Big Sky Country

Just got back from visiting the family in Montana, where I learned:

Peacocks will not necessarily die if you take them out of their natural environment and dump them in the snow. These here can often be seen hanging out on the front porch of a house five minutes away from my parents':

Kids don't care how idyllically placed a concrete embankment is. They will graffiti it.

Five years and 20lbs after the last time you skied, it is still possible to descend the mountain without dying like a peacock in the snow should but doesn't, provided you stick to blues, and spend $60 on the latest boot-insert technology for your now-flatter feet.

Farms tend to amass huge collections of vintage automobiles, though the farmers probably don't call them “vintage”. Spent an hour roaming a lot full of these cars, which the proprietor hauls away after one farm purchases another and want to be rid of the rusting treasures they've inherited. Saw everything from a custom mini '57 Chevy, to a (Dali-esque?) battered metal tricycle resting atop a 50-year-old pickup, to an old sedan artists frequently stop by to render because its patina evokes an oil painting. The lot's affably conspiratorial owner was as open to showing me around as he was to expounding on the general goodness/rightness of expansive interpretations of the 2nd Amendment. When discussing impending state laws allowing for unlicensed concealing & carrying, the filing off of serial numbers, etc, he periodically snicker-laughed like Mumbly the Dog from the Laff-A-Lympics.

My dad recorded an album of classic country parodies – most dealing with the theme of being a big-city transplant in cowboy country – in the tradition of Tom Lehrer, the original Weird Al Yankovic, except not overtly weird, other than also being a math savant (except not savant, because he did other things well, like song parodies). Over the past few years my dad's been performing these songs a capella at Cowboy Poetry gatherings. At the urging of people including actual cowboys, he went into the studio with one half of the local folk duo Storyhill, and came out with a 16-song disc, complete with cover art featuring two hulking dudes from his gym. If you purchase this album at digstation.com, it will help my dad pay for my boot-insert technology.