What We Cannot Measure

This week Montana held its primary election, and this week we also mark the anniversary of Robert Kennedy’s own fateful primary victory, and his death.

Thank you, to the people of Montana House District 92, for entrusting me to represent you in the Montana Legislature. I’m grateful to Reggie Spaulding for her courage to step into the ring, and I look forward to working together moving forward. And I’m grateful to everyone who has been by my side, knocking doors, doing the ground game, doing the work.

Most of all: Thank you, Greg.

Greg would understand the Forest Service rangers in Seeley, who joke that they get paid in sunsets.

It’s a good joke. It’s also a little devastating, because it’s true, and because we keep making choices that suggest we don’t actually believe sunsets are worth much.

A data center proposed in Bonner. A gravel pit. A gold mine in the Blackfoot. The mill in Seeley Lake closing. The Boy Scout Bridge falling apart. School bonds failing across Montana, almost every one of them, Missoula being an exception. Schools begging for pennies while we debate how much can be extracted from the ground.

We keep asking: what will it bring in? What can we get out of it? How much is it worth?

Robert Kennedy gave a speech at the University of Kansas in March of 1968 that my husband Greg has read to our family at the dinner table. He’s been reading it for years. The part that stays with him is this: the Gross National Product counts weapons and jails and the destruction of the natural world. As Kennedy put it, it does not count the health of our children, or the quality of their education, or the beauty of a river.

GNP doesn’t measure “our wit or our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”

Those contrasts are especially apparent today in the Seeley and Swan valleys, the Blackfoot River, and Rattlesnake Creek. Montana House District 92 is a part of our beautiful Montana that is not measurable by GNP.

Neither is a Forest Service ranger who shows up for the job. And for the sunsets.

Greg has been by my side for six years of this work. The town halls, the doors knocked, the disagreements, the late nights, the kids picked up while I was somewhere else. He is not on the ballot. He is the person behind the person, the way Robert Kennedy was the person behind his brother. Greg has been doing the unseen work, cooking the meals, keeping the household together, making it possible. He sent me that speech the morning after the primary. A reminder of what it’s all about.

Greg: this one’s for you. And for all of you who do this work because you believe that what matters most is what we cannot put a price on, and it’s worth fighting to protect.

Kennedy asked for help from anyone who believed the United States could do better, who believed we stand for something at home and abroad.

I’m asking for the same.

For everyone who has been moved by a Montana sunset, who has floated a Montana river, felt the wind across the open prairies, for everyone who feels connected to the true treasures of this Treasure State, I, like Robert Kennedy, ask for your help going forward. I ask for your help in writing and passing good laws for our communities in HD 92, and for all of Montana.

Thank you.

All together.