Photo by Brad Torchia
Three weeks after my wife gave birth to our second child, we rented a VW Westfalia, loaded up the family, and drove around Western Montana for this story for Hemispheres, United’s inflight magazine. The story is called Three Perfect Days in Montana, and features some wonderful pictures by Brad Torchia. It was a joy to get an assignment like this to write about my adopted home state. The story is in your United seatback pockets in August, and online here.
The element lithium powers our phones and our electric cars. It is also one of the most effective treatments for bipolar disorder. But how much do we know about one of the oldest, scarcest elements in the universe, one on which our future increasingly relies? I wrote the life story of lithium, in five acts,…
We all know we should pick up after our pets. What happens when we don’t? In this piece for The Pulp, I explore the nitty-gritty of picking up poop, a subject that causes community strife all over the world. Among other things, this story is a reflection on our complicated relationship with rules.
Thirty years ago, Ed DesRosier saw non-Native businesses exclusively profiting off of Glacier National Park, which once belonged to his people, the Blackfeet. When he started his own tour company, the Park Service tried to shut him down. Now Sun Tours is the only company that tells Glacier’s story from a Native perspective. I joined…
I wrote about the absurd, abstract history of money and one wild-eyed, vegetarian, free-love-promoting German economist’s idea to create a currency that decayed over time. The story is published here, in Noema Magazine.
My hometown of Missoula has a new community news outlet called The Pulp. I wrote the first feature story for them, about a small team of EMTs and clinical social workers who respond to people experiencing mental health crises. The Mobile Support Team shows up to a scene not with sirens, guns, and flashing lights,…
Are we the same person all of our lives? The average human cell only lasts seven years. We, and everything else, are constantly in flux. So what endures? I explored these questions and others in this essay about identity, water, family and home for Noema Magazine.
