Pitch Your “Pursuit of Happiness” Story, Lost & Found plus, New Artwork!
Reading time: about 6 minutes
Here’s a song that can be the soundtrack to this month’s newsletter.
Happy summer, y’all. I am so happy that we have so far avoided significant smoke this year. Happy. Did you hear me say it? Yeah, I’m happy. I’ve been thinking a lot about happiness recently as we begin gearing up for the September 23rd Tell Us Something event, even before we’re finished wrapping the June “Power of Place” event.
We pulled our theme in January, “Self Evident”, and our theme in September from the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
As I’ve been thinking about happiness, I’m asking many questions about it. What is it? Is it the joy of fresh from the bush raspberries? Is it a full calendar? Is it an empty calendar? Is it freedom from stress? Is it relaxing on a beach? Is it making lots of money? Is it sharing a meal with friends? Is it owning lots of things? Is it even real? How do we know when we’ve reached it, if we have a right granted to us in one of our founding documents to pursue it? How do we know what it is? Because to pursue something, don’t we have to know what it is? And if “all men” hold the unalienable Right of the pursuit of Happiness, does one’s right to pursue happiness, whatever we are defining it to be, end when it then infringes on another’s right to pursue happiness? I invite you to explore these questions with us, and maybe even answer some of them collectively at the next Tell Us Something event on September 23. We’d love for you to join us as a storyteller, a volunteer, a sponsor, and an audience member.
We keep gathering to share our stories. We keep gathering to listen to our community, to support each other in that sharing. We keep standing up and expressing our First Amendment right to free speech and we keep exercising our right to peaceably assemble. And I invite you to share your “Pursuit of Happiness” story. We’d love to hear it. We’re accepting story pitches now for the September event. Read on to learn how to pitch.
Call for storytellers
Sharing your story on the Tell Us Something stage is, in the words of a storyteller from the June “Power of Place” event, a “…space to regain my stage confidence. It made [it] possible for me to share my story with the community and show them how much they mean to me.
True stories grow a connection in a community. Our stories reveal the mutual journey that has us all arrive at this place and time.”
Join us. Share your story. The first step is calling the pitch line.
How to Pitch
It’s simple! Give us a call at 406-203-4683 and leave a recorded version of your story. You have three minutes to pitch. We need to hear the beginning, middle, and end. No cliffhangers.
For our Deaf friends: You can pitch your story by emailing the beginning, middle, and end of your story to info@tellussomething.org.
PITCH DEADLINE: August 28, 2026
Lost & Found
Thanks to all of you who attended the June 16th “Power of Place” event in Bonner Park. The video should be ready soon, and, shortly after that, the podcast should be ready for your eager ears.
Meanwhile, a couple of you left some things behind. No one has reached out to us to claim them. If these are yours, please let me know!
Jacket with Axis Physical Therapy pen in right pocket. Smells slightly of perfume. (The jacket, not the pen!) (Modeled by Joyce, owner of Joy!ce of Tile.)
Gallon sized Hydroflask. (Stay hydrated!)
Photos from “The Power of Place”
The video from the event should be ready soon, and, shortly after that, the podcast should be ready for your eager ears. In the meantime, you can peruse the photos below.
Pursuit of Happiness: The Artwork
We are so excited to reveal the poster for the next Tell Us Something event. The posters are always cool. I mean, we hire local artists to make them, after all. This one’s no different. Coming to us from Lily Kip. Want one? Let me know and if there is enough interest I’ll have some printed on high quality paper without sponsor logos or ticket info that you can purchase. Posters are 11”x17”.
Thanks, Lily! See more of her work over @ her website.
Get Tickets to “Pursuit of Happiness”
Meanwhile, the whole reason for the poster is to make you aware of the next event! Please! Come join us at The Dennison on September 23rd for “Pursuit of Happiness” stories. Tickets are on sale now! Get yours today!
Feeling the Love? Want to Sponsor the Upcoming Event?
One of the storytellers at the January event shared that Tell Us Something “…“is such a gift to Missoula. Every story shared builds a bridge between us. We get a glimpse into lives, challenges, adventures, and perspectives we might never have encountered. Stories have a way of opening our minds and softening our hearts — because once you hear someone’s story, they are no longer a stranger.”
Help us bring that gift to the community in September. We are in need of sponsors to help cover some of the costs of producing the event. Please reach out if you’d like to be a sponsor!
Take Me out to the Ballgame
Those of you who know me know that I am usually not much for sportsball. I mean, I know that The Guardians just beat The Twins, but that’s only because I want to be able to chat with my mom when I call her back in Ohio every week. But I do love to go to a baseball game to watch. I don’t know what it is, childhood nostalgia? It’s so much more comforting, than say, the fast pace of a basketball game or the violence of a football game. (There’s a comic who had something to say about this). And there’s just something about a hotdog and a cold beer at a baseball game. Sitting in the stands, watching the osprey fly overhead as Xavier Casserilla hits a home run or Jeremy Piatkiewicz makes a seemingly impossible catch in the infield.
I’ll be over at Ogren Park on September 1st if anyone wants to join me. The fine folks at The Paddleheads have generously offered to donate all proceeds to us from every ticket sold when you use this link. So get your Paddleheads tickets now!
We are grateful to the Montana 250th Commission for their support in helping make the September “Pursuit of Happiness” live storytelling event possible!
Volunteer! Get free tickets to the event!
We’d love for you to join us on some of the behind the scenes magic that it takes to produce a Tell Us Something event. There are many different ways for you to pitch in. Please consider helping out! In return, you get a free ticket to the event! Sign up to volunteer here.
Indigenous Spotlight
I just returned from a vacation of a lifetime in Alaska. It’s a huge place, and I can’t begin to share with you here all of the stories that I learned there. We stopped at the Alaska Native Heritage Center, located in the traditional territory of the Native Village of Eklutna, a Dena’ina Athabascan Tribe, to get a little bit of a better grip on Alaska as a place, not just the 49th state. I was struck by how different their dances are than the dances I’ve seen from our our Confederated Salish, Kootenai, and Pondereilles friends at the Pow Wow up in Arlee. Alaskan tribes dancers’ feet hardly move as they dance. I got to see some of the competitive games that they play too, many derived from skills needed in hunting. Incredible.
That, along with the 250th anniversary of the United States got me thinking about who gets to tell the story. Which also got me thinking about how we honor those whose lands we tread upon every day. Which lead me to this year’s IndigiPalloza. It’s not until the end of this month, but I thought you should be aware of it (July does seem to slip away pretty quick.) From the words of the organizers themselves: “We chose RESISTANCE 250+ [as this year’s theme] because 2026 is being heralded as the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. We asked ourselves what this means to Native people, whose stolen land (combined with the forced slave labor of Black people) is the source of the foundational wealth of our settler colonial nation; the Declaration of Independence goes so far as to identify the original human inhabitants as ‘Merciless Indian Savages.’ We decided to devote IPFEST to the ways that Native people have resisted the genocide of entire communities for more than 250 years to not just survive, but thrive in the wake of all of this calamity.”
I plan on going to as many of the events as I can. Maybe I’ll see you there?
