Unfortunately this is the only way I know of how to get a hold of you. I would like to apologize for not conversing with you this shearing season. As you can tell, when we shear there is always a lot of people that like to ask questions and talk about shearing. I wanted to say thank you the article that you wrote. It’s always nice to see that some people appreciate the “lost art” of shearing. I would be happy to answer any questions that you have and look forward to hearing from you.

Guy

Bobby

thanks for the heads up on the email listserve thing-a-ma-bob.

Ambrose I can’t stomach. His great men theory of history doesn’t interest me. What can I say, it’s odd, cause Milton is also in that camp quite often. Also, Ambrose’s slavish devotion to Thomas Jefferson strikes me as odd. Nothing against Jefferson of course, I just like stories told from the bottom of history–labor stories, etc.

Maclean: yeh, he’s right there. I do love that book. It grabs me by the proverbial throat and tightens.

I’ll have to revisit the topic with only Montanans, since we have so many. My short list would start (in no order): Richard Hugo, James Welch, Ivan Doig, Norman Maclean, Mary Clearman Blew, Rick Bass, David James Duncan, Kevin Canty, D’arcy McNickle, likely Kittredge and McGuane…..let’s see…maybe Brautigan (if he counts). But perhaps I’m reaching now.

The big books back in college were Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, David James Duncan’s The River Why, Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams, Kerouac’s Dharma Bums and On the Road, Gary Synder’s poetry and essays. They should all have made the list but I don’t return to them as often.

Paradise Lost I can pick up and read and be amazed (as with the classics).

And you called for the ten most influential not my ten faves and having to work at a piece leaves an impression (protestant work ethic and all). This is more a map of my neuroses than my likes I suspect.

on Aeneid/subversion (and why it’s relevant if disregarded in today’s political climate): True, Aeneas loses everything for the empire but Virgil is very curious on whether that’s a good thing. Granted, it was a commissioned piece by Augustus, etc. Still: the warriors in the poem are all psychopaths, war is utterly pointless–it’s just that “these” wars, however insane and pointless, are “favored” by the gods because these Romans are favored by the gods. That’s Virgil hitting the empire without end line but he does with some irony.

for instance: when Aeneas slaughters his fallen foe (name slips my mind right now) in the parallel to Achilles wrath in Homer (killing Hector), Aeneas is aware of the futility of it, unlike Achilles who is just an unrepentent psychopath (it’s only Odysseus in Homer–my unsubstantiated opinion–that shows any kind of self-relflexivity. Odysseus is the first real dude to have it both ways.)

on the Georgics: only a bit. I did suffer years of Latin so you kind of touch on everything. I can see why Herzog would recommend them….all his themes are present in some form (man’s struggle against a hostile natural world, the futility of labor and the necessity of labor at the same time). If I recall, my prof. in that class was all about the context in Roman society between epicurianism and stoicism (which one or maybe more of the Georgics tackles) and the political context of the Georgics (the collapse of the 2nd triumvirate with Mark Antony’s death at Actium and the subsequent death of the Roman Republic as Octavian becomes Augustus). So I was taught Virgil as a kind of marginal character always on the side of the Republic, like Shakespeare after him, writing things that pleased the royalty but also subverted it.

But a paen…..I’d like to think not. I’m still tempted to give Tarantino some credit, but I may be blinded by his encyclopedic film referential geekery and mistaking that for self-awareness. Perhaps as you say it’s just pomo-showmanship masking a kind of racist anger (if I read you correctly).

I read the Nazi as Ubermensch in the film as a restaging of the cultural work WW2 films did (not the war but the post-war hollywood propaganda machine), which was to raise up this straw-Ubermensch and displace all America’s racist ideology (mainly the south, represented by Raine) onto the fetish Nazi and kill it. Not exactly a scapegoat (since that demands an innocent victim in a way) but the same mechanism. And I’m giving Tarantino’s film credit for re-staging that. I think the film is aware of the politics–at least as shot if not by intent. I mean, yes the blue eyed dude who gets his head bashed in is stoic (I thought he might be the Steve McQueen character) but Butz is all too quick to give up his comrades. Not every Nazi is glorified.

On Frederick Zoller. I’m pretty sure he’s clueless she’s Jewish (only Landa knows that as he toys with her, ordering her milk). But he is the only one who flinches when looking in the mirror of his violence (during the film screening). His character tempts us (as viewers) to do the same–the film asks us are we better than a Nazi. The answer, I think, is no.

In this film no one is evil or good because of what they do but because of who they are. This seems quite contemporary given the political climate. And I think the criticism goes both left and right–Raine’s forehead carvings change nothing…it’s a kind of meta commentary on the film (and liberalism) also.

When you think of the way that Fascism stages power (Nazis were nothing if not theatrical), one wonders if Tarantino doesn’t see power in that but also repulsive on some level.

Ok, while writing this, I put it on and man it was pretty rocking. Clearly outstanding. I guess Quadrophenia was more of my Joy Division moment in ’82.

And I’m sure I’ll get your full rant outta you one day (blog it baby), though I will say that the “diseases that plague rock groups” you mention seem to hit us all, yes?

Lady gaga….sheesh.

(This isn’t counting the punk bands that were just washing ashore in flyover country back in the pre-internet dark ages.)
(And yes, I am flirting with Nick Hornby territory here, so I’ll stop).
You’re lucky you weren’t around to be victimized by my patented “old filthy hippy rockstar” rant, in which the Who, I have to say, played a major role. In a very truncated digest, I opined that the The Who peaked with Live at Leeds, succumbing to the diseases that plague rock groups, wanna-be movie stardom (Daltry) strange perversions (Townsend) and death (Moon).

They sound pretty good on those Wes Anderson soundtracks, though.

And don’t let your daughter near any Lady Gaga videos. She’ll see them anyway, but at least your conscience will be clean.

My 9 year old son and I have been discussing Apartheid recently. I’ve just read your post to him … and now we’re listening to Biko. Thanks.

To your second paragraph: in the middle of this I was challenged by an elderly woman pulling weeds in a garden I was photographing who said something like “everyone one of those people [again with the other/those people] would jump at the chance to move here. They all want to live here.” It’s an odd and disturbing sentiment, one I think enmeshed within our national identity, alas.

Thanks for this; well said. I hope you get around to posting the “second strike.” I’m astounded and saddened. We all have sh*t to overcome, but the fact that I/we/he overcame sh*t through a lot of hard work does not a level playing field make. It’s hard to believe that people fail to perceive that at least at some deep level.

What’s equally boggling, though embedded further within the lefty discourse as well, is the assumption that “they” would jump at the chance to make it to whatever “third base” we were born on—or that they ought to jump at the chance. Your acquaintance’s question, “What the hell is wrong with them…” not only presumes that “they” have had the opportunity to make it “like us,” but that they should have taken it. This problematic opens up into a minefield, one which I’m sure you are well aware of. It’s painfully difficult to open up opportunities for people who are currently excluded from the game without simply inviting them to join our game and play by our rules.

If it comes to a naked choice between two options, I’m all for erring on the side of welfare-ism rather than the myth of the trickle down, but I’m coming to realize that this entails owning the narrative that I’m “aiding” people into. Unless you know a clean way through this dilemma…?

and when walt dies
i’m throwing the clippings on his grave.

i’m so glad you don’t live here.

my own daughters would be so disappointed in me.

that’s awesome!!!!!

Bret

Bobby

But about the guv — who can resist a love story with a spicy Argentinian attached?

Good to see your family again. The Angus silver lining for us was the chance to get to know the Johnson girls better.

to your other comment:
I actually think Hardin’s problem is the problem of growth in the West, especially the rural west. It’s a longer rant/post, but in short: towns are dying, money and people only flow out. Now, this is part of an ideological trap in my opinion, one often complicated (and perpetuated) by notions of manifest destiny, the American Dream, and capitalism’s insatiable need for growth, etc.

But let’s leave aside the commie-pinko angle and go with the idea that towns need to find ways to grow; or if not grow at least stem the emigration through jobs, etc.

In that case, town leaders work to find ways to keep local money local (which usually isn’t enough) and ways to bring regional/national money in. A nursing home/retirement community seems to work in many cities as it transfers out of state money into local money (in the way it takes social security money and keeps it local, in the way it receives federal dollars via medicare, etc.). The key is to find a thing that captures revenue beyond the current local base.

Hardin looks around and says what do we have? We can’t compete with nearby Billings in the medical arena. We have a lot of crime, mostly misdemeanors. That money mostly flows to Billings already. So they say: let’s keep it here plus we can contract with the state. I’m also hearing that the former Governor supported the idea. So they build it. The political winds shift on the idea. Crime drops (no causal relationship between the last two). But for them it was an attempt to build something that generated local revenues beyond local.

In early May, 2009, the Montana Correctional Advisory Council called for 920 new prison beds in the state. They see the need for 3500 new “beds” by 2025. So it’s not completely absurd that a town would go after that “market” (and I put quotes around market because I don’t think we should look at incarcerating individuals as a market or a growth industry–that is I don’t think we should be counting it on the positive side of our economic growth balance sheet. We need to learn how to subtract if we’re ever going to get a real picture of our economy)

How did this little town so thoroughly allow itself to be taken to the cleaners?

on the other stuff: I’ll just let that lie Mr. sweet and wet

i want to order everything that way.

“i’ll take the brown ones in a size 13……sweet and wet”

or

“give me the 15″ with 500gb hard drive and 4gb ram, sweet and wet”

and the obvious, which i won’t mention here.

i can’t believe you didn’t report on the duck fat fries at dougs though.
they must not have had them that day.
they didn’t have them the day i showed up either.

now, tell me where to eat in dublin
besides guinness for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Sara worked nights at a outdoor shop here called Backcountry (now long closed). I came home in the freezing dark, undressed outside to keep the diesel smell out, showered and read Milton, Shakespeare, et al. in prep for my grad school entrance exams until Sara came home.

We were living in Sara’s grandmother’s basement. When we moved back to Billings, we bought the house. My office is now in our old basement bedroom.