Flathead Lake, MT

I left Hickory Valley on August 21st. I drove into Memphis first, to pack my cooler full of fresh organic salads and fruits. I have learned not to search for fresh food on the road. I was headed to Montana, where I lived for most of 2005,  wrote Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. and the Aristocracy of Stock Profits and met Anais Starr who has run Solari operations since 2006.

I love being on the road. I drove straight through to Billings - a 25 hour trip through Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, South Dakota, Wyoming into eastern Montana. Then a 12 hour sleep, up the next morning and then 8 hours across southern Montana turning north on the Western side into the Flathead Valley.

Montana Map
Gordon’s Guide

The drive was spectacular the whole way. Clear blue skies with the temperature in the ’60’s. After the heat of the Tennessee summer, the crisp cool air was welcome.

I met up with colleagues from California at the Deep Bay Center in Lakeside on Flathead Lake through last Friday. Each day the air poured into our house from across the lake. Because our team is spread around the country, it is important to find ways to get together to brainstorm and create. I can’t think of a better place to bring a team together than the Center at Deep Bay.

We found the Center thank to the wonderful We Trade Network.  More proof of the power of barter networks.

On Friday, I moved up to the Swan Valley to stay with friends - a weekend of hiking, reading (or I should say re-reading Richard Dolan’s book for this week’s Solari Report) and eating more great fresh food from Loon Lake Farm in Bigfork, The Good Food Store in Missoula and Mountain Valley Foods in Kalispell. I even continued my education on grizzly bears and how to care for the wilderness from the master of the forests, Rick Freeman.

Swan Lake, MT

I will be staying in the Swan, headed into the Solari office several days to work and then driving home over Labor Day weekend.

I’m loving Montana. It’s a reminder of what Wordsworth wrote in Tintern Abbey:

“..and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; ’tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.”

By Lars Schall

Hardly another serious plague to society is associated with more hypocrisy and erroneous assumptions than the drug business. So Lars Schall talked with Catherine Austin Fitts, who explains the real deal: “It’s a very old business. It goes back to the question of how you control the most territory with the fewest players as possible.”

The following interview was conducted, while she sat in her car and drove across the U.S. state of Montana.

Continue reading the article . . .

By Marian Burros

The 250 farmers, bakers, millers, scientists and just plain eaters, all of them fanatics about the kind of bread that is so good it doesn’t need butter or jam, gathered here last month for the fourth annual Kneading Conference. They spent two days at the fairgrounds talking about locally grown, mostly organic grains — and how, after 100 years of neglect, breads made from them are beginning to pop up, in limited quantities, nationwide.

Continue reading the article . . .

Solari Reports on Building Your Food Sources:

Building Your Local Food IQ
(14 Oct 10)

From Naked Capitalism

Normally, I don’t report on anecdotes from my immediate circle, but a set of conversations in less than a 24 hour period suggests that even those comparatively unaffected by the crisis are bracing themselves for the possibility of sudden, large-scale, adverse changes. And that sort of gnawing worry seems to be growing in New York despite being buoyed by TARP funds and covert bank subsidies.

When out on my rounds the day before yesterday, I ran into an old McKinsey colleague, who had subsequently had impressively titled jobs in Big Firms You Heard Of before semi-retiring to manage family money. He and his very accomplished wife were big Bush donors and had been invited to both inaugurations.

He made short order of niceties and got to the point: “We need more fiscal stimulus. Obama did too little and too much of what he spent on was liberal pork. We could and need to spend a lot on infrastructure. This is looking a lot like 1936. I’m afraid it could get really ugly. And I’m particularly worried that the Republicans will win big this fall. They’ll cut even deeper, that’s the last thing we need right now.”

Continue reading the article . . .

Related reading:

Family Wealth
Catherine and The Solari Report (19 Nov 09)

By Elizabeth Skrapits

Would local officials be powerless to stop a natural gas company from drilling a natural gas well in the middle of a housing development?

Not according to a new state court ruling, which affirms the right of municipal and county officials to limit natural gas drilling to certain districts, such as agricultural, mining or manufacturing, and out of residential neighborhoods.

Three new court decisions were outlined by attorney Jeffrey Malak during a recent meeting of the Back Mountain Community Partnership in Luzerne County.

The latest decision, Penneco Oil Co. Inc. v. the County of Fayette, “…opens up the floodgates and says municipal zoning is not pre-empted” by the state Oil and Gas Act, Mr. Malak said. The case was decided in Commonwealth Court on July 22.

Continue reading the article . . .

Related reading:

Lessons from Dimock, PA: Calling for a Moratorium on Natural Gas Drilling in New York
The Huffington Post (3 Aug 10)