Trouble in Paradise?

Do bad things really come in threes?

First: Ouch -- it’s a heat wave in Hamilton!! Well, sort of. The temperature at 1:30 p.m. is 71 degrees, going up to a "blistering" 84 as the predicted high. A girl behind the U.S. Forest Service desk (http://www.fs.usda.gov/bitterroot/) on Friday warns us that “this weekend is going to be hot!” How hot, we ask? “It’s getting up to 80!” she says. “That’s not hot,” corrects Alex -- who's from St. Louis (97 highs this week) via New Orleans (90s, also). And she laughs. Tonight's low? A lovely 45. And daytime temps for next week are to be in the 70s, then 60s, plus a little rain. Just right for me.

But today, iced coffee and frozen drinks are selling out at River Rising, the café and coffee bar. We walk there and then around the quiet streets on a Sunday afternoon and see folks out gardening and lots of cute little cottages cooling off under huge old oaks or conifers, always with a backdrop of the Bitterroot.

Things look prosperous, especially with employers such as the Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton -- now a division of The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (http://www.niaid.nih.gov/about/organization/dir/rml/Pages/default.aspx) and the early research institution on Rocky Mountain spotted tick fever. The lab is the reason Kelsey Milner Sr. came to do post-doctoral work in Hamilton in the ‘50s, and why his good friend and mentor, Morris Shaffer, brought his wife, Leah, and son, Alex (my Alex), out from New Orleans many summers in a row.

But I'm told later, at a dinner at the Grange, that the lab is small potatoes in terms of Hamilton's economic health. Lab workers are a small core of post-docs from all over the country.  I tell my dinner companion that we're renting a house, and she says, dryly, "You must've had a lot to choose from." She says "there are no jobs here" for low- and middle-income folks and that they're leaving to look elsewhere, with lots of houses for sale or for rent.  Well-off retirees (and Californians looking for summer homes) have discovered Hamilton and are pumping some money into it, but not enough. At least not according to my tablemate.

A sidebar to our walk -- we stop in at a fly fishing store and see just how dedicated Bitterroot familes are to the sport. Check out 11-year-old Matthew's fly-fishing flies for sale!

We also check in with Bob Ward Sporting Goods (http://www.bobwards.com/), a Montana hunting and fishing store that has items I've NEVER, ever seen before. Such as...

Second, in the trouble department: There's a big baby crow in the shrubs next to our wonderful patio. It's possibly injured, and its parents won't let up with the squawking! Understandably.

The fuss doesn't bother us but it does the next door neighbors. And so Alex -- biologist for "hire" -- goes on patrol, digs into the shrubbery, finally brings out the baby and takes it to a large conifer where the parents and a sibling have gathered (see a series of photos, below.) 

The odd thing is that the very next morning, we see no sign of baby crow or parents. A mystery! We hope all is well. We fear it is not.

Third, among Hamilton troubles is the influence and infiltration of the Tea Party.  A few new Ravalli County commissioners are ultra right wing and supporting, for instance, the extension of Hamilton airport runways to allow for noisy, wilderness-disturbing jets to fly in a few wealthy area residents. Hamilton has a population of about 5,000 and, over the years, has successfully campaigned to keep its Main Street businesses alive by keeping out the Wal-Marts of the world. For now, the right is a part of Hamilton life. The Ravalli County Fairgrounds even hosted such recent speakers as Red Beckman, a self-styled "anti-semitic tax protestor," and Schaeffer Cox, founder of the "Alaska Peacemakers Militia." A dinner that we attended at the Grange brought out a large number of progressives and a few Tea Partiers.  We were told by a Hamiltonian in the know that there may be as many as a third of the population leaning right, a third independent and a third progressive. We hope that we can make our voices heard on the left while we're here!!!