National and regional award-winning journalist, photographer, and activist (Hanford, Spokane River, regional clean air issues, national nuclear weapons and waste policy). Former senior editor Camas Magazine, former client and communications director, Center for Justice, Spokane.
No doubt there are sentient beings more miserable than a writer unable to write. I just happen to be a writer, so it’s this cubicle of despair that’s most familiar to me. Writer’s block is usually transient. What I tumbled into three years ago was quite different—a prolonged period of depression and grief that left me at a loss for words. Any story, even a modest act of journalism, requires an energy and a confidence that I didn’t have and didn’t feel inclined to fake.
“Little Bear” beetle in desert gold wildflowers, near Dry Falls, spring 2015
I still can’t watch the Tom Hanks movie “Castaway” without dissolving into tears at his rain-drenched scene with Helen Hunt. It’s just so heartbreaking. But the film is also about perseverance and flotation. Somewhere in my dark night of the soul my camera became the paddle for my life raft, so to speak. Continue reading Sharing the Light→
One of the larger reasons I’m a Spokanite is because of our stunning inventory of trees. It’s hard to leave them behind for very long. I remember, as a kid, family car rides from Pasco, and how I felt when we reached the tree line near Sprague, and there began to absorb the enveloping greenness and the smell of pines. After the November storm that brought so many of them down, I’ve wanted to frame an homage to trees from photos I’ve taken the past few years. This is that. Treeshine.
David Condon strangled police oversight in Spokane. Now he wants to blame it on state law.
David Condon came to office in Spokane because of how badly his predecessor botched the issue of police accountability. After sailing through the 2011 primary election, former Mayor Mary Verner energized Condon’s campaign by turning remarkably tone deaf to rising public anger about police conduct in the Otto Zehm tragedy.
Although Condon was something of a political blank page when he took office, it would have been hard to imagine that he could do any worse than Verner on what, then, was the central issue in city politics.
Statement of a Nez Perce Warrior On War’s Hidden Wound
They said that I would be changed in my body. I would move through the physical world in a different manner. I would hold myself in a different posture. I would have pains where there was no blood. I would react to sights, sounds, movement and touch in a crazy way, as though I were back in War.
They said I would be wounded in my thoughts. I would forget how to trust and think that others were trying to harm me. I would see danger in the kindness and concern of my relatives and others. Most of all, I would not be able to think in a reasonable manner and it would seem that everyone else was crazy. They told me that it would appear to me that I was alone and lost even in the midst of the people, that there was no one else like me.
They warned me that it would be as though my emotions were locked up and that I would be cold in my heart and not remember the ways of caring for others. While I might give soft meat or blankets to the elders or food to the children, I would be unable to feel the goodness of these actions. I would do these things out of habit and not from caring. They predicted that I would be ruled by dark anger and that I might do harm to others without plan or intention.
They knew that my Spirit would be wounded. They said I would be lonely and that I would find no comfort in family, friends, elders or spirits. I would be cut off from both beauty and pain. My dreams and visions would be dark and frightening. My days and nights would be filled with searching and not finding. I would be unable to find the connections between myself and the rest of creation. I would look forward to an early death. And, I would need Healing in all of these things.
Stories, dreams, and landscapes from the Inland Northwest
