Blog

Here in Missoula, summer is beginning its retreat. The breeze up on Blue Mountain during Sunday’s hike was downright frigid at times, and the last two mornings have seen temperatures in the 40s even down here in the valley. During the day, the sun warms things up into the 80s, and it will be a while yet before we have to put all summertime activities aside, but fall is on its way.

Fall has always been an exciting, energizing time of year for me. I used to think it had something to do with a conditioned response to the beginning of new school years, when, however horribly the year could be expected to turn out in general, at least there were new jeans and other opportunities for self-reinvention to look forward to.

The other day it occurred to me that the explanation might be even simpler. I was born in September, so maybe changing leaves and crisp nights were simply my first experience of the world and still excite in me a primal reaction to the waxing of this season.

If you don’t know why I’m thinking such thoughts, Amy and I are expecting our first child to be born toward the end of the month, just six days before my own birthday.

Due dates are predicted based on averages, of course, and it’s already been two weeks since the doctor allowed as how he’d better brief us a little more thoroughly on the signs that would indicate Amy had gone into labor and should soon see the inside of one of Community Medical Center’s labor and delivery rooms.

“Any day now,” in other words, as various friends and acquaintances have been pointing out relentlessly. Vanetta, who runs the department office where Amy works, says she’ll be watching the clock extra carefully around the time Amy usually gets in every morning, with lateness having a whole new potential implication. Last Saturday, I called my parents around 8:30 p.m. their time, assuming that-if they were watching a movie or something-they’d just let the call go to voice mail. It didn’t occur to me until the phone was actually ringing how they might interpret a call at such an unusual hour.

Any day now.

I know Amy is ready. Although she is not having any acute problems, it seems to be difficult for her to get comfortable, whether standing, sitting, or sleeping. “I can’t wait to be normal again,” she said the other day.

For me, of course, things are normal right now, other than the ever-increasing space limitations in our bed and the slower pace I have to remember to take when Amy and I are walking together. (Not to mention the crib and changing table that now occupy half of the room I used to call my office.)

So I’ll go ahead and admit that I think I can stand to wait right up until the scheduled due date, and maybe even a little beyond.

For one thing, I’m trying to knock out a couple of freelance projects first, to pad the bank account enough that I won’t have to work very much in the aftermath of the Blessed Event.

But mainly, Sept. 22 is when everything changes. Amy’s discomfort aside, I know enough to suspect that I should enjoy these last few days of-for me-normalcy. Though I understand abstractly a great deal of what’s about to happen-apparently, for example, there is no grace period and the baby will start to need its diapers changed right away-I cannot claim to have the slightest true grasp of what’s about to happen.

All of this potential energy seems to be gathering off stage. Waiting for it, I have the distinct sensation of standing somewhere, blindfolded, listening to something large rushing toward me from somewhere off in the distance and beginning to suspect that these might be railroad ties that I feel under my feet.

I’ll take a few more days of normal if I can.

About a week ago, I opened my morning paper to the opinion page and found an editorial arguing for increased education funds.

Nothing unusual about that. Times are tough all over, and residents of every state in this nation are used to hearing calls for more money for education. What was unusual is the class of students the editorial writer had in mind:

[A] fully funded bear education program would make a wonderful gift to mark Glacier National Park’s centennial next year.

This isn’t as crazy as it sounds.

The editorial was written in response to a controversial decision by Glacier National Park officials to kill a mother grizzly who had become too friendly toward human users of the park. Although she had never attacked anyone, she was known to approach and “greet” hikers and campers, and officials were worried about both the potential immediate dangers of these interactions as well as the lessons that were being imparted to her two cubs.

In August, government agents tracked the bear down and shot her. They tried to tranquilize the two cubs for transport to a zoo, but, in the process, accidentally killed one of them, too.

This is a sad story, but what’s interesting to me is all the talk about one possible way that these deaths could have been prevented: bear education, or hazing intended to impress upon bears just how dangerous it is to hang around near humans.

Apparently, this approach had been tried with this very bear a few years back. As an earlier article about the problematic bear explained:

[I]n 2005, park rangers enlisted the help of Carrie Hunt and her Wind River Bear Institute. Think horse-whisperer for grizzly bears.

Hunt’s job is to teach bears and people how to live and let live, and her work with the Old Man Lake female was nothing short of precedent setting….

Hunt… [used] specially trained dogs to not simply instill fear in the bear, but to teach bears what was allowed and what was not…. they worked grizzlies the way cow dogs work cattle. This, she said, is sophisticated bear behavior modification, teaching bears how to make good – and lifesaving – choices.

Hunt “worked” this bear for 10 days that year and another 10 days in 2006, and her approach seemed to work: there was no sign of the problem bear for the next two years. Hunt felt the bear would need some “booster work,” but then the bear lost its radio collar, the park didn’t budget the funds, and the followup visit never happened-to the detriment not only of the bear, but anyone who values these animals as one of the last remnants of the great wilderness that this area-this country-once was.

If you do value these animals, it might interest you to know that times are pretty tough for them, too. The 600 grizzlies in the greater Yellowstone region (which includes this part of Montana) were removed from the endangered species list in 2007, but they’ve since been dying at a rate high enough to be on the verge of triggering federal reconsideration of their delisting. The death toll among this population is up to 17 this year, including the illegal slaying of one of the biggest known bears in Montana, a giant that stood more than seven and a half feet tall. Human-caused deaths-self defense, traffic accidents, illegal hunting-are partly to blame, but so is climate change, which is killing off some of these animals’ staple foods.

Clearly, then, bear education isn’t the only answer, but it might help reduce the overall rate at which we humans feel forced to kill these animals. Before signing on completely in support of an ongoing bear-education program, I’d need to know how much it would cost, and what else that money might otherwise get spent on (other than press releases defending the decision to kill a bear). But in the abstract, I’m all for it: increased funding for bear education!

Determined to keep active in these last weeks of her pregnancy, Amy wanted to get in a Labor Day hike. We had failed in our second attempt on Bear Creek Overlook a few weeks back, so we wanted something even easier.

Consulting our venerable (seriously: published in 2001) Day Hikes Around Missoula, Montana, we chose Hike 25: Blue Mountain Saddle to Blue Mountain Lookout in the Blue Mountain Recreation Area.

The main problem for Amy right now is steepness, partly because-with about 50 percent more blood volume than usual(!)-it’s easy for her to lose her breath. Then there is simply the mechanical difficulty of lifting her legs high with all that belly in the way.

The description of Hike 25 indicated there would be a brief section of steep climbing, but then we’d be on gentler switchbacks the rest of the way to the working fire-lookout tower at the top. We stopped by Safeway for sandwiches and we were on our way.

After the 10-mile drive in on a rutted Forest Service road (Toyota should make a commercial about our Corolla), we parked on the pullout described in our book and set out. As described, the first section of the trail straddled a rolling ridge and was easy enough. Then came the steep section, a poorly-thought-out route that simply carves straight up the face of the mountain.

We were looking for a right-hand fork at 0.7 miles to take us to the switchbacks and thought we had found it when we saw a little sign for trail 3.01. This new trail cut to the right straight across the mountainside and so was much flatter than the route we’d been following, but after about 10 minutes we saw no signs of any switchbacks and decided we must have made a wrong turn. (If the route’s official turnoff was really 0.7 miles from the trailhead, I’d say this turnoff was at about 0.5.)

We walked back to the main trail and returned to clambering up the steep trail, at one point having to make a wide detour around some big downed trees. The whole time, we were treated to the droning roar of some ATVers powering up and down the mountain somewhere nearby, which was unpleasant but at least minimized the bear risk.

The trail was extremely overgrown narrow and after a while we began to wonder if we were still on the right branch. We picked out a dead pine about 50 yards above us and decided we’d turn back if we couldn’t see anything promising from there. But a little past the pine we found a right-hand fork that quickly matched the description of the switchbacks we’d been looking for.

This part of the trail was no better maintained than the lower section. Along one 30-yard stretch, branches from plants on either side of the trail had grown completely across to meet in the middle. It had rained recently, so the branches were wet, and pushing through them was cool and refreshing.

Because of the poor visibility in all of that brush, it seemed (to this admitted ignoramus on the subject) like the kind of place where one might surprise a bear, so I unholstered my pepper spray and held it in my hand as I moved into the lead.

After a few more switchbacks, we found ourselves at Blue Mountain Observatory, a green, cinder-block building with about the same size footprint as my garage and a smooth metal dome on top, all locked up today tight as a drum. About a tenth of a mile distant stood the lookout tower.

We made our way over. According to the book, the lookout is about 50 feet tall. A smiling, white-haired man with a beard came out on the walkway to greet us. He didn’t invite us up, but he certainly seemed friendly enough and probably would have been amenable if we’d expressed interest.

The problem, of course, is that in situations like this what looks like a nice old man from the bottom of the tower often turns out-once you climb to the top-to be a serial killer wearing the Forest Service employee’s skin. Plus, as Amy observed, the tower looked kind of rickety, so we decided to just circumnavigate it and then rejoin the trail that had brought us up. As we looped back around the tower, the man called down.

“You came up the hard way,” he said.

He directed us to what he described as an easier trail. We sought it out and found that it was the other end of what we had earlier decided was a wrong turn, trail 3.01. Sure enough, this was a much easier route back, taking us on a long, single switchback before doubling back toward the original trail. This mostly level route took us through gloomy firs and across an avalanche chute right in the thick of the forest, a spooky vista of dozens of huge, jagged snapped-off trees above and below the trail, all pointed downhill.

I think this alternate trail probably added to the 2.2 miles of our book’s described route, but the ease of the return route made up for any increased distance. With frequent stops for breathers and water, Amy did just fine, and we were back to the car no more than two hours after we’d set out. We were both glad to have finally completed a hike for a change.

Last night’s Prairie Home Companion took a good-natured swipe at Twitter, the online blog-like service that restricts users’ messages to 140 characters or less at a time. Garrison Keillor’s detective character, Guy Noir, was walking through the Minnesota State Fair and found a Twitter booth, at which the attendant was posting updates like “I am updating my status”; “I can’t think of what to say next, so I’ll leave it that”; etc.

I immediately checked to see if Garrison has a Twitter account. While my search was not exhaustive, I didn’t find a likely candidate. (Call me crazy, but I’m pretty sure that the user claiming to be “garrisonkeillor” is an impostor).

This makes sense. Twitter gets a lot of abuse from people who don’t actually use it, and fair enough: when you first hear the thumbnail description of the service, and if you’re still getting used to the idea of blogs, Facebook, and the rest of what the kids are calling “web 2.0” and “social media,” it’s easy to assume that such a format is good for nothing but the sharing of trivial information.

I’ll be the first to admit that Twitter users share a lot of trivial information (I’m certainly guilty), but the great thing about this and other services is that the recipients don’t have to keep listening. As soon as someone’s feed-or “stream,” as the whole combined Twitter/Facebook/etc. output is often described-bores you, you can opt out.

My friend Brad wrote about this recently, comparing the relative intrusiveness of unwelcome/unneeded information sent by Twitter to that sent by email:

If you are like me, you have probably heard a number of friends complain bitterly about Twitter (and, to a lesser extent, Facebook status updates) by saying something like: “Why do you think I care what you had for lunch?” It’s a fair enough question if you discount the opt-in nature of most social media. That is, if your analogy is “Why would I want an email about what you had for lunch?”

But that’s a false analogy – I’m not emailing you, and if I were, I would definitely not email you my lunch menu. It would be rude. But, there may be some people who might find it interesting that I am eating at a particular restaurant, or eating a particular dish, or just that I’m having lunch. The transaction cost of letting them know is near zero, and the burden on others’ attention is near zero too.

Besides, to anyone who actually uses Twitter, it quickly becomes clear that the people who lampoon the medium by saying “I don’t care what you had for lunch” are telling us more about the limits of their own imaginations than they are about the limits of this mode of communication.

This morning, I experienced an unexpected upside to the opt-in nature of “the stream.”

Most mornings these days, I try to get in a little work on my novel (tentative title: Learning to Lose). I’ve decided that two of the supporting characters-a married couple-are struggling to conceive, and I wanted to know what sort of books, gadgets, medications, and related items they might have lying around. My first stop was the Wikipedia entry on infertility, and I did find it to be a good start.

Then, on a whim, I posted the following question on Twitter, which-because I’ve set up my account this way-then updated my status on Facebook:

For my novel, can anyone tell me some things a couple undergoing infertility txmts might have lying around? (Hold the ribaldry, please.)

In response, I got the following advice. Even the non-writers among you will easily be able to see how much more usefully, idiosyncratically human these details are, as opposed to the more schematic view offered by something like a Wikipedia entry.

Commenter 1: pregnancy tests, sex toys, porn, alarm clock (so you can get up early enough to get ur daily ultrasounds done before work), under eye concealer, knitting/books/etc for dr’s ofc waiting rooms, lots of rx meds including gross stuff like vaginal suppositories, bedside calendar & pen for recording “activities”. and no, i’m not in this process. i just happen to be in the car w/a doctor & parent who’s gone thru this. she sez feel free to contact her for more info if needed.

Commenter 2: Baby name book, syringes, what to expect when your expecting. they are already living as if they are expecting a baby.

Commenter 3: prescription drugs with names like “medroxyprogesterone-135.” Mine were actually compounded specially by a local pharmacy. Many women use a cream or gel for this purpose, but I couldn’t sleep with the constant sensation of having peed myself. Let us know if you have other questions.

Commenter 4: Thermometor! Sutton, never having “been there” I did egg donation for a cousin in 1990..let me recollect..(sometimer’s disease strikes in your 50’s)..I’ll get back to you on this one.

And so on. The comments are still rolling in, and, from the sound of some of them, it seems clear that I’m gaining insight from people with personal knowledge of the subject. This last fact leads to two points I wanted to make about the opt-in nature of “the stream” and how well it worked for me in this situation.

1. For one thing, I had no idea that I knew anyone with personal knowledge of fertility therapies. But since my tweet/status update was going to be seen by, potentially, hundreds of people, I figured it was worth a shot.
2. Even if I had known which of my friends has personal experience with this issue, I might have been reluctant to approach them with questions about such a potentially emotionally fraught issue-especially since, having been contacted directly, they might have felt obligated to help me out, even if they didn’t really feel up to it. But because tweets and status updates aren’t “to” anyone, I could just put the request out there and see who felt like responding. No one was put on the spot, and no one shared anything more than they wanted to.

Some final thoughts: I’m a Garrison Keillor fan, for the most part, so I hope this doesn’t sound like an attack on him. I think he and many other people misunderstand Twitter, but, on the other hand, if users who willingly refer to their posts as “tweets” can’t have a sense of humor about the whole concept, they are taking themselves way too seriously.

And while, I haven’t had lunch yet, I had eggs for breakfast.

• Employing the subjunctive. #
• Transcribing interviews about the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act. #
• Missoulian has a pretty new web site, but I still can't reliably search for and find articles. How hard is this? #
• And can anyone help me change a background photo in the header of a WordPress blog? #
• Anyone else out there like a good, stiff… index card? I'm disappointed by Mead and Ampad. Any suggestions? #
• Is there no way to "share" a Facebook status update with comments thread, or am I missing something? #
• Costco members: worth it to join for $25 per year? (I'm thinking mainly of diapers/other baby supplies.) #
• Not particularly scared about H1N1. #
• Hint for Scrivener users: create all cover/bid letters in one "project" so they are all in one place for easy review/reuse the next time. #

High Speed, Emphasis On “Speed”
I’ve been following news about the boat crash that injured Montana’s U.S. Representative Denny Rehberg and-I think it’s fair to say-almost killed Dustin Frost, his chief of staff, late last week.

If it turns out to be true that Montana state Senator Greg Barkus was operating the boat at speeds of about 40 miles per hour just before the crash, there’s no question that recklessness was involved. I’m not sure if that kind of recklessness is, by itself, legally actionable, but anyone driving a boat that fast at night clearly cares more about the wind in his hair on his scalp than he does about, say, the possibility of meeting unexpectedly with a submerged log and the potential resulting effects of extreme deceleration on his passengers.

In this case, drunk operation is an easy conclusion to leap to, and not just because I’ve never known anyone who doesn’t drink while boating: the fact that the accident in question resulted from colliding-not with a hard-to-see log-but with a cliff strongly suggests that Senator Barkus did not have all of his wits about him.

We’ll have to wait and see, though, because-and here’s what motivated me to open up ScribeFire and post about this-it could apparently take as long as two months for the state crime lab to determine what Senator Barkus’s blood-alcohol content was that night.

From today’s Missoulian:

“Dave McAlpin, director of the crime lab, has said he hopes to return BAC results within 30 days, but Wingert warned that “our timeline, typically, is two months on something like this from the crime lab.”

He said he would not be surprised if results weren’t available until early November, given the lab’s considerable backlog of cases.”

I don’t mean to bash the crime lab here. Still, it was obvious from the start that there was going to be strong local and even some national interest in this investigation’s outcome. Given that, I’m surprised that McAlpin doesn’t prefer to go public saying something like “we’ll have those results in 72 hours,” as opposed to being quoted repeatedly in the newspaper explaining how slowly his lab works. I mean, the people on those CSI shows solve whole murders in under an hour.

I kid, of course. To be fair, McAlpin is also a state senator, so he has to send the testing out to a private lab to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. And, if there is a backlog, there’s no good reason this case should get to jump to the front of the line-speaking of ethical concerns, I suppose it might look like McAlpin were hiding something if that happened.

Still, I wonder what really goes into testing a vial of blood for BAC? Seems to this lay person that it couldn’t take more than a few minutes, certainly not more than a day. And that, in turn, leads to the question that Amy asked as we read this news over breakfast this morning: “Just how much crime does Montana have?” As ex-Baltimoreans, we’re thinking “not much,” relatively speaking. But then again, it’s not like they really actually solve very many crimes back there.

High Speed, Emphasis on “High”
In other crime news, a $12,000 pot deal gone wrong apparently led to a car pickup chase down Broadway Thursday afternoon, one truck repeatedly ramming the other until one of them had the misfortune to roll over within sight of a Missoula County sheriff’s deputy. I note with approval that the subsequent arrest and seizure of drugs, cash, and a gun proceeded under a search warrant, which certainly seems like more caution than a court would have thought required under the circumstances.

Bonus: Misbehaving Clergy News
Meanwhile, a former area pastor has been arrested in a prostitution sting. It must be so rough on these guys, having to be held to the same standards they demand of everyone else. And I wonder what he thought he was going to get for $60, other than ill?

On Thursday’s Diane Rehm Show, guest host Susan Page interviewed David Helvarg, author of the new book Rescue Warriors: The U.S. Coast Guard, America’s Forgotten Heroes.

This former Coastie found the interview fascinating for all sorts of reasons. For one thing, I was tickled to learn that I spent four years as a “rescue warrior,” although I don’t think I’ll try to drop that title into conversation the next time someone asks me I assume someone wants to hear about that time.

On a grimmer note, I was saddened to learn that-on September 11, 2001-two Coast Guard helicopters out of Massachusetts were preparing to attempt rescues from the roof of the World Trade Center’s North Tower when-according to Helvarg-they were advised that doing so would risk being shot down by Air Force fighters.

That was a chaotic day, and I understand why on-scene commanders would feel it necessary to close that airspace with extreme prejudice. What if they hadn’t done so, and another errant jetliner had plowed into the Empire State Building?

Still, given that a Coast Guard-organized boat lift ended up evacuating about 500,000 people from the south tip of Manhattan that day, I must say I’m prouder to be associated with the federal branch of service that was prepared to take effective action, instead of the branch of service that, we can see in retrospect, arguably increased the total death toll, if only by the handful of people that those helicopters might have been able to pull off of that roof.

Before anyone jumps on me for bashing the Air Force, I suggest they read this article detailing the utterly ineffectual response on 9/11 of the only military branch specifically tasked with protecting this country from an airborne threat. You’ll learn that, while planes were plowing into buildings up and down the east coast, the Air Force planes scrambled in response were racing out over the Atlantic Ocean, so little had their training prepared them for the concept of anything but inbound bombers from overseas. (Come to think of it, do we even need an Air Force anymore?)

Along these same lines, Elaine Scarry’s 2002 article in the Boston Review, “Citizenship in an Emergency,” is a must read. She makes the point that, when it comes right down to it, the only effective defense of the nation mounted on that terrible September day was the attempted re-taking of Flight 93 by a band of incredibly brave passengers, the mere thought of whom gives me chills to this day. Writes Scarry:

“When the plane that hit the Pentagon and the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania are looked at side by side, they reveal two different conceptions of national defense: one model is authoritarian, centralized, top down; the other, operating in a civil frame, is distributed and egalitarian. Should anything be inferred from the fact that the first form of defense failed and the second succeeded?”

Given this line of criticism, it’s especially disturbing that we continue to see the metastasis of the federal police state, military mission creep into civil defense and law enforcement, and the devolution of much of the electorate into a panicked “whatever it takes, just keep me safe” voting block, when there’s evidence to suggest that centralized authority doesn’t have much ability to actually keep us safe from very much at all.

That’s why I’m glad to hear this kind of thing (in a recent article in The Atlantic) from Craig Fugate, the newly appointed administrator of FEMA:

“We need to change behavior in this country,” [Fugate] told about 400 emergency-management instructors at a conference in June, lambasting the “government-centric” approach to disasters. He learned a perverse lesson in Florida: the more the federal government does in routine emergencies, the greater the odds of catastrophic failure in a big disaster…. We tend to look at the public as a liability. [But] who is going to be the fastest responder when your house falls on your head? Your neighbor.”

I hope we can all internalize the only really usable lesson from 9/11: average citizens are capable of amazing things, even if armed with little more than cell phones and coffee pots full of boiling water.

If catastrophe strikes, have you given any thought to what you will do-after seeing to your family’s safety-to help your neighbors and your community during those crucial first 72 hours before centralized help is likely to arrive? How well do you know your neighbors? Who on your block will need what kind of help? What skills and tools do you have? What do you know how to do? Depending on the nature of the emergency, there may be a need for everything from strong backs to messengers to someone keeping tallies on an improvised chalkboard. It’s worth thinking about, and it’s worth talking to your neighbors about.

That said, I hope the chronically under-funded Coast Guard continues to get what it needs. If a catastrophe ever strikes in my vicinity, and representatives of the federal government arrive, I hope it will be in a helicopter painted international orange. (Hm, maybe I should move closer to a large body of water.)

Growing up, I didn’t eat a lot of eggs. They were an occasional special meal on weekends, as I recall, but that was in the 1980s, when everyone thought that eating eggs on a regular basis was about as healthy as eating broken glass.

I remember first developing an appetite for eggs as a result of all of the “Early Riser” egg sandwiches I bought on meal exchange in Bard College’s coffee shop, after, well, rising too late for the dining-hall breakfast service. It was during a weekend home from school when my father saw me cooking myself eggs for a sandwich and remarked as to how he didn’t even know I particularly liked eggs. Well, I was starting to, and it was a romance that would only strengthen as time went on.

The eggs on those sandwiches were generally “over, hard” in kitchen parlance, a good way to ease into egg eating but one that didn’t remain all that appealing to me. Eventually, I became mostly a scrambled man.

I never put much thought into how I scrambled my eggs. I just beat them up in a bowl with a little milk, as a girlfriend taught me to do in my early 20s. Then I just poured them in a pan, usually greased with (shudder) Pam cooking spray, and stirred them around until they looked cooked enough to eat.

It turns out I had to move all the way to Montana to learn how to cook scrambled eggs, from Ari LeVaux, who writes the Flash in the Pan column for the local independent weekly paper. I enjoy reading Ari’s column even though I don’t really cook: he always has hints for (to me) exotic stuff like elk sausage, which I like reading about because it reminds me what a strange new place I live in. I have yet to attend a barbecue in Missoula where someone hasn’t broken out something they killed themselves, so it’s always a taste adventure, but also I have yet to shoot anything myself (well, other than some ponderosas with the bad luck to be standing behind my target), so Ari’s kind of cooking tends to be mostly a spectator sport for me.

So you can imagine my excitement when a recent column of Ari’s included a recipe for something I cook all the time, scrambled eggs. Says Ari:

“My favorite way to cook good eggs is the minimal scramble. Heat a medium-sized pan with 2 tablespoons olive oil and beat your desired quantity of eggs in a bowl with salt and pepper. When the pan is hot, but before the oil starts to smoke, add your eggs. Watch them spread out flat and sputter. Wait 15 seconds, until the edges start to cook. Then stir it minimally with a spatula, just to make sure there’s no sticking. Wait 10 seconds and do it again. Then kill the heat, stir it one more time, and let the remaining pan heat finish the job.”

As someone whose scrambled eggs often remain on the heat for ten or more minutes, I was dubious, but after a couple of tries at Ari’s approach, I’ll never go back. The “minimal scramble,” as he calls it, results in scrambled eggs that are more like, I don’t know, cuisine, as opposed to simple filler food that gets whipped up out of habit. Ari’s eggs turn out a pale tannish-yellow color, look great on the plate, and taste fantastic. In the past, if we were having a brunch and I wanted to impress with something egg related, I always went with omelets. Now, I’m looking forward to laying some of these eggs on people.

Speaking of laying eggs, Ari’s whole point in recommending this method was in response to a reader’s question about the best way to enjoy the fresh eggs her backyard chickens lay. I have yet to try this method with fresh eggs, but a neighbor put a coop in this summer and the hens should be laying any day now, so I hope I’ll get the chance soon.

Here’s a charming video in which Ari demonstrates his method:

A recent New Yorker article (behind a pay wall, drat the luck) about the life, times, and uncertain fate of Governor’s Island offered this charming summary of the place’s history:

Benjamin Franklin’s nephew oversaw design of a fort. John Peter Zenger, the first American champion of freedom of the press, had, as a German immigrant, been quarantined here. Wilbur Wright took off and landed here for the first airplane flight over water in the U.S. The Smothers Brothers were born in the island’s hospital. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev held a summit in 1988 in the Admiral’s House. The Burger King was the only one in America that served beer.

Governor’s Island would be 150 acres of prime Manhattan real estate if it weren’t cut off from the tip of that larger island by a significant stretch of open water. From 1966 until 2003, it was used as a base by the U.S Coast Guard, an organization with which I have more than a passing familiarity.

The first time I ever heard of the island was in 1995, while I was at the Coast Guard Training Center in Cape May, New Jersey-in boot camp, in other words. We were nearing graduation, and I was sitting through a class on how to fill out our “wish lists,” the form on which we would tell the Coast Guard where we hoped to be stationed next.

The instructor drew our attention to a section of the form where we could enter the two places where-even if the Guard couldn’t give us one of our first choices-we absolutely didn’t want to be stationed.

“I’m not telling you what to put there,” he said, “but I always put the same two places: headquarters, and Governor’s Island.”

I followed his advice. As it turned out, I didn’t get sent to headquarters or to Governor’s Island, but neither did I get my first choice, one of the 400-foot icebreakers that cleared the Northern Passage each year and then took a slow southerly ride home, calling in ports from Tokyo to McMurdo Station. Instead, I ended up on a 378-footer out of Seattle, which took me south to Samoa and north to the Arctic Circle. Close enough, and I have no complaints now.

But what if I had lived for a couple of years on an island off the tip of Manhattan? I’ve always been fascinated by New York City-what a way that would have been to experience the Big Apple. I’ve fantasized about it from time to time: looking out my barracks window at the lights of the greatest city on earth, racing to catch the last ferry back on a Saturday night, watching the ships go by. Since it’s a place that’s always been a trigger for my imagination, I’m kind of glad to hear that its fate is still al little unsettled.

• Feller bunchers, grapple skidders, and stroke delimbers. #
• Boarding a Cesna 210. #
• Sardines and rum. #
• LIstening to the Michael Steele interview on NPR this morning, I am so glad he is the RNC chairman. #
• We’re going to need a bigger boat. #
• Preparing for my first junket. #
• inflating my stability ball #
• Might need to borrow some fishing equipment “suitable for small water.” #
• Exploring tools for storing links + notes (for later blogging). Liking Publish2 and ScribeFire. Any other recommendations? #