140 miles east of cool

One of the Greatest Fireworks Shows on Earth

Brad Johnson — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 19:49:48 +0000

The fireworks get shot out from the middle of a cow pasture and you just pull up your pickup along the pasture fence, jump in the back, sit in lawn chairs or lay on blankets, stare up at the stars until the show starts. And man it's a show.

Magic City Hen video & Expo this Saturday

Brad Johnson — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 19:05:08 +0000

Before heading off to California, I got the privilege to shoot for a couple evenings with Mumbo, this little bantam hen for a quick video to support the Billings backyard hen initiative, which is slowly making its way to the City Council. It’s a quick shot to raise some awareness around the issue. There were […]

Some Dreamers Along the Golden Line

Brad Johnson — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 13:45:18 +0000

The guy at the front of the Reno Trader Joe's checkout line catches my eye and chuckles "A thousand bucks man. Eight days worth of Burning Man chow. For our whole camp. Crazy." He and his buddy slap down their credit cards on what seems an impossible amount of food to consume in those days, even for people hardlining for some organic, free-range style munchies.

The Mind Eraser

Brad Johnson — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 14:27:09 +0000

“My feet. That’s the signal. They start twitching. And I know it’s coming,” C tells me. Out the window of the rushing train, the sun climbs up out of the eastern horizon of Colorado. I met C early this morning for the first time after she agreed to be interviewed for a project I’m working […]

Bright Edges of the Earth

Brad Johnson — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 01:50:33 +0000

The sound of Mr. Chen’s motor drifts upwards, mingling with water lapping along the sides of his gently rocking boat. I ache: for Sara, for my daughters, for home.

Acceptable Blasphemies: Reflections on Opening Day

Brad Johnson — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 14:27:33 +0000

The cottonwood leaves, like teenagers, can’t sleep. They rattle nervously and drop to the ground or simply hang in the breeze waiting for someone to blow through and lift them away. Jupiter still lights the twilight with her constancy, bright against dark robed trees. The moon keeps low, almost hiding. I pause to take a […]

Welcoming Autumn

Brad Johnson — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 05:47:17 +0000

I'm waiting for the bobcat. She's all the rage on our street. Neighbors call those with small dogs wondering if they're inside, as the she was seen strolling towards the Rims with something largish in its mouth (turns out it was a squirrel). A dozen or so sightings this month has my hopes up that she'll come traipsing past my office window soon.

American Sinai: Wovoka & the Ghost Dance of Walker Lake

Brad Johnson — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 17:49:38 +0000

This is hallowed ground. Indigenous America’s Mt. Sinai. It’s Sea of Galilee. The birthplace of the Messiah, of late 19th century Indian Hope, and, as always (always) despair.

The Repressed Psychic at the Corner Bakery

Brad Johnson — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:10:38 +0000

And so vibrators become vibrations, and yoga becomes big business, and cupcakes tremble behind glass, and psychics get LLCs and graduate degrees, and the world becomes more exquisitely repressed and sanitized.

(Beach) Apocalypse Now

Brad Johnson — Thu, 27 May 2010 00:41:28 +0000

I love this photo in a kind of "postcards from the apocalypse" kind of way. The way the photo inverts the usual overly bright and shiny beach postcard genre. It's gorgeously unsentimental and tragic.

Reading Virgil on the New York Stock Exchange Floor

Brad Johnson — Tue, 18 May 2010 21:41:52 +0000

Lower Manhattan, New York City 7a.m. I rest in front of George Washington’s statue at Federal Hall at 26 Wall Street. I sit with my camera bag waiting for the light to move so I can get a good exterior shot of the New York Stock Exchange across the street. I am on assignment this […]

Chuck the Body Into Canada

Brad Johnson — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 12:38:21 +0000

…snapping her phone shut: “Well, that was Dan, he did it, he bought that place near me with the dead guy in the septic.” “I don’t know why he doesn’t just haul that thing outta there, walk across the border, and chuck it into Canada.” Two Montana women overheard in the Airport this morning.

Where the Stress Falls

Brad Johnson — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 12:50:34 +0000

Spondees are the best words to whisper in the dark.

On Blindness and Insight

Brad Johnson — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 20:21:54 +0000

I want this man to translate the tongues I cannot read, and bend the mute leaves into song. But I suspect he cannot. He can only, like me, mourn the loss of shade and take refuge from the whine and hydraulic screams of the bulldozers.

A Personal Geography: Ouray, Colorado

Brad Johnson — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 16:46:58 +0000

In 1976, we took a summer camping trip to Ouray/Silverton Colorado area. As he drove our family station wagon, I sat in the back seat piling wads of gum into my jaw like it was chewing tobacco. The sound of his harmonica floated back...

Light & Letters | Words & Images of Hunger

Brad Johnson — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 15:12:34 +0000

Radio can pierce. Voice stabs me in a way very few things do. Someone's voice on the radio is intimate, like you're either being held by them or holding them. Close.

Ten Most Influential Books

Brad Johnson — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 16:28:02 +0000

My friend Tim, on his blog, burns the "Ten Most Influential Books"Â internet meme flame and asks what are yours? It got me thinking (as it's supposed to), but rather than clog up his blog comments as I usually do, I dashed off a list here.

Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Ash Wednesday and the Mark of Cain

Brad Johnson — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:17:19 +0000

Given that the swastika is often read as a kind of perverted cross, and the marking of the forehead has a particular religious resonance, we can read that Raine's forehead carvings invert the Ash Wednesday observance. The Ash Wednesday marking is a highly ritualized display of absolution. Raine's marking scenes are highly stylized rituals of condemnation intended to foreclose such absolution. Aldo's knife is a pen (however worn the analogy) with which he carves/writes/creates a space where evil cannot repent, a person cannot be forgiven, cannot switch sides, cannot become new, cannot shed a uniform for new clothes and be cleansed.

Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generation?

Brad Johnson — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:46:44 +0000

Now, finding my daughter hula-hooping or wearing wigs (even a man-wig) isn't surprising. She scours thrift and costume stores for groovy wigs and is building a nice collection. She's got a Liz Taylor wig, two Amelia Earhart wigs, a Paula Dean wig. Her Roger Daltrey wig is her only man-wig. It's the combination of the wig and The Who and what those things meant to me in my own identity-formation that took me back a bit, equally as much as hearing my guileless pre-teen daughter belt out "we're all wasted."

Goodnight Keith Moon: Some Post Super Bowl Bedtime Reading

Brad Johnson — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 15:27:31 +0000

Back in November, Bruce Worden and Clare Cross offered up this updated, and creepier, version of the 1947 classic children’s picture book by Margaret Wise Brown, Goodnight Moon. This parody features Keith Moon (1946-1978) [Annie Leibovitz portrait], the impish drummer for The Who. Click the picture to wish all your little rockstars goodnight.

The Super Bowl as directed by Tarantino, Lynch, Anderson, Godard, Herzog

Brad Johnson — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 22:34:21 +0000

What might the Super Bowl look like if directed by Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch, Wes Anderson, Jean-Luc Godard, or Werner Herzog?

Going out in Style

Brad Johnson — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:40:55 +0000

Recently deposed Sun Microsystems front man Jonathan Schwartz resigns with a haiku on Twitter, giving the world two things it needs: more poetry and fewer CEOs.

Infinite Jest: Rodent shifts Time-Space Continuum and Other Thoughts on a Minor Holiday

Brad Johnson — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:48:22 +0000

It's fitting on a day in which a largish varmint shivs the meteorological time-space continuum that the popular U.S. show Lost returns to explode what's left of our collective brains. When we last left the hapless survivors of Oceanic 815 they too had cut loose from the time-space continuum (ok, I'll stop using that phrase cause I don't really know what it means because it involves math and I have all the mathematical prowess of a weather-predicting whistle-pig).

Werner Herzog Reads Curious George

Brad Johnson — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:30:44 +0000

Well, it’s not Herzog. One would have a hard time nailing the Herzog accent, though as my family will tell you I try rather too frequently. Some of the lines quite wonderfully recall Herzog’s philosophies.

When Less is More | a J.D. Salinger Appreciation

Brad Johnson — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:56:52 +0000

He's been gone for forty-four years, but today he passed over. Expect the mainstream media to wallow in the "J.D. Salinger" question for the next week: they'll enshrine his absence from public life all these years and ask whether or not his life was good, or bad.

Howard Zinn: 1922-2010

Brad Johnson — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:28:14 +0000

After reading Zinn's A People's History of the United States, Bruce Springsteen sat down, wrote, and recorded "Nebraska," perhaps his best social and political work. Zinn once said he decided to write A People's History after listening to Woody Guthrie's lyrics about Colorado's Ludlow Massacre. Guthrie goosed Bob Dylan towards political consciousness who in turn moved Springsteen to consider writing stories "from below" -- stories against the grain of the "great men" theory of history.

Turning Around | Mr. Ignacious Mwambola

Brad Johnson — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:42:12 +0000

So much of the news from Africa is depressing: famine, aids, wars, orphans, despots, you name it. It’s not just the mainstream media; I’ve been hit recently by a kind of “year-end giving blitz” when relief agencies scramble for your 2009 tax planning largesse. Lots of hungry kids with flies in their eyes. I’m told […]

Broadsheets and Chalkboards | The Daily Talk

Brad Johnson — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 05:04:41 +0000

The swan song for traditional media is as incessant as it is unquestioned. Don't tell that to San Francisco's Dave Eggers or Liberia's Alfred Sirleaf. In radically different ways, under radically different conditions, they both open a space for the newspaper's relevance in a landscape of navel-gazing corporate media non-stop blather-a-thon (oh, and blogs, let's not forget blogorrhea).

100 days in Glacier National Park

Brad Johnson — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:17:41 +0000

This summer, Glacier Park Magazine editor Chris Peterson undertook a photographic project to take photos of Montana's Glacier National Park over 100 consecutive days, starting on May 1, 2009, for a traveling photo show in 2010 to commemorate Glacier's Centennial. He used a mix of film and digital cameras, including an 8 by 10 field camera, a Kodak Pocket Vest camera, circa 1909, and a Speed Graphic, among others. His idea was to use the cameras that would have been used over the course of the Park's 100 years.

it’s been so long

Brad Johnson — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:39:49 +0000

since I’ve posted. But I’ve been in Africa. Without internet. Until tonight. I’m sitting in a joint in Zanzibar missing Sara and Grace and Ruth. It’s hot, but the beer tonight is cold. Tonight, for the first time in a week I’ll be able to take a shower. With hot water. I’ll begin sweating the […]

The Upper Cut: Walt Young Hangs up His (and his Father’s) Shears

Brad Johnson — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:48:29 +0000

Walt Young cut hair on East Colfax in Denver for 60 years. His chair was less than 6 feet from the sidewalk, a constant parade of homeless winos. Walt never let that thin sheet of glass get in the way. Everyone came in to his shop.

Born on Third: on Drinking with Racists (Strike One)

Brad Johnson — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:46:22 +0000

A friend of mine likes to tell the joke: the reason I don't like George Bush is that he was born on third base and he thinks he hit a triple.

90 Seconds in Malawi (MaiMwana Video)

Brad Johnson — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:42:46 +0000

Video footage from the current documentary project on a group of women in Malawi (MaiMwana Project) who organized to begin solving the various health issues in their villages.

American Police Force Turns Tail and Exits Hardin

Brad Johnson — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 23:12:57 +0000

claiming the prison is outdated, American Police Force turns tail and drops their bid for the Hardin Jail.

95% of Cinematography

Brad Johnson — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:33:51 +0000

I've been told that 95% of cinematography is pointing the camera at something beautiful. I'd like to thank the people of Malawi for making my job easy.

Blind Faith

Brad Johnson — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 03:58:03 +0000

All sight is a form of nostalgia for something lost.

Hardin Jail/American Police Force President Michael Hilton: Scam Artist or True Western Hero?

Brad Johnson — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:31:09 +0000

Here's a new joke we tell out here in the windswept plains of eastern Montana: what do you get when you cross a wanna-be Serbian Militant with a Southern California car salesman? That's right, the keys to the Hardin Jail.

Hardin jail Updates

Brad Johnson — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:36:47 +0000

Shay named spokesperson for American Police Force “American Police Force, the company contracting with Two Rivers Authority to run its new-but-empty jail in Hardin, announced Friday its new public relations person. Becky Shay, a former Billings Gazette reporter whose beat included the Hardin facility, accepted the position Friday.”…..(click link to continue) Job applicants overwhelm American […]

The Fix Is In (140Miles East of Cool Recommends)

Brad Johnson — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:06:49 +0000

OK. You surrender. The little white flag is now raised high over your cubicle. Your weekend is all laid out for you. After taking the kids to see Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs you'll take in The Informant. Why? Helloooooo. Do you really think we have a choice? Is NOT choosing to slap down the green on the new Diablo Cody/Megan Fox vehicle Jennifer's Body really "voting with your dollars" or are you caught in a double-bind with your consumptive choices cordoned all around you and shoveled down your sometimes-metaphorical throat?

Guest Columnists: Grace + Ruth

Brad Johnson — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 04:49:15 +0000

Mom is out of town this weekend.

Lock and Load Them Ballet Tunes Boys, We’re Headed to Hardin

Brad Johnson — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:02:45 +0000

I associate Ravel's Bolero with, if not softness itself, the soft curvature of a woman. Imagine my surprise to find it as the website theme American Police Force, a group that sells arms in Afghanistan, and is a general one-stop shop kidnap and ransom/fugitive recovery/spousal infidelity service group that also does international military and paramilitary operations, cruise ship and shipping security, and trains special forces. Oh, and this they're the new residents of the Hardin, Montana jail.

Police Room 619, September 12

Brad Johnson — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 17:35:42 +0000

He was arrested on August 21 at a police checkpoint under Terrorism Act No 83 which allowed the government to detain any citizen for an indefinite period of time without trial and without the requirement to release any detainee's name. He was beaten repeatedly for 20 days until September 11th when, close to death, he was stripped naked and tossed into the back of a Land Rover and driven 1500km to a prison with hospital facilities. He died on September 12.

In Defense of Fanaticism: Breaking Into the Twin Towers

Brad Johnson — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 04:10:27 +0000

They were a ragtag band living overseas watching the World Trade Center towers go up. And they knew, even before the towers were built, that they were going to break into the towers; they knew they were going to commit crimes. They spent six years planning every aspect of the operation: where to hide inside the building, how to sneak in, the rotations of the guards. It was an exercise in extreme detail and brilliance.

Lesson Plans, 2009

Brad Johnson — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:05:59 +0000

Timothy Egan’s last two posts on the NYTimes site deserve your attention. Check ’em out: Lesson Plans, 2009 – Timothy Egan Blog – NYTimes.com Hunting Wolves, and Men – Timothy Egan Blog – NYTimes.com And while I’m posting others, say what you will about Al Franken, the man knows his geography…and he was taking questions […]

Obama Wets His Line in Montana

Brad Johnson — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:00:12 +0000

I often find myself checking out the White House Flickr stream, partly because I like Pete Souza's photography, and partly because Souza uses the same camera and similar lenses to me which makes me curious about his shots (and Flickr posts much of the metadata so the nerds can check out lens, aperture, etc.) I also find that on the White House Flickr stream, one can find really candid and interesting photos. For example this one, where the Park Ranger at Grand Canyon is clearly holding the President's ear while the Obama kids are bored out of their skulls, hunched over in the hot sun with that "dad, can we just go now" body slump.

The Public Option in Short: Robert Reich Lays It Out

Brad Johnson — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 22:04:42 +0000

Adopt Me: on Madonna, Malawi, and Adoption

Brad Johnson — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 18:27:29 +0000

When Madonna's black-with-dark-tinted-windows Land Cruisers came barreling down the dirt road towards the orphanage, the locals thought they were ready. They had printed up t-shirts with the "Adopt Me" slogan and an arrow pointed towards their face. They were ready to run down to the main road with their shirts on, line the road out to the orphanage, and wave at the cruisers as they sped past.

African Sausage

Brad Johnson — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:31:23 +0000

Find a patch of brush. Light it on fire. Catch all the mice as they race to escape the flames. Toss them into boiling water. Wait. Scoop their wet-soaked scraggly carcass out of the water pot. Jam a dozen between two sticks. Run out to the road. Wait for a passing minibus. Sell for 150-250 Kwacha (USD$1.00-1.75)

Chakhala

Brad Johnson — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 07:25:13 +0000

In 1988, on a trip to Uganda, we carried a polaroid and were able to take family shots, village shots, etc. and give them the photograph right then and there. I can't seem to find a Polaroid these days. And while everyone seems to get a kick looking at the LCD screen on the back of my camera, it's not the same.

Pakati

Brad Johnson — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:21:30 +0000

In Chichewa, a pregnant woman is described as pakati (between life and death) or matenda (sick).

July 16th along the Jornada del Muerto

Brad Johnson — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:58:11 +0000

They are walking in prayer today in Church Rock New Mexico, thirty years after the largest radioactive accident in U.S. history (Three Mile Island happened a few months earlier, in March 1979). When the dam broke at the United Nuclear Corporation's Church Rock Uranium Mill in the early morning hours, eleven tons of radioactive wastes and ninety million (90,000,000) gallons of radioactive waste poured into the Rio Puerco with such force that the liquid waste lifted manhole covers throughout Gallup twenty miles downstream and people fled to hospitals complaining of burning feet.

National Park Fee Free Days, in a word, glorious

Brad Johnson — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 08:00:58 +0000

While Yellowstone is posting record numbers of visitors this year, National Parks as a whole have seen attendance slide in recent years. In hopes of reversing the trend and re-introducing folks to our wonderful public lands heritage, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced back in June that the Department would waive entrance fees nationwide to all parks on three prime summer weekends. This is no small offer as park entrance fees have really climbed in past years. Nearby Yellowstone sits at $25 for entrance (that does give in and out privileges for 7 days).

“Mad Money” Indeed: CNBC’s Jim Cramer, High Priest of Death

Brad Johnson — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 08:00:39 +0000

If we have learned anything from the past year, we should have learned that we are plagued by a kind of dark age, an age of ignorance, an age of economic illiteracy... We rely on the priests and the prophets who have unmediated access to the gods of commerce. They translate the dense, opaque, confusing world to the rest of us. And they wield enormous power. They are often referred to in otherworldly, nearly priestly terms. Warren Buffet is interchangeably the "Sage of Omaha" and the "Oracle of Omaha."

Have Camera, Will Travel

Brad Johnson — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:05:56 +0000

The tickets are paid for, the seat assignments are locked in, and at this time next Tuesday I will be headed to Africa. This trip is part of my commitment to “be like Barack,” that is to do everything Obama does: hail from Chicago (check); have two daughters and a lovely wife (check); play a […]

Weekend Update: the Vacuous Morsel Edition

Brad Johnson — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 19:46:04 +0000

in which we discuss Michael Jackson, Willie Nelson, Shakespeare's Hamlet, Homer's Odyssey, Slavoj Zizek, the algorithmic brains of Google, Mark Sanford, Twitter, the advertising wiles of Abercrombie & Fitch, and the ongoing infantilization of culture (on a Saturday no less!).

Iran: partying like it’s 1989

Brad Johnson — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:45:31 +0000

Which version of 1989 will Iran 2009 be: Berlin or Beijing?

A tough day to be a blonde

Brad Johnson — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:05:11 +0000

Millions of us grew up in the '70s and 80s playing "cowboys and indians" by day and staring at her poster by night.

Infinite Summer: Reading DFW’s Infinite Jest

Brad Johnson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:09:18 +0000

I suppose I also wept a fair bit because his suicide frightened me. It raised the specter of suicide as a kind of foreordained trajectory, a price one pays for a Wallaceonian empathy, for a DFW-tuned brain. This is an age-old notion usually dismissed as sophomoric and romantic. Still, it's not often in your life you read someone who reminds you that you're not alone only to wake up one morning and find that once again you are.

Just Another Day at the Beach: 60 Million Years Too Late

Brad Johnson — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:00:52 +0000

Science has a way of creeping up on you. It's sneakyâ€”like classical music can be sneaky. One day you're thrashing to the Ramones and Nine Inch Nails and the next you find yourself in tears in the middle of your living room because you just heard Lazlo Varga play a cello in ways you never thought possible and the strings' vibrations reached out and bent you into a kind of fetal position of perverse ecstasy.

Crane Songs

Brad Johnson — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 13:55:53 +0000

From out in the fields I hear what has become a familiar spring sound, a loud rattling karooooo-oooooo of a family of sandhill cranes. A sound unique to this season, one that reaches out from primal history:

A Tale of Two Cities

Brad Johnson — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:18:42 +0000

Each June I become perversely interested in the Stanley Cup. Like a migratory bird, I wake up one morning in spring with my homing beacon dialed in to the NHL. It never fails. I don't watch much hockey during the regular season, but from mid-to-late May through June I'm a crazed hockey fan.

YouTube – Bighorn Sheep vs Toyoya 4Runner In Lander Wyoming

Brad Johnson — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:45:47 +0000

Montana version of an NYC squeegee man...

In Celebration of Spring (and weekends…and public lands)

Brad Johnson — Fri, 29 May 2009 04:44:39 +0000

One of the best times of the year to be in Montana. The heat and crowds haven't descended. The world is green. The mountains are starting to give up their captive snows. Just goofing off with my camera (and the girls) on a hike in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness.

Such an Uncomfortable Place to Hang Your Ass

Brad Johnson — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:05:26 +0000

When we were kids growing up in the Bible Belt, my mother used to threaten to wash our mouths out with soap if we told dirty jokes. Like a lot of kids in that era, in that place, my older brother and I used to try and juke her out by using off-color biblical references that involved the hint of slightly naughty words.

my brother: "Hey punk, who was the the most flexible man in the Bible?"

A Small Natural Grave

Brad Johnson — Tue, 26 May 2009 04:03:31 +0000

This Northern Flicker egg dropped at our feet while we goofing around with intertubes on the Stillwater River this Memorial Day. It seemed a fitting natural elegiac moment for a day given to remembering the dead.

Welcome to Montanamo Bay: Hardin Montana continues its campaign to become Gitmo North

Brad Johnson — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:51:03 +0000

Al-Jazeera? Yes, that network. The local news gave it all the shock-value of an invasion of the Taliban. In reality, the crew was two white dudes -- one from D.C., one from Canada. It looked more like the invasion of the Nordic News Network. Not since Dick Cheney and his fishing guide swooped down in a Blackhawk helicopter to fish the nearby Bighorn have two white dudes garnered so much attention in Hardin.

Tripping on Food: My Own Version of Eating Local

Brad Johnson — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:02:41 +0000

When Fluitt and I used to travel on business together, we sought out the reptilian, the amphibious, and various forms of aquatic vertebrates for dinner. We went for alligator in Texas, frog legs in France, what we could only semi-translate as "pot-of-fish" in a tiny, dark, Korean restaurant off the Champs-Elysee; and something that looked like a half-fish-half-kimodo-dragon, perhaps more suited to an evolutionary exhibit than used as culinary enticement, that pulled us in off the street in a back alley walk up in Hong Kong.

As if I needed anymore evidence that life is like high school

Brad Johnson — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:51:08 +0000

Congressman Denny Rehberg (Montana's sole Representative) is making much of his "cutting-edge" social networking props, including Twitter and Facebook. How is this man supposed to be in any kind of realistic command of our state's representation while he is still mired this deeply in his own infancy?

Is he so lost in his own navel-gazing delusions that he believes snarky and petulant comments pass as leadership?

Wolf Kill, Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness (Winter Count #2)

Brad Johnson — Tue, 05 May 2009 16:50:42 +0000

He wasn't very large by bull moose standards, with a fairly small set of antlers. He didn't look healthy in fact. He was standing ankle-deep in the river, watching us, not moving, almost unsteady on his legs. Something about the way he was standing didn't seem "right." Of all the animals I do not want to tangle with, a bull moose, particularly a sick one, ranks near the top.

Sheep Shearing Video

Brad Johnson — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 02:26:39 +0000

Ewe 17a gets a haircut Fromberg, Montana style.

Armed and Dangerous

Brad Johnson — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:54:20 +0000

The first time I was arrested was on my dead father's 52nd birthday.

The Darkness is Light Enough

Brad Johnson — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:21:47 +0000

Last night, like many around the globe, we shut off our lights in solidarity with Earth Hour. Now, it's easy for me to get really cynical about these kinds of things. The event is, after all, a symbolic and licensed subversion which rather than producing the effect it desires, produces only a spectacle of that effect without any meaningful change (which is a kind of fascism, but I digress!

At the End of An American Metaphor: Santa Monica Pier, Route 66

Brad Johnson — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:48:35 +0000

Santa Monica Pier, the terminus of Main Street America, Route 66. A washed-up dead seal bobs in and out of the incoming waves, drawing the attention of beachcombers lazily walking this strip of sand at the edge of America, this resting place of the American Dream of westward expansion.

Sioux Charley Trail, Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness (Winter Count #1)

Brad Johnson — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 14:42:18 +0000

4:30 A.M. Pitch black. Deep winter. Nothing but darkness and cold. Jack Ballard and I are making time up the trail before first light for an end-of-the-season deer hunt. The light from my headlamp swings back and forth, making me dizzy. I turn it off and move silently up the canyon. We're aiming for a spot about three miles up and across the river...Out of nowhere it hits us â€” a howl comes straight out of the darkness.

The Shear Delight of Wool

Brad Johnson — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 16:05:03 +0000

17a, a pregnant Romney, ambles into the chute and stops. Her fleece corkscrews out from her body sending out shoots of thick wool in all directions. Grace, my ten-year old daughter, buries her hands deep into the wooly fleece and smiles. She runs off to find Anabel Lombard, the ewe's owner, to have her to hold 17a's fleece once it's sheared. Grace has never chosen a fleece before. She goes with her intuition; with the way her hands feel buried into the ewe's wool, with the way the ewe stops, tilts her head back, and looks up at this girl leaning over the railing, as though asking to be chosen.