TUS01503-Podcast 01 2025 Hold My Beer

Marc Moss: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Tele Something podcast. I’m your host, Mark Moss, founder and executive director of Tell Us something. The next Tele something event is October 7th, 2025. The theme is. Walk on the wild side. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets@tellussomething.org. This week on the podcast,

Jeremy Keene: Willie was one of those people, you just kind of into his energy and his mischief, like moths to a flame.

Meco Correia: And I turn off of sixth Street onto a side street. And so I’m in the heart of Missoula and I look up on the horizon. And something catches my eye and my first thought is it’s a helicopter. And as I look at it, I say, that’s going too fast.

Marc Moss: Four storytellers share their true personal story on the theme.

Hold my beer,

Kali Neumeister: and we get an alert on our phones that says Severe storm warning. And [00:01:00] then the power goes out. I don’t know if you know where you were at on July 24th, 2024, but I was 38 weeks pregnant having contractions. Knowing what to do with my evening ’cause I’m not quite ready to go to the hospital.

Tom Attard: So I tell him, Tim, you are impossible to love. You are destroying yourself. Like, what is your problem? Do you hate yourself? Are you mad at God? Do you have some kind of bitterness or anger?

Marc Moss: Their stories were recorded. Live in person in front of a sold out crowd on January 13th, 2025 at the George and Jane Denison Theater in Missoula, Montana.

I do have to apologize for the quality of the recording. The gain was set too high on the recording device and there was a lot of his and background noise. I did what I could to remove it and a lot of that is gone. In the process of removing most of the hiss, all of the applause and ambient noise went away.

The hiss is still noticeable in places. [00:02:00] These stories are great though, and it has been too long that they’ve been sitting dusty on my hard drive. So let’s get to it. TE us, something acknowledges that we are gathered on the traditional ancestral and unseated territory of the Ponderer Salish and Kni peoples.

When te us something engages in land acknowledgements, we try to make them specific to the time of the year that the live event took place. Keeping that in mind, we know that traditionally storytelling is reserved for the winter months for many tribes. This was a practical choice given the fact that during the other seasons.

People were busy growing, gathering and hunting food when the stories on this episode were recorded. It was winter with long, dark evenings, the snow and wind blowing outside, and that is when telling stories is used to entertain and to teach the children. Another reason for winter storytelling is that many traditional stories [00:03:00] contain animal characters.

To be respectful. People wait until the winter when animals hibernate or become less active so they cannot hear themselves being talked about. We take this moment to honor the land and its native people and the stories that they share with us

tell us something. Stories sometimes have adult themes. Storytellers sometimes use adult language. Please take care of yourselves. In our first story, Jeremy Keen and his buddies embark on a cross country road trip with a big gulp, super glued to the roof of the car, right along with Jeremy to experience the hilarious reactions and unexpected encounters Everywhere they went, Jeremy calls his story Big Gulp.

Thanks for listening.

Jeremy Keene: So you, y’all know what a big gulp is, right? It’s that 32 inch. A cup that you get at seven 11 comes with a lid and a straw. Your favorite soft drink have [00:04:00] seven 11 around here. But you know what I’m talking about. All the, every convenience store has one of these things. Well, the best thing we ever did was alluded to the top of my brother’s car.

It was my friend Willie’s id. He found this tube of super glue in the glove box. And he was like a little kid at Christmas. He’s all looking around and smiling, like, we gotta glue something.

So Willie was actually my brother’s friend. We were all going to school together in Boulder, Colorado, and uh, we’d hang out. Willie was one of those people, you’re just kind of drawn to his energy and his mischief, like moths to a flame and. One of our favorite things to do is to go on road trips. My brother had this 1973 Volvo station wagon he got from our parents.

Bright yellow had [00:05:00] the four speed manual and way too many miles. We packed that thing full of sleeping bags and potato chips and beer, some extra oil. So the back end sagged, like it wouldn’t make it around the block. We but it, but it did. And we went places. Went to Newport Beach and went to Mexico to the Grand Canyon and uh, Willie would always go along.

It wasn’t like he didn’t have to ask him or anything, he’d just show up. He’d have his long underwear and his cutoff shorts, and his pillow in one hand is toothbrush in the other.

Going on road trips with your buddies is a little bit different than road trips with your parents. This is the same car we used to take family road trips in, but when you go with your buddies, you see life through lens and Willie’s lens was like a carnival.

So the last road trip we ever did with Willie was we went to Mardi Gras [00:06:00] and we were around the backyard waiting for my brother to get outta class or something like that. And, um, fixing things on the car, which was basically Willie scraping the bugs off of. The windshield that the spatula

Tom Attard: found

Jeremy Keene: made, the cards fixed.

So that’s when he found the super glue and then he spotted the big gulp in the console between the seats. And, uh, I wasn’t, didn’t think it was a good idea. Glue up to my brother’s car because, you know, it’s a piece of shit. It’s his car. He’s gonna be pissed that we ruined the paint. But Willie thought this was the funniest thing he’d ever thought of, and he was determined.

He glued that thing right above the passenger side door where he might set it and get. Then I remember there’s this picture of Willie standing on the running board with his arm on the door and he is got his mouth on the straw thing, stayed on for 1500 miles.[00:07:00]

I’d be surprised. The lengths that people go to to tell you, you’ve left your big gulp on top of the car. They would run after us as we were pulling outta the gas station. There was this whole group of church kids in a van and it was like a slalom course driving through ’em as they tried to save the big gulp

where people would catch up to us on the freeway going 70 miles an hour and honk and point and. And we just smile, like had no idea what they were talking about.

Willie uh, Willie liked to do this thing. He called Newton’s. He put the, he put the car in neutral and put both feet on the floor and let it start rolling down the hill. So, if you remember, um, Newton’s law of motion is force equals mass times acceleration, where force is measured in Newton’s. And this is a 1973 Volvo station [00:08:00] wagon and acceleration is gravity, 19.8 meters per second going down the hill.

We’d all hang on and we’d watch the speedometer. 75 80, 85, 95. People trying to save the goal would give up. Fall behind.

Willie also used to love to get kicked outta things. He would get us kicked out of everything at at Mardi Gras. We waited in the rain to get into this restaurant for like an hour and by the time we got in there all hungry and wet and they put us at this little table in the middle of the whole restaurant and I could tell it wasn’t gonna work.

Willie’s, he can’t sit still. He is running. And talking to everybody, slapping people on the back, buying drinks, yelling at the waitress, and the, the manager finally comes over, guy named Michael. He is got Michael on his name tag and [00:09:00] he’s real polite, says, Hey, you know, we just, we just need your friend to come sit down and, you know, stop cussing so much.

So we call Willie over and Hey, Willie, come. And, and he, he just says. More money and he disappears out the door into the rain to get find an ATM machine. We don’t see him again for like 30 minutes, and we do, Michael’s got him by the arm and he says, look, your friend just has to sit down and stop swearing.

And Willie immediately says, shit, Michael, your pants are too fucking tight. You should relax more often.

Now I didn’t eating anything all day and I ordered this one of these Cajun burgers with all the fixings and puppies on the side, and I can see back in the open kitchen, they’re just about to bring our food out. I looked at Willie and I looked at my brother, [00:10:00] my friend Jeff,

and then my brother stands up and says, well, if he goes, we all go.

I took one last look at my burger. I knew that was gonna be a good burger. And then when I followed my friends out the door side, Willy’s standing on the sidewalk looking, sorry. He’s got bare feet cut off shorts. He’s wearing Hawaiian shirt that’s only got two buttons left. He’s got Mardi Gras beads down to his waist.

His curly hair is all wet, hanging in his face. I just looked at him. I said, Willie, man, where the fuck are your shoes? And then Michael comes back and tosses, Willie’s shoes out onto the sidewalk, and he sits down on the curb and kind of Dejectedly puts them and looks at us and says They were wet, explained everything.[00:11:00]

Then he got up and looked at the people still waiting in line to get in and said, y’all don’t eat there. Food sucks. If we’re going down to the corner where there’s a hot dog stand, they’ve got hurricanes now. Hurricanes are these rum and fruit drinks that they serve at Mardi Gras and they come in a big plastic cup with lid and a straw.

We probably should have glued one of those to the car. I don’t know. When we lost the big Gulp, when Mardi Gras was over, we drove to Pensacola so we could save Florida. Sat on the beach all day and filmed a Kung Fu movie. Willie and my brother fighting the waves as they came into shore.

Uh, and then, you know, when the sun went down, we got in the car and started driving home, and it was probably somewhere in the middle of the night, three in the morning I stopped take a piss, and standing there in the headlights, I saw the big gulp, was all it was [00:12:00] left was this ring of super glue.

A couple years after that, Willie was gone. My brother called me and said he’d crashed his hang glider into the side of, I’d never known anybody that died before, at least nobody my age. And for a long time I just kept thinking we’d find him again. Like all those times that Willie would get lost. You could be standing there talking to Willie one minute, and the next minute he’d be gone.

And then you wouldn’t see him again for like three hours and we’d go looking for him. ’cause you know what? If something happened, but we could never find him, and then he’d just turn up later at the hotel sleeping in front of the door. I,

I think some people just burn so bright. They’re only here for a flash, a shooting star or a bolt of lightning. And afterwards, you’re never quite [00:13:00] sure what you saw. That’s how it was with Willie. I think we all know somebody like that. If he’d lived, he’d be in his fifties today, have a hard time imagining what he’d be like.

I like remembering when he was 20. It reminds me that not everyone gets to stay here for very long, and it reminds me, I’m glad I’m still here. I’m glad I get to stay a little longer, and I know Willie’s not lost. He knows where he is. We just can’t find him. Right. Thank you.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Jeremy. Jeremy Keene graduated from the University of Colorado in 1994 and landed a three month temp job in Missoula and never left.

He met his wife Heather, and they raised two talented daughters who are now flung far and wide in the world after a long career, engineering streets and highways, Jeremy became the city Public Works [00:14:00] director in 2019. When he is not sailing on Flathead Lake, you might find him riding mountain bikes in the hills around Missoula or playing beer league hockey at the Glacier Ice rink.

In our next story, Miko Correa is a former PACU nurse with a heightened awareness of horizons and the lingering echoes of trauma. Discover how a unique self-care practice involving Japanese rope art provides grounding and connection, setting the stage for an extraordinary encounter with the unknown. On a quiet Missoula Street, Miko calls her story eye on the sky.

Thanks for listening.

Meco Correia: From 1998 to 2000. I worked in a local hospital in the post anesthesia care unit, also known as the recovery room, and several times a month I had to carry a [00:15:00] pager and be on call. For those of you that are not from pre-cellphone error, that’s a way that somebody could get in touch with you.

And believe it or not, I was told I needed to explain that. Uh,

so, um, as the, my day off technically, but I was an on-call day off, and if my pager buzzed I well prior to my pager buzzing, I became very acutely aware of the horizon. Um, where the helicopters would be coming in and the helicopters usually meant that somebody had something really awful happen to them where they made a bad decision and now they were life fighting in.

So I became aware of watching [00:16:00] the horizon. Um. Not just when I was carrying a pager, but it became a heightened sense that I noticed things in the sky. And when I would feel, what I would feel is my heart would start racing, my stomach would clench, my hands would get sweaty, and it really helped me to tune into that sense of embodiment, like how things felt for me.

And this segues into, I am from those experiences of recognizing that people carry a lot, a lot of, a lot of traumas. In both my career I used the opportunity to, to connect and touch people, to help ground them. So that kind of segued into. I am a [00:17:00] whole creator in a community here in Missoula, built on helping people to ground an essential way to heal their collective traumas.

And so it’s a very supportive, very loving environment and it’s pretty powerful. So part of that is also finding different ways that help me to feel grounded and uh, one of those ways was. On the afternoon of October 13th, it was a Sunday in 2024, so three months ago, and I was spending an afternoon doing, um, a sari session.

ChAARI is the Japanese art of rope tying or rope bondage, and in a session, if I have ropes. Um, when they’re tied on me, they’re not tight, [00:18:00] but it allows a compression that releases an incredible amount of endorphins, so your natural opiates and that helps relieve and, uh, my autoimmune issues where I carry a lot of inflammatory side effect, but it also helps me really ground into a deep space of connection and.

Wholeness. So on that afternoon, after that, um, session, I was out running some errands and I had just, as I was out running the errands, I was listening to have Chorus Sing. It’s a, it’s a song, but it’s a mantra, a Hindu mantra called, oh. Potty m and all is [00:19:00] considered by the Hindus as the sound of the universe, universal sound, and in that sentence of M potty M, it’s a mantra to all in relief from suffering.

For each of us, it’s like a global prayer to help relieve our suffering. And it’s a beautiful, uh, choir that’s singing this. So my car is just reverberating with this gentle praise music, and I turn off of sixth Street onto a side street. And so I’m in the heart of Missoula and I look up on the horizon and something catches my eye and my first thought.

Is it’s a helicopter, which after all these years I’m still, I still have a bit of a [00:20:00] response to them, and as I look at it, I say, that’s going too fast. And it is literally in less than a blink of an eye, it traveled across that half of the valley and I stopped in the middle of the road. No, no cars. It’s a side street.

Not a lot of traffic. But I stop and I look at this, and in this microsecond observation, I say, what the hell? And there above me, it’s not a helicopter. It’s bigger than a helicopter, but smaller than an airplane. It’s kind of lowy. Metal. So it’s got its own radiance. There are no lights, no reflectors, no propellers, no [00:21:00] gen engines, no turbo boosters or thrusters.

There is no, uh, chem trail that cross the sky. It’s dusk. Um, I looked at my, my. A clock on my dashboard and it was 5:09 PM and I like super fast, took in these details that it’s silver. It had kind of a dry type shape front, and the body had what I would say would be wings, except they were tipped up and they were shaped like flattened, uh, triangles.

And on the one wing there was an arch of red with, or it was an arch, but had red symbols and it was like, like an arch. And then there was another arch below it that [00:22:00] had red symbols and they were just out of focus where I couldn’t make out what they were. But this spacecraft was just above the tree line.

And there was no seams, honest crap and no windows. And immediately I have this sense of incredible love, like grounded in love. I didn’t the sweaty hands, I didn’t like the clenched stomach. I didn’t have that visceral response. It was just the opposite. It was beautiful. And as I’m looking at this spacecrafts, I wanna say spaceship, I, I mean, I said all it’s, you know, I said in my head, no words in my head [00:23:00] because I had such an incredible sense of love.

If you are a UFO, you could totally take me. And by golly, that. That craft slid over to the left and turned slightly toward me, and I realized at that point we were communicating and I got a download that without words, there were no words. It was just this sense of knowing that my mission is to love myself abundantly.

Uh, and to let that spread out to others and to teach them about self-love and connection and let that ripple out through our planet. And I was recognizing that the sense and the feeling that I had from this experience was [00:24:00] equal to the sense that I had when I had the ropes. Very grounded, very loving, very reassuring.

And so I don’t know what you would do if you saw a UFO, but this is what I did. I said thank you, and then I drove away.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Miko Miko. Correa is a believer that a nourishing meal cooked and shared in love will advance soul healing on this planet. She’s a co-creator in a sensual healing touch community, a culinary artist, a watercolor dabbler, a gypsy gardener, and an RN that has touched many lives and bodies in this community for over 25 years coming up after the break.

Tom Attard: So I tell him, Tim, you are impossible to love. You are destroying yourself. Like, what is your problem? Do you hate yourself? Are you mad at [00:25:00] God? Do you have some kind of bitterness or anger?

Kali Neumeister: And we get an alert on our phones that says severe storm warning, and then the power goes out. I don’t know if you know where you were at on July 24th, 2024, but I was 38 weeks pregnant, having contractions, knowing what to do with my evening ’cause I’m not quite ready to go to the hospital.

Marc Moss: Stay with us. Remember that The next tell us something event is October 7th. The theme is Walk on the Wild Side. You can pitch your story by calling 4 0 6 2 0 3 4 6 8 3. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets at, tell us something. DOT org. Thank you to our story sponsor who helped us pay our storytellers the Good Food Store for more than 50 years, the Good Food Store has been Missoula’s homegrown independent source for natural, organic, and locally sourced food.

Learn more@goodfoodstore.com. Thanks to our media sponsors, Missoula events.net Blue Dog Media and Missoula Broadcasting Company. [00:26:00] Learn more about them and listen online@missoulabroadcastingcompany.com. Thanks to our in kind sponsors Float Missoula. Learn more@floatmsla.com and Joyce of tile. Learn about Joyce and the work that she does@joyceoftile.com.

Alright, let’s get back to the stories. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast. I’m Mark Moss. Tom Attard shares his story about a raw and emotional Christmas Eve encounter at a Kalispell bar where a man’s heartbreak leads him to his little brother. A drywall delivering, street fighting functional alcoholic.

They’re intertwined lives, marked by a decade of distance and dangerous choices build to a powerful, desperate conversation about change. Crack a beer and listen along to Tom’s story that he calls a ride home from the rainbow. Thanks for listening.

Tom Attard: Where do you go when you get dumped on Christmas Eve?

You go to the [00:27:00] purveyors of peace, the home of the magical elixir of emotional amnesia. You, you go to the bar, but who are you gonna find at the bar on Christmas Eve? Well, I’ll tell ya. You are gonna find somebody who’s burnt every bridge, someone who’s taxed every relationship in their life, to the point of breaking, who has no one left, no relationships to speak of.

And so to the bar I went. So I’m walking up to Stockman’s Pool Hall in Kalispell, Montana. And I look across the parking lot and I see this big, burly guy’s got a bushy beard smoking a cigarette. He’s got a Santa hat on. I start getting closer. I look at that guy, looks familiar. [00:28:00] Lo and behold, it’s my little brother, Tim.

Oh, and what does Tim do when he sees me? I’ll tell ya. He grabs me. He picks me up. He puts me on his shoulder, parades me around the entire bar, introducing me to everyone who he knows by their first name. Every bartender, everyone, because my little brother lives at the bar. He is the most functional alcoholic I’ve ever met.

He can drink all night long. And get up at five 30 in the morning to deliver drywall. He would drive that boom truck. And Tim is the strongest person I’ve ever met. He can beat me arm wrestling on both sides while I’m using two hands. [00:29:00] His hands are so big around that I can’t even close mine around his when I go to shake his hand.

And he’s delivered drywall so much. One of his arms is longer than the other. This might not mean anything to you, but he can carry two sheets of five eights thick, 12 foot long sheet rock at once. He didn’t pull the tape. If you’ve picked up one sheet, you know that that’s impossible. So calling him my little brother was a misnomer.

He is taller than me. Six foot three, just super strong. Uh, but I didn’t have much of a relationship with my brother for about a decade. I only saw him twice a year at most Thanksgiving and Christmas. And that is because if you ever got a call from my little brother, it was from one of [00:30:00] two places. He either is gonna call you from jail.

Or from the hospital, and that’s because he was also the bravest person I’ve ever met. He never backed down from a fight. In fact, he’d fight four or five guys at once, which often lance you in the hospital. So at this moment in time, me and my little brother, our lives merged. We became two peas in a pod.

We were on the same life path. And, uh, yeah, I had a lot of my first experiences with my little brother. Um, I didn’t even know what last call was for until I met him the first time. He came down to Missoula to go out with me. We’d been out drinking and bar hopping and two in the morning at Charlie B’s. He would walk the [00:31:00] call, last call, he walks up to the bar.

He orders three beers and three shots, and he drank them in five minutes and he just was unstoppable and he was so fun. Um, yeah, we would just stay up all night playing guitar and hand drums until they called the cops on us. And then we would laugh at the cops ’cause we were like. It’s Friday night, Missoula.

What did you expect? Um, so I just couldn’t keep up with the guy. I gave it my best shot and for two years I tried to keep up, but after a couple years realized, man, I can’t keep doing this. And I tried to get my life together, you know, I tried to stop drinking, tried to stop doing. All the other stuff. Uh, but I was still [00:32:00] chasing this girl in Whitefish and, uh, she invited me to her house warming party on Valentine’s Day.

And I said, well, if, if I’m gonna come to your house, housewarming party on Valentine’s Day, I’m gonna break you up with your boyfriend. I’m just gonna ha kiss you in front of him. We’ll get in a fight. And then ta-da, I’ll be your boyfriend. So I, uh, went up to Whitefish with evil intentions and I get up there and I get to the party and everything’s going great, right?

According to plan. And I get a call about 10 or so that evening, pick up the phone, and who is it? It’s my little brother and he’s like, Hey, I called to tell you I love you. [00:33:00] And I’m like, Tim, uh, where are you man? He’s like, I’m at the Rainbow bar. And I was like, he’s obviously drunk out of his mind. So I was like, don’t go anywhere.

I’m gonna come and get you. And he started laughing. He says, you’re gonna drive all the way from Missoula, Montana to pick me up from the rainbow bar and give me a ride home. And I said, no. Nope. I actually happened to be in Whitefish, so I’m gonna come get ya. So I left the party and I got in my car and I was, I was pretty angry.

I was frustrated with this guy. And so as I’m driving, you know, I’m working up this whole lecture in my mind. I’m gonna give it to him, and I get to the [00:34:00] rainbow and I pick him up and we’re driving him back, driving him to his trailer, uh, to his fiance’s house. Now, Tim, uh, he. Was actually a recovering meth addict, and he’d been on and off meth.

Meth and oxycont back and forth. So to Tim, alcoholism was a recovery program. A lot of people recovering alcoholics will become chain smokers. Tim recovering meth addict, became an alcoholic. This was actually the best he’d ever been doing in his whole life. He had a house, he had a fiance. But we get back there and he’s his fiance and step kids are there and he walks into the trailer, he trips over this broken tv and she’s just like, Tom, you [00:35:00] gotta get him outta here.

I don’t want him around the kids. It’s like, okay, I understand. So I, we go out on the porch and I’m gonna let him have it. So I tell him, Jim. You are impossible to love. You are destroying yourself. Like, what is your problem? Do you hate yourself? Are you mad at God? Do you have some kind of bitterness or anger?

What is going on? And he looked at me and he said, you know. I made my peace with God. I don’t have a problem with anything. It’s the people. It too many people have hurt me too badly and I just can’t. I can’t stop. I can’t change, and [00:36:00] I wasn’t gonna let up. I was like, man, you can change. Anybody can change.

I’m trying to turn my life around. You can do it. Like, come with me. And he says, you know, I can’t change. I’ll never change. And the more he’d said that, just the more frustrated I got finally, just really in his face. And I’m like, that’s a, that’s not true. You can change. And he looks at me right in the face and he said, Tom, I’ll never change.

I’ve seen it. I’m gonna die. He said, I love you, goodbye. And I was even more, it’s impossible. You don’t know that you can change. You just gotta try. And [00:37:00] so I just, you know, he wasn’t listening. I said everything I had to say and I walked away and I got my car and I drove back to Missoula and I was deeply frustrated, but I was also, I was confused and I wanted to believe so badly that people change, that I could change, that Tim could change.

And four days later, six in the morning, my phone rang. And it is my mom. She was crying and I said, I know Tim’s dead. And she said, how? How do you know? He said, he told me. And that began [00:38:00] a decade of a journey of living my life. As a memorial for my little brother, Tim, to do all the things that he’ll never be able to do and to experience all the things he’ll never experience.

And I went, I got that phone call and I went to my fridge and I got my last beer, you know, went outside and I opened it up and poured it on the ground. And it’s not been an easy road, didn’t. Find sobriety right away. A week here, a month, six months, still going. But I realized along the way that

the strongest thing that I can do is to admit that people [00:39:00] hurt me and to feel my feelings. And the bravest thing that I can do is to choose to trust people and give them a chance. And so that’s what I do every day and I do it all for 10. Tim.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Tom. Tom Attard was born and raised in the great state of Montana and is a father, husband, general contractor, ultra runner, and lover of all things outdoors.

You can find him on most dark winter mornings, running a trail on any of the surrounding slopes in constant motion from birth. Tom rarely still skiing, rafting, fishing, hunting, running, and finding any excuse to get out there. Rounding out this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast, Khali Neum Meister invites you to forget what the movie’s taught you about pregnancy.

This candid account reveals the [00:40:00] surprising realities of pregnancy from a challenging gestational diabetes diagnosis. To an unexpected labor during a severe storm. Follow one woman’s unforgettable journey to motherhood, proving that real life births are far more dramatic and unpredictable than anything you can see on a screen.

KLI calls her story a womb awakening. Thanks for listening.

Kali Neumeister: Pregnancy is not what you see in the movies. Oftentimes in the movies, they portray pregnancy as. A woman who runs out of some important meeting because she feels nauseous, she barely makes it to the bathroom to throw up. Then she looks at her calendar and calculates and says, maybe you should take pregnancy test.

Then you flash forward and you see her for her first ultrasound appointment. She gets excited and you see the bump, you know, gradually develop through the film, and at the end it’s this really dramatic, you know, moment. Either there’s a big [00:41:00] contraction and they say, oh my goodness, the baby’s coming. We gotta

Meco Correia: go.

Kali Neumeister: Or the water breaks at the most inopportune time with friends or at a restaurant. My experience with pregnancy was a little bit different after I found out I was pregnant, I, I go on my chart and I contact my doctor and say, Hey, I had a pre positive pregnancy test. And they say, congratulations, we’ll see you in a month.

Oh, okay. Well, what do I do in the meantime? Oh yeah, sorry. Here’s a pamphlet you can read. Okay, so take my prenatals. Don’t drink alcohol, avoid substances. What about the diet stuff? Okay, cool. So then you go to your first doctor’s appointment. That is my child right there. Spoiler alert.

So then you go to your first appointment, you get your ultrasound, they say everything looks good, you know, we’ll keep following up every month. And then you hit about [00:42:00] your 28 weeks of pregnancy and you go in for your glucose test, which I have a few pregnant people in my life, so I did know about this, but not from the movies for the record.

So you go in for your glucose test and you know you’re pretty healthy going into your pregnancy. So it’s a surprise when you fail the first test, right? Then you go through your second test and you’re not quite sure what the results will be. You have to fast and drink this awful sugary liquid. And then, you know, they tell you, all right, well you have gestational diabetes, which is something that was surprising to me.

I had to be on a pretty rigid diet and they test you, test your blood sugar four times a day, make sure the baby’s not getting too big, you have to go in for appointments, and that was challenging. I’ve never had a lot of exposure to the medical world besides just my regular exams. So. That was hard. You know, I had to worry a lot about her getting too big, her, her having complications, but things were okay.

They stabilized. So we’re going through this process of being on [00:43:00] this new diet and things are going okay. Well then July 24th, 2024 hits, and I’m about a week and a half out from my due date and I’m starting to get contractions through the week. And once again, it’s not something where you just rush off to the hospital at this point.

You have to wait. How long are the contractions lasting and how long is it between each contraction? So my husband and I aren’t at home. We’re just relaxing watching Netflix after a day of work, and we get an alert on our phones that says severe storm warning, and then the power goes out. I don’t know if you know where you were at on July 24th, 2024, but I was 38 weeks pregnant having contractions.

I’m knowing what to do with my evening ’cause I’m not quite ready to go to the hospital. So what do we decide to do instead? We don’t have our entertainment for the evening, so we decide to, um, you know, look through our list of things we have to get done, you [00:44:00] know, set up crib, check, set, you know, clear out the nursery.

Almost check. We had a, um, desk we wanted to, um, assemble, you know, before the baby arrived. So what do we do? We drag this, um. You know this box out, we pull out this desk and we have pieces all over our kitchen island. I put on my headlamp and my husband has his, his headlamp on. We’re lighting candles and we just gotta get this desk done before the baby gets here.

Right? It’s the only logical thing.

And so I hand him a wrench and I hand him, you want a bag of the tools?

Just gimme a sec. Okay. I’m good. What’s the next step? Because there’s no owner’s manual for what do you do when there’s a major storm event? But we have a manual to assemble the desk, so let’s do that. The contraction slowed down and my husband says, you know, the storm is over now. Um, you know, I kinda [00:45:00] wanna go check things out, see how things fared, see how our town is doing.

We had some branches fly across our yard. I later heard that my, um, sister and brother-in-law, they had their cottonwood ancestral tree pull up and drop right in front of their house. You know, we heard about, you know, trees coming down on top of roofs and cars and totaling them, you know, a hundred mile per hour winds on mount jumbo.

But we got through that, right? I didn’t have the baby. So then the next morning we both go onto our separate work days, and about midday, I noticed that I had some symptoms that I wasn’t really sure about. So I go to the bathroom and I pull down my underwear and I look down and there’s a little bit of fluid.

So I take a picture, shoot it off to my sister.

She has three kids. She has her md, so I thought she’d be the best person to talk to about this. There’s no water gushing, so I’m probably okay. Right. So at the [00:46:00] end of the day she says, you know what? You probably should just call lab and delivery just to be sure. So I go ahead and do that, and I say, you know, here are my symptoms.

I started having contractions, but they weren’t that intense yet. You know, this is what occurred today. And they said, okay, well, we can kind of see how things go. I said, oh, I forgot to mention, at her last appointment on Tuesday, just a few days ago, she was breech. And for those of you who don’t know about what that means, her head was straight up and her butt was straight down.

And we knew this. We knew that we should go to the hospital if, if things progressed and they said, you don’t have to rush, but we would recommend getting a bag together as quickly as possible and heading in. So I called my mom on the phone. I said, I don’t think we’re having the baby today, but we’re heading to the hospital.

I just wanted to let you know. So we do that. We get our bags packed and we say, you know, we’ll probably just check in with them. Go get takeout, head home, relax. I didn’t have any two intense tractions that day. So then we get to the hospital and [00:47:00] they do their little swab, and at that point we’re just relaxing and hanging out.

And, um, I get a test alert that says positive for amniotic fluid. And my doctor walks in and she says, we’re having a baby today. She explained to us that during major, um, bariatric pressure changes, something can happen called the preterm rupture of the membranes, which means your labor doesn’t progress very far, but your water can break.

And when we had driven up, the parking lot was full of labor and delivery cars. I wasn’t the only one. So we go back and they begin the process of going through the C-section and they numb me from the, the chest down. And my husband and I are behind this, this tarp. And for those of you who have been pregnant or have had a c-section of what that feels like, and they start to pull and, and tug.

And I feel this very bizarre pulling and tugging sensation. And I feel kind of dumb in this moment, but I’m like, have you started? [00:48:00] And she says, oh, we are well on our way. And she pulls our daughter out and she roars like a lion. And our doctor says, that’s a really good sign. She’s born the sign of the Leo.

She was born the year of the dragon, and she was born Amids. The greatest storm that I have ever been witness to, and I think back to Marian Zimmer, Bradley’s sci-fi novel Storm Queen. There’s this character who when she would feel great emotions, the storm would rage around her lightning bolts and wind.

And I’m saying, I think you are our storm queen. You brought this storm and you brought, um, as you went into this world. And I looked down at her with her bright, um, blue eyes, her stormy blue eyes, and her dark hair at that time. [00:49:00] And to this day, as you heard earlier, she still hollers, she still roars like that.

Lion and dragons are a big part of it too. The the Chinese sign of dragons is also very special to us. And I look down at her eye and I say, this is your new home. Now. You’re safe. If we can survive this, we can survive anything. Thank you.

Marc Moss: Thanks Khali. KLI New Meister is 33 years old and was born and raised here in Missoula.

A counselor by Trade kli enjoys the quiet life of reading and storytelling and the adventures of skiing and scuba diving. Thanks for listening to the Tele Something podcast. Coming up on the next episode of the Tele Something podcast,

Mark Schoenfeld: I’ve been told I look like Matt Dame, and you’d have to imagine me skinnier.

With more hair on my head and less on my face. But I a [00:50:00] little bit.

Tess Sneeringer: So I turn back to Officer Becky who has a second question, which is, have you been drinking? And I say, no, ’cause I have not been drinking. And she walks closer than me and she smells me. And she goes, you’ve been drinking

Kelley Provost: my hand finds its way to my purse.

I do not let go of these hot five fingers that are my child’s. And, and I grab my phone and it does not ring a second time. My sister and my husband lock eyes with me. We know that this is the news that we’ve been waiting to hear since we left Missoula.

Jeff Ducklow: I looked to my left and a tower of ice, probably the size of two Wilma buildings stacked on top of each other, was slowly starting to lean away, and I just went, oh my God.

My heart was beating so fast. I couldn’t feel it. It was, I was just frozen in disbelief.

Marc Moss: Listen to the concluding stories from the Hold My Beard. Tell us something. Event from January, 2025. Subscribe to the podcast so you’ll be [00:51:00] sure to catch it on the next Tell us something podcast. Remember that. The next tell us something event is October 7th.

The theme is Walk on the Wild Side. You can pitch your story by calling 4 0 6 2 0 3 4 6 8 3. Learn more and get your tickets at Tell us something. Dot. Org.

[00:00:00] Marc Moss: Welcome to the tell us something podcast. I’m Marc Moss. We are currently looking for storytellers for the next tell us something storytelling event. The theme is lost in translation. If you’d like to pitch your story for consideration, please call 406 203 4683. You have three minutes to leave your pitch.

The pitch deadline is August 20th. I look forward to hearing from you soon. I’ll call you as soon as I get your pitch. If you’re not the type to share a story and you want to attend the event, you can get limited edition printed tickets. At Rockin Rudy’s you can also get digital tickets at tellussomething.org

we acknowledge with deep respect and gratitude that we are on the ancestral lands of the Pendlay Salish and Kootenai peoples who have stewarded this land for countless generations, their profound connection to the earth and its resources. Has left an indelible mark on the landscape. We now call home in recognizing their enduring legacy.

We are called to be steadfast stewards of this land, nurturing its diversity, [00:01:00] preserving its ecosystems and upholding the principles of environmental sustainability. May we honor the wisdom of our ancestors and theirs and embrace our responsibility to protect and preserve. This precious land for future generations.

This week on the podcast,

[00:01:17] Charlene Brett: the thunder starts rolling and it’s echoing off all of these walls back and forth. My dogs are getting terrified. They’re like, can we go in the tent? Please? We’re scared. Please let us in. So we all, we bail into the tent because the rains come in and the rain instantly starts pouring.

[00:01:33] Jessie Novak: And I know where this is going and I don’t like it one bit. My brain is saying they’re going to shut the oil lamp off too. And it’s gonna be really, really dark. And boy, was

I right!

[00:01:48] Sydney Holte: When I’m doing the thing that I’m nervous about, the feeling goes away. But this time, the feeling in my stomach did not go away.

I was still feeling

really queasy.

[00:01:59] Marc Moss: Three storytellers [00:02:00] shared their true personal story on the theme, Out of My Shell. Their stories were recorded in person in front of a live audience July 16th, 2023 at Bonner Park Band Show. The storytellers you’ll hear in this episode are all educators enrolled in the University of Montana’s Creative Pulse program, a graduate program of the University of Montana that Creative Pulse embraces critical thinking, processes, and habits of the mind, enabling the participants to develop Refine and integrate these processes into their own thinking and learning abilities as well as those of their students.

The Master of Arts in Integrated Arts and Education is completed over two consecutive summer sessions, plus independent studies and a final project. Our first story comes to us from Charlene Brett, who takes her two children and two Golden Retrievers into the backcountry for a backpacking weekend and survives a terrible overnight thunderstorm.

Charlene calls her story, A backcountry weekend adventure. Thanks for listening.[00:03:00]

[00:03:02] Charlene Brett: I’m a music teacher, and I love what I do. But… But as all teachers do, we live for summer. And I live for adventures in the summer. And this particular summer, I was talking with my oldest daughter Abby and my middle son Craig about going on a backpacking adventure. And we were going to leave my husband and my youngest son Tyler behind.

Now Abby is 15 and Craig is 12 and, and what you need to know about them is, is Abby is very independent, sort of headstrong daughter. of mine who’s like, yes, mom, let’s go. We can do this girl power and, and my son Craig is like, he likes to do that stuff, but he will always kind of step back and observe first and think about it and before he just jumps right in.

So I have two different personalities, but they’re both good. They’re like, yeah, mom, let’s plan this trip. So All week long, we’re [00:04:00] thinking about where we should go and we decide we’re going to go to Baker Lake, which is down in the southern end of Darby and sits in a circ at the base of Trapper Peak.

Trapper Peak sits at about 10, 100 feet in elevation and Baker Lake is about a thousand feet underneath that. And like I said, it sits in this cirque. So we’re like, hey, that looks cool. It’s only a mile and a half into it. And since we’re going to leave on a Friday late afternoon, that would be a good hike for us to get into and get into that lake and get set up.

I talked to my husband. He’s like, yeah, you can do this. You can do this. I’ll stay home with Tyler. All is good. You go for it. Well, all week long, on social media, and on the weather reports, they were calling for major thunderstorms that weekend. Ah, Montana weather. Montana’s bipolar. Look, it’s a blue sky, it’s beautiful right now, it’s going to be like that on this weekend too.

There’s not going to be a big thunderstorm. [00:05:00] All week long, social media. Better not do anything, there’s going to be a big storm. So we decide we’re going to wait until Friday and we’ll make that decision as to whether we should go or not. And Friday comes along, it’s the afternoon, the kids get off their job and we’re like, hey, what are we going to do?

I look outside, blue sky, not a cloud in the sky. Let’s go. So we throw our backpacks in, my little Toyota minivan, the mom van, and we hit Highway 93 and we head down to Darby and we hit the trailhead. And we start hoofing it up the switchback. It’s about a thousand foot elevation gain like in the first half mile.

And we’re huffin and puffin and we got two Golden Retriever dogs are with us, the ones that love going hiking, Bailey and Finley. And we get up to this beautiful overview and we’re looking at the valley below where we drove up the road and the sun is, you know, the sun is setting behind us and it’s casting this beautiful golden color over that valley and it’s [00:06:00] just gorgeous.

And we’re kind of looking at each other like, so glad we’re doing this, this is really cool. And for me, it was like a moment of. This weekend, this backpacking trip is a moment of, like, empowerment for myself that I can do this. I can take my kids on a backpacking trip on my own and it’s going to be okay.

Alright? So we’re providing some sort of, like, I don’t know, extra security or something that I’m proving to myself I can do this. Then we finish on the trailhead and we get to the lake. And we jump up to, or we climb up and there’s the head of the lake and it’s that first view of the lake when you finally get there.

It’s just gorgeous. It’s calm. The water is calm and the sun is setting behind all these ridges that um, circle around the lake and you can see Trapper Peak up off to the left and there’s a campsite right there that’s not taken. So we’re looking at this campsite and thinking, well, yeah, you know, it will be okay.

My dad. Always taught me to look around at the different options [00:07:00] before you choose one. It’s okay. There’s these rolling granite boulders, big boulders, because you’re up in the high country. And they’re colored, these beautiful colors coming down, it’s just gorgeous. These rolling boulders that go out to the lake that would make a perfect spot for the kids to jump off or dive off and swim in the water.

And I’m looking around and I see this one little patch of dirt. Where obviously other people have put a tent and right behind that is a really big tall dead tree a dead snake and I think Mom always said don’t put your tent under a dead tree in case a windstorm comes along We don’t have a choice if we’re going to take this campsite and those rolling boulders come right down to that and I’m thinking well if there is a thunderstorm then That rain might come down to our tent Let’s look for another spot.

Well, kind of look across the lake and you can tell that there’s this glorious campsite across the lake. It’s already [00:08:00] taken. Lucky ducks got the really cool spot. They’re set up over there and, and kind of look to the left and to the right of the lake and, and there really isn’t anything else. So this is our spot.

And it’s starting to get dark and we haven’t had dinner yet. So we set up our tent. I had a brand new tent from REI. I loved it. Little four person backpacking tent. Got the footprint to go with it. Smart. Set that baby up. It went up so easy. Made dinner, cooked some popcorn, I always pop popcorn on my backpacking trips.

Watched the fish jump in the lake, did a little swim to get all that sweat off from the hike. Watched the stars come out, it’s beautiful. When you’re up in the backcountry and you don’t have the light pollution, the stars just shine so much brighter. So we’re telling stories, pretty soon we are off to bed, it’s kind of a cold night.

No sound of rain or anything over the whole night. The morning we wake up, that sun is [00:09:00] coming into the tent. And if you sleep in a tent and you’ve ever had the sun coming in the morning, you know that feeling of warmth that comes. You’re just kind of snuggled in and just like, Oh, but I got to get up. So we finally get out of bed and we’re talking about different things that we’re going to do for the day.

Of course, I love to fly fish. I’m going to be fly fishing most of the day. My kids love to swim. And then they’re fishing a little bit too, but they’re spending more time swimming in the water and throwing sticks for the dogs and whatnot. And we’re walking around the entire lake, we’re checking out the stream at the back of the lake, we’re looking at the wildflowers.

And I’m looking at the sky again and I’m thinking, what an awesome weekend. There’s not a cloud up there. Bipolar weather in Montana, right? And during this time, this day, there had been some day backpackers that had come up to the lake. And spent some time, there were two different groups, and of course there’s this other campsite, and they’re doing fishing, and me, I’m thinking, I’m up here with my kids, but [00:10:00] there was a sense of security knowing I wasn’t the only adult up there.

So the day goes on, those day packers head out, and I’m kind of looking across the lake, and I notice that the other group of backpackers is packing up. And I’m thinking, hmm, starting to feel a little bit uncomfortable, you know, ah, we’re good. I got this. I can do this. There’s not a cloud in the sky.

Looking up at the peaks. It’s beautiful. Trapper Peaks. Amazing. I want to hike it someday. Don’t know if I can. Those backpackers head out and we have the lake to ourself. And there’s something about that, too. Like, it’s ours. We can be as loud as we want, we can do whatever we want up here. We’re not going to disturb anybody else.

So we head back over to our campsite, and we’re kind of settling in a little bit, getting ready for dinner. And the wind, just like right now, is picking up. Remember I said this lake sits in a circ at the base of Trapper Peak. [00:11:00] And that wind is coming in and it’s picking up really, really fast. And it’s starting to circle around the lake.

And I look up at the ridge tops. And the darkest, blackest clouds are just coming over the ridge in all different directions up there. And I thought, oh shit, here it comes. And it looks like it’s going to be a doozy. And when you’re up there at 9, 000 feet and you’re in a thunderstorm in the mountains and you’re all by yourself, you’re thinking, What the heck am I doing up here?

Maybe I shouldn’t have come. Maybe I should have like listened to my parents and stayed home. The thunder starts rolling and it’s echoing off all of these walls back and forth. My dogs are getting terrified. They’re like, can we go in the tent, please? We’re scared. Please let us in. So we all, we bail into the tent because the rains come in and the rain.

Instantly starts pouring. The dogs are snuggled up next to me and they’re whining, they’re looking at me like, Mom, what are we going to do? And my [00:12:00] kids are kind of terrified and we just break out in laughter because what do you do when you’re freaked out? You start laughing. And so we’re laughing at each other and I’m sitting there praying, Oh my god, I hope we make it through this storm.

I hope that dead tree behind us doesn’t fall on us. The wind is really bad. In fact, the wind becomes so bad that the tent poles are starting to cave in on us. And so the next thing you know, my brand new tent, right? I’m not going to let this windstorm mess it up. We’re playing Twister in the tent. And we’ve got arms and legs stretched out, and we’re pushing out on those tent poles, and we’re trying to hold it, and I’m trying to keep the dogs calm, and I’m looking at my kids going, it’s going to be okay, we’re going to make it.

In my head I’m thinking, what if something happens to me? Do they know how to get out of here? Are they going to know what to do? Do they know where I put the keys to the minivan? Can my daughter drive down that hill?

Plane twister, hole in the nose, and finally my daughter [00:13:00] looks down and she sees these major ripples and bubbles in the bottom of the tent. Flowing from one end to the other. And she goes, Mom, look. And I went, Oh, crap. We’re going to have wet sleeping pads. We’re going to have wet sleeping bags. We’re going to have wet clothes.

It’s going to be a cold night. What am I doing? What am I doing? And then we laugh, and we sing, we have this crazy song that we sing, it goes, Sunshine and happy days, blue skies are all around us. And it’s meant to be off pitch because it’s like supposed to break the tension, right? So we’re singing that in the tent.

My daughter zips open the tent door, and pulls it back open, and we look. And there’s a five foot wide by about two inch deep river of rainwater running underneath our tent. And out the other side. I was like, [00:14:00] crap. We’re going to be wet. We’re going to be soaked. And we laugh, I’m trying, and happy, you know, and it goes on.

The storm finally subsides, and I assess the situation. Things are dry. Close up the tent. In fact, it subsides a little bit. We get out and we’re kind of checking things out. The tree is still standing. I close up the door. We settle in for the night because we’re not going to pack out in the dark. And I just tell him, okay, if we make it to the morning, we’re going to throw everything in our backpacks.

I don’t care how it’s organized. It’s just. I always organize my backpack really well. I don’t care how it’s organized, and we’re going to get out of here. We sleep. Well, they sleep. I kind of wake up off and on. You can hear the pitter patter of the rain, and every now, thunder boomer, and rain, and thunder boomer, and then finally the morning comes, and I open up the tent door, and it’s just a drizzle, and I’m like, hey kids, let’s go, back it up, we’re getting out of here.

So we’re stuffing things in, and getting ready to hike out, and on the hike [00:15:00] out, I’m thinking, Maybe it would be wise to invest in some sort of like S. O. S. satellite telephone or Garmin device. But then I was thinking, everything was okay. We did it. We had a great adventure. I have a story to tell and I live to do it and I’m more powerful for it.

And we made it home and we told our story.

[00:15:31] Marc Moss: Thanks, Charlene. Charlene Brett is a K 5 teacher in the Bitterroot Valley in Montana and has been teaching music for 14 years. She’s a fan of the great outdoors and enjoys escaping into various high mountain lakes in both Montana and Idaho in the summer to fly fish. When not backpacking with her family or her three mom friends, moms of the traveling backpacks, You can find Charlene hiking on her property with two female golden retrievers and her tortoise shell cat, who thinks she is a dog.

On those [00:16:00] cold Montana evenings, she enjoys working thousand piece outdoor image style puzzles. Our next storyteller is Jessie Novak. Jessie is an indoor person who goes on an outdoor adventure with her sister, Stephanie, in Lewis and Clark Caverns. Jessie calls her story, Finding Joy. Thanks for listening.

[00:16:20] Jessie Novak: I’m a quadruplet. That means that my parents had Four babies, on the same day, at the same time. I know, they’re blessed. Lucky them. The first thing I get asked when people find out that I’m a quad, is your siblings must be your best friends in the world, right? They obviously don’t have siblings. I will say, my sister Steffi, who’s in front of me, is my favorite person in the world.

We are polar opposites. Two sides of the same coin. She’s taller. I’m short. She is very outdoorsy. [00:17:00] I’m an indoor girl. Step has every credential under the sun. She collects them like they’re candy. Again, I like to stay inside step and I decide that in the summer of 2022, we were going to go on the great Mid Eastern Montana Road trip.

We were going to create, or recreate, a trip that we went on when we were little. Lewis and Clark Caverns. Now, we hop in the car in August. It’s hot, it’s sunny, surprisingly not smoky. We got very lucky. But, it’s August in Montana. It’s construction season. This drive that normally takes three ish hours. I’m a passenger princess, I don’t drive.

Don’t correct me. Took [00:18:00] six hours. In the heat. Stop and go construction the whole way. For those of you who have never been to Lewis and Clark Caverns, you drive up a mountain. And you hit the lodge. That’s home base for all of the tours going through the caverns. You have to check in there. They give you a wonderful little ticket.

And they tell you, if you can’t make it up that trail in 30 minutes, you don’t get to go on your tour. Because you’re not in physical, enough physical shape to go up and down the stairs in the caverns. Well we figured, we did this when we were 6 years old. We’re 23, we’ve got this. We’re gonna go do this, and we’re gonna rock it.

Steffi is the most prepared person I’ve ever met in my life. To the extent where she’s a little bit of a hoarder. She has water, sunscreen, snacks, band aids, extra snacks. [00:19:00] I show up. With snacks. No water.

No hat. Just food.

So we’re starting to hike up this trail. You gain about a 150 feet or so in elevation in a very short time span.

It’s hot, there’s no trees, and there’s nowhere to sit down. I’m dying. This is not what I remember. This is not what I signed up for. And Steffi’s walking next to me, like this is the best day of her life. She’s having so much fun, she’s singing songs, and I’m getting passed by six year

olds. It was perfect.

We made it up to the entrance to the caverns in 29

minutes. We

got to go on our tour. That’s money saved. When they take you [00:20:00] into the caverns, it gets very cold very quickly. And when you’re like me and you’re sweating like crazy, you get freezing. I’m not prepared. I didn’t bring a jacket. I stole Steffi’s.

It was great. When you go into the caverns, the first thing you remember if you go as a child is there is a natural slide. It takes maybe 30 seconds to get down, but it is the coolest thing in the whole wide world. Especially when you’re six. When you’re 23, 24, It’s a little less exciting, unless you’re Steffi.

Then it is the coolest thing in the world, bar none. She looks at me, and she says, Jesse, we are going down this slide. I say, absolutely not. I’m an adult. I’m not prepared for this. She says, we’re going. No way in hell. [00:21:00] So Steffi goes down the slide, and I can hear her giggle the whole way down. And I can picture the look on her face of pure joy.

I’m a party pooper, I took the stairs. Yay! More stairs! When you get to the very bottom of the caverns, they tell you a story about a man who was stuck down there for three days. Without electricity, and with a teeny tiny oil lamp. Oil lamps, if you don’t know, don’t put out much light. That’s okay. It’s the 21st century.

We have electricity. So we thought, We’re getting told this story. Our tour guide’s super into it. Very dramatic. He’s acting it out. And he says, we’re gonna reenact this. I’m gonna turn out the electric lights. And use this oil lamp to light up this huge[00:22:00]

Cavern. So you know exactly what it was like to be stuck down there for three days. I’m terrified. I don’t do heights. I don’t do the dark. In the caverns, if you fall, you fall for a thousand feet. And it is dark. There is no natural light. Steffi thinks this is the best. She is nerding out. She’s doing a little happy dance over in the corner.

I’m frozen. I don’t want to move. I don’t know where I’m

going.

Power goes out. And the oil lamp lights. Puts out more light than you think it does. Which isn’t saying much. As they’re finishing the story, they’re saying three days this man was stuck down there. Three. And I know where this is going, and I don’t like it one bit.

My brain is saying, they’re going to shut the oil lamp off too, and it’s [00:23:00] going to be really, really dark. And boy was I right. He blows the oil lamp out, and I am frozen. Not

breathing, not blinking.

And in the dark, I feel Steffi’s hand grab mine. And stay there for the longest two minutes of

my life.

Our tour guide turns the electric lights back on and tells us have a wonderful day after that traumatizing experience, you’re on your own.

Be free. Go up this flight of stairs and enter the real world again. So we do. There’s nowhere to go. You can’t turn around. Steffi is doing her little happy dance. This is so cool. This is so much fun. I’m terrified still. Absolutely traumatized. Walking up these stairs trying not to touch anything, trying not to look over the edge.[00:24:00]

Steffi almost bonks her head because she’s too busy looking at me and laughing rather than watching the stairs. When you exit the caverns, there’s an airlock system so you don’t let the bats out. One door opens, you go inside a hallway, and the other door shuts. And then another door opens, And you go outside.

Steffi held my hand all the way through that door. She knew that I was terrified and shaking like a leaf the entire time. Stepping out into the sunlight was probably the most freeing moment of my life. It’s bright, it’s warm again, which I complained about earlier. Never again. And Steffi’s right there beside me.

We snap our obligatory selfie, cause I went outside and I need to prove it. And we [00:25:00] continue walking back towards our car. Steffi is not ready to go home. I’m over it. This is already not what I signed up for. And she decides, we’re going to keep going on our adventure. We’re going to go hike to the Ringing Rocks.

And now every single summer, we go on a trip. She hasn’t picked this summer yet, but she’s going to. And I know that no matter where we go, she is going to be with me, holding my hand, and it is going to be amazing. The best.

[00:25:35] Marc Moss: Thanks, Jesse. Jesse’s an art teacher, quadruplet and enthusiastic dog mom growing up outside Missoula with her three siblings and father. She realized that the only ways to control the chaos of life was living in a small town, and teaching. So, she decided to do both. She relocated to Billings, Montana, received her teaching credentials, and quickly moved to the other end of the state, to a tiny town called Noxon.[00:26:00]

In a town where everyone knows everyone, she teaches K 12 art, hikes, attempts to grow a large garden when there isn’t six feet of snow, and spoils her fur child Peggy Sue rotten. Coming up after the break.

[00:26:13] Sydney Holte: When I’m doing the thing that I’m nervous about, the feeling goes away. But this time, the feeling in my stomach did not go away.

I was still feeling really queasy.

[00:26:24] Marc Moss: Stay with us. Do you have your tickets for the next Tell Us Something live storytelling event? You can get your tickets online at tellusomething. org. Better yet though, why not pick up some limited edition printed tickets? These tickets are the same price as the online tickets and feature the beautiful artwork used on the posters.

Artwork for the Lost in Translation event was created by Bear River Studios. These special tickets are available exclusively at Rockin Rooties. Get your tickets now at Rockin Rooties or get the digital version at tellussomething. org. Alright, back to the stories. [00:27:00] Closing out this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast is Sidney Holt.

Sidney lands a student teaching gig in India and an unfamiliar green sauce causes her great gastrointestinal distress on her first day of student teaching. Sydney calls her story, green sauce. Thanks for listening.

[00:27:21] Sydney Holte: I’ve always loved to travel. I love being in uncomfortable moments when I’m traveling out of my element. And a big part of loving traveling is I love to try new foods. I love to try foods that I’ve had before, maybe with a different spice or cooked in a different way. But I also just love trying new foods in general.

That’s a big part of why I love to travel. I was 21 and I was trying to decide where I was going to do my student teaching. And I was presented with an amazing opportunity to do my student teaching in India. And of course, being the person [00:28:00] that I am, I said yes, and I got on a plane in February to fly to India for four months, and I land in New Delhi.

It’s in the middle of the night, midnight 1:00 AM somewhere in there. And. I’m overwhelmed in the best of ways. I step out of the airport and instantly I smell incense. But I can also smell a lot of garbage. And I can also smell street food with spices that aren’t my normal spices, like turmeric. And I can also smell a lot of urine.

So, it was an overwhelming amount of smells in the best of ways. I could… Here, in the middle of the night, the mosques and bells going off, I could hear people chanting prayers over what seemed like a giant megaphone. And they did not tell me how the traffic would be in India. There are these roundabouts in [00:29:00] New Delhi that have like six or seven lanes, and there’s lines on the ground like there are here.

They’re just suggestions for where to drive.

So, people would go in these roundabouts and hit each other like real life bumper cars. And, uh, they would just continue on. Uh, so, it was overwhelming in the best of ways. I was in New Delhi for about three days, and then I traveled to where I was going to be doing my student teaching.

I had to travel about seven hours

on a train north of New Delhi, and then it was like a switchback up this mountain in a taxi. And… I’m, I’ve always been a little prone to getting car sick, so this, I, I had to tell the taxi driver several times to slow down, please. Um, so we get there, and it’s this, on top of this gorgeous mountain, it’s in the Himalayas, it’s these beautiful, [00:30:00] huge trees like this, and I met by my mentor that’s going to show me around campus.

And she shows me around campus and shows me where I’ll be living for the next four months. And the houses that the employees stayed in were anywhere from really close to campus to Three quarters of a mile away. My house that I was going to be staying in was about a half mile from campus. So half mile walk in and half mile walk after school.

And I had been at Woodstock International Boarding School for about two or three weeks and I was starting to get to know people a little bit, and I was invited to a party. I was like, great, I’m starting to get to know people, I’m feeling pretty good about it. And so I go to this party, and there’s food, and drinks, and there’s a new food that I have not tried before.

It’s fried, but it’s not pakora, I had tried pakora, [00:31:00] and there was… This green sauce next to it. So I try one, and I don’t know how I like it yet. It’s not, it doesn’t taste like cilantro. It doesn’t really taste like parsley. It has some different flair to it. So I try another one, and I try another one. I’m still not convinced if I like it or not.

So about four or five I tried, and then I finally decide that I don’t like it. And my stomach is feeling a little upset from eating it. And I don’t, I don’t really think much about it. I carry on. The next morning was a big day for me because I was going to be teaching my first lesson without any help from my cooperating teacher.

So I wake up and I’m feeling really queasy. I’m feeling really nauseous, really anxious about. Teaching this lesson, but I think, okay, I’m feeling queasy. It must just be because I’m anxious. So I continue getting ready. I start my half mile [00:32:00] walk into campus and I’m gradually feeling more and more. Yucky. My stomach really doesn’t feel good.

And I get up to the classroom and I’m doing a lesson with 7th and 8th graders on xylophones, and I start teaching, and you, normally, for me at least, when I’m doing the thing that I’m nervous about, I, The feeling goes away, but this time the feeling in my stomach did not go away. I was still feeling really queasy, and I get this urge to sneeze.

Oh shit, I just shit my pants.

And I shit them big. Poop is

running down my legs. And I was wearing tight pants that day, thankfully, and they were black, but I am…

Clenching my butt cheeks so that my poop doesn’t run onto the floor as [00:33:00] I’m teaching 7th and 8th graders. And I

don’t want to excuse myself

to go to the bathroom because I don’t want my cooperating teacher to think that I don’t care about teaching this lesson.

So as I’m going around helping these kids on xylophones, I’m just squeezing my butt tighter and tighter so that my poop doesn’t… End up on the floor.

I finished the lesson, and waddled my way back to my house,

and changed my pants, and all is well. But thinking back to this experience, I can’t help but think, if I can teach my very first lesson with poop running down my legs, then I can probably teach in most situations.

[00:33:56] Marc Moss: Thanks, Sydney. Sidney Holt was born and raised in [00:34:00] Minnesota and now teaches elementary music in Billings, Montana. She enjoys camping and fly fishing whenever she can with her husband, Jacoby. Singing and musical theater have always been a large part of her life, too. She loves canned goods, peeing in lakes, and drinking coffee before the sun rises.

Pretty great stories, right? I’ll bet you have a story to share and I’ll bet that you have a story to share on the theme lost in translation. The next tell us something live event is scheduled for September 28th. The theme is lost in translation pitch your story for consideration by calling 4 0 6 2 0 3 4 6 8 3.

You have three minutes to leave your pitch. The pitch deadline is August 20th. I look forward to hearing from you soon. I’ll call you as soon as I get your pitch. Tickets for Lost in Translation are on sale now. Limited edition printed tickets featuring the artwork of Bear River Studio are available at Rockin Rudy’s or you can get your tickets online [00:35:00] at tellussomething. org. The Tell Us Something podcast is made possible in part because of support from Missoula Broadcasting Company, including the family of ESPN radio, the trail one Oh three, three Jack FM and Missoula source for modern hits. You want to 4. 5 learn more at Missoula broadcasting. com. Thanks to Float Missoula for their support of the telesumming podcast.

Learn more at float msla. com and thanks to the team at Missoula events. net. Learn about all of the goings on in Missoula at Missoula events. net. Next week in the podcast, I catch up with local author, Rick White. Just way back there

[00:35:39] Rick White: in the heart of the subway, Bitterroot National Forest. So, yeah, we were at the end of the road and, um, off grid

for, for three weeks.

And it looked like me scribbling furiously and, uh, on a yellow legal pad and then transcribing onto a, uh, a hundred dollar typewriter that I’ve sent at the [00:36:00] antique mall beforehand so that I could… Translated into print.

[00:36:04] Marc Moss: Rick and I chat about the story that he told live on stage at the Wilma in Missoula, Montana in December, 2019.

[00:36:11] Rick White: So I had a few letters behind my name. Those letters and what they signify to

what I had earned or what I thought I had earned

mattered less to my students than did the name preceding them, which was not so shield.

[00:36:25] Marc Moss: The theme that night was tipping point. We also talk about podcasting, writing his artist residency. And storytelling. Tune in for his interview and listen to his story. On the next, tell us something. Podcast. Thanks to Cash For Junkers who provided the music for the podcast, find them at cash for junkers band.com. To learn more about, tell us something, please visit tell us something.org.

Neighbors Part 2

[00:00:00] Marc Moss: Welcome to the tell us something podcast. I’m Marc Moss. We’re currently looking for storytellers for the next tell us something storytelling event. The theme is lost in translation. If you’d like to pitch your story for consideration, please call 406 203 4683. You have three minutes to leave your pitch.

The pitch deadline is August 20th. I look forward to hearing from you soon. I’ll call you as soon as I get your pitch. This week on the podcast.

[00:00:29] Devin Carpenter: Uh, I noticed that there is a woman standing outside my bedroom, tapping on the window and holding this white bag in the air. And then I get excited because I realize this is not just some woman.

This is Mimi. This is my grandma. And what I need to do is go very quietly, let her in the house. And I go let Mimi in the front door and we sit down and we open up this white bag. And we share a couple glazed donut holes, just the two of us before we go wake up everyone [00:01:00] else and then share with them as well.

[00:01:02] Sarah Black: The best explanation that I have for this is that it’s like I was walking down this path and it’s nighttime. And queerness is like a house, with the lights on, and I can see the people inside, and I want to go in, but I don’t know those people, and I don’t live in that house, and the door is closed. And then I met Louis.

[00:01:31] Whitney Peper: And he’s going, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, can I get a ride? And Tracy’s

[00:01:34] Cathy Scholtens: like, yeah, get in the car. And I’m like,

[00:01:37] Whitney Peper: whoa, no, no, no, no. And I, I like, barricade the door and trap him inside. And Tracy’s behind me and JP’s standing next to me. And I go, JP, call the cops. And JP’s like, no, we’re not calling the

[00:01:51] Cathy Scholtens: cops.

And we see this hawk coming up the North Ridge, and she’s floating on those drafts, and just floating and floating, [00:02:00] and pretty soon, she’s right here. She’s right above us. If I had stood on my tiptoes, I could have touched her. Now, I’m not no hoogity boogity, new age, woo woo, mystical girl, I’m not, look at me, oh my god, okay?

Our

[00:02:18] Marc Moss: storytellers share their true personal story on the theme, Neighbors. Their stories were recorded in person in front of a live audience June 16th, 2003 at Ogren Park at Allegiance Field in Missoula, Montana. We are proud to have partnered with Missoula Pride for this event, which featured six queer voices and two allies.

At the event, I acknowledge that Tell Us Something has a lot of privilege. We welcome all respectful voices and at this event. We used our privilege to elevate marginalized forces. And if I say that I must in good faith, give up the microphone. So I did two members of the Missoula queer community took over the MC duties for the evening to honor and respect the work that they did.

They will follow up each [00:03:00] story on today’s podcast. Cara Rivera and Devin Carpenter were the MCs that evening.

Tell us something acknowledges with deep respect and gratitude that we are on the ancestral lands of the Pendlay, Salish, and Kootenai peoples who have stewarded this land for countless generations. Their profound connection to the earth and its resources has left an indelible mark on the landscape we now call home.

In recognizing their enduring legacy, we are called to be steadfast stewards of this land, nurturing its diversity, preserving its ecosystems, and upholding the principles of environmental sustainability. May we honor the wisdom of our ancestors and embrace our responsibility to protect and preserve this precious land for future generations, fostering a harmonious coexistence with nature that celebrates our shared heritage.

We take this moment to honor the land It’s native people and the stories that they share with us. Our first story comes to us from [00:04:00] Devin Carpenter, who shares a verbal love letter to his grandmother, who taught him to be a good neighbor and to be bold, he calls his story Mimi on my Shoulder. Thanks for listening.

[00:04:17] Devin Carpenter: So it’s about eight o’clock in the morning on a typical Saturday and seven year old me is fast asleep. And into my dreams, I start to hear this sort of subtle yet persistent tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. And as I wake up, I noticed that there’s a woman standing outside my bedroom, tapping on the window and holding this white bag in the air.

And then I get excited because I realize this is not just some woman. This is Mimi. This is my grandma. Uh, and what I need to do is go very quietly, let her in the house. Uh, and so I very carefully creep down the wooden bunk bed, [00:05:00] uh, so I don’t wake up my little brother Austin, who’s sleeping below. I sneak past my little brother Zachary’s bedroom, past my parents bedroom, and I go let Mimi in the front door.

And we sit down and we open up this white bag and we share a couple glazed donut holes. Just the two of us before we go wake up everyone else and then share with them as well. And this is just one of the many silly little things that my grandmother and I would do together as a kid. Um, I am extremely close to Mimi.

You see, I’m the oldest of seven grandchildren. So by default, I’m the favorite. Um, and, uh, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve really realized, uh, just how profound of an impact Mimi has had on my life, and how I choose to show up in the world. Um, and what it really boils down to, are two lessons. The [00:06:00] first is to be a good neighbor.

Uh, you see, I grew up in the same small town, Lompoc, California, where Vandenberg Air Force Base is, that my mom and her two sisters grew up in. And so Mimi and Papa have lived in the same place for almost 50 years and have really built a community of people around them. Uh, their house sits up kind of on a corner, raised above everyone else’s, and as you stand at the kitchen sink, you look out across the lawn that my grandpa zero scaped over the years and past the hedges where the blue bellied lizards, you know, the ones that if you try to catch them, their tail rips off, um, where they would sun in the summertime, and you can see kind of the whole neighborhood out where everything is.

And what I noticed over sort of observing my grandmother is just how Very small interactions can lead to really meaningful relationships. And things like Mrs. Pickles next door coming over to bring over the Sunday paper because they would share it among [00:07:00] all kinds of ladies in the neighborhood so they could get the most coupons because they all use different brands and so they were maximizing their coupons.

Or if it was Mimi sending me across the street to go visit Ruthie because she could see me go all the way across the street and so I’d go hang out with Ruthie and she usually had some kind of sweet treat to give me. Or is my grandmother making jam from her boysenberry bushes and giving it to the other neighbors?

Um, and these sorts of small interactions can lead to a type of community where you are sort of forced to rely on other people, but it’s a two way street. You’re, you’re also providing something to others and that builds into something larger. The second lesson was… It’s to live boldly. And boldness can take shape in many forms.

Uh, Mimi was diagnosed with cancer in 2008, um, and as she started to lose her hair, rather than letting that sort of demoralize her, she decided to be silly about it. And so she would [00:08:00] hide costumes around the house and would wear them at the most inopportune times. Um, so you’d be sitting at the dinner table and next thing you know she’d pull out a pair of Groucho Marx sunglasses with the big nose and the mustache.

Or she would wear one of those furline trapper john hats to church. Um, or she would bring, uh, boa, uh, feather boas to her exercise class so that everyone could wear one and be a little silly. Boldness is also sassy, too, and so one particular time, this was in Colorado, we moved there when I was 10, we’re at the commissary on base and this woman, uh, is not using good grocery store etiquette.

Uh, so Mimi nicknames her the General’s Wife because the only person with the audacity to act like that must be the General’s Wife. And she, General’s Wife leaves her cart in the middle of the aisle and wanders away, and so Mimi takes it. And hides it a couple aisles in the other direction. , uh, and I mortified running the other direction as well, [00:09:00] and it’s this kind of boldness that I really have taken with me as well.

Uh, 2008 was a big year for my family. Not only did the cancer happen, but we were also moving to Montana. Um, I was starting college and my family was. being stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base. Um, and so this was really the first time where I was forced with figuring out how I wanted to exist. I was moving out on my own, starting college.

It’s when I started really exploring my sexuality. It’s when I figured out how I wanted to take up space and use my voice for social justice and activism. Um, and I also had to decide what kind of friends I wanted to have and how I wanted to build that community for myself. Um, and so I really found my friends in the music scene here, and the best way that I can explain this is, again, through a series of seemingly small interactions that cascade into larger things, and so it can be as simple as being in the pit at a concert, and you see someone who had one too many mushroom chocolates, and you offer them water, and then [00:10:00] you talk to them, and you add them on social media, and then Months later you’re looking for a ride to go to a mountain party in Billings and they know someone who’s going and so you hop in the car with these strangers and talk for the next six hours as you drive to Billings and then you spend the weekend surviving at a rave in the forest and you get to know them through those interactions and not only is that being a good neighbor but it’s also quite bold to do those kinds of things and so this really comes to a head for me.

Uh, in one particular moment, it was a typical Saturday, uh, I was in the alleyway behind the Badlander, um, and I wasn’t, uh, none of my really close friends were there, but people I knew, some of these acquaintances were there, and I noticed that there were these people who were talking about me, they were actually, they were making fun of the clothes that I was wearing, it’s actually this jacket is what they were talking about, um, and they were using some not so nice words about how flamboyantly I was dressed, um, and so.

I did the thing that [00:11:00] Mimi would do and I yelled back at them. Um, and next thing I know, I, there’s a semi circle of men standing around me, uh, demanding that I apologize to them. And, uh, the people around me were encouraging me to apologize. Um, and I will never forget the moment. Where I consciously decided I would rather get beat up in this alleyway than apologize to these

[00:11:29] Whitney Peper: people.

[00:11:35] Devin Carpenter: And I didn’t know it then, but I know now that Mimi was standing behind me saying, those are not good neighbors. Be bold. And thankfully two people who I knew a little bit, maybe not super well, Nico and Tiffany. And,

[00:12:00] as luck would have it, we’ve actually become great friends. Nico has tattooed Mimi’s handwriting on my body, and Tiffany, who’s here, I just spent the night in the emergency room with her when she broke her collarbone a couple weeks ago. And so we are still very good friends. And I wish that the story ended here, uh, but there was one more lesson that Mimi had to teach me.

Um, I mentioned that she was diagnosed with cancer in 2008, um, and that continued over the years with different kinds and strokes and things and just this past February I got the call that I have been dreading for over a decade. And my mom told me that I should get on a plane and I should pack a suit.

And so I went with the intention of being there for two weeks. Um, my parents from Denver, me from Montana, my aunt Karen from DC, my aunt Julie from Northern California, all arrived in that same driveway that we [00:13:00] spent our childhood in with the hedges and the lizards within a matter of moments. And seven hours later, as we were arguing over who was going to stay awake to give Mimi her medicine, she died.

And in the chaos that ensued in the days to come, I found myself standing in the kitchen, trying to look at anything besides anyone else’s face. And so I did the logical thing and just started reading everything that was on the refrigerator. And I came across a magnet that said, Angels are sometimes disguised as neighbors.

[00:13:54] Kera Rivera: I’m not crying, you’re crying. Devin Carpenter is a Colorado [00:14:00] Tannin who has lived in Pennsylvania and New York and is joined tonight by his mom, Patty, and his dad, Jeff, who did not know he was telling this story. Growing up on a military base and moving throughout his life has greatly influenced the way Devin sees the world and how he approaches relationships with others.

Devin calls Missoula home and has been deeply involved in building communities through activism and social engagement since he arrived here to start college at the University of Montana in 2008. Devin left Montana in 2015 to pursue a master’s degree in higher education at Penn State and found his way right back to take on his current role as the director of new student success at UM.

In his free time, Devin is likely listening to his record collection, cooking a meal from scratch, drinking a shady at the former Kettle House Southside with his friends, dancing in the dark, or some combination of all

[00:14:55] Marc Moss: four. Our next storyteller is Sarah Black. [00:15:00] Sarah leaves her husband for another love and another life.

Her parents hear the news with a lot of questions and a lot of grace. Though, she isn’t as graceful when her spouse brings unexpected news to her. When she leads with love, she knows she’s hearing the news the best way that she can. Sarah calls her story, Lead with Love. Thanks for listening.

[00:15:27] Sarah Black: There’s a path that I was supposed to follow. Um, I was supposed to marry a cisgender man. They don’t specify cisgendered, but it’s just assumed that that’s what they’re talking about. Cause there’s no other kind, right? I was supposed to have kids, eventually grandkids, and me and this man were supposed to grow old together.

I wasn’t sure if this was the right path for me. [00:16:00] Um, I thought it might be, because I did, actually, fall in love with, and then marry a cisgender man. But I was also queer. Um, it didn’t complicate things right away, because I didn’t know what that looked like for me. Um, I… I didn’t have a lot of role models when I was younger, and, um, the ones that I had I couldn’t really relate to.

The best explanation that I have for this is that it’s like I was walking down this path, and it’s night time, and, Queerness is like a house with the lights on and I can see the people inside and I want to go in, but I don’t know those people and I don’t live in that house [00:17:00] and the door is closed. And then I met Lewis and the door opened and it turns out that I do live there and I do know those

[00:17:13] Whitney Peper: people.

[00:17:21] Sarah Black: So then it got a little complicated because, um, I still loved this man that I married. Um, but I was also falling in love with Louis.

I, um, I felt like my marriage was unraveling. I would have kept the both of them if I could, but that wasn’t an option. Um, So, um, I had to kind of start letting him go. And I felt like no matter how you [00:18:00] told the story, I was the villain. And not like a sexy villain, more like the kind of villain who loses everyone close to them and then proceeds to make terrible life decisions.

And I didn’t want to be that. villain. So, um, I reached out to a friend, the one person that I could think of who had been through something sort of similar, because I thought he might understand. And he did more than understand. He listened to me fret endlessly. And then he said, look, you can’t do this wrong.

I was like, I can’t do this, right? He was like, no lead with love and you can’t do it wrong.[00:19:00]

So I came out to a few more friends that went pretty well. And then I had to come out to my parents. I had to tell them that my marriage was ending. I’m in a new relationship. And I’m bisexual, like in all in the same conversation, right around Christmas time. Merry Christmas.

My mom had a lot of questions. I don’t blame her. That’s a lot. And I didn’t really have all the answers, but I felt like I owed it to her to try. It was a hard conversation. And then my dad, who had been kind of [00:20:00] quiet through all this, spoke up and said, The most important thing is that we love you.

So let me just go back real quick and tell you about Lewis and how I met him. We worked at a Starbucks together in New York. And this particular Starbucks… It had a walk in freezer that was an absolute nightmare. I don’t think they make them like this any I really hope they don’t make them like this anymore.

Um, you open the door, and the first compartment is a refrigerator, and then there’s a second door, and you have to go through that to get to the freezer. And there’s no other way into this freezer, it butts up against the wall. So… [00:21:00] Every time that door is like hanging open, condensation builds around the door frame so that when you close it, it freezes.

And that makes it very difficult to get into the freezer and it also makes it very difficult to get out of the freezer. So it was just this terrifying exercise. Um. Because we would prop it open and it would just build up more condensation and then it would freeze.

Some kind soul had left his red soccer warm up sweatshirt on a hook right outside the freezer for anyone to use whenever they went in there. And I love that sweatshirt. Um. I felt a connection to the person who owned it even before I knew who it [00:22:00] was. Um, and I loved having access to it because I get cold real easy.

[00:22:11] Whitney Peper: Um,

[00:22:15] Sarah Black: and that’s just kind of who Lewis is. Um, he just provides you with the thing you need before you even know that you need it.

So, um, turned out. I kind of liked him, he kind of liked me, we eventually did get married, we have an awesome daughter, um, and we moved back to Montana to be closer to my folks. And um, then about 10 years into our relationship, he says, I’ve taken this body as far masculine as I can and it’s not far enough.

I need to transition. He gave me [00:23:00] permission to tell you this, by the way.

Now, as someone who has come out and faced clumsy reactions to it, I would like to tell you that I handled this very gracefully, uh, but I cannot. Um, I loved him and I knew that it wasn’t going to break us up, but it didn’t break us. I was a little scared about how the hormones would change him. Like, I don’t know, he was going to become a big grumpy Hulk monster or something.

I don’t know what I thought was going to happen,

but he did change. Um, but not at all in the ways that I was afraid he would on the outside. He’s a little different, but on the inside, he is exactly the same person he always was. [00:24:00] Except that now he’s a little more comfortable, well a lot more comfortable in his body and in his life than I have ever known him.

And gender congruency has been just, that’s where your insides and your outsides match. Um, has just been such a huge relief for him that he now has more capacity for the bullshit of the world. And more capacity for the bullshit of his wife, which is good news for me. So, I guess I went a little bit off the path that I was supposed to be on.

But, I wouldn’t take it back, ever. I mean, once you get to be yourself, it’s, you just have so much freedom to keep going. [00:25:00] Um, And I don’t know where we’re going next with this. Uh, hopefully Hawaii. I kind of want to check out three tables now.

Um, all I know is lead with love and you can’t do it wrong. Thank you.

[00:25:23] Whitney Peper: Sarah

[00:25:23] Kera Rivera: Black grew up in Helena, Montana. After high school, she moved around several times and is happy to reside in Missoula and live closer to family. She is fascinated by wellness, art, the outdoors, social justice, storytelling, and all the ways they intersect.

[00:25:41] Whitney Peper: Coming up. And he’s going, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, can I get a ride?

And Tracy’s like, yeah, get in the car. And I’m like, no, no, no, no, no. And I, I like barricade the door and trap him inside and Tracy’s behind me and JP’s standing next to me. And I go. JP, call the cops. And [00:26:00] JP’s like, no, we’re not calling the cops.

[00:26:05] Cathy Scholtens: And we see this hawk coming up the North Ridge and she’s floating on those drafts and just floating and floating and pretty soon she’s right here. She’s right above us. If I had stood on my tiptoes, I could have touched her. Now, I’m not no hoogity boogity new age woo woo mystical girl. I’m not look at me.

Oh my God. Okay.

[00:26:32] Marc Moss: Those stories after a word from our sponsors, stay with us. Thank you to our stewardship sponsor, university of Montana summer office. Thank you to our story sponsors, AXIS Physical Therapy and Hindu Hillbilly. Thank you to our accessibility sponsor, Blackfoot Communications. Our next story comes to us from Whitney Pepper.

Whitney and his partner make compassionate choices to the news that there is a strange man under his mother in [00:27:00] law’s bed. Whitney calls the story, The Right House. Thanks for listening.

[00:27:18] Whitney Peper: It was spring of 2022, just over a year ago, here in Missoula, Montana. It was a cool morning, crisp air, and we had the doors flung open in our house to let that beautiful spring warmth start coming in because our windows are all painted shut. But this was not just any day. This was, this was the sun coming back in a time of celebration.

Cause what had just taken place six months prior, leading up to this moment, was a ridiculous home renovation extravaganza. Which I took on and told my [00:28:00] partner we got this. Which I did not know how to do. And so, over six months we had completely gutted and completely renovated and torn apart this house involving every single person that I met on the street, anywhere.

I’m like, you wanna help? And we’re down to the details at this point. So it’s really a time of celebration, it had been chaos. And on this day… We were sleeping in, which was really nice. You know, we, I think we slept in that day. Um, oh, I should back up the, the context of my house. I’m living with my partner who grew up here in Missoula and my partner’s mother.

Who’s name is Tracy. My partner is JP. My partner’s name, uh, JP’s mom is Tracy. And Tracy moved back from Arizona to move to her hometown, Missoula, to move in with us. So this house renovation project involving ex husbands and family members and cousins and strangers, um, [00:29:00] has been a big deal. And Tracy…

Sleeps on the main floor in the small bedroom. It’s a very small house. You walk in and it’s just one space. There’s a little bedroom and then downstairs there’s the basement. That’s where JP and I sleep. So this morning we wake up. We’re down in the basement. We can hear Tracy getting up in the bedroom above us going off to the farmer’s market or to go grab lunch or something.

And we wake up this day and we’re down to the details. I’m planning to install smoke detectors, which is really exciting. Hmm. And, we put on music, I think it was the Bahamas, you know, like, Doom, doom, doom, is there some way, trick to being happy? Doom, doom, doom, most days I’m feeling like a half me. It’s, it’s a blissful morning.

And we’re out there, you know, JP’s cooking us breakfast or something. I’m working, smoke detectors, getting my stuff, getting my tools. And, uh, I go into Tracy’s room, which is on the main floor. JP’s, you know, [00:30:00] cooking breakfast and we’re grooving. I’m on the stool and I walk in though and I see that there’s a, a, a camel cigarette on Tracy’s bed.

And I think, that’s weird. Tracy doesn’t smoke. But… She is a spiritual woman, and I thought, you know, she’s got some native indigenous friends, and I thought, I know that tobacco is something used for ser I, my mind was just like I went about, I went about my business. Installed the smoke detector. And then I worked my way downstairs, and I’m in our bedroom.

I can hear the music. You know, JP’s dancing all around. And, uh, at some point, Tracy comes back. And I hear her come in, and our, I forgot to mention that our other housemate is a geriatric dog named Bayrock. He’s 18 years old. He’s a terrier. He’s a terrible guard dog. He’s more like a piece of furniture. And, um, I hear Tracy come back and I hear Bayrox shuffling his little, his nails on the [00:31:00] floor.

Shook, shook, shook, shook, shook, shook. And then, I hear Tracy going, Hey! Get out! Get out right now! What are you doing? Get out of there!

[00:31:10] Cathy Scholtens: And I’m thinking, what did he do?

[00:31:12] Whitney Peper: We don’t ever talk to Bayrock like that. And then JP screams down the stairs, Whitney, come upstairs. There’s a man under my mom’s bed.

And I run up the stairs, and I walk in, and there’s chaos. Tracy is in this tiny little bedroom where she’s got furniture not arranged appropriately, and you have to, you know, squeeze past, and there’s a man who’s emerging, a grown human man, Coming out from the bed. And what had happened is Tracy had gone in there and been like, Oh, why is Whitney’s shoe under my bed?

And she grabbed onto the shoe and there was a leg attached to it. [00:32:00] And the leg had a body attached to it and the body was moving. And Tracy’s response was Get out of there! What are you doing under my bed? And so I walk up and she’s like swatting him with a magazine. She’s a small woman. But she’s got this real sternness that I’ve never seen before.

And she’s swatting him, get out, get out! And he’s going, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, can I get a ride? And Tracy’s like, yeah, get in the car! And I’m like, no! No, no, no, no! And I, I like, barricade the door and trap him inside and Tracy’s behind me and JP’s standing next to me and I go… J. P., call the cops. And J.

P. ‘s like, no we’re not calling the cops. And I was like, shit, I just failed my test.

you want something to eat?

Eh, we give him a sparkly water. Sparkly water? Fizzy water. Spindrift. And [00:33:00] like a granola bar. And we’re sitting there and I’m like, what are you doing? He’s like, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t. This is the first time I’ve ever done this. And I was like, what’s your name? And he goes, I’m Steve. We’re like, damn it, Steve,

[00:33:19] Cathy Scholtens: what are you

[00:33:20] Whitney Peper: doing here?

Why are you under my mother in law’s bed? He’s like, goes on this whole story that there was, you know, his ex wife has this abusive husband and, and he was trying to like help her out cause he’s abusive and then the guy was being attacking him and then there’s a car chase and he gets out of the car and he busts his ankle and, you know, it’s this whole story and I’m sitting there, you know, barricading the door just like, Oh, okay, Steve.

And finally, you know, Tracey leans over my shoulder at one point and she goes, You didn’t steal anything, did ya? And he’s like, No, no, no, I did not. And I looked down and I was like, Steve, you’re wearing my shoes! And he’s like, [00:34:00] I’m sorry! And it’s sad, you know? But then I remember, earlier that day, I could not believe that this had happened.

And I forgot, earlier that day, at our neighbor’s house next door, I had looked out the window, when I’m like, dancing and eating and And having a great time, celebrating. And there was like a whole SWAT team coming in on the house next door. And my neighbor, the person who owns the house, had called me and been like, hey, the cops are looking for somebody, he’s on the run, and they think he’s hiding out in our house, which was vacant.

And I was like, that’s terrible, that’s terrifying. And it was really frightening though, you look out and it was like. It’s like, police with assault rifles, you know, it’s just not expected. It was frightening. And then nothing happened and they went on and we danced and I was installing smoke detectors and now we’re here and I’m looking at this guy.

And at a certain point I go, Steve, you [00:35:00] lucked out because the background, you, you, Tracy is a nurse who works at St. Pat’s in the behavioral health unit. clinic, and has a lot of experience caring for people in various situations. She’s got experience. J. P. has an entire career in criminal justice reform, working with people who are incarcerated, doing embodiment work, and meditation work, and helping people heal, and you got, and then you got me, and I’m just a nice guy.

And so, Steve’s got the dream team, and I’m like, Dammit Steve! You picked the right house. This could have gone so poorly for you. Do you understand that we’re in Montana? Seriously, Steve? I mean, finally, I finally, like, stopped barricading. I was like, I don’t even know why I’m doing this. I’m trapping him in the bedroom that we’re like, Get out!

But I let him come out, and I would [00:36:00] offer him a chair, but we’re hippie people, and we don’t have chairs, we sit on the floor. And he’s got this busted ankle, and he, so he gets down on the ground, and we got his fizzy water, and You know, he’s asking, will you give me a ride? And we’re trying to figure out what to do.

And I’m like, no Steve, we can’t give you a ride. And I’m trying to be like, how do I not get in? Is this the guy that the police were looking for? Is it not? I have no idea. I just don’t know if we should get involved. And the three of us are kind of just, me, Tracy, and JP, we’re just looking at each other.

Partially trying to strategize and also being

[00:36:30] Cathy Scholtens: like, Is this really

[00:36:30] Whitney Peper: happening?

And finally, you know, we let him use our phone, call somebody, they don’t answer, and so we just, you know, we say, Steve, I’m sorry, we can’t help you. You gotta go. You can keep the shoes. And we send him on his way. You know, he, and he’s got this busted ankle. And inside, you know, we’re sitting there looking at him.

He was not a scary man. He was not a scary man. He was a man who was down [00:37:00] on his luck. You know, and this is what we Is that Steve in the audience? And, uh, this is a guy who’s down on his luck. And what I I’m just a nice guy, but what I know from being in partnership with JP is how poverty and incarceration and all these things can make some people’s life disproportionately miserable.

And I’m sitting here looking at this guy, and I’m like, I don’t know if his story’s real. I don’t know. But, I certainly don’t want to participate in further. Traumatizing this person. And so we sent him on his way, and, you know, we went about our day. And, uh, every once in a while we’d look at each other, like, Did that really happen?

And, you know, we were like, maybe we should lock our doors, you know. Or fix the windows or something. Um, and now it’s a bit of a joke. You know, Tracy has a good friend, Wish, who lives on the north side, that some of you maybe know. And, um, Wish will always say, Is [00:38:00] Steve back? You seen much of Steve? And we’re like, no, we haven’t seen Steve.

But truly, I mean, Where I end up, Nobody thinks this stuff’s gonna happen, but… I think housing in Missoula has raised, the cost of housing for renting has raised like 40% in 6 years or something. I mean, it’s astronomical. So, any one of us could be in Steve’s shoes. And the real question though is like, we all got these great signs that say like, We love queers!

And science is real! What do you do though when someone shows up under your mother’s bed? Not that queers and science have anything to do with that, but you get what I’m saying. Virtue signaling, what do you do? The question I leave you with. What would you do?[00:39:00]

[00:39:00] Devin Carpenter: Barron Whitney Pepper is an award winning architect based in Missoula, who helps homeowners create new spaces and transform old ones in a way that welcomes nature, community, and health into our lives. He is also co facilitating an emerging coalition of community members to support the city and re imagining how we can together address housing affordability.

And he would love to talk to you about it. Our final

[00:39:25] Marc Moss: storyteller of the evening is Kathy Schultens. Kathy hikes to Hope Lake in Montana with her best friend, Becky, where they work out their complex feelings for one another. Kathy calls her story, friendship, hope, and wisdom. Thanks for

[00:39:40] Whitney Peper: listening.

[00:39:41] Cathy Scholtens: Missoula pride.

Woo.

Well, it was. Late September, and my best friend Becky and I decided to go to Hope Lake in the Big Hole. We’d never been, and we wanted to go. The [00:40:00] map said it was seven miles. So we start up. The weather had been terrible. We start. We have a canine companion, Katie, the Wonder Dog, and she’s with us. She’s a three year old golden retriever and she’s up for anything.

So we start up and about the 30th switch back, we realize, Oh shit. Yeah, it’s seven miles, but it’s six miles straight up to the continental divide. Over the top and down another mile. Well, you know, we’re up for it. We’re best friends. I’d met Becky about seven years before that. And she was fantastic. She was funny.

She was smart and we became best friends immediately. She was a tomboy. She wasn’t into shopping and makeup and pedicure. She was into. Fishing and camping and hiking. And so was I. So it was perfect. We had a lot of [00:41:00] fun. She was also the kindest person I’d ever met. As a matter of fact, when we would go to Missoula and I would not drive, we, every stoplight with a guy with a cardboard sign, she’d go, Kathy.

Hey, Kathy, give that guy ten bucks. Hey, Kathy, you got twenty bucks? Give that girl twenty bucks. Look, it’s all coming out of my wallet. So I started to drive. Saved myself a lot of money over time.

So we’re hiking. And we’re talking, like best friends do. You know, but we’re not talking about what we’re supposed to be talking about. Because, yeah, we were best friends. But, in the past, you know, month or so, our relationship had kind of shifted a little bit. Okay, a lot, alright? Because we had become lovers.

[00:42:00] They don’t call her Bad Becky for nothing.

And we didn’t know what to do with that. Okay, because there was a lot of red flags, a lot of problems. Now, Becky was gung ho. She was ready to call up U Haul, get the trailer, go, you know, live with me the rest of my life. Come be with me. But me, I’m like, oh man, there’s like way too much stuff going on here.

There’s, there’s red flags. And let me tell you what they were, okay? One. We were both. In relationships already. I know. It wasn’t fair to them. And we felt pretty crappy about that. And we had to come clean. Two. Becky was a straight girl. All of you lesbians out there. You know what trouble straight girls are.

Are they not? They listen to every Katy Perry song. They just want to kiss a girl. And they’ll kiss you. But then they’ll break [00:43:00] your heart. And I was well aware of that. But the biggest problem, biggest problem, was me. Because I am a relationship loser. Okay? Every relationship I’ve ever been in… I left. I couldn’t stay.

I’d think I was in love, and pretty soon, I was gone. I could not keep a relationship going. And I knew that. And I didn’t want to break her heart. I didn’t want to lose our friendship. And so we needed to talk about this stuff. But hell no, we’re not going to talk about it, because that would make too much sense.

We’re just going to get up to the… The top, go to this lake. So we’re making promises to God, and we finally get up there, and we’re on the top of the Continental Divide. And now, on the Continental Divide, you guys, you can see forever, okay? It is awesome. I recommend it. [00:44:00] Except that what we saw that late September day.

Was snowstorms, thunderstorms, snowstorms, and to the west, the sun was going down. And we knew we’re not making the lake. We can’t make it. Why? Because we are responsible hikers. We know better. We know that we can’t be on that mountain in the dark. In late September, it was snow all around us, so we, like, responsible people say, okay, we’re gonna not make the lake, we’ll go down.

But let’s look at this for a minute. And it’s beautiful. It’s fantastic. And we see this Hawk coming up the North Ridge and she’s floating on those drafts and just float and float. And pretty soon she’s right here. She’s right above us. If I had stood on my tiptoes, I could have touched her. Now, I’m not no hoogity [00:45:00] boogity new age woo woo mystical girl.

I’m not look at me. Oh my God.

I ain’t no braids, nothing, but something magical happened with that Hawk. She’s right there. It’s a national geographic moment. And she is. And I’m like this.

And she’s talking to me, and I’m hearing crazy stuff. And I look at Becky to hear, to ask her if she’s hearing the same crazy bullshit I’m hearing. And just then, that hop goes phew! And goes over the side of that mountain towards Hope Lake. The message go to the Lake . I don’t know. I don’t know. We’re we’re like, duh.

So we like, what do you got in your pack? What do you got? Well, I had a water pump pretty good. I had some matches. I had a space blanket that’s useless. I’ll let you know that. [00:46:00] Um, it melts when embers hit it. Um, and I had a pound of trail mix that I was. already sick of. Now, Becky, Becky, being amazing, had an 8mm Glock on her hip, okay?

So butch. And, uh, she had a fishing pole and some worms and, uh, that’s about it, right? So, what we didn’t have was a tent, sleeping bags, warm coats, hats, gloves, food. You know, everything you need. So we decide to go anyways, because the hawk said to go. So, duh, we go. We go over the side, down to Hope Lake. And by the time we get there, it’s dark.

But Becky starts fishing right away. Why? Because Katie the Wonder Dog doesn’t eat trail mix. So she’s gotta catch some fish. And I’m over there, trying to start a fire. Because I know! Goddamn, we’re gonna die if I don’t get a fire [00:47:00] going! When I was a kid, I was a pyromaniac. I could start anything on fire, and did, and um, but I couldn’t get anything going because it’d been raining for days, I couldn’t find anything dry, nothing was working, I’m starting to freak.

And I look over at Becky, and every time she catches a fish, and that bobber goes down, Katie, the wonder dog, goes, AH FUN! YAY! And jumps in the water and goes for the bobber. And the fish would be gone. So, both of us are striking out. And I’m starting to freak. I’m like, Oh, we’re gonna die. We’re gonna die.

Gonna die. Stupid hawk. So, Pretty soon here comes Becky and she’s managed to wrangle a few fish out of Katie’s grasps and she has a couple fish and she says, what’s going on? And I go, Oh man, I can’t start this. I don’t have anything dry. And she goes, I got something for you. And she reaches in her jacket and pulls out a bunch of love letters that she’d hidden there that I had written to her over the [00:48:00] past month.

Now these love letters. Of course, we read them out loud because we’re gay girls and, uh, we had to share the moment and, uh, they’re full of, like, how I think she’s fantastic and she’s adorable and I am madly in love with her and what a loser I am and how I’m going to screw the whole thing up and, you know, I’m going to mess it up and I, I can’t do relationships and what are we going to do?

Well, she’s reading them and she’s just wadding them up, shaking her head, putting them in. We finally get a fire going, we get a good fire going, and she’s got the fish on a rock for Katie, cooking. And we’re sitting there, she says, Look at that smoke, Shultz. Look at it. It’s just going up. That’s from your letters.

All that angst and, I can’t do it, I’m horrible. All of that, up in smoke. There it goes. It’s gone. And I said, Oh yeah? [00:49:00] Well, what about all the love in those letters, baby? And she said, Oh, the love. Love goes higher. Love goes up to the universe. And the universe is listening. And the universe has us. I’m like, whoa, okay, whoa, okay.

[00:49:17] Whitney Peper: Whatever,

[00:49:18] Cathy Scholtens: Becky. And,

[00:49:19] Whitney Peper: uh,

[00:49:21] Cathy Scholtens: So we spend the night freezing our ass off, trying to be with the fire, you know, following the fire, following the fire, and talking. We start talking. And we really are mixing it up, trying to figure things out. But every once in a while, Katie the Wonder Dog keeps things really interesting by looking off into the dark woods and growling a growl that I’ve never heard any dog growl, let alone a golden retriever, okay?

And I would shit my pants. I’d be like, aaaah!

Really maintaining the butch aspect. And Becky though, Becky would whip that Glock off [00:50:00] into this commando like mode, like, and she’s ready to shoot the shit up at anything that’s gonna bother us. And I’m like, oh, I’m in love. I’m in love with this girl. So we spend the night talking, freezing, talking, freezing and come the early light of dawn when we can finally see something we see Here comes the snow, and it’s coming fast and heavy and hard.

And we’re like, we gotta get the hell out of here. So we pack up our stuff, and we start heading up to the divide. And I stop, and I take one last look at that little campsite. And I think, what the hell did we just do here? What we did was we did something really stupid, and really dangerous. But what we did was we trusted each other, and we worked together, and we made it happen.

We survived the night with nothing, and was that much [00:51:00] different than what Becky was asking me to do with her? To lean out of my comfort zone, to believe in us, to trust her, to trust myself, and to have a life together. And I figured… If I listen to a goddamn bird I’d never met before, I could surely listen to my best friend.

So up at the top of the divide, I told her I took her hand, so romantic. And I said, yes, yes. And we were on cloud nine. We ran down that mountain. Snow, no snow. We just ran down. We didn’t even stop at the camper. Cause we had to find a payphone. We had to call the people who needed to know. So we jump in the truck and we drive to Wisdom, Montana.

And we get on the payphone at Leddy’s and we call home. What used to be home and we both say we’re not coming [00:52:00] back, we’re not coming back because home, home then was in my Becky’s arms and that’s where I wanted to be. You guys, this September. It’ll be 26 years ago.

I’m still, still madly in love with her and she’s still my best friend. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Kathy Schulten.[00:53:00]

[00:53:02] Devin Carpenter: Living her best life amidst the beauty of the Bitterroot Valley, Kathy Scholtens is an out of shape adventure enthusiast. She loves the mountains, waterways, back roads, and most people of Montana. When she first came to Montana in 1976, she saw the Milky Way in all its glory for the first time. The wonder and magnificence of the night sky continues to knock her socks off.

Kathy’s heart also lies with a ragbag group of friends and family, her family of choice. She remains forever grateful for the craziness, the love, and the laughter they bring into her life. Pretty

[00:53:40] Marc Moss: great stories, right? I’ll bet you have a story to share, and I’ll bet that you have a story to share on the theme, Lost in Translation.

The Tell Us Something live event is scheduled for September 28th. The theme is Lost in Translation. Pitch your story for consideration by calling 406 203 4683. [00:54:00] You have three minutes to leave your pitch. The pitch deadline is August 20th. I look forward to hearing from you soon. I’ll call you as soon as I get your pitch.

Thanks to our media sponsors, Missoula Broadcasting Company, including the family of ESPN radio, the trail 103. 3, Jack FM, and Missoula’s source for modern hits, U104. 5, Float Missoula. Learn more at FloatMSLA. com and MissoulaEvents. net. Next week on the podcast,

[00:54:26] Stephan Tucker: the world starts to come into clear focus. And I can hear the dog still barking, and there’s a sound of desperation in its barks, like something is wrong.

[00:54:35] Sandy Shepherd: To do my eye exam, I now have three board members watching me. One old man on the right, one old man on the left, and the patient.

I’m a little nervous.

[00:54:49] Jolyne O’Brien: And I turn and look at my daughter and I say, Sis, we have a problem. She’s not really exactly sure what this problem is, but she is sure on board to help mom whatever it is.

Eyes big and sure, mom! [00:55:00]

[00:55:01] Candice Haster: So I tell my midwife, I want to do it my way. I just want to be simple. I want to try it in the most simple way possible. I can use interventions later if I want to. But I want to start simply, okay, you should do that, but it’s not going to work

[00:55:15] Marc Moss: for storytellers from the Creative Pulse graduate program at the University of Montana, share their true personal story on the theme out of my shell, thanks to Cash for Junkers who provided the music for the podcast, find them at cash for junkers band.

com to learn more about tell us something, please visit, tell us something. org.