[00:00:00] Welcome to the Tell Us Something podcast. Tell Us Something is a nonprofit that helps people share their true personal stories around a theme, live, in person, and without notes. I’m Mark Moss, your host and executive director of Tell Us Something. The next Tell Us Something live event is right around the corner.

We are excited to be returning to Bonner Park Bandshell, located in the University District of Missoula, Montana. The theme for our summer event is The Power of Place. Tickets are on sale now. Learn more and get your tickets at tellussomething.org. Tell Us Something is supported this year in part by a grant from the Montana 250th Commission, which was established to coordinate statewide efforts to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America.

The objectives of the commission include promoting civic engagement, and Tell Us Something, [00:01:00] at its core, does this by encouraging community members to share and listen to the stories of those who live, work, and play here in Montana. We are grateful to the Montana 250th Commission for their generosity.

This week on the podcast.

Where I saw my fellow waiters like me, artists, writers, photographers, actors, dreamers, all waiting for their big break.

Four storytellers share their true personal story on the theme self-evident.

I went to the Easter dresses they had, and I was, like, flipping through dresses. And I turn around.

My mom was standing right there, and I was, like, so scared.

Our stories today were recorded live in person in front of a packed house on January 20th, 2026, at the George and Jane Dennison Theater.

And I knocked on the door, and this big burly guy [00:02:00] with dark hair and a tattoo of a grizzly bear on one bicep and a woodpecker on the other opens the door, and he looks at me and he said, “I was wondering when you people would find me.”

The theme that night was “Self-Evident”.

I read Into the Wild, and I just ate that up. Alaska, it wasn’t a place, it was an objective. It was traveling west. It was doing more. It was wrapped up in this idea I had of some clarity.

The University of Montana stands on the aboriginal territories of the Salish and Kalispel people, and we must acknowledge in the year of the 250th anniversary of the United States that our founding fathers arrived here as colonialists and stole this land from the indigenous people that were here long before Christopher Columbus made a wrong turn and landed here.

For millennia, winters were a time for Indigenous communities that were here and continue to live here to come together, passing down history and wisdom [00:03:00] through the art of storytelling. We recognize the deep sacred relationship that they have with this land, and we are grateful for the opportunity to have shared our own stories in this place

Remember this Tell Us Something stories sometimes have adult themes Storytellers sometimes use adult language In our first story, Francis Davis is an aspiring novelist who receives a letter that promised to change everything. He had won a prestigious $50,000 arts grant. As he celebrates the windfall with his fellow dreamers and artists in the South Philly arts scene, a strange coincidence involving a famous jazz writer and a second piece of mail begins to cast a shadow over his sudden fortune.

Francis calls his story The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Thanks for listening[00:04:00]

It was 1994 Frances Davis won $50,000 in an arts grant and I’m sure my life was about to change

I was living in South Philly working part-time as a caterer

And I came home one day, find a piece of mail that I took up to my one-bedroom apartment above an accounting office. It was from the Pew Charitable Trust Walked into my apartment, opened the letter. There were two pieces of paper. The first piece of paper, “Dear applicant, we regret to inform you. We’ve read with interest, but please apply in the future.”

I was a loser. I was a [00:05:00] loser. I was a loser. But the second piece of paper, the list of winners, there was my name. Francis Davis. Francis Davis. Francis Davis. I was a winner. I was a winner. I was a winner That afternoon, I was working a party at Rittenhouse Square, 15th and Locust. I gathered up my secondhand tuxedo, put it in the garbage bag that I used to haul around, and walked to work, where I saw my fellow waiters like me, artists, writers, photographers, actors, dreamers, all waiting for their big break Mine had come in

As we set up the [00:06:00] tables and chairs, the bars and the food stations, the decorations, strung lights in the trees, I told all my fellow waiters the good news. I was a winner. Fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand dollars. I could take off a year, maybe two, write my novel. They were happy. They congratulated me Maybe a little jealous.

One girl who had broken up with me by telling me she’d like to do things looked at me like maybe she had misjudged

It was one of the best nights of my life. By the time I had changed out to my tuxedo, I told nearly everyone in work the good news. Serving the fancy food to my patrons, the rich and [00:07:00] influential of the arts community of which I would soon be part

I felt great. That night, my coworkers took me out, bought me drinks, slapped me on the back. I told stories. But when I went home, there was the two pieces of paper on my kitchen table. The rejection letter, “Dear applicant,” the list of winners. There was a number at the bottom of the rejection letter. I called the number, left a message.

“There’s been a mistake. I’m a winner. My name is among the winners, but there’s also a rejection letter. Could you call? Could you explain my quandary?”

I must confess, about two years [00:08:00] previous to this, I was in my West Philadelphia apartment with a, my girlfriend at the time. We were watching a VHS movie. We’ve rented from Blockbuster The Conversation by Francis Ford Coppola and the phone rang And I went to the kitchen to answer it. I picked it up.

Person on the line identified themselves as a reporter. They said I was Francis Davis. They began to praise my book, how much they liked my book, how much they liked my writing, my book of jazz. I let them go on. I had received a call like this more than once

When he stopped talking, when he asked when would be a good time to set up an interview, I had to tell him the truth. There were two Francis Davises. Two [00:09:00] Francis Davises. One, the famous jazz writer who’d written a book on Miles Davis. Me, a short story writer published by his friends in zines I hung up the phone, went back with a fresh bowl of popcorn, finished the movie with my girlfriend.

We laughed about it

You might guess what happened. I got a call Monday morning from a very sorrowful cl-clerk, “We’re sorry. We’re sorry. There’s been a mix-up. There’s been a mistake.” But it was my mistake The rejection letter was right. The list of w- won- winners was right. There was two Francis Davises. But he had done nothing wrong.

But I ask you, had I done anything wrong? Wouldn’t you have done the same? Enjoyed the weekend. [00:10:00] Live a little bit in your head as a dreamer

So I went back to work that Monday. There was an indoor party, this one at the Franklin Institute for bankers And I knew what I had to do

But I couldn’t. I served the prime rib, the garlic whipped potatoes And between the entree and the dessert, I wandered upstairs, the second floor of the science museum where there’s a giant replica, fiberglass replica of the human heart. You could walk into it. There was a set of stairs up the right ventricle into the aorta, down the left ventricle.

The da-dum, da-da-dum, da-da-dum of the [00:11:00] heartbeat. Facts Were drummed in as well. The average human heart beats two billion times per lifetime. I knew what I had to do. I walked down and told all my coworkers, “There was a mistake. There was a mistake. There was two Francis Davis. I actually didn’t win the fifty thousand dollars.”

Let me tell you, if you tell a group of dreamers, artists, writers, musicians who would die for fifty thousand dollars, fifty thousand dollars may be a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in today’s money, and you had to tell them you didn’t win, they will laugh at you They will look at you with a mixture of pity and ri-ridicule.

The girl who had said she liked to do things when I told her the news she [00:12:00] looked at me and scoffed like something had been confirmed

But I was not wrong. I was not wrong. I was not wrong because two weeks after this, I get a call from Lois Welch, the creative writing director, U- University of Montana, the MFA program. She was offering me a full fellowship. “Francis, come to Montana. Would you like to come to Montana? Are you interested? We loved your work Yes, Lois.

Yes, Lois. Thank you so much. But I thought, “Is this a mistake? Is this a mistake? Is this a mistake?”

But it was the truth I left. I disappeared to Montana

18 months after this news broke, Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber was [00:13:00] found in a cabin outside of Helena

When the news broke, I thought of my coworkers back in Philadelphia who by this time must have figured that I’d gone, disappeared. I wondered when they thought, heard about Ted Kaczynski, if they thought about me. I wondered if they believed me now I wondered if they thought about me. I wondered if they believed me now

Thanks, Francis. Francis Davis was born and raised in Philadelphia and has lived most of his adult life in the West. He has an MFA in fiction from the University of Montana and a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska. [00:14:00] Francis loves American working class literature and teaches college writing, creative writing, and literature at Gallatin College.

He’s also recently been certified as a hot yoga instructor and teaches at Headwaters Hot Yoga in Missoula. Francis published a collection of short stories, West of Love, and his stories have appeared in Story, Natural Bridge, and Weber: The Contemporary West, among many other publications. Francis Davis has also worked as a journalist throughout the state of Montana and has earned a variety of writing fellowships from around the country.

In our next story, Adria L. Jwart spent years as a functional alcoholic in order to bury her true identity. Adria finds herself in an intensive treatment center where the ultimate lesson is learning to love yourself enough to survive. Her journey toward recovery leads her to confront a childhood memory in a Kmart clothing aisle and a deep-seated fear of being, [00:15:00] quote, “an abomination,” leading to an act of truth-telling that accidentally goes viral on a global scale.

Adria calls her story Prestigious Education. Thanks for listening

Many a times people have, uh, queried me about my education. It’s like, “Um, you’re very well educated. You’re, uh, very articulate, well spoken.” Well, for an Indian. Just kidding. Lots of Natives have heard that before, but, um, and they’re like, “So where’d you go to school at?” Or, um, “Where’d you graduate from?” And I just jokingly, not jokingly say, “Watch East.”

And they’re like, “Oh, where’s that at?” “Well, it’s, uh, back east.” “Oh.” “It’s very, uh, prestigious. They only have like 50 people in there at a time.” But the fact is Watch East is actually stands for like [00:16:00] the Worm Springs Addiction Center Treatment for Change or something. It’s like an acronym for that. And East means they had another location out in Glendive, Montana.

So it’s very eastern Montana. Basically West Dakota. Yeah.

But the fact is, I am– That is one of the hardest things I ever did, was graduate from that place. It was an intensive treatment place where for six months, day in, day out, seven days a week, you, like, dealt with your own self and inner soul and being and just let everything out, or tried to anyway. Because, um, one of the things they teach you there is, uh, the number one cause of relapse is resentment.

So what does that mean? Well, resentment is like you always have these reasons to go back to drinking. Okay, you’ll be going good. You’re sober for two years, and then, um, wait, what about my… You know, [00:17:00] something maybe happened when you’re a kid or whatever, and you’re holding something against your… Anyways, whatever haunts you, it always comes back and gives you a reason to drink, including at yourself.

It’s like, “I’m doing good. I’m doing well. I’m doing… You know, everything’s going well. My job is good,” and then all of a sudden, “No, you don’t deserve this. You don’t deserve this. You don’t deserve this happiness. You’re a piece of shit. You know? You’re a piece of shit. You’re a felon.” I know I can say that about myself.

And so you just kinda slide, “Yeah, I am,” and you just give up on yourself and start drinking again or s- whatever your drug of choice is. And, um So, um, it’s one of the things that you also had to combat that was, uh, you have to love yourself enough to quit drinking. What does that mean? Um, well, basically means, like, I know you can use, like, a reason for, like, not to drink.

Like, “Oh, my, uh, you know, I’m gonna quit drinking for my wife,” you know? [00:18:00] But heaven forbid, what if your life-wife leaves you and then you don’t have that reason no more? Or, “I do it for my kids.” Well, you can use your kids as a, you know, reason to help give you strength and everything. Ultimately, it comes up…

You have to, um, you have to do it for yourself. You have to love yourself enough, and that’s, uh, something, um, you know, I took from that place. And, um, there’s one other thing that they made me do is, like, they found out I was a bohemian, artsy person. And so they had me do all these big murals there, but one of the murals said, uh, “Your story still matters.”

And underneath it, even though the place had only been there since, like, nineteen– the late nineties, there was, like, thirty-six or forty names or something, and two names actually popped up while I was there, and these were names of people who had died while still on paper after leaving that place. So it was very, like, a stark reminder of, um, you know, [00:19:00] what could happen or what the reality was.

Like, one day, they, like, had us all, like, grab a piece of paper. One, two, three. So paper one, they opened it all up. We all stood over there. It was like, “You guys all relapsed.” Paper two, “Y’all died of your addiction.” Paper three, “You recovered. You’re living in recovery. Which one do you want?” And that was the thing.

Th-they straight up said, “This place has a one-third addiction recovery rate.” So we– That’s basically– That’s the honest truth of this place is, like, two-thirds of you aren’t gonna recover, and it’s, like, even worse for other places. It’s only, like, ten percent. But anyways, um, the thing about Not loving yourself enough to drink.

It’s like I got out of there and I hadn’t been thinking about relationships. I didn’t really love myself enough, just been a functioning alcoholic for the last eight years. And I was just like [00:20:00] thinking about getting into a relationship, but there was stuff haunting me from back before when I was like a teen and little kid and everything, and that was my gender identity.

And I never really thought about that too much until, you know, I started thinking about relationships again. It was just something I had to deal with. So, um, so I think back to when I was a little kid. I was in a Kmart Blue Light Special, and I’m shop– my mom is shopping for Rustler jeans. I had to try on Rustler jeans.

I hated those jeans so much. They were so uncomfortable and whatever. And I was just like, “Mom, I gotta go look at toys.” “Okay, sure, whatever.” And I ran off to the toy section, except I didn’t go to the toy section. I went to the Easter dresses they had, and I was like, uh

This works as a prop. Um, it’s like flipping through dresses. [00:21:00] It’s like, “Hmm, wonder if they have this one in my size?” And I turn around, my mom was standing right there, and I was like so scared, so embarrassed. And she– I, like, I literally said that out loud, and I thought she was gonna be mad at me ’cause she’s evangelical Christian.

But she just looked at me, not with a look of judgment, w-with, like, sadness in her eyes that her kid was, you know, a queer kid in Montana, in eastern Montana, that was gonna have a tough life, and it was something they’d probably have to hide, and there’s nothing she could do about that to protect her. So-

I remember a few months later, I’m in the church, at a church camp, some random, one of the many church camps that got in up around Livingston, Montana in the boondocks. I’m [00:22:00] sitting there praying on a prayer bench, like crying my little eyes out, asking for forgiveness. Like, “Please, God, I don’t wanna be an abomination.

I don’t wanna be an abomination.” And that was because I read in the Bible that if you wear clothes, if you’re a male, wear women’s clothes, you’re abomination unto the Lord, and that course meant you’re going to hell or you’re gonna burn, and I didn’t want that. I’m just crying my little eyes out and stuff, and that’s one of my, um, most intense memories of, uh, whatever growing up.

But there was also another instance of, uh… I saw this person on the– this movie, Little Big Man, and, um, there’s a Heemane character in there, which is, uh, basically the Cheyenne word for trans. Um, yeah, it’s born women, heart and soul of that of a– or born male, that heart and soul of that of a female trans, [00:23:00] basically.

And, um, and I, I kind of– It was just like nice having a word of that person. Maybe that’s what I am. But at the same time, it was like, it’s a comedic movie. Even though they treated the character respectfully in hindsight, at the same time, it was just like, that’s a character people also laughed at, and you didn’t wanna be that.

It was like, “You look tired, Little Big Man. You wanna come to my teepees and rest on soft furs?” Cue everyone laugh at character. It’s like, I don’t wanna be that. So So, um, yeah, so it was just something I kind of kept hidden and everything, and I act- when I was a, being an artsy bohemian and everything, about 16, 17, I started, you know, being more bisexual in the closet and stuff, and, you know, I was what they called a closeted femboy with the girlfriend I had.

But then after that, about 25, I was a, had what you call a, lose my twink death or [00:24:00] whatever. And I just like, “Well, I guess I missed that window.” Be- ’cause I was gonna actually try to go to school here or in down south and just, like, get away and just so I could transition, but it just never happened, and I figured that window had, that opportunity had passed.

So, so cue fast-forward about 10 years later. Um, my brother is murdered, and I’m, like, turned a functioning alcoholic until I couldn’t function anymore, until I’m in the treatment place. So I get out of there, and I’m thinking about this whole time, this whole, um, situation of, well, I’m just, like, ashamed of myself.

I’m sitting there where as a Native activist, #decolonize and, you know, love yourself enough to quit drinking. I couldn’t even love myself who I was, who I truly was, this Hiamani character. And to truly decolonize, I ha- had to accept who I was as a Native person, [00:25:00] which is a Hiamani, and, um, it was just something that…

So I wrote about it in some article. Gotta wrap this up here. You know, it was like a… I never thought the, um, character was like, um, or it was like, it was like a line in there. It said, uh, maybe I would have been, uh, decolonized. Maybe I would have been more, um- In my gender identity or something in the article, and then, um, it became this…

Uh, you know, I figured a few hundred people would read it online in Indian Country. Then, and then all of a sudden, I start getting all these emails and people actually wanting me to speak, and this is a great article. And I was like, “Well, what’s going on? I didn’t expect them to… Oh, congratulations on coming out tonight.”

I was like, “I wouldn’t expect that many p- people to see it.” But apparently, Jake Tapper of CNN had retweeted the article, so when I came out, it was just, like, announced on CNN, basically. But, um, so I guess I… [00:26:00] Yeah, I guess I’m out. I g- There was no, uh… But anyways, the thing is, I just, you know, for self-realization, that one kid, that little kid that’s crying, the one in the church camp, that kid, I wish I could just go back to him and just say, “You know, you are not an abomination.

You are who you are. You’re a himane. And you know, I wasn’t gonna, I wouldn’t promise your life’s gonna be easy, but at the same time, it’s just like, just love yourself enough to be you, and your story still matters.” And maybe I’d remember that when I’m feeling suicidal or unwanted later. Anyway, thank you

Thanks, Adria. Adria Zweit is a Northern Cheyenne fiction writer and transgender two-spirit journalist. Her writing has [00:27:00] appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, and Indian Country Today, among other publications. She is the executive director of the nonprofit Indigenous Transilience.

You can also find her on Instagram Coming up after the break

And I knocked on the door, and this big burly guy with dark hair and a tattoo of a grizzly bear on one bicep and a woodpecker on the other opens the door, and he looks at me and he said, “I was wondering when you people would find me.”

I read Into the Wild and I just ate that up.

Alaska, it wasn’t a place, it was an objective. It was traveling west. It was doing more. It was wrapped up in this idea I had of some clarity.

Stay with us. Thank you to our story sponsor, The Good Food Store, who helped us pay our storytellers. Learn more about them at goodfoodstore.com. The next Tell Us [00:28:00] Something live event is right around the corner.

We are excited to be returning to Bonner Park Bandshell, located in the University District of Missoula, Montana. The theme for our summer event is The Power of Place. Tickets are on sale now. Learn more and get your tickets at tellussomething.org. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast, where people share their true stories around a theme live in person without notes.

I’m Mark Moss. Storytellers in this episode shared their stories in front of a full house on January 20th, 2026 at the George and Jane Dennison Theater in Missoula, Montana. Opening the second half of this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast, Mark Matthews is a freelance journalist assigned by the Washington Post to cover a high-profile assassination attempt at the US Capitol.

He thinks he’s found the scoop of a lifetime in a small Montana mining town. After tracking down the shooter’s best friend and securing what he thinks of [00:29:00] as a bag of gold in the form of a delusional handwritten manifesto, Mark discovers that in the world of big city journalism, landing the story is only half the battle.

Mark calls his story Front Page News. Thanks for listening.

So, uh, in, um, on July 22nd, 1998, when I was working as a freelance journalist, I got a phone call from The Washington Post. And the editor told me that a resident of Montana had apparently driven to Washington, DC, to try to assassinate Senator Conrad Burns.

His name was Russell J. Weston, and he went by the nickname Rusty because of his red hair. So when Rusty went to the Capitol Building, he tried going around the metal detector, and a security guard confronted him, and he took out a pistol, and he shot the man dead. [00:30:00] And then he ran down a corridor and got into a gunfight and was injured himself and arrested.

The editor want- wanted me to drive over to Rimini, Montana, which is about 15 miles west of Helena, to get some information about Rusty, and that’s, that’s where he was living at the time in a small shack. So this was a couple years after I graduated from J-School, and I’d built up a pretty good freelance, uh, business.

And, uh, what I would do, I would take a local story that I wrote for the Great Falls Tribune, give it a regional twist and sell it to High Country News, and then give it a national slant and sell it to The Washington Post If it dealt with Native Americans, I could sell it to Indian Country Today or if it was a dam removal on the Clark Fork to Engineering News-Record or if it was about a Black lab to the Retriever Journal[00:31:00]

So I, but I’d never got an assignment, uh, to go cover a breaking news story of national interest, so I was pretty excited, uh, when I was driving down from McDonald Pass on Highway 20, uh, down to the flatlands, and I found the dirt road going to Rimbey. And I drove over there to check it out. And it was a old mining town.

There were just a few cottages, shacks, and, um, log cabins and a spat- um, smattering of, uh, modern houses in, in the trees. So next morning, I went back to Rimbey and the first person I ran into was an elderly gentleman who called himself the mayor of, of Rimbey. And he invited me into his house and, uh, talked to me for about an hour.

And he told me how Rusty would stand in front of this, um, satellite dish and shout into the dish, “I am here. I am [00:32:00] here.” And apparently he thought the FBI had set that up to spy on him. And I later learned that he had spent time at, at the mental institution in Warm Springs and had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic After, after talking to the elder- elderly gentleman, um, I went down to find, uh, where Rusty lived, and it was easy to find ’cause there was a, a gaggle of reporters already assembled there, about 30 reporters and two giant vans with, uh, satellite disks on the roof from the television stations.

But nobody could, um, enter the property ’cause it was cordoned off by the FBI, and agents were trying to determine if Rusty had booby-trapped his shack And none of the other neighbors really interested in being interviewed, at least for that day. [00:33:00] And the FBI finally entered the shack. It didn’t blow up, and the reporters dispersed.

And I drove into Helena to call up the, the Washington Post and give my report. And the editor said, “Why don’t you hang around another day and see if you can dig something up?” So I did. And the next day, I got to talk to some of the neighbors, but they didn’t give me any new information. And kind of, uh, in a deje-dejected state, I started heading back to Helena to call into the Post and, um, stopped at a mom-and-pop gas station at the outskirts of town.

And while talking to the proprietor, I said, “Did, did you know Rusty Weston?” And he said, “Oh, sure. He used to stop in here all the time, buy cigarettes and groceries.” And during the conversation, I found out where his best friend lived and a descri-got a [00:34:00] description of the house, and it was just off Highway 20, just outside of Helena.

And I drove over there, and I found the house, and I knocked on the door. And this big, burly guy with dark hair and a tattoo of a grizzly bear on one bicep and a woodpecker on the other opens the door, and he looks at me, and he said, “I was wondering when you people would find me.” And he invited me in. And he told me this nice story about how he and Rusty worked for an entire summer excavating an old gold mine, uh, in the forest.

But after a while, he got very angry and emotional, and he stood up, and he started just gesticulating and pointing his stubby finger at me ev-every time he said something. And he started berating the Forest Service and then the government in general. And it turned out they were mad at the Forest [00:35:00] Service because, uh, the mine was in a wilderness area, and they couldn’t build a road into the mine to take out the tailings.

And then he went off about everything, everything about the government, and I started getting nervous. And then he said, “Wait a second.” And he walked into another room, and I thought, “Should I run out the door? Is this guy gonna come back with a gun and shoot me?” But instead, he came back with a piece of paper And he handed it to me.

He said, “This is a letter that we wrote to Senate- Senator Burns.” And this is only part of, of what it said. It was full of misspellings, and you could see that Russ probably had a hard time growing up, and he had been described as a loner, uh, by his high school mates. He said… He wrote, “Mr. Burns, I have seen the speech made by the representative of Iraqi at [00:36:00] Geneva, Switzerland.

Iraqi is making the same accusations as myself. Organized crime coming from the Office of the President of the United States. Criminal acts perpe- perpetrated by criminal faction in control of the US government. I know and have evidence of this. I would like to make my case to the United Nations and make public through advertising.

Myself and many influential persons are asking for the arrest of George Bush, B-U-C-H, and his outlaw band of criminals. We are mad as hell. We demand peace in the Gulf, withdrawal of troops for the purpose of capturing the outlaw Reagan-Bush outlaws.” Signed Russell E. Weston Jr. I felt as if I had a bag of gold in my hand.

I could just picture the headline, front page, Washington Post, my [00:37:00] article, my byline. So I turned to the fellow and I said, “Could I borrow this to take it to photocopy?” He said, “No.” And without thinking, I said, “I’ll give you 50 bucks.” “No, okay.”

So I photo– got it photo- photocopied it. Um, and then I went into the Associated Press offices in Helena so that they could fax it to The Washington Post. And then I went and wrote my story. And at that time, you had to call it in and dictate it to a stenographer. And they said, “Well, the paper’s already gone to the presses tonight, so it won’t come out tomorrow, but the next day.”

And I drove home feeling ecstatic. I had, I had out-scooped all the other reporters. And, uh, I woke up the next morning and emailed The Washington Post an invoice for two days work and fifty dollars to [00:38:00] gain access to this thing. And this is when it will be self-evident that the so-called fake media actually works under strict moral and ethical standards.

Because two hours later, I got a call from The Washington Post, and the editor asked, “Did you really pay for this information?” “Well, not really. I paid blah, blah, blah, blah.” And she said, “We’ve argued with the– with our lawyers for an hour, and they said we can’t use it.” So, so no headline, no front story, no byline.

But I did get my fifty bucks back

Thanks, Mark. Mark Matthews was born in 1951 in Lynn, Massachusetts. During the 1980s, he lived in a fishing shack perched on a [00:39:00] dock at South Freeport Harbor in Maine. In 1989, he moved to Montana. Mark has spent the last 50 years of his life sculpting, painting, writing, making music, and teaching people of all ages the community-inspiring patterns of American folk dances.

Closing out this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast, Christian Bazano is hoping for clarity and a Deadliest Catch-style adventure. He heads to Bristol Bay, Alaska, to work on a fishing boat. Between 20-hour workdays, stinging jellyfish, and the relentless melancholic gray of the ocean, Christian discovers that the intellectual endeavor he planned is quickly dissolving into a battle to keep his own sanity from cracking.

Christian calls his story Lessons From the Last Frontier. Thanks for listening.

When I was 25, for no particular reason, I signed on to a fishing vessel for the sockeye salmon season in Bristol Bay, Alaska. [00:40:00] It was a 10-week season. I signed on as a deckhand. Uh, it was 2022. I say no particular reason, but I actually had a lot going on in my life at the time, kind of pushed me to do such a thing.

For starters, when I was in high school, I read Into the Wild, and I just ate that up. Uh, Alaska, it was, it wasn’t a place, it was an objective. It was traveling west. It was doing more. Um, it was wrapped up in this idea I had of some clarity. At the time, uh, I was pursuing my graduate degree, my master’s in philosophy, and philosophy had provided me a, a structure, an analytical way of looking at the world around me.

And in that structure, I could point out, this is where I’m gonna get some clarity to some of life’s biggest questions. Why am I here? What am I doing? What’s my purpose? And now Alaska was wrapped up in this as well. Alaska was gonna point me in a direction that I needed to go. I probably watched too much Deadliest Catch and a few other things that I [00:41:00] thought this would be a, a journey.

You know, I wanted an adventure. I wanted to get away. I wanted to be a part of something. I wanted something new. And while philosophy had provided a, a larger structure, it was in these tangible things like fishing in Alaska and another number of other experiences I had done that, that would give me the answers I was looking for.

And I’m in a bar in Naknek, Alaska. And Naknek is, if you have Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, uh, you follow them up, that’s Bristol Bay where the fishing happens, and Naknek is a, a little tiny fishing town. And when you think large scale mountains, your picturesque Alaska, it’s not really that. This is a, a tundra, dilapidated buildings, and it’s a fisherman’s village.

And one of two bars are in Naknek, and I was sitting in one. This is the day before we head into the water. Myself and Spencer, the other deckhand, are, are sitting at the bar [00:42:00] and, and the bar is pretty packed, but there’s not a lot of talking going on. No music was playing, and I remember that, which is just, uh, kind of emblematic of the, the environment that we were in When I was a kid, I watched The SpongeBob Movie, and there’s the Salty Spitoon.

Um, that’s what it reminded me of, of just these pirate figures in this bar and, and I was SpongeBob in this case. I just didn’t really belong there. And we’re talking to this older gentleman. He’s, he’s on my left. Spencer’s on my right. We’re both new deckhands. And the conversation happens, ki-kicks up, and, and I can tell he’s not really interested.

He’s actually looking straight ahead and, and doesn’t turn to acknowledge us once. Should’ve been my cue to fuck off, but I was just kinda pressing him, just so excited. And the conversation turns to, “Are you, like, w- are you excited for what’s about to happen? How do you feel about this season?” And he says, “Yeah, I’m, I’m really excited, and everything’s going to plan, and it should be a good year,” X, Y, Z.

The conversation turns just more [00:43:00] general and, and we ask, you know, how things are going, and he, he, he tells us he’s a captain, and if everything goes to plan, it’ll be a good year as long as he doesn’t have the problems that he had last year. And so I look at him and I say, “Well, what problems did you have last year?”

And then he goes, “Oh, just with my deckhands.” And Spencer and I, we cast our first glance at each other, and I say, “Well, what happened to your deckhands?” And so this man, he’s sitting at the bar, and he’s got a hand on a bottle of Budweiser. On each knuckle is a callus maybe the size of a golf ball. He’s got a, a baseball hat pulled down really low, long hair, and a, a thick beard.

Um, I kinda picture him like Neptune, but really he was just probably what most fishing captains look like. He had a flannel that was ripped open from top of his shoulder down to the middle of his forearm, the kind of flannel that in Missoula we pay $30 to $50 for. And, but he, he earned this flannel. Um, and yeah, and so we ask, I ask, “Well, what happened to your [00:44:00] deckhands?”

And rather flippantly, he takes his hand off his Budweiser, puts it in the air, and he says, “Well, one broke his femur.” Spencer and I look at each other again. And he says– puts his hand back on the bottle, “And the other, he just cracked.” Spencer and I look at each other again. Spencer leans forward and his voice kinda breaking, he goes, “W- what is cracked?”

And for the first time in the whole conversation, the man actually acknowledged that we exist. He turns and he looks at us, and he was like, “You boys must be green.” Greenhorn being the, the term for, for newbies in Alaska, which we certainly were as we probably were like, “Yeah, we’re, yeah, we’re new. You can tell.”

And the conversation kinda died there, and with the excitement of getting into the water the next day and everything that was happening, just really didn’t think anything of it I’m about four weeks into the, the season, and I’m standing on the bow of the boat, and the bow is the front, and it’s just me out there.

And for some context to fishing in Alaska, the boat is 32 feet long, um, [00:45:00] so maybe not much longer than this stage. It’s a pretty small boat, and most crews have four to five people. My crew was myself, Spencer, and our captain, which was good because we made a lot more money, uh, that you get paid at the very end of the season based on how many fish you catch.

Um, but it was bad because we just got our asses kicked for pretty much the whole time There was about 15 to 20 hour days, uh, pretty much on end, never ending, of, of fishing. Um, but fishing felt more tangential to the experience than anything else. It was really just try not to get egregiously injured, maimed, or killed, um, while you’re fishing.

And we use fish hooks with these really sharp pointers to, to pull fish out, and each fish weighs about eight pounds, and in the few hours of rest you would have, your hands would be so tight that you couldn’t move them, and you’d have to heat them up on a stove to get your nerves working. And just in the sleep deprivation and the waves coming over the side, and again, I, I watch too much Deadliest Catch and, and I, [00:46:00] I recognize that.

I romanticize it a little bit more than I should have. I had bought this leather journal, and it was probably like 50 or 60 dollars, and this Alaska experience was also gonna be a-an intellectual endeavor. I was going to write and document and figure some things out. And I have a, a journal entry on the first page, and it begins with, “The adventure begins.”

And I started that on the day we flew up. It takes about two days to get there. And it was… It’s this very well-written entry I have and, and that’s the only fucking time I ever wrote in the journal. I never got to it again after that. And pretty emblematic of everything that was happening and just, yeah, the nonstop picking fish, and there’s jellyfish coming over the side stinging your face.

And, uh, I got what I asked for, that’s, that’s certainly true. And I’m standing on the bow of this boat. You know, my life has now led up to this singular moment, and I’m looking out at the gray. And this time in Alaska, there’s [00:47:00] 24-hour daylight, but it, it’s not actually daylight. It’s just a gray that doesn’t really change.

And no matter what time of the day it was, it pretty much looked the same. I’m looking out, and I’m noticing where the skyline meets the horizon, and it’s this gray, this, this melancholic, somber gray. It’s palpable. You can feel it. It’s, it’s, it’s got substance to it. And I’m looking where the, the waterline meets the horizon line, but then I’m actually not sure if that is where they meet.

And then I’m thinking, “It’s all just one gray.” And then I’m thinking, “I think I’m gonna be here forever, and I don’t think I can leave.” And I just started to spiral. And in that, somewhere it, it hit me. I, I, I understood. I understood. I was starting to crack. You know, I got it now But somewhere in there, which r- in reality was, uh, the borderline psychotic break I was having, um, in my lapse of sanity, [00:48:00] I had a deeper acknowledgement.

I was looking at this all wrong. Alaska was gonna be this means to an end. I was gonna walk away with some newfound knowledge about who I was, what my point being here is. And, and I had it backwards. Um, you know, and maybe it took something like this for me to recognize, but philosophy, where it had failed was, was in that pursuit.

You know, I think, we all think at the end of the day that that thing we’re working for, it’s coming. It’s coming. One day it’s gonna be there, and that’s just what our focus is. And then one day it is there. We’ve, we’ve arrived and, and we’ve got what we wanted, but we probably don’t feel very different from how we’ve always felt.

We’ve thought of life by analogy of a journey, a pilgrimage, with success or that thing at the end is, is the point of it all. And, you know, the, the analogies or the… Yeah, the analogies ring true. It’s the journey, not the destination. Ferris Bueller tells you to look up or you’re gonna miss it. You know, when [00:49:00] you’re a kid and you’re looking at your iPad in the car and, and it dies and the world is ending.

Instead, you just look out your window. All these things that we hear told to us repeatedly, and we, we don’t think too much of it. But again, we’ve had it all wrong. It’s, it’s a musical thing, and we’re supposed to sing and dance and laugh while the music’s being played around us. Brian Andreas, an artist, he says, “There are things you do because they feel right.

They may make no sense. They may make no money. But maybe that’s the reason we’re here: to love each other, to eat each other’s cooking, and to say it was good.”

Thanks, Christian. Christian Bazzano moved to Montana almost six years ago from his home in Tennessee. He spent many years of his life doing seasonal work in various roles across the Northwest, from guiding whitewater to sawyer to ski operations to Alaska commercial fisherman. [00:50:00] Christian has his master’s degree in philosophy and works for an environmental education nonprofit

You have been listening to the Tell Us Something podcast. Tune in next week to hear the concluding stories from the Self Evident live storytelling event.

The air starts getting hazier as we’re getting closer and closer to the fire. We’re coming up on people that are really struggling in their event.

Pretty much every single one of them is walking at this point.

I began to think, what if I wasn’t an unruly kid? What if I was just trying to exist in a neurotypical society while being neurodivergent?

I live in a place that is mostly made up of a lot of trees, sweeping majestic mountains, and the overall belief that nothing too strange or unexpected ever really happens to you.

A belief that, for me, would not survive the upcoming weekend. [00:51:00]

I had this sudden strong urge to turn around and thank the forest. And so I did. I turned around and I put my hands in front of my heart and I bowed just ever so slightly.

Listen for those stories at tellussomething.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to our media sponsors MissoulaEvents.net, Mike’s Print and Copy, Missoula Broadcasting Company, including the family of ESPN Radio, The Trail 103.3, Jack FM, and Missoula’s source for modern hits, U104.5. And thanks to our in-kind sponsors, Float Missoula and Joyce of Tile.

Thanks to Cash for Junkers, who provided the music for the podcast. The song is called Buzzin’ and can be found on their album, which you can stream at cashforjunkersband.com. The next Tell Us Something live event is right around the corner. We [00:52:00] are excited to be returning to Bonner Park Bandshell, located in the University District of Missoula, Montana.

The theme for our summer event is The Power of Place. Tickets are on sale now. Learn more and get your tickets at tellussomething.org.