Mailbucket #15: The Accidental Journalist

Also: Just because you know a thing better, doesn’t mean I don’t know it at all

Much has transpired since last we ‘Bucketed, so this collection of over-long, over-interesting emails is perhaps unusually eclectic. As per ancient tradition, I perform light copy-editing & occasional snips on these missives, add hyperlinks when appropriate, and respond when so moved in parenthetical italics. Fair warning, I was moved a LOT this week….

From: Mitch

Subject: It Was Hot and It Was My Fault

Date: July 9, 2025

Gentlemen,

Celebrating my fifth-year-paying subscriberversary.

As an Always Fly Coacher, my opportunities to travel are limited. But I was able to swing a work trip a couple of weeks back into an extended stay in NYC. The catch was that it was 100 degrees for the first couple of days. On my third subway ride in my life, a reporter from the CBS station decided to interview me about the temp in [one of the] few subway cars that didn’t have A/C. I said I was used to the heat because I’m from Texas, but mostly was a bumbling idiot. Smart editorial decisions prevented my words from gracing your airwaves.

My lady and I tried to see all that we could. Tourist attractions, museums, a comedy show (the Cellar was unfortunately sold out), and a fuckton of walking. Taking in that city was otherworldly for someone that lives in the middle of nowhere. A decade in Austin did not prepare me for truly seeing what people can and will do. It’s a special city full of people who push, people who pull, weirdos, normies, and us tourists. Seeing the city from the ground up, doing observation tours at Empire State, etc., and appreciating the American experience of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and the 9/11 Museum, are experiences I’ll keep with me forever. I apologize for bringing [the] hot-as-fuck weather with me.

This experience was sandwiched between a couple of heavier moments. The first being the passing of Brian Wilson.

Brian Wilson was important to me. I came to “more serious” Beach Boys roughly 20 years ago, at a time where I needed to experience someone else’s interpretation of hope, sadness, love, and feeling a bit lost. His and the band’s music brought serious comfort to me when I needed it most. I wanted to be just like him, and maybe I was to an extent, but just couldn’t express it in the way that he could. On his passing, I was appreciative of what he accomplished musically to impact myself and millions of other folks. On the other hand, I’ll always know how difficult being him was for him. A lovely and complicated life in the end. Matt, thank you for taking the time to put out an episode on his importance to the world. I’m sure he’s important to you as well. Also, “Do It Again” and “Whistle In” both rule. It’s all a part of what makes the Beach Boys the Beach Boys

The other side of my NYC trip is much heavier. We live in San Angelo, Texas, and our city was one that has been impacted by floods in recent weeks. Somehow my neighborhood was fine, but people three miles away lost everything. Seeing what nature can do is world-shattering. City blocks of people [who] lost everything, all of those things that remind you of the life you’ve had, just destroyed. It’s awful. And our city was fortunate because we live in a flatter area and the floods came in early in the morning.

Yet, communities like Kerrville that lie in a valley [where] the storms came in the middle of the night experienced devastation on the greatest scale. The loss of life in my city was one, and that’s terrible. But it’s hard to not constantly think on the horrors the communities relatively nearby in Texas terms are enduring. My heart breaks [for] those whose existence was swept away in what I can only imagine as pure confusion and terror. There are stories of hope, but I can’t shake the thoughts of precious lives washed away and the hurt felt by those [who] loved them.

There’s no way to conclude this email. And I’m not sure why I’m sending [it] here, other than y’all seem to get the world in the same way I do. The joyous-humorous and the tragic. Please disregard any typos or wandering sentences. Six beers in and all that shit.

(I wish I could type that nice on six beers. Hell, I wish I could still drink more than about two….

Taking the various stops of this emotional journey in order: All Americans should visit New York! Also, all New Yorkers should visit America. I will never, ever, schmlever forget rolling into the then-quite-overripe Big Apple in the scorching & historically violent summer of 1990 as a terrified, very-little-traveled Southern Californian, and just blinking cow eyes at all the senses-overwhelming sights, smells, SOUNDS … and velocity, and beauty, terrifying drug zombies chasing me off Times Square at 2 a.m. after seeing Last Exit to Brooklyn, and watching this thrilling Yankee game and this thrilling Mets game back-to-back on the same day. It is a key part of our shared national and cultural heritage, full stop. Consult Ric Burns’s fab New York: A Documentary Film for more.

Thank you for the nice words about the Brian Wilson cassingle, and for sharing your own experience with the music. Hard to put that stuff in words; appropriately so.

The Texas floods are just so gobsmackingly awful, I can’t really consume any media about it. Imagine leaving your 10-year-old at a bucolic summer camp, as I am going to do in one month, and then waking up to that horror…. It’s a wonder human beings can move on from such a thing. Your adjacency makes it that more real for us, so thank you.

Oh, and DING DING DING on your subscriberversary!)

***

From: Robert T.

Subject: College and the OBBB

Date: July 4, 2025

Happy 4^th, Fifthdom—sorry, Mr. Foster, Moynihan, and Welsh.

I am a paid subscriber, so hopefully that buys me some sort of cred. While I'm not Never Fly Coach – sorry, I am a poor welder, and despite what Batya says it isn't as glorious as it sounds – I did feel a duty to subscribe around the time of the Bob Dylan movie. I wanted to hear the mostly scathing reviews. Now, I will go deeper.

The first time I heard y'all was on Megyn Kelly, and I was less than impressed. Welsh sounded like a libtard, and Foster sounded like the only reasonable person. But it wasn't until Moynihan did work for The Free Press that I decided to listen to The Fifth Column, and God, what a blessing that was.

For once, I was challenged on beliefs. I realized I was a blind ideologue. My beliefs were based on owning the libs, and not on principle, so thank you Matt Welsh for opening my eyes to having actual principles and not blind loyalty to one party or the other. It has been an eye-opening experience to who I was and who I am now. In a short time, really. I became a paid member in January, but even before that, the wisdom and just open and unbiased critiques have been so eye-opening.

But I am not here to just brown-nose; I have serious life questions (although I am sure y'all would prefer if I just sucked your dicks for the rest of this email). As journalists, at least my favorite modern journalists – sorry, but nobody beats Hunter Thompson's Wild Turkey & coke-fueled Gonzo journalism – I really want to know how to get into the field. College? A journalism degree seems like a risky gamble, especially for 60k at the least. Or go the freelance route and hope and pray you can break into the mainstream. I know Welsh didn't go the traditional route of college, but have the times shifted so much that it is necessary to get a degree? My fear is being labeled, even if I do break into the mainstream, as a pseudo-journalist, like the Ian Carrolls or Martyr Mades. The industry seems so protected and almost pretentious, so much so that the great HST might not even be able to break in now. So really, is J-school worth it? Or should I just go for it and hope?

OK, second thing: The OBBB. What do y'all think? On one side I hear that it is absolutely necessary for the tax cuts and our economy; on the other, I hear that we will never recover from the amount of debt and financial hardships we will face as a country. Is this good or bad? I tend to agree with Rand Paul, but the American people don't want those kinds of cuts on Social Security or welfare. I also do not want to increase our deficit by approximately $3 trillion in the next few years. I also know Trump has approved a $1,000 investment for the newborns of the next three years, which could be a form of phasing out Social Security. Is this not a good thing?

Any feedback, or response, is greatly appreciated. I love you guys and love what y'all do.

P.S. I am a 25-year-old. I don't know if that matters in terms of me not being Never Fly Coach, or going back to college. Also, if you are fans of Dylan, please give “Desperados Under the Eaves” by Warren Zevon a chance.

(Many notes here, beginning with W-A-L-S-H.

Let’s go in reverse order this time, shall we? Re: Zevon, two years ago, at around the time that Robbie Robertson died, I began spelunking into the not-very-well-known-to-me lore surrounding Dylan’s post-motorcycle crash woodshedding w/ The Band dudes up in Saugerties & Woodstock, not far from where I spend many weekends and summertime days [including this very moment]. This obviously led to some Spotify list-making, first just of the Dylan songs hatched there in chronological order of them appearing in public. Like, Peter, Paul & Mary’s “Too Much of Nothing” [which Dylan hated], Manfred Mann’s goofy “The Mighty Quinn,” and “Down in the Flood” by Flatt & Scruggs. But as even that odd troika of artists suggests, there were some deeper and more interesting currents and tributaries and offshoots associated with this wellspring of Americana creation, and so I started learning more about the folkies moving to Nashville, the young country longhairs tuning in and turning out what would become Outlaw and Southern Rock; a whole back-to-the-roots turn by the Stones, Beatles, and Byrds; the California-harmony variants of Country Rock and Cosmic American Music, etc. Long story short, the playlist, now christened Basement Waves, would stretch out to 1965-1976, encompassing the rise and fall of Dylan’s tempestuous first marriage, beginning with the famous “I don’t BELIEVE you” live electric performance of “Like a Rolling Stone,” and ending with … “Desperados Under the Eaves.”

BBB we’ll probably talk about when next we record, so I don’t want to spoil that party. But for me, increasingly, the sheer size of these cromnibus/tax-overhaul thingies, coupled with the accelerating centralization/de-federalism of the American political system, is reason enough to be against. Way, way, WAY too much of this shit is being crammed into single up-and-down votes held on strict party lines enforced by the punitive charisma of a quasi-monarch. We cannot possibly begin to process the competing goods and bads of this thing, though us fiscal buzzkills surely know enough to see this hurtling us even faster toward the Great Entitlements Cliff.

Re: HST, I am duty-bound to link to my 1998 Tabloid.net piece about my fateful 1987 encounter with the man; my 2000 Online Journalism Review report about his becoming an unlikely new columnist for ESPN.com’s Page 2, and my 2005 Reason obituary. Cred thus established, let me give you the harsh medicine first: You have GOT to move on. Or at least, take with grave and sober seriousness the fierce and perfectionist work ethic, the chip-on-shoulder ambition, the go-anywhere-to-keep-writing propulsion of Thompson’s pre-fame career, set against a backdrop of grinding financial anxieties. Like the Stones/Beatles/Beach Boys with Chuck Berry, he only became who he was after aping the chops and exaggerated personae of Jack Kerouac and especially Ernest Hemingway, then leaving that behind to forge his own path. So, too, will you, if you choose to continue this exhilarating if doomed career path.

In terms of how you get there in 2025? Fuckifino. Above all, you need to work, so that you learn how to do this stuff, and discover what value you can add that others cannot. That’s a bit of a steep climb in the face of mass industrial collapse. Being willing to move anywhere, earn shit money, and live like a poor are surely comparative advantages you can leverage toward entry-level journalism jobs; definitely start some Substack in the meantime, preferably one that relies less on your 25-year-old wisdom, and more on you curating other people’s good pieces of journalism on a subject or two that you aspire to write about. I would avoid J-school and debt generally like the plague; these baubles of ever-shrinking value saddle you with earning expectations that limit your horizons. Also, a mild correction: I did go the traditional route of working for my [great!] college newspaper; I just didn’t graduate from the university. That experience is now exponentially more difficult to obtain at any price, given the decimation of college newspapers and vast tuition inflation. But also: If I have anything at all in common with Hunter Thompson, it’s that we both created our own opportunities by working in such a way to attract the notice of people who previously would not give us the time of day. And, we were poor well into our 30s.

Finally: Ding ding ding, thanks for the nice words, and best of luck.)

***

From: Dacia

Subject: Did I Just Move to Wyoming to Become a Reporter?

Date: July 3, 2025

Hello boys,

I'm five deep into some 9.5 ABV, so I figured I'm juiced up enough to write. I'll make this brief (no, I won't). After taking the golden handshake and leaving my teaching job and daughter in college a mere 15 hours away … we all did crazy shit during COVID; in 2021 what I did was rent an Alfa Romeo and drive to Wyoming and purchase a home on a river next to the largest hot springs in the world. Did I do 120 mph on a breakaway at one point? Yes, I sure as hell did. But that's not why I'm writing.

I looked for teaching jobs here, but I saw in the classifieds that the local paper was looking for an editor, so I applied. And got it. So me, this person who has never written journalistically in my life, has just traveled over a thousand miles away to make less than half of what she made [in] a town of less than the student count at her former site (3,000 at the school, 2,700 here), to work at the local weekly paper.

And right away, I'm not just editing, I'm writing. I've been to commissioners meetings, town council meetings, the farmers market, the community rummage sale, and reported on all of it. I started work LAST WEEK, and I already know the land planner, the Game and Fish biologists, and the town council members.

But guys, amidst the new laws on commercial guides, the budget cuts for the fiscal year, and Shelley's jam down at the market, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. Please laugh. So, what do I do? This is not a crazy plea; I know how to listen to people and dive into wherever they're at. I had this practice with teenagers, so adults and their shit is easy, but the writing, the storylines, what's important, HOW TO FUCKING JOURNALIST! Some tips would be great, even coming from urbanites like yourselves. Small towns are amazing, and what has gotten me so far is that what's important to them (like being able to fly-fish without being cut off by out-of-state commercial guides with no etiquette) fascinates me. I love talking to them.

So, if nothing else, I'm here for your entertainment. And your suggestions. How do you cover small towns? How do you journalist? I'll be 50 this year and this is something I fell into, yet I'm liking what it brings me and want to do a fair job. Any comments, even if Mike … blasts the shit out of me, are welcome.

Here's my first article in print -- it's a super hard-hitting piece on the new fly shop in town, and the guy would've loved [it] if I talked more about his divorce than the shop. Yes, I saw the one sentence-structure issue:

https://www.thermopir.com/story/2025/07/03/news/east-rosebud-fly-and-tackle-opens/16050.html

Three cheers to "What the fuck, I'll be 50 this year," your reluctant small-town journalist,

Dacia

P.S.: I got sick of explaining my first name, so I went with "Annie" on that same 2021 trip, and it stuck up here. Apparently old Romanian names are difficult all around.

P.P.S.: Upon re-reading this morning, I need to add: Please excuse the drunk grammar, poor sentence structure, and use of "Mike."

(In this house, we do not apologize for drunk grammar disparaging Moynihan!

I love all this, and feel like you should get together with Robert above on some Equality State hijinx…. So: You’re already off to a good start, being genuinely curious about/interested in people, and wanting to convey what THEY are interested in. [And, of course, listening to this fine podcast.] For the granular practicalities of finding/gathering/presenting of news, I heartily recommend one book: The Associated Press Guide to News Writing. Just the familiarity with the Style Guide is reason enough, but they have many other useful tips in there about pyramid style, types of feature ledes, question-strategery, and so forth. Most helicopter-view books about journalism are awful; many accounts of individual newspapers or journalists are positively delightful…. There may be a lesson there!

Practical tips: Record every interview; use the cheap A.I. transcription services but then double-check every quotation you plan to use against the recording. Always ask [when there’s enough time, which there generally will be], “Is there anything else I forgot to ask?” Better to play stupid than fake smart. Always take notes, at least in terms of pointing out to yourself moments/time-codes you found noteworthy for later. Who/what/where/when in or very near the lede paragraph is a must, and why/how should not be far behind, particularly on news items of any recency. Do NOT let anyone outside the newspaper read your copy before it’s published; do NOT let subjects read [let alone change] quotes. [You will have ensured the veracity of the statements by recording absolutely everything, and making sure on re-listen that every word in between quotation marks is as uttered, with elisions marked by ellipses.]

The local police authority will almost certainly have a “blotter”; this is a terrific source of both news-bits and beginnings of stories that will take a while longer to report out the non-cop point of view. Go introduce yourself at the police station and nearest courthouse [which will also be a generator of interesting if contested news], plus relevant Congress-critters, other elected officials, and definitely the tribal leaders at Wind River. Read and take seriously the parts in the AP book about attribution rules and idiosyncratic newspaperese language [like, “according to,” and “allegedly,” and so forth], particularly if the story involves cops, courts, or any strenuously contested dispute between parties. Ask your publisher for the details of your paper’s libel insurance. Discover and use multiple services such as Bandsintown that give you heads-up about any/all entertainers or other notable figures coming within driving distance; contacting those people for pre-event interviews is an always-welcome staple & space-filler.

The paper has been around for 125 years, so if you don’t have a “This Week in Thermopolis History!” feature, yer doin’ it wrong. Learn about the energy/mining, tourism, and agriculture industries. Make yourself physically available some public place on the regular – 3 p.m., each Wednesday at the Black Bear Café, whatever. It is terrifying to be publicly accountable, even to readers/sources who hate you, but it’s also sobering, responsibility-making, educational, and ultimately liberating.

OK, that’s enough blather. Good luck!)

From: Tim the Spiritual Being

Subject: I'm the Being That Visited Tucker. Let's Correct the Misinformation!

Date: June 23, 2025

Hi Fifth Column team,

I’m a subscriber to your Substack and a long-time listener. In Members Only #264, there was a clip of Tucker Carlson recounting an experience where he claims a "demon" visited him. I would like to give my side of the story. I have been slandered by this man for far too long, and I just [want to] correct the record. Being that you are a media literacy podcast, I'm sure you will be able to help.

Would it be possible to connect briefly, either via email or another channel? I’m not looking to pick a fight, just to offer some additional context and insight that I think your audience would appreciate, especially given the way the conversation framed that clip.

Thanks for all you do. I really value the show’s mix of honesty, irreverence, and debate.

Best,

Tim the Spiritual Being

[July 10 follow-up]

Hey guys,

Just checking in. I know you’re busy, but I had to double message because Tucker's slander is making my life a living hell. Would I be able to contact FIRE? I just want to [tell] my side of the story. I really appreciated Kmele Foster's work with the Central Park birder. I know you have a strong track record for this kind of thing; I really want to clear my name.

(You bring up an excellent point, TTSB, about there being two sides [at least] to every disputed bedroom encounter; devilishly difficult to verify by those of us who weren’t there. That said, I am frankly unsure that I am ready to handle this particular truth. Fortunately, we have a braver colleague more likely to adjudicate your claims; he can be reached at: ben@calmdownben.com.)

***

From: Chet

Subject: Immigrations! Deportations! Oh My!

Date: July 10, 2025

Hi Welch!

First, you guys missed a golden opportunity to make a joke about Moynihan cruising while talking about your cruise. For shame!

More importantly, I really liked what you had to say about deportations towards the end of Episode #514. I'm an immigration hawk (and in Canada, where we have a completely different set of immigration problems, including entertaining admitting a bunch of ratbag supporters of the Iranian regime, possibly?), but you've made a good case that ICE is going way over the top. It reminds me of the gun control up here where they go after the most law-abiding because they're the low-hanging fruit. It does jack shit to tackle real problems, but gives the impression of having an impact. Thank you for getting me to reconsider some of my priors.

Quick story. One of my former colleagues moved to the States to get married. He went through the whole process entirely by the book and has his green card, is employed by the state of Wisconsin, etc., but he was afraid to come up to a friend's wedding here because he was worried that he wouldn't be able to come back to the U.S. afterwards because they would find some pretext to ban his re-entry. He's as clean cut as you could imagine, hell, he worked for the public service here, too, in a position that requires a security check. At the time, I thought he was being overly cautious, but after what you said, I'm not so sure.

Apart from being gross and wasteful, it's so stupid to take the minority side on an 80-20 issue when you're a sleazy politician with no ideology.

Anyway, rant over. You're doing the Lord's work.

(Well, thankee, Chet, always love to add value particularly to those who don’t agree with me! It is an ongoing aspiration.

Funny that you should mention Canadian immigration. I was just at … the Canadian Museum of Immigration! Right there in your version of Ellis Island, Halifax’s Pier 21. Here’s a pic:

Re: your nervous former colleague, I totally get it. We came to the U.S. in 1998, rather unplanned [after our move to Cuba turned out to be a fiasco], and from that point up until Emmanuelle’s swearing-in ceremony as a U.S. citizen, every return trip back into America was a white-knuckle affair, due to the enhanced and unreviewable powers given port-of-entry authorities by the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. It only takes about one trip to “the dark room,” as we used to call it—that chamber adjacent to the passport-stamping line, where frightened furriners were corralled but sometimes ignored for hours by surly, unforthcoming uniformed agents, told in harsh tones to NOT use any cell phones—to motivate you very strongly to never make yourself eligible for such treatment again. A single ill-tempered border cop—or entire local I.N.S. office, as was the case in the late ‘90s/early aughts at the “Deportland” Airport, which just straight-up lost international flights because of the infamous way Japanese and Chinese tourists were treated—could ruin your day, your vacation, your next immediate plans for life.

Just remembering it right now gets my blood pressure up, especially the part about most Americans being blissfully unaware of the individual cases of mistreatment and injustice, or even worse blasé when they find out.

Now imagine that system dialed up not to 10, or 11, but something closer to 70. Every damn day, there will be news like this. I can only hope that it will also be met by polling like this.)

***

From: Andrew W.

Subject: I Need to Pick a Fight With Matt

Date: June 28, 2025

Hey Gents,

Longtime subscriber and listener, and I've got a bone to pick with Welch.

Matt, I was listening to you and the rest of The Reason Roundtable discuss Mike Lee's public land selloff and thinking to myself, "This could easily be a bit in Bill Maher's 'I don't know it for a fact, I just know it's true’ segment.”

"I don't know it for a fact, but I know it's true that nobody on the Reason Roundtable has been hiking, camping, backpacking, hiking, fishing, hunting, or horseback riding on public land in the West within the last 25 years".

I say this confidently because a normal human being can't have one of those experiences and think, “It would be great if Blackrock owned all this.”

Facts:

This is not the first time Mike Lee and Utah's crop of messianic Mormon politicians have tried to sell, transfer, or otherwise wrest control of public lands from the federal government. Lee has referred to public land as "a playground for elites." It's a funny thing to say, especially when we have the likes of Joe Rogan coming to Utah to hunt, [in] exclusive private land, elk at $25,000 to $30,000 a pop. As a resident of Utah, I'm able to buy a $50 elk tag and a $40 deer tag and hunt public land without having to pay a wealthy landowner for the opportunity. Seems pretty democratic to me.

Matt, I believe you made a point about Utah claiming these lands are mismanaged. Mike Lee and the merry band of idiots that represent Utah in congress follow a time-honored tradition of refusing to fund projects on Forest Service or BLM land that have already gone through environmental approval (typically the hardest bureaucratic hurdle to clear). These projects would do things like controlled burns to prevent massive fires, restoring watersheds that cities depend on for drinking water, habitat restorations post-fire, invasive vegetation control, etc. Our elected reps then return home to Utah and whine about how these unfunded projects on federal land in Utah are an example of "mismanagement," and then propose that the land be transferred to state control on the oft-repeated claim, "We can manage it better." Never mind the fact that one big fire would put the state in a budget hole it would take years to dig out of. It's embarrassing that more journalists haven't picked up on this snake-eating-its-own-tail conversation we have around public land in Utah.

KMW expressed a common sentiment about National Parks and Wilderness Areas being excluded from any potential land sale. I know this is crazy, but people (myself included), like to recreate on public land other than National Parks, Monuments, or Wilderness Areas. There are abundant recreation opportunities on the BLM lands adjacent to cities and towns where much of the land Mike would like to sell is located. Guess what else? You can't hunt, off-road, or even take a dog off-leash in a National Park.

Much of the land that would be on the auction block is the land closest to towns that depend on recreation dollars. Moab, Utah, and Grand Junction, Colorado are two rural towns that see hundreds of thousands of mountain bikers, trail runners, off-roaders, and hunters come through every year. This is a renewable resource for these communities that would be gone forever if the land was sold and developed. I hunt deer in the mountains above Salt Lake City, on land that would fall into Lee's proposed sale. I can tell you firsthand that building affordable housing two thousand feet up a mountainside regularly scaled by climbers using ropes isn't going to happen.

There currently is a process for the federal government to sell public land, it's called FLTFA and FLPMA. There's debate, discussion, and oversight that prevents abuse. Pushing this through as part of the reconciliation process is bad politics, and Lee is getting an earful from his constituents as a result.

I could go on, but I'll wrap by saying I appreciate y'all doing what you do, I'm a huge fan of the show and recommend it to all of my friends and family.

Matt desperately needs to touch grass, but I suppose I knew that already.

If any of you are ever coming through Salt Lake City or vacationing in Utah, I'd be happy to buy you a beer and show you some pieces of public land that will change your life.

(To paraphrase the immortal dril, you do not, under any circumstances, have to “pick a fight with Matt.” But since that’s the door you chose, I am, with love and affection, going to slam it on your fingers.

Touch GRASS, motherfucker? What, pray tell, is this mysterious green substance I captured on my iPhone [*checks notes*] YESTERDAY?

Granted, that patch of property, on which I spend about 15 percent of my time, and upon which over the past 24 hours I have glimpsed heron, hawk, fox, woodchuck, possum, and bear shit, in addition to the two dozen other birds captured on the Merlin ID app, is private. And much of the glorious riparian and wilderness spaces that we walk, hike, and kayak through in the Hudson Valley are owned by state and local governments or private land conservancies rather than the feds, so maybe my east-coast grass-touching does not fall under your narrower, I-REALLY-don’t-know-it-for-a-fact claim that I have not been “hiking, camping, backpacking, hiking, fishing, hunting, or horseback riding on public land in the West within the last 25 years.”

But, since you mentioned the Roundtable, let me invite you to actually listen to the thing that made you go full Johnny Utah at me, particularly my bit at around minute 40: “I scattered my grandpa’s ashes in the Snake River.” That was 23 years ago. Good luck finding any stretch on the Oregon side of the Snake River—my grandpa’s favorite fishing & hunting spot—that isn’t owned and/or administered by the federal government. My people, hunters and fishers all, come from Oregon; my Uncle Tom for years had a place on the nearby Wallowa Lake [in the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest], and we have our periodic family reunions [including as recently as 12 months ago] in the Deschutes National Forest. Which, to be fair, is more about inner-tubing and rafting these days than animal-murdering, though my cousin Greg does make a mean homemade elkburger.

Perhaps more pursuant to your broader, also-wrong claim that I think it “would be great if Blackrock owned all this,” I take long walks just about every year with my dear friend Ken Layne of Desert Oracle fame and his off-leash dog in the BLM-managed lands between the city of Yucca Valley and Joshua Tree National Park. While claims were constantly disputed about which lands would have been included in Lee’s now-failed initiative, such tracts along the habited/protected interface were precisely what he was talking about. Here’s a pic of me & Layne in it from 22 months ago:

I do not remotely say this to burnish my cred in any way. I say this because YOU, Andrew in Salt Lake City, were so intent on exalting your own [admittedly impressive] credentials and local knowledge that you then fell into the classic trap of assuming that every person who has your exact level of relevant expertise MUST arrive at your same policy conclusion, and that only ignorance can explain the difference. Along the way, you niftily illustrated the maxim that, “When you assume, you make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me.’” Please do not attribute my insufficient agreement to a wholly invented lack of experience and knowledge.

I also bring up Ken Layne because he, very vociferously, was against this bill-within-a-bill, in podcasts and tweets that I retweeted on several occasions. Why did I retweet? In part, because Ken’s content is always compelling, plus he has specific local knowledge. But also, BECAUSE I WAS AGAINST THIS, TOO, YA MAROON. Both on process and policy grounds. It’s right there in the podcast that drove you to such umbrage; as is my praise of the mammoth “land back” conservation transfer to the Yurok Tribe along the Klamath River.

And yes I *will* be taking you up on your offer to see some of the beauty around Salt Lake City [where my mother lived as a child], thank you very much!)