Searching

Today is a strange day, and to keep my mind occupied from the things it would rather not occupy itself with I'm thinking about Jimmy Buffet. Not so much the man, but that fictional character that many of us think we now and sometimes rely on for advice in times of questions without answers and wrestling without an opponent.

I've been thinking about Parrot Heads and Margarittaville and the party that is the Jimmy Buffet franchise, and thinking how different that is than how I think about my first Jimmy Buffet record (yes record, my Dad still has it). When I discovered Jimmy I had yet to taste a Margaritta, but there was some deeper longing for meaning that I could tap into, and as I have gotten older songs like "A Pirate Looks at Forty," and "Tin Cup Chalice" seem to speak even more clearly to me about what I'm still looking for. I don't have any desire to go have a cheeseburger in paradise or drink margaritta's until I can't remember the questions, but I'd like to sit down with Jimmy, at least the fictional one in my head and ask him what he meant when he wrote or sang some of that stuff. The parrothead franchise doesn't appeal to me, but their is something deeper that does.

As I was thinking about this I'm going to make a quantum leap and say the same is true with Christianity for me these days. I still love going to church, still love to hear about Christ. But there is a franchise nature to it that makes me want to run away and hide or worse. Like wanting to find out who Jimmy was when he was hanging out in Livingston, Montana (not Texas as has been reported) I want to read my Bible and find Jesus that was hanging out with real people. Yes, as the story of Simeon shows Jesus was God from the time he was a baby, but somehow like Jimmy Buffet in the mass marketing of it all I think we have it wrong.

Three and 0, 0 and 3

Just an update on the team that we are 3-0, but the varsity is 0-3 which is probably more important. We play 5 games in the next 8 days, and as of this weekend they promoted my best players, so I'm guessing my perfect season is in trouble, but I'd rather see the varsity get over the hill at this point than to win 9th grade games.

Interesting ideas kicked around on Sunday between church and our small group. Basically, it all came down to a challenge that to live fully as Christ would have us live we must live boldly and follow where many others may not go. Part of it came through the story of the wise men in a sermon, and part of came out of John Ortberg's, "If You Want to Walk on Water You Have to Get Out of the Boat" DVD that we discussed in small group. Somewhere in there I kept getting the message that I'm currently out of my boat, but where God wants me to be, and fighting against it sucks the joy out of what he is doing in my life. Lots of other related thoughts.

Christmas is really kicking up. Seems to bring about so many emotions in people and things for me can pretty high and low which I don't think is uncommon. I'm sending out prayers that the highs would be real, we would count our blessings in the low spots, and get an unexpected call from a friend when the lows get too low.

One and O

The Watertown Mayer Basketball 9th Grade Girls basketball team is now 1-0, which surpasses my win total for last year before Christmas by 100%. Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with coaching, I have a phenom 7th grader who turns broken plays into 3 pointers.

In other basketball news the 5th grade girls are 1 and 1 after two games this weekend. The middle daughter went 0-1 from the field but is showing some improvement and is a lot of fun to watch.

The 8th grade boys play only once before Christmas and a dance scheduling conflict looms large in possibly changing the date of the game. Priorities - it's good to have them when they are convenient.

Also, got some time with great friends on Saturday. It's great when God provides some unexpected moments with people we care about.

Cat vs Griz and other nonsense

I'll admit that I love to terrorize my niece by pretending to big the world's biggest Grizzly fan, but the bottom line is I just don't give it that much thought. Once you move out of state if either school does well good for them. For instance I was in Dickinson, North Dakota over the Thanksgiving weekend and it was fun to watch UM Western hand it to Dickinson State.

However, I've been watching some of the posts on the Cat-Griz rivalry on the Billings Gazette website and some of these people are nuts. They have way too much time and energy wrapped up in finding denigrating ways to refer to one school or the other.

By the way, am I the only one who thinks it is interesting that Myles Brand can keep a straight face while testifying before Congress that the NCAA should remain tax exempt. If I had a few extra million dollars I'd take a run at creating a new league. The NCAA is simply a big business monopoly. It may not be all bad, but let's go ahead and call it what it is. It may even be the lesser of several evils, but it comes with it's own problems.

Then again, I may be just having a cynical day but it is kind of ironic that Dr. Brand is talking about how it is really for the good of the athletes in front of a body that says it is really for the good of the "people". I have a hard time believing that either one of those things is true anymore.

Long time no blog

The real estate market in Minnesota would be picking up based on the very small evidence I have. This week two houses were sold by friends who had moved on to different jobs in different states. We are still praying that a few more friends can sell.

I've been thinking a lot lately again about what I want to be when I grow up. It seems that I've never shaken this idea that stories are what really matter. I watch modern America and the world and I wonder if we haven't lost the power of stories. Someone made the point in an article recently that we should take some lessons from the "Left Behind" series even if the theology is tragically flawed. The story brought people in and captured imaginations. Over the course of the past few months I have seen two of my kids devour "Eragon" and other books because they are still captured by the story in print. Not sure what that means, but interested.

Happy Thanksgiving

Just a quick note because I wanted to post this week before Thanksgiving. A lot to be thankful for in recent days. Apparently through no fault or effort of my own I'm raising a "boy genius". We had parent teacher conferences this week and both the girls and the boy are doing really well in school. What's even better to hear as a father is that Cole's teachers really seem to enjoy him as a person.

This week we are headed back to Dickinson for a few days. It's strange to think that three or four years ago we thought we needed at least a week to travel that far and now we are willing to travel seven hours and it is almost a day trip.

Bait and switch

In today's Billings Gazette there was an article stating that Jon Tester did not get the seat on the appropriations committee he was promised. I'm sure somewhere in the fine print of that promise was the word eventually or someday get on the appropriations committee, but that didn't make the headlines when it was promised. It seems like the Democrats succesfully undermined one of Burns main selling points without having to really mean it. Would the Republicans have done the same - absolutely, but it just further shows that their doesn't seem to be a lot of room left for good guys in politics.

Also, it does make a difference. There are things that happen in committee that don't happen anywhere else, and although Max will keep the dollars flowing somebody just turned down the spigot considerably.

Election

If this blog is my practice session for becoming a pundit, today is pretty big mea culpa. I really did think Conrad Burns would win in Montana. Not that I'm a huge fan (though he is the lesser of two evils) I just thought at some point things would swing back that direction.

One of the things that struck me as I listened to rhetoric out here last night was how little was being said. A freshman Senator from Minnesota more or less promised to lower taxes on the middle class, make healthcare affordable, get troops out of Iraq, and make the world safer within five minutes of being elected. Of course, she can't do those things and their is no real plan, but as people we may have gotten to the place where the world is just too complex and the promise of a better way is enough.

I was actually a little disappointed when I went to the polls I didn't know more. In two years when I get the chance to do it again I hope I don't make the same mistake.

Winter coming

Since my last post was a little darker, I thought I'd take a moment today and ramble on about the fact that I don't think you can truly get to know Minnesota, particularly Minnesota natives until their is a little bit of winter in the air. Sure, Minnesota looks like a fun place to live with cool things to do in Minneapolis and all the lakes during the summer - but just wait until the four months of big freeze.

I notice the natives are starting to get a little gleam in their eye. They seem to know that those of us not from here are about to start complaining real complaints about not being able to feel limbs. Don't get me wrong, native Minnesotans complain too, but they seem to do it with a kind of glee, like complaining about having too much fun. Most Minnesota natives are much to passive aggresive to express their real joy that the frozen dark has once again returned to the land - and the rest of us are miserable.

Worlds

I was driving home the other night on a less than stellar day at work thinking about what it means about me as a person that I can understand (or pretend to understand) both the Indigo Girls and the Pauline epistles. I don't understand either well, but I know that I have heard some truth, that is something that is real in both. Paul Simon and the Apostle Paul are both pretty clever lyric writers, though I do not lose sight of the fact that the Apostle Paul was talking about a new level of truth, the level of truth that came in the man Jesus.

What I'm continuing to try to put together in my 30's in the worlds that I live in and I have lived in. As stated, I still don't like losing, I'm a conservative in the world and a radical in my workplace, and I'm looking for the capital G - God and the capital T - truth and the more I am part of the "Christian" subculture I'm not sure there aren't better places to find those things. Authenticity is part of what I've been thinking about but it is more than that.

Part the problem is as you get older the yuck just gets harder. Within the last week we have heard from family and friends about some people that are really struggling. Divorce, crime, etc. take a toll on those around us, but we let days slip by without reaching out and asking for forgiveness, a hand up, or just to let somebody close know we love them.

I have spent the better part of a couple of days being really angry about a work situation. Am I right, I don't know. Chances are somewhere between my point of view and anothers is the truth, but the bottom line is that I don't want to waste my time feeling that way.

This is my most personal post, and for both of the people that might read this I'm not sure this is a nerve that is more raw than should be exposed, but I think it's worth getting out of my head.

I can't quite figure out how to be 33, but I know I have been blessed beyond what I can ask or imagine.

Visionary or Maybe not

Having one of those days where I can't figure out if I'm an misunderstood visionary or full or crap. If you were to take a vote I'm guessing I don't want to know the results, though feel free to vote by comments.

Professionally, I think I have some idea of where we need to go and I'd like to at least participate in a discussion. But right now we are at a place where everybody is staking out their territory, and gorging themselves on a pie that is much too small. There isn't a clear sense of vision or something greater than us that drives us to excellence or even points of agreement. Having said that, maybe I'm just wrong.

A few more items of note. One is that I can't quite figure out why, but I still like winning. I've started playing noon ball pretty regularly again and I can't figure out exactly why but I always like winning better than losing. No one, absolutely no one in their right mind would care about noon ball - yet?

Also, it's always nice to hear of people from the past that are doing well. In recent days a guy who lived on my dorm floor was named to the staff of a CBA which is pretty cool, and I have run into someone else via email that I was happy to hear is doing well. Makes me think about the lost generation that I'm a part of, somewhere between the baby boom and boomlet known currently as Millenials. But I'm not sure what it makes me think.

Very wrong

O.K. so I was very wrong. Conrad Burns is likely going down in a fairly large fireball of glory. My wisdom of a month ago about the political bent of Montana was largely for lack of a more creative phrase - a bunch of crap.

I'm not sure how that magic weekend known as MEA has come, but it has. In both Montana and Minnesota it happens to fall on the same days so it seems like the world has off work, when actually I still have to come in tomorrow.

A programming note - Steven Wright is back and has an upcoming special on Comedy Central. This guy used to be hilarious and from a recent NY Times article still seems to have it. One of my favorite one-liners of his is, "What's another word for a theasaurus." If you see it on, stop and watch I hope he's still worth it.

Montana writers - best and worst

On Monday of this week Bill Foley of the Montana Standard in Butte wrote a relatively decent journalistic piece. Today, however he's back to sheer and utter nonsense with a lot of reliance on the word, "sucks".

I realize I'm getting somewhat older, but one things that seems to be standing out to me right now is that we have somehow lost the ability to write. I'm the pot calling the kettle black, because rarely do I take the time and discipline myself to plan and rewrite like I should. I've been reading novels again lately, and I'm struck that good writing doesn't just show up on the page. I'm reading newer Larry McMurtry and just finished a great book by Annie Prouloux. The writing is great in both, though McMurtry has gotten a little weird with age.

All of this is kind of a diversion right now, but of all the things on my mind this seemed to be the only thing that I felt like writing about.

Strange days

We are still waiting to hear from Montana, but for now it seems as though my grandfather is doing well. Hard to know what that means, but for now living with a little mystery is probably better than the alternative.

As a quick political note, the NY Times Magazine ran a piece on Governor Schweitzer this weekend. It is a site that requires you to register, but well worth the registration. It is amazing to me how people characterize Montana. A lot of things in the article don't say much about the Montana I know, but maybe I have it wrong. One of the things that jumped out at me was that Gov. Schweitzer better be careful not to believe his own press. Ever since Mike Mansfield left Washington there has been a long line of would-be national figures from Montana, most recenlty on the Republican side of the aisle in Marc Racicot, another Governor beloved as much in the beltway as within the confines of Helena. I will admit Racicot is a national figure now, but the electoral system and a variety of factors will probably always make Montana political figures interesting circus acts as political pundits fill air time waiting for the real candidates.

Another less than interesting note about Montana in the news today was that the Sports Illustrated's website named the hazing incident in Montana as its daily "Sign of the Apocalypse". Less embarrasing to the state than the article I read today about Wisconsin's marching band, but overall not a good sign.

Overall, it's windy, it's cold and I'm looking forward to a Friday night watching "Lost" on tape. If I survive the after work run.

Looking for better days

The posts are likely to get kind of random for the next week or so. We will be taking and unscheduled trip back to Montana for my grandfather's funeral. He is currently in the hospital, but not expected to make it. He has had a long battle with cancer and we incredibly sad but thankful for the time he got. He seemed to have defied the odds and predictions a number of times.

It is times like this when I understand a little bit of the high cost of being an expatriated Montanan. So many of things that are close to the heart are within a 200 mile radius of Bozeman, Montana.

This is the big one

Here is a more recent photo of the kids.

One of my memories of old TV is Red Sanford grabbing his chest and saying "This could be the big one," whenever he needed to fake a heart attack to get out of something. Tonight, I try and become a runner, and as Red used to say, "This could be the big one."

My wife now runs five miles with relative ease, and she will be my partner, so I'm pretty much figuring that I'm done for. The good news is that it is 60 degrees and about perfect here. Also, on Friday we will be hosting about 10-20 junior and senior high kids in our house for something the church calls "hang time". It could be an adventure.

The Gift of Free

Sometimes you just get lucky. Yesterday I sat seven rows back just outside the left field foul pole and watched the Twins play the A’s in the first round of the playoffs. It was simply great atmosphere. The Twins ended up losing, but not a fan moved until the final out. The tickets were free, the dome dog for lunch was free, parking was free – all in all further proof that God gives us much more than we deserve.

Speaking of the gift of free, the family is looking forward to a Minnesota Symphony Concert on October 15. It will be great to take the kids to their first symphony concert at a concert designed specifically to introduce kids to the symphony. Should be fun.

There was another story today about the Pat Davison case in the Billings Gazette. I’m a little surprised how sad the whole story makes me. I only know one of Pat’s accuser’s and I think part of me is struck by the fact that I always thought of Pat as a pretty decent guy and at least one of the parties accusing him is not somebody I would choose to ride an elevator with if I could avoid it. Part of me keeps remembering talking to Pat in his office with the picture of the Pope in the background. The personal toll and side of this story will likely not be told, but I would guess that it is a fascinating and sad story of misguided ambition and a lot of small unethical decisions that led to a pretty big fall.

Picture experiment

I've decided that blogging is a little like talking to myself, only harder on my fingers. However, those wacky college kids I work with (for) seem to think it's all the rage so I will continue the experiment and try to figure out how to harness the power for good.

Part of the experiment is figuring out pictures, so I am going to attempt my first picture insert here:

Fabulous. On an entirely unrelated thought if you haven't checked out Flickr at flickr.com it is a pretty fascinating photo posting site. It's fun to put in stuff like "Deer Lodge, Montana" and do a search because you end up with pretty wacky stuff. Also fun because my friend Phil has a picture from my wedding which seems weird, but the rest of his phots show how a guy can go a long, long ways from Deer Lodge, Montana to sailing outings on the east coast.

Fall is great

I can't believe how nice the fall is in Minnesota. No knock on Montana, because I'm sure it is great there too right now but the sheer beauty that comes out in these days almost makes living in the great midwest worth it. Tonight we get to drive out to a small park on a lake and watch my son run cross country, and there are a lot of goods things about that, but just the trees and all make it pretty spectacular.

Also, as a note to self I'm realizing that I'm a poor political and personal prognosticator. Conrad Burns most recent ad was featured on You Tube. I think he may in fact be in political decline, the folks particularly in Bozeman better consider the giant sucking sound of federal dollars going somewhere else - because they don't give that kind of money to guys with flat tops.

Best times?

As I was waking up my kindergartener this morning I realized that this might be the best time in my life. O.K., so having said that there are a lot of things that aren't really right. I have a career that feels like I made a critical mistep somewhere along the way, financially things are shaky at best, and everyday part of my brain is dedicated to wondering how my granfather's health is. But, as I look at the ages of my kids and what they have going on I get the sense that they just don't get much more enjoyable than this. So far I don't have to worry about dating, cars, or too many other evils out there and I get to spend a lot of time with all of them. (The upside or blessing of bad career choices maybe?) They still think I'm pretty O.K., they laugh at my jokes, yet they can all make themselves cereal and more or less pick out their clothes for school in the morning.

All in all, I'm realizing that though there are many storms in life, I'm lucky to have both my immediate and extended family.

Organizational yuck

A guy by the name of Marc Cohen had an album during my high school years and in a song he said, "My friends will ask me how I'm doin, and I can't lie to em', not feeling fine today."

I seem to be trapped in a organization where I am supposedly a "communication expert" who is consistently miscommunicating. Here we don't discuss or dialogue, there are just directives and middle management is supposed to jump. In the end, that may be the definition of middle management, but I know that for the effective organization there is something more. In the effective organization there is a moment where communication is co-creation and everyone contributes to an idea and it becomes great.

Somehow the image of a garden just came to me. If I water, somebody else plants, somebody else weeds, somebody fertilizes, etc. then in the end we can have a pretty good garden. My image of the current professional garden I am in is that we are each busy trying to care for our one seed, each trying to grab the hose or the fertilizer or the rake and when the harvest time comes we are going to find that we will starve because we are each harvesting one small kernel where there could have been an abundant harvest.

School Daze

After spending the weekend with 194,000 of our closest friends at the Minnesota State Fair labor day has passed and the kids are all in school. It's a weird year because for the first time we have no kids at home or daycare during the day. I'm not old enough to have three kids in school is one of my issues, but there are many others. One thing is that school seems to be the place where every fall both my kids and my money go. The good news is that the kids are doing well. The youngest couldn't wait for us to leave her at kindergarten. The middle is a big middle schooler and feeling the joy of being a big kid, and the oldest kicked off his first day of school by placing 14th at a cross country meet. He is running a mile in under 7 minutes which may not seem that impressive unless you have seen his father run.

Fall is a great time in Minnesota, and it's actually a pretty long season here. It's not as long as winter, but then again nothing is.

By the way - alligator tastes like chicken.

State Fair and Free Stuff

This weekend my family and I get the opportunity to attend the "Great Minnesota Get Together", otherwise known as the State Fair for free. Well, somewhat free. My son won tickets which is a great blessing because just getting inside the gate will set a family our size back about $40.00. So this year, we are taking the tactic that we each have a $7.00-$8.00 food budget. The rule is that each person has to buy one thing each that we can share and one thing each that they want to try on their own. My son wants to try fried alligator and the girls are scared that will be the thing he wants to share. Without the free tickets, we just couldn't go so it's a pretty big blessing that we get to go do this.

Having said that, as a stranger in a strange land I accused my wife last night of going native Minnesotan on me when she wanted to put something out in the yard with a "free" sign on it. You see it all over out here, especially in rural areas. It's not uncommon to drive down the road and see an old dresser here and especially baby stuff here or there. Like a good agriculture state, the harvest of free goods seem to peak during the fall as garages need to again accomodate vehicles. Sometimes, the stuff isn't free. Another common site is an older snowmobile or car parked along a farm road with a big red "For Sale" sign purchased for the local hardware. I'm not making a judgement, it's just one of those, "You know you are in Minneosta when. . ." signs.

A friend once talked about having spiritual "gift of free". They just seemed to come into stuff, whether it was cars, movies, vacations, whatever. Who am I to complain, I'm going to take my "free" stuff and run.

Water and sadness

This weekend my family and I got to spend the weekend at a lake in northern Wisconsin. It is the kind of family place with a small cabin, canoes, a dock, and a fire place at night. In short, it was pretty wonderful. That is an experience that nothing in Montana really prepared me well for. In Montana the constant with water is that their is not enough and rarely is there enough to recreate in atleast above the knees. I remember one very long afternoon trying to float the Clark's Fork outside of Deer Lodge that mainly consisted of five or six of us trying to push cheap rubber rafts along the bottom.

I was sad to read this morning that it looks like Pat Davison is having some trouble. The Billingsgazette.com had the story that I read. Not knowing what did or didn't happen I don't want to comment, but Pat was always pretty fair with me. Unfortunately it looks like the combination of money, politics, and friendship are proving once again that they just don't mix.

Memory Lane

In today's Missoulian they had two articles that caught my eye. The first is an interview with the football coach at Missoula Sentinel. I knew Pete many years ago and he has to be the most charismatic person that I have ever met. Pete could pack more into a weekend than was wise, but it was always an adventure. I'm glad to see that he is doing well in Missoula.

The other article was about the Missoula Children's Theater summer performing arts camp. I have a lot of great memories of the people there from the five years I was a part of the program as a camper and as staff but the detail that really brought back the memory was the fact that they duct tape pillows to the low hanging ceiling beams so that performers don't hit their heads. For some reason, that detail in the article absolutely triggered every detail of what it was like in that dining hall to rehearse for three straight hours (or more) while the lake sat outside calling our names. Sometimes the rain has the same effect on me, bringing back the MCT memories of one two week stint when it rained all the time.

My favorite MCT story is when I was the camp director and one of the counselors came to me and told me the story of two girls on the first night. One of them said, "I think you're my best friend." The other replied from the top bunk, "You're my best friend too." To which the first asked, "What's your name again?"

While I remember a lot of names from MCT, the truth is that I don't have contact with anybody (other than my brother) and I suppose that is part of age. At seventeen or twenty one the intensity of emotion is so great that you just can't imagine not knowing these people in the future, but I'm left to wonder how they are, and pray that they are doing well.

On MSNBC.com today they had an interview with Jon Tester. I think this story is a good example of how people outside of Montana don't really get the complexity of the state. This is set up as pretty much a good vs. evil story, and as a communications professional there are plenty of tricks up the sleeves of both campaigns. It is set up as a classic city mouse vs. country mouse story, but ignores the fact that Conrad Burns has been running as the quintessential cowboy outsider in D.C. for more than a decade.

I have visited Conrad at his office in D.C. and I have visited Max and Denny. None of them would know me by name, but I was part of a small delegation and got to see them in action. The bottom line is that Tester can talk about "necessary evils" in his interview but nothing is more necessary in the Senate than seniority and connections and Conrad has them. It would be foolish to tell people who to vote for, I've seen plenty of reasons that if I had the honor of voting in the great state of Montana I wouldn't vote for either of these guys, but if anyone thinks that voting out Conrad won't significantly affect the federal money that flows to the state of Montana they are absolutely kidding themselves. Right, wrong, or indifferent, Conrad has been incredibly effective at getting money for projects in the state, and the evidence would show that he is just now coming into his own. "What if the democrats control the Senate?" It won't matter, Burns will have the bargaining power of being in the minority and even from his minor party status he would be able to direct far more federal dollars than a freshman Senator from a state few people can name and even fewer care about.

Another interesting media question for me is how anxious will Newsweek be to talk with Tester a few weeks into his term. I have enough friends and I've seen enough to know that honeymoons in D.C. often end before they start.

Politics, Tester or Burns

On MAGNIFIES today they had an interview with Jon Tester. I think this story is a good example of how people outside of Montana don't really get the complexity of the state. This is set up as pretty much a good vs. evil story, and as a communications professional there are plenty of tricks up the sleeves of both campaigns. It is set up as a classic city mouse vs. country mouse story, but ignores the fact that Conrad Burns has been running as the quintessential cowboy outsider in D.C. for more than a decade.

I have visited Conrad at his office in D.C. and I have visited Max and Denny. None of them would know me by name, but I was part of a small delegation and got to see them in action. The bottom line is that Tester can talk about "necessary evils" in his interview but nothing is more necessary in the Senate than seniority and connections and Conrad has them. It would be foolish to tell people who to vote for, I've seen plenty of reasons that if I had the honor of voting in the great state of Montana I wouldn't vote for either of these guys, but if anyone thinks that voting out Conrad won't significantly affect the federal money that flows to the state of Montana they are absolutely kidding themselves. Right, wrong, or indifferent, Conrad has been incredibly effective at getting money for projects in the state, and the evidence would show that he is just now coming into his own. "What if the democrats control the Senate?" It won't matter, Burns will have the bargaining power of being in the minority and even from his minor party status he would be able to direct far more federal dollars than a freshman Senator from a state few people can name and even fewer care about.

Another interesting media question for me is how anxious will Newsweek be to talk with Tester a few weeks into his term. I have enough friends and I've seen enough to know that honeymoons in D.C. often end before they start.

Circumstances

This morning as I was doing some devotional reading I came across the idea that God sometimes doesn't want us to change our circumstances, he uses our circumstances to change us. That seemed to be a good thought for the morning and a good thought when so many of the circumstances of life are up in the air, or at least not what I had expected. In talking with a good friend the other day I said something about that fact that none of the changes I expected to happen in May last year have happened yet. Many of the situations I thought would resolve have not, and many other things have simply changed.

On an entirely different, but maybe related note, last night I caught my first bass and it was rather unexpected. I went down with my youngest daughter to a small fishing pond located at the end of our street and basically just threw the line in the water. The bass hit it hard and fought it up all the way to the dock. I don't think I really realized what had happened until I took it off the hook and released it back into the pond.

So the unexpected happens. More often than sometimes I think I would like, but the truth is that sometimes the unexpected is great.

New School

Today, on campus the soccer players have been added to the football players and by the end of the week freshman will start moving into campus. There is something about working at a college that just seems better when the students are around. There is a vitality to the campus when people are here and one of the problems in higher education is that most of our campuses go so unused during the summer months.

The ebb and flow of the higher education life is one thing is a blessing and a curse. This weekend we helped a good friend and a great guy move his family to another college. It is our third day this summer spent as moving help. Unfortunately for faculty and staff at colleges moving is a pretty common occurence. Though we seem to have some kind of unfortunate record with 11 different moves in our (almost) 13 years of marriage, it is not uncommon, but this summer has been particularly hard. I can count between six and seven people that I really respected and cared about that won't be here this year, and it gets harder to muster up the energy to invest in new people.

It makes me wonder about that time when most people never traveled more than a 100 miles from where they were born. I haven't lived within 100 miles of where I was born in over 10 years, and realistically it is probably a lot more before I'm back. And if I could go back - what would I do?

I'm hoping to master pictures soon so I can spice up the blog.

Opening salvo

It is turning fall in the Midwest all of the sudden. After a long two weeks of vacation in Montana where the mountains were big we are back and the fall rain has started. I also know that fall is coming because as I log onto the billingsgazette.net I see fires raging throughout Montana, an annual rite of passage in my short time on this earth.

I'm starting this blog to explore the creation of culture and how a place gets into our hearts along with the people. For my family and I that place is Montana, but right now we are missionaries in Minnesota. Minnesotans don't think they need missionaries but then again I'm not sure there have ever been a people group who thought they needed missionaries.

So, in this blog I hope to explore a lot of things.

I'm hoping to gain a few readers along the way, because as someone said to my yesterday, if you don't have readers, you are really just talking to yourself.