What's Your Beef? Spades

Kris Drummond

The phrase “call a spade a spade” originated with the classical Greek philosopher Plutarch and has been recycled through time by the likes of Oscar Wilde, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others. I’ve always been curious about the term as…

Riding For Science

Kris Drummond

August 8th, 2020, 7:00 am. That morning, like a single sudden morning every summer, I woke up reminded that seasons exist just when I was starting to consider a bedroom air conditioner. The first clue of the shift comes as an abrupt and unmistakable…

Bozeman's Cohousing Community

Kris Drummond

As I was driving to meet with Bozeman Cohousing Community cofounder Mark Owkes at the Daily Cafe on a quiet Sunday morning in February, I was secretly hoping to encounter a spiritual teacher. Or at the very least, a representative of a group loosely…

What's Your Beef? This is Normal

Kris Drummond

We live in a culture that cultivates the art of pretending not to know. This could be one definition of privilege. In playing along, we the privileged beneficiaries of the system avert our eyes from injustice, greed, and inhumanity to take up…

Tears Ritual Vision: Grief Work in Gallatin Valley

Kris Drummond

“My grief says that I dared to love, that I allowed another to enter the very core of my being and find a home in my heart. Grief is akin to praise; it is how the soul recounts the depth to which someone has touched our lives.To love is to…

Beef Reconsidered

Kris Drummond

Having beef feels strangely satisfying. Being asked to write about it is even better. Not only do I get to spend time re-convincing myself of my own opinions, but I get to expose people to them in a one-way conversation where nobody else can comment…

My Beef

Kris Drummond

Last month I paid almost a thousand dollars, flew across the country, and drove four hours to sleep in a tent and tell strangers the truth. For five days, we woke with the sun beneath the pale blue Sonoran desert sky and gathered at the picnic tables…

After the Apocalypse

Kris Drummond

Earth, Imagination & Rebirth in Bozeman

Hurricanes in the Heart

Kris Drummond

“We do not see that what we devalue and destroy is part of ourselves. We do not see that we aren’t merely conditionally dependent on the oceans, rainforests, and every living system on Earth for survival; that something more important…

The Slow and the Furious

Kris Drummond

I have to admit that when I was asked to write an article about Bozeman car culture, I was struck by the seeming oxymoron in the phrase. To me, culture is about shared experience, common values, and inhabiting a place in the world together. Cars…

Lights In The Night

Kris Drummond

The first thing I learned after seeing a UFO is that life is stranger than I can imagine. The second is that nobody wants to talk about UFOs.Socially, it’s a subject on-par with the Illuminati, flat-earth theory, Tower 7, and Atlantis (if you…

Bioscience: An Experiential User’s Guide

Kris Drummond

It’s all a joke now, a strange dream of filth and heartbreak.It’s over. I’m clean. And while the smell is gone, the memory remains.I’m talking about the month I spent as a participant in a study at Bozeman’s own…

The Olympic Equation: Nordic Sprinter Jennie Bender

Kris Drummond

When Jennie Bender was thirteen years old, sitting in her Vermont home journaling about “making the Olympics in either running or skiing,” the often-harsh reality of an athletic career was probably a distant and uninteresting detail. Like…

Internet Earthquakes Passionate Plane Rides

Kris Drummond

The tectonic plates of the society we’ve long known are shifting; low, lethargic rumbles, nearly imperceptible, yet capable of tearing continents apart. The security we think we have doesn’t seem so certain; the question mark of the…

Finding Empowerment

Kris Drummond

Why am I anxious? My brain is clogged, and the circle of people I’m sitting in feels cramped. It’s my first day of volunteering as a mentor for Big Sky Youth Empowerment and instead of showing up with presence and compassion like I…

All You Need Is Metta

Kris Drummond

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love. Love is the missing factor; there is a lack of affection, of warmth of relationship; and because we lack that love, that tenderness, that generosity, that mercy in…

The Great Dinosaur Conspiracy

Kris Drummond

Contemplating federal politics in the electoral afterthought that is Montana is exhausting. It’s an empty helplessness that settles in as November nears, particularly this year. I want to care, but maybe part of growing up is coming to terms…

A Vision of Bozeman’s Future

Kris Drummond

A bead of sweat dropped from my eyelid as I looked over to the wall of Bozeman High School’s South cafeteria and saw the painting that my graduating class, the class of 2007, signed as we prepared to embark on our lives. I was shocked. Nine…

The Last, Best Place

Kris Drummond

What does it mean to be “The Last Best Place,” exactly? That combination of words has confused me since I was a kid. I can’t help but feel that a comma is needed between last and best. Otherwise it kind of reads like the opposite of…

It’s a Bird, it’s a Plane, it’s a Superdelegate

Kris Drummond

My plan with this article was to wander around downtown after midnight and ask people silly questions about politics. I hoped to evoke some funny answers that would illustrate the madness that descends upon America every four years, and hopefully…