Mike Jopek

I stood at the thrift store looking at the electronic gadget. Decades earlier I’d purchased a used IBM 8088 desktop computer from the print shop that once occupied the same downtown space. I brought that IBM home, plugged in an expansion card, and connected a 2400 baud modem to dial in to some of the first internet accessible bulletin boards in the valley. By the mid-1990s, Whitefish internet pioneer Skip Schloss convinced me to sign up for one of the first email address offered in Montana.

A pile of 39 different political mailers sat in the corner after last week’s primary election. Almost all of the gloss was from outside money looking to run Montana. A couple years earlier, out-of-state money had saturated Montana to fund a failed ballot initiative where candidates not getting a majority vote would head toward a run-off election. No one could miss the television ads or glossy mailers of the past Jon Tester vs.

Leant against the mailbox, he stood on the side of the road. On the pavement and melting fast was a couple inches of freshly fallen, nickel sized hail. In the yard stood a proud Ten Commandments sign, planted years prior. Montana’s governor earlier proclaimed a day to pray for rain. In his declaration, the governor wrote that nearly 500 wildfires had burned some 15,000 acres this year while summertime was still weeks away.