In Memoriam
I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am, also, much more than that.So are we all. James Baldwin I once read obits more carefully, for the stories they told….
Powerless – Unmanageable
The Brethren of my youth defined themselves by “no’s.” No smoking, no drinking, no gambling, no taking the lord’s name in vain. No attachment to worldly goods or fun that might lead to sex before…
Friday Afternoons in the Chief Historian’s Office
He was the kindest man I’ve known: scholar, gentleman, Lutheran, dad, husband, boss, Chief Historian of the National Park Service (NPS). Although he had too little confidence in himself, his political instincts were spot on….
Wanting
This early spring, I stretched to the far side of my memory, Stalking riches: the pure gold of so many moments that life has given me; The uncanny, dazzling opportunities that I never saw coming…
Off to an Inauspicious Start
Montana Preservation I’d spent that 1980 April morning interviewing. The Montana Historical Society’s Preservation Office Program Manager job was up for grabs. Notwithstanding the fact that I’d just snagged a great position in the National…
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…
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…