Leaky Buckets

Whoa! Creativity!   For four months, from November to March, I woke up every morning and wrote a story. Most of those stories, at least the decent ones, made it onto my blog. I feel silly talking about my blog. Blogging was all the rage a decade ago, in an earlier version of the internet before reels and Tiktoks and Covid and whatnot. Everyone had a blog or a tumblr to share their knowledge and stories. Then social media came along and stole the thunder and the publicity. I am not knocking blogging; they are great ways to share stories or learn information. But they have been replaced in the pop culture sphere and aren’t quite old enough to be classic; kind of like CD’s. Everyone is digging vinyl again, and streaming is the hot new thing, but CD’s are just kicking around in the console of your truck, waiting to be valuable again.  Blogging, at least in my social spheres, went out of style when Instagram and Reddit came into style. So obviously, like the social buttercup I am, ...

  The Pancake arch, under construction Architectural History II was not the most fun class of the semester. The professor was 78 years old, taught like the cliche monotone professors of 1980’s teen dramas and dressed in tweed like it was London in 1955. He often acted like a cult leader and his students were the underlings; ignoring us most of the time, yet randomly vicious is his pointed critique of our essays, clothing styles or posture. The class was at 8am in a large, slightly too warm and stuffy lecture hall that was built to cure insomnia. The textbooks were approximately the size of wrecking balls and weighed about the same. I have always been fascinated with history, but listening to an ancient man mumble about Palladio or Renzo Piano at around dawn was not exactly enlightening to me.  As with any college class, there was an inevitable group project, combining three random young adults into a triad of missed deadlines, poor communication and desperate all-nighters ju...

  The Town Crew, working hard to supply water to us Last night as I was driving home, a generic country song came on the radio. I spent a lot of time in my vehicle, so many of my thoughts come to me while I am sitting at the wheel. I had forgotten my music device, so I was stuck with the FM dial. On drives east of town, I can listen to 99.5 The Bull; the classic country station out of Helena that hasn’t yet succumbed to the corporate sameness of most radio stations. Alas, west of town, where I found myself last night, I am out of range of the Bull and have only two options out of Missoula, KISS Country and EAGLE country, basically identical nationally syndicated pop radio stations marketing themselves as “country music for the working people of Western Montana” or some other blustery jingoistic nonsense. But bad music is better than no music when there is snow on the road after a long day.  Just like a thousand other songs you can hear on the radio anywhere in the USA, this so...

  The Modern West Podcast Somewhere on the great prairies of Wyoming, Montana or South Dakota, I reach for my Spotify phone. The hum of the highway, the whoosh of the constant wind and the crackling of my blown out truck speaker have kept me in a borderline-meditation state for the last three hours of driving, but now I have resurfaced and need entertainment.  I pull off into a truck parking area and rummage in the console for the old Samsung with no calling or texting capability, a cracked screen, dying battery and only two important apps; Spotify and Voice Recorder. The device is slow as molasses and the touch screen is fading, but this little black box holds an entire roadtrip soundtrack. I have my playlists of all genres from Montana songwriters to New Orleans Jazz, all with silly names to help me remember which is which. Motor Breath is the heavy metal playlist for traffic jams and thunderstorms. Hobgoblins is the underground hip hop playlist for late nights. Johnny Bicyc...

  Insulation, another task in the toolkit, though not terribly enjoyable Every morning after breakfast, I grab my old Randy Moss notepad, open it to a blank page and scribble down a to-do list. Yes, I have an old flexible-binding notepad with my favorite NFL football player of all time on the cover because I will never grow up. Anyway, I write down a to-do list for the day. The other day, I think it was a Wednesday, I had a particularly notable to-do list. It included the following… Meet Kyle at nine to pour 30x30 radiant slab Tear out old windows and install new ones for Emily  Clean woodstove chimney and install new spark arrestor Install and wire a bathroom fan in upstairs bathroom Design a new logo and sticker for my bluegrass band Complete the architectural plans for Craig and Donna Bake a cake for Sam’s surprise birthday In the end, it took me two days to complete this task list, with the help of my buddy, David. But what struck me was the variety of tasks on the list. D...

  My collection of destroyed work clothes We had a snow day on Monday, which was much needed because David and I very badly needed a work pants repair day. Climbing up to clean the chimney last week, I had torn open the inseam of my best insulated jeans. After six days of enjoying the breeze, I saw a forecast of -20 and knew that repair day had come soon. David, my best friend, coworker and resident of the tiny cabin below my house, was also sporting some risque cuts in his Carharts, so we settled in at the sewing machine. Sewing is not one of my better skills, but thankfully David is a master seamster. He did a majority of the work while I pulled stitching on a dozen different seams and cut patches for ten different pairs of Wranglers and Carhart work pants.  David and I destroy pants for a living. The IRS classifies us as construction workers, but we spend most of our time tearing holes in double stitched, heavy duty work pants and jackets. The beefy sewing machine that doub...

  San Francisco... formely a 15 minute city, but not anymore When I was in architecture school back in the mid 2000’s, one of the core tenets of our schooling was to design buildings and cities to better serve people. Sometimes, that meant easing the struggles of disabled people, unable to navigate existing infrastructure. Sometimes it was providing multi-use space that doesn’t already exist in our urban fabric. Sometimes it was just making something pretty to look at. But most of the time, the emphasis was on making buildings and human construction less wasteful; so that we didn’t burn all sorts of physical and societal resources simply trying to exist. This was where I first learned of the 15 minute city idea; the premise being that every human could access their basic needs within a fifteen minute walk or bicycle of their home, like food, entertainment, employment, social interaction, etc. Often, when discussing the 15 minute city in school, it was implied that if humans didn’...