Timberline

I have been teaching as a parttime adjunct at UM-Helena the last couple of years (drawing, painting, archaeology, sociology, environmental history/ethics). Just enough so I don't have to sign up for foodstamps, but still well below the poverty line. After three years of not being able to find a regular job, not even interviews, I have officially become a discouraged worker, and just try to find ways to keep in the rented apartment ($450 a month), the power on, and some food on the table....as they say "keep body and soul together." If I get sick, I am screwed :-P

I just got my own book "The Indians of Iowa" (U of Iowa Press) published (with my own drawings), but the once-a-year royalties (if any) won't be paid until next August if all goes well. I am going to be interviewed by phone this week for Iowa Public Radio.

I got selected this week to do a public mural downtown. My art blog has some images of the design (http://paranormalmontana.blogspot.com).

This month I am taking people on weekly "Ghost Walks" and telling ghost stories. I also update my Paranormal Montana blog often (http://paranormalmontana.blogspot.com).

A couple of weeks ago as a volunteer I told traditional Native American stories in a tipi at the Montana Historical Society to about 600 kids over 5 hours (man, my voice got tired!)

My current writing projects are a book of Ioway myths (my tribe), an intro to Montana archaeology for the interested layman, and folklore on Montana's paranormal landscapes. No money, but I am plugging along :-)

An Inuit song provides me with my Road of Life:

I think over again my small adventures,
my fears,
 These small ones that seemed so big.
For all the vital things I had to get and to reach.
And yet there is only one great thing,
The only thing.
To live to see the great day that dawns
And the light that fills the world.