I haven’t posted much this week for a couple reasons:
- First, there’s not much going on that’s worth writing about.
- Second, I’ve been out of town.
Yep, it’s MEA days, or what we sometimes call youth hunting days.
School’s out for Thursday and Friday this time each year, so hardworking parents usually need to take off work so they can care for their kids as teachers get ‘extra training.’
I decided to go to Helena with my son.
While there, I hit up the Historical Society so I could get some more research on my final volume of Montana history, which will come out December 2020.
Here’s a bit I found on Schweitzer that I’d never heard, probably because it happened when I was a junior at Helena High, and not really paying attention:
Schweitzer was 43-years-old when he decided to run for the U.S. Senate in 1999. He was a “virtual political unknown,” state reporters wrote.
To remedy that, Schweitzer started off his campaign “with a flamboyant move that let everyone know he would be an unusual kind of candidate.”
It happened during a day the legislature was in session. Schweitzer went to the Capitol rotunda and dumped $47,000 in cash on the floor. This was done to “illustrate the amount of campaign contributions that Burns had accepted from tobacco companies.”
Vowing to run a different kind of campaign than that, Schweitzer made sure that everyone knew he wouldn’t be in bed with special interests.
