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	<title>Eric HeidleEric Heidle | Eric Heidle</title>
	<link>http://ericheidle.drewblood.com</link>
	<description>Life in Big Sky Country</description>
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		<title>Vacationing with the Palins</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve enjoyed following Sarah Palin&#8217;s family vacation road trip this spring. More than that, it prompted a deep pang of nostalgia. Just reading about the Palin family&#8217;s adventures takes me back to those great summers as a kid when Dad&#8217;s political action committee would rent us a tour bus and wrap it with with oversized graphics of the Constitution and clever slogans like &#8220;Heidles for Freedom &#8217;84&#8243; and &#8220;Disneyland, Limited Government, or Bust.&#8221; We could hardly wait to roll through each new key primary state, waving to a gaggle of reporters eager to ask my brother and I what it was like to stand on the rim of the Grand Canyon or have pizza with a failed real estate tycoon in Times Square. Were we ever that young? If you&#8217;re a friend of the family then you know Mom took early retirement, just like Sarah, to spend more time focusing on the important things in life—visiting family, pursuing her love of photography, honing her talking points in a calculated bid to court the evangelical wing of the party. I envy her the freedom. And speaking of photos, she&#8217;s been scanning some shots of those great old vacations and posting them [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ericheidle.drewblood.com/?p=339</link>
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		<title>Final Jeopardy!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A life-long trivia geek takes his shot at the big leagues.]]></description>
		<link>http://ericheidle.drewblood.com/?p=260</link>
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		<title>Great Falls. Great Town.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Created for the Great Falls Convention and Visitors Bureau, this series of three print ads highlighted the community’s amenities and attractions by highlighting Great Falls’ unique brand of rustic refinement—communicating to visitors that they can enjoy the authentic West without sacrificing good food, great lodgings, and lots of fun.]]></description>
		<link>http://ericheidle.drewblood.com/?p=183</link>
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		<title>Guidance, Loyalty, Trust</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Produced for Montana-based investment firm DA Davidson, this campaign focused on Davidson’s conservative fiscal stance by using visual metaphors for reliability and trust.]]></description>
		<link>http://ericheidle.drewblood.com/?p=138</link>
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		<title>Supporting Those Who Support Us</title>
		<description><![CDATA[What's the Red Cross all about? You know they hold blood drives, but  that's only a small part of their mission. ]]></description>
		<link>http://ericheidle.drewblood.com/?p=97</link>
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		<title>Going, going&#8230;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[What&#8217;s left of the Conrad Bank building began yielding to the wrecking ball this morning. Most recently the home of B&#38;B Loan and Rental, the building was gutted two years ago by a fire that destroyed the interior but allowed the hideous Sixties-era facade to come down, revealing some beautiful architectural flourishes and a brief glimpse into an era of wonderful buildings now long gone. In my hometown of Helena, an unbelievable wealth of architectural jewels has been lost to earthquakes, fires (accidental and otherwise) and the early-70s whim of fashion with the Orwellian name of Urban Renewal. In Rome you can see arched colonnades built in the time of Christ. Ours have considerably shorter lifespans: The Conrad Building was too far gone; without a deep-pocketed benefactor interested in preserving it, there was simply no way to keep it standing. Which is a pity, because you couldn&#8217;t build it for money today. And who in his financially-right mind would want to, when it&#8217;s so much cheaper to drop a steel box on an empty lot and tart it up with fake brick and neon? Like a lot of things in Montana, these beauties are getting rarer all the time. It&#8217;s [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ericheidle.drewblood.com/?p=18</link>
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		<title>Blogging About the News, About&#8230;Blogging</title>
		<description><![CDATA[KRTV just did a piece about local bloggers and asked me to say a few words on the process, which is a bit like asking J.D. Salinger why he still insists on flooding the market with his books. But if you&#8217;re interested, here&#8217;s the piece on my blog, which you&#8217;re reading now. How meta can this get?]]></description>
		<link>http://ericheidle.drewblood.com/?p=14</link>
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		<title>D.C. Does It</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Metro station roof Just returned from a week-long vacation to visit the folks, who live in Virginia just south of Washington, D.C. It&#8217;s a great place to visit, especially since the territory is so different from Montana. Your sense of navigation gets messed up—roads go in all directions through endless housing tracts carved out of deciduous forest, and you never have any sense of where you are. The sort of &#8220;take a right at Eddie&#8217;s Corner&#8221; instructions we use out here have no meaning in the east. But it&#8217;s great to soak up the big-city atmosphere once in a while, riding the Metro and gawking at tall buildings. It&#8217;s fun, too, to recharge the cultural batteries. We hit the museums hard, catching the current Robert Rauschenberg exhibit at the National Gallery and saw the National Museum of the American Indian for the first time. Probably the high point for me was the new Air and Space Annex, which is interesting for everyone and an absolute toy store for aviation buffs: P-40 and Corsair, Air and Space Annex Everywhere you turn is a bit of aviation history: here&#8217;s the Concorde, there&#8217;s an SR-71, and oh, let&#8217;s throw in a space shuttle [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ericheidle.drewblood.com/?p=13</link>
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		<title>A three-mile ski uphill into the wind? Sign me up.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I left Saturday morning with friends for our annual winter cabin trip near White Sulphur Springs. For the last five years we&#8217;ve done a three-day weekend here, and depending on the amount of snow have had to ski in as far as two miles (except for the dry year we were able to drive all the way to the cabin door). This year, the first drifts stopped us at least three miles out, so we had no choice but to strap on the boards and start the uphill grunt. We should have known the trip was cursed before we even got there. Driving in two vehicles, we were set to meet up at the east end of Great Falls to convoy over King&#8217;s Hill. While we were waiting for the second car to arrive, a sheriff&#8217;s rig pulled across the entrance to the highway and blocked the road. The stretch between Great Falls and Belt had just been shut down due to high wind and drifting snow. We regrouped and decided to go the long way around, through Helena and Townsend. It added an hour to our trip, but we figured we&#8217;d still have plenty of time for our three-mile [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ericheidle.drewblood.com/?p=10</link>
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		<title>Dorks on Film, Redux</title>
		<description><![CDATA[KFBB aired its piece on Banik&#8217;s role on the Voyagers&#8217; name change Sunday night on the 10 o&#8217;clock news. I told them to shoot my best side, so they sort of winced and circled me with the camera a few times before dropping the tripod where it suited them. But they cut together a good piece from all the random information Dan, Pat, and I gave them. Here&#8217;s a lengthier explanation of our part in the process. Thanks to Zack and the crew at KFBB for making us look good, and keeping baseball on people&#8217;s minds during football season. Speaking of which, I watched the Giants upset the Pack on the frozen tundra at Lambeau last night. It was fun to watch the broadcasters whine about the cold. There should be a Constitutional amendment requiring the Super Bowl to be played in cold weather. I&#8217;m hoping it reaches -40 here before the current spell breaks.]]></description>
		<link>http://ericheidle.drewblood.com/?p=9</link>
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