Like the hurricanes affecting Gulf Coast states, Montana's version of natural disaster comes every summer, all too often to the Bitterroot National Forest. This year we missed a big mean bullet by a cat's whisker <<. Interestingly, not a single structure has been damaged in this 26,000 acre fire that is still going strong.

Of course, that could all change tomorrow, or even tonight. There's dry lightnin' in the sky...

Today satellite internet provider was going to pay me a visit to check my equipment. The local support guy and another guy from the corporate office were both coming to my house because I've whined so much about their lame satellite internet service.

They "got lost" after following my directions, directions that have been used by dozens of people over the past decade to find my house in the woods. They said they even asked some Forest Service people and they didn't know either.

Bullshit on this one. A voice mail received 1 hour after they should have arrived said they got lost. I should send them a bill. In fact, I think I will.

A bill for stupidity? Nope, a bill for dishonesty that cost me a few hours of billable time.

A wild looking cloud front near Paria Gulch, Utah, with commentary by Paul and Tamera.

There are stories and stuff I want to write about that won't fit on my other sites, so I'm going to rename this page as "The Open Shut Journal" and keep going!

Why the new title? Because that's exactly what it's going to be, a place to open up, tap out whatever's on my mind, and then shut it. My personal memory hole, if you will.

If you are looking for my mother's page, it's here. Please let me know via email if you have any personal stories or anecdotes, or leave a comment on her site.

A pregnant spider in the poppies

So it's mid June, the rains have stopped and the flowers are blooming:

The mountains are green and the hikes are stunning:

Bye Mom...

'Bird lady' was friend to Coast wildlife, birders
Judith Toups, Sun Herald columnist, dies
JEAN PRESCOTT, jtprescott@sunherald.com

Judy Toups, the Coast's renowned "bird lady," is going to miss spring migration this year for what probably is the first time since her ornithological interests began in 1972. It is not by choice. Toups died quietly at home Tuesday in Decatur, Ala., of complications from medical problems. She was 77.

Overwhelmed by Hurricane Katrina's destruction - of bird habitat and the property of myriad friends and acquaintances here - she moved to that small Alabama town barely a year after the storm.

Born at the front-end of the Great Depression, in 1930, Toups met and married a handsome sailor from Mississippi - Jay Toups - in Gloucester, Mass., just minutes from her hometown of Magnolia, and returned with him to his home state in 1965, the year he mustered out of the Navy. They would settle in Gulfport and raise six children there: Jeffrey, young Jay, Patrice, Christine and twins Drayton and Desmond.

Toups' parents realized, on one of their visits to the Coast, that a stay-home mom of six young children desperately needed a diversion. Someone bought a feeder. Someone else identified a bird, and Toups was off and running.

Everyone who knew her has an extraordinary personal story to tell.

Coast artist and veteran birder Alison Henry recalled her first field trip with Toups: "Here I was meeting the rock star of birding." As the group gathered in the pre-dawn blackness, "Judy said, 'Oh, good, everybody's here. Now all we have to do is wait for the birds to wake up.' I thought it quite remarkable. She was a brilliant teacher, a best friend and an honest critic. I was addicted to her as a person."

Don McKee, another Toups friend and fan said Tuesday, "My opinion is that all of nature has lost a very dear friend, especially our avian friends. She will be remembered always as the mother of birdwatching in Mississippi. I don't think of her as gone," McKee said. "Today she's soaring with the eagles."

This writer's personal story goes something like this: In the late 1980s, she performed a daring rescue of a sharp-shinned hawk from the front screened porch of a house where we lived in Bay St. Louis. The bird had barreled through the screen in pursuit of a squirrel and had been trapped on the porch, disoriented and unable to find the door and freedom. With only a quilt between her and sharp beak and talons, Toups dropped the bed covering over this formidable raptor, and with yours truly carrying the trailing tails of the quilt, she carried the swaddled bird outside and let it go.

What a woman.

At that point she had been writing a weekly column for the Sun Herald for 15 years; nearly 20 more years would follow.

Toups founded the Mississippi Coast Audubon Society and advanced its conservation causes, including the high-profile protection program for least terns and black skimmers, "Nest in Peace."

She taught Seashore Methodist Assembly elderhostels and sent fledgling birders out across Coast terrain in search of native and visiting birds. Birders from every part of the United States knew her.

She developed the Mississippi Coastal Birding Trail map, and wrote two books on birding the Gulf Coast, plus innumerable articles for every birding journal ever published in late 20th-century America.

There is a trail named after Judy Toups in Jackson County's Ward Bayou, and she has been honored by birding societies too numerous to count.

Daughter Christine Toups remembered, "Just a couple of weeks ago, I told her, 'I plugged your name into Google, and almost 20,000 entries came up, Mom. You've been Googled.'

"She calmly turned to me and said, 'Funny, I didn't feel a thing.'"

Typical Toups.

Peck Funeral Home in Decatur is in charge of arrangements, which were incomplete Tuesday.

Last post for Whirled Home Journal?

Just the last post to the journal on my own domain name, after nearly 10 years. I've decided to reposition this blog to a wider audience here: http://whirledhomejournal.blogspot.com. The new page will focus more or less exclusively on topics regarding our environment, and on the people and institutions who abuse or improve our natural environment.

You'll also notice the liberal use of Google Adwords with ingenuously crafted ads designed to resonate with environmentally aware people. All proceeds from clicking the ads will go to supporting the Whirled Home Journal and keeping my telecommute or die lifestyle afloat.

The business goal? Make money by creating measurable change in the form of improved environmental practices and lifestyles of people, businesses, institutions and governments worldwide. By whatever means possible short of theft, vandalism or violence.

See you at the new Whirled Home Journal 2.0 in January.

Recording and Producing Music: Lots of Work But It Lasts Forever

If you would like to listen to my earliest work as a music producer and sideman, listen to Paul Boruff's CD "Blue Jay" for free on CD Baby. After 13 years it's still nice piece of work for a bedroom studio project. Paul has sold lots of this disc from the stage at his performances.

Paul wrote, sang and performed all the songs live and we spent many hours getting all the parts dubbed in, then mixing and mastering everything over a sucky ADAT recorder that used SVHS video tape (long dead as a medium) for storage. Besides producing the disc, I played guitars and some percussion, and there are a bunch of other people on it too, Matt Flinner most notably, along with Steve Wesson on bass and Anthony Perry on drums, and a fiddler whose name escapes me at the moment.