Santa Cops & Pictures

I Like to Vote

In person!!!

I like taking the extra time it takes to drive to the police station to vote. That time helps to remind of what a privilege it is – a privilege to vote and a privilege to live in our country.

I like the opportunity to say “hi” to the election judges. I have known many of them for many years and, sometimes haven’t seen them since the last election.

Today is the first day of early voting. Don’t forget to vote and be sure to wear the colorful little sticker that says “I Voted.”

A Forest Fire that Shaped the US Forest Service

Cover letter from my recent mail out:

I really enjoyed this item from the Cody Enterprise. As most of you know, I have a little get-a-way home in the northwest corner of Wyoming. Consequently, I subscribe to the local paper so I stay "up" on things. A few weeks ago this item about our forest and fires jumped out at me and seemed very appropriate for our area this fall. What a history lesson!

Article:

'Big Blowup' century ago shaped USFS

Posted by The Cody Enterprise Newspaper,

Friday, September 3, 2010 3:55pm

Written by: Tim Lydon

This summer marks the centennial of the Big Blowup of 1910, America's most devastating wildfire.

It's being commemorated throughout the northern Rockies, where it killed scores of firefighters and torched 3 million acres. But as a seminal event for the Forest Service, it shaped a much broader swath of our landscape.

The Fire was the culmination of a hellish summer. In the Bitterroots, a rainless spring left emaciated streams and withered understory. Dry lightning arrived early and passing locomotives tossed candle-sized flames, sparking dozens of fires. They crept through the understory at first, but grew a the drought persisted. In July, lightning storms crashed through the mountains, igniting hundreds of new fires.

The five-year-old Forest Service, its funding slashed by Congress, was not prepared for the disaster. Rangers assembled ragtag teams of lumberjacks, railroaders and miners in the smokey streets of Missoula, who emptied stores of shovels and axes, then marched into the woods. With few trails to follow, the flames spread before the men could contain them, and in early August the Army was dispatched to help.

By mid-August, firefighters were battling thousands of blazes along a 250-mile front, from the Salmon River to Canada, and hoping for rain. But on Aug. 19 gusty weather barreled into the mountains.

It was like opening a flute. Flame raced through treetops as hundreds of fires combined. The inferno created its own wind, ripping trees from the ground. The skies went black in Missoula and into Wyoming, and a gust blanketed Denver with Bitterroot soot. The men in the woods had no warning. They doused falling embers with wet blankets and their hats, but when the flames whirled to hundreds of feet and raced over ridges, they ran for their lives.

The Big Burn lasted two days. At least 78 firefighters died, crushed by trees or incinerated while running or hiding in cabins and mines. The lucky ones stumbled from the woods with melted shoes and burns they would wear the rest of their lives.

The Forest Service - born of the enthusiasm of Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt - was deeply scarred, its young rangers routed by the fire. Waving photos of melted saddles and charred shovels, the agency claimed it could have beaten the fire with proper funding from Congress. Pinchot and Roosevelt thundered their support, converting skeptical lawmakers.

And so, the war on fire was declared. Overnight, the Forest Service became the nation's leading firefighter and swiftly developed a fixation with fire-suppression. The Park Service soon followed suit.

In the Bitterroots, foresters blamed the area's remoteness for the Big Blowup. From Missoula, rangers led mule teams into the mountains to improve access. They forced trails as wide as boulevards along wild rivers, then fanned out to open the wilderness with ranger stations, lookouts and more trails.

Trails became roads. As trucks rattled into the mountains, the Forest Service promoted logging, lodges and more roads to further open the forests, a defense against fire. During the Depression, the agency led an army of Civilian Conservation Corps men into the woods to cut fire breaks and carve roads, a pattern repeated across the West. But more fires burned, and the Forest Service's response grew more militaristic, using surplus bombers to stomp out every fire the day after its report. Some recognized fire's ecological role and the futility of total suppression. But the Forest Service, traumatized since 1910, stayed the course even as the Park Service broke ranks in the 1960s.

The agency eventually let fire back in the woods, but on short leash, in a rehab program that continues today. Meanwhile, we all live with legacy of 1910: Suppression has left millions of acres of overcrowded, fire-prone woods susceptible to the hot whims of our changing climate.

But there's another legacy. Bob Marchall worked for the Forest Service in Missoula nearly 20 years after the Big Blowup. Aghast at the taming of the Bitterroots, he convinced his agency to leave more than 1 million acres in the Selway-Bitterroot area roadless. After the CCC hit the woods, amplifying development, he created The Wilderness Society with Aldo Leopold and others. It became the force behind passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act, which permanently protected the Selway-Bitterroot and created today's wilderness system, free of roads and motorized traffic.

Where I used to live in northwest Montana, a few big cedar snags stand among dog-hair fir thickets like pale ghosts. They're wider than their living neighbors and still blackened by the flames of 1910. I like to think of them as ambassadors from an earlier age, with a heck of a story to tell.

(Tim Lydon is a contributor to Writers on the Range, the op-ed service of High Country News (hcn.org). He writes from Juneau, Alaska, where he works as a wilderness ranger.)

A Winter Walk

I live in the old part of Loveland and I take a walk every day - even when my streets are icy and snow packed. If you are a walker, you know the challenge. I think a winter walk on icy streets is a great analogy to life.

You have to decide on your route. Where will there be the longest stretches of good dry street. Don't even think about not walking that day because once you get started it goes pretty good even on a bad day. You have to look ahead, of course; but don't look too far ahead. If you keep moving, the bad spot you noticed up ahead looks less formidable as you get closer. Sure enough, when you get there you find some little dry spots that you couldn't see from a distance. Pick your way through and away you go again.

Isn't if funny how much this mirrors our lives.

HOMEBUYER TAX CREDIT

I believe that nothing has done more in the past year to revive our housing market than the $8,000 first time home buyer credit. Since the tax credit was extended and expanded, I think we have another window of opportunity, but many folks I visit with are not aware of the details.

In a nutshell: To qualify for the credit, Buyers must have a home under contract by April 30, 2010 and must close on the property by June 30, 2010. The credit is $8,000 for first time buyers (or anyone who hasn’t owned a home in the last three years) and $6,500 for existing home owners (must have owned their home for at least 5 years).

The surge we normally see in the spring may well occur in late winter because of these deadlines. Hopefully, the credits will help Sellers also and reduce our “homes for sale” inventory.

Be sure to check with your accountant for any details that might affect you differently. This can be a great opportunity for Buyers and Sellers.

Interest Rates Are Great!!!

A Quote from "The Rotarian" Magazine

The subject of the article was the prevalence of hollow and insincere apologies that we hear these days. Since I work daily in a career that is so directly affected by the lending industry, this paragraph jumped out at me:

"What lies ahead for the Great American Mea Culpa? Obviously, at some point, it would be nice if some representative of the banking industry came forward and apologized for ruining life as we know it. The correct way to do so would be to say: "I'm really sorry that my colleagues and I in the banking industry deliberately designed a gigantic, intercontinential Ponzi scheme that has brought the global economy to a standstill and impoverished our children for generations. Mere words cannot tell you how sorry we are. If it's any consolation at all, we promise we will never do it again."
September 2009 / The Rotarian / by Joe Queenan