Trego's Mountain Ear

"Serving North Lincoln County"

Tag: writing

  • You Haven’t Met All The People . . .

    One morning I saw a meme – maybe an unattributed quote: “You still haven’t met all the people you’re going to regret ever meeting.” I’d been ill with chest congestion for several weeks, so on that hand it was an upbeat message. On the the other hand, it’s a depressing description of the world as it is. On the third hand, I may well be one of the people folks regret ever meeting.

    So I got to thinking – and the people I remember have all enriched my life in some manner. The narcissist, whose rage provided the motivation to study up on narcissism, taught me to look beyond the presentation of self. It’s a wonderful gift, to see others more as they are, and go past the disguises that cover up the problem. Some people really do have value as bad examples.

    Others add amusement to life just by being there – I recall one character on one of the main drags of Missoula, as I walked from the motel to a restaurant for breakfast. As he stood in front of me, and whipped his overcoat open, I had time to think, “I surely don’t need a flasher this morning.” I was wrong – the lining of his coat was covered with bible verses that he used in his missionar2y work of bothering people before breakfast.

    In South Dakota, we had biennial visits from Wisconsin Jehovah Witnesses – nice people on a mission to spread their gospel in an area they believed was devoid of their reality. They’d stop by for 15 or 20 minutes, every other year, with no real expectation of making converts. I liked them. Missionaries that stop by for 15 minutes every other year are very tolerable people. More frequent encounters may lead to becoming people you regret meeting.

    The one man I quickly regretted meeting was the county cop who busted me for speeding through Ashland on my next to last trip moving back home to Montana, He did make a point of cheerfully welcoming me back home – but he did it with a forty-dollar bond I forfeit for the crime. Never saw him again, but I was still out forty bucks.

    In general, karma tends to reach a balance – and that’s enough for the people I regret meeting.

  • We Still Have The Basic Rule

    Way back when I started driving, I listened to folks tell me that Montana had no speed limit. I eventually learned to just shut up and let them prattle. I knew Montana’s Basic Rule – and despite the fact that we now have speed limit signs, that rule is still enshrined in our traffic codes.

    The basic rule, outlined in Montana Code Annotated 61-8-303, requires drivers to travel at a speed that is reasonable and prudent under existing conditions, considering factors like weather, visibility, traffic, and road conditions. Drivers can be cited for speeding even if they are below the posted limit if their speed is unsafe for the circumstances. https://legalclarity.org/montana-speeding-violations-laws-penalties-and-defenses/

    It’s a good rule for writing tickets – if you leave the road, or hit another vehicle because it’s slick out, the cop can write ‘Basic Rule’ and you don’t have any argument to take into the JP’s court. Back in the old days, Montana’s speed limit was ‘reasonable and prudent’. I guess it still is, really – the posted limits just provide caps under good conditions.

    I got a basic rule ticket years ago for my first really impressive car wreck. After I got in good enough shape to realize the A-frame had let go, I thought about arguing the ticket – but I realized that improper maintenance of a motor vehicle cost the same. Basic Rule is like Heller’s Catch 22 – it’s one heck of a rule that we still have in Montana.

    I read of an accident a few miles up the creek – first on Facebook, then in the TVNews. It was an obvious spot to write a ticket for Basic Rule – when it’s really slick out, the Basic Rule violation occurs as you drive onto the highway. I recall driving back from Spokane, before Highway 37 was completed. There was an Idaho state trooper stopping traffic at the state line, and he accepted my argument – “I have studded tires and four wheel drive. I can handle it.” It took 13 hours to make it back to Trego – and that confident, erroneous phrase came back several times each hour. I think I violated the Basic Rule for 130 miles and half a day.

  • Not Made in This Millennium

    I have the habit of looking for low mileage older cars. That’s why my two main rigs weren’t made in the 21st century. The Talon is a 1995 with 65K miles on the odometer. The Suzuki Vitara is a 1999, that has just rolled past 90K. My last trip out with it, in the darkness before 8:00 am, and with bright lights close behind me, I clipped a deer’s right hind leg – cracked the edge of the plastic grill and left a small dent in the right fender. I don’t enjoy denting my cars – particularly when lights from the rear, close to my bumper, are a fellow driver’s way of saying I should speed up in deer country.

    My wife drives the “new” car – it’s a 2009 Chrysler PT Dream Cruiser – built in this century. It has a device to tell when the air pressure in a tire gets low. It reported a lot of low tire pressure – I had to inflate the tires to 40 psi to turn the light off. Then I started researching. For the car to monitor tire pressure, it takes a small battery operated device in each tire. After 16 years the batteries probably are a bit tired. I can get new sending units, with new batteries through Amazon for $16 each. I suspect that to make things work right I probably need four for the summer tires and four more for the winter tires. That’s $128 plus the cost of taking each tire off the rim. For years I’ve made do with a tire pressure gauge. I’m still making do with a tire pressure gauge, but I have an annoying light on the dash – not to mention tires that were ran overinflated until I figured out that it’s another spot where modern technology and I aren’t particularly compatible.

    It got me to realizing – I drive cars that were built in the previous millennium. Not just the previous century, but the previous millennium is just as accurate, and shows that I am definitely driving old cars. The state of Montana thinks that because of my advanced age they only need to give me a drivers license that’s good for four years at a time. The bastards may be correct.

  • What Ph.D. Means

    I can, and occasionally do, put the letters Ph.D. behind my name. I know what the letters signify – and I just saw a commentary that Canada and Mexico have both elected leaders with Ph.D. behind their names, while the US has Trump.

    So let’s look at what the letters Ph.D. actually imply – that I have done original research in a satisfactory manner while supervised by a Ph.D. holding faculty member. That’s all the title actually tells of what I, or anyone else who holds the Ph.D. has accomplished. I take some quiet pride in the fact that current researchers are still citing my dissertation – but that isn’t a necessary part of getting the letters behind your name. And, despite the fact I feel good about those citations, there aren’t nearly so many people citing the dissertation as read this blog. Most dissertations are filed away and never cited.

    Einstein’s dissertation was “A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions.” In his thesis, he developed a methodology for calculating Avogadro’s number from the Brownian motion in sugar water. It was original research – which means that nobody had done it before. It was good quality research. But when we associate Einstein with research, we tend to recall his later research – the spot where he quantified Energy as equal to mass times the square of light speed. The point being, we don’t recall Einstein because of his first piece of original research.

    Generally speaking, whenever someone tells you “If you want to know about X you should read my dissertation.” you probably don’t want to read it. The document represents several years work, and we tend to think of our dissertations as important – but most are not.

    Research for a Master’s degree doesn’t need to be original. It doesn’t even need to be done – a Master’s can be awarded just for coursework. If there’s no thesis, the degree is called a terminal masters, not qualifying for admission into a Ph.D. program. (My M.Ed. was a non-thesis masters, so I had to research and write a separate thesis to make up for the lack of a thesis.)

    Jill Biden’s Ed.D. thesis is available online (all 137 pages) at https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20407101-jill-jacobsbiden_dissertation/ and can be downloaded without cost – the title is Student Retention at the Community College: Meeting Students’ Needs. It is nice to have this available to help people understand what can go into a doctorate.

    We (the United States) elected a guy with a Ph.D. to the office of President once – well, actually twice, over a century ago. Woodrow Wilson, Ph.D. Once he was elected, he segregated the federal work force. I don’t have any evidence that he belonged to the KKK – but they missed a great prospect if they didn’t recruit him. His dissertation – from back in 1885 – it titled “Congressional Government” and describes the government of the United States. There is nothing in Woodrow Wilson’s dissertation that you can’t get out of a high school government text.

  • Starting Montana

    There are many spots in history where you can start Montana’s story – I’m looking for the spot where the Montana Attitude starts. Leslie Fiedler, in his 1949 essay about the Montana Face touched around it – but missed the moment and the incident.

    Our origin includes Meriwether Lewis (whose Apron resides with Montana’s Grand Lodge in Helena) and Colter’s Run – John Colter, who mustered out from the Corps of Discovery early, who stayed in the mountains to begin the beaver trade, and who left Montana in 1810 and died a couple of years after returning to civilization (well, St. Louis, Missouri).

    Even in grade school, I learned that the Custer legend didn’t pan out – but Custer barely made it into Montana before screwing up at the Little Big Horn. But his poor decision occurred after the Montana perspective began to develop.

    Go back in history – and remember that Lewis and Clark passed through, Colter expanded on what they had mapped, but in the middle of the War Between the States, men from both North and South moved to Montana. And, in 1863, men from both sides came together for the funeral of William Bell. Bell, dying of natural causes, asked that he might receive a Masonic funeral. Seventy-six of his lodge brothers showed up for that funeral, and the realization hit, that while the criminals held the Sheriff’s office, they had the organization with a group of fraternity brothers that they could trust. (The seventy-six attending the funeral, plus the deceased William Bell totaled 77 – the final number of the Vigilantes 3-7-77. The blending of North and South wasn’t free of strain – Bozeman still has two separate Masonic Lodges, one originally formed of Confederates, the second Unionists.)

    At any rate, the Montana Attitude begins with the organization of the Vigilantes – who, in a couple of months, organized, hanged the crooked sheriff, and restored law and order. With an origin like that, a fundamental mistrust of government – as personified by Sheriff Henry Plummer – and the willingness to confront that government, is kind of engrained in the collective psyche of Montana.

    The next incident occur with Montana’s Acting Territorial Governor – Thomas Francis Meagher. Before President Andrew Johnson sent him to Montana, Meagher had used a horsewhip on an editor who criticized him (in New York, as I recall). As Montana’s acting governor, he threatened to repeat that behavior on the editor of the Virginia City paper. The editor responded with the invitation “Pistols for two and coffee for one?” I’m not real certain as to the date, but obviously it was before July 1, 1867, when Meagher disappeared from the deck of a steamboat at Fort Benton.

    While Meagher, who was appointed Territorial Secretary, filled the position of Governor, he also ran up the territory’s debt to pay the militia – I recall reading of that debt being recently paid off shortly before I graduated grade school (though I may have been reading an old book).

    In those three formative years, Henry Plummer set an example that made Montanans skeptical about trusting local government, while Governor Meagher showed us that state government was willing to incur a debt that would take most of the next century to pay off, as well as attempting to censor the press. I still kind of like Meagher, but if he was pushed off the steamboat, the perp may have had the idea that he deserved it. There’s a reason why Montanans tend to mistrust government – though I’m not sure today’s journalists would be ready to send the “Pistols for two and coffee for one?” response to the governor.

  • I Wish I Could Get Dad’s Opinion on Mark Kelly

    For folks who don’t know, Dad retired from the Navy as a CWO4 – Chief Warrant Officer. Most of his neighbors here didn’t really understand what a warrant officer was, and he didn’t make it easier for the questioners when he would explain “Jesus Christ was a Carpenter’s Mate.” Folks who had served around warrant officers understood and accepted the comparison. At the time he retired, CWO4 was the top warrant officer. Dad and Ed Ruhl both retired as CWO4 – Ruhl was Marine Corps and had one day of seniority on Dad.

    One of our conversations touched on the conditions of his retirement – that he could be called back in the Navy needed his skills, or if he violated civil law or UCMJ to embarrass the Navy. The conversation was a long time ago, and kind of in passing – perhaps driving down the road. Mark Kelly wouldn’t be in the crosshairs of an investigation had he been in the passenger seat paying attention to the old boatswain.

    Instead of having a deck division to supervise, Kelly had an airplane to fly, then went on to become an astronaut. I wish I had Dad to comment on Kelly’s situation – not for an analysis of whether Kelly did right or wrong – I’m sure Dad would have looked at his video appearance as foolish at the least. I’d like to hear Dad’s analysis of how a Navy officer could retire as Captain – with the bird on his shoulders – and still either not be aware of the circumstances governing his retirement, or somehow figure that the rules just don’t apply to him. Somehow, the CWO4 knew the situation when he retired, and the Captain did not. There are a lot of times when I still wish I could telephone Dad and get something he said years ago clarified. Most times it isn’t something on the national news that makes me feel that way.