Even Before I Was Appointed Poet Laureate
I bleated at every opportunity
Boozhoo, indinawemaaganidog! Aaniin! That is to say hello, all of my relatives! Welcome to another edition of An Irritable Métis. I’ve been thinking about so much stuff to write about that I’ve gone and written about none of it and now I’m late in announcing some Time Sensitive! goings-on. So here we are. This one is a mess. It’ll be better next time, trust me.
Oh, and speaking of next time! That might be the one containing a Big Announcement! concerning the availability of Becoming Little Shell. You won’t want to miss it….
It’s 19°1 and climbing outside as I type near bedtime on another unhinged Friday night out in the Red Light Quarter2 of the Old Mill District. Which might sound cold but it’s positively balmy compared to what it was like about a week, and 40° colder, ago. Since then the frigid weather has broken and we got a little bit of snow … but not nearly enough. The forecast calls for us to be getting steadily warmer over the next few days too and then high-30s and low-40s for the foreseeable future. That sucks, frankly. I hope my snowshoes didn’t bounce around in the back of my truck all last summer only to suffer not being taken out in the winter either.
Tomorrow morning – which is probably “today” for most people reading this, the critical date being Saturday, January 20th – is important for three reasons. One, it’s my sister’s birthday, which means for about 25% of the year she’s THREE years older than me. Second, it’s Paul “The Starchild” Stanley’s birthday3. And third, I’m doing this Saturday Storytelling event out at Travelers’ Rest which I have been utterly remiss in talking about. If it isn’t too late of notice and you are in the Missoula area, get thee to it at 11:00am! I might even organize some plan for what I’m going to do there between now and then.
I did an event at Travelers’ Rest once before: it was in March of 2020. Less than a week later the entire world was shut down due to Covid. Who knows what might happen this time around! I remember there being a bunch of people there (100+!) for what might have been my very first Little Shell presentation. There was a woman in attendance who accused me of not knowing what I was talking about. Curiously, I’m pretty sure it was the same woman in the front row of THIS EVENT I did last week with my friend Peter Stark who gets up at about the 53’ mark to tell us she has a very “in depth” understanding of what we’re talking about, calls the Métis a “tribe”, and then proceeds to get wrong by more than forty years how recently Canada recognized us as a people. I don’t think she remembered me but, clearly, I remember her.
One nice thing about the weather relenting is that I’m beginning a series of more trips out on the road starting next week. I’m headed to Helena Thursday to meet with a couple people, and from there on Friday to Boulder where I am going to talk and write poetry with some incarcerated (and mostly Native) women there. They’ve been writing poems about winter in preparation for my visit and I’m really looking forward to it. This is the kind of opportunity that makes BEING POET LAUREATE incredibly meaningful to me.
After my visit in Boulder, it’s back to Helena for a little workshop I was asked to do there Saturday afternoon. Dig this:
If you’re around, come join us! This is one where I am pinch hitting for someone else originally slated to do something but can’t due to tragic circumstances. It’s another opportunity I take seriously and I’m grateful to be in a position to do so.
Which is as good a time as any to up and mention this: it is your support, more than the little honorariums and backroom negotiations I cobble together to finance this stuff, that allows me to do this. If not for paid subscriptions, I’d certainly be living a different kind of lifestyle (i.e. being a relentless burr under the saddle of some inept and hapless middle manager likely limping around with a chubby over AI) that wouldn’t allow me to drop everything and go do things like much of what I’m doing. It’s a big deal, and I am grateful to all of you. I love that no one has ever complained that paid subscribers don’t get perks that unpaid ones don’t and that is never going to change. That said though, if you have the means, please consider throwing a few dollars to keep this thing on the road….
If you’re still worried about your money and that Nazi thing, you might not have heard that the whole uproar was a bit overblown. My friend Thomas boils it down HERE.
Speaking of Helena, that’s where the Montana Arts Council has gone to the mattresses in defiance of efforts by our legislature to make the entire state a cultural Berkeley Pit. What a stalwart group of first rate people! The new issue of their “State of the Arts” paper is out and my magnificent hardcopy arrived in the mail today. I love print! You can check the thing out online HERE. Meanwhile, here’s my column.
Mino-bimaadiziwin is the Anishinaabe word for "the good life."
I don’t know if I’m supposed to announce this yet but I am going to anyway. I’m taking to a river again this summer for the Freeflow Institute and this time around it’s the Main Salmon River in Idaho. I’ve never been on this river before and it’s going to be epic. It’s early to be thinking about June, I know, but details HERE. I’d love to have some of you out here with me; the limit is twelve, I think.
You know what else is epic? The price. Outfitting has gotten expensive. I struggle with this every year, with everything I do in this arena that feels so exclusive. But there are scholarships and I’m working on a couple other things to hopefully make this attainable for people who might otherwise not be able to. We’ll see how it goes.
And Finally….
I was leafing through the glossy pages and real estate porn that comprises the latest issue of Big Sky Journal while trying not to puke in my mouth when I fumbled it to the floor. I’m sure there is good writing in there between all the gawdawful ads … good writing like this magnificent winter poem that was looking up at me from the back page after I dropped it. This is from my friend CMarie Fuhrman. Isn’t it beautiful?
What a find. What a poem.
That’s it for now, my friends. Miigwech for sticking it out. Stay warm, wherever you are. Stay inside if you have to. Or, even better, get out in it if you can.
Fahrenheit, of course, which translates to -7° in reasonable countries who use a less ridiculous form of measurement of such things.
Hawt Pigz! Hawt Chix!
A stealth, unanticipated excerpt from BLS, for those of you who actually read these footnotes, concerning my maternal grandmother: “We didn’t share musical tastes. She expressed woeful disappointment when I, at eleven or twelve, showed up at her house one day in a KISS T-shirt. It was black, of course, and bore the purple-tinted illustration of Paul Stanley, the ‘Starchild,’ from 1978, when each member simultaneously released a solo album. Paul was my favorite member, and I wore his image with pride. On seeing it my Grandma Doris, as was her way, scowled, shook her head, closed her eyes, rubbed her hands together, and repeated with utter disappointment, ‘Oh, honey. Oh, honey.’”
It’s a pleasure to support this publication, Chris! I loudly chuckled at “i.e. being a relentless burr under the saddle of some inept and hapless middle manager likely limping around with a chubby over AI” 😂😭 Can’t wait to find out about Becoming Little Shell’s availability! As soon as it available for preorder, count me in!
Thank you for sharing the poem "Refuge". What a wonderful read to start my day. I'm really looking forward to Becoming LIttle Shell when it's available.
Watching the video you mentioned - I always learn from you. The white centering at 53' was cringy af. Especially when I think of the times in the past that I did the same. Yikes.