Tag: Montana

Categories
Chronic Disease

Day 1282 and Summertime Sadness

Montana has blessedly been free of excess heat and fire season doesn’t seem to have arrived. But it was a wet spring and I fear we have a long summer ahead of me. I live in one of the best possible places to spend a summer and I still find it challenging m.

I was looking back at pictures from this time last year and I was not in the best health. I’ve never been a summer person and I have to accept some aspect of its misery is likely to forever plague me.

Other people have season affect disorder in the winter. I guess my people are a winter people. I can’t wait for snow to return.

Maybe I’m not alone in finding summertime unbearable. Lana Del Ray croons through summer’s emotional ghosts. Crime gets worse when it’s hotter.

I’m sure my mood is affected by the lingering Covid (does it count as long when you feel shitty 7 weeks later?) as well as the general unease in American politics. I’ll do what I can to shake it. But I’ll never understand anyone’s affection the season.

Categories
Politics

Day 1267 and Civics

I spent my day at a policy organization’s gathering. I feel obligation to become as much a part of the civics process as I can. If we intend to have a working democracy it America it requires citizens who participate in an informed way.

Now cynics might say regular people don’t terribly like being bothered with the hard questions of self government. I’d say that obligates one even more to be a part of a civic polity that treats its participants with the dignity to be capable of self government.

The aspiration may never be fully met but if you cannot find a way to do that within the boundaries of civilization generally you get run out of town. Americans is the product of a lot of people who got run out of town. It shouldn’t surprise us that sometimes raw power rears its ugly head.

So much of my education was dedicated to participating in a Western canon of civilization. The portions of it that privileged anything all novel or even recent barely made a dent in my formal education. It did however spend a lot of time on the civics of Athens, Rome and the Protestant Reformation. And those are all stories of who should govern and on what authority.

Anytime there is a dislocation in the expectations between those who govern and the population it has to be worked out.

The western journey has been one of citizenship. If we cannot self govern in ways others agree to abide by we have lost quite a bit of ground in that quest. And history doesn’t have much positive to say about demagoguery or Vox populi. Anyways good luck out there this election season.

Categories
Homesteading Travel

Day 1265 and Fair Forecast

It started snowing last night before sunset in western Montana. At first it seemed like it might be hail and sleet but soon enough fluffier condensation was coming down.

While the rest of the world is suffering under heat domes and excessive weather warnings, things are cool in the Rockies. So much so I wonder if any agriculture may suffer. Our chickens seemed no worse for wear but we didn’t plant much this year.

As I was looking at the forecast in the Apple weather app I noticed in the average table a surprising -14F below the seasonal norm.

Seeing snow on the mountains is always a relief. Dry summers lead to wildfires and no one wants that. I consider this to be a fair to pleasant state for the weather.

I have a day trip planned to the capital shortly and I’m wondering how to pack given the cool. Layering is a fair technique until you have a fierce high altitude storm sweep over the pass.

Wearing linens and light sweaters seems fine for June until a freak snow storm has you wishing you’d packed boots and a puffy coat. Whatever the forecast I hope I’ll be prepared.

Categories
Biohacking

Day 1258 and Relapse

I woke up feeling reasonably good this morning. I thought perhaps my prayers have been answered. I have been managing a case of Covid for over a week so I really wanted to be turning the corner on recovery.

It’s hard fully rest with an infection and this case overlapped with a lot of big things for my portfolio companies. That excitement made it even harder to stay away from working. I was joyfully working all weekend for multiple deadlines.

I’ve not been the best behaved patient though I have stayed in bed. I thought I’d at least maintained the appropriate protocols for sleep, nutrition, supplements and medication.

What I really wanted was to go outside and enjoy the weather. June in Montana is heaven. Cool bright mornings turn into sunny dry days.

I thought that a short walk in this type of environment would be healthy. I walked the property and down our dirt road. I wasn’t out for more than twenty minutes.

Walking by our little pond fed by a creek.

It was too much. By early afternoon I was exhausted, feverish and coughing. I slept but it was the fitful half conscious sleep of the sick.

I am disappointed as I want this to be over. The pushback from supposedly health giving activity like strolling in the morning sun was immediate. It isn’t over and I’ve been punished for joyful nativity. But damn it’s a beautiful day to be alive.

Categories
Chronicle

Day 1233 and Heat

I have been enjoying the mild weather of May. I’ve not had any extremes which is a sort of pleasant surprise. Climate and weather intersect poorly too often these days.

I was explaining to a mutual how we’d settled on Montana to buy land and much of the calculation was about the pleasures of a cold, dry and mountainous climate. It’s sunny without much in the way of humidity which makes for enjoyable winters even when it gets cold.

I am not much of a fan of humidity. It hurts my joints and reminds me of my ankylosis. I’m much more prone to trouble with inflammation when it’s damp.

Whenever I encounter a coastal climate I struggle a bit. Others may love a riviera but I’ve never found one I liked. I’ve been to a reasonably diverse array from San Francisco to coastal Mediterranean and I can do without.

The weather is however about to change. Soon it will be the season of air conditioning. I’ll be going through Texas for a conference at the end of May. I’m not looking forward to the heat.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 1216 and If It Is Really Important

My husband was unreachable for the last 72 hours. So no one gets worried while I tell the story, I’ll note this was planned, nothing bad happened and he is back on the grid.

This is the first time I’ve had had no way of getting word to Alex if I wanted to do so in over decade of marriage.

This probably tells you a lot about how accessible we are to each other even when we are apart. We’ve had entire continents between us but I’ve always been able to reach him and he can always reach me. We’ve basically been in non-stop contact since our first date.

Until this weekend. For the last three days Alex was unreachable because he was on a camping (ok hunting) trip.

Many parts of Montana have so few people it’s pretty simple to go completely off grid. And he did.

If you have a decent truck, a Bureau of Land Management map and the ambition to bag a wild turkey you too can get off grid and become unreachable.

When Alex got back onto the grid he texted me.

He asked me what had happened while he had been offline. My first instinct was try to fill him in on everything. But so much had happened I found myself unable to even start.

I went back through hundreds of news stories, group chats, Twitter timelines, and emails in an attempt to sum up everything I’d seen while he’d been off grid. It was my turn to disappear. It was now me who was unreachable

Thankfully Alex stopped be before I got too far into the wild.

“If it’s really important it will get filtered up to me”

Alex Miller 4/30/24

As is often the case my husband was right. So I stopped. Please take this as a sign to not worry about getting caught up. We will filter things up to each outer.

Categories
Internet Culture Media Politics

1196 and Reality Crazed

Just when I think shit cannot get any crazier reality absolutely fucking mogs me.

“Surely” I say to myself. “It cannot get more weird, more brazen, more chaotic, more fucked up, more absolutely unreal.”

And then it absolutely fucking does.

What if I told you there was a funny movie about dysfunctional airlines?

Getting second passports is normal don’t you know? I guess us regular professional class moves to Montana because we stupidly believe in America but everyone else is splitsville.

But don’t worry Italy welcomes digital nomads. I’d personally go to Tallinn though. But if you like Riveras hit up Albania. Thank me later. Never too early to think about where you might find yourself as a refuge.

Looking for something a little more exotic? I got you. How about some drugs. No really.

Hack the planet! Hack the gut biome! Hack your cavities? It’s possible the effective altruists saving us from bad teeth with polyamorous sex parties? I learned about an experimental probiotic from a sex worked based Austin. No I am not kidding. Her name is Aella. Iff you don’t know what this means I’ll spare you. But I’ll leave you with this.

Unless you are an investor like Yishan here, the way to get it is to pay $5000 for an appointment at a clinic in Prospera, the libertarian-run ZEDE on the island of Roatan currently suing the Honduran government for a third of the countries GDP

True Anon Pod

Now to be fair this is excellent affinity marketing. Who else would know more mouth bacteria than a hooker right? Well actually you’d be more likely to get gets thrush from that sort of extracurricular which requires an anti-fungal not an antibiotic but I’m quibbling.

In even stupider news, control of the senate might be up for grabs and the control hinges on a dude who might have lied about shooting himself for reasons? I don’t fucking know. I’m not a mercenary. But I hear Erik Prince is a dope podcast interview.

Anyway, the Gen Xer didn’t shit about reality biting. But the rest of us might be getting an idea.

Categories
Emotional Work Startups

Day 1193 And Peak Performance

I was really struggling yesterday so I didn’t expect to jump right onto a flow state today. I went into town to eat a hamburger.

“You may not like it but eating a burger in the back of a casino in a strip mall in Montana while reading an economics lecture by Deidre McCloskey is actually female peak performance”

Maybe it was the positive effect of a bunch of fat and protein but I was in the zone afterwards. I was able to pull together a bunch of disparate connections on a specialty niche where I’ve had some very promising investments.

I, for a brief shining moment, realized I was almost certainly one of the most expert and well connected people on the planet for something.

So much of not getting eaten by change is simply accepting that you feel absolutely bonkers an enormous amount of time. Learning to live with it isn’t as easy as it looks

If you are lucky and smart and open minded a straight line can appear through what was other completely disparate things. It’s funny that we call putting a line through things regression right? Simplifying things is funny like that.

Learning to act when you see a through line is almost all of the battle. “Noticing things” is only useful insofar as it something you take action on.

I felt as if I had no clear path at all yesterday on anything and then today I did. I didn’t see some kind of perfect Delphic vision of the future. I just realized that work I’d set in motion three or four years ago has yielded results and if I was able to keep going with other people who saw it too then I had done what I could.

Categories
Homesteading

1185 and Hobby Horses

It’s a lovely Saturday in Montana. The sun is shining which helps cut the otherwise brisk gusts of wind. It just seemed like a day to enjoy life.

Our dirt drive has finally dried out a bit so we went out for a walk to get some sun and check the potholes.

My husband and I went to town for some errands and stopped in for a burger at one of Montana’s unique liquor store, casino and bar combinations.

They are legacy of prohibition and overly involved governmental regulatory authorities. Montana has a government monopoly on all liquor stores.

For such a libertarian state, the alcohol laws seems a bit baffling. But one of the best burgers in town can be found at the bar inside the liquor store. It feel like any sports bar that leans towards country and western tunes. America is an amazing place.

Waiting on our burgers at the bar

And because we are also yuppies we went to get groceries at the local food cooperative of which we are members. My inner hippie loves getting her Dr Bronner from the bulk bins. We went a little overboard picking out some essential oils (Alex loves bergamot and I needed more lavender) and then ground of our not butters.

All the lentils and beans you could want

Having thoroughly covered the country and hippie portions of our day I came home to do some spring cleaning.

Moving from winter to warmer clothing isn’t my favorite seasonal shift. I prefer cozy cashmere and long sleeve black tee-shirts. But I have conferences and professional obligations coming up with travel so I tried out a new paid mobile application for closest organization and packing called Style Book.

I haven’t quire got the hang of it but the basic idea is to take photos of your wardrobe, tag it, organize it into outfits and packing lists and get more visibility into your wardrobe. I’ll have a to play with or more to get it polished but it seems like it has potential.

Style books Home Screen
A spring look
A conference outfit

Categories
Aesthetics Homesteading

Day 1179 and All Good Seasons

While the Spring equinox has come to pass, we have had a couple late snowstorms this week in Montana. I am always wishing we’d get just a few more weeks of winter. It’s my favorite season here.

Of course, there are no bad seasons to be had in the Gallatin Valley if your preference is dry, crisp and bright. It’s never too wet or too dreary here. Our mountains feel close to the sun at our altitude. Maybe some of April qualify as the muddy season but the sun is our friend here.

Our summers are long and bright with intermittent thunderstorms. Our winters are cold, snowy but most crucially sunny. We get 300 days of sun on average a year in Bozeman.

Something about the Southwest Rocky Mountains in Montana keeps them from the unfortunate damp wetness of the rainy Pacific Northwest forests that begin closer to Missoula on towards Washington.

Alex standing in front of our solar array

The sunniness has made our solar grid in the front pasture particularly efficient for us.

Already melting into nothing

Just a few hours ago it was snowing fluffy powder. The sun is already melting it away within hours as the clouds pass over the foothills and the sun begins to shine again.