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Maybe it’s my age showing but I’m becoming increasingly frustrated with the inability of tech companies to stop making it difficult to use software from other companies seamlessly. They go out of their way to make it hard to use the other service even though everyone I know uses a variety of products from Google, Microsoft, etc. Trying to remember how to go from one to the other along with the correct sign-in credentials causes extravagant use of cuss words from all around the globe. Tech com...
5 years ago was the first flight. The time between that flight and the first moon landing was only 66 years. This past year NASA had a helicopter that flew on Mars. That little helicopter had a scrap of canvas from that first Wright brothers plane on it. Imagine what will occur in the next 66 years, in 2090 or, in 122 years, in 2144. We can imagine some things but we’d be wrong about most things. Something we didn’t know just a few years ago was the makeup of other planets and asteroids. Tod...
I heard a child say, “When I grow up I want to be an influencer.” For many of us the immediate question is, “What is that?”. An influencer is someone who has amassed a large number of internet followers and are self-proclaimed experts on something, style, makeup, animals, virtually anything that younger folks are interested in. Successful influencers can make thousands of dollars every time they post something online. They don’t have to actually have any expertise, they only have to act like...
I read a quote recently that was a reminder that the term “culture” often means not only the behavior of a group but also the rationale for that behavior. The great baseball player Shohei Ohani very recently revealed that he is married. The announcement came as a complete surprise to his fans and even his teammates here. No one knew he had a special girlfriend, had no idea he was even contemplating marriage. The American media was bewildered and wanted to know why such a thing had been kept a s...
Remember pinball machines? I’m sure there are still some around, but nowhere nearly as many as when I was a child. The thing about pinball machines was they were a bit disreputable because some people were known to gamble on them! In this era it seems sort of quaint to worry about the nickels and dimes that probably changed hands but it was a different time and place. Pinball machines could be found in gas stations, cafes, and bars. In my childhood memory they usually had some young males g...
The Cascade Courier reached out to Mayor Murry for an update on the current staffing situation since the resignation of Town Clerk, Jodie Campbell. People had reported that the City Hall had closed early on Monday. According the the Mayor, an Assistant Clerk, Melanie Bissell, has been hired, and the hours for City Hall business will be the same as usual....
Our dog, “Remy” considers it his duty to defend the yard. Since he weighs 125 pounds it isn’t as if he’s going to get many challengers. There are, however, two creatures that torment him. His number one nemesis is a neighborhood cat. The cat knows Remy’s limitations. Remy is not a jumper. Consequently, the cat sits on top of the fence or just outside it, nonchalantly grooming itself while Remy goes crazy just feet away, barking frantically. After annoying Remy long enough the cat slowly sa...
There are folks who endeavor not to feel emotions. We’ve all known people who hide their tears, their sorrow, even their love. We mistakenly call that “being strong”, but it isn’t. Burying emotions is corrosive and ultimately erupts in some way, as anger, as depression, some other way. I’m no expert but I do know what grief feels like and, of one thing I’m certain, it doesn’t just disappear once and for all. I know folks who do their best to overcome grief by chasing constant distraction. They f...
NASA tells us Mars once had plentiful water which evaporated when its atmosphere thinned. Life, as we know it, requires water. It is supposed, given the presence of water, microbial life could have existed at one time on Mars but we haven’t found proof. As we humans begin to touch the barest fringes of the universe, it seems clear we would go absolutely nuts at the first sign of non-earthly life. Whether a microbe or a larger creature of any sort, we would be transfixed. If we actually d...
There are words which are used as if they mean the same thing but are, in reality, vastly different. Two words which are often used interchangeably are “alone” and “lonely”. They occupy similar emotional spheres but, like railroad tracks that run along side each other but never ever meet, they are forever separate. I saw a short clip recently about Michael Collins. He was the pilot of the Apollo 11 spacecraft. While Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin went to the surface of the moon, Collins continue...
I don’t know anyone who says they’re looking forward to the politics this year. We’ve been inundated with so much negativity we’re sick and tired of it long before the campaigns really get going. There are, however, two things which we all can do to improve our feelings about this year. They go hand in hand. The first of these is hope. We can focus on all the bad stuff shoveled endlessly through the news and assorted partisans who do their best to create fear and distrust or we can focus o...
There’s an old saying, which, when I first heard it, I mentally objected and pushed the thought aside. The saying is, “Let go, or be dragged.” The Buddhist idea that it is our attachments which causes our suffering makes it a likely origin. I couldn’t accept it because, like everyone, I am a child of my culture. Our culture teaches us from birth that we are valued according to our achievements. We are molded by culture to believe we must continually do more, be more, or we’re not achieving... Full story
A friend and I were discussing the difficulty all of us have growing up in learning to ask for help. Especially, when we’re young we don’t like to admit we don’t know things and need someone to give us a hand. My friend recounted a time when he was about nine years old watching his stepfather, who was about forty, attempt to iron plastic curtains. At nine he already knew that was a wildly illogical thing to do. Needless to say, they didn’t have curtains over that window when he was done. W...
The news has a repetitive theme these days about folks dreading this election season. Even political junkies who thrive on every twist and turn of elections confess to dreading how divisive and vitriolic it will almost certainly be. People are rightfully worried about a return of the violence that occurred in 2020. I’ve attempted to reassure some folks that we’ve gone through rough political waters before and survived but that doesn’t help much. There was a time in our history, known as the ...
Whenever I head for Great Falls I always make sure I have my cell phone, my wallet, and my truck keys. Those are important. By the time I’ve been on the highway for even two minutes, I remember something else. I wish I had some eye drops with me. There is some micro-dust in the air between here and there that causes my eyes to feel irritated. It wouldn’t be advisable to put in eye drops while driving but, theoretically, if I had eye drops with me I could use some before I start driving and bef...
Because I like articles that make me go, “What?” I dove into an article in “Aeon” recently that made the case that time is an object. Since I’m still trying to wrap my poor head around the concept of “spacetime” I confess I have no ability to even begin to explain what I read. What I did take from that article is the idea that evolution is necessary for things to come into being and the evolutionary principle demands we recognize time as an object rather than a mere conceptional framework by...
The children’s Christmas pageant at my church this year had one of those unexpected moments we don’t forget. Among the sheep gathered at the Manger was a tiger. The image of a tiger, the most fearsome of predators, at that iconic scene of peace and goodwill, definitely brought smiles. What were they to do when the little boy really wanted to wear his tiger costume? Sometimes we can really enjoy something that breaks the routine, something that alters the trajectory of what’s expected. We are a...
Although change is a constant, there’s one thing I can count on. Every day my 5 year old grandson will ask, “How many days until Christmas?” Everything beyond about three days is, to him, an excessively long amount of time. On the Christian calendar, we’re in Advent. It’s the season of anticipation and preparation for the birth of Jesus. Different groups down through history have traditions associated with this time. At least one actually included fasting! Thankfully, that horror was never pop...
It has been noted for many years that television has contributed to our being a very impatient people. We have been accustomed to very difficult problems being solved in a half or an hour-long show. We watch movies in which the world is saved from catastrophe in under two hours max. The Internet has made that tendency worse. Want to get information? It’s only a click away. Want something? No need to even drive to Great Falls, you can order online and it will be at your doorstep, assuming the del...
My Thanksgiving involved 2,000 miles of travel. I drove to Utah to see a friend, then we went to Denver for Thanksgiving, then back to Utah and finally home to Cascade. The myriad of experiences makes simple evaluation a bit complicated. As I was thinking about it, a post on Facebook by Willie Sloan caught my attention. We’ve all been exposed to the concept of “triggers” over the past few years, those words or actions that cause someone to feel threatened and angry. We’ve seen that in folks w...
I like to cook. To me cooking is like playing with the chemistry sets my parents bought me when I was young. They undoubtedly thought I would do the experiments in the accompanying books. The truth is, I rarely, if ever followed the instructions. I liked to try different things to see what would happen. Some results were good, some not so much. A couple were more dangerous than advisable. Likewise, I cook the same way. Some results are delicious, some acceptable, a few disasters. Over the years...
When this is published we’ll be a week away from Thanksgiving. As I’ve said often, it’s my favorite holiday. I’m sure for some of you, that’s not true. Some folks don’t like Thanksgiving, of course, those same people probably dislike puppies, kittens, fall foliage, and springtime and, are obviously, tastebud deficient. Just kidding. Some folks have legitimate reasons for not caring for Thanksgiving, or any particular holiday. Some folks honestly don’t feel like they have anything for which to...
In the holiday season we often find ourselves besieged by the necessity of making decisions. We are supposed to adhere to family traditions, some of which don’t really fit what we need or want for ourselves anymore. We always go to this place or that for Thanksgiving, we must bring the dish everyone assumes we will bring. We have to keep buying presents even for adult relatives, cause that’s what we’ve always done. The list is endless. This a good time to think about how we make decis...
Don’t tell but I have a confession to make. I’m well aware that my opinions may be wrong! My first editorials, opinion pieces, were written some 25 years ago for the Los Angeles Times, and I’ve written over 500 just for the Cascade Courier. I’m sure some folks think I’m completely goofy on a regular basis but, I assure you, I never intentionally write anything I don’t consider true. The thing is, truth is somewhat flexible. Some truths hold up under scientific scrutiny. They are subjected t...
The Earth rotates at 1,037 mph. The Earth orbits the Sun at 67,000 mph. Our solar system whirls around the center of the galaxy at 490,000 mph. The speed at which our galaxy is moving through the universe is about 1.3 million miles per hour. All that is beyond comprehension even though we know it is true. We don’t feel the speed, if we did we could not function. We exist in an infinite void, travelling at an incomprehensible speed. There are no words capable of fully expressing our place in s...
