Yesterday, at approximately 11:22am, I declared the land where the Sleepy Inn once stood as my TAAAAAZ (Trash Alchemist’s Awesome and Amazing Autonomous Zone). Why did I select this particular location for my evolving attention-getting campaign? Visibility is one obvious reason, but it goes much deeper than that, touching on things like alcoholism and the idiotic idea of “land banking“.
That last link goes to a 2023 article describing the additional cost of asbestos abatement the city had to pay before this property could be scraped. From the link (emphasis mine):
The city purchased the property in 2020 as part of its land-banking strategy and used the building as a quarantine shelter during the pandemic. But last July, the city announced its plans to place the property for sale as it looks to redevelop the West Broadway corridor.
The vision for the Sleepy Inn property as detailed in the corridor’s master plan calls for a six-story building with ground-floor retail and roughly 35 residential units. However, the size and location of the property may present challenges for redevelopment, some have said.
Add the takeover of this property by the TRASH ALCHEMIST as another “challenge” to selling and developing this property.
The changes to this property for the long-term vision of “land banking” actually displaced one of my former clients, a chronic alcoholic who some nursing students saved one cold Missoula night by calling 911, saving his life, but not his foot from frostbite.
Making this deal even worse, here’s a portion of a letter opposing the city’s purchase of this motel from a post I wrote in 2021:
We need to see commercial estimates by commercial appraisers. This hotel was listed six years ago for $675,000 dollars. At the time the owner was so desperate to get rid of it that they were offering owner financing on it. This price is close to half of what the city is now paying for it after 6 years of wear and tear in the middle of an economic depression. It is also worth noting that the taxable value of the hotel is roughly 400k less than the value the MRA plans to spend. It is our strong recommendation that the City gets at least two commercial appraisals. We do not know if a commercial appraisal has been completed on the property and we do not know if the tax dollars (that we supposedly preside over) are being spent wisely or appropriately.
Three years later, this property sits empty and unsold, thus providing the PERFECT opportunity for a creative agitator like the TRASH ALCHEMIST to declare an autonomous zone. Thanks Missoula Redevelopment Agency!
A different housing scheme in another part of our valley got some recent attention from a UK publication, and because I have a flair for writing about cultural terrorists, like Max Wolf, this UK publication gave ME some attention. My giant ego is VERY appreciative!
Here’s a screenshot of the quote that made me smile this morning:
Yes, this “firebrand blogger” loves to put tantrum-throwing developers in his crosshairs, like I did with Aaron Wagner at the start of this year before tracking this White Lion from Utah all the way to Scottsdale, Arizona as I traveled and documented other dark aspects of our sick culture.
Instead of trembling at the evidence our culture is sick, like the pearl-clutching podcaster, William Ramsey, I’m doing about it, and I’m doing it locally, where the risk is much greater.
Yesterday I had several positive interactions while residing at my TAAAAAZ working on a new tune, including giving away a workout machine, which gives me an idea: GARAGE SALE THIS SATURDAY?
I think that sounds like a great idea, but let’s see how Friday goes first. I have a lot of work to do, and despite several different personas and one replacement, I’m still technically just one person.
Before wrapping this up I’d like to give a special thanks to the donor who got $200 dollars into my hot little hands–the gasoline, food and spray-paint acquired with those funds put a BIG SMILE on this Trash Alchemist’s face, so THANK YOU!
If you want to put a smile on my face, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is still accepting donations, or, if doing it digitally isn’t your thing, come on down to my office at the corner of Russell and Broadway and donate directly! I’m sure Skully and Lucy would appreciate the company.
Trash sculpture? How about trash INSTALLATION? Or, going even further, at precisely 11:22am this morning, I climbed a ladder and declared my TAAAAAZ with my megaphone. It has begun.
I’ll post my journal entry tomorrow as this new step for TRASH ALCHEMY evolves. Stay tuned!
Oh, and if you can’t tell from the video, my TAAAAAZ is located at the former Sleepy Inn site at Russell and Broadway.
Since people have limited bandwidth and therefore very few fucks to give, getting attention for important issues is more difficult than ever. Why? Is it the deplorable state of our media? Or is it the deplorable state of our education system? Or maybe the deplorable state of our criminal justice system?
Montana Indians who think the equation to improving their communities is media attention + money are probably hopeful when they read an article like this one in the Missoulian, but should they be? From the link (emphasis mine):
The high rates of missing or murdered Indigenous people is a nationwide crisis, and experts say Montana is an epicenter. While Native Americans comprise 6.7% of Montana’s population, as of April 4, they accounted for 27.6% of the state’s missing persons population.
Lots of factors contribute to this crisis. Thanks to a patchwork of laws passed without Indigenous people or their communities in mind, Native families must navigate a complex web of legal jurisdictions. The law enforcement agency tasked with investigating a case depends on whether the crime happened on or off reservation land and whether the victim and perpetrator are Native or non-Native.
Have I been talking about jurisdictional difficulty as it relates to urban camp cleanups? Yes, I have, and yesterday I made the rounds talking to multiple agencies, like DNRC, DEQ, and MDOT. I even made a public comment, but when I went to get the clip from the city website, I discovered a significant portion of my comment has been removed. Why?
On just THIS issue of urban camps, I’ve been trying to get media attention since last spring, but local media has been AMAZING at ignoring the work I’ve been doing. When I finally did get a little media attention, it was an act of slanderous mis-reporting about someone yelling at Council, which was erroneously ascribed to ME when the video clearly shows the yelling wasn’t coming from my mouth.
Three years ago this month I wrote a letter about my concern as a former service provider regarding homeless camps and the young Native woman’s ID that I found in the garbage. Here’s a portion from that letter:
I was involved with last Friday’s clean-up and, though the clean-up part was productive, I was VERY discouraged to see how bad this area has gotten again after so many personal hours spent tactfully working to remove tons and tons of trash over the years.
One item I found in the trash was a young Native woman’s ID. This validates my concern about how areas like these can function, especially in the warmer months when seasonal transient activity increases.
I spoke about these concern in a Zoom meeting earlier this week with the Missing Indigenous Woman’s Task Force. They were very receptive about my description of homeless encampments and motels being places touched by human trafficking and meth abuse. I wonder what they would think about citizens like myself and Kevin getting lectured to by homeless advocates about our good-faith efforts to address what they are enabling?
With my decade of experience working in the non-profit sector, and my continued work as a journalist called to expose local corruption, you might think my efforts would be appreciated, but no, my efforts were definitely NOT appreciated at the MMIP fundraiser I was asked to leave because a certain Indian woman thinks Lowell Hochhalter and his enablers are going to help her people. How do you say Patty Hearst in Salish?
I wanted to find an image of Patty Hearst for this post, but instead I found an Indian connection to that historical drama. If we’re talking media attention, this Indian did a good job of riding Patty’s infamy.
From the link:
The Symbionese Liberation Army, or SLA, is little known today, but it was worldwide news 40 years ago. That’s when Patty Hearst, 19, was kidnapped at gunpoint from her Berkeley apartment in February 1974, thrown into the trunk of a car, and driven away.
A few days later, a recording aired on KPFA radio in Berkeley claiming that the SLA, a radical military group, was holding Hearst as a prisoner of war. The group demanded that Patty’s father, Randolph – editor of the San Francisco Examiner – give free food to needy people as part of the conditions of his daughter’s release. The Hearst family dutifully organized a series of food distributions on their daughter’s behalf.
One group that refused to take part was the United Bay Area Council on Indian Affairs, according to Adam Fortunate Eagle, author of Scalping Columbus and Other Damn Indian Stories, who was active in Bay Area Native American issues at the time.
Fortunate Eagle (known as Adam Nordwall when he lived in San Leandro) notified the elder Hearst that their group was planning to announce their refusal to participate in the give-away on the grounds that: “We will not be co-conspirators to extortion. Many Indian people are hungry today, but we will not accept any free food until Patty Hearst is released.”
I did a little more reading up on this famous Indian and I really like his “serious joke medicine”, described in this article as a part of his infamous approach to getting attention for his fellow Indians, some of whom didn’t appreciate his antics. From the link:
He hardly resembles the dashing, short-cropped, raven-haired figure he cut in the ’60s, when he helped form the Indian movement out of his San Leandro home and partied with the likes of Black Panthers, Terence Hallinan and Willie Brown. His hair, now in braids he hasn’t cut since the ’70s, has gone entirely gray, and laugh lines are deeply carved into his face.
But there’s a glint of the “sacred clown” that endures in his grandfatherly countenance — and makes him impossible to ignore, whether it’s those who consider him a hero for raising Indian awareness or those who brand him a headline-chasing embarrassment to his own people.
“I use (humor) in a way some Indians don’t understand,” he said. “It’s called serious joke medicine.”
And to understand Nordwall past and present is to understand his clowning, whether sacred or profane — those madcap acts of political theater that made him a legend.
Am I already utilizing serious joke medicine to bring attention to the trash crisis along our river corridor? Fuck yeah I am, and here’s a clip that shows how I’m threading the humor/anger needle in my attention-seeking approach to destroying official narrative control:
Further down in the Missoulian article, the amount of media attention Indians DO NOT GET is broken down like this:
There’s also a lack of media attention. A Columbia Journalism Review tool estimates that a 21-year-old missing Native woman in Montana would receive about 35 news stories, whereas a missing white woman in her early 20s would receive at least 120 articles. News stories fuel public interest, and when the public is engaged in a particular case, law enforcement agencies often hold press conferences and release updates — prompting more news, and in turn, more public interest.
Unable to depend on law enforcement, news media or a flawed criminal justice system, members of the Blackfeet community — and tribal communities everywhere — instead turn to each other for support, healing, advocacy and action.
While I consider myself “media” and report on subjects like “urban camps”, the one thing I don’t have that Montana Indians have is the leverage of being historical victims. I also don’t have any expectations that Hollywood bestowing attention on Lily Gladstone is going to do a goddamn thing to improve the lives of people on the Rez, but maybe that’s just me being stuck in my perpetual state of butthurt.
I’ve got to wrap this up now because it’s almost time to start building my trash sculpture on the parcel of city land I’ve hinted at in my poem, which you can hear in song form at this link.
I’ve given a heads up to the relevant parties, including some local media, about my plans this morning, but the IGNORE TRAVIS campaign still seems to be in full effect. Let’s see if what I’ve got planned today changes that.
Am I going to have some fun? If I use my serious joke medicine correctly, then yes, I expect to have a little fun, especially when the police inevitably show up to assess what the heck I’m doing, so stay tuned!
If you’re coming to Montana from the west, traveling on I-90, Mineral County is the jurisdiction you’ll enter as you cross Lookout Pass. Before the disappearance and ultimate death of Rebekah Barsotti, I didn’t think much about Mineral County. Now, as the 2024 election cycle starts ramping up with the change of seasons, I’m going to be thinking about Mineral County A LOT as our Governor and Attorney General make their case to Montana citizens about keeping their respective jobs.
Earlier this month, the legal shit-show I’ve been covering got some more official ink from the Missoulian. Before getting to the most recent developments, here’s some of my past posts for context:
Will you get this kind of context about a sparsely populated County in Montana from any other news source? No, you will not, because no other news source has dived into this David Lynchian realm with the unique skillset that I possess. You’re welcome.
The latest article from legacy media is telling you the writ of mandamus process almost over, meaning the Mineral County Sheriff’s Office and County Attorney’s Office should be up-to-speed on the requirements of doing their jobs, like maintaining COMPLETE PERSONNEL FILES on Sheriff Deputies. You know, basic shit that most jurisdictions don’t need a judge to force them to comply with.
Here’s how the Missoulian is framing the issue in an article published earlier this month (emphasis mine):
A writ put in place to remedy errors by Mineral County’s law enforcement departments is nearing dismissal, moving along a legal process that’s essentially served as an overhaul of Mineral County’s criminal justice system.
The Mineral County Attorney’s Office and Mineral County Sheriff’s Office were put on judicial notice in October 2022 after a Missoula law firm filed two writs of mandamus contending the departments were abusing the rights of Mineral County residents through the legal system.
In their original filing, the plaintiffs, represented by Jordan Kilby and Lance Jasper of Reep, Bell & Jasper P.C., argued the county violated the rights of multiple Mineral County residents through not disclosing information relevant to the defendants’ cases, known as Brady disclosures. Hiring malpractices within the county sheriff’s office led to unqualified law enforcement involvement in criminal cases, and the Mineral County Attorney’s Office didn’t properly disclose that in case proceedings.
I highlighted the name Lance Jasper and the law firm he works for because this is where I distinguish myself from other media sources: I will actually tell you that the Jasper family name is VERY well known in Mineral County, and because of that notoriety, NOTHING about the legal actions taken by Lance Jasper and his law firm should be taken at face value.
To emphasis this point, here are two more posts I wrote in 2022 worth considering:
Isn’t this interesting context? It sorta makes you wonder what this law firm is REALLY up to, doesn’t it.
Let’s continue with the Missoulian article for more on this legal shit-show, including the funny victim-card Lance keeps playing for himself.
Tensions have mounted between all sides involved in the writ in the 18 months since it was first put in place. Accusations of improper conduct were lodged by both sides in court on Wednesday, with Jasper sharing concerns about retaliation from the county attorney’s office.
“We started this complaint to just get law enforcement and the county attorney’s office to follow the law, but as a result of this there have been continued efforts to slander and attack myself and others in this matter,” Jasper said.
Mineral County Attorney Debra Jackson denied such conduct, and described Jasper’s allegations as “absolute nonsense.”
Maybe it’s just me, but Lance’s strategy to make himself look like a victim is pretty damn amusing. Lawyers are already pretty disgusting creatures, IMHO, but launching a legal process to ensure your boy, Ryan Funke, defeats the gay woman from Florida is REALLY something.
Does Lance Jasper need a box Kleenex to get him through the day?
I’ve been doing a lot lately to bring a critical perspective to local law enforcement, like developing a mutha fukin methodology for assessing the credibility of one famous member of local law enforcement, including disclosing the rumored nickname of that famous detective.
Well, today I’m going to let readers in on ANOTHER NICKNAME for the jailer who was on-shift when Shane Pelletier was found dead from an alleged suicide, and this nickname should REALLY make you chuckle.
The man who former Sheriff, Mike Toth, hired DESPITE the fact he was caught cheating on a cop test, is David Kunzelman. Here’s a picture of Toth and Kunzelman for context:
And here is the movie character that inspired the nickname for Kunzelman when he worked on an ambulance truck here in Missoula:
The money-quote from the Missoulan article is buried, so here’s the result of my excavation for YOU, dear reader! The quote is from Robert Long, an attorney from Polson brought in to referee this embarrassment (emphasis mine):
“In 32 years of criminal law practice in Montana, the undersigned never encountered a general failure by a law enforcement agency to employ qualified personnel as occurred in this case at the Mineral County Sheriff’s Office,” Long wrote. “The problem in Mineral County was, by any measure, large and serious.”
See? It’s not just me saying things are REALLY BAD in Mineral County, so what I’m about to say next should be taken with all this context in mind.
A coroner’s inquest is coming to Mineral County, and this inquest will be happening under changes made by our last dumpster-fire legislative session, as the title of this article clearly indicates:
From the link (emphasis mine):
Prior to 2023, state law said a coroner who is also a law enforcement officer couldn’t conduct an inquest for an in-custody death. However, in recent years, more and more counties have combined their sheriff and coroner’s offices, with one person holding both titles. That’s made it harder to find civilian coroners.
Brian Thompson, a lobbyist for the Montana Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, said during a legislative hearing last year that only 15 counties still had independently elected coroners. That means those 15 people had to handle all the inquests for in-custody deaths.
The Legislature eventually passed and Gov. Greg Gianforte signed Senate Bill 68, sponsored by Sen. Barry Usher, R-Yellowstone County. That bill allowed sheriff-coroners to preside over these inquests as long as they’re from a different jurisdiction.
This, in my opinion, is VERY BAD news, but there’s a silver lining, and it’s this: the narrative controllers in this state are SCARED, and I think little moves like this are an indication that, despite EXTREME narrative control over things like determining cause and manner of death, not to mention a crime lab in Missoula I suspect is VERY corrupt, our members of law enforcement want to put a JUDGE hat on the Sheriff’s already wearing their CORONER hat when convenient, like claiming Rebekah Barsotti’s river death was accidental.
Right, Sheriff/Coroner Funke?
I don’t know how smart it is to put so many hats on the heads of men like Ryan Funke, especially when his Sheriff’s Office signed a memorandum of understanding with the Missoula drug task force last year to deal drugs in Montana–I’m sorry, I mean deal WITH drugs in Montana.
The Missoula Police Department is a member of the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force, comprised of other local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.
Mineral County has just become a member of this esteemed society.
Lt. Sean Manraksa, of the Missoula Police Department, who is assigned to the Missoula Drug Task Force, and Mineral County Sheriff Ryan Funke signed a memorandum of understanding linking the law enforcement teams to work fighting all aspects of the illegal drug markets.
Yeah, I’m sure you guys are trying REALLY HARD to combat the scourge of illicit drugs, but what I’m seeing in the “urban camps” shows me whatever you guys are doing is NOT WORKING very well.
Is this by design, or due to a combination of incompetency and lack of resources? I’d love to continue speculating, but the morning is getting late, and Virgil needs a walk. Doesn’t his new leash look good?
If you appreciate my work, a donation is a great way to show it, though I’ve realized panhandling my audience for GoFundMe donation dollars isn’t cutting it, so I’m looking at an option that would change up the look of Zoom Chron and make it LESS of a money drain on my very limited funds.
Did I expect to be removing a homeless sex swing during my ECLIPSE THEIR BULLSHIT urban camp trash removal event yesterday? No, I did not, but it also wasn’t much of a surprise. Getting high and using bondage equipment amongst needles and burnt tinfoil is no longer an aberration in this community, it’s a fucking policy choice. Right, Mayor Davis?
After removing the sex swing from this jurisdictionally problematic spot next to the river (DNRC, do you give a shit about any of this?), the few volunteers who showed up shifted to the stretch between the California Street bridge and the gates to the West Broadway Island, which remain shut due to the amusing need for “vegetation management”.
While a significant portion of the West Broadway Island is off limits to urban campers, the stretch we examined is in DIRE NEED of more trash removal than our humble efforts yesterday could produce. Why? Because this is the kind of shit going on out there:
One camper in this area didn’t like seeing us doing trash removal, and tried telling us to leave, but she was told to either help or shut up. Maybe next time someone thinks they’re going run us out from PUBLIC land, we should give them our Mayor’s phone number, since this is HER political problem.
I was on campus briefly yesterday, wondering if the Kaimin kids were interested in trash, but everyone seemed busy looking up at the sky to see if they could catch glimpses of the eclipse. Here’s a shot I got from a friend in Texas, if looking up is what you were concerned about yesterday.
After the day’s excitement, which I documented in a song I’ll end this post with, I decided to watch Mel Gibson’s movie, Apocalypto. If you recall, this film features an eclipse as a bad omen, but NOT for our protagonist, Jaguar Paw! No, the bad omen is for the political elite, who are making human sacrifices like crazy to appease their gods for crop failures and widespread illness.
Because I followed through with what I said I was going to do, a lot of good things happened yesterday. Not even the drunk homeless man who stumbled over from the Poverello Center to call me a provocative word could remove my smile from the day’s plentiful successes.
The other homeless poetry critic who didn’t like my megaphone performance was more effective in stopping that performance by honking his car horn. After I stopped, he drove off erratically, even opening his car door while driving just so he could yell at me. Where are the police when you need an asshole to be ticketed for reckless driving?
Is the dude driving this car sad that I removed the homeless sex swing? If he is, well, GOOD!
Maybe sex could be an incentive for getting into housing, since those in housing can have all the kinky sex they want, as long as they are consenting adults, of course! Or, we can do what Missoula is doing, which is engaging in the classic TASK FORCE bullshit model of energy-sapping madness that is literally considering doing the same things, like authorized camping sites, but expecting different results.
Thankfully I have my talents as a poet to channel my frustration, and those talents have been quite prolific this year, as the following tune about the homeless sex swing clearly indicates!
If you’d like to help fund my entertaining trash alchemy efforts, please consider supporting Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF). Do you know any other trashmen who make art from trash removal?
