A Cool “Summer” Day

It was 44 degrees and very cloudy this morning, raining off and on all day.  When Mom and Chuck arrived she convinced me to build a fire in the fireplace—a fire in August????  Ellie was reminiscing about how cold she was here in Montana last summer—she is now in Red Bay, AL and it is anything but cold there!

When I posted last night I was very tired and promised more about my thoughts on organizations.  One of my quilting buddies, Marjean who belongs to the same guild called this morning to ask me what I meant.  She assured me that the guild would turn out in force to help with this quilt show.  The guild holds a large quilt show every other year and this October is the date.  A quilt show requires an enormous amount of man power and this is a two day show.  I saw signs of no cooperation last night, only a small number of people doing the work and Marjean assures me this won’t be the case and that is a good thing! 

Michael and I were involved in a shooting sport a few years ago called Cowboy Action Shooting.  You shoot through the course of a “stage” three different type guns—2 pistols, a rifle and a shotgun.  The sport required you to dress in period, late 1800’s costumes and shoot replica type guns from that same time frame.  Scoring was based on speed and accuracy.  This sport is why Michael and I started going to AZ in winter.

Michael and I participated in the sport for seven years.  The sport was labor intensive—there was a “posse marshal” who was in charge, a person who ran the timer, three people who served as spotters looking for hits and misses on the targets, someone picked up all the rifle brass once a shooter finished a scenario—everyone participating in the sport, us included reloaded all their brass, you couldn’t afford to do the sport otherwise going through 300 rounds per couple per day.   Another person watched the loading table to be sure each person loaded their guns safely and a person watched the unloading table to be sure all guns were safely unloaded.  There were people helping reset targets and a person to document each shooter’s score. 

Each posse usually consisted of 15-20 people and it always seemed that there were 6-8 people doing all the work and the rest were chatting and sitting on their laurels.  Michael and I just burned out even though we were both competing very well—in 2006 I place third in my class at a major 500 person shooting event in Phoenix, AZ. 

I’ve belonged to other organizations in my career as a nurse and it was always the same—lots of people but only a few doing the work.  I was president of the Chamber of Commerce for our county here in Montana when I owned Cinnabar Creek—same thing—lots of people, only a few doing the work—so that’s my take on organizations, right or wrong!

My friend Gemma and I went up to Peg’s house this afternoon for a lady’s afternoon.  We enjoyed great cookies, lemonade, coffee and even better conversation.  Michael went out to Jill and Terry’s to talk to them about a sprinkler system. 

And that is it for a another great day in Montana.

The chokecherries are starting to turn—bears will be coming!!

Our morning scene.