Al Jahra

Since it could possibly be one of the sites for the community college, today we went to Al Jahra, an oasis town that used to be agricultural and is located about 20 miles northwest from Kuwait City and 75 miles from the Iraq border.
On the way there we saw this multipurpose stadium; it looks like a flying saucer.
And we saw more mosques than in Kuwait City.



Once in the town we noticed that there were many more covered women than in the city.



Water tanks are stacked on top of many buildings.
We visited the Al Qasr Al-Ahmar, that is, the Red Palace fort. The Red Palace fort was ordered to be constructed in the early 1900s by the Amir, Sheikh Mubarak Al-Sabah, who is known today as Mubarak Al-Kabir (Mubarak the Great).
It was to be used primarily as a strategically located fort that would protect the agricultural village of Jahra from invasion. On October 10, 1920, Jahra was attacked by an army which was led by Faisal Al-Daweesh of Saudi Arabia. Four hundred Saudi men took over Al Jahra.
Amir Sheikh Salem Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah (the son of Mubarak the Great who built the fort) led about 2,000 Kuwaiti fighters in the battle.
On October 11, Sheikh Ahmad, who had been safeguarding Kuwait City, sent another 600 armed fighters on boats to help those besieged at the Red Palace.
There was a battle and Al-Daweesh and his men left Al Jahra.
Today, the Red Palace is a source of pride in that it symbolizes patriotism and fortitude; it is one of the few things that made it intactly through the destruction of the invasion in 1990.

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The WVMCCD-Kuwait team:
John, Phil, Raj, Stan, Dulce Maria, Cindy, Lance Our week of work is winding down; after a break we'll return to campus and continue to plan for this productive venture with our partner in Kuwait. Although I will continue to blog about my own travels through Tunisia and Italy, this is the last posting I'll make about our work here in Kuwait. Thank you for reading and for sharing our excitement.

AMIDEAST, Relaxing

Date Palm

Today we met with Maureen Aldakheel, the Kuwait Country Director of AMIDEAST, an NGO founded (in 1951 by educators, theologians and writers led by columnist Dorothy Thompson) to strengthen "mutual understanding and cooperation between Americans and the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa." Among other things, they do institutional development, educational advising and test administration and support. This organization is headquartered in Washington, D.C. and has field offices in Kuwait, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, West Bank/Gaza and Yemen.

The hotel where we're staying faces the Persian Gulf, and today we had some down time, so the four of us ran to the beach.

Below, Cindy, Lance and John headed toward the sand.
Not far from the hotel there is the Corniche, below (but since it's way too hot during the day, you can stroll it only at night)

Weekends here happen on Fridays and Saturdays. Almost everything closes for the sabbath, including most museums. I really wanted to see Sadu House, a house that predates the oil era and a museum where supposedly there is a collection of beautiful traditional Bedouin weaving, but it was closed this Friday. One other museum was open, the one established to house archeological findings at Failaka Island (located near the city). Masouma, one of our hosts, took three of us to the Kuwait National Museum, which is in the former residence of Sheikh Al Jaber Al Sabah right on Gulf Street facing the Corniche. During the Iraqi invasion, the building was destroyed, the collection was set ablaze and many precious pieces were stolen. The museum is now being renovated. Because of that, we didn't get to see the collection of Islamic art. But we did get to see a really interesting collection of wood doors and other architectural pieces used in traditional building of houses. We could not take pictures of the actual pieces inside the museum, but I did take pictures of the doors facing the court yard. I think they're exquisite!

In one room we found very old photographs and two very lovely paintings, below, just sitting there waiting to be refurbished and set up in proper display spaces.


Below: this is not my picture, but I had to include it because it's just so pretty. (It's from the web.) And maybe because I'm thirsting for the sea. This is a dhow, the traditional Arab sailing vessel. (There's a huge replica of a dhow right next to our hotel; it's a restaurant.) Dhows sailed along the coasts of the Arabian Peninsula, usually carrying dates and fish.

Embassy, City Scenes

We visited the American embassy to discuss this project (of creating a Kuwait American Community College) with the Counselor for Public Affairs. I took a picture of the side of the building, above, but in order to enter the embassy you have to give up all of your electronics. So, no pictures of that event for you. Our meeting was productive and the project continues to evolve. It's very exciting. A side note: as we consider delivering courses to US military personnel here in Kuwait, it's very interesting to learn about the history of US military presence in Kuwait. GlobalSecurity.org has useful information, including a list of camps, for instance, Camp Arifjan located south of Kuwait City and Camp Virginia, which I think is located in Al Jahra outside of the city.

Below is the Liberation Tower, the symbol of Kuwait's freedom and resurgence. It's one of the tallest telecomunications towers in the world, taller than the Eiffel Tower. It was inaugurated on 10 March 1996. Inside there's a revolving observation level and a restaurant.
In this short entry I'd like to simply show you the sights as I've seen them, mostly from the van as we drive by, and also up close in places we've stopped.
Below, a set of the many desalination/water towers you see all over the city.
Following are pictures of the many different types of residential and office buildings you can see in the city.




Zooming by... lots of construction.











Below, the Stock Exchange

Mosques

Article, GUST, ACK, Music, The Avenues

There's a lot of construction going on all over Kuwait; here, a mosque being built.
Today, Wednesday 28 May, there was a very interesting article in the "National" section of the Kuwait Times: "American style education reform in Kuwait and the Gulf" by Sherin Deghady. Deghady explains that the six members of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Oman) are experiencing a huge boom in private sector higher education: the GCC is "seeing exponential growth in the number of private institutions." That's partly because the population has risen dramatically since the 1960s; 64 percent is under the age of 16, and during the last six years laws have changed to allow the establishment of private universities and colleges: "the demand for higher education has grown fast and has not yet been fully met." All of the GCC nations are pouring billions of dollars into expanding their private higher education institutions. That big push most often includes creating affiliates and partnerships with American, Australian, Canadian and British universities.

Below, private villas being built across from GUST.
To date, there are 15 American universities operating in the GCC:
"Many US experts see this global drive as having a direct benefit, where these programs can actually ease friction between countries and cultures. At the same time, others agree that overseas programs can help American universities raise their profiles, and eventually attract top research talents."
Those 15 universities include Cornell University that has set up a medical school in Qatar. In Saudi Arabia, rather than open new private institutions, the push is for improving existing public universities. To meet that aim, in 2005 King Abdul Aziz University (KAU)established collaboration with Virginia Tech. Additionally, Deghady writes, "King Abdallah bin Abdulaziz is setting up a new, $2.7 billion public university--King Abdallah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)--where 'minds and the ideas of enlightened men and women' are shared without 'discrimination'. And, for the first time, men and women will study in the same classrooms." In Saudi Arabia 30 percent of the population is under the age of 30.

Below, as seen through the window of a conference room at GUST, the building built for a United Nations office, but the location is not secured enough, so the building is unoccupied.
Qatar and the UAE aim to become the "regional base for world-class higher education." In Qatar five major American universities have opened campuses: Carnegie Mellon, Virginia Commonwealth, Weill Cornell Medical College, Texas A&M University and Georgetown University; a sixth is on the way: Northwestern University. The UAE is seeing a lot of change: George Mason is already set up; Abu Dhabi will soon have New York University and University of Washington campuses; Dubai is expecting Michigan State University and Rochester Institute of Technology, and they've had the American University in Dubai since 1995. Below, developing area around GUST.
In Oman, Al-Mazoon College of Management and Applied Sciences in Muscat established an affiliation with the University of Missouri Science and Technology (formerly known as University of Missouri-Rolla) in 1999; according to MS&T's website, its "role has been to provide assistance in establishing the appropriate curriculum for each of the degree programs offered, develop course syllabi and textbook selection, provide library resources, provide faculty hiring guidelines, and provide help with many other tasks relating to the establishment and operation of a new college."

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Here is a list of all the universities in Kuwait.
Almost all of them are licensed by the Kuwaiti Ministry of Higher Education's Private Universities Council (PUC).

* American University of Kuwait

* American University of the Middle East
AUME is a private two-year career college affiliated with Purdue University in Indiana.

* Arab Open University
AOU partners with The Open University (the UK's distance learning university) and is headquartered in Kuwait but has branches in Lebanon, Jordan, Bahrain, Egypt and Saudi Arabia; like GUST, it is a Cisco Certified Academy Center.

* Australian College of Kuwait

* Gulf University of Science and Technology

* Kuwait-Maastricht Business School
KMBS is the first private university to offer an MBA in Kuwait; it is the counterpart in Kuwait of Maastricht School of Management (MSM), Netherlands.

* Kuwait University
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GUST

A couple of days ago I told you about American University of Kuwait, which has signed a memorandum of understanding with Darmouth College. Today we visited Gulf University for Science and Technology, the first private university in Kuwait, opened in 2002. GUST has signed an MOU with the University of Missouri at St. Louis; for an agreed upon yearly fee, UM's their Center for International Studies is assisting GUST with developing academic programs, curriculum, staff and faculty recruitment, organization and structure, as well as providing quality assurance and advice regarding academic, student services, curriculum and course review processess. Essentially, UM functions as consultants and overseers in GUST's development. GUST is an impressive four-year liberal arts university: the buildings are spacious, and the administrators and faculty diverse and highly credentialed; GUST held its first commencement ceremony in June 2007 and conferred diplomas on 400 students. Currently, it serves about 2,000 students. Below, Starbucks at GUST.

Australian College of Kuwait
Today we also visited ACK, the first private vocational education college in Kuwait. We met with several people and Mr. Abdullah Abdul Mohsen Al Sharhan, the Chairman and founder of the college. ACK is also truly impressive; it partners with several Australian universities and Institutes in order to provide technical training, especially in maritine studies and aviation.
ACK is wired to the max! Every innovative tech can be seen on the campus. There was a job fair going on... inside a huge air-conditioned tent (remember that the temp goes up to about 105 degrees F!). ACK and Boeing have a vocational training project that exposes students to hands-on practice with specialized aviation and avionics equipment and aerospace technology. Boeing has provided ACK with a hangar with workshops and a 737-200 airplane that is used as a training platform for aviation maintenance programs.
Below, Dr. Hartley in the cafeteria (called the canteen).


Music
One of our hosts, Masouma, told me about this Kuwaiti singer, Nabil Shoail. Click on each parts of his name to see him perform two of his songs, or just find him on Youtube.com.

The Mall
We ate lunch at The Avenues Mall, a huge white structure with loads of stores including Ikea and Carrefour, the supermarket, 10 cinemas, 35 restaurants and cafes, including Starbucks. It opened in 2007.

PAAET, City Streets, Souq & Mall

URGH! My suitcase is still missing and it's 7:00PM.

Today we visited the Public Authority for Applied Education and Training (PAAET), an educational institution established in 1982; this huge institution serves more than 30,000 students, two-thirds of them females, and it's built on the government's effort, beginning in the 1950s, to train workers so that the country could meet the demands of producing and exporting oil. PAAET's function is to supervise and coordinate various vocational training centers. It includes 4 colleges (specializing in Basic Education, Business Studies, Technological Studies and Health Sciences) and numerous institutes (specializing in Telecommunications and Navigation, Electricity and Water, and Industry).

We visited the Department of Chemical Engineering Technology and toured several of their modern labs.




Here are a few more photos, street scenes from Kuwait City.



The Souq
A few of us strolled through the heart of downtown's Souq Al Mubarakiya, one of the biggest traditional markets in Kuwait City. This open-air, high ceilinged-covered souq consists of labyrinthic passageways lined with stalls and shops (each specializing in some particular goods) where you can buy just about anything. There used to be about 20 interconnecting souqs, but many of them were destroyed during the war in 1990. My favorite is the gold souq where jewelry made of 21 or 22 carat gold can be found. Supposedly, this is a generally safe place to buy jewelry, since the price is determined by the per gram weight value of gold, and since the government inspects the shops.

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Nivea skin whitening cream in bulk!
The Mall
There are malls everywhere. They're modern facilities with spacious walkways and attractive displays that you'd find in any major city. So far, I've spent time in two of them. I like Marina Mall in Salmiya, where we ate lunch yesterday; it's one of the largest in the city.


Of course, I had to take a picture of the Starbucks in this mall.

AUK & AAG

Greetings from Kuwait!

I'm here with colleagues exploring a possible affiliation between the college district I teach in and a Kuwaiti educational organization that is interested in opening a community college in Kuwait City. Although this very American model of higher education has been exported throughout Latin America, New Zealand and most recently the Middle East, right now there are no community colleges in Kuwait. Should this affiliation work out, it would be mutually beneficial in numerous ways. For one, it would create far greater opportunities for students and faculty to learn about each other's cultures. We'll be here for a week. My aim in blogging is to give you a glimpse of what we're experiencing.
Before I tell you about our very interesting full day of activities, I'd like to give you some basic information about this highly industrialized nation. As you can see in these first three pictures, yesterday there was a sandstorm, so Kuwait City is enveloped in a haze, but I understand that (given pollution) it's usually cloudy anyway. By 10:00 AM today it was already past 100 degrees F.
Kuwait is a tiny cosmopolitan sovereign country on the coast of the Persian Gulf. It is enclosed by Saudi Arabia to the south and Iraq to the north and west. (My Kuwait Airways flight flew right over Iraq. At 35,000 high, it was difficult to see much, but I must admit that it felt a little strange to be flying, as if all were normal, over a war.) Today there are about 3.5 million people in Kuwait; they're governed by a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system. Kuwait is the fourth richest country in the world per capita: it has the world's fifth largest oil reserves (so logically real estate is very expensive); oil was first exploited in the 1930s when the country was still a colony of the UK, and them more aggressively after it became independent in 1961. Pearls used to provide Kuwait's major source of income, but today petroleum and petroleum products account for almost 80% of the government's income.

On 2 August 1990, Kuwait was invaded and annexed by Iraq. The occupation lasted until 26 February 1991 when the US intervened and removed the Iraqis. (Kuwait paid the US-led coalition forces US $17 billions dollars for liberating the country.) Before retreating, the Iraqi army destroyed much of the infrastructure and set fire to almost 700 oil wells; it took over 9 months to put out the fires. Consequently, the country is still in rebuilding mode and the environment is visibly affected, which is especially sad when you consider that Kuwait has been a major center for spice trading, particularly between India and Europe, since the early 1600s. Today, Kuwait is the largest exported of oil in the Persian Gulf.

Kuwaitis are highly literate--82.9 percent. Public schooling is free and compulsory from age 5 to 18, but private schools are extremely popular, especially those patterned after American, British and Australian models. Private K-12 schools are extremely popular and abundant. (The Kuwaiti educational organization our district is working with owns 5 such schools: one American style K-12 school, one English style K-12 school, 2 Arabic schools [opened over 30 years ago, they now serve over 5,000 students] and New Zone, an adult learning center.) Kuwait University, established in 1966, is the only public university; it serves 24,000 students, and within the next 10 years it plans to serve 40,000. The Public Authority for Applied Education and Training (PAAET), formed in 1982, is a sort of community college (or vocational school) in that it exists to train and supply the skilled manpower needed in the country. (Our delegation will visit PAAET.) There are numerous private colleges and universities, many of them sponsored by or affiliated with organizations in the west (most deliver instruction in English), and the number continues to increase, which makes sense since Kuwait has the highest birth rate in the world. The government either completely funds or heavily subsidizes students in higher education.

Our delegation started working early on this Monday morning. First, we visited with Dr. Carol Ross-Black, the Dean of Student Affairs at the American
University of Kuwait, and we toured the campus. AUK is a private co-educational liberal arts institution where all instruction is conducted in English; it is accredited by the Council of Private Universities of the Kuwait Ministry of Higher Education, and it is affiliated with Darmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. That affiliate relationship entails having a signed memoramdum of understanding that allows AUK to consult and cooperate with Darmouth on curriculum development, administrative matters, and participation in student bridge programs, as well as a series of seminars and conferences meant to advance the understanding of liberal arts and business education in Kuwait and the Arabian Gulf region. That affiliate relationship is partly what interests us, since it's a model for what could be done to bring the community college to Kuwait--plus there's also the possibility of arranging articulation agreements such as the ones our district has with numerous universities in the States. Below you see John, Lance, Cindy, Raj and Dr. Ross-Black in the AUK library. Below is Dr. Ross-Black in the AUK Student Success Center. AUK opened in 2004 and is currently seeking US accreditation; it plans to move to a bigger new campus in a couple of years. Right now, there are more than 1,500 including its first graduating class. Below is Dr. Ross-Black with a graduating student, a stellar young woman who plans to become an administrator in higher education.
AUK's Mission Statement:
The American University of Kuwait is a liberal arts institution based on the American model of higher education. It is dedicated to providing students with knowledge, self-awareness, and personal growth experiences that can enhance critical thinking, effective communication, and respect for diversity. AUK seeks to create leaders and life-long learners who aspire to the highest standards of moral and ethical responsibility in their societies.

As we toured the AUK campus we came upon a "protest wall," above, where students had graffitied all sorts of comments, written in English and Arabic, opposing gender seggregation, a hot national topic and one of the two top reasons Parliament was dissolved a couple of months ago. Some of the reasons inscribed are quite funny: e.g., "what is peanut butter without jelly?" and "men and women are queally unfortunate." Gender seggregation essentially means that governmental policy requires men and women be taught in either separate buildings or separate classrooms. In private schools that policy doesn't seem to be enforced, and in fact males and females congregate freely, as can be seen in the picture of men and veiled and unveiled women in the AUK tech lab.

At AUK gender seggregation in the classroom is accomplished by dividing the room with a short mobile wall, as seen in the picture below with John and Raj on the left and Dr. Ross-Black on the right.

Of course, I had to take a photo of Starbucks, one of several eateries on the AUK campus.

After our tour of AUK, we ate lunch at Casper and Gambini's (right next to TGIF's) at the marina on the other side of town (2 pictures below).

After lunch, we visited one of the schools owned by Al Jeel Al Jadded, our host. The American Academy for Girls is a European and American accredited pre-K-12 school that opened in 1996 and now serves almost 900 females; all instruction (except Arabic language) is conducted in English, and the curriculum is American style. We toured the 3 school buildings, and met with the Superintendent, the Principals of the elementary and high schools, and with a group of impressive students in the high school. In the 3 pictures below you see students in their elementary school classrooms and high school girls in the gym.

The five high school girls we talked with said that they'd be very interested in attending a community college, but only if it met these requirements: that there are
--courses that lead to degrees in law, engineering, architecture, science and health;
--teachers who are well trained and come from diverse places outside of Kuwait;
--teachers who really enjoy teaching;
--language courses, especially in Spanish and French;
--ESL, Composition and Creative Writing classes;
and that there is a
--strong athletic program that includes basketball, volleyball and soccer;
--cadre of counselors willing to spend time guiding students, and that the
--curriculum taught completely in English, except Arabic language classes;
--degree accredited and transferable to universities in and out of Kuwait;
as well as
--scholarships available more abundantly, and
--transportation to and from the school.

I end this posting with a picture of a sticker I saw in one of the American teacher's file cabinet.

I arrived in Kuwait, Bill in MC

Hello from Kuwait City!
Today is Monday at 7:00 AM. (I have to reset the clock on my laptop, will do so later tonight when I have more time to write a longer message.)
A 24 hour trip, but I arrived last night feeling fine. My one suitcase remained in Paris (a wish for shopping?), and it won't be delivered until Wednesday, so at the airport in Kuwait I had to buy toothpaste, toopthbrush, and I was so thrilled to find the cream I use (which I get from New Zealand; I hadn't seen it anywhere else), and I now have two new outfits.

So, now in this quick posting I just wanted to tell you that I left Miles City on Thursday and on Saturday President Bill Clinton spoke in the high school auditorium. George went and took these pictures with his mobile phone.


Here's what George wrote to me in an email.
"The Saturday Bill Clinton event was excellent. It was a full crowd [about 1,000 people--there are only 8,000 people in the entire Miles City].
He gave a very nice speech - about fifty minutes with no notes. It
was especially interesting because of the breadth of what he covered
and the huge number of statistics and numbers that he had at his
command and was able to quickly rattle off. It was well organized,
easy to follow, personalized to the audience and at times adroitly
phrased to avoid any local sensitivities while at other times directly
addressing issues that might be of a local concern. He claims that
Hillary's rural support and success has been the best of all the
candidates and rattled off a number of supporting statistics."

Pythons... but not at the ranch

Yesterday in the local newspaper, the Miles City Star, there was a short boxed announcement that caught my eyes. It read: "Search on for loose pythons, call police if sighted." Pythons!? Yep, the police are still looking for two of them that were reported missing on the 18th. The article said: "Both snakes are 4-1/2 to 5-1/2 feet long. One is a pregnant female and she will be looking for a warm place to lay her eggs." Unbelievable. I'm afraid I did not sleep peacefully.

Well... let me tell you about going to the ranch on Monday. We almost didn't go because ominous clouds threatened rain, and when that happens the dirt roads become thick glue that swallow wheels in even huge trucks. Scotty drove. It takes over an hour to get from Miles City, past Forsyth, to the ranch. I enjoy going to the rach; I like seeing Scotty revel in his 91 years of memories: he knows the place as intimately as he knows every tiny fold and crevice on his own face. He loves the land, and the small house his father and mother built with their own hands way back in the early 1900s. (What a privilege it was for me to edit his book, I'm 'a-tellin' you: Homesteading the Little Porcupine, about growing up in this expansive ranch.)
I enjoy the wide endless sky, and the seeming emptyness. But when you look closely, this landscape is far from empty. There's sage brush everywhere, and showy weather resistant flowers peeking every time a drop of water falls, and cacti, and all sorts of bugs and creepy crawlies. And of course, there are deer and antelope roaming, and bushy tailed rabbits, skuns, and what's the name of that animal that burrows everywhere? Yeah, and snakes (but no pythons!). It's a demanding land, a land that doesn't yield much that's edible, but it's exquisitely striking nonetheless, breathtaking. It's a land that forges fortitude, interdependence, resourcefulness and honor, since without those character traits I can't imagine anyone surviving on it.

Scotty and George headed toward the cows.

When Scotty's parents homesteaded this ranch, they built an outhouse. (Can you imagine having to leave your cozy cabin in 50 below zero weather just to go to the bathroom?) About 90 years later that outhouse is still standing.

The outhouse doorknob... rustic, weathered, hitorical--imagine the hands that have touched that knob during all those years.
I've visited the ranch numerous times, but this was the first time I've seen the cattle cemetery--yes, the "resting" place for ranch animals, the place where bulls and cows (and whatever else dies) are dumped and desiccate. We saw a cow and a calf dead, skin and hair still there, but bodies definitely stiff and given the smell (if you stood downwind), surely dead for at least a week. The remains of one bull still had tough leather around its face, but the rest of the body was gone; only stark white bones (scattered by the wind, birds and itinerant animals) were left.
Ranch people are used to this life-death in-your-face co-existence. Death is part of life.
That attitude helps me to understand (maybe) why some people decorate their living room walls with bulls' skulls. Hmmm... not my cup of tea, despite possibly understanding, and admiring, that hearty attitude.

Art and women

This water tower overlooks the community pool and tennis courts where Scotty still plays at least five days a week. It will soon be replaced by a larger more modern one being build less than a mile away.
We spent most of Sunday at the Custer County Art and Heritage Center, which is located in a really interesting place--the original brick and stone building, completed in 1910, that was the water treatment plant for over 60 years. The building, now listed in the National Register of Historic Places, is on the bank of the Yellowstone River in what used to be Fort Keogh Reservation. The area is packed with cottonwood trees. (While walking outside the building I remembered that a few summers ago, when Eleanor was still alive, we all attended a Shakespeare in the Park production and the trees shed cotton like crisp snow that magically covers everything in white.) The interior space in this building is really beautiful.
So... I was thinking about art all day and when we returned home I perused Eleanor's paintings and felt really sad.

Eleanor's blue Montana hill.
I miss Eleanor; it's been four years since she died. She didn't paint much in her later years, but when George and Linda were children, and before they were born, she finished a lot of oils, water colors and pencil drawings. I like these two in particular; I like the passion in her strokes and the vibrancy in the colors she combined. They remind me of her keen ability to notice her surroundings.

Eleanor's zinnias (her favorite flowers; she planted them every summer).
One thought led to another, and I remembered that the day before we'd met David Graham at the Bucking Horse Sale. David's a young artist who lives in Bozeman. He too seems to have a sure ability to notice and capture his surroundings in fine gloriously colored details. I like this one of his paintings, "Last Ride in Snow," and the poetic words he's composed.

"Life is full of changes. Living in Montana, the seasons constantly remind a person of that truth. These riders are scanning the horizon for stray cattle as the final, waning rays of evening sun provide one last show of brilliance. The warm days of fall are nearly over and any day now, snow could blanket the ground and bring a deep sleep upon the countryside. The seasons of life are a lot like that. No season lasts forever. Seasons of warmth and contentment give way to seasons of seemingly endless cold and starkness, and then growth and new life return once again. As the seasons change, these cowboys know that they will likely never be in this spot again, witnessing such a glorious sunset. But they know that the secret of enjoying each season is taking the time to savor the moment, commit it to memory, and carry that memory along into the next season of life."

At home, I spent the last of daylight digging up some of the ramblers (a sort of progeny) of bright yellow irises that Eleanor and Scotty planted over forty years ago. I already have a garden full of them in Saratoga, but I wanted to have more, and to send some to friends. As I dug, I thought about how painful it is to miss someone you love, and how soothing it is sometimes to simply hold on to whatever beauty that person created.

Miles City as seen from the Airport Restaurant up on the hill. That night, I read about one of Montana's illustrious women, someone whose legacy is undeniable. I'll leave you with some notes about Jeannette Rankin.

Women in Montana won the vote in 1914, six years before the Nineteenth Amendment gave all American women that privilege. Just three years after that, in 1917, Montana sent the first woman to serve Congress--Jeannette Rankin. (She was also the very first woman elected to a national legislature in any western democracy.) In her inaugural vote as a member of the House of Representatives she voted against US entry into World War I: she had the courage to say "I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war." That kind of commitment was not unusual for her. After being re-elected to the House (in 1940), in 1941 she cast the lone vote against declaring war with Japan. The she said, "As a woman, I can't go to war and I refuse to send anyone else. I vote NO." In 1968, at age eighty-eight, she marched at the head of the phalanx of nearly five thousand women protesting US involvment in Vietnam. I suspect that if she were alive today she'd also be protesting the war on Iraq and Afghanistan. Ms. Rankin worked determinedly in support of peace and women's issues. Today her legacy can be seen in various places and organizations, among them the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center in Missoula. I just learned that there's a play, written by Jeanmarie Simpson, about Rankin's life; it's titled A Single Woman. There's also a film adaptation, starring Jeanmarie Simpson, that is directed by Kamala Lopez-Dawson; it too is titled A Single Woman. It should be out soon in general cinemas.

Bucking Horse Sale

On Saturday, the 58th Miles City Bucking Horse Sale started with a really fun parade on Main Street. There were vintage cars, covered wagons, all manner of tractors and, of course, all sorts of horses, which logically paraded last. (Needless to say, in horse country like this one, it'd be an insult to strap on any kind of "diaper.") Both sides of the street were full to the brim with locals and many many out of towners from every nook and cranny. Officially, this weekend-long event started on Thursday night with a music concert;
on Friday cowboys began to confront broncs at the Eastern Montana Fair Grounds, and later there was bull riding and a street dance where 3 different bands played until very late. We missed all that, so the parade was the beginning for us. The three of us wore our hats; incredibly,mine's ten years old and out of fashion (see how tall it is?).

It's really interesting to see the changes happening in this small town of barely 8,000 people. In the relatively short time I've been visiting I've seen how it's becoming more and more trendy, like Bozeman, which is not necessarily a bad thing. For instance, Cafe Utza sells all the coffee combinations you'd find in any large city, and delicious chai, but you can also go to lunch at Cafe 600, an old fashioned family diner-type place.

And sensibilities and political stances are clearly changing: at the parade I saw several people giving out Hillary and Obama stickers, but I didn't see one person distributing anything in support of McCain. (Yeah, maybe I just missed it, but the point is that however slow, this traditionally staunch Republican community is clearly being recharged by a younger hipper infusion of ideas and commerce.)


At the end, we watched the bagpipers, the Miles City Caledonian Society Band (founded in 1908) go up and down the street as they celebrated spring and the near arrival of summer. This annual parade heralds the main activities for the weekend: the showcasing of horses auctioned to rodeo contractors, individuals and sadly (to me), as a perfectly strange woman explained, to the likes of Alpo. There are also horse races (a profitable part of the weekend, and not necessarily for those who bet), and different kinds of intermission-like shows such as synchronized riding.

To a city-bred woman like me, the Bucking Horse Sale is fascinating. The auction of each horse begins as soon as the gates are flung open and the cowboy begins struggling to stay mounted on the horse. The feistier the horse the more money he's worth.
The cowboy's aim is to show that he can ride an untamed bronc. A cowboy rides bareback or on saddle for a mere 8 seconds (which I'm sure feels like eternity to him) holding on to dear life with just one hand; the other hand must be visibly away from the horse, usually above the cowboy's head. The horse, an untamed fellow who's resistant to having someone on top of him, or to anyone telling him where and when to go, tries to throw the cowboy off his back by flinging his hind legs up and out. Most riders don't last more than 3 seconds; but on Saturday there were quite a few who held on past the requirement and invariably the crowd cheered their lungs out. As the auction rages, three other cowboys ride fast and furiously after the loose bronc. They finally rope and lead him through the corral into the trailer that will take him to a few years on the rodeo circuit or to Alpo heaven.


The races are equally enthralling, but you can't close your eyes for a second, because you miss the entire thing.

Hola! I arrived in Miles City, MO

Hi everyone,

You know, spring break in April just wasn't long enough. Even though George and I vacationed on Maui with Terri and Nadia (check out the view from our balcony!), I worked and so I've accumulated way too much stress. I won't get to relax for a couple of weeks yet, but actually, this summer's adventure started today. We are at Scotty's in Montana. I leave early to gather myself before departing on a business trip to Kuwait. After a week in Kuwait, my vacation begins: I fly into Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, where I'll spend about a week exploring the country and reading literature by Tunisian Jewish women. I want to travel along the Mediterranean Sea coast and stop in Hammamet, Sousse and Jerba Island. If I have time, I'll go inland before returning to Tunis from where I'll take a ferry across the Tyrrhenian Sea, probably into Napoli, Italy. I'll spend a week working my way up the coast to the Vatican and Rome, and then I'll fly back home to Saratoga. I hope you'll enjoy my musings and photographs. Below, the beautiful entrance to Miles City, Montana.