THE ELEPHANTS' POCKETS

The elephant has pockets.  I’m thinking about Republicans but also about that parable we hear everywhere now, the one about the blind men trying to figure out the beast, each of them finding something different:  a rope, a tree, a fan, a garden hose.    But there are pockets that the blind men’s seeking hands never touch.  Even so small a village as this one is so many different things to different people.

My internet connection has been breaking off every afternoon about 3PM until late in the evening -- maybe 10PM.  It’s not a disaster for me because most of my emailing is first thing in the morning or in the middle of the night.  My writing partners are on the east coast and Europe where the time zones are quite different.  I’ve been hypothesizing that it is congestion caused by the school kids getting online to chat and do homework, but one local person pointed out that the hours also coincided with the east coast closing down their day and transmitted big data loads.  We have a LOT of federal entities in Montana.  We may be getting bumped off at a much higher level than our own backyards. 

I went scouting around only to discover that the rich people here have wireless and the poor people don’t even have computers.  My DSL connector is showing all the wireless people when they go online, as though were were all sitting in Starbucks.  They don’t seem to know or care.  Few were aware that corporate forces have just captured the FCC in their new rules about freedom of the Internet.

Last night I went to the town council meeting, as I always do, and asked to be put on the agenda.  “Oh, no,” said Marie Antoinette, the mayor.  “You have to apply 24 hours ahead in order to be on the agenda.”   Huh?  New rule.  Then some back-pedaling -- did I want some kind of action?  No, I just wanted to report what I knew about this internet access problem.  “That’s not our problem,” said MA.  “That’s the telephone company.  I went to wireless.”  She’s soooo much more au courant than the rest of us.  (She’s from Microsoft country over there by Seattle and was once the world’s authority on a piece of software now defunct.)
   
“Would you like some candy, Mary?”  
“I’m diabetic.”  
“But it’s wonderful hand-dipped specially made truffles!”  
“Are you deaf?  I’m diabetic!”  
“Oh.”  
“Diabetes is an epidemic in our community.”  
“Oh.”
"We can't push sweets at meetings anymore."
Silence.


I made my report.  No one had a comment.  They were worried about snowplow protocol.  At exactly what time should the city employees arise to plow if the snow is 2” or 4” or . . . and what exact route should they take?  And who will knock on the plow drivers’ doors to alert them to snow height?  MA has prepared a detailed plan.  She has little idea who gets up when to work where, where the school buses go, which are the most-traveled routes, etc. 

The sheriff’s deputy on the council had an idea about plowing the snow to the middle of the widest streets instead of berming in everyone’s driveway.  Much discussion about whether the plow should be required to open everyone’s driveway.  At least they weren’t insisting on us shoveling our sidewalks (major issue in Great Falls) since a) there is NO sidewalk in many places and b) the sidewalks end up under a four-foot berm of snow-turned-to-ice.  One look at the plow driver’s face and you knew he was going to do what he always does anyway:  what’s possible and what works.  The day before the meeting the two employees had been required to watch an OSHA safety film about how to plow streets without running over dogs and little old ladies.  The exasperation is palpable.

The second issue that came up was taking back the airport, which is legal county property, because it is prime lakefront land and if people built fine houses there (the kind of people we like and want to associate with -- like RICH people), our tax base would be much improved (as well as our social status).  Why is the airport there anyway, they asked. 

First, you have to know this lake is an irrigation impoundment rather than a natural lake and that the canal company that owns it could drain it anytime they wanted to.

Second, this is not a lovely sand beach.  When the water is low (often, late in the season, there is mud.

Third. the mountain view is thirty miles away and rather low on the horizon.

Fourth, there are far more splendid places closer to the mountains -- accessible by rich people who own airplanes but they can't land here if there’s no airport.

Fifth, if there were no airport, the fine houses would be looking at cheek-by-jowl trailer and RV parking in the campground.

Sixth, this airport was built as an emergency landing strip during WII and the “Lighthouse” for which our excellent eating establishment is named was originally the airport beacon.  The airport itself needed the lake as an orienting landmark.

Seventh, though those present believe the airport is not being used much, my ears tell me differently, even now that the crop-duster and his poisons have moved out into the country. 

Eighth, in the notorious flood of 1964, the airport was underwater.

Ninth, this is not a “rich person’s” treasure.  It is a geezer lake where fish are planted so someone sitting in a boat or an ice house can catch them.  (Rich people fly fish in streams.)

Tenth, just across the lake is a Hutterite pig farm, whose lagoon once broke and emptied into the lake, which is the water supply for the county seat, Conrad, though when the lake is low they pretty much suck mud.

Delusions of grandeur are not surprising when things get tough, but the truth is that this year Montana had the best grain and hay crop of any for a very long time.  Beef prices are up.  People here are building on to their small houses.  They are too busy to attend the town council meetings.  Why do I go?  I sometimes claim the idea of being a public philosopher, but the truth is that I’m acting more like a community minister.  Yesterday I typed up all the information I’d found out, complete with persons who need to be contacted in order for them to have the evidence they need for upgrading the system.  (Some pretty competent and enlightened people, I must say!)  I handed my document around to places I thought it would do some good.

Marie Antoinette has taken up daily residence in our village office.  She does not see her constituency as being the population of the village and its surrounds.  She sees herself as an enforcer of rules, like any good corporate officer.  I have a larger concept in mind.  The problem is not MA.  It is that the elephant has lost its memory and is settling for peanuts when it could have the freedom of the veldt.   But you have to show up at the circus.

IS VALIER IN THE PITS?

What do you call a steam shovel when it’s no longer driven by steam? An excavator. What’s the difference between an excavator and a backhoe? An excavator moves around on big tank-type treads while a backhoe has rubber tires. I found this out by asking the guys digging giant pits in the street by my house. The one up by the highway is maybe twenty feet deep and fifty feet long -- very impressive.

What do you call a scandal? A mayor who signs up for all this (a renovation of the town water system that means installing water meters and raising rates) without the backing of her town council or the townspeople themselves. The project is well under way, but the machines -- whatever they are called -- have been quiet this afternoon. There is action behind the scenes. Of the four town councilmen (all men -- some describe them as “good old boys” who conspire for their own good instead of what is good for the town) only one has not resigned. (He is a person who doesn’t act quickly.) The news accounts on the front page of the Valierian are hostile. http://www.cutbankpioneerpress.com/the_valierian/?cal=thevalierian

Mackenzie Greye (note fancy spelling) came to town with money and high intentions. She is retired. This is not the first place she’s tried to settle after leaving Seattle corporate culture, where she was a computer expert. In Valier she published her poetry on a blog and drove to Cut Bank to teach art classes. And she quickly lined up the town’s women as her admirers. Except me. She called me up to ask me to run for the council, though she’d never met me and knew nothing about me, nor had she ever been to a council meeting. She wanted me to go for coffee and I proposed that she just bring a thermos to the next town meeting, since I normally attend all of them. (I don’t know whether I’m glad or sad that I missed this last confrontation. I was pushing a deadline of my own.)

A minister dreads to see this kind of person coming into a congregation, not because they bring new ideas but because they are divisive, don’t know what the real stakes are, don’t bother to find out the lay of the land, and try to enforce fine print in long documents instead of using common sense. Ms. Greye was soon appealing to state authorities and, in turn, being courted by a certain kind of business (consultants, engineers, salesmen) that makes its living off small town projects. They arrive, identify trouble (starts with a T), point to disaster (starts with a P -- like pool) and offer to sell the finest in band instruments and uniforms. This time the trouble was an ancient water delivery system, the threat was that if there were a fire at the school there would not be enough water to save the children, and the answer was a new water main, water meters, and a new water tank. Maybe some new wells.

Earlier the way has been strewn with disaster. The first fiasco I heard about was a local knothead taking his ATV out to the little nesting island in Lake Francis, made accessible by drought, and gleefully smashing through every ground nest he could find. “They were just filthy seagulls.” Greye raised hell with everyone from the Audubon Society to the feds about the Wordsworthian solitude and beauty being violated. Every enlightened woman in town was on her side. The Pondera Canal and Irrigation Company which owns and operates the lake (it’s actually the reservoir for irrigation) declared that they would resolve future problems by bulldozing the island out of existence. Every practical man in town (except for the idiot who caused the trouble) was alarmed at the official hue and cry when a well-placed word would have done the job.

Another major blunder came when the town needed some gravel and the mayor went out of her way to buy it from someone other than the local gravel provider, who happened to be one of the councilmen. She let the word be passed around that the only reason he wanted to be a councilman was so he could make money off town projects. (His prices were never explored.) The bill for the gravel was high and was sprung in the council meeting AFTER the purchase. So were some other expenses, to the point where some councilmen were wondering why they were even asked to sign the checks. At one remarkable meeting the council and mayor confronted each other in lawyer-to-lawyer combat. The lawyers were embarrassed.

Then there were the Great Horse War. Horses are now forbidden in the Great Metropolis of Valier. But you can have a 4-H project, so we have hogs.

It began to appear that the mayor thought she had been elected Queen. And yet in meetings she spoke in a voice so soft no one could hear her as she sat hunched and meek beside the protective town clerk. The latter, a local solid citizen and good Mom, once lost her temper entirely with a power and righteousness that brought the meeting to order in a hurry. She apologized but she needn’t have.

Confrontations with the town employees (1 clerk and 2 maintenance men) continued. They had started with the previous mayor whose health had deteriorated badly during her tenure. The union rep came. Confrontations between councilmen and employees flared at every meeting. Behind the scenes citizens were demanding to know why THIS was done and why THAT was done and also why wasn’t that other done? But they never attended council meetings. Greye complained that the councilmen were plotting against her, lingering on the sidewalk after meetings in order to mock her. (Actually, I stood with them for a few minutes and got the impression that they were just kind of confounded and trying to blow off some emotion.)

I’ve attended nearly every council meeting for the past few years, not to follow content -- though that’s often interesting -- but rather to follow group dynamics, a major part of my training both as a minister and as a teacher. I didn’t often say anything. I did try to help find a way for an old rancher to keep a couple of horses in a field that’s technically inside the town, as he has for several years. There’s a major lesson in this situation. It could never have come to this if the townspeople had cared enough to attend meetings or even run for office. But they are all too busy for democracy. Democracy takes too much time. Let the Queen do it. Okay. Then she sets the terms. She says that everyone is so awful to her that she’s just going to move away. Okay.