The Truth Does Not Change According to Our Ability to Stomach It

Newspaper clippings from the 1990s showing the ways colloidal silver was marketed as a health supplement After the publication of my first book, When the Moon Turns to Blood, I was very, very tired, and my mind was very, very broken. In the years leading up to its publication, I had written about many dark, difficult things, but nothing that came anywhere near the case of Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell.

Portrait of a surprised person. Happy spring, friends. Before we get into today’s interview, I wanted to drop the excellent news that Blazing Eye Sees All won the Oregon Book Award for Nonfiction. Here’s a photo of me trying not to cry at the Oregon Book Awards ceremony. I distinctly remember one night in June 2023 while I was writing the book. I was sitting alone in a hotel room where I’d locked myself for days with all of my files. My deadline was two months away.

A snapshot of the Damián Ortega exhibit at Museo Del Palacio De Bellas Artes, which gave me teleportation vibes, but in a cool way. (Photo by me) You have heard of whitewashing, and greenwashing, but have you put much thought into sanewashing? I could define this term for you, but in this season of Easter — a time of worship of a fella who said it better to teach a person to fish than do it for them — let us cast our lines, readers, into the waters of the Internet for a sanewashing lesson.

An illustration for my 2013 Inlander story on polyamory by my friend, Meester Rarch. I wrote about polyamory for the first time in 2013 as the word was becoming more ubiquitous and a local group had formed on Meetup.com for polycules to get together with other polycules.1 The meeting was in Spokane Valley, the most vanilla of suburbs, and I reached out and asked if they’d let a reporter come and interview folks. The organizer said, sure, come talk to us. But you’ve got to change our names.

A projection on a downtown Portland building in July 2020 (Photo by me) Last week, I woke up much earlier than I’m used to, slammed a cup of coffee and got out the door on time to be a featured guest at a Portland elementary school’s Career Day. It is not unusual for me to speak to college students and, on rarer occasions, classrooms of spirited teenagers excited about journalism and creative writing.

One of many promotional pieces designed by the one, the only Joe Preston That little number at the top of these posts? That’s how many months I’ve been writing here on Substack. Today marks dispatch #68, which means I’ve been putting out this newsletter for five-and-a-half years. Wild. This week also marks the beginning of something very new and very exciting. The Western Edge is a new publication I’ve just lauched here on Substack with my reporting partner, Ryan Haas.

Sometimes what you need most is the wisdom of a zine There have been a few moments in the last decade when work or life got to me and I fled to the woods, or the desert, or the coast, to cleanse my mind, only to have the news follow. When the plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer became news, I was near the ocean. I processed the Dobbs decision by silently staring into a campfire while backpacking in Central Oregon, my anger a scream in my brain despite all that peace and quiet.

Sunset over the West Plains outside Spokane, Washington - August 2025 I had a weird year filled with professional highs, personal lows, and a whole lot of mundane adult days in between. Calm was not my friend this year. I intend to change that in 2026. In this very weird year, I published Blazing Eye Sees All, my second book, and traveled from Washington DC to Hamilton, Montana, talking about it with crowds large and small (and somehow I was on C-SPAN twice).

We’ve all seen the clip now, right? Trump standing in a doorway aboard Air Force One fielding questions from a gaggle of reporters about the Epstein Files. “If there’s nothing incriminating in the files, sir, why not act?” asked Bloomberg White House correspondent Catherine Lucey. “Quiet,” Trump said, leaning close, sticking a long finger in her face. “Quiet, Piggy.” Lucey, to her credit, kept asking questions. Days earlier, Trump had called her “the worst.” Maybe she was used to it.

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