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Born in a Bar
I visited Montana for the first time in over 13 months in September. Somehow, it’s the longest I’ve ever gone without setting foot in the state, and that despite living some 1,500 miles closer to a Montana border than any time in my adult life prior to 2019. I have a lot of feelings about traveling out of state on any non-essential terms these days. So, a September voyage to Montana was something that I had been wringing my hands about since June. I didn’t want to be a vector tracking in coastal cooties that the landlocked parts of the…
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Carrying Capacity
I still tend to fare better when there’s plain evidence of a complete living order, and not just the systems humans have imposed on it. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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The Stony Remains of Shantyville
If my theory about bars being a proxy measure for livability in Montana has any teeth, it seems like the path forward to an improved Shantyville that’s livable for regular folks is paved with, yes, residential housing, but also bars.
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The South of It All
In the past few weeks, something north of a dozen cities have either removed or approved the removal of Confederate monuments. That might sound like good progress at first blush, but according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), as of last year, there were still almost 800 Confederate statues nationwide. And that was just a fraction of the more than 1,700 total monuments, place names, or other symbols memorializing the Confederacy. That SPLC number includes 103 public K-12 schools and colleges named for Confederate icons, but it doesn’t necessarily include the dozens of schools in 41 states that have…
