I found something in this pile of trash that helps me understand the world I first got introduced to in 2008, when Ellie Boldman (Hill at the time) chose ME to be an Americorps VISTA worker at her humble, non-profit launching pad for a career in state-wide politics. What I found (and confirmed with a street source), puts me directly on the trail of someone in consistent proximity to overdose deaths.
When you follow the flow from this location upstream, on the Blackfoot, you have Paws Up Ranch, the spot where Musk, Thiel and Altman hung out last June. Further north you have the sleepy little community of Seeley Lake, a place I’m thinking about for a specific reason that I’m reflecting on the best way to proceed with.
Part of my reflection is my dire financial position, which I expound on in a video that shows my glorious box truck before the city came and took it away last week. BYE BYE, BOX TRUCK!
Another part of my reflection on moving forward with information giving another strong indication how important this part of America is to the power brokers is…who actually cares? The corruption is so endemic, and partisan rancor so blindingly stupid, and ability to disassociate with memes and endless doom-scrolling so all-consuming to the populace at this point, I’m not sure it’s worth enlarging the target on my back.
The new information is going into the beginning of a new book, for now, but the way in which books get to people these days is a strange and fractured landscape. So far the one post at The Pulp this year is about a woman who wrote a book that leaned to heavily on being about a white guy from history when obviously she could rewrite it with…
At first, Thompson imagined a book that would literally follow De Smet — tracing his movements across North America and Europe. With grant funding, she traveled widely, digging through Jesuit archives in Rome, visiting De Smet’s hometown in Belgium, and working through collections across the United States.
But once she began writing, the project shifted. She wasn’t interested in tracing the path of a single man who had already been extensively, if incompletely, documented. What mattered more was what De Smet represented: a moment of encounter, and the vastly different worldviews that met there.
Letting go of De Smet as the organizing center changed the scale of the book. An early draft ballooned — spanning continents and centuries — until a reviewer urged her to focus. Why not center the Salish, they suggested, and let the other threads move through that lens?
Well, if publishers love the inclusionary market strategy of pedestaling “the other”, then maybe my documented hunch something non-human is lurking in a pattern of depravity across centuries could be sexy enough to actually PAY ME to publish and distribute. Wouldn’t THAT be crazy?
For a sense of the scope of my project, here’s how table of contents currently stands:
Is Missoula a spook town punching above its weight on the national stage? Yeah, that is definitely one conclusion a reader might come away with, but there are others, so stay tuned for more specific info on how to get an early peek at my book.
In the meantime, please enjoy this song about middle fingers, it’s epic.
Thanks for reading!