A Preservation Office Pastiche
Montana Preservation I’d write a more fulsome history of my 15 years as Montana’s State Historic Preservation Officer, if I could remember them. That alone is a puzzle. How is it that the defining position…
Author: mmsw922
Wrangling With Teenagers
Montana Preservation They were looking for a fight – those mining company executives and disdainful forest supervisors. The subdivision developers, the highway engineers, the power company managers, and, of course, the university presidents. Many were…
The Late Baby – The Surprise Kid
Montana Preservation It was always going to be tricky—adopting the State Historic Preservation Office into the Montana Historical Society’s established family. But needed. For a decade the Parks Division of the Department of Fish and…
The Last Library
Don’t count them out. Or think them made redundant by Google. They are damn pure magic. Portals into time travel. Archetypes of standing stone circles, temples, pantheons of all the gods we’ve worshipped over time….
The Incomparable Old Red Barn
I’ve lived for 40 years in breathtaking landscapes. Where, from our deck at the Land, the Backbone of the World—40 miles of the Rocky Mountains—stretches into infinity. Where night after night, my home range—the Big…
The Paper Route
I was just home from watching my 87 year old mother die. For her, that meant the blessing of peace after months of fear and unease. The cruel additives to her illness. For me, that…
Amen
It seems the notices come weekly now As one class mate after another dies. The news relayed by a faithful Bullpup Who’s lived his life in McPherson. Or hers. A pillar now of the community,…
Shake It Off: A Postscript to “Who’s in Blue”
My son-in-law’s girls’ basketball team played their last game of the season several days ago. Most of the girls are young; some almost new to basketball. None were tall or solid enough to deflect opponents…
A Meditation on Cats, Rabbits—and a Pig
Let’s start with the pig. She’s Esther and she lives in Campbellville, Ontario, with her turkey brother Cornelius, her dog brother Phil, her cat sister Delores, and her dads, Steve and Derek. Given to her…
Who’s In Blue
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man…