking out on the gray puffy cloud-filled sky. It looks like I could reach out and ring the water from one of them.

Traveling is always a bit disorienting especially when the trip is fast-paced and packed from start to finish and the flight path is crisscrossed. I booked the flight with American Advantage miles, which was good for the pocketbook but not for direct travel. For starters, American doesn’t fly to Montana. With mileage points though they allowed me to hook up through Alaska Air’s Horizon Air. There aren’t many of those flights out of Helena so I took what I could get: 6:10am to Seattle (one stop in Great Falls that didn’t require getting off but did require moving to my assigned seat and losing my sleeping berth). Then was the painful 7-hour layover before I could catch a flight to Dallas. Two things Sea-Tac Airport has going for it: (1) there is a great place for chair and foot massage that is very rejuvenating especially when one has had only 4 ½ hours of sleep and (2) the bathroom stall doors open outward so you don’t have to squish in your bag and yourself into the stall, work around the door to turn around and get it shut before doing one’s business. Someone thought that one through. Probably an architect with a hell of a long layover somewhere.

Thirty-six hours after arriving in Dallas –just long enough to miss the turn off at Lewisville and almost go to Mckinney rather than Denton and still have some time to sleep once I backtracked and got to the right destination-- I caught a quick flight on Southwest Airlines (my favorite) to Houston and the day after that I drove the 3 1/2 hours to San Antonio. Now coming back a week later, I had it easy this morning with an 11:10 departure from San Antonio, quick changeover in Dallas, and then nice flight to Seattle where I now have five hours before I board for Helena. I love flying and traveling but as I gain in minutes and years, it seems to take longer for my soul/life-force/innards to catch up with my body. Hopefully that will happen tomorrow, Sunday, when I get some time to stare into space –not that I’m not doing that now but it looks like I’m focusing on the computer screen.

I was in Texas to promote my San Antonio book, It Happened in San Antonio (on sale at the Alamo Gift Shop, your local bookstore, and online). I had an excellent book signing at the Twig Bookshop, a brief news radio interview, and two nerve-racking 30-minute taped radio shows. Nerve-racking because prior to I felt like I was preparing for a pop quiz on my book that led me to reading the book in the style of cramming for finals the night before. Hal, father of my friend Elaine and publicist of mine, told me after the second taping that I had a thorough knowledge of my subject and that I’d be surprised at how many authors didn’t know their material. I wasn’t surprised at all but felt that a bit of grace/luck/willfulness had gotten me through by the skin of my teeth. In an earlier conversation he told me about a book entitled Fiction Writers are Liars and Thieves, which made me feel justified in whatever I said, true or false, even though I do write non-fiction.

Hal has his own recording status, he makes tapes reading Hank the Cowdog books (on #49) out loud for a radio and reading program. Kids that have trouble reading can listen to Hal/Hank while they follow along on the page. Sounds like a great program to me and Hal with his perfect Texas accent I’m positive makes Hank and the gang come alive.

Hal, my mother and I got to the second taping about an hour early, which didn’t help my nerves any, but when the radio personality (Ron Aaron) arrived with a giant black Great Dane named Eloise by his side I decided that it wouldn’t be so bad after all. Hal asked what kind of dog Eloise was and Ron answered, “A Texas Chihuahua.” An answer even Emma would have thought funny and she’s known some of the smaller variety Chihuahuas. Later when one of our party went to the restroom, Ron said, “Oh, did he stop at the sandbox.” Ron is the executive director of the Animal Defense League of TX, a no-kill non-profit shelter that right now has about 400 dogs and cats (go to their website, the dogs all look happy and the cats coy). Hal, my mother, Ron, Eloise, and I boarded the elevator and went up to the studio and while Eloise circled around, Ron and some others gathered up equipment and another chair. The chair part caught my attention because there was already one and they were only getting another and there were three of us humans. There wasn’t a chair by Ron’s control panel either. He came back and said that I would be standing because that makes for better radio. Since he didn’t have a chair I figured he wasn’t pulling my leg. So I stood with a huge microphone in my mouth, Eloise bedded down behind me, and Ron doing his introduction. My cheat-note book out of sight behind the microphone, I swallowed hard and dove in. I had been comforted by the “taped” part of the interviews, however I found out that it just meant it wasn’t live right then but the taping wasn’t for the purpose of editing. It was The Deal. The morning taping went well but I could refer to my book and find snip-its. The second with Ron was more of an overview of the book and a discussion of San Antonio, also more banter, kind of like a non-competitive but still speed-ball ping pong match. He told me that the recording went right to the hard drive so that if I made a mistake to correct myself right then. Only choice was to jump in, hope the thoughts/answers came, and in a timely fashion. They did and I had a fine time even when Ron asked how I knew the story I had just told was true. I answered, “How do you know it wasn’t.” I got to bring in my alma mater Davy Crockett Junior High and our mascot The Pioneers and he got in a “Go Pioneers.” I also got in a plug for the Myrna Loy Center and, of course, the Rodney Street Laundry and Jailhouse Sandwich Shop & Soup Kitchen. I broke up the laundry and sandwich shop name as one must be succinct on the radio (so I was coached). It was a good day all around. The radio shows play Sunday morning (September 30th) on “Community Closeup” at KCYY-FM with Chrissie Murnin and “Talk San Antonio” on KAJA-FM with Ron Aaron. I won’t be tuning in. My voice never sounds the same on the outside as it does in my head and listening to a tape scares me.

I had been worried about sounding Texan enough but felt prepared after the flight from Seattle to Dallas with all those Dallasites and then one trip to the grocery store pretty much got me set. However after the second interview I asked my mother if I sounded Texan. She said, “No but you were well-spoken.” I don’t think she meant to imply that the two are mutually exclusive.

Side note/Wish I had a picture: As Hal and I were driving to the first interview, we passed a fast food restaurant with two drive-thru lanes: one for DONUTS, the other for TACOS.


In my last post I wrote about various different ways to define seasons. Soon after that the seasons began to divide and multiply. Summer-Montana is Heaven sub-divided into June Heaven with Precipitation and Chance to Stay Cool, July Hot-as-TX Summer-without-AC & Severe Drought Season, and August Fire and Smoke Season. And my personal seasons were June Visitors, July Buy a House via Email/Phone for Brother and Sister-in-Law, August New York City and Virginia Beach Trip to Unrealistic Redo New House in Seven Weeks with Laptop Hard Drive Crash, Diverticulitis Bout and Red Dots. The August season blended into the September season with the Redo and the final move into the redo-in-process house on the 10th. I now live on Butte Avenue (for those not familiar with MT cities, Butte rhymes with “cute”…really, no jokes). My neighbors include a small herd of deer, couple of rabbits, and graffiti tagger. The last week of August, some youngster tagged the house with the signature “Unknown.” It was funny at first because that was the last thing I expected to happen in Helena, my house to be signed in Sharpie permanent ink. When I had to clean it off, I wanted to ring the child’s neck. I figured that it wouldn’t take much to identify the tagger. I thought about stopping kids on the street to ask if they were at-risk youths or, simply, if they had a Sharpie I could borrow. I wondered for a bit if maybe the culprit was a disenfranchised buck (of the hooved kind) with pen rubber-banded to his antlers –the city has planned to bring in sharpshooters to cut down on the deer population. If I were a deer, I would feel at risk AND disenfranchised and take to scribbling to extinction. I gave up ID-ing the tagger and worked on cleaning the graffiti off the house. For future reference, paint thinner, TSP cleaner, and electric sanders do not take permanent ink off, they mostly make the wall cleaner and the tag stand out more. Also, it is hard to match up paint from a 500 year old paint can found in the Pulp Fiction-like basement even if it is the paint on the house. My mother was the last person I would think of as being the source for graffiti removal products but she faithfully reads the Happy Handyman column in the Houston Chronicle and remembered a product that cleans graffiti right off. Our Ace Hardware didn’t have that particular product but did have another one. With a good spray application and a hard scrub the tag came off. A few weeks later some high school informants told me that there was a girl going around tagging houses with “Unknown.” A girl-pioneer-tagger…I still want to ring her neck. The police officer that I talked to said that there was a gang in the area named the “No Browns” but if he was taking it from the tag, he was on the wrong track. And what kind of name is No Browns for a gang in a state with a population 92% white. Their goal is racist AND flimsy.

Just after the graffiti incident I got sick and had to have a round of antibiotics that I then had an allergic reaction to. Red dots started appearing on my stomach. I thought about connecting the dots to see if it made a shape or word but was afraid that the “Unknown” tag would emerge.

A special note about the new house, Emma shares the yard with three cats that live in the guesthouse (a tiny rental house) in the backyard. One in particular is Emma’s new best friend and food supplier. The cat is a successful hunter and as cats do, he brings the dead prey back to the yard and home base. Emma then has endless cat-roadkill treats to look forward to. She’s a happy dog even if she has feathers stuck between her teeth.


I left off my July posting with the promise of Part II and Part III. Now there are more Parts than can be counted, it’s been such a full summer. I do remember though what Parts II and III were going to be about: II was about crashing the free, Willie Nelson concert in Choteau with sister-in-law Kelly and III was about taking the Nia White Belt Intensive Training to become a certified Nia dance teacher. I’m adding a post below that tells the Willie Nelson close-up adventure story in pictures as well as two other photo essays: SHOUT goes on vacation and Emma’s Dog Days of Summer. I’ll start my teaching-Nia escapades in posts-to-come as I’ve set a goal to teach my first official class on Tuesday, December 4th. After doing radio with Eloise, I’m up for (almost) anything.