so Missoula

Near midnight the other day, I startled two teenage girls as they vandalized my neighbor's car, covering it in crushed eggs and two other goopy substances I didn't recognize. The girls fled into the dark night and later, as I spray-cleaned my neighbor's car with a garden hose, I discovered empty bottles tucked near his tires. "Beer bottles," I thought, but no, not in Missoula. These were the empties that had once held the goopy stuff I was now cleaning off the car windows. What could it be? Motor oil? Ink?

No.

Only in Missoula would teenage girls commit vandalism with ORGANIC molasses and RAW, UNFILTERED honey.

The eggs probably came from steroid-free chickens.

What a place.

It is our right; it is our duty

This morning, as on every July 4, I raised the American flag outside my front door. It's a beautiful piece of material, representing a country whose people I admire, a nation that rests on many principles I hold dear. I cherish the First Amendment, habeus corpus, our protections from unreasonable search and seizure; I love that we are a nation structured so that people of varied faiths and ethnicities live together in a relative peace. I'm grateful and aware that I was born into a country blessed with economic prosperity. But I raise the flag today with a heart full of anger and fury with the administration that currently governs the United States. This government spends billions of dollars on private contractors in Iraq, but fails to spend enough so that the poorest Americans have proper housing. This government takes unprecedented measures to keep secret its work on behalf of the people, thereby holding in contempt the very population that elected it. This government tortures people without any determination whether its victims have committed a crime, holds others in prison without trial, but commutes the sentence of its friend and ally found guilty through proper trial because "he has suffered enough."

The people of this country -- in New Orleans, in Hartford, in Lodge Grass, in Baghdad -- have all suffered enough.

Would that I could commute this administration's time in office.

This morning, with friends, I will read aloud the Declaration of Independence as I have every July 4 since 1991. It is a solemn reading of a remarkable document, and, as every year, I will be moved. But I will also be reminded that the government of the United States is our government, and that when a government's "long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce (a people) under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

It is our right; it is our duty.

Love Under the Big Sky

Mermaids flirting with New Englanders at a Tiki Bar? The Loneliest Man in America? Immaculate conception? This is what Brian McDermott discovered while working on his graduate journalism project about Montana Love. He found a lot more than that, too, and I recommend you check out his site -- Montana Love -- to discover fine, multimedia storytelling (with the emphasis on the word storytelling). These are some of his photos (copyrighted) to entice you.

McDermott is now an out-of-work former grad student, so if you're a smart editor somewhere on the East Coast who'd like someone who can write, photograph, and work in audio, I'd recommend you chat with Brian.

Thin Ice

My wife is a writer of lovely prose. I don't mind saying so, because I know her recent essay in the book "Thin Ice: Coming of Age in Grand Rapids" proves me right. I just returned home from Grand Rapids where Sheri was among nine or so writers reading excerpts of their essays during a fun show at the Grand Rapids Public Library. Sheri's piece has as its springboard the true and peculiar family tale of Sheri's twin aunts, born premature, who spent their first days as part of the sideshow at a Grand Rapids amusement park where people paid to see the "preemies."

Our particular disappointment about the reading? Even though he has a piece in the book, the Rev. Al Green couldn't find his way north from Memphis (yes, that Al Green. He grew up in Grand Rapids) to join his fellow authors.

How can anyone mend our broken heart?

Faith and the famous

What a delight to find Cathleen Falsani's face on the front page of the May 16 USA TODAY, teasing a story about journalists who cover religion. Cathleen's book, "The God Factor" is a dynamite collection of her interviews with folks from Bono to Dusty Baker to Seamus Heaney asking them about their faith. The Christian Science Monitor named Falsani's book one of the best nonfiction books of 2006, and it has just been released in paperback. Falsani has long covered religion for the Chicago Sun-Times with freshness, candor and wit. Cathleen's husband is the inestimable Maurice Possley, kick-ass investigative reporter at the Chicago Trib, who once gave a semester to the University of Montana's School of Journalism as its T. Anthony Pollner Distinguished Professor.

The God Factor isn't theology to give Aquinas a run, but it is thoughtful people thinking about what matters to their spiritual lives.

The Greatest Show says "Check it out."