Saturday Pictures on Thursday

Since we are unlikely to see this sparkling white setting again any time soon I dragged the camera around today (the kids have the cell phones with the good cameras). Browse and enjoy! Click to enlarge.

That's the peak of Mt. Baldy peaking over the ridge -- our Mt. Baldy.

Windswept snow in the field below the barns.

The end of the road...

The Bridgers viewed over Story Hills, from in town.

The original Ted's Montana Grill. The buffalo filet mignon is to die for.

Down home vibe down Main Street. This will be Big Sky's closing weekend -- best conditions in a month due to Wednesday's snowstorm.

Wilcoxson's Ice Cream is locally made (across Bozeman pass over in Livingston). It's to die for. Buy it by the tub.

Looking out of town, east down Main Street.

The Ale Works occupies the old Northern Pacific railroad freight depot and reprises the defunct railroad's logo. The dozens of beers on tap, but more importantly, the selections on its extensive and highly varied menu are outstanding, whether it be American, Italian, or Chinese. It's a can't miss restaurant.

Businesses occupy the old Milwaukee Road freight depot across from the Ale Works.

The Bridgers from the softball complex. Close enough to home to say we are there. Good luck and a great day to all!

Do We Get an Income Tax Filing Extension?

Bozeman, Montana at 9:00 am this morning -- it's still coming down. First, off the front porch.

The Weather Service says it's four to eight inches. Up the valley we are getting close to the eight.

Down the valley, the putting green at Cottonwood Hills will not be busy today.



Some wiseguy in town posted this on Facebook.

Skiing into Oblivion

A warmer than normal winter? Check. Less than normal snowfall? Check. 

The Gallitan National Forest Avalanche Center's avalanche advisory alert going into this weekend was low, but mentioned "there may be a few [slabs] on high elevation slopes where the snow remains dry which could produce a small avalanche."

No avalanche fatalities? Sadly not. After the previous winter's tragedies we thought we were free and clear. But that was not to be. Yesterday a back country skier perished on a run down from Beehive Peak near Big Sky.

BIG SKY -

A 28-year-old Bozeman man died Saturday afternoon in an avalanche north of Big Sky.

Gallatin County Sheriff and Coroner Brian Gootkin said Jens Hagen Anderson was skiing with three others near Hanging Garden on Beehive Peak when he triggered a small avalanche and was swept over a rock face.

Jens Hagen Anderson dropping his "knee down
 low, and watching the poweder blow," December, 2012.

The slide happened around noon. Witnesses say Anderson was the first to ski the run.  A preliminary investigation indicates that Anderson died at the scene as the result of injuries sustained from the fall.

A member of the party made a long climb to a ridge top in order to make a cell phone call to 911.

Rescuers accessed the site and evacuated Anderson from the mountainous area using a helicopter before wind and snow closed in.

Sheriff's investigators and the Gallatin Avalanche Center will continue the investigation Sunday

Back country skier at the Hanging Garden off Beehive Peak, April, 2009.

There are two skiable routes down from Beehive (elevation 10,742 feet), a north coulier and a south coulier. Anderson was skiing the northerly route.

The best ski line off Beehive is Bowman’s north couloir.... Dropping off the west ridge a short distance from the summit, this extreme route follows a steep ramp-like couloir for several hundred feet to the edge of a cliff. It then traverses east across a hanging snowfield to a large bowl above Beehive Lake. Mountaineer Terry Johnson first climbed this route on July 23, 1967 and named it “Hanging Garden.”

Apparently the top layer of snow sheared off and carried Jens Hagen Anderson over the cliff. 

April 11, 2015 view from helicopter. The Gallitan Natioanl Forest Avalanche Center says, "the upper portion of the couloir is mostly out of view but the hanging snowfield can be seen. The avalanche carried the skier over the cliffs."

We will await official word from the Gallitan Avalanche Center when it completes its investigation and update this post with their findings. 

Here is the Avalanche Center's post mortem video, posted Monday, April 13. The finding is the skiers were as careful as they could have been given the inherent danger of the terrain. As can be judged from the video, the chute they were skiing was very narrow and near vertical. 

Avalanche experts with the GNFAC tried to access the site of the slide on Sunday, but were forced to turn back due to gusty winds. Doug Chabot and Mark Staples were able to make it in to Beehive Peak Monday and filmed the video above.

We spoke with forecaster Eric Knoff on Monday morning who said they are working to piece together how this happened to a seasoned skier when avalanche danger was low.

"It did catch us a little off-guard," said Knoff. "It has been such a quiet and fairly benign winter and right when you think you're out of the woods, you can be surprised by an accident like this."

Knoff said although avalanche danger was low, the terrain in the Hanging Garden area where Anderson and his friends were skiing Saturday is really unforgiving.

"There's essentially no room for error," said Knoff. "Unfortunately, they triggered a small slide, that anywhere else wouldn't be a big deal but the terrain magnified the consequences significantly and it ended badly."

Knoff said Anderson and his skiing partners were experienced in the backcountry, had avalanche training and were essentially doing everything right.

"Unfortunately you can make tons of good decisions which can be offset by one bad one," said Knoff. "It's a great reminder that spring is a really fickle time in the mountains and weather and snowpack can change rapidly."

This is the second avalanche fatality in Montana during the 2014-2015 season and the ninth nationwide. Last year, 35 people across the country were killed by avalanches; six of them in Montana.

In May of 2009, Jens Hagen Anderson received his B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Montana State University. He was a design engineer at Graymatter Research in Bozeman, Montana. May Jens Hagen Anderson rest eternally in peace. Our prayers and sympathies to his family and friends.

Related posts:

Beware the Avalanche.

More Avalanche.

Avalanche Advisories Issued.

Memorial Service for Jens Anderson and Opportunities to Help.

Read the moving obituary and tribute to Jens Anderson published in the Bozeman Chronicle.

The avalanche was triggered approximately in the location of the black circle. It was one foot deep for about 6 feet and quickly tapered to just a few inches thick on either side. The skier was in the middle of a turn with his skis pointed downhill when it broke. Had he not been in this position, his partners are fairly confident he would have been able to either ski off it or self arrest. Photo, April 12, 2015.

Jens Hagen Anderson skiing a back country couloir, January, 2015.

All The News That's Fit To Print?

A 95 year old man who was a local legend died this week. Here is what the New York Times reported -- dismissive, cold, selective and gratuitous, no mention of his military honors or hint of the deceased's entrepreneurial spirit, hard work and individual successes  -- zero class. It's all about the blemish.

Tim Babcock, a former governor of Montana who took office when his predecessor was killed in an airplane crash and who was later involved in an illegal financial scheme to help President Richard M. Nixon’s re-election, died on Tuesday in Helena, the state’s capital. He was 95.

Chris Shipp, executive director of the state’s Republican Party, confirmed the death.

Mr. Babcock was lieutenant governor when Gov. Donald G. Nutter, 46, and five others died in the crash of a twin-engine C-47 in mountainous timberland north of Helena on Jan. 25, 1962. The state’s agriculture commissioner and the governor’s executive secretary were among the dead.

Mr. Babcock, a Republican, narrowly won election in 1964 before losing four years later to Forrest Anderson, a Democrat.

After leaving the governor’s office in 1969, Mr. Babcock worked for the wealthy businessman Armand Hammer as a vice president at a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum. He later got caught up in a campaign finance scheme linked to Mr. Hammer and Nixon’s re-election campaign in 1972.

Mr. Babcock pleaded guilty in 1974 to concealing the source of a $54,000 contribution to Nixon. He was fined $1,000 and sentenced to four months in jail. The jail term was later set aside. President George Bush pardoned Mr. Hammer in 1989.

Mr. Babcock had served three terms in the state’s House of Representatives before being elected lieutenant governor in 1960. His wife, the former Betty Lee, also a state legislator, helped write the Montana Constitution. She died in 2013. Republican stalwarts, they attended every Republican National Convention for 60 years.

Mr. Babcock was born in Littlefork, Minn., on Oct. 27, 1919. A high school graduate, he served in the Army infantry in World War II. His survivors include a daughter, Lorna. Another daughter, Maria, died before him.

Mr. Babcock later started a mining industry consulting firm, owned a hotel in Washington State and operated a cattle ranch in Wolf Creek, Mont.

He often said he was the only Montana governor to take the oath of office with tears in his eyes, The Billings Gazette, a Montana newspaper, said in its obituary. Mr. Nutter had been a close friend.

Here is what the Billings Montana Gazette reported on Mr. Babcock's passing.

HELENA — Former Gov. Tim Babcock, who served as Montana’s chief executive from 1962-1969, died in Helena on Tuesday morning. He was 95.

Funeral arrangements are pending at Anderson Stevenson Wilke Funeral Home in Helena.

Although Babcock’s term as an elected official ended in early 1969, he and his late wife, Betty, remained the first couple of the Montana Republican Party for many decades after. They were regulars at state GOP conventions.

He attended every Republican presidential nomination convention from 1952 to 2012 and was honored as the oldest delegate at the 2012 convention in Tampa, Fla.

Babcock also was a prominent businessman. He and his wife built and operated what is now known as the Red Lion Colonial Hotel in Helena, and at one time owned a Helena television and radio station based in the hotel. The Babcocks later sold the hotel, but he kept an office there for decades afterward. They also owned a hotel in Spokane and the Ox Bow Ranch near Wolf Creek.

Babcock also was involved as mining industry consultant and for years was the Montana representative of a company that planned to build an ethanol plant in Great Falls, which has not materialized.

When a Republican was considering running for statewide office, the first step was to visit the former governor at the office to seek his advice and perhaps support.

Tim Babcock was born Oct. 27, 1919, in Littlefork, Minn. His parents had moved there after losing their homestead at Crackerbox Creek in far Eastern Montana because they weren’t able to make the land payments. Six months later, his family moved back to Crackerbox Creek to farm the homestead for a friend who had bought it.

He met Betty Lee when he was a senior in high school and she a sophomore at Dawson County High School in Glendive. He graduated in 1939. Betty Babcock graduated two years later, and they married in September 1941 when he was working at Douglas Aircraft in California.

He worked at the aircraft plant until enlisting in the U.S. Army infantry in 1944. Babcock fought at the Battle of the Bulge and later received a Bronze Star for heroism at Remagen Bridge.

After the war, Babcock returned to Glendive, he helped his father-in-law, Wood Lee, in his trucking business. One day, Lee asked Babcock if he wanted to become partners. Babcock said in his book that all the extra money he could contribute to the partnership was the $500 he had won gambling on the ship that brought soldiers home from Europe. That was good enough for Lee, and the trucking company took on the name Babcock & Lee Truck Lines.

It expanded greatly over the years as the petroleum business grew in Montana.

Babcock later became active in politics, winning a state House seat from Custer County in 1952. The Babcocks moved to Billings, and he was elected to the state House from there in 1956 and 1958.

At the Legislature, Babcock became good friends with Donald Nutter, a state senator from Sidney.

When Nutter was gearing up to run for governor in 1960, he asked Babcock to run as lieutenant governor. Prior to the 1972 Montana Constitution, candidates ran for the two offices separately, but Nutter and Babcock ran as a team.

Nutter and Babcock both won their races handily.

On the night of Jan. 25, 1962, Nutter was killed in an airplane crash during a blizzard near Wolf Creek, along with two top aides and three members of the Montana Air National Guard.

Former Governor Tim Babcock, lying in state at the Montana state capital rotunda, April 10, 2015.

Babcock said often he was the only Montana governor who had tears in his eyes when he was sworn into office.

Babcock was a traditional Western Republican conservative governor who called for holding the line on government spending, limiting government’s role and developing natural resources. He criticized President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, which created new government programs to fight poverty.

Babcock led the promotion of Montana’s Territorial Centennial in 1964, including backing a Centennial Train that traveled to the New York World’s Fair.

In 1964, Babcock retained the governor’s office, narrowly defeating the Democratic nominee Roland Renne.

Two years later, Babcock lost a bid to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Lee Metcalf, with Metcalf winning, 53 percent to 47 percent.

In 1968, Babcock lost his race for re-election as governor. Attorney General Forrest H. Anderson, a Democrat, defeated him, 54 percent to 42 percent.

Babcock’s support of a 3 percent statewide sales tax was a major issue in 1968. Anderson opposed the sales tax, running on the slogan: “Pay more? What for!”

When Richard Nixon, a longtime friend, was elected president in 1968, Babcock had hoped to be appointed secretary of the Interior. Nixon appointed someone else.

Instead, Babcock was recruited by wealthy oilman Armand Hammer, to be executive vice president of Occidental Petroleum subsidiary in Washington, D.C. It was a move Babcock came to regret, later calling Hammer a “scoundrel” and “schemer” in his book.

During the Watergate investigations, Babcock pleaded guilty to making illegal political donations totaling $54,000 to Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign in the names of himself and others. The money had come from Hammer.

Babcock was sentenced to four months in federal prison and fined $1,000. But the federal judge refused to send Babcock to prison, saying he was Hammer’s “leg man” and noting that another judge let Hammer off with only probation and a fine.

Betty Babcock died at age 91 in August 2013. She had a political career in her own right, winning election as a delegate to the 1972 Montana Constitutional Convention and the Montana House in 1974.

The Babcocks had two daughters, Lorna and Marla, who is now deceased, and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

My aunts Charlotte (left) and Margaret
(right),Winnepeg, Manitoba, circa 1930.

For comparison purposes you may wish to note that the Times did not mention Teddy Kennedy was a Democrat until the 12th paragraph of his obituary, and buried his taking Mary Jo Kopechne's life in the 20th, not even meriting a complete sentence.

My Aunt Charlotte Foster Von Alman (author of the family history that has turned up in many of my Bathgate posts) taught Tim Babcock -- in the second grade if my memory serves me right. She married her husband Roy in Glendive, Montana (pop. 4,935), and moved by 1930 to Littlefork, Minnesota (pop. 643), reversing the course of Governor Babcock's odyssey. May Tim Babcock, along with his wife, and my aunt Charlotte, rest peacefully and eternally. God bless.

Rand Paul for President

Rand and Ron.

Ron Paul, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System -- that has a nice ring to it!

A president who has had a real job, doing real things for real people (and Harry Reid too)? OMG!!!

If you want things shaken up, if you are bothered by rising wealth and income inequality, if you would like to see a return towards a real economy whose bounties are shared all around, or if you are sick and tired of a government that props up and expands the big banks beyond historical precedent -- and some thoughtful and strategic foreign policy maybe for the first time in the twenty-first century  -- then Rand Paul is your man.

He's running for President.

You can be sure Hillary will have Goldman Sachs' support.

Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, paying homage to Hillary Clinton and to the Clinton Global Initiative -- nice racket if you can get into it.

Celebrating National Beer Day

Though you can make a good argument that is should be eight days from now, April 7 is National Beer Day.

The timing celebrates the beginning of the end -- the end of Prohibition and the speakeasy era that is.

With Prohibtion in the rear view mirror, The Dells Roadhouse in
Morton Grove, Illinois is torched, October 7, 1934.

Reversing a constitutional amendment is a long and difficult process, so changes came in waves. The first sign of change came in the form of the Cullen-Harrison Act, which legalized the sale of low alcohol beer, and went into effect on April 7, 1933. The whole country celebrated by lining up in droves to legally purchase beer! Many reports were made that people started lining up outside breweries and bars on April 6, and waiting in line through the dark of the night to get their hands on all the beer they could handle. In the first 24 hours after the alcohol amendment was officially changed, 1.5 million barrels of beer were consumed. That must have been an awesome day in America.

The beer industry is an economic space where our government is actually breaking down regulatory barriers -- and facilitating true diversity and an openess that is beginning to approach free market competition.

In Bozeman alone we have six craft breweries -- the most notable being Bozeman Brewing Co., Madison River Brewing Co., and Bridger Brewing.

I'm partial to the Bozone beers produced by Bozeman Brewing. Just about every local pub and eatery has Bozone Amber Ale on tap. Canned, its available wherever cold beer is sold. It's my fave. 

Bozone Select Amber Ale

The local favorite, this flagship light amber is all about balance, with medium body, a hint of hops, and a refreshing finish that leaves you beckoning for more. Bozone Select Amber Ale is the flagship offering from Bozeman Brewing Company, made with Montana grown and malted Pale barley, as well as Crystal and Vienna malts. Hopped with a blend of Magnum, Columbus, Santiam, and a late kettle addition of Cascade hops for a pleasant aroma. This is a truly quaffable session beer.

If you come by our way, have a few cold ones. I don't think you will be disappointed.

Urban Warming

Even Bozeman, population of 40,000, has an urban heat island.

And I wish we resided in it this morning. Brrrrr!

Another April Day in Montana

From nearby Livingston....

We would show the Bozeman Pass webcam, just up the road from home, but that's up in the clouds and camera lenses are caked with snow and slush, so we added some porch photos (click on the photos to enlarge).

This is lower Mt. Ellis -- upper Mt. Ellis is completely obscured. Bozeman pass is off to the left.

This is a shot at the foot of Kelly Canyon (lower right), where William Clark (of Lewis and Clark) camped during his eastward return trip on July 14, 1806. Bozeman Pass is off to the right. Clark went left, following buffalo trails to take the longer but gentler Jackson Creek route across the Bridger Range, and then down to the Yellowstone River at Livingston.

Beyond the barns, looking the opposite direction, the vista goes down into Gallitan Valley.

The Masters (Repost)

Masters week is here. The golfing world’s attention is focused on the lush fairways, rolling hills, lightening fast greens and historic layout of Augusta National Golf Course, located in Augusta Georgia, just south of the South Carolina border. For those not in the know, The Masters is the first of golf’s four majors – the others being the United States Open, The (British) Open Championship and the PGA Championship. The course and tournament are progeny of golf legend Bobby Jones, who nursed them from infancy to become the most renowned in golf.

     

Augusta National 13th Hole

The Masters is about renewal and rebirth.  It is played in a setting adorned by flowering spring bulbs, blooming azaleas and dogwoods, stately magnolias growing along both sides of the clubhouse lane and towering pines paralleling the fairways. By virtue of its early season position the Masters first creates and then limits possibility. Only the winner of The Masters can achieve the most coveted (and never accomplished in modern times) feat in golf – coming home victorious in each of the season’s four majors -- the Grand Slam.

The Masters is link between young and old -- it's the youngest of the majors and the same time is most revered. 

For the old of it, two time Masters champion, Ben Crenshaw, is playing in his final tournament. Fred Couples always seem to find the elixir of youth at Augusta. Fifty-seven year old Bernhard Langer finished top ten last year, and is playing some of the best golf of his life.  

On the young end, twenty-five year old Rory McIlroy, ranked world number one, and twenty-one year old Jordan Spieth, currently the hottest player, are the betting favorites. McIlroy is looking for his third straight major victory and to complete his career Grand Slam. Spieth will be looking to impress his buddies, who will be graduating from UT Austin in a few weeks, with his first major victory. And watch for Patrick Reid.

Victor Dubuisson (France), Martin Kaymer (Germany), Sergio Garcia (Spain) and Justin Rose (England) are strong contenders all.

Suddenly, it seems in a blink of an eye, Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods, are on the downside of their careers. They are in Augusta too, hoping to catch lightening in a bottle.

Don't forget about Dustin Johnson.

Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player
The Big Three in their Masters Green Jackets

The Masters bestows uniquely among the majors the honor of first teeing off Thursday morning to living legends. This year again the honorees are Jack Nicklaus (6 time Masters champion), Arnold Palmer (4 time champion) and Gary Player (3 time Masters champion). They once dominated professional golf as the Big Three. Decades later they are being honored for lifetime achievement and lasting contributions.  They have earned the privilege of driving the first tee shots into the morning dew.   

Byron Nelson, Gene Sarazen and Sam Snead

For almost two decades the honorary threesome had been Sam Snead (3 time Masters champion), Byron Nelson (2 time Masters champion) and Gene Sarazen (1935 Masters champion), gentlemen who legitimized professional golf in the post Bobby Jones era. Sadly, they are no longer with us, but we still have memories of Snead’s syrupy slamming swing, Nelson’s ruthlessly efficient stroke and Sarazen’s elan. Ken Venturi had the honors once.

Jock Hutchison and Fred McLeod
First Honorary Starters

The remaining two members of the exclusive honorary starters club are Jock Hutchison and Fred McLeod, who paired up from 1963 through 1973, which happens to intersect with the nine years I caddied at Glen View Club in Golf, IL. Why those two? Neither man won The Masters. But each did win another important tournament at Augusta. Bobby Jones was an organizer of the PGA championship for senior golfers, what today is called the Senior PGA Champrionship. And the first two Senior PGAs were played at Augusta National Golf Club. Hutchison won the first one in 1937, and McCleod won the second one in 1938. 

Jock Hutchison was a member and retired club pro at Glen View Club. I caddied for him from time to time when I was teenager. Looking the octogenarian up and down, I did not believe a word the old guy said when he pointed to a club in his bag and said “I won the Open Championship with this mashie niblick laddie.” Such is the ignorance of youth. But thanks to Jock I can say today that I caddied for a World Golf Hall of Famer, a one-time honorary starter at the Masters and a British Open and PGA champion. I can say that with confidence because now we have the Internet.

Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer walk across Hogan's bridge on the 12th hole at Augusta National before last year's champions dinner at the Masters.

Newsreel on Jock Hutchison's 1921 Open Championship.

Good luck to all.

March Top 10

We're two days into April. It snowed yesterday. It snowed today. Snow is forecast for tomorrow night and Easter Sunday. Monday too. April is coming in like a lion. The weatherman calls them vigorous snow bands. Seems like a good time to look back on the sunny days of March. Here are the March top ten posts in Along the Gradyent.

1. My brother- and sister-in-law are diving feet first, and finances to the hilt, into the hottest new thing in apartment construction. Down in Ted Cruz land and the Lone Star state:

Cube Square is rising in Huntsville, Texas. One of the coolest new ideas in apartment construction is to build using inter-modal shipping containers. They call it Cargotecture. You have seen them on truck trailers, double stacked on flat bed train cars and stacked to the sky on cargo ships. Now they are beginning to appear on land, rising high in the latest green movement in apartment architecture.

America is a consumer nation, resulting in a surfeit of shipping containers inbound at U.S. ports -- many looking for a domestic home in lieu of an empty back haul. In our import intensive economy, the containers protect goods that are shipped in but are not needed in equal numbers for outbound export. A solution? Shipping container apartments: Reuse, repurpose and adorn to create a utilitarian industrial chic.  

For the full story and video links click through to the "The Cubes Are Coming, The Cubes Are Coming." 

2. I don't know if it is the record winter snows in the northeast, the prospect of Rory completing his career grand slam, or the speculation about what is happening with Tiger Woods, but people it seems are really looking forward to the Masters this year. In The Masters (Repost) we reprise our childhood connection with a gentleman who was in the first pair of honorary starters who kick off the tournament on Thursday mornings. 

Current honorary starters at the 2014 Masters -- Gary Player (black sweater), Arnold Palmer (green sweater), and Jack Nicklaus (blue sweater). 

3. People love childhood reminisces. So do I (sometimes I am not fully human, I get that). I wrote about my times and adventures as a baby boomer in the sleepy suburb of Morton Grove.

Half a block up and across the street was a field on the edge of the Cook County Forest Preserve, which with its bridle paths, heavily wooded areas, and riparian landscape presented all manner of opportunity for adventure and mischief. We captured butterflies, grasshoppers and lightening bugs, hung out in a "cave" along the river, climbed trees and explored the dump once located within.

I have been contacted by all sorts of people as a result of this post. One fellow, who was adopted, I was able to help track down his birth mother's trail, who sadly is deceased. But he was happy to finally know more of her and to meet his birth grandmother and an uncle who was a classmate of mine. There is more than meets the eye in Growing Up in Morton Grove.

"The Goal," March 16, 1973.

4. Wisconsin was in the Final Four in 1973 as well, except that time it was hockey, and our opponents were Cornell and Denver University. We reigned supreme in the old Boston Garden. Here's hoping that the Badger cagers are similarly successful this week in Indianapolis. Forty-Two Years Ago Today (Repost) looks back at our Bean Town trek, and the zany return trip we could never forget -- planes, trains, buses and automobiles, precipitated by a March blizzard in northwest Pennsylvania.

5. We like it when our top ten posts reprisals are well read, because that signifies readers saw something they liked here and are looking for more. So it is that we are proud that the February Top 10 came in strong for the month.

Bonnie Swearingen riding down
State Street, Chicago, Illinois.

6. Sometimes you meet the darnedest people on a golf course. When I was a teenager, that included John Swearingen, president and chairman of the board of Standard Oil (Indiana) and his southern belle wife, Bonnie Boulding. Whether it was the business or society pages, the New York Times, the Washington Post or the Chicago Tribune, or People Magazine, they were a couple worth talking and writing about -- and the media did, and did, and did. In John and Bonnie: A Profile in Oil, Finance, Politics and High Society, I do the same.

7. Before Google Maps and satellite views, there were aerial photos. I used one of these in Addendum to the Lincoln Tavern Post to add to my exegeses on one of the most notorious roadhouses in Morton Grove during the Al Capone and Prohibition era. I hope someday to get to finishing off a draft post about Fred Sonne, a Morton Grove resident and pilot, who invented and patented cameras that were used for many of these aerial reconnaissance shots, and hot spots like North Korea, the Soviet Union and Cuba in subsequent years.


8. AT&T entered the Dow Jones Industrials average in 1916. Now it is out so Tim Cook of Apple can make a federal case of whom does and does not bake wedding cakes for likes of himself. In Hello Good-Bye AT&T we profiled the life of Angus S. Hibbard, a pioneering telecommunications engineer, operations and marketing executive, and, it so happens, an orignal memeber of Glen View Club, where I caddied as a youth. That Bell System logo? It was a Hibbard creation. He did more to bind this nation together than Tim Cook can imagine. Tim Cook has done nothing except draft in Steve Jobs' wake.

9. My uncle, Lyndon R. Foster, was a great man. He died mere months before I ventured to California in 1975, so I never had the pleasure of making his acquaintance. There are World War I, disabled veteran, 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, China Town, mob and Ronald Reagan ascension to politics elements in the Lyn Foster story. Read all about it in On the Road to Bathgate Act 4f: Lyndon R. Foster -- Veteran, Publisher and Politician.

10. My hometown of Morton Grove, Illinois was a notorious hangout of mobsters and hoodlums during the Prohibtion era. By the time I was born and raised there in the 1950s and 1960s it was a Ward and June Cleaver kind of a suburb. In Morton Grove Mapped Through Time, we trace the physical transformation of the Chicago suburb that tracked its cultural evolution. 

A 1938 aerial photo showing greenhouses where the school I attended and the park of my youth were later located.

Glen View Club -- Focus on the First Quarter Century, Part I

Blogging on the history of a country club -- how, you might ask, has it come to that? 

Let me explain it this way. I was channel surfing the other night and came across a C-SPAN Q&A interview with Erik Larson author of "Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania," just published on the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the ship. When asked why write on the Lusitania, Mr. Larson emphasized two things -- he was interested to learn more on the topic, and he found a treasure trove of original material (in his case at the Hoover Institute on the campus of Stanford University). 

Then, Erik Larson replayed video he shot out of a low lying porthole, framing the dark, roiling and seemingly limitless cold expanse of the North Atlantic. The Lusitania was sunk in those unforgiving waters on May 7, 1915, with a loss of 1,198 of the 1,959 on board.  Larson said he voyaged across the Atlantic because when it came to writing history he considered it essential to have visited "the scene of the crime." To have been there, even a hundred years later, gave him a sense of perspective and stark reality that helped the story come alive. 

For me, Glen View Club was a scene I visited more than a thousand time from 1964 through 1972. It is a ready made backdrop for a story. As for interest, the club was founded when United States golf in particular, and our country in general, were growing up. Glen View is a stage that was populated by key actors in those processes, people such as Angus S. Hibbard, a telecommunications pioneer, urban planner and architect Daniel Burnham, and Jock Hutchison, the first United States citizen to win the British Open championship.  By virtue of Glen View Club's notoriety and the stature of its members, plus resources like newspapers.com, choniclingamerica.loc.gov, archives.chicagotribune.com and books.google.com, treasure laden archives are there for the researching.

Mr. Allen satisfied an early need to stock Glen View
Club with polo ponies. Chicago Tribune, April 5, 1898.

So it is with this post and more to come, that we blog on the early history of Glen View Club in Golf, Illinois -- the club's formation, its early membership, and its design and development. Originally founded as Glen View Golf and Polo Club in 1897, Glen View has long been a retreat for rest, recreation and respite of social and business aristocracy up Chicago's North Shore. For me it was a place where I learned how to toil.

Glen View Club's membership has included prominent politicians and leading doctors and lawyers, as well as captains of finance, industry and commerce, with some intellectuals and a legendary golfer or two thrown in for good measure.

Noted members through the years have included U.S. Presidents, William Howard Taft and Warren G. Harding, Vice President Charles Gates Dawes, and renowned amateur golfer, Charles “Chick” Evans. Chick was joined in the World Golf Hall of Fame by Jock Hutchison, who served as Glen View Club’s head professional for 35 years.

I remember well caddying in the 1960s for octogenarians Chick Evans and Jock Hutchison, both major champions during Glen View Club's early years. I will write separately on each in due course.

Glen View revolves around outdoor recreation -- golf, tennis and swimming in the summer, and paddle tennis and trap/skeet shooting in the fall and winter. Early on the club hosted the most important tournaments in American golf.

In 1899, Glen View Club hosted the first Western Open – one of five to be held on our course. The Club hosted the 1902 U.S. Amateur, which was won by member, Louis N. James, the first American born golfer to claim the title. In 1904, Willie Anderson won the third of his four U.S. Opens at Glen View Club.

Glen View Club's female 
curlers  had a sense of humor.

Glen View once had a rustic indoor curling rink with parallel ice sheets, overseen by a mezzanine wet bar that saw more action than what unfolded on the pebbled ice surfaces below. When winter weather cooperates, the club grounds open to members and guests for ice skating, cross-country skiing and snow shoeing.

NCAA Final Four -- On Wisconsin!

Wisconsin is in the Final Four -- basketball that is -- not hockey, which is startling to us old timers who graduated about a century ago. While the featured sport may have changed, some things don't. I'm talking about the music. Most are familiar with the "On Wiscosnin" fight song. There are two others -- a fun one "If You Want to Be a Badger" and a sentimental one "Varsity." Listen for each of the tunes Saturday night. Better yet, have a few beers and sing along!


If you want to be badger, just come along with me.
By the light.
Shining light.
By the light of the moon.



On Wisconsin. On Wisconsin.
Plunge right through that line.
Here we go, clear down the field boys.
Touchdown sure this time, (Uh, rah, rah)
Oh Wisconsin, On Wisconsin.
Fight on for her fame.
Fight fellas, fight, fight, fight we'll win this game.
Uh, rah, rah, Wisconsin.
Uh, rah, rah, Wisconsin.
Uh, rah, rah, Wisconsin.
Yea!



Varsity, Varisty, uh rah rah Wisconsin, praise to thee we sing.
Praise to thee our alma mater. Uh, rah, rah, Wisconsin.



And a few more for good measure, including our winning trip to the old Boston Garden in 1973.

Open Memo to Tim Cook and Apple

Mr. Cook:

You can marry whomever you want to marry. You can marry however many people you want to marry, as far as I am concerned. If I was qualified to marry you, I would do so. If I baked wedding cakes, I would bake yours. If I leased out a wedding hall, I would gladly rent it to you for the day. If I was your friend and you invited me to your wedding, I would attend. Or if you choose, you can live without the sanctity or commitment of marriage -- that is perfectly fine by me as well. Live and let live. The key here is your choice.

Now you have come out and demanded the police power of the state be lined up to force others to serve you and yours. You want your choices guaranteed by the state, but you don't want others to have the personal or religious freedom to exercise rights guaranteed for over two hundred years under the U.S. constitution. When you exercise your rights, you see it as a celebration of freedom. When other people exercise their rights, you see it as discrimination. That is unmitigated, self-centered bull. You insist the world be servant to you and yours.

Mr. Cook, you are a bully and a bum, and an embarrassment to the memory and legacy of Steve Jobs.

I will be exercising my freedom of choice going forward by having my family boycott Apple products and divesting myself of Apple stock. You don't get it. Good bye and good riddance Mr. Cook.

Freedom for all!

Sincerely,

Along the Gradyent.

Steve Jobs staunchly defending Apple's (and Microsoft's) First Amendment rights and right to discriminate in a May, 2010 email.

We Are Number Six

Architectural rendering of new Town Pump, 19th Street in Bozeman.

In growth among micropolitan statistical areas, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The U.S. Census Bureau says Bozeman was the sixth-fastest growing “micropolitan” area in the nation from July 1, 2013, to July 1, 2014, with Gallatin County’s population increasing by 2.8 percent to an estimated 97,308 residents.

The fastest-growing micro area in 2013-2014 was Williston, North Dakota, with 8.7 percent growth, the bureau reports. Rounding out the top five on the micropolitan growth list were Dickinson, North Dakota; Heber, Utah; Andrews, Texas; and Vernal, Utah.

There are 536 micro areas in total, so that would put Bozeman just outside of the top one percent. The top two areas, Williston and Dickinson, are in the middle of the Bakken oil formation. Their growth should moderate substantially in 2015 with the recent 50 percent decline in wellhead oil prices substantially reducing drilling activity in the area.

So far, the local Bozeman county and city governments are welcoming of growth and spend much of their time taking on its challenges. But as the year goes by, and more people from the coasts move here to get away from it all, these people from the liberal lands will make up an increasing proportion of the local voting population. They will move to close the doors behind them and impose taxes, requirements and restrictions that discourage growth and make Bozeman a substantially more expensive place to live. Then they will decry the absence of affordable housing and blame it on rapacious business people. So it goes.

Service line at new Five Guys in Bozeman.

Now the truth be known, the Census really doesn't know what populations are but every ten years. In between decennial censuses the bureau imputes populations using birth, death, and other demographic and real estate data, along with a dosage of statistical benchmarking. Despite their best but distant and partially informed efforts, most population data need to be substantially revised by the time of the next decennial census. Based on the growth in traffic, expansion of local retail (food and service stations), and the local proliferation of construction sites, I am betting that the Census Bureau estimate for Bozeman is understated. We shall see in time.

Another Day in Montana

A couple of guys didn't make it to work this morning.

On my way to golf past Four Corners, a little road rage, cars screech to a halt off the side of the road, drivers exit and engage in fisticuffs, shots fired ...

Subject vehicles pulled off into parking lot for fist fight and gun shots. We settle up our bets after golf in the Korner Bar & Cafe.

Here is the news report:

FOUR CORNERS - A road-rage incident escalated into a fight and gunfire this morning near Four Corners.

According to the Gallatin County Sheriff's Department, at 8:22 a.m. deputies responded to a report of a fight and gun shots in the parking lot of the Korner Club in Four Corners.

Initial reports indicated that a road rage incident involving two vehicles turned into a fight, followed by one man producing a gun and firing.

Deputies were on the scene quickly and the two men were detained.

One man was transported to Bozeman Deaconess for a cut above his eye from the fight - not the result of a gunshot.
Detectives are interviewing witnesses and investigating the scene to determine what charges will be filed.

Then at Cottonwood Hills the thermometer never cracked 40 and we were snowed out on the back nine -- just another day in Montana.