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This vista is along the road to Garnet ghost town in the Garnet Mountain Range east of Missoula. The jagged peaks in the distance are the east side of the Mission Mountains; I believe the valley is the Greenough area. Pretty, huh? I'd like to live down there, or somewhere like it -- farther away from the city.

It's been cold these past few days. Like cold as in the 50s and 60s. I'm not ready for fall yet. Summer barely started two months ago. The mice have all been moving back into the cabin, and I suspect they're more reliable forecasters than the Farmer's Almanac. Tango and Luna have been busy scouting out the little critters, who like to hang out under the fridge and stove, as well as in the attic and ceiling insulation where the cats can't get at them. Ugh.

As I write, the coyotes just started up, their odd yipping a lovely midnight chorus. As long as my kitties are inside, anyway. I tend to think the howls are celebrating a kill -- probably just rabbits and mice, but it is always a possibility with the cats. We've been lucky so far. Tango and Luna are pretty "street-smart," I think.

Not much new and interesting to blog about. I'm trying to focus on hustling up more and better-paying freelance assignments. They seem to come in clusters. Some weeks I have almost more work than I can handle; others, nothing. It's been slow the last week or two and it's making me nervous. My retirement savings is dwindling. I have money coming in, but not enough. I think it's interesting that right after I quit my nice, secure job to become a freelance writer, the economy tanked. Timing.

Oh, well. I just need to be more aggressive about pursuing work. Got any?

posted by Patia  12:22 AM 3 Comments

This little miner's shack is in better condition than most of the structures at Coloma, a former mining town in the Garnet Range east of Missoula. Coloma is smaller and less developed than the neighboring ghost town of Garnet, a few miles away.

Both towns were populated from the 1890s to the 1920s or so with gold-seekers. The surrounding countryside is dotted with sunken mineshafts. Garnet is a popular tourist destination, with its fancy hotel and general store, a visitor center and continuing preservation efforts. Both Garnet and Coloma are authentic windows into Montana's past.

More photos in my Ghost Towns set on Flickr.

posted by Patia  11:58 PM 5 Comments

This past week, McCain and Obama were asked what constitutes "rich." Obama said, "If you are making more than $250,000, then you are in the top 3, 4 percent of this country...You are doing well." McCain answered, "I think if you're just talking about income, how about $5 million?"

Via a MoveOn.org email.

posted by Patia  11:36 PM 4 Comments

My Ferris wheel picture is the featured photo on New West today.

Hooray!

posted by Patia  7:32 PM 6 Comments

Chickens are my favorite exhibit at the fair.

posted by Patia  2:29 AM 12 Comments

The title refers to my thoughts, which have been a little scattered. I may have mentioned before that I'm pretty sure I have Internet-induced ADD. Lately I find myself thinking in one-sentence status updates, a la Twitter and Facebook. "Patia ... is craving a chocolate-dipped vanilla ice cream cone." "Patia ... is anxiously awaiting Barack Obama's text message announcing his VP pick." "Patia ... really misses Tony Soprano."

I try to limit myself to one or two status updates a day, and I try to make them interesting. Picturesque, if not profound. Some people, though, tweet the minutiae of their lives all day long. Just today, one of the people I'm following tweeted about getting her period, another about her lunch giving her bad breath, another about killing a fly. I myself tweeted about the mouse hiding out under my stove.

What do you think? Is all this twittering TMI? Are we just a bunch of narcissists? Or is there some kind of sociocultural significance to compulsively telling the world what we're doing?

"Patia ... is alive! Hey everybody, look at me! I exist!"


After encouragement from a few sources, I decided to put a personal ad on Craig's List. It's been three days and I've almost stopped cringing in anticipation of weirdos. I've received two responses -- one from a guy who sounds nice and may have potential, the other from someone who said he doesn't like computers and I should text message him. Um, I don't think so.


I am still sore from floating the Clark Fork River on Sunday. Attempting to get on my inner tube in about two feet of water, I managed to flip over and hit my head hard on a rock on the bottom of the river. It was at that moment that I had the thought, "Oh. So this is how people die floating the river." The back of my head is still tender and my neck is stiff. Apparently I also hit the bone in my forearm, because that hurts, too. Wah.


I'm glad to hear that Montana catchphrase, "The Last Best Place," will likely be protected from the copyright efforts of one David Lipson and any others looking to turn a profit off a concept that belongs to all of us. Thank you, Sen. Max Baucus and former Sen. Conrad Burns, for your efforts on this issue.


Montucky recently posted a simple but powerful photo essay, "The words and the reality," about what Plum Creek Timber says and what it does. An interesting comments thread follows, too.


Now that the hubbub over my Hooters essay on New West has died down (or been shut down), I'm left with a couple of thoughts:

1. I'm pretty sure I would have gotten the same nasty comments had I written anything other than, "OMG! I love Hooters!" (Or as Sutton Stokes put it, "OMG I <3 h00terz!!!!"

1. It's a good thing I wrote a light, fluffy post instead of the hard-hitting cultural analysis I'd been contemplating. Seriously.

1. For those who didn't catch the subtlety, what I was trying to convey was my discomfort and ambivalence as a woman who has never been able to conform to the cute, thin, busty feminine ideal that Hooters and our culture idealizes. I'm not anti-men, anti-beauty, anti-sex or even necessarily anti-selling-sex, but I suppose I am anti-rigid-beauty-standards.

1. I've been around the Internet long enough that I've learned not to get too worked up over the creeps and trolls. Mean, hateful or otherwise incendiary comments -- usually anonymous, of course -- have little credibility and no integrity, as far as I'm concerned.

1. The two jerks who commented were well outnumbered by friendly commenters, a statistic that I think holds true on most of the Internet, if not the world. What do you think, is the creep-to-rational-person ratio about 1:5 on the Internet, 1:20 in the real world?

Thank you to everyone who sent kind words via comments, email and otherwise. (And to Rebecca for taking me as her guest!)

posted by Patia  12:14 AM 11 Comments

posted by Patia  1:29 AM 2 Comments

In the last week or so, I've discovered that I haven't received many of the emails sent to my cowgrrrl @ bloglines.com email addresses. I've decided to switch to a more reliable strategy of disposable (anti-spam) email addresses using Gmail and my domain.

If you have sent anything to any of my Bloglines email addresses, please resend to webcomments@patiastephens.com.

posted by Patia  4:29 PM 2 Comments

posted by Patia  2:39 AM 1 Comments