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Joan Zen
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| By Brian D’Ambrosio, Editor |
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Indicative and vivid, Joan Zen’s music has a sly, unlikely way of being able to reassure the optimist and silence the cynic. Within the funky bars, rich chords and thoughtful lyrics of the band’s recently released second CD, there’s an agreement, an accord, and a harmonious relationship between word and deed, action and intent, sound and frenzy.
This curious consolidation of musical and lyrical forces asserts that enlightenment can be attained not just through meditation, self-contemplation, and intuition but also through the quintessential love of, and devotion to, the peppy practice and pugnacious spirit of music.
With its consistent, orderly, and pleasing arrangement of parts, Youniverse, the self-produced follow up to the band’s debut CD “Intramission,” is indeed congruous in feeling and opinion, and slickly provides a pleasing combination of elements in whole and colorful and vibrant harmony.
“This CD is really a totally different animal altogether; I really don’t want to call it a project,” says Jason Hicks, who produced and mixed Youniverse from the cozy confines of his Hamilton home and supplied much of the musical and vocal punch on its 12 tracks.
“We needed to get this CD out. This captures who we are and represents how we sound at our live performances. It’s a more polished effort from songwriting to production,” he adds.
“This album is more representative of who we are,” says Deborah Hicks, a.k.a Joan Zen. “It’s a concept album – all the songs are related. Our first album really wasn’t as cohesive as what we’ve got here.”
Inspired by the Hicks’ robust interest in Vipassana meditation, a plethora of political causes, and personal lifestyle choices, Youuniverse is the natural extension of the imaginations and philosophies of two people tied so intimately to not just one another but to music and its harmonizing and regenerating factors.
Indeed, Deborah and Jason Hicks have an intimate familiarity with the politics of freedom, activism and self-renewal. The CD’s central theme, often subtle but at times much less so, is rooted in the Buddhist belief of offering practical methods to help humans deal with a problematic world and to develop lasting peace, first within ourselves and then systemically. Basically, you’re listening to the reemphasis of universal order and harmony and a passionate explanation of two peoples’ spiritual code of the road.
“This is a really revealing album, basically everything that we like and are about is in it,” says Jason.
“We’ve gotten a little bored with nonsense songs and lyrics. The core of Buddhist teaching is the reality, and we’re trying to offer reality. We love writing our own material and we’ve got a dozen songs here that might affect people. I personally feel like I couldn’t hide behind the cover band motif anymore,” says Deborah.
With unvarnished freedom comes hefty responsibility and both Deborah and Jason are prepared to take the responsibility – whether it be in the form of cheerful praise or harsh criticism – for the CD’s content and character.
Explains Deborah: “We chose to take a side this time. Prior to this record, I’d been walking a line because I really didn’t want to offend anybody. I didn’t want people to think the Zen ideal was taking over, but rather to just feel the general groove of the band – it was more important to gather fans and spend more time doing covers.”
For example, “Mother Terra” is a stern indictment of environmental degradation told with haunting prescience, including a cautionary warning that some day there may be “nowhere to run and hide from ecological homicide.”
Apparently, progressive environmental lyricism or sober chit-chat about the dangers of planetary pollution isn’t the stuff that some folks want to hear dished out in accompaniment with their mellifluous melodies.
“We upset some cowboys the other night,” says Jason. “They’d been line-dancing but not listening to the words. After Joan’s Earth Day message about being ‘greener,’ one of them shouted ‘goddamn hippies, you have no idea what you’re talking about’. It’s odd to me that someone would respond that way to a message about how we should clean up the planet.”
Deborah counts John Lennon and Bob Marley as incalculable spiritual and musical influences in her life. From these men, she learned that music is a vehicle to speak about what’s important to her and that this speaking out can’t be done in a way that oozes insincerity or reeks of the singular intent to pretentiously propagate a career. It needs to be done earnestly.
“I idolized John Lennon and Bob Marley, people that had something to say. Who’s out there today to idolize, Britney Spears?” asks Deborah.
Jason refers to Youniverse as a work of pure volition.
“We put down how we believe and made it a little more pop-like and digestible on the music side, and have this as our karmic medallion,” he says.
While the lyrics to Youniverse may ruffle a few political feathers across the stoutly conservative state of Montana, the intention of the record isn’t to perpetuate fear, spread divisiveness or promote inveterate contempt for others, but to “spread a happy and positive vibe to people in a non-preachy way,” says Deborah.
Youniverse is buttressed by a passionate lyrical style abounding with energy and tight musical arrangements that wallop listeners with a forcefulness of expression. And even though for some peace may sound heavy and a life of brotherly love extremely abstruse to understand, Debra says that the album itself is actually pretty simple.
“There’s a model and an ideal here, and we’re really not living up to it. It may sound deep, but it’s all pretty basic: Love, harmony and connectedness to hippie ideals.”
Over the last few years, Deborah has taken on the persona of Joan Zen, creating it, nurturing it, and occasionally rearranging it, and now she’s at the point where this persona is part of her own inner selfhood. Joan Zen has even given Deborah her own mantra.
“I had to be a better person because of the name. It’s given me motivation to purify myself a little bit these last couple of years.”
Indeed, Deborah has recently gone through a purging of the emotions and has relieved myriad emotional tensions through Joan Zen’s music. (In fact, by adjusting her pH balance she’s lost 100 pounds within the last six months, has conquered minor anxiety and depression problems, switched to a raw diet of fruits and vegetables, and has eliminated caffeine, alcohol and red meat from her life’s story.)
Youniverse has given Deborah the fine opportunity to work off her energies and exorcise her spiritual shortcomings and cravings. The CD gives solid proof that Joan Zen’s a whole lot more than a run-of-the-mill funk and R&B cover band perfunctorily respinning “(In the) Midnight Hour.” The production moves into a more inspired, darker and moodier direction than Joan Zen’s debut album, “Intramission,” which was an eclectic combination of original tunes swaying back and forth from funk to rock to boogie and then back to funk.
In hindsight, both Deborah and Jason feel as if Intramission was a solid, reasonably inspired art piece, but that it never authentically encapsulated them and their lifestyle choices all that perfectly.
As a couple, Deborah and Jason seem to go together as naturally as smooth wine and sophisticated poetry, or Charlie Parker and sweet jazz, or strenuous hiking and physical harmony. They met in California in 1997. Both share diverse musical tastes. Deborah, who was born in Memphis, Tennessee and raised near Atlanta, was working as the lead singer in a show band when she met Jason, who showed up one day at a small nightclub to tryout as the band’s new saxophonist.
Three weeks and three dates later the pair was engaged.
“From the time we first met there was a great depth to our connection obvious to both of us. We knew at the moment. We’re lucky to have the opportunity to share this bond,” says Deborah.
The couple decided to move to Montana after watching a financial planning television ad showing a retired pair of shriveled seniors actively enjoying their golden years together. The commercial got the Hicks’ thinking that they wanted to enjoy life – and one another – not only when they were diminished and slower, but at the younger, more rollicking stages in their lives.
Today Deborah and Jason, still only in their mid-thirties, possess an infinite capacity for vigorous artistic achievement. As human beings, they’ve grown comfortable with just exactly who and what they are in life. As musicians, their plan is that Joan Zen’s music doesn’t have to make any obsequious promises of eternal political meekness, and there’s the beauty of it – they’re comfortable knowing that it doesn’t have to.
Whether gleefully pouncing on life’s contradictions when discussing issues affecting their own personal lives or by introducing new concepts to listeners through music as performers, Deborah and Jason Hicks see to it that their days are always spent engrossed in avocation.
When it comes to their music, perhaps most importantly, they’ve used the medium as the message, and the message isn’t rife with vague, chaotic fears or hateful aphorisms, but one that promotes an open bond and an implacable friendship with that ever-so elusive bastion of sanctified spiritual equilibrium known as peace.
“The Bitterroot has always embraced us,” says Jason. “Some places haven’t embraced our music all that much. But, hey, the worst thing that they can say about us is ‘They love everybody’.”
For more information and concert dates, visit JoanZen.com.
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Q & A With U.S. Congressman Denny Rehberg
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| Montana Republican opines on the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq, the Read ID Act and its influence in Montana, and contentious wilderness matters. |
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| By Brian D'Ambrosio, Editor |
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U.S. Congressman Denny Rehberg, in his third term representing the state of
Montana
, is a fifth generation
Montana
rancher with more than a quarter century of ranching and public service experience. Rehberg, who recently received the United States Chamber of Commerce’s Spirit of Enterprise Award for his voting record on business issues, spoke to the Clark Fork Journal about the war in
Iraq
, the Read ID Act, wilderness issues, and other matters.
(Clark Fork Journal): It appears that Congress has taken its first decisive action against the Iraq War and that momentum in
Washington
is building against the war. Congress is attempting to mandate a withdrawal of troops beginning in five months. My question to you is two parts: Is Congress truly making an anti-war statement, and do you favor a timeline for troop withdrawal the same way as polls suggest a majority of Americans do by a wide margin?
(Rehberg): I’m behind our Commandeer-in-Chief and I agree with his position on the war and I reject the timetable. Our constitution allows the opportunity for Congress to declare a war, but after that our Founding Fathers spent a lot of time in the Constitution Convention debating who should be in charge, and they very clearly determined that it couldn’t be done by committee – Congress wasn’t a particularly good setting. It’s interesting to me as a student of both the constitution and of political science to recognize that Nancy Pelosi’s and Harry Reid’s party– and their faction of American politics – are trying to micromanage the war.
The Constitution doesn’t give them that authority, so what they suggest is a voluntary or a non-binding timeline. If they really wanted to make their statement, ultimately they can come up with an alternative, or they can pull funding, and they’ve chosen not to do either. They recognize that problem. Short of doing that, all it really does is make it more difficult to try and accomplish the goals. Our goals are: to stabilize the region and to get out of the region as soon as possible. There are times when I would suggest that perhaps the president isn’t articulating the issues as well as I think he possibly could. I’m not so sure that the American public sees the connection between why it’s so import for
Iraq
to establish a democracy and to have a government. Essentially, what we’re trying to do, and I’d like to see the president start a discussion this way: we are in
Iraq
for the specific purposes of trying to stabilize the region so
Iraq
’s creating problems for its neighbors or for us. September 11th is a reflection of the problems that can be created by terrorism.
There are those in the world, especially in an unstable region of the world like Iraq, that want to do things to us because they may not like our religion, may not like our economy, or they may not like us. They’ve proved that they’re willing to put in the effort, the money, and that they have the desire to do us ill-will. That’s not just September 11th, but the actions leading up to it, it’s the bombing of the USS Cole, and the first
World
Trade
Center
bombing. If Nancy and her party within the US Congress were serious, they’d end the funding for the war or take some other action that was something more than just disruptive to getting our troops out of
Iraq
as soon as we possibly can.
(Clark Fork Journal): Democrats are saying that President Bush eventually must accept some conditions on the
U.S.
commitment to the unpopular war. Doesn’t setting a fixed date to begin a pull out of
Iraq
bring some much needed clarity to an ill-defined mission?
(Rehberg): There is a growing emphasis on troop removal, partly because the mainstream media and some opinion leaders are continually hammering every day the failures and not the successes. The American public as a whole tends to be a little impatient. We assume - being the greatest nation in the world - that we can hope to accomplish whatever we hope to accomplish in the shortest period of time. Why don’t we win in a year? Why don’t we win in two? We tend to forget that we spent 55 years in
South Korea
. In fact, today we are doubling the size of
Camp
Humphries
. We are reconfiguring the threat of
North Korea
, and its nuclear weaponry hasn’t been eliminated, apparently. And we are still there 55 years later. We’ve still got bases in
Japan
and
Germany
. Somehow, we have created in the mainstream media, and with certain political leaders in this country, a timeline of success or failure, and we’ve compressed it so much that it almost guarantees failure.
(Clark Fork Journal): So in your opinion our military and diplomatic successes in
Iraq
are being underemphasized?
(Rehberg): No doubt. I’m the only member of the Congressional Delegation that’s now been to both
Iraq
and
Afghanistan
. I was there in December 2005, and I saw a major difference between then and my first trip years earlier. We saw an infrastructure, we saw the carrying capacity of water through the cement ditches for agricultural purposes, and we saw it in the rehabilitation of the refineries that can give them a source of revenue for purposes of rebuilding their country. That’s the one thing about Saddam: you notice that he lived in an oil rich country with a lot of money but he didn’t give it to his people. Virtually non-existent under his rule was schools, hospitals, or public transportation. His infrastructure of refining capacity had deteriorated to the point of being non-existent. He was shipping crude and not refined product, which tells you that he was taking his billions and billions, as we knew, for his own personal benefit – building the mansions, the palaces. He took the money for military construction, weaponry and research, and such, and it wasn’t being used on infrastructure.
In the two year period in between trips, I noticed a rebuilding and rehabilitation of infrastructure. Not necessarily in Baghdad, where the media has a tendency to hunker down in the Green Zone, but we had the opportunity to get out to Mosul and to Crete and to other areas where business is being established and roads are being rebuilt, and where real progress is being made. So the answer is yes, we as an American society love to dwell on the murders and rapes – just pick up the newspaper - and you’ll see what the front papers are full of. We tend to dwell on the negative not the positive.
(Clark Fork Journal): How this does this
Iraq
war spending bill affect the funding for the combat operations related to the war?
(Rehberg): Well, a solution will be bridged. Compromise is necessary. And once again we’ll go back to the initial premise of an emergency supplemental, and that is, we can’t anticipate with any finally the exact cost of the war one or two years in advance. The war supplemental is intended to be just that, an infusion of the dollars necessary to carry out the actions based upon the plan that the military leaders have put together. The timeline is something extra, it’s different. It’s a timeline for failure. What it says – and it’s ironic in a way – it says that if the country isn’t stable by a certain date, then we pull out, it’s just the opposite of what we ought to do. If the country isn’t stable, and the people are attempting and trying and doing the best they can, we should stay. You had a country in
Iraq
where Saddam would kill opponents, and that’s just a fact; it didn’t have to be during an overt demonstration or in an attempt to overthrow him. Even if there was a hint of opposition, they’d just disappear.
Now, there are people stepping up to serve in the Iraq Army and in the police departments and signing up to serve in their elected positions – and that’s really something. What they’ve essentially said is that if
America
pulls out, they’d be killed. The people who have stepped forward aren’t the ones that are asking us to leave, the insurgents are, as are those that are out of power that want to be back in power that are leading the effort to try and manipulate the opinions of world leaders and policy makers, and to pull out so they can go back in. Setting a timeline that suggests that if
Iraq
isn’t stable by a certain date we are going to pull out will do damage to the long-term.
(Clark Fork Journal): Let’s shift to the Real ID Act and its influence in
Montana
. The Real ID Act, as you’re aware, is a federal law that sets a national standard for driver’s licenses and requires states to link their record-keeping systems to national databases. You originally supported the federal legislation, but now you say that you are against it. Why the switch in logic?
(Rehberg): I respect the legislature and the Governor’s position of opposition. If the American public - which I believe to be true – wants us to solve the issue of terrorism, to try and gain control of our borders and control those within our borders, and also control the issue of illegal immigration and illegal aliens, we need some way or ability to make a determination with a factual basis whether people are moving across the borders or are applying for certain benefits within the country legally. The Real ID is perhaps misdescribed. It’s really a driver’s license. Every state has a driver’s license. There’s a certain level of information that’s on that driver’s license, and there ought to be a certain level of information that’s necessary to determine whether that driver’s license has been issued legally. Currently, if you drive a semi-truck, you get a commercial license. That commercial license is tapped into a database that can tell you whether that driver has been in an accident or has violated traffic laws in
Louisiana
, and yet he’s driving in
Montana
or
Oregon
. It’ll tell you how many points have gone against their record and should they be on the road or not. We do this for safety purposes.
The Real ID is nothing more than a driver’s license for people like ourselves - that aren’t commercial drivers - that has a certain level of information on it. There’s a level of demagoguery that’s going on regarding this issue and misunderstanding: When the Governor suggests that you’re going to have to swipe your driver’s license in some machine which is going to tell everybody in the world where you’ve been, who you saw, when you left, and when you returned – no way. That’s foolish. It’s just not true. It could get to that point, and it’s up to us to see that it doesn’t happen. Bureaucrats have a tendency to grab something and run with it and to do more with things than they possibly should. It’s the oversight responsibly of State Legislator, Congress, and the Governor, and, ultimately, the media and the public.
(Clark Fork Journal): The Federal Government has never been very popular with Montanans. What took you so long to decide that repealing the Real ID Act was enormously in favor with your constituents?
(Rehberg): See, the Real ID Act is Catch 22. We want to protect ourselves from terrorism, and this was a September 11th recommendation, and we want to clamp down on illegal aliens, and we want to hold business responsible for hiring illegals. Yet if we don’t have those tools necessary for those businesses to find out if those people are here legally or not, how can we hold them responsible? If they have a place to go to ask the question of whether they’re here illegally or not, things would be better. So know we have ourselves a pretty interesting dilemma.
I don‘t blame the American public for fearing the Federal Government or any governmental entity taking things too far. Bureaucrats have a habit of taking things too far and some have lost their common sense. They hit us with regulation upon regulation and control upon control, so I don’t blame people. This gives us an opportunity to step back and say ‘we don’t necessarily trust the Federal Government, and we’ll see if we can come up with a better way.’
Whether I voted for it or not, I recognized the right to make the determination not to trust the Federal Government. Now I’ll step in and say ‘I can live with that.’ Now we have to come up with a way to protect ourselves from terrorism, and have a legal way and convenient way that doesn’t step on our rights, to find out whether people are here legally or not.
(Clark Fork Journal): When it comes to the Real ID Act, we’ve heard so much about it, good and bad, that it’s difficult to discern fact from fiction, truth from hyperbole, logic from paranoia.
(Rehberg): That’s true. But, you know, the Federal Government continues to prove that it can’t be trusted in some ways. I supported aspects of the Patriot Act, with the understanding that nothing could be wrong with our Department of Justice having the ability to intercept calls form
Iran
or
Iraq
or
Saudi Arabia
to cells in
America
. Based upon the recommendation of the Department of Justice, we gave abbreviated process opportunities to the court system to get in and get them quickly and then go though the paperwork, because we felt it was more important to get to it fast so we might be able to head off something like September 11th than to hold it up in bureaucracy.
Well, lo and behold, the bureaucrats at the Department of Justice chose to use that authority and that right more excessively than we had anticipated. It’s another one of those cases where we gave them a little bit of rope and they hung us. It angers you. I have a level of credibility with my constituency and they don’t necessarily want to know how all of this fits, they say ‘that’s why we elected you, hired you, and pay you to go back to
Washington
to make this work.’ But, I have to make the best value judgment at the time. When you have somebody like the Department of Justice come in and you find out that they’ve been violating the principles, because they’ve used it more than they actually needed to, that hurts my credibility, and I take it personally. Next time I might not be so quick to trust the Federal Government because maybe we shouldn’t. I spent three years after the Patriot Act going around the state of
Montana
saying ‘if you know of any example where the Federal Government has abused its authority under the Patriot Act, against you personally or against anybody other than a terrorist, tell me because we want to know that in Congress.’ That’s part of our oversight responsibility.
(Clark Fork Journal): You sponsored the Northern Border Prosecution Initiative Reimbursement Act, ostensibly to repay our local law enforcement jurisdictions for monies and resources utilized in the prosecution of federal northern border-related crimes. Tell us more about this particular piece of legislation.
(Rehberg): There are two issues within that bill, or two points of philosophy. One is that a lot of the attention is on the southern border, and rightfully so, because the volume of problem is along the southern border. We have to have a way of reminding those in the executive branch, the president, Customs, INS, DEA – all the entities controlling the border, or having anything to do with immigration – that we are trying to make it easier for them to control the border. We provide the assets, the money to do it. We don’t want the northern border to lose position within the discussion about terrorism and immigration, because the southern border is such a problem. We have a large expanse. I don’t need to explain the miles involved and the lack of population. As we toughen up the southern border, the northern border then becomes a point of access for those that can’t get through the southern border because the fence has been built and because we’ve deployed assets there.
We’re continually looking at ways to improve our security along the northern border. Such as the use of additional border patrol agents, more people, better equipment and sensors, buying helicopters and airplanes, we’ve got dogs, and we’re building buildings along the northern border to house new border patrol to process and hold illegals. My legislation is there to recognize that not only is there a need for help along the border, but there’s also a cost involved – a cost to local law enforcement – and there ought to be a reimbursement by the Federal Government to local law enforcement for the purposes of doing the job so we don’t necessarily have to fight over jurisdiction.
(Clark Fork Journal): The Department of Transportation announced that it will open the southern
U.S.
border to 100 long-haul, interstate trucking companies from
Mexico
. Your position is that such a move will create even more serious, chronic safety issues on our highways and roads, correct?
(Rehberg): After September 11th the government starting pointing fingers at the airline industries for not adequately screening passengers. Congress on two separate occasions told the Federal Aviation Administration they must come up with regulations that establish the standards for screening, the training and testing for screening, and ultimately, the punishment, if it wasn’t done – would be to hold the airlines responsible. They were supposed to let them know what the regulations are. The FAA never got around to it. The government never established the standards or the ability to manage such programs. That’s the problem with this idea pilot project of allowing Mexican drivers to bring their trucks into
America
. Until they’ve got the standards, the training, the testing, and the punishment, it represents a safety hazard.
Do you open things up first and then try to deal with the problems? Or do you try to anticipate the problems first? At the very least we want these truck drivers to speak English. And at the very least we want them to take a test and to understand our safety standards, our signage, just like anybody else would have to go through a training process to become a commercial driver. They’ll be on our streets then. They become a safety issue to our families and to the communities they’re driving in. The DOT and the Federal Government need to recognize they’ve got a responsibility if something happens. It’s too soon and too early to open up that border. We’ve all got different views on immigration. There are those in southern
California
that represent constituencies solely of illegal aliens. So there are those that want this.
(Clark Fork Journal): The most recent Wilderness Protection Bill making its way through Congress is designed to protect as much as 23 million acres in five northern Rocky Mountain States, including seven million acres of land in
Montana
. Proponents of the bill say that it’s crucial to protect these beautiful and ecologically important lands; critics say that the boundaries are artificial and see it as arrogant ploy by East and West Coast politicians to gain favor with and court environmental groups. Where do you stand here?
(Rehberg): If there’s one thing I’ve learned in public service over the years, and I’ve been involved in Montana as a state legislator, lieutenant governor and now as a congressman, and also as somebody that’s been involved in private business in the natural resources industry – I’m a rancher by trade and I manage my ranch under a philosophy of holistic resource management, which clearly understands what makes up our environment and how to protect and preserve it – is that there are certain groups that get involved to polarize the issue. I try not to polarize. One of things that I did do as lieutenant governor is to create the Consensus Council to solve natural resource controversies before they became disputes.
We got involved in lots of natural resource disputes. The reason we got involved on both sides is because issues concerning natural resources can be high-profile and emotional, mostly because there are so many various factions when comes to wilderness issues. The best thing to do is to sit down at the table and come up with areas of agreement before people divvy into corner and sue their way back out. I do think it’s foolish for a congresswoman from
Manhattan
, and others who’ve never been to
Montana
, to be deciding what our boundaries should be like.
I like Carolyn (Maloney, D-NY); in fact, I traveled with her to
Qatar
three weeks ago and I asked her how she liked
Montana
, but she said she’s never been here although she’s flown over it. When I was in the real estate business, we tried to convince people that you really can’t buy a house by driving down the street and looking at the outside of it. You really needed to get in and look at the plumbing and look at the carpets and look at the walls. Flying over it, while interesting, isn’t a particularly good way to determine what’s in the best interests of the residents, the constituencies and, ultimately, the environment.
They never asked our opinions or our advice, or got a clear understanding how we feel about the issue, or whether we even feel if it’s a good idea or not. To introduce legislation that’s had no public hearings in
Montana
, and essentially no public hearings in
Washington
D.C.
, polarizes the issue and creates more controversy. We don’t need that in
Montana
. We have a hard enough time trying to create a census on these issues just in
Montana
. To have something thrown out of national nature from people coming from an area that, frankly, they can’t relate to our lives, our livelihoods and our families in Montana, because they come from an area where they may represent 20 square blocks in downtown New York City. She’s got exactly the same population in 20 square blocks that we have in a 147,000 square miles of
Montana
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Road Trippin’: Philipsburg
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| A day trip to this uncommonly enjoyable western Montana town full of amusing resources is indubitably worthwhile. |
| By Brian D'Ambrosio |
Something I’ve noticed in the last few years is the way certain communities in Montana pull together – and, quite frankly, how others don’t – to make their region a better place in which to live and work. This is, in part, a result of successful collaboration between town and county governments as well as the promethean efforts of various organizations that strive for improvement in everything from economic development, to agriculture, to the arts.
In terms of promoting tourism and fomenting cultural interest, Philipsburg is on the progressive side of the pecking order. Long the county seat of Granite County, Philipsburg has an exclusive history in mining and ranching, the roots of which started as a thriving mining town in the late 1800’s.
Today its historic downtown is abundant with tastefully restored buildings from that era, including shops, saloons, and other establishments. Situated 30 miles south of I-90 on the famous Pintler Scenic Loop, also known as Montana Highway 1, the picturesque town is halfway between Yellowstone and Glacier Parks and only about an hour from Missoula (78 miles).
From fly-fishing to singularly exceptional hiking, Philipsburg is the perfect headquarters in the Rocky Mountains for agreeable enjoyment any time of year. (At an elevation of 5280 feet, the town of 930 is within a 30 mile drive of two National Wilderness Areas.) With the Sapphire Mountains on the west, the Flint Range on the east, and the Pintler Mountain Range to the south, you’ll have an exceptional vantage point no matter which way you look.
The residents and business community of Philipsburg would like you to feel right at home when you’re visiting their town. For tourists, the area is a fine and friendly place to visit thanks to the combined efforts of local civic groups, business leaders, the Philipsburg Chamber of Commerce, and other key players. Indeed, it’s remarkable what can be accomplished when a small group of people share a single-minded progressive business vision and are proactive in seeing it through.
Eclectic, quaint and indubitably friendly, the business community of Philipsburg has done its dandiest to preserve and accentuate the town’s small-town atmosphere and delightfully peaceful living. Here are a few tourist attractions affording great relaxation and enjoyment and typifying the town’s unique spirit and irrepressibly jolly countenance.
Located in the heart of Philipsburg, 103 West Broadway, The Broadway Hotel is “your elegant, yet cozy, headquarters for anything you want to do in the glorious Rocky Mountains of Montana.”
Fully renovated in 2003, The Broadway offers modern comfort and convenience in an historic building dating back to 1890. In addition to a huge guest lounge and coffee bar, you’ll find nine beautifully appointed rooms that range from cozy Queens, spacious Kings and large suites complete with sitting rooms. For more info, visit www.broadwaymontana.com.
Gem Mountain, a merry sapphire-round up establishment billing itself as ‘good dirty family fun in the shadow of Montana’s Old West’, offers the opportunity to take in the natural beauty that surrounds the Pintlars and to enjoy the family fun the business offers. There, you get a chance or two, or more, at stuffing your saddle bags with precious Montana sapphires from “one of the most abundant sources for sapphires in North America, if not the whole wide world.”
The retail store and gravel wash trough full of Montana sapphires are open through the summer to mid-October. For more information, visit www.gemmtn.com.
Speaking of sapphires, the downtown Sapphire Gallery calls itself “the only all sapphire and ruby store in the United States.” The business puts forward a vast variety of services: indoor sapphire mining, heat treating, SP faceting, goldsmithing, custom jewelry design. Over 2,000 pieces of sapphire and ruby jewelry from Montana and many worldwide deposits are displayed in an antique showroom. Gift items include handcrafted minerals from both Montana as well as international locations.
From young to old, the Sapphire Gallery allows one and all to enjoy searching for sapphires in a comfortable mining room. Throughout the years the Sapphire Gallery says that it has created over 10,000 pieces of fine jewelry from the diggings of their visitors.
“Montana sapphire jewelry is being worn and bragged about in every state of the US and many countries of the world,” says owner Dale Siegford.
For additional info, visit www.sapphire-gallery.com.
If exquisite candies and confectionary cravings are on your mind, then the Sweet Palace, one of the largest and most pleasing candy emporiums in the great American west, is where you’ll want to be positioned. Its name is in honor of a family-owned 50-year-old candy business in Philipsburg.
Owners Dale Siegford and Shirley Beck renovated this 1890’s building that “has stood the test of a mining, timber and cattle community in a growing movement westward, and now has matured to a sweet, glorious confection for the next century and more.”
“What can be more fun than a candy store?” ask owners Siegford and Beck. “Who can resist a candy store, if only for a peek and a whiff?” they wonder. For more information on how you can freely acquiesce to the irresistible deluge of sweets and sugars, visit www.sweetpalace.com.
Philipsburg gives visitors the opportunity to enjoy wonderful family entertainment in one of Montana’s few remaining opera houses. The Opera House Theatre Company, a professional company of actors from all over the country, provides the melodramatic flair in an ideal setting for presenting theatre as it might have been seen in the early 1900’s.
Plays, skits and ensemble acting are brought to life from early summer through Labor Day weekend. The 350 seat opera house is a cool, comfortable respite from the summer heat where “you’ll experience riveting, fast-paced melodrama; you’ll laugh out loud at our platitudinous panorama of pithy, preposterous and perfectly palatable variety acts.”
The historic Opera House provides a perfect environment in which to sit back, relax and be entertained by live theatre accompanied by live music. Showtime during the week is at 7:00 p.m., designed for those wishing to reach final evening destinations before dark. On weekends throughout the summer, matinees take place at 2 p.m. For more information, check out www.operahousetheatre.com.
So, now that you know a few of the dandy and divine points of interest, there’s no valid reason as to why one wouldn’t venture to take at least one day this coming warm, wistful summer to recreate and relax in Philipsburg – a charming little western Montana town bursting at the seams with amusing, interesting resources.
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What is the Truth About MSG?
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| The truth is that we aren’t being told about all of the research that shows MSG to be antagonistic to human systems. |
| By Merlin Eagle , for the Clark Fork Journal |
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What is MSG, and why is it so often referred to as being “hidden”? Let’s start with what it is; MSG stands for monosodium glutamate. There are several types of MSG, but all of them contain glutamic acid (glutamate), sodium (salt) and up to 1% contaminants. As for why it is so often referred to as being “hidden”; could it be that if people were to know the truth about MSG, they would demand that it be outlawed? To know this we have to find out how MSG affects us. What does MSG do to the average human body that the owners of MSG producing companies might not want consumers to know?
MSG has been masquerading as a seasoning for decades, since it was invented in 1908 by Kikunae Ikeda of Tokyo, while seeking an alternative to seaweed for seasoning. It wasn’t until the close of World War II that MSG was brought into the U.S. in quantity and since then we have been conditioned to accept it as if it were indeed only a seasoning. Why, if a slightly salty and possibly seaweed taste is all it can bring to the table? Ordinary table salt does that job much more efficiently and without the glutamic acid and contaminants. Ordinary salt is also cheaper than MSG, so why do we need it? What does it do for our food? Perhaps more importantly; what does it do for us, or TO us? There is ample evidence that MSG is not our friend. In his book “Excitotoxins – The Taste That Kills”, Dr. Russell Blaylock, MD lists quite a few things that MSG has been proven to be responsible for, among these are; brain damage in children, endocrine problems, as well as many neurodegenerative brain diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, ALS, and Alzheimer’s disease. There could be brain lesions from as little as one single exposure to MSG. There are also an increasing number of people who experience ventricular tachycardia after ingesting MSG and are distressed enough by it to seek a cardiac specialist thinking that they had experienced a heart attack. MSG is particularly risky “…if you have diabetes, or have ever had a stroke, brain injury, brain tumor, seizure, or have suffered from hypertension, meningitis, or viral encephalitis…” Is this what we want to get from our food? How can we avoid consuming it, when it is so universally used by the food industry? Apparently not just the food industry is using it.
MSG is used in the farming industry and is being sprayed on crops. It is included in formulas for fertilizer, fungicide, pesticide and a plant growth enhancer product called AuxiGro. It is also used in processed food, dietary supplements, cosmetics, personal care products, and drugs. It is used in waxes that are applied to fresh fruits and vegetables to make them more visually attractive in the market and can remain on the edible portion of the plant until served. Then of course it can be deliberately added to our food to produce a particular response.
What response could be so desirable that it would be put into things like baby food, dietary supplements, medications/drugs, protein drinks recommended for seniors, protein bars and protein powders, even those that are sold in Health Food stores, kosher food, and even vaccines that are injected in children, seniors, and our soldiers and even unbelievably, in enteral feeding products (tube feeding)? What response could be so important? How, without our consent, has MSG made its way into most of the food we eat, especially when we eat out? What makes it so popular with those who sell food? This brings us to its principal use. MSG is addictive!
The only reason why a restaurant or any other food service company would put it in our food is because we become almost immediately addicted to it and we will then be much more likely to return to a particular restaurant, or product that uses it. We become addicted to a substance that does absolutely nothing for us and in fact damages our health to a surprising degree and yet we associate it with the food it is used on and crave that food like an addict craves drugs.
Restaurants and other food service companies defend it as if it were just an innocuous seasoning that has been unjustifiably maligned, but if it’s just a seasoning, why are those who use it reluctant to admit that they do? Why does it always have to be hidden?
What are some of the other names for MSG and why are other alternate names necessary? MSG is the main ingredient and is always contained in food additives called; Autolyzed Yeast, Maltodextrin, Sodium Caseinate, Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein, Hydrolyzed Protein, Hydrolyzed Plant Protein, Plant Protein Extract, Yeast Extract, Textured Protein (including TVP), Hydrolyzed Oat Flour, and Corn Oil, and even Soy sauce which contains huge amounts of MSG, there are also many other additives that frequently contain MSG. It therefore becomes extremely important for us to become our own “Authority Figures” and read the labels and search for any name that MSG may be going by at the time. We must take the time to become familiar with all of the disguises of the many hazardous chemicals that we are subjected to on a daily basis.
If MSG is good for us, or even if it just does us no harm, why must it always be hidden? Why aren’t we allowed to know the truth? Why aren’t we told about all of the research that shows MSG to be antagonistic to human systems? More importantly, if MSG is NOT good for us and in fact DOES do our bodies harm, why do we continue to allow the restaurants and food service industries to continue to poison us with it?
Why do we not demand that they all stop using it? Are we all too addicted to protest? All we have to do is not patronize any restaurant or food service product that uses it, and they would lose the only reason for using it in the first place. We can’t become addicted to food that we don’t consume.
Excitotoxins – The Taste That Kills by Dr. Russell Blaylock, MD
The Slow Poisoning of America by John Erb (Research assistant at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada
www.truthinlabeling.org/II.WhereIsMSG.html
Merlin Eagle is the owner of Washido Studio, the top Martial Arts school in the Bitterroot, touting the finest instruction, and specializing in Hapkido Karate, a Korean form of Martial Arts. It offers a variety of classes taught by certified instructors.
For more information, call 375-0372, or email staff@washidostudio.com.
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| The Ravalli County Off-Road User Association
Honorable ethics and land veneration key tenets of outdoor organization’s beliefs.
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| By Shannon Selway |
The Ravalli County Off-Road User Association’s name is pretty much self-explanatory. They are ATVers and motorcycle riders comprised of folks from virtually all over the Bitterroot that exist mainly to preserve, protect and expand off-road access to state and federal lands for the public. The club has an impressive membership list of over 400 (and growing) – a remarkable size for a young organization that’s been around for only about two years.
The Association was formed in 2005 by an ATV enthusiast, Kathy Lieberth, who put an ad in the paper. She did so out of great concerns that her sport was under compromise from the direction that she saw the Forest Service was taking in road closures. The “ball got rolling” and in no time, great things were happening for the proactive Association.
Some of the public holds misconceptions about off-road users, and the Association wants to “clear some things up.”
In addition to protecting the rights of off-road users, they also represent the rights of hunters, fishermen, campers, hikers and day-users’ access to public lands by motorized vehicles. They advocate multiple usage of backcountry roads - not just for ATVs and motorcycles - but also for fourwheelers, snowmobilers, hikers, and backcountry horsepeople. It is their feeling that recreational opportunities should be preserved for all citizens, including older and disabled Americans, not set aside for the able-bodied.
In addition to the nominal membership fees, the Association’s 23 business sponsors have added financial support for publications and the like. One publication is the Association’s newsletter, which features upcoming events, their “Code of Ethics,” awareness articles and the Association’s By-Laws.
Members work not only with the Forest Service, but also the Sierra Club, Friends of the Bitterroot and the Wilderness Society. Together, there can hopefully be a “meeting of the minds” in addressing road closures and opening new trails.
The Association, as is true with other like clubs, strives to maintain a “good guy” image. It is unthinkable to leave behind garbage or to ever harm the environment in any way. After all, being in the backcountry is something that is very cherished, and it’s their feeling that folks associated with their sport respect that. Should anyone disregard such an obvious code of ethics, they’d be blackballed (such an event with this group of folks is virtually unheard of).
And, as is true with other off-road users through out the country, the Ravalli County Off-Road User Association pitches in on clean up projects working along with the Forest Service. Last year, for example, the Association went to Gird Creek (off of Skalkaho Pass) and cleaned up the area of garbage and debris. It’s a way of “giving back,” and they plan on further participation in future projects when the Forest Service calls on them.
They are also active in doing road work and assisting in maintaining and opening up environmentally responsible new trails.
However, of all their involvements, the core focus is to get out there and have some fun. The Ravalli County Off-Road User Association invites all to come ride with them. They offer many organized events, and one is coming up, the June 23rd Fun Ride. It occurs at Springer Memorial, about 12 miles on the East Fork Road, just off of Highway 93 before the Sula Store. If these directions are a little sketchy, just pop into the Sula Store, and you’re bound to run into a fellow ATVer or two, or follow the balloons which should be well-marked. It apparently is a most desirous destination for some back road fun!
For more information you are welcome to contact the Association’s secretary, Kathy Lieberth at 363-7487. Some of the businesses where membership literature is available include: Al‘s Cycle, Hamilton Polaris (both in Hamilton) and Five Valley Honda & Yamaha (Missoula). They also have a website at: www.bitterrootatv.com.
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Bitterroot Art Beat - Rudy Autio
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| Demure, gracious and reflective, one of Montana’s most venerated artists contemplates the conclusion of his influential, inspiring life’s work. |
| By Brian D’Ambrosio |
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Clay artist, painter and optical innovator Rudy Autio remains at the vanguard of a remarkable generation of artists whose work in ceramics and cross-media installation changed the very nature of what is considered art in Montana.
Indeed, Autio’s art is inseparable from certain facts of his life. The vast vessels, behemothic bowls and avant-garde ceramics that make his career so remarkably multisensory are restorative – and that’s a major part of their significance. But they are also simultaneously abstract and timeless. Today they speak less of his identity as an 80-year-old artistic icon born and raised in a tight-knit Finnish Lutheran community in Butte than of a pensive man seeking serenity, reconciling thorny questions about mortality’s vigor and viability as he skirmishes with his third remission from Leukemia.
“You know, I still like to work,” says Autio. “I’d just go crazy if I didn’t or couldn’t. I’m very happy that I can still work some even though Leukemia doesn’t promise me a long life.”
Autio’s mellow, soft spoken voice, like his art, has the perfect pitch and courage. Indeed, his ceramic artwork, when either viewed individually or juxtaposed in its totality, possesses a taciturn sagacity. There is an additional savoir faire, one of abidingness, created from a perennial pledge to drawing and to the clay vessel. We see irrepressible brilliance in Autio’s work, we adore it, and we respect it. We are mesmerized by the urgent awareness of implicit expertise pervasive in this influential artist’s creations.
It’s been fifty since years since Autio sold his first piece of art; in 2006, his large ceramic sculpture, titled “Backstage,” sold for $23,000 at a Missoula Art Museum fundraiser, making it the most ever paid for a single item at a MAM auction. The hefty sum recently doled out by an art connoisseur to own one of his artistic offerings is as perplexing and strange to him as when he’d sold his first piece of crafted clay while residing at the Archie Bray Foundation in 1951.
“I asked for $125 and the guy talked me down to $75. It was a fairly good piece, but I was taken aback that somebody would pay for it. That was five decades ago. When you’re that young, you’ll practically give it away, that’s because you’re so enthusiastic that you can make more.”
The same evening that his chiseled out ceramic “Backstage” mold fetched such an impressive price, Autio was greeted with a wildly emphatic standing ovation – a booming and decisive display of both unabashed appreciation and perpetual affinity.
“Often I’m surprised by the publicity,” says Autio, who speaks in unpretentious terms that seem thoughtfully deflated in an effort to underestimate his role as an artistic icon.
“I guess it’s a matter of longevity than anything else. I’m no judge of my work. I don’t know if I’m very talented. From the beginning, I’ve never made a lot of separation between the arts. I always wanted to be a sculptor, pure and simple.”
Autio might be the poorest or most modest evaluator of his own skills and status, and that’s fine, because his deeply developed dedication and ornamental and optic aptitude – specifically when they’re related to ceramics – has certainly impressed upon the tastes and comprehensions of those that count most in art appreciation realms. Recently, he received notice that he’s been named 2007 Master of the Medium in Ceramics by the James Renwick Alliance in Washington, D.C.
The James Renwick Alliance is a group dedicated to promoting American craft arts and it’s the support organization for the Renwick Gallery, which is part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Every odd-numbered year, the organization presents Master of the Medium awards in five categories.
After some jabbing, Autio does acknowledge that recognition from the Renwick Alliance is “a nice bestowal. I feel good about it.”
Don’t let his modesty mislead: Despite Autio’s demureness, there are few higher honors for living American ceramicists than the Renwick’s commendation.
However, it’s not just Autio’s typically reserved Finnish nature stymieing enthusiasm, or his natural aversion to self-aggrandizement, or his tacit rejection of platitudes and accomplishments, at work here. Autio has other things on his mind. Specifically: his battle against Leukemia.
When Autio was first diagnosed with anemic illness, in February of 2005, he was told he would only live two weeks if he didn’t start chemotherapy as soon as possible. Over the past three years, even though Autio’s health has teetered precariously, bouncing back and forth between setback and rebound, he has never lost his appetite or love for ceramic expressiveness.
“I’m okay with the fact that I’ve got Leukemia. I’ve been lucky to do what I’ve wanted to in life, and I’ve liked working as a clay artist. To make a living out of it is surprising for a guy living here.”
Born in Butte, Montana., the once bustling capital of the copper industry, in 1926, Autio has lived in his native state throughout most of his career. Raised in an ethnically segregated enclave known as Finntown, he grew up in a house and neighborhood where his parents and most playmates spoke Finnish. Both Finntown and its Italian enclave equivalent Meaderville were razed in the 1950s; today it’s a canyon-like Superfund site known as the Berkeley Pit—a defunct open-pit mine that the Anaconda Company abandoned with a pool of deadly chemicals at the bottom.
“It was fun to go uptown in Butte as a kid in the ‘30s and to see all the characters, the miners drinking, and the street excitement, there was activity at all times, guys selling pasties and tamales and pencils,” says Autio, from his Missoula home and studio.
Years later, Autio headed the ceramics department at the University of Montana, which he did for nearly three decades before retiring as Professor Emeritus of the School of Fine Arts. Prior to his appointment at the University of Montana, Autio was a founding resident artist at the much-heralded Archie Bray Ceramics Foundation in Helena, MT.
“The Archie Bray was a wonderful place, and I met some of the best people there. I mean it’s a world-class place. Archie himself was unique. He was a modest capitalist who supported the arts, dramas and plays, and he was also a gentle brickmaster. He had a gentle side and a really tough side.”
In 1963, Autio received a Tiffany Award in Crafts, followed by the American Ceramic Society Art Award in 1978, and a National Endowment grant in 1980, which enabled him to work and lecture at the Arabia Porcelain Factory and the Applied Arts University in Helsinki, Finland. While there, he was elected honorary member of Ornamo, Finland’s Designers organization. In 1981, he was the first recipient of the Governor’s Award and named outstanding visual artist in the state of Montana.
Additionally, Autio is a Fellow of the American Crafts Council, Honorary member of the National Council of Education in the Ceramic Arts, and recipient of the honorary Doctorate of Art from the Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore. His litany of accomplishments is impressive. With accomplishment comes accolades, with accolades lionization, which in turn can most often make the object of such affection discontented, but as far as his own honoring goes, “I don’t understand it, but you put up with it,” laughs Autio.
While Autio’s most acclaimed work is figurative ceramic vessels, he has worked in a variety of materials and other media. In addition to commissions in ceramic relief and tile murals, he has worked in bronze, concrete, glass, fabricated metal sculpture, and design of colorful Rya tapestries. Most of these were commissioned for public buildings in the Northwest and one is in Finland.
Even though he’s dabbled in the deliciousness of other art mediums, Autio’s love for clay is implacable: “I still love it because there are so many ways you can go with it and because it requires great focus and concentration. There’s the interesting technical side to firing clay, and the sculptural side, and the painting side. Other arts seem so distant to me right now,” he says.
Now that he’s enduring his third struggle with Leukemia, Autio isn’t entirely enthusiastic about putting in long hours in the studio or having to pound, pummel and pulverize clay, an earthly element notoriously physical to work with. Some days his formerly stout hands feel so feeble that, after only a few hours of work, his mind, body and spirit slump, and his fingers pain him once more.
Autio, who’s keenly aware that a lifetime of artful productiveness will certainly cease sometime in the next few months, speaks of his personal achievement and expressive brilliance with an unaffected honesty that could make even the godly feel humble. Speaking with single-minded humbleness, he extols the artistic aptitude of his wife of 55 years, Lela, and of the talents of his contemporaries and predecessors.
The biggest mental hurdle for Autio is that he still has wide-ranging artistic interests, and that his intellectual power and will are vigorous. But the sobering facts of Leukemia’s complications shape his mode of reasoning, thus provoking an assuaged emotional response in him.
“You know, when I was first diagnosed with Leukemia doctors told me that I didn’t have long. These wonderful doctors have already given me a couple of years more than what was expected, and I appreciate that. Even if I’ve only got another six months left to my life, see, that’s okay as long as I’m busy up until then.”
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Living with Lupus
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| One woman’s stouthearted journey fighting for a healthy life. |
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| By Shannon Selway
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Systemic lupus erythematosus (“lupus”) is a chronic, inflammatory disease that can affect the victim’s skin, joints, blood and organs; it attacks the body’s healthy cells and tissues by mistake, as it loses the ability to distinguish foreign substances from its own cells and tissues. Virtually every system in the body can be affected by it. Moreover, it is a lifetime sentence with no cure in sight.
Anyone can get lupus, but it most often affects women, typically in their childbearing years between 20-50. It is more common in those of African, Hispanic, Asian and Native American descent.
What triggers lupus is unknown, but the general thought is that some people have a genetic predisposition. Factors such as pregnancy, surgery, any insult to the body, or even overexposure to sunlight could awaken the disease.
There is one thing strange about lupus’ presence in Montana. Montana is a part of the five states in the northern Rocky Mountains that has off-the-chart numbers of lupus victims (as compared to elsewhere in the nation). That seems to imply an environmental connection, but physicians nonetheless tend to embrace the genetic explanation.
Susan Porteous has been courageously living with the lupus disease for over eight years. She is in a smaller group of its victims that have the unfortunate fate of experiencing the disease’s worst extremes.
Susan did not feel particularly well for a couple of weeks, like having a mild case of the flu. She was only 28 and had been physically active and fit, and believed she just had a nasty bug that would soon pass. Then one morning, on May 4, 1999, she awakened to a life-altering day. She was struck with Bell’s Palsy (sudden loss of muscle control) on the right side of her face. Then the left side of her face lost control. She couldn’t talk or eat properly. It marked the beginning of Susan’s horrifying medical problems.
Soon her legs became so swollen that even wind blowing on them was painful. Her entire body’s muscles and joints hurt so much that lifting a fork was a difficult task, and later, her condition became so grave that she could not walk for two years.
“It took its toll on my family. It was just too much for someone in my condition to be responsible for my children. I was forced to move from Kalispell to Missoula to live with my parents so that they could take care of me.” Susan said.
Early on, her doctors declared her condition to be multiple sclerosis, and began treatment plans that target that disease. It took over two years for Susan’s condition to be properly diagnosed as lupus.
Lupus, as it turns out, is very difficult to diagnose. Because it can mimic other diseases and its victims can go into remissions, it can sometimes take years for the affected person to get a proper diagnosis. However long the wait, having a correct diagnosis has been lifesaving - both physical and psychological for Susan; it meant she could become, somehow, more proactive in her fight for a normal life.
It took a couple of years for her doctor, Dr. Stephan Johnson, to find the right balance of medicines, but with lupus, that is about par.
“I take enough medications that could bring down a horse.”
In fact, that may not be stretching the truth all that much. She currently takes 27 medications, and some of them are plain scary. One medicine in particular is Plaquenil, an anti-inflammatory drug that keeps her body from swelling up and getting cold. While that drug is effective, it slowly diminishes vision, and will ultimately rob Susan of her eyesight. Without the drug, Susan would likely return to being bedridden and helpless.
Susan has suffered just about every conceivable complication connected with lupus. She landed in the hospital once with a minor heart attack. Her potassium level was at 40 (it should be at 4000). She has had blood transfusions, deals with irritable bowel syndrome, nasty skin rashes and painful joints and muscles. In addition, she must avoid the sun - something she dearly misses.
Susan’s important battling tool is stress management, which also helped her lose a great deal of weight. Twice a day she devotes 15 minutes to breathing exercises, in which she strives to feel nothing but calmness. She’s found a direct connection in taming her conditions and flair ups with stress relief, and these rituals are of paramount importance to her.
It’s taken much bravery and determination to overcome so many obstacles, but Susan has done so “head on.” It would have been virtually impossible to cope with lupus without some sort of support system, and for Susan, it was - and is - her family. They’ve been her rock.
Susan has an agenda. She sees a need for a local lupus support group, and wants to get one going.
“I wanted to create a local support group, and have monthly meetings. The closest chapter is in Salt Lake City. Currently, there’s nothing around here”
A couple of years ago, I heard there are as many as 2,000 people that have lupus in Missoula alone. ” Susan explained.
Susan said you lose so much of yourself with lupus. It’s important to connect with others in the same boat, share ideas and approaches. It’s also important for family members to connect with a support group.”
Getting a support group going shouldn’t be too difficult, but help is desired. The first step is to contact Susan via e-mail at: susanrg@iwon.com. From there, various issues can be addressed such as when, where and how the monthly meetings will occur.
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