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BUSINESS: Drawn to Longbows
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| By Rod Daniel |
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After creating more than a couple dozen traditional, handcrafted, hardwood longbows, Andrew Wicker has earned the title of bowyer. But the path the 22-year-old Stevensville man took to bow making was far from traditional.
“I was probably 18 when the idea just struck me to take a piece of PVC pipe, make some notches in the end, put a string on it, and shoot some arrows,” Wicker said with a grin. The “arrows” were long sticks, and when one of them knocked over a lamp, Wicker took his experiment outside.
“The next day I got some cottonwood branches from the yard and did the same thing,” he said. “Then I did some research on the internet and, after that, I made something I thought was similar to a bow out of a willow sapling.” Wicker pulled the simple self-bow from a shelf in his shop. “I’m pretty proud of it, but if you ask any bowyer, he’ll tell you willow is the worst bow wood around.”
With a real wooden bow to his credit, Wicker began buying hardwoods like walnut and hickory and building more bows.
“I read the ‘Traditional Bowyer’s Bible’ many times through,” he said. “I really got into it as a hobby.” Wicker’s first laminated multi-wood longbow came about at the request from a friend. “My friend asked me to make him a nice bow, so I started researching laminated bows,” he said. “I wanted to make him a bow he could hunt with. It took me three tries but I made him a bow he said he really liked.”
Since then, Wicker has learned by trial and error and produced some very impressive traditional longbows, using a combination of woods to achieve optimal strength and efficiency. He currently uses a combination of ipe (pronounced “eepay”) and bamboo for the working part of the bow, and a variety of hardwoods for the decorative handle. The ipe, he said, is strong in compression while the bamboo is strong in tension.
He’s sold about a dozen of his bows through archery shops and by word of mouth, and has broached the idea of making it a business. “I printed brochures and took my bows to some of the archery shops, but I’ve kind of backed off the marketing,” he said. “I’m not sure I want to turn my hobby into a business.”
Traditional longbows became less popular with the advent of modern compound bows, Wicker said. But they are currently experiencing a resurgence. Web sites like Paleoplanet celebrate prehistoric and stone-age skills like spear throwing and bowmaking, and information on the subject is easy to find.
Western Montana, Wicker said, features some of the best bow makers in the world. Dan Toelke from Lake County and Jimmie Neaves and Dale Dye from the Bitterroot make incredible hand-crafted bows.
“I saw Dale Dye shooting his bows one day and I went home and looked him up online,” he said. “He makes very nice bows – incredible bows. He does things like checkering and carving and notching that I haven’t learned yet.”
Wicker said seeing other people’s work is a big source of inspiration and something he will draw on as he pursues his hobby. “I’m essentially self-taught, but I learn so much from seeing other people’s bows,” he said. “They are all a motivation to me.”
Shooting his bow in the front yard of his Stevensville-area home, Wicker proudly demonstrates the efficiency of the weapon. “It’s relatively fast,” he said. “I try to keep the mass down, the tips light and make sure the string angle is efficient.”
Hitting his target with impressive accuracy, Wicker is quick to downplay his shooting skills.
“I’m more of a bowyer than an archer,” he said. “And I learn from every bow I make.” And after four years and hundreds of hours in his shop, Wicker is quick to sum up his education in the art of bowmaking. “If you want to be frustrated, making bows is the way to go.”
For more information about Andrew Wicker and his custom-made, traditional wooden longbows, email him at traditionalbows@hughes.net.
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ROADSIDE CHATS: Amish on a Bus
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| By Gretchen L Langton |
This story does not begin with Amish on a bus, that comes later. This story starts with Bob Petty looking on Craig’s List for reclaimed timbers to grace his remodeling project. His search led him to Troy Sweeney who works with the Graber family from Davis County, Indiana. The Grabers are Amish and they have experience putting together and taking apart timber framed structures.
Bob Petty, who grew up in Indiana, went there on a road trip to check out four barns: a dairy barn near Montgomery built around 1869, a tobacco barn in North Vernon, one from Putnum County, and the last near the Ohio River in Evansville. Some of the beams are 10 feet by 10 feet by 55 feet long. Old when they were cut down in the 1860’s, “some of these trees were seedlings in the 1600’s,” Bob says. “Tulip poplar, maple, red and white oak, ash, black walnut, black cherry, American beech, and chestnut,” is the impressive list of trees from which the beams were cut.
But back to the Amish on a bus. While Bob was in Indiana, he broke bread with the Graber family and began hatching a plan to have them help install the beams in his home. So how do you get a handful of Amish men and their families to Montana when nobody drives? The Grabers, after asking themselves the same question, came up with a solution–buy a bus and hire a driver. First, they had to paint the bus and put in a restroom. They also added a generator (to help with power and air conditioning) which Efram Graber proudly explains saves them three miles a gallon in gasoline.
And so began the Graber family’s six-thousand-mile-long “Wild West vacation.” They are taking in everything of interest from Wall Drug to the Redwoods, Crater Lake, and the Grand Canyon. “Noone has been west of the Mississippi,” Efram says. They were amazed by the mountains. “On the way here, we went downhill for twenty-eight miles.” “We” refers to 23 members of the Graber clan–including six children under the age of two. Ten men and boys worked on the Petty house while the women did the cooking and laundry and took care of the little ones. When I arrived, there was a small mountain of folded cloth diapers on the picnic table, while the men sat high atop the rugged rafters filling the air with the thud of many hammers.
Before the Grabers arrived, the beams had to be cut to the proper length, the tops of the rafters were milled flat and level, and curves were added to the knee braces. However, for the most part, the hundred-plus-year-old patina was preserved, so says Brian Jacobs, Project Manager from Birch Creek Design Build. Working with this variety of aged wood was an experience. “Everything is irregular...even trying to mark out a line on rough hewn beams when every stick is different...We didn’t know what we were getting until we saw it. It’s all square rule from the inside out.” When he talks about the color of the poplar knee braces that they milled in the shop, his voice sounds like going to church, “They were a beautiful light green.” The beams I saw being flown into place had the look of wizened old men, grey with cracked, leathery features. They silently demand respect.
Bob Petty feels this too. His attachment to timber framing and to preservation is simply an extension of who he is and what he does. As we are talking, his eleven-year-old son Jack passes us with his rod. He’s going fishing. “Just be back before dark,” Bob tells him. Bob wants his son to share his love for nature and he knows this comes from hands on experience. He has put his love to work for the National Audubon Society; he is the director of field support for the western states, “everything west of the Mississippi River.” Bob develops teaching programs, helps create interpretive trails, hires folks–all in the name of teaching the public about habitat conservation. He is also a gifted artist and recently created twenty meticulously detailed watercolors of twenty birds of concern including the burrowing owl, the whooping crane, the wood thrush. These images were put together on a poster to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Partners in Flight, an organization that works to protect migratory birds.
His verve for preserving things has driven him to embrace the concepts of “footprint reduction” by reusing things and by utilizing energy saving technology. “We live in a world with finite resources; the bottom line is that our dependence on fossil fuel has global consequences,” Bob states when I ask him why this is important. Bob applied for a home loan through the Montana Department of Environmental Quality. “This is part of the stimulus package.”
The loan at 4% will be used to install a hydronic solar system that will heat much of the home’s water. The walls are double studded and super insulated (R-40) with blown cellulose. The house will also have a heat recovery ventilator so that very little produced heat is wasted. Bob’s former house had cedar shakes on the roof, but he lives in the trees and sees this as a fire hazard. Rather than discard the shakes as happens in many remodel jobs, the cedar will become siding. While the installation of energy saving technology is expensive, Bob says that state and federal tax credits will pay for 30% of the systems’ final costs. “Within 7 to 10 years, the systems will pay for themselves.”
Back to the Amish. They stayed at Bob and his wife Margaret’s place for fourteen days and I was dying to know what it was like to be around a group of people who for the most part are known by stereotypical details like using horse and buggies and professing non-violence. What do they like to eat? According to Bob, Efram’s favorite meal is “haystack supper”–a pile of food tall enough to look like a haystack and include nearly all the food groups in one fell swoop. Brian Jacobs recalls a particular break-time treat with amazement, “Who makes homemade donuts?!”
Bob has the farm bell from his childhood which has gone virtually unused until the Grabers arrived. They knew exactly what the bell was for–it signals a time to gather. Aside from their obvious woodworking skills, the Amish crew impressed both Bob and Brian with their “authentic relationships” hewn from consistent personal contact. Bob believes that it’s ironic to live in a culture that is so connected through technology but so lacking in personal relationships with other people and the land. (Author’s suggestion: Read “Better Off” by Eric Brende.)
In an attempt to reconnect people to each other and to a sense of place, as well as getting some work done on his project, Bob recently held a rock workshop with renowned stone mason Charles McRaven, who claims he’s only famous because he has “outlived his competitors.” Bob was struck by how this one week workshop was peppered with moments of connectivity and musical spontaneity. (Anyone interested in attending another masonry workshop next year can contact Bob Petty at 777-0780.)
Efram Graber says there are many old barns with salvageable hardwoods that are falling into disrepair and should be recovered rather than burned or bulldozed. Interested parties can contact him at (812) 486-6012.
To see pictures of the projects Birch Creek is doing, check out their website:www.birchcreekbuilders.com
Finally, anyone who wants to attend a green building workshop on October 9th and 10th,2010, can contact Gretchen at 207-3738. Techniques to be covered will include earthship building (rammed earth tires and pop cans), concrete block, stone masonry, can and crete, bottle and crete, and cob application. Instructors include David Bassler, Leo Staat, and Peggy Steffes. Camping is available, music is inevitable, and space is limited to forty participants. A cost of $100.00 includes the two-day workshop and lunch both days. Proceeds will be donated to Sustainable Living Systems.
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HISTORY: The Vanishing Glaciers of a National Park
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| By Wm. W. Whitfield |
As the debate over global warming heats up, one thing is certain; the world’s glaciers seem to be receding at a record pace. All around the world 2010 has been the hottest year on record, and since we first started keeping track of global temperatures, the first decade of the new millennium has been the warmest ten-year period ever recorded. A full century has now passed since Glacier National Park was first established, and from all indications the relatively small number of glaciers that still occupy this incredibly scenic region of western Montana will all disappear within the next couple of decades. You certainly might imagine that when the park was first established nobody could have possibly conceived of the idea of global warming, but in fact, a full half-century earlier, a distinguished British physicist named John Tyndall had actually predicted that a global greenhouse effect might eventually be instigated through the burning of fossil fuels!
Tyndall was born in Ireland in 1820 and received his early education in local schools. After a stint as a railway engineer and a teacher, he became a member of the British Royal Society and held a professorship of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution, were he eventually rose to the position of superintendent. He earned his doctorate in Germany, and for many years spent almost all of his free time studying the huge glaciers of the Swiss Alps. Some of his more popular publications were ‘The Glaciers of the Alps’ and ‘Mountaineering in 1869’. Although his other published works were of a highly scientific nature, they were all written in a common-sense style that made them appealing to a much wider audience. Tyndall’s books displayed a remarkable clearness of style, as well as an accuracy of scientific thought. His research on the characteristics of radiant heat are probably his greatest contribution to science, though a fair amount of his fame was attained from his practical approach to the subject, and his adept skills as a lecturer.
One of Tyndall’s companions during his many excursions to the Swiss Alps was Thomas Henry Huxley, the grandfather of famed science fiction writer Aldous Huxley. Thomas Huxley wrote the controversial book on evolution entitled ‘Mans Place In Nature,’ which was the first serious investigation into man’s uncanny resemblance to apes. The comparison is one that has been continually, and falsely, attributed to Charles Darwin, although Huxley certainly supported Darwin’s views. Other like-minded scientists of the time included noted evolutionists such as Herbert Spencer and Alfred Russell Wallace. All of these men were free-thinkers who were intensely involved in their various fields of scientific research, and each of them presented a fresh new view of the physical world in an uncompromising and factual manner.
In 1872, Tyndall visited the United States on a lecturing tour where he pointed out the fact that burning coal, oil and gas would release large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Tyndall believed that an increase of carbon dioxide would raise the overall temperature of the earth through a greenhouse effect. Needless to say, his new theory was considered controversial at the time. However, in 1956, a controlled experiment conducted at Johns Hopkins University appeared to prove that Tyndall’s theories on greenhouse gasses were actually quite correct. The Year 1957 was known as the International Geophysical Year, and scientists from all around the world worked together to share their knowledge about the physical world. Nearly 10,000 researchers gathered on 60 experimental bases located across Antarctica to study such things as gravity, magnetism, layers of snow and ice, wind, atmospheric pressure, and temperatures. This survey was conducted worldwide and included the study of glaciers as well as ocean currents. On Antarctica, scientists also studied the ice sheet, and tried to calculate how fast it was moving towards the sea.
It has been estimated that almost 90% of the world’s fresh water is locked up in the ice of Antarctica. But Antarctica hasn’t always been the frozen land we imagine it to be. In fact the icy continent was apparently quite warm and green in the past. Petrified wood and fossils of leaves from redwood, beech and pine trees have been found there, as well as huge deposits of coal. Geologists have estimated that the Ice Age came to Antarctica sometime between 11 and 14 million years ago, then, roughly a hundred thousand years ago, the rest of the earth suddenly slipped into a similar pattern. Some scientists believe that huge amounts of volcanic dust or even debris from a large asteroid colliding with the earth may have blocked out the sun’s rays, causing the world to cool off dramatically.
At any rate, the average temperature fell suddenly, and much of what is now North America was soon covered with ice up to a mile thick. Only the very tops of the mountains in the Northern Rockies would have been visible above the icecap. Coastlines around the world extended out beyond their current borders to a depth of between two or three hundred feet below sea level, and nearly a third of the world’s existing landmasses were covered in vast sheets of ice. Giant ice fields and glaciers slowly ground away at the mountains during the height of the Ice Age, gradually carving out the distinctive features of the extreme mountains and valleys we now find throughout Glacier National Park. The mountains had been formed long before the glaciation began, when two huge tectonic plates collided eons ago, forcing an ancient seabed to raise up high above its former elevation at sea level. Then, some time about 11,000 years ago the earth suddenly began to warm up. A few thousand years later the region that makes up Glacier National Park became extremely dry and warm, and it’s possible that there may have been no real glaciers remaining at the park at the time. The glaciers currently found there are actually only small remnants of a mini-ice-age that took place around 4,000 years ago.
More recently a blue-green algae fossil deposit was discovered along a road-cut at a high elevation near Logan Pass. These sea-dwelling algae are believed to have been the most abundant and advanced organisms living on earth about a billion years ago, when the world was entirely covered with water. The simple life forms, known in their fossilized state as stromatolites, weathered the harsh conditions on earth by turning carbon dioxide, which originally made up most of the planet’s atmosphere, into oxygen. As a result, this primeval ooze eventually provided the conditions that gave all other air-breathing life-forms the chance to slowly develop and evolve. During photosynthesis the algae create a crusty layer of calcium carbonate, and these continuous deposits are what make up the stromatolites in Glacier National Park, which are not true fossils at all, but are merely a metabolic byproduct of the blue-green algae’s life cycle.
Living stromatolites still exist in a few places on earth today, most notably in a secluded bay in western Australia, where conditions continue to mimic the Precambrian seas of old. Wouldn’t it be ironic if after a billion years of evolving life on earth, the constant burning of fossil fuels by humans, presumably the most highly evolved creature to ever inhabit the planet, eventually replaced the earth’s life-sustaining supply of oxygen with carbon dioxide once again? Our own stubborn reliance on cheap gas and coal could actually lead to the flooding of the planet from melting ice caps and vanishing glaciers, and in some nightmarish succession of catastrophic events, I suppose there’s also a slight chance that nothing other than blue-green algae might be left in the end to represent life on Earth. Somehow I doubt that even the fertile mind of Aldous Huxley, with his haunting vision of A Brave New World, could have ever seen that one coming!
When the region that now encompasses Glacier National Park was explored by Euro-Americans in the 1850’s, it was estimated that there were upwards of 150 active glaciers in the area. Just a mere century later the count had dropped considerably, to about 50 glaciers, and today the number is less than half that! In fact, just sixty years ago the glaciers were expected to fully disappear within the next thousand years, if weather patterns continued to follow their supposed course. Unfortunately, time seems to be running out more quickly for these icy remnants of the past, but perhaps there is still hope yet. In a worldwide effort to understand global warming, we may be nearing a turning point, and although opinions continue to differ as to the cause of radical climate change, modern technologies and advances in renewable energy sources such as wind and solar have given us a chance to drastically alter our human behavior. If we can do something now to reduce the affect of global warming, then by all means, let’s do it. After all, there’s really nothing much to lose, other than the shining vision of the very glaciers that for a full century have furnished a spectacular theme for Montana’s premier National Park.
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HEALTH: Pregnancy hormone HCG Helps the Overweight Conquer Faulty Metabolism
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| By Lori Grannis |
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Despite what we may learn in a classroom, from a book, or as part of wisdom gleaned from expert advice, life’s answers aren’t always as clear cut as they ought to be. And despite life’s many tried-and-true equations - it’s very possible that two-plus-two won’t always equal four.
When I saw the ad for “The Ten Percent Solution” - a medical weight loss diet offered by Missoula’s River City Family Health that features the use of hCG - I was immediately confused.
Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hCG) is the hormone produced by a developing embryo and placenta once a woman becomes pregnant. Its concentration is what flags detection and a positive test result - whether you’re expecting to expect, or not expecting to expect. It’s also what helps sustain that pregnancy as it progresses.
Fertility clinics even prescribe hCG to increase the chance a woman will conceive.
Men also produce hCG. It’s what controls testosterone production, and what doctors prescribe to fend off age-related testosterone ebbs in men, and to encourage more production.
But I wondered how in the world hCG had found its way into diet circles. Clearly the elephant in the room, fat-loss among the mommy-to-be set would seem counter-intuitive. How in the world might one shed pounds if body chemistry mimicked that life stage?
My own understanding of hCG came from years spent as a sports writer in the area of bodybuilding and fitness. Commonly, upon completion of an anabolic steroid cycle, hCG injections are a part of regular protocol that restores a man’s own natural testosterone production, and minimizes the nasty side effects of returning to normal.
Absent that boost, issues such as depression, muscle loss and body fat are capable of toppling even the mightiest of men.
Before calling this local clinic that offers this diet program, I did some preliminary research. It turns out the hCG diet protocol has been around for decades. Given my 16 years writing in the field of human performance and nutrition, the fact that I had not ever heard of it, was baffling.
Developed by Dr. Albert T. W. Simeon in 1954, the diet protocol came about on the heels of a series of experiments that lead to the discovery of a profound and consistent weight loss in patients who used hCG in conjunction with a very low-calorie diet.
The 500-calorie-a-day diet is accompanied by daily injections of hCG throughout either a three- or six-week cycle, depending upon the amount of weight loss desired or needed.
In the course of his studies, Simeon discovered something even more curious than profound weight losses: Patients who lost the weight, generally reported keeping it off effortlessly. He surmised that the actions of hCG were responsible also for resetting a person’s hypothalamus gland - the director of a healthy metabolism.
Once public, this protocol achieved popularity, was used clinically for a period of years, then died out as other diets and fads emerged and took its place.
In 2007, the hCG protocol was resurrected in a book by author Kevin Trudeau, called The Weight Loss Cure ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About. Known more for his television huckstering of coral calcium, and despite a stint of jail-time served for having once posed as a medical doctor, the book was an instant bestseller in the weight loss category.
Mostly a coattail ride on Simeon’s earlier work, Trudeau’s book rehashed the edicts established by a legitimate physician, while adding popular key marketing buzz words like “organic” to the mix.
When I called River City Family Health to assess how the hCG protocol was being receieved locally, I was guardedly skeptical, though curious. Widespread in large urban areas, the clinic is just one of a small handful of local places quietly offering a medical chaperone through this controversial weight loss protocol.
Family nurse practitioner Deni Llovet opened River City Family Health two years ago after the sudden passing of Birth Center founder Dr. Lynn Montgomery caused staff to disperse.
Always fascinated by work in the field of endocrinology, Llovet had long counseled patients requiring hormone replacement, and other similar therapies. So when a patient approached her a year ago, with questions about the hCG diet, she remembers having the same reaction most in the medical field do: “I told her she was crazy,” laughs Llovet.
But curiosity also got the best of her, she did her homework, researched the protocol, then eventually tried it out on herself.
“We formed a pilot group. I lost 15 pounds in 18 days, and I lost it from the areas that were in the most need,” she says. Fat melted most noticeably from the midsection, underarms and back, she says, and was only eclipsed by the number of inches that followed.
“Sometimes the number of inches lost is more profound than the weight loss, but people can expect to lose anywhere from 15 to 20 pounds on the scale in 21 days, and more in six weeks,” Llovet says.
River City Family Health began offering the four-phase program to clients last fall at a cost of $400 for a first round of hCG - including either a three or six week cycle of shots, nutritional and how-to guidelines, weekly support counseling, and measurement tracking - and $200 for repeat cycles.
In Phase One of the hCG diet, patients consult with Llovet, and are assessed - via blood work and health screen - to determine suitability as a candidate in the rigorous program. Depending upon health, amount of body fat and lifestyle factors, some are encouraged to endure a pre-program cleanse to rid the body of toxins before beginning.
In Phase Two, patients load with dietary fat for two days, then begin injections and the recommended ‘very low-calorie diet’ (VLCD), for a period of 21 to 42 days. Protein is limited to 7 ounces daily, and fat, sugar and starch is restricted, but fruits, vegetables and fiber are consumed alongside protein, and a minimum of 64 ounces of water daily.
Phase Three, a modified Atkins’ diet phase that slowly adds variety and calories back into the diet, allows fruit, and restricts starch and sugar, is followed by a true maintenance Phase Four. Seen as “rest of your life eating,” Phase Four allows dieters to witness a newly repaired metabolism in action.
Like most of the clients who come to River City Family Health in search of a magic cure, Delia V. says she struggled with weight most of her life. By the birth of her second child, she began to pack serious pounds and had tried just about every diet known to man.
Frustrated, and puzzled at what foods would deliver her from the gateway of obesity, she joined the program last fall and began the rigors of diet-and-injection. In 21 days, she lost 20 pounds and 19 inches overall. She recently completed a second course, and lost approximately the same.
“I was a size 20 to start, and I’m now just about five pounds shy of a size 14,” says Delia, now in Phase Four maintenance.
“But what’s more profound for me, is that I am more aware of the foods that cause me problems - like wheat and sugar - and I actively avoid them. I also now routinely reach for foods that are healthy by choice, and so does my family,” she says.
Forgoing chip and candy aisles, Delia says her family began to change watching the results of her efforts emerge. They now go to the store on regular produce-buying expeditions, she says - a change that is attributable to an ongoing quest to reach a healthier weight.
Karen S. just completed a 21-day course of hCG and lost 22 pounds. At 5-foot-8, the surgical nurse says she didn’t need a big weight fix coming in, but had crept up 20 pounds over her ideal, and thwarted her metabolism, simply by skipping meals.
“I’d get so busy throughout the day, I’d end up not eating for hours, or grabbing at things like cheese-toasted crackers - really unhealthy stuff,” she says. “Now I’m just so much more conscious about eating better, and more frequently.”
That alone has made the program worth doing, she says.
River City Family Health program facilitator Linsey Wiesemann - a registered nurse - says that a new-found love of healthy foods, and a consciousness about meals, portions, and water intake, are not uncommon among those who complete the program.
“That shift is essential for long-term change, despite the fact that hCG may also be super-reparative to metabolism and fulfill the promise of incredible weight loss,” she says.
But the watching the weight come off is the easy part, she says. The biggest challenge Wiesemann faces each week is helping patients debunk long-held myths and misnomers about diet, nutrition and metabolism.
Sitting in on weekly support groups, I was privy to many of the nonsensical myths passed back and forth between dieters like baseball cards in a tree fort:
A woman of 53 says her time in Weight Watchers taught her that if her urine had a high concentration of color, that color was in direct proportion to the number of calories she was excreting at that moment.
“I know she didn’t hear that at Weight Watchers, but I have to gently correct, without invalidating someone, or making them feel wrong,” says Wiesemann.
Sharing common experiences is part of what gives them the ability to continue going forward, she says.
Wiesemann also says that in the course of seeing patients weekly - while dispensing shots, leading support groups, or taking measurements to chart progress - she has time alone to ask patients how they are really doing. It’s there, she says, that they often admit major or minor diet infractions that correlate to plateaus, and where they can ask questions, clarify, or share things they might not share group-wide.
Critics of the program are still many, despite broad-sweeping successes by those who follow the plan correctly. Nutritionists say that a 500-calorie-a-day diet is unhealthy and scandalous - that it further injures the metabolism. Fitness experts say that anyone can lose that amount of weight on a low-calorie regimen, and the fact that you cannot run, or do vigorous exercise during the regimen, make it an unhealthy choice.
Women in groups at River City Family Health would beg to differ, considering that, for many, this is the first time they’ve been able to achieve and sustain results.
Carolyn N. says the fatter she got, the less she could eat. “It may have taken some getting to a certain point in my weight gain, but people who think I hide out in a closet somewhere stuffing my face don’t know what they’re talking about. It wasn’t long before, the fatter I got, the less food I could eat and even maintain without gaining,” she says. “The after-effects of this diet - whatever repairing it’s done - is something I have never experienced before, and I’m one of those who has tried just about everything in 30 years.”
Llovet says she believes the research is fairly straightforward and backs up everything that manifests for patients in fat loss.
“If a pregnant woman were forced into a situation of starvation, where she had little to no caloric intake, hCG would sustain that pregnancy by pulling from and mobilizing fat stores in the areas with the greatest reserve,” she says of the body’s abnormal fat, most prevalent in the midsection.
“Not only that, but hCG maintains normal blood sugar levels to sustain the pregnancy - which is why hCG dieters eating that very low-calorie diet don’t feel particularly hungry, or weak, and often report feeling great.” Circulating fat, mobilized and released, convinces the body it’s got plenty of calories, she says.
Despite any diet sounding too good to be true, it’s hard to ignore the kind of success rates people experience with this diet. YouTube searches produce thousands of videos - all homemade - that offer full-frontal testimonials of real people, heralding unbelievable weight loss.
It’s not unusual to see people who, over the course of a nine month period and several cycles, have shed 100 pounds, and continue to keep the weight off.
And despite seemingly extreme methods and downright counter-intuitive protocol, stunning results have spurred nationwide popularity.
When asked of the risks hCG may pose to dieters, Llovet says that side effects are uncommon. Temporary afflictions such a mild headache and irritability can characterize rare moments during the brief cycle’s duration. An increased chance of pregnancy among women who are fertile, and a slight possibility of ovarian hyper-stimulation, which requires medical attention, are also possible, but not probable, she says.
“That’s why we do thorough health assessments with people before they are approved for the program - aside from being overweight, they have to be generally healthy going in,” she says.
Because hCG mimics pregnancy, and pregnancy has been associated with a lower risk of breast cancer, the fact that hCG mimics that state and is present in the body of a dieter, may mean the hormone might protect women against breast cancer - though no empirical evidence exists.
“The real question - the better question - people should ask is, ‘How risky is obesity?’”
Lori Grannis may be reached at 360-8788 or llgrannis@gmail.com (Editor’s Note: As part of research for this article, author Lori Grannis took part in the 21-day hCG diet protocol and lost a total of 21.4 pounds).
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| REAL ESTATE: Montana property sales data may be disclosed to taxpayers
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| By Darwin Ernst |
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I was recently asked to discuss the public disclosure of real estate sales data in Helena before the Interim Department of Transportation and Revenue Committee and was surprised to hear that the committee members moved to approve a recommendation to the full committee to have staff begin drafting legislation on “disclosure” of real estate sales data.
The Montana Department of Revenue is scheduled to introduce legislation that, if passed into law, will allow taxpayers access to real estate sales data, which is commonly referred to as “disclosure”. Although this legislation is still being drafted by staff, it is a topic that deserves the attention of all Montana taxpayers and the real estate professionals throughout Montana, charged with representing buyers and sellers of real estate and providing valuations for lenders.
The Assessors within the Montana Department of Revenue were recently inundated with phone calls from irate taxpayers asking why their property tax went up during the last assessment cycle while their property values have gone down .
A Montana assessor’s first response is typically; “I’m sorry. We cannot legally share our comparable sales data with you (the home owner/tax payer)… Montana is a “non-disclosure” state. You first need to fill out an official tax appeal and sign this confidentiality agreement. We will then provide you with raw data of comparable property sales we used in assessing your property, but you cannot legally share this data with anyone else.”
The taxpayer is left to fill out a stack of paperwork and provided raw sales data that supposedly cannot be taken to a professional real estate appraiser for further analysis during the tax appeal process, because the taxpayer had to sign a non-disclosure form to receive the data from the government. Furthermore, Montana home owners are legally required to submit a realty transfer certificate, which is the source of the comparable sales data.
The disgruntled taxpayer is left speechless… he/she is looking at the real estate sales data he/she has paid the government to collect, yet it takes a signed confidentiality agreement to even look at the data and it may not be shared with others.
It must also be mentioned that the Montana assessors are not required to meet the same criteria required for state-licensed real estate appraisers and they are mandated to meet a separate standard of developing and reporting their mass appraisals for taxation. An assessor is tasked with creating models from verified comparable sales that can be applied to a specific property to determine a taxable value for that property. This often requires bringing the higher valued properties down and the lower valued homes up to create an “average” taxable value. The assessor’s verified comparable sales are derived from realty transfer certificates (RTC), which are legally required to be completed by property owners for every real estate transaction in Montana. However, agricultural land is exempt from filing the RTC in Montana, because the value of agricultural land is based on its production and not its parcel size.
While details of real estate transactions are available for public access throughout most of the United States, some states (or counties within states) consider the sale price of real estate transactions to be private and confidential information. Montana state law allows home owners the right to sell their home to a buyer without disclosing the sale price to the public. There are 36 “disclosure” states, where State law requires every real estate sale transaction to be available to the public, usually through the State’s assessor office. Typically, the disclosed sales data in Montana are only maintained by Realtors® through their various local multiple listing service (MLS). Therefore, the disclosed real estate sales are only available to those individual members of the Realtor® profession, which include a majority of the licensed Montana real estate sales agents and appraisers.
Alaska, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming are still “non-disclosure” states.
Because Montana law does not currently require public disclosure, real estate agents (at the request of their client) are not required to disclose the sale price through the (MLS) database. This disclosed data is extremely valuable to the real estate professionals in Montana because this limited pool of disclosed sales data is utilized by Realtors® in determining list prices and by state-licensed real estate appraiser’s in developing opinions of market value. See the April 2009 edition, page 18, of the Clark Fork Journal (available on-line) for the definition of “market value” and the services available from these two separately licensed professions.
In addition to these non-disclosed MLS sales, there are an unknown number of non-disclosed real estate transactions resulting from properties sold by private owners. These transactions are commonly referred to as “FSBO’s”, or properties “For Sale By Owner”. This “non-disclosed” sales data may provide valuable added information to the real estate professionals trying to complete an analysis of the market with very limited disclosed sales data. In some instances, the valuable non-disclosed information becomes available to the real estate professionals through alternative routes other than through the multiple listing services. Sales information obtained through these potentially non-reliable sources can easily be misrepresented by those market participants who do not want the public to know the actual sales amount, or unintentionally misrepresented by those who are not professionally trained to identify sales specifics that affect the actual purchase price, such as financial concessions, personal property, and/or other purchase incentives.
It should also be pointed out that FSBO’s rarely indicate a sale that meets the definition of “market value” because of the limited market exposure and the limited number of market participants who are truly knowledgeable about the current market conditions. Therefore, it is imperative for all real estate professionals to verify the specifics of the real estate transaction from at least two separate reliable sources if they are to use a “non-disclosed” sale in a market analysis.
Ultimately, it is the responsibility of real estate professionals to set sale prices and provide opinions of market value for those individuals trying to refinance, buy, or sell property in Montana. Because of the current law, which limits disclosed sales data available to data disclosed within the local multiple listing services for these analyses, this can often become a very difficult and daunting task. Many lenders require appraisers to use comparable sales with less than 25% gross adjustments, sales within the past year (preferable within the past six months), and proximity within five miles for rural properties.
If there is insufficient disclosed real estate sales data available for Montana appraisers to meet a mortgage lender’s appraisal requirements, a Montana property owner may not be eligible for a loan, even if they have good credit and are a qualified buyer.
Members of the Montana Legislature will soon be asked to vote on proposed “disclosure” legislation originating within the Montana Department of Revenue. It is your chance, as a Montana taxpayer, and property owner, to let your legislators know how you feel. Do you support “disclosure” of real estate sales data or is their some benefit to maintaining the current non-disclosure law?
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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