Welcome to Great Falls, Montana, birthplace of Linda Ann Hopkins and Sheila Young.

If those names aren’t familiar, maybe you’ve heard of Tera Patrick or Victoria Paris? These two women are near the top of the charts when you search online for famous people from Great Falls.

Great Falls, home of premier western artist Charlie Russell, refuge for authors A.B. Guthrie, Dan Cushman, Jamie Ford, Pete Fromm and Wallace Stegner, training ground for Olympic skaters John Misha Petkevich and Scott Davis, waystation for Lewis and Clark–and our most famous natives are a couple of porn stars?

Victoria Paris (not a recent pic, as you might be able to tell from the '80's hair)

Our Chamber of Commerce is not doing enough to promote our erotic heritage. I’ve been here all my life and I had no idea.

Imagine how this discovery could swell our tourism base. Finally, Great Falls could give Mitchell, South Dakota’s Corn Palace some stiff competition. While Aunt Betty visits the C.M. Russell Museum, Paris Gibson Square and the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, Uncle Phil could while away the hours at Great Falls’ newest tourist attraction, the Porn Palace.

Perhaps we could make up for ignoring Tera Patrick and Victoria Paris by erecting a statue at the Tourist Information Center. The dedication ceremony, with bands from both high schools and a nighttime fireworks display would jam traffic all the way past Dick’s RV Park.

Tera Patrick, in one of the few Internet images that did not melt my screen.

If celebrating our erotic heritage is not to your liking, we could try to displace our tassel-enhanced natives from the top of online search engines by launching a clicking campaign for other famous Electric City natives.

How about googling Gerald Molen? This Hollywood producer won an Academy Award for Schindler’s List, as well as producing Rain Man, Days of Thunder, and Minority Report. If his face is familiar, it’s because he appears in cameo roles in the movies he’s produced.

Respected stuntman Buddy Sosthand was also born in the Electric City. He’s worked on many A-List movies, including Pirates of the Caribbean, 21 Jump Street and the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

Just a ways north of town, up in Conrad, we have Wylie Gustafson, energetic country crooner and composer.

Click hard on those famous names and we’ll topple those porn stars off Google’s pedestal.  If we can’t out-click the more lurid among us, perhaps it’s time to round up investors to approach Mr. Molen, give some vitamins to that stuntman and get our world-famous country yodeler to lay down a vocal track. I have an idea…

Cajole, Threaten, Hint and Lie: Renewal Notices from the New Yorker

 
The first letter came without a threat last May, in a plain white envelope.

It was from the subscription department at the New Yorker with a return address in Boone, Iowa. I felt like one of those cowboys around the campfire lamenting the origin of their salsa: my New Yorker magazine comes from… Iowa?

If there was a terrorist plot against effete rural liberals, a renewal notice from the New Yorker, postmarked from a town named after the symbol of rugged frontier justice would be just about right.

I shook the envelope. Something awful, like anthrax or Sweet&Low might pour out. Above my name, in caps, “EXP FEB 13.” Even if this renewal notice was legit, my subscription didn’t expire for ten months.

Either the terrorists would have to try harder, or I’d  hear from the New Yorker again. I tossed the unopened letter in my desk.

Within a few weeks I got another friendly reminder, same return address. This time I googlemapped Boone, Iowa. No magazine fulfillment center. I thought about staking out the Boone post office, waiting for a dandy with a top hat and a monocle to unlock P.O. Box 37685.

Wait. Why does Boone, Iowa have 37,685 post office boxes? The population, according to the 2010 census, was 12,635. I’d be damned if I opened that letter. Something wasn’t right.

The third notice came from a different P.O. Box, three doors down from the old one. It had the word “REMINDER” in all caps, above my address. Kind of classy, like the guy at the opera who coughs and stares at your crotch to let you know you forgot to zip.

I had 33 issues left, a little over nine months of New Yorkers. I ignored their request.

I admit that I am easily annoyed. I’m taking pills for it now, but they are obviously not working. It tightened my gut that Condé Nast, the publisher of the New Yorker, was rubbing its hands together, wanting me to feed the beast.

I understand beasts need to be fed. I throw money at open mouths too. I’m offended to be asked to throw money at Boone, Iowa in May for a New Yorker subscription that runs out in February, that’s all.

I also resent anyone trying to con me into paying far in advance for goods or services yet to be rendered. That’s called ‘playing the float’.

Could my highbrow magazine be attempting to shave a few issues off if I renewed early? No… The New Yorker would never commit such a low-down offense–though there have been legal settlements in the past for ‘short sheeting’ subscribers in the periodical biz.

What they are unquestionably guilty of is negligence. The New Yorker farms subscriptions out to CoMag, a company, until recently co-owned by the publisher of the New Yorker, Conde Nast, along with archrival mega-publisher Hearst.

Hearst and Conde Nast sold their distribution monster to a third party, Jim Pattison Co.. Pattison already owned NewsGroup, which distributes 1.5 billion periodicals per year.

Picture (an as yet, uncalculated) huge percentage of all the print magazines published in the U.S. and Canada, throw them into a pile of glossy glued bindings, and run them all through the same huge stainless steel distribution funnel.

Publishers shove the stuff in the big end,  they wash their hands, you pull it out the small end.

You can’t blame me for being annoyed and suspicious. No one is washing my hands.

The New Yorker is a top tier magazine. Erudite cartoons pepper pithy reviews; insightful, vetted commentary is quoted worldwide; their exasperating feature articles beat a topic with a stick, soak it in quotes, hang it out to dry and then fold it like origami. It’s a thing of annoying beauty.

Why would this bastion of intellectualism farm out their subscription service to a company that cajoles, pokes, prods, threatens, and lies to a loyal subscriber?

It’s even worse that they can shrug their shoulders and say they had no part in it.

Yep, they lie. I received at  least three reminders with the words “Last Chance.” (Obviously not). Two others said “Final Notice.” White ones, manila ones, blue ones.  One was emblazoned with a huge militaristic “DEADLINE EXTENDED.” Several featured a Stars & Stripes stamp. Is there a battle going on? Is it my patriotic duty to renew?

Within the past few weeks, as my subscription was truly about to expire, their tactics changed: they wanted me to think I’d already renewed, and that I just needed to send in the “Confirmation Notice: Enclosed.”

Last week  the Crooked Tree Coffeehouse here in Great Falls, Montana received their January 28 issue. I did not.

Had the New Yorker given up?

A few days later, I got my copy, with a thick paper overlay: LAST ISSUE ALERT. The attached “Pay me later” prepaid postcard offered only one alternative for last-minute renewal “$99.99 for 47 issues. 64% off Cover Price!”

I was only mildly tempted.

On Thursday, another issue arrived. Surprise. My “last issue” wasn’t the last issue after all.

It’s not the last issue I have with the New Yorker. Or is it?

Check out my hubpages blog for a commentary on Zero Dark Thirty.

www.http://baizblogger.hubpages.com/hub/To-See-or-Not-to-See-Movie-Tickets-as-Endorsements-Zero-Dark-Thirty

What’s ‘rent-seeking’? It’s quietly creating unearned wealth and widening the economic gap in the USA. Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz explains it to me here…

Joseph Stiglitz

9. Security. I’m thinking armed guards. Imagine a lottery winner living in a diverse neighborhood–that’s what you call a city block where two people have been murdered, and a third was sent away for the deed in the last two decades.The vandals who regularly loot my 1996 minivan would have to upgrade to figuring out the gull-wing doors of a Lamborghini. And the construction noise from building all those gun turrets might send Bud next door over the edge. My neighbors would go from this pleasant state of indifference and suspicion to downright resentment and hatred.

8. Relatives. These people are bad enough if you aren’t rich. I’m sure they are worse if you are.

7.Unearned Bucks are Bad for Babies. I don’t care that they are adults. Once Dad and I began to wiggle our hineys into comfortable excess, the whining would begin. I’m all for giving people a leg up, but putting both my kids’ feet up and hiring someone to mix margaritas and order NetJets: uh, no thanks.

6. Business Schemes. People with all kinds of ideas will want me to finance them. I will tell them they are crazy stupid. They will get mad. I will be lonely.

5. I want to be disliked for who I am. Or liked for the same reason. I am not sure I would even like ME for myself if I had millions and millions of dollars. From my internal dialogue, I can say with certainty that I am not incredibly fond of myself anyway.

4. The Parade of the Curious (or worse). Sometimes people slow down to look at our old house. It’s pretty big, it’s decorated with exceptional cats, and it’s got a funky paint job. It’s hard enough trying to talk my husband into wearing underwear and stop waving to gawkers from the upstairs guest room. I would not want pictures of my buck naked butt-scratching nouveau-riche husband in a tabloid.

3. The Total Loss of Anonymity. In Great Falls I can still go places where I don’t know everyone. Yep, someone I know usually stops by my table at a restaurant or waves at me when I’m walking around downtown. The baristas at Starbucks know my drink by heart. My iced half-caf soy cocoa cappuccino would curdle in my gut if people slowed down just to point at my Day-Glo orange Lamborghini. It would make me so sad to have to build my own personal Starbucks in the backyard.

2. Fear of Kidnapping. See #10, #9, #6, #5 and #1. If kidnapping involves #8 or #7, please note that you have already been written out of my will. If it involves #10, my precious Beats, I will hunt you down and scratch your eyes out, force you to defecate in a sandbox and declaw you: this is no small matter, since declawing is essentially surgical extraction of your digits down to the first joint.

1. The Curse. West Virginia Lottery winner Jack Whitaker’s ex-wife said, after his granddaughter was found dead and over $100 million in winnings was squandered, that she should have torn up the ticket. Jeffrey Dampier, a $25 million lottery winner, was kidnapped and murdered by his sister-in-law. Winners Ken and Connie Parker’s 16-year-old marriage disintegrated within months of cashing the jackpot. Right in Sun Prairie, a stone’s throw from Great Falls, back in 1995, a 77-year old man died only a week after cashing his first Lottery check.

Face it, fellow losers: sometimes it’s more fun to dream about winning than it is to deal with it.

http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/03/monday-reading-theyre-souvenirs-not-stuff/

I brought something special from my childhood travels with me to New York City. Here’s my memento,  ’Flipper’.

Stainless Steel Flipper, Decorated with Dregs of Trader Joe's Vegan Chorizo

I slept in closest to the wall, in a double bunk that had been stitched from unbleached canvas and strung between two six-foot lengths of half-inch lead pipe, just sixteen inches from the ceiling of our travel trailer.

On the outer half of the bunk was my little brother, Roger. Below us, where big sister Cheryl slept, the dining table of our travel trailer seated all seven Reicherts at mealtimes (someone usually pulled up a camp chair).

Mom and Dad had the couch that folded out into the best substitute for a real bed, and from what I remember, my brothers, Greg and Robert, were outside, sleeping in a tent, where, Dad was sure, boys belonged.

If anyone had to pee at night, everyone woke up.

Even if I was about to burst, I wouldn’t even open my eyes until four a.m., when I smelled coffee and Canadian bacon. To this day, the mingled scents of salted flesh and chocolate earth make me wistful. Mom cooked at home, but in the trailer, an hour before the morning rise of his favorite rainbow trout, Dad was chef.

My dad always wanted an Airstream. With five kids and a fireman’s salary, just four years before he died, my dad and Duke Tedford built the best he could afford, a white-paneled job, barely big enough for the whole Reichert clan.

Me? I always wanted my own penthouse apartment in New York City. You know, with a balcony overlooking Central Park, a personal trainer and a guest bedroom. Like Dad, I lowered my expectations. Like Dad, I’m happy with what I got. And it’s a little bigger than Dad’s travel trailer (but not much).

A decade ago, before the trailer bid its final goodbye to the concrete pad in my mom’s backyard, I sat on the hideous brown plaid couch and dug around in the kitchen, eight inches away. Inside a rickety drawer, I found this flipper. I saw it in my Dad’s big mitt; I could almost smell breakfast at four a.m..

I might have asked, but I didn’t. I took it.

It’s not “stuff”. It’s not a souvenir. That flipper is a goddamn icon.

The pace of walkers everywhere in Manhattan quickens, the throng of tourists in midtown thins–though it amazes me that in the middle of a harsh winter, international sightseers still abound. In the fall, Fattened tourists give way to fashionistas, college students reduce their radius and buckle down for some serious studying, studding and slugging down their share.

In the last half of August, giant leaves begin to litter the greenery of Bryant Park. One fell right into my lap yesterday, perfectly ochre, the size of a horse’s hoof. A few days ago I stood on the raised terrace and watched the race for space at the final outdoor movie of the season (Raiders of the Lost Ark), blankets waving behind spectators like superhero capes, flying full speed to stake out the best spot on Bryant Park’s famous lawn. Bryant Park is a great place all year, but it sings in the summer: concerts, outdoor reading, ping-pong, chess, the carousel, juggling. The final summer jazz concert by the fountain was so large that fans clogged the sidewalk, annoying and entertaining passers-by at the same time.

The days and evenings are as sultry as they were in late July but in the wee hours,   walking back to my place in Chelsea from a late movie at the Angelica, the thermometer dropped into a temperature that would be exhilarating if it weren’t a harbinger of the cold to come.

The Green Market at Union Square overflows–people are in the mood to buy more than they need, in response to an instinct to stock up: lean pickins’ ahead.

Even the little street-side gardens, wrought iron squares around boulevard trees, are reverting to ivy and bolting coleus, as if they understood the heavy lifting of sprits is done and it’s time to act their age.

The people of Manhattan ready themselves this weekend for the American rite of passage, when some parents usher their children off to elementary school down the street with a tinge of bittersweet pride, others endure the ache and expense of education far from home, and every autumn since 1959, short plaid wool skirts decorate the window at Macy’s.

On Tuesday morning, it will feel as though we New Yorkers have the power: we practically will the weather to change. “Bring it on,” thinks the college kid from Topeka, in the auditorium for his first lecture down at NYU. “Bring it on,” writes the buyer for Holiday decor at Macy’s. “Bring it on,” says the mother of three, who, exhausted and relieved, will nevertheless, look forward to next summer.

Bring it on.

soggy with joy

hailed my return by halting everyone

at JFK

Better than a ticker-tape parade

I got

a two hour wash-and-wait on the tarmac

a hundred feet short of Gate 8

Then, I got

The City

gussied up wet at sunset

The shiny grit of Manhattan

pierced, dark, covered

After all, she’s an island in a squall

Wet leather Gothic

New York in late summer

is a woman just the other side of full flower

the moist ache of passing rain

that used to pound and bounce.

In August

the wet parts roll off

too-heavy petals

gathering speed

to Fall

in the City

Hitler. Idi Amin. Osama Bin Laden, Anders Behring Breivik, Jared Lougher, Wade Michael Page.

The names of the damned have a power of their own.

Just saying them aloud sets up a vibration, a vulnerability, the kind of infamy that could tilt the head of an unbalanced Soul…and make him pause at the local gun show or weapons store, smack-dab in front of a semi-automatic weapons display. He might picture his face on Fox, CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, or on the newswires of AP, Reuters, and of course, the hometown newspaper…complete with a signature expression or unusual hairdo.

A rogue sicko looks in the mirror and imagines being dead and infamous. Alive and anonymous does not create the kind of notoriety these killers feel they deserve.

If a madman makes a horrible choice, I’d rather not hear his name, over and over again, against my will. I’d rather not see him in article after article, along with the details of the senseless act and the plodding due process that we have a right to cherish.

I’m not advocating that we erase Hitler, Idi Amin, or Bin Laden from the history books. We need to guard ourselves against demonic, magnetic individuals who managed to attract followers, profiteers and soldiers. We need not only to remember their names, but we need to repeat them, despite our discomfort, to keep ourselves vigilant of their ilk.

Lone assassins, crazed gunmen, they are a different story. The media should use their names when it’s necessary, not bandy these gruesome monikers about, granting lone killers, alive or dead, the opportunity to inspire more of their kind.

While most of us could point to Wade Michael Page or Jared Loughner in a lineup, we can’t name a single victim of a recent mass shooting, unless it’s Gabrielle Giffords, and that’s because she had the temerity to survive. And she had some fame to begin with. And she’s pretty. And white. And she had a hell of a backstory.

Dear Print Media:

How about naming the assailant ONCE in every story, and not in the first three paragraphs. If the reader wants to know the *******’s name, (s)he’ll have to read below the fold.

Dear Broadcast Media:

Instead of creating a mantra for madmen, how about showing some restraint: limit the mention of the shooter’s name to say, once an hour during the first day, and only when there’s a reason, thereafter.

It’s not just the name: Loughner’s one deeper set eye, Holmes’ blood-orange dyed hair, Page’s round-faced mug shot. Today, the dead Texas A&M cop shooter, is primed for a pirouette and posthumous bow in the media spotlight.

I don’t want to recognize the features of a new shooter’s face. Instead, I want to hear intelligent talk about the underlying causes of mental and emotional illness, to debate access to semi-automatic weapons. I want the names of the victims along with a restrained respect for their families. Explore the factors that shooters have in common without granting them the gift of infamy. Show us the protocols and priorities we can create, as individuals, and as a society, to curb senseless bloodshed.

My friends in the media need to act like grownups with a big, powerful, double-edged power tool. I don’t care if it is a slow news day and a juicy multiple homicide has the potential to entertain millions.

Unless it’s absolutely necessary, He-Who-Should-Not-be-Named doesn’t deserve the coverage.