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ART & CULTURE: Music for the Masses
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By Lori Grannis
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For years, symphony orchestras nationwide have enjoyed an upper crust image - a kind of mystique that felt to its patrons very much like a private club. Musical treasures, it seemed, were shared only with those capable of supporting the arts, or those of a certain age and standing.
It can still be heard in the dispassionate voices of public radio announcers. As if testing listeners in a memory game, hosts recount four-hour long sets lists and, for all pretentious palaver, speak of classical music in stuffy, informed tones as if personal ombudsmen for long-dead composers.
Yet this same classical music sings so sweetly, as it wends its way through your dad’s garage on a Sunday afternoon - the perfect backdrop to rebuilding classic cars, and purposeless puttering.
This classical music is the same after all these years - in a time when you once sat five seats back in the string section, and your fingers could barely keep pace with the notes and bars on the page.
Now in adulthood, as if overnight, it seems almost cruel that it has barred you from membership in its elite club.
That’s something Missoula Symphony Orchestra & Chorale director John Driscoll says he and others in the industry are trying their best to change.
He says the marketing of symphonies - the type that seeks to exclude, rather than include - is precisely what is at the heart of the orchestra’s fall in many small towns across the nation, and what has damaged the image of classical music, overall, leaving a community’s majority at arm’s reach.
But as the Missoula Symphony, now in its 57th year, moves into a new era with the tag phrase “Great music doesn’t care how much you know about it - great music cares only that it be well played and thoroughly enjoyed.” The perception of classical music as unapproachable is fast disappearing.
“Not that Missoula has ever been that pretentious over its symphony, mind you,” says Driscoll. “But we have worked hard to give the Symphony Association a personality that many Missoulians can relate to.”
When Driscoll came on board as executive director in 2000, he came not only as an administrative pundit, he also carried with him the unique distinction of being a member of the orchestra himself, deeply ensconced in the trumpet section.
Making the symphony more approachable made sense for its longevity and growth, but it also made sense to him as a musician. Wearing both hats has ultimately enabled Driscoll to connect with community to make it approachable to the masses once more.
“On one hand, our goal is to present what we do in an inviting way so that people don’t feel it’s pretentious or beyond them, but once they are in the door, it’s our job to perform at the highest level possible so the musical experience is visceral and engaging and people want to come back,” he says.
Largely always thought of as an artistic pursuit for older adults, Missoula’s symphony orchestra has quashed that image, attracting a much younger talent base in recent years, he says. That, in turn, has attracted a more diverse audience.
“We want people of all ages and walks of life to identify with music, so that’s what we’ve been trying to communicate,” he says. “And it seem we have been successful in doing so.”
Attendance numbers for the 2000/ 2001 season Missoula Symphony concert series hovered in the neighborhood of 5,000. Numbers in the recent 2009/ 2010 season were tallied at 10,000.
The fact that Missoula is the culture capital of Montana doesn’t hurt matters either. Locals of all stations care about sustaining the arts, and embrace the privilege of having a local symphony.
But Driscoll says the symphony’s continued growth and success also has a lot to do with the sheer talent pool found here.
“In this day and age, when symphonies in smaller towns aren’t surviving, the fact that we have one here at all is a testament to talent and organization,” he says. “The fact that we have one as good is what’s really amazing.”
The per-minute expense of renting or purchasing symphony music, coupled with overly ambitious concert schedules that are unsustainable, and poor organization, can be falter factors in cities similar in size to Missoula.
“Every community is different, but there are bright spots all over the country - we feel fortunate that we’re one of those bright spots,” Driscoll says.
Within the Missoula Symphony, one sees a microcosm of Missoula. All ages are represented, in all orchestral sections, and this town sees a lot of talented musicians of all ages, he says.
Talent pool, coupled with a desire to truly connect with community - both with longstanding lovers of classical music and new music converts - owes to careful work on image and an eye on offering variety within musical programs that speak to the community at hand.
Making symphony approachable to a younger generation of audience members is just one way the Missoula Symphony Association has doubled interest and attendance.
Masterworks concerts - five throughout the season in all - constitute the orchestra’s regularly scheduled program, but expanded offerings that reach out beyond a loyal following to an up-and-coming young audience has also been pivotal.
“We’ve done youth concerts for a long time now, where fourth graders from Missoula, and 100 mile radius beyond, attend concerts that introduce orchestra and its varied instruments,” Driscoll says. “We present it to that age because that is when they are deciding what they’re going to be doing - whether in band, orchestra or choir.”
Creating opportunities to connect with youth, both to inspire participation and engender music appreciation, may be the only opportunity to expose a child to classical music, he says.
Other such opportunities include the symphony’s annual family concert, and the annual ‘Symphony in the Park’ concert at Caras Park - this year on August 8. It’s just one more way to put an entire community in front of classical music.
Family concerts offer a standard orchestral repertoire for a one-hour show, and may feature a single movement from a well-known symphony, such as Beethoven’s Symphony Number Five in C Minor.
“We don’t need to dumb it down for kids, we play real music that is presented in a fun and interactive way,” Driscoll says. Perhaps a Beethoven symphony will be played, he says, but it will be a single movement, as opposed to an entire symphony.
“Kids have responded with a lot of enthusiasm and have had a lot of fun,” he says.
Expanded programs, a softened, more approachable image, and community-based offering such as Symphony in the Park have helped the symphony attract a younger audience, but the arrival of symphony conductor Darko Butorac in 2007 helped charm an entire community.
Originally from Serbia, Butorac won the coveted music director spot in Missoula at the age of 29, on the heels of a two-year international search to replace retiring former director Joseph Henry. He recently signed on for another three-year term here.
A wunderkind by all musical standards Butorac has worked with such orchestras as the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, the Trondheim Symphony in Norway, the Mendoza Symphony in Argentina, China’s Xiamen Philharmonic, and the Ukraine’s Kharkov Symphony Orchestra, and Kharkov Philharmonic.
To have him in Missoula, says Driscoll, is a real coup.
“As conductor, you have to be a member of the community, and people have to connect with you,” says Driscoll. “Darko does that in spades, and to find someone who was the entire package is just remarkable.”
“I’m lucky to have a great rapport with orchestra and lucky that the popularity of concerts is what is is,” says Burotac. “For some reason, people also like my bad jokes in Missoula.”
In an age where professional sports’ tickets cost more than a night at the symphony, and entrance to a major amusement park for a family of four rivals the cost of an entire season of orchestra concerts, Missoula Symphony finds itself in a fortunate position.
Sound marketing efforts, creative fundraisers - like the upcoming Cycle for Symphony on September 18 - and a culturally hungry and appreciative audience, have helped entrench the Missoula Symphony firmly in the community.
Lori Grannis may be reached at 360-8788.
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ROADSIDE CHATS: The History of a Homestead
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| By Rod Daniel |
A mere 60 miles from Hamilton, over Skalkaho Pass, the Morgan-Case Homestead provides a glimpse of what a real Montana homestead was like a hundred years ago. The towering ponderosa pines watch over a land they’ve shared with countless generations of native Americans, prospectors, trappers, homesteaders, firefighters and recreationists:
The collapsed, century-old barn out back kneels in the moist soil, surrendering to gravity. The stone garage built into the hillside across the road longs for the horseless carriage of its youth. A lichen-covered corral, once home to horses and cows, now nurses aspens and junipers. A root cellar, dark, cool and lonely, pines for the days before refrigeration.
But the comfortable Forest Service rental cabin a couple hundred yards from Rock Creek offers much more than a place to relax, unwind and soak up the scenery. The whispered words embedded within its weathered wooden walls tell tales of slavery and servitude, war and peace, farming, fishing, freedom and love.
Paths to a partnership
Two of the first folks to live on the homestead – Annie Morgan and Joseph Case – each took amazing journeys to the rugged, roadless piece of land where they would live out their lives together.
Morgan was born a slave in 1833 in Maryland and came to Montana in 1876 while serving as a cook for Gen. Custer. Prior to the general’s ill-fated battle at Little Big Horn, Morgan left his employment and made her way to Philipsburg. There she was hired by County Attorney Durfee to care for his alcoholic uncle in a cabin up Rock Creek. Located on an abandoned fox farm, the two-room cabin became Morgan’s home after Durfee’s uncle moved on.
In 1894, after years of living alone, Annie Morgan encountered Joseph “Fisher Jack” Case near the creek. The Civil War veteran from New Jersey who had wandered to Montana after the war was stricken with typhoid fever. Morgan nursed Case back to health, and he agreed to stay on to build fences for her as a payment for her services. Restless and rambling, Case had recently been earning money by catching fish in Rock Creek and selling them in Philipsburg. But Morgan’s cooking and companionship apparently were enough to make him consider settling down on the remote homestead.
Case and Morgan developed a mutual affection and lived together as a couple until Morgan’s death in 1914. In their 20 years together, they made a living off the land and made many improvements to the property. In 1911, after more than three decades on the land, Morgan filed a homestead claim. The claim had not yet been finalized when she died at age 80. And while her will stated that the home be left to her common-law husband, Joseph Case, ownership of the land remained in question. (The two never married because interracial marriage was illegal in Montana until 1953).
Case ended up filing his own claim for the homestead, and after several years of negotiations, he finally received a patent on the land in 1919 when he was 74. He lived on the 160-acre homestead until 1924, when he sold it to John and Olga Myers for $3,200.
Case then made arrangements to live out the rest of his life at the Old Soldier’s Home in Columbia Falls. A few months before his death in 1930 he penciled a note which read “Don’t send me back east for burial, but take me to the Philipsburg Cemetery and put me near my Annie.”
Subsequent owners
Myers continued to improve the property by building a stone fireplace and walk-in pantry. The couple reportedly operated a still during Prohibition and built a number of hiding places into the log cabin to conceal their equipment. The income from the moonshine allowed Myers to indulge his love of automobiles. He owned an Auburn touring car for which he built a rock garage which still stands across the road from the homestead.
The Myers eventually owned a number of contiguous parcels near the homestead and operated their ranch until 1943 when they sold all their property to Bill Schmidt, a plumber from Anaconda.
Schmidt made many improvements to the property, including adding another addition to the house. He also built a blacksmith shop, woodshed and sauna northwest of the house. In 1951, Schmidt sold all but two and a half acres to Frank and Sarah Puyear. The Puyears moved away in 1956, but owned the ranch until 1979, when they sold it to the Forest Service.
In 1999, the Missoula Ranger District of the Lolo National Forest began to renovate the Morgan-Case Homestead, and in 2005, it was named to the National Register of Historic Places. In 2008, it became part of the Forest Service’s cabin rental program.
Inspired by history
Many visitors to the Morgan-Case Homestead have been prompted by its history to find out more about its original occupants. My wife and I, for instance, left the cabin after a three-day stay and promptly headed to the Philipsburg Cemetery to find Annie and Joseph’s graves.
Lenore McKelvey Puhek took another track. The Helena writer, while visiting the Philipsburg Cemetery, was struck by an unusual, obelisk-shaped, white tombstone -- Mrs. Agnes “Annie” Morgan 1914. On the back of the tombstone were the weathered words – “Cooked for General George A. Custer, a good neighbor and liked by all who knew her.”
Something clicked, Puhek said. “I had to find out more about this person.”
Shortly after, Puhek visited her brother, Patrick McKelvey, who was working with the firefighters on the Sawmill Complex fires of 2007, which included the Rock Creek drainage.
“They were wrapping these cabins to keep them from burning, and I found out this cabin was Annie Morgan’s,” Puhek said. “I took that as a sign that I should write about this woman.”
Puhek researched the lives of Morgan and Case for more than a year, drawing on personal interviews, death certificates, census information and more. The end result is a 294-page, two-part, historical novel – “Annie: From Slavery to a Montana Homestead.” It’s the stories of Annie Morgan and Joseph Case woven together with scores of historical facts from Puhek’s research.
“I tried to tell their stories using as many of the facts I uncovered as possible,” she said. “I wanted to fill in the blanks and bring their story to life.”
Puhek’s Montana roots run deep, and as a writer, she seeks to shed light on otherwise little-known bits of history. She cites the law preventing Morgan and Case from marrying as an example.
“I don’t think many people know that it was illegal for an interracial couple to marry in Montana until 1953,” she said. “And of course since Annie was a woman she was never able to vote. There’s a lot of Montana history in this book.”
Renting the cabin and reading the book
The Morgan-Case homestead may be rented for $65 a night. It sleeps four and has electricity, a hand-pump well and an outhouse. Because of its popularity, reservations for the historic cabin are done through a lottery. For more information contact the Missoula Ranger District of the Lolo National Forest.
Puhek’s book, “Annie: From Slavery to a Montana Homestead,” can be purchased directly from her. Write Lenore McKelvey Puhek, P.O. Box 2006, Helena, MT 59601, or email her at lpuhek@gmail.com.
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HISTORY: Trailing Herds From Texas to Mt., Part II
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By Wm. W. Whitfield
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Last month I started to tell the story of a young Texas cowboy named Tom Moore, who was involved in a cattle drive along the Old Western Trail. The herd of thirty-one-hundred Mexican Longhorns, branded with a Circle Dot insignia, was due at the Blackfoot Indian Agency in northwest Montana on the 10th of September 1882. As the herd passed just west of San Antonio our young cowpoke says that the well-worn path that the outfit drove their cattle along was “a broad, well defined trail, in places seventy-five yards wide, where all local trails blended into one common pathway, which after a few years of continued use, became as well defined as the course of a river.”
On a dark night just prior to reaching San Antonio the outfit experienced their first stampede when one of the night watchmen’s horses accidentally stepped into a gopher hole and dumped the rider off right at the hooves of the sleeping cattle. The spooked herd got up immediately and scattered off in every direction. Tom Moore, the young Texan, says “stampedes were generally due to negligence in not having the herd full of grass and water on reaching the bed ground at night. But though hunger and thirst are probably responsible for more stampedes than all other causes combined, it is the unexpected, which cannot be guarded against.” He goes on to say that a stampede is a natural result of fear, and at night this fear might be imparted to the entire herd by a flash of lightning or a peal of thunder, or even by the scent of some wild animal or the stumbling of a horse. Once the animals are alerted to any danger, it infects the entire herd, throwing them into the wildest panic. “Frequently a herd became so spoiled in this manner that it grew into a mania with them, so that they would stampede on the slightest provocation, or no provocation at all.”
The cowboys spent the entire night chasing down the runaway herd and when the morning light finally shone through the filtering mist, the outfit had no way of knowing just where they were in relation to the trail. Some of the riders had blindly chased portions of the herd through razor-sharp thickets of mesquite, and both horse and rider bore the deep cuts and scratches to prove it. The men who were riding without chaps had their pants shredded to pieces, and one cowboy said afterwards that he had “worn leggings for the last ten years, and for about ten seconds in forcing that mesquite thicket was the only time I ever drew interest in my investment. They’re a heap like a six-shooter, wear them all your life and never have any use for them.” When the cowboys finally got their bearings and gathered up the furthest strays, they found they were a full twenty miles from where they had bedded down the animals that evening! A few weeks later the herd was once again spooked when it came upon a small band of about twenty wandering buffalo. Being from Mexico, the longhorns had never encountered an example of their wilder brethren.
Outside of Dodge City our young cowboy received word that his two brothers were engaged in a cattle drive along the Chisholm Trail on it’s way to the Crow Agency of Montana. It was the first news he had
heard about his family, but it seemed that his brothers Robert and Zack were a week behind his outfit and the three would not meet up on this trip. The cowboys sat up that night and argued the different merits of the two different cattle trails until near midnight. When the conversation moved on to the subject of Texas, one of the cowboys claimed that if he owned Hell and Texas, he would rent out Texas, and live in Hell! Another one recalled a story of a Tennessee girl who had married a Texan. She wrote home to her sister and stated frankly that “Texas is a good place for men and dogs, but it’s hell on women and oxen!”
The comment on oxen somehow turned the conversation towards the merits of a fine mule and one of the old veterans recalled a story he’d heard during the Civil War. According to his source, during one of the winter retreats a cavalryman saw a hat apparently floating in the mud and water. In the hope that it might be a better hat than the one he was wearing, he dismounted to get it. Carefully feeling his way through the murky ooze until he reached the hat, the cavalryman was stunned to find a man still attached to the floating hat. “Hello comrade,” he sang out with surprise, “can I lend you a hand?” The fellow under the hat looked up and calmly replied “No, no, I’m all right, I’ve got a good mule under me yet!”
For the next few days the cowboys took turns visiting Dodge City, and their foreman warned them to be on their absolute best behavior. “Dodge is one town where the average bad man of the West not only finds his equal, but finds himself badly handicapped. Don’t ever get the impression that you can ride your horses into a saloon, or shoot out the lights in Dodge. It may go somewhere else, but it don’t go there. You can wear your six-shooters in town, but you’d best leave them at the first place that you stop, hotel, livery, or business house. When you leave town call for your pistols, but don’t ride out shooting. Most cowboys think it’s an infringement on their rights to give up shooting in town, but your pistols are no match for Winchesters and buckshot, and Dodge’s officers are as game a set of men as ever faced danger.”
Tom Moore says that he had worn his six-shooter for so long that he didn’t trim out well without it, and that he tended to topple forward and couldn’t maintain his balance without the weight of it! Some of the more venerable peacekeepers of Dodge City were the brothers Ed, Jim and Bat Masterson, along with Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, to name just a few. In Dodge in ’82 there were a wide variety of theatres, dance halls, and other resorts, which, like the wicked, flourished best under the veil of darkness. Cattle herders bound for the Yellowstone and points beyond had always considered Dodge as the halfway mark on the trail, even though Moore’s outfit had hardly covered half the distance to their final destination at the Blackfoot Agency in Montana. After leaving Dodge City, the foreman of Moore’s outfit received a letter from the boss directing him to go to Culbertson, Nebraska to meet a man who was buying horses for a ranch in Montana. The deal was made quickly, and the remuda, (extra saddle horses), chuck wagon and mules were sold for a handsome profit, to be turned over at Silver Bow after the cattle drive ended sometime in September.
When the time came to turn over their horses, Moore says, “There was a feeling of regret in our hearts which we could not dispel. At no time in my life have I felt so keenly the parting between man and horse as I did that September evening in Montana. On the trail an affection springs up between a man and his mount. Every privation that he endures, his horse endures with him, carrying him through falling weather, swimming rivers by day and riding the lead of stampedes by night, always faithful, always willing, and always patiently enduring every hardship, from exhausting hours under the saddle to the sufferings of a dry drive.” At Silver Bow three men from the ranch rode into camp and the Texas cowboys reluctantly passed their mounts into the hands of strangers, after traveling nearly three thousand miles together. The Montana cattle company that bought the remuda was headquartered out of Helena, and had their ranges somewhere on the headwaters of the Missouri. Silver Bow was the terminus of the southern railway for the Montana Territory at that time, and most of the cowboys intended to book passage there for a return trip to Texas.
It was now the beginning of summer and the days were long and monotonous, and our young cowboy reported that they “were always sixteen to eighteen hours in the saddle, and we frequently saw mirages, though we were never led astray by shady groves of timber or tempting lakes of water, but always kept within a mile or two of the trail.” Once spring had passed, the plain took on a sun burnt color, and day after day, as far as the eye could see, the horizon was unbroken, except by the variations of mirages. Other than in the morning and evening, they were never out of sight of these strange optical illusions, which Moore says were “sometimes miles away, and then again close up, when antelopes standing half a mile distant looked as tall as a giraffe. Frequently the lead of the herd would be in eclipse from these illusions, when to the men in the rear, the horsemen and cattle in the lead would appear like giants in an old fairy story.”
Eventually the company came within sight of the Northern Rockies firmly outlined on their left, while the scrubby, rugged country of the Black Hills bore up on their right. Here the trail for Montana-bound cattle veered off toward the northwest and the Powder River area of Wyoming. Somewhere near the Montana line they took another left-hand trail that led them over to the Tongue River country and beyond. Moore says that Tongue River was “clear as crystal, swift, and with a rocky bottom. On the Tongue we met range riders, and learned that this trail crossed the Yellowstone and was the one in use by herds bound for the Musselshell and remoter points on the Upper Missouri. With the exception of cool nights, no complaint could be made, for that rarefied atmosphere was a tonic to man and beast, and there was pleasure in the primitive freshness of the country which rolled away on every hand.”
On August 26th just a couple hours before dawn, a chilly wind blew out of the northwest and the fine mist that had been swirling around them throughout their night watch turned to snow. This was the first snow that many of the young Texas cowboys had ever witnessed, and it sent a tingly chill down their spines, but they all took solace in the fact that their five and a half month long journey to Montana was nearing an end.
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| REAL ESTATE:
The New Financial Reform Law & how it protects us
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| By Darwin Ernst |
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As a representative of the Montana Chapter of the Appraisal Institute, I recently acted as a lobbyist and asked Members of Congress for support in filling the gaps within the current financial lending industry regulations. The gaps in the regulation have resulted in taxpayers involuntarily bank-rolling the gambling debts created by high rollers on Wall Street. Brokers sold investors bad deals and then made twice as much money by winning the bet with insurance companies that those investments would later prove to be bad investments. These Wall Street gamblers played with the fake money created by an inaccurate understanding of the housing market, which was allowed to exist, mainly due to the ineffectively regulated financial lending industry. The resulting debt was involuntarily repaid in the form of a governmental “bail-out” by taxpayers.
I am glad to report that Montana Senator Jon Tester, who serves as a member of the Senate’s Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs Committee, has aggressively supported financial reform legislation that will provide “Main Street” with effective regulation of the financial lending industry and prevent any future bail-outs for those financial companies previously considered “too big to fail”. He has been a key figure supporting these reform efforts and I personally thank him and his staff for taking the time to meet with me over the past couple years on appraiser-related provisions.
As a taxpayer, designated residential real estate appraiser, real estate agent, and four year member of the Montana Board of Real Estate Appraisers, I feel the appraiser-related provisions within the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which were signed by president Obama into law on 7-21-2010, provide consumers with the strongest protection from abusive lending practices within the mortgage industry throughout our Nation’s regulatory lending history.
Subtitle F of Title XIV within the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act addresses the appraisal-related provisions that will affect borrowers, lenders, and regulators. Here is a summary of the appraiser-related provisions:
• Funding and additional authority for the Appraisal Sub-Committee (ASC). The ASC provides oversight of the Nation’s State real estate appraiser boards. The ASC mandate from Congress to regulate real estate appraisers was created within the legislation passed by Congress to correct deficiencies within the regulation of the financing lending industry linked to the Savings and Loan Crisis of the 1980’s. The Financial Institutions Reform Recovery & Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA) failed to provide any funding for the mandate and the ASC was not given sufficient authority to discipline those State real estate boards which were not properly regulating their State-licensed real estate appraisers. Montana’s Real Estate Appraiser Board complies with the ASC’s oversight.
• Requirement for Appraisal Management Companies to be licensed and regulated by State Real Estate Appraiser Boards. Currently, AMC’s are unregulated in many States and have been used by financial lenders as a solution to prevent mortgage loan originators and real estate appraisers from committing fraudulent collusion activities.
• Requirement for AMC’s to compensate real estate appraisers with fees customary for a market area. Many AMC’s are asking appraisers to cut their customary fees, so their “brokerage” business can pocket the difference and thereby increase profits. This provision eliminates the AMC’s ability to select real estate appraisers based on fees and promotes appraiser selection based on quality, which better protects the public’s interests. Several recent independent appraiser surveys have demonstrated that quality appraisers were systematically replaced with lower quality appraisers by many AMC’s in their attempt to make money. Working Real Estate magazine reports 98% of appraisers report that their experience has been that AMC’s rely on lowest fees in their selection process and only 62% of AMC’s consider service, quality and other factors as part of the appraiser selection.
• All real estate appraisals (valuations) and appraisal reviews are to be performed by State-licensed appraisers. Currently, there is a strong move among lenders who provide mortgage loans, to use real estate agents’ broker price opinions (BPO’s) in lieu of appraisals produced by a State-licensed real estate appraiser because they cost less. This takes advantage of a loop-hole in some State statutes, which does not specifically indicate that mortgage lenders must rely on real estate appraisers trained in determining market value, and who can be regulated by that State’s real estate appraiser board. Thirty-one States already have “mandatory” licensing, which means that only duly licensed or certified real estate appraisers are legally able to complete real estate valuations within that State. State licensed real estate agents, who are currently providing BPO services to mortgage lenders, have no education or experience requirements in developing and reporting opinions of market value.
Other real estate related provisions within Title XIV provide further protection to consumers. Here are some additional highlights of the new legislation:
• A Consumer Financial Protection Board (CFPB) of regulators will be created, formed by the Federal Reserve with the intent of having a broad oversight of financial products and authority to curb current abusive lending practices of mortgage lenders and credit card companies. It remains hopeful that the CFPB will permit appraisal portability, so consumers can switch lenders who eventually sell their loan packages to the Government-Sponsored Entities (GSE).
• There will be an elimination of stated income loans and lenders will be required to adequately document borrower’s “reasonable ability to pay” back the loan.
• Mortgage brokers will no longer be able to place borrowers in higher interest rate loans while accepting yield-spread premiums from lenders.
• Mortgage Brokers must also be licensed and place their license on all documentation. Mortgage brokers will also be liable for up to three times the amount of any origination fees they receive (plus any applicable lawyer fees), if they violate the provisions of this Act.
“Main Street” will benefit from the enactment of this strong, comprehensive and effective financial regulatory reform package that protects the American public from unsound financial lending practices and future bailouts by taxpayers.
Darwin Ernst, SRA, e-mail: darwin@tekboys.com
Montana Residential Certified Appraiser, Designated Residential Member of the Appraisal Institute, Montana Real Estate Appraiser Board Member, Montana Licensed Real Estate Agent, Realtor, and President of Independent Valuation Solutions, LLC
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COOKING: Walleye with Peanut Breading
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By Chef Vince
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This month can be a hot month with frequent thunderstorms on most good fishing lakes. Thunderstorms can appear in just minutes. Be prepared when these events happen
Simply put, get off the water fast, the winds can create big waves and rough water. I have, in my past, had to tow smaller boats into shore. It never fails that older motors will quit when the weather turns bad and rough water arrives. When I was young, I had many an old boat and motor and I had some hair raising experiences. I will share some of these experiences at a later time.
The best times to fish are early morning to about eleven AM and evening from about five PM to dark. This is particularly a good rule to follow when fishing streams and rivers. The fish get terribly stressed in warm water. Remember these are the dog days of summer. Kick back, relax and have a cool beverage in some shady spot. The fish need a rest and so do you. This rule applies to lake fishing in most cases because it is too hot on a boat when the sun is high and you are hot. Always bring plenty of water and ice. Ice for the fish as well as ice for you. If you are lucky enough to have a boat with a canvas roof take advantage of it because when you return to shore it may be the only shade you may find. Eastern Montana lakes can be in tree bare areas, so keep that in mind.
I just recently worked on a new recipe for walleye and other white fleshed fish such as perch. I found it to be most tasty. Here is Walleye with Peanut Breading.
What you need:
• Two pounds walleye fillets - skinned and boned
• Peanut oil
• One cup finely minced peanuts
• One dozen salteen crackers - crushed fine
• One cup flour
• Half teaspoon ground red pepper
• Milk - to dip fillets in
• If needed add salt - remember the salteens have plenty of salt
• One lemon - quartered lenghtwise
What you do
Blend the peanuts, flour,red pepper and crackers together well. In a large fry pan pour enough peanut oil to fry the fillets and heat to medium high heat. Next dip the fillets in the milk and coat well with the peanut and flour mixture. Place in the heated oil and cook until golden in color on each side. Fish will flake when done. Squeeze fresh lemon over cooked fillets. Serve with sliced fresh melons and fried potatoes. You might want to add a bit of chopped onions when frying the potatoes. Enjoy!!
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