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Three years ago, I wrote a post about the California Street Bridge graffiti wall in Missoula. That brief post engendered a interesting conversation in the comments thread between myself and a couple of local graffiti artists. It was particularly fascinating to me because I was taking an Art Appreciation class at the time. The discussion largely focused on the merits of legal versus illegal graffiti.


I don't pretend to be at all knowledgeable about graffiti or the scene, but my conclusion is that thoughtfully done artistic or message graffiti can be really cool, while thoughtless "tagging" is just stupid and ugly.


I think graffiti artists should respect private property and confine their work to legal walls or ask for permission. (I confess I'm undecided about public places such as trains, freeway overpasses and bathroom walls. Technically, they're privately or collectively owned, but it seems harmless enough.) The California Street Bridge wall is a fantastic, legal outlet for local graffiti. The owner put the metal wall up with a note that said people were welcome to use it as long as it did not degenerate into profanity, racism or hate speech. How cool is that?


Local artist and blogger Marc Moss has written a couple of thoughtful posts about graffiti:

It should make you think.
Street art should be witty in its message (and sometimes subtle).
It should be political.
When possible it should combine all of the above.

The age-old question is: What is art? I've pondered this question a lot over the years, and the conclusion I've come to is that life is art. Life, in all its beauty and ugliness. Life and death, love and hate, nature and urban trash (remember the plastic bag scene in "American Beauty"?), flowers and rotting flesh. It's all art.

I think our challenge as human beings on this planet is to turn the ugly into beauty. Despair into joy. Hate into love. Chaos into purpose.


I believe good art is art that is beautiful or meaningful -- preferably both. Good art should make you feel or think. Graffiti certainly has a place there. From vivid painted murals to scribbled hilarity, it brings a little light, a little spark, into our daily lives.


Tagging, on the other hand, is the modern equivalent of scratching your initials in a school desk -- just an immature expression of ego. "I exist. Pay attention to me."

"Kilroy Was Here," the ubiquitous phrase and illustration popular in my parents' generation, at least added a little humor to the urge to mark one's territory. Even more hilarious is that the linked Wikipedia article speculates that the real Kilroy may have been from Butte, Montana, of all places. Who knew?


Links:

• My Graffiti set on Flickr
• Style Wars (Killer website and documentary history of NY graffiti)
• Echo (Missoula graffiti artist and one of the California Street wall's biggest users)

posted by Patia  3:47 PM 3 Comments

This vista is looking north 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 6 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 6 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 13 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

The Venus of Willendorf is just 4 inches tall but is celebrated for her undeniably curvy, feminine figure. Experts say the statuette dating back to the Paleolithic era is among the world's oldest depictions of a woman.

But exactly what she represents — or who carved her all those thousands of years ago — remains a mystery. Was she a fertility symbol, a lucky charm, a goddess — maybe even a prehistoric piece of pornography?

Austrians fete voluptuous, prehistoric Venus (AP)

posted by Patia  12:48 PM 7 Comments

An essay I wrote for New West, "Hooters in Missoula: More Than a Mouthful, Still Not Quite Enough," just went live.

And I already have my first two nasty comments, hooray!

posted by Patia  12:59 PM 19 Comments

posted by Patia  3:34 AM 3 Comments

I visited the Miracle of America Museum last Thursday with my friend Jen and her boys. It's located on Highway 93 just south of Polson, Montana. I've driven past it a million times, but never made time to stop. I'm glad I finally did.


Jen says it should be called the American Museum of Cr*p, because it's just a big collection of junk. Cool junk, though. The main building houses collections of stuff under glass -- everything from Native American artifacts to old saddles and state highway maps -- and a complete soda fountain counter. Oh, and a stuffed buffalo. A fair amount of space is dedicated to morality, like abstinence and anti-smoking displays, and many reminders of the sacrifices made by our soldiers.


Outside, a jumble of old buildings houses various historic, agricultural and other items. There's a one-room schoolhouse, a gas station and barber shop. I loved the big barn -- and had a strange sense of deja vu in it. Scattered in between all the buildings are rusting cars, trucks, farm equipment and even an alien spaceship.


Definitely worth a visit if you're passing through.


More photos in my Miracle of America Museum set.

posted by Patia  4:50 PM 11 Comments