Issue 10
SING-A-LONG & CIDER - December 24th
Our Christmas Gathering will be December 24th at Pub Station instead of the usual Sunday Gathering on December 23rd.
The Sing-a-long is the one time each year when the entire CMYK Community gathers together for a raucous good time. Join us at 4:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve for the annual CMYK Sing-a-long & Cider at Pub Station.
We'll have hot cider to share, and Sean Lynch will be selling adult beverages from the Pub Station bar. Kid care will be provided for those kids who don't want to hang with the adults. We hope to see you there for great music, great people and a great start to Christmas.
“Sharing our stories” is one of the most popular things to do at CMYK. Our 'stories' series this past summer was one of our most popular, and we have a regular rhythm of sharing stories around our practice of 'Be Present', 'Be Honest', 'Be Open', 'Be Love(d).' CMYK Magazine aims to share our stories with a wider audience, with hopes of creating points of connection and encouraging others to share their stories. So welcome to a new segment where we get to know different people in our CMYK Community through a series of questions.
RICK WILLIAMS
Why Billings? My dad was stationed here in 1967 after coming back from Thailand with the 71st Fighter Interceptor Squadron. He was involved in Air/Sea Rescue and we lived in nine different countries around the world. My favorite was high school in Okinawa. I was able to do diving and snorkeling — and experience a lot of different restaurants. I started selling beer in the base commissary at the age of 16. They figured it was easier to keep me working than figuring out what trouble I'd get into next.
I bought my house in central Billings in 1968. My aunt died and left me $7,000. I used most of that as the down payment on the house, and I still live there today.
Who shares your home? That's a BIG question. I'm single but let people live in my house with me.
What do you do? I've worked as a Stevedore - Rough Neck - Mechanic - Welder - Truck Driver - Van Driver.
What do you love about the CMYK Community? I love that nobody is telling me how to vote!! And how welcoming you are to everyone. My usual crowds are hot rodders and AA. So I enjoy being around people with different interests at CMYK. And I like that I can go to church at night. I think about the talk when I go to bed that night. If I went to church in the morning, I'd get distracted by all the daily activities and wouldn't think about it.
What can the CMYK Community do for you? Just be there.
What keeps you awake at night? Am I doing right? Since I stopped drinking seven years ago, I've started thinking about what I do in life, and it kind of spooks me. Am I doing right? Am I helping or hurting the people I'm interacting with?
What are you passionate about? Cooking and I want to travel. From a food perspective, I'll try any kind of food. Nothing can be as bad as McDonalds. I learned a Peach Cobbler recipe in Boy Scouts that's made from canned peaches, butter, brown sugar and a cake mix. You pack it in a cast iron dutch oven perched on hot coals. The topping is made out of the cake mix and peach juice, but I discovered that if you mix the cake mix with beer, the topping rises so much it fills the whole top of the dutch oven. It's pretty good, but since I don't drink beer anymore I haven't made it in a long time.
I'd love to travel internationally and would especially like to go back to Okinawa and Thailand. But it's hard to spend that much time in a plane. So right now I'm interested in the American Southwest. I've been following this travel blog called Wonderhussy Adventures, and there's a lot of cool places down there I'd like to see. [Caution - Not surprisingly, Wonderhussy has some adult themes.]
What are you loving? Being able to walk without pain. I had both knees replaced last year and it's changed my life.
What are you interested in (or expert in) that most people haven’t heard of? Wood carving and making flowers out of steel.
What do you wish you knew more about? Giving to others. I'd like to be better at relating to others and sharing who I am.
What do you consider to be your best find? Some peace of mind. Since I quit drinking, I've got a lot more peace of mind. I drank because I was bored. Now that I've stopped, I've started doing my artwork again. I don't focus on one thing — I like to try all kinds of stuff, from hand-carved wooden spoons to steel roses and steel furniture. Right now, I'm working on hand-carved snowmen. I've learned boredom is not a good thing for me. Growing up, when I got bored, I got in trouble.
WILDLIFE WELDER | by Clark Hodges
When Shane Hyem, 27, was attending West High School, he worked on the grounds crew at Par 3 golf course. To make repairs, his boss used a welder and plasma cutter, a process that captured Shane’s curiosity. Years later, he started working for MAC LTT as an air and electrical technician, where he was taught how to weld aluminum for himself. It was love at first spark.
Shane went to Harbor Freight and bought a welder for the low, low price of $37. With his welder, he went on to make his first project — a foldable hammock frame whose arms bent slowly until the hammock rested on the ground.
Through the years, Shane honed his craft and accumulated more tools. He combined welding with his passion for the outdoors to create his masterpiece. “My favorite project so far was a steel fish that I made for a very good friend of mine for a Christmas gift. I cut, welded, hydroformed, polished and heat-colored the steel. I learned so much making it. I think I put 30 hours into that thing”.
Shane is now in the process of buying a house, and has added 3D printing to his creative roster. He is still working at MAC LTT, where he is able to sate his passion for welding until he has a dedicated space in his house to bring more creations to life.
John Binder - Be Present, Be Love(d) | by Kate Blakeslee
Meet John Binder. John and his family are a part of our community, and he is really shaking things up in the medical community here in Billings. John is a pediatric neurologist and describes this field as "the most rewarding, interesting, and fun specialty." He calls the brain the "most interesting and least understood part of the body." Sounds easy, right? As a neurologist, John works to treat people (in his case kids) with brain and nerve problems. He is living and breathing our mission to Be Present and to Be the Embodiment of Love as he practices what he calls a "perfect intersection between great families and a fascinating field." He's a caring guy AND a scientist.
Spinal Muscular Atrophy is a rare neurologic condition affecting kids. It causes a decline in motor skills that often results in death. It was not until December 2016 that there was an FDA-approved medication to treat SMA. Diseases like SMA that don’t have treatments are one of the most difficult part of John’s job. But with a new drug called Spinraza, SMA patients have promising treatment that is completely changing the course of this devastating disease. However, treatment is extremely expensive at $100,000 per treatment, and it is difficult to administer. The medication must be injected directly into the cerebrospinal fluid (think spinal tap). These obstacles require many people working together to overcome the barriers.
John rallied the troops at Billings Clinic. Ten months later, he and his team had established a way to provide this treatment in Billings to kids with SMA. This is amazing as oftentimes kids and their families have to travel to places like Denver and Seattle to obtain this type of specialty care. Getting the medical care they need in their own community lifts a huge burden off his patients. What an amazing benefit to the city of Billings.
John describes some of his best days at work by talking about improving quality of life for seizure patients and migraine suffers. However, delivering bad news to patients and families does not make for a terrible day. Those circumstances are what John calls a privilege and he is practicing the art of being present and open, shouldering heavy burdens and carrying loads with his patients.
We are so lucky to have Dr. John in our city, caring for kids. But we are also so lucky to have John and his wife Kelli in our community, teaching us how to Be the Embodiment of Love and how to do hard things in life, especially when taking care of people is part of the equation.
A NEW HOLIDAY TRADITION | by Daron Faught
Sometimes holiday traditions are caused by happy accidents. For example, the 1946 film "It's A Wonderful Life" wasn't originally a Christmas classic. In fact, it wasn't seen as a classic of any kind. It bombed at the box office during its original release. This might be why the copyright holders of the movie forgot to renew their copyright some time during the 1970s. This meant it fell into the public domain and any two-bit TV station could broadcast the picture without paying any sort of syndication fee to the copyright holders. Add the fact that cable TV grew by several hundreds of channels, and a classic would soon be born.
The same thing happened to an episode of the long-running PBS music series "Austin City Limits." The eclectic, gravelly voiced folk musician, Tom Waits, taped an episode on December 5, 1978. The concert contained everything a fan could want from him and more. The stage props were something you would definitely not see from a Willie Nelson performance, including old gas pumps and a functional streetlight with a little bit of rain during the show causing Waits to break out his umbrella.
One of his more popular fan favorites was a song called "Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis." Just to mix things up a bit, Waits sang the first verse to "Silent Night" before launching into the tune. The concert was first broadcast sometime in 1979 but soon enough, viewers started to call their local PBS affiliate around December to ask if that specific episode could be run again during the holidays. Remember; this was before home recording had reached the masses. Even though PBS would eventually release some ASL episodes on home video, this one remains in the vault and only shows up once a year.
The PBS Website says it will be broadcast this year on Saturday, December 22nd. It doesn't say what time it will be shown, but usually this episode is scheduled after 9 p.m. on most Saturdays. So if you're in the mood for something a little different to view, this is what I would call "Must-See TV." Go ahead and give it a shot. A guy who coined the famous phrase, "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy" can't be all that bad, right?