gas station chinese food for lunch

Here is what I wrote for the paper to say goodbye to be beloved little Malta:

Over the last seven weeks in Malta, I have had the chance to meet many of you.

The question on every one's mind seems to be "How are you liking Malta?"

I often reply with a short "It’s great, everyone is really friendly." And you all are really friendly, that’s not a lie. But I figured since I’m leaving now, this is the perfect chance to expound on my answer a little without any repercussions.

Coming from a college town of nearly 50,000 people to a county with one-tenth of that population, was sort of like diving into ice cold water on a hot afternoon, not that there are many of those around here.

I know that the water will be cold, I am prepared, but when the water rushes over my body I’m still a little shocked, though its not exactly unpleasant.

That’s what this has been like for me: a refreshing dive into unknown waters. No matter how much I told myself, ‘I can handle small, I like small’ I couldn’t fathom how small nor how different 11 hours north of my home town in Utah would actually be.

But it has in no way been bad, aside from the occasional bout of boredom on Friday night, I have thoroughly enjoyed myself.

The prairie landscape, while unfamiliar to a girl who grew on the Rocky Mountains, is absolutely beautiful.

Though you might grown when I tell you I went camping at the American Prairie Foundation BioBlitz, waking up that morning and looking out the screen door of my yurt to see miles and miles of nothing but grass and sky, was breathtaking.

As I stare into Montana’s empty horizon, I am reminded how infinite this world really is, how small a part I play and how hard I should work to make that part important.

I would hope that many of you experience a similar feeling of awe as you work you’re wheat and alfalfa fields, looking out on the vast expanse of flat grassland.

Though I sometimes found myself wishing there was a Walmart or Sally’s Beauty Supply store in town, I quickly reminded myself that its pretty amazing to see small businesses do in fact still exist in America.

Living in a world of Walmart’s and Sally’s, nearly everything us humans desire is at our figure tips. But the human connection, what we crave most in a world of increasing isolation, is often missing.

The owner of Walmart, or even the high school bag boys who work there, don’t stop to chat with me as I pick out my favorite cream cheese the way Drew Nagy does at the Albertsons in Malta.

When I walk around my college campus, no one recognized my name from the school paper, even within my own department, fellow students rarely got chatty in the elevator, preferring to go it alone.

I may have been slightly naive as I packed up my little Toyota and headed north. I thought ‘the west is the west,’ but I should have known there are cultural outliers, after all, California is technically ‘the west.’

I now recognize that Northern Utah, characterized by suburbs and LDS/Mormon standards, falls under the realm of western outliers.

Arriving in Malta, I was left to decipher a new accent and lots of confusing farming terms, along with the federal bureaucracies alphabet soup.

When Marko Manokian, from MSU Extension first said "summer fallow" in a conversation about farming, I thought he meant a bird, and yes, I now know that makes no sense.

While seeing a church on every other block was nothing new for this Utahn, it was new to see that each belonged to a different faith.

Seeing nearly as many bars as churches in one small town, was however, very new. In my college town there is but one bar for 50,000 people. And in that bar, they only serve beer.

A special thank you goes out to Sue Frary, dinosaur expert, for showing me why Utah needs more bars.

So it has been an interesting and eye-opening experience to see how the rest of the west lives, and my only judgement is, its kind of nice.

You may all hold different beliefs and have your own favorite bars, but it appears you have one important thing in common: you love your community, you care about your quality of life and want to protect it.

I admire that and say, ‘right on!’ because your community, your way of life, has produced some very friendly, amazing, talented, smart, unique people who have shown me, more than anything, what it means to be in this life together.

I came to Malta with a broken heart and high hopes, and I wasn’t disappointed. I didn’t find a cowboy, but I fell in love with many of you. Thank you for making things easy.

In other news, I'm coming home!!!!

why are wednesday's so hard?

So it's my last week in Montana! I am excited to come home. I have recently had many conversations that go like this:
"So how much longer are you here?"
"I'm leaving Friday!"
"But you just got here, you're leaving already?"
"I know! I've been here awhile."
"You don't sound sad about that at all."
"Haha, yeah, I have enjoyed myself, but I'm glad its not forever."
"Well we've been glad to have you here."
And they are glad, very glad. They have been starved for a new perspective on town life, in need of a writer that enjoys her subjects and the people she meets, even if she doesn't agree with them. I have been happy to give them that. I really have met some fascinating, genuine people.

I really think it would be great to work somewhere for a few months and then move on all the time. You can come it and pick up on what people care about, find the unique characters, make your mark and then go before you become complacent and cynical about your location. It would keep things exciting and fresh. But this isn't reality. Even international journalists get stationed in the same place for years. If you work for the middle east bureau, you don't travel, you live in Iraq or Israel. And I get it, the best investigative journalism can only take place when a reporter has become very familiar with her beat, when she's tracked patterns and knows all the ins-and-outs. But I still think it'd be fun to move around a lot.

Anyways, here are some photos I've been hording.

Front page photo from the history museums weekend event. This guy is telling the story of John Ebaugh, a rancher and outlaw from the late 1800s in Phillips County.

Isn't this the most perfect headstone ever? I love George Washington too. Please bury me with one of these things.

Kids, this is called a "lichen," pronounced just like something from a Lord of the Rings book. The orange stuff is extra nitrogen, or bird pooh with algae growing on it.

A weekend trip to Havre. Didn't find Walmart, but I wandered the streets with a camera. I think what's sort of frustrating about wanting to take pictures here, is that there's no people around to capture. So I end up shooting trees and building and signs, and who cares about any of it, I want to see some people.

did a kid write that?

"Smile, you are in God's country"

weather damage at the milk river pavillion

this is the "old gym," there is a new one now.

So Debbie, the newspaper accountant, has this adorable son 9-year-old and she brought him to work yesterday. I took down copy for a clasified ad on the phone and put it on her desk to bill and layout the ad. Her son is sitting at her desk eating lunch and he goes "Mom, look!" pointing at the ad text, "was some kid in here writing that?" She shushes him and says "no, it's okay... stop talking about it." Nope, I am 21 and my handwriting looks so childish and awful that it shocked a 9-year-old into thinking someone even younger had been in the office and left a note for his mom. I even re-wrote the note once to make it more readable. All that time doing extra handwriting assingments in first grade really didn't pay off.

On Tuesday morning, I will talk to Glen Templeton on the phone for 15 minutes because the week after he's performing at the county fair here. I think this may be of significance to country music fans? So far, in my research of this label-described up-and-coming star, I have concluded that he really needs a better PR person and someone to please, proof read his website. Your telling me that with all that country music money, someone can't write him a decent bio?

So I had a lot to do these last two weeks. Yesterday's front page content was 95 percent done by me, except the layout, which is sort of disappointing, but all words were mine. However, now things are slow again. So I'm off to chase down random feature stories.

I am very excited to go home soon and attend the twilight concerts in SL, the Decemberist!! Bright Eyes in August!!!! I can't wait. The 14-year-old in me is just thrilled that Bright Eyes has new music out. Also, it wouldn't hurt to see my sisters. Since Monday, I have been doing some early birthday present shopping. If I texted you to ask your shirt size, or some other random thing, that's why.