Picnic Music: Tim Torgerson

Wednesday at the noon time Picnic in the Park concert the performer was Tim Torgerson.

Tim is singer/songwriter/guitarist (Acoustic & Electric). His repertoire consists of original songs and instrumentals and twisted arrangements of classic and current cover songs. He performed solo except for a few songs in his second set where he was accompanied by an electric guitarist.

He was pretty good. He was low key and suited for a noon time concert or a coffeehouse or intimate setting.

The audience was the smallest crowd I seen all year at one of the Picnic in the Park concerts. The concert had started at 11:30 am and I noticed later more people arrived, though the crowd was still small.

The sound, like during last night's concert, was loud. Which was odd as he was an acoustic guitarist. Being a small crowd I sat relatively close. It was also in the shade. Either I got used to the sound's loudness else the sound person dialed it down later. The sound person appeared to be discretely breastfeeding a baby while she ran the sound board.

I noticed that a probably prematurely gray haired athletic looking man who always attended the concerts night and noon and who sits near the front on folding seat cushions with what appears to be his early teenage daughter, today attended the concert with a thin, long haired, woman a little younger than he. No daughter this time. Daughter gone back to her mother after a summer here, and now the girlfriend is back in the picture? I never noticed all three together before. They are a couple as she sat close to him and placed her hand on his inner thigh above his knee. Oohhh. Good for them as I'm not going to get into a huff like the "no-shirt note lady" Sandy.

At the concert I met one of Colleen's friends. Friends of this woman were sitting on the other end of the bench from me so she sat between us. We chatted about her real estate prospects. She talked about attending a recent sales pitch for local properties being developed where I believe the parcels start around $250,000. She seemed pleased the developer is trying to limit the impact on the land and that a conservation group gave the developers a high rating. She seemed ambivalent about the acreages' price when she made some sort of comment about the number of poor people in the world.

The conversation was going well until I wondered if all this new wealth moving into the Flathead Valley is changing things, and whether the Valley is trending towards being the rich and the blue color working class people, and if this divide may cause resentments in the future. I asked her opinion explaining I wasn't a longtime resident in the Valley and I wondered if she had been and had noticed a change. She sharply told me she was a native Montanan.

"Yes", I said, "but how long have you lived in the Valley."

Apparently her family moved here many years ago. Again I asked since she was a longtime resident had she noticed a change as I had spoken to people in the construction trades and cleaning trades, and for the Iron Horse subdivision (of the rich), these people complained how they were treated by the residents.

She turned and looked at me coldly and said, "What's your point?!"

That caught me off guard. I said I didn't have a point.

She again coldly repeated some question about me having a point.

I then repeated that I had no point but I was wondering if there was a change as more wealth has come into the Valley and whether that is now breeding resentment, or could breed resentment if rich people are overt in their displays of wealth.

I got a terse statement that the middle class is disappearing and that's the way it is. She asked if I thought all rich people were bad people and I assured her that I didn't believe that nor did I insinuate that. She told me that rich people are good people and many donate lots of money to good causes. Her parents were well off but she had been a teacher and taught in minority classrooms where more than 50% of the students were poor Native Americans. I was thinking to myself, "Umm.. what does that got to do with my original question?", but I didn't say anything. She got very upset as apparently I hit a nerve I didn't know existed and that was so raw. I had been trying to get a perspective from a long time Valley resident who I thought as a former teacher and now apparent real estate investor had moved in both working class and upper class circles.

I apologized saying I wasn't criticizing anyone but I was trying to get perspective and hear opinions from all sides. She didn't say anything but then got up, and taking her lawn chair that she had placed behind the bench, opened it up and moved to sit on the other side of her friends and away from me.

Okay.... I think she was rude. If she didn't want to discuss this subject she could have said that she didn't know, or had no opinion, or could have mentioned that she wanted to listen to the music. That would have ended the conversation on an amiable note.

I don't know. It appears people are touchy about most everything. In general one doesn't seem to be able to have an intelligent conversation on a number of subjects without someone getting upset over something.

Things aren't going well lately: today's result - inadvertently alienate one of Colleen's friends.