Tag Archives: Montana

Would you rather have a wind farm or McMansions built nearby?

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This is a choice I assume many homeowners would not want to make: would you rather have a wind farm or McMansions built nearby? Here is what one Montana resident had to say in response to plans for eight wind turbines on a nearby hill:

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Windmills are not ugly, they are neat. Whoever saw a postcard of a windmill in Holland as a kid and didn’t want to go there? So what’s the deal? Windmills in Holland are picturesque, but a windmill in Anaconda is ugly? It’s got nothing to do with ugly. You’re brainwashed if you believe that.

I’ll tell you what’s ugly. What’s ugly is a McMansion on the skyline in Montana. That’s ugly! McMansions, with those “grand entrances.” They ought to be outlawed. Revoke the insurance policies on them I say.

What would you rather see on the skyline, a windmill or a McMansion? How would you like to look up and see some fool’s mansion everyday looking down on you? Just rubbing it in? Huh? I’d move. I wouldn’t put up with it for a week.

— Oldie

This is a clear denouncement of McMansions, particularly in the context of considering another kind of development that many homeowners would not want. Apparently, McMansions have entrances that are too large, they should not be built in the first place, the ones that are built shouldn’t be allowed to have insurance, and they are even worse when built on hills to lord it over everyone else. Perhaps McMansions should primarily be built in valleys where other people can look down on them?

Note: the windmills in Holland do look a little different than modern wind turbines…

Drinking and driving in Montana

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While many states have cracked down on drinking and driving, Montana has maintained a more accepting stance towards this activity. However, this era may soon be coming to a close:

Until 2005, when the state came under heavy duress from the federal government, it was legal to drink and drive in many places. And a few years before that there wasn’t even a speed limit on major highways and in rural areas.

But spurred by the high-profile death of a highway patrolman at the hands of an intoxicated driver, Montana’s Old West drinking and driving culture is retreating. Judges are rejecting lenient plea deals and law enforcement leaders are exploring different ways of keeping track of repeat offenders.

Even the Legislature, which just a few years ago struggled mightily to ban open containers of booze in cars, is beginning to promise tough new laws. This comes after years of virtually ignoring the state’s ranking at or near the top of per capita drunken driving deaths.

I didn’t even know this was possible in a country where drinking and driving has been a recognized social problem for several decades. Does Montana not have MADD or SADD groups or are such groups just ignored?

It would be interesting to track, as the article begins to do, how a state makes a transition from a culture open to drinking and driving to a place where this becomes defined as problem behavior. This would require a good amount of culture work among legislators and the average citizen.