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Been thinking about Montana a lot lately. My father's side of the family is from the big sky country. My great grandfather was a homesteader in Paradise Valley. Despite the promising name, there is a good reason why they were giving away that land: you couldn't grow enough food to make it through the winter. But thanks to a little side work on the newfangled railroad, my ancestors survived, although the land was lost - in good cowboy fashion - on a hand of poker. Tough life, or so the legend goes. I "lived" there briefly during my college years, but only through the good will of some real westerners. It's beautiful country, but it's cold. The people have to be tough. I, on the other hand, am clearly from the east ("the concrete jungle" as my grandfather would say) where you just have to be loud, and maybe a little pushy. That's a survival skill too, I guess, but it's different. Anyway, it seems like a few lucky (where 'lucky' means 'crazy') modern people are going to experience the real thing: frontier.
More planets discovered in the "habitable region."
We saw the new Ang Lee movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" last night. I heard somewhere (NYTimes?) that you want to break into applause at the end of the first fight scene, and that's exactly what happened in our theatre. Really impressive. They managed to capture exactly what "flying" feels like in my dreams. Not so much Superman-style all out flying, but an almost weightless running, bounding, hopping, floating. Good stuff. Highly recommended.