Many Hats, Many Photos
Why "writer, lawyer, historian, horsewoman, Montanan?" I could add "voracious reader, dogged researcher, and person most likely to go down a rabbit hole and never emerge!" Along the way I've been a teacher, ran a Macintosh computer repair business, worked at my local library, and even was a college radio DJ. So which hat fits me best?
Perhaps the best answer is that no hat fits perfectly! Case in point: When Eric and I were shooting author photos, I tried the classic Montana cowgirl look, posing with my little buckskin half-Arab, Sassy. As you can see from the photo on this page, after a few dozen photos, it was obvious to us that it wasn't going to work. Even in those rare moments when I smiled and Sassy "gave us her ears" at the same time, the hat shaded my face and the wind blew Sassy's forelock into a Mohawk! Ultimately, I ditched the hat, grabbed Indy the Fire Horse, and that's the photo we used!
Setting hats aside, if I had to choose just one label, "Montanan" would be first. On my dad's side, four generations of my family have lived here; on my mom's side, three. My home is under the Big Sky.
"Horsewoman" is next. I tell that tale elsewhere, but horses were my "gateway drug" to history (with a side jaunt into politics—my first "cause" was supporting Wild Horse Annie when I was a fourth-grader). Even in law school, when I studied the rules of statutory construction, an equestrian thought crossed my mind: "hey, this is a lot like interpreting the USEF Rule Book."
I began to write articles for the now-defunct Montana Horseman's Journal in the early 2000s, and was editing Wikipedia articles* about horses and horse racing by 2006. After American Pharoah won the triple crown and I published a magazine piece in 2015 about the horse racing meet in Great Falls, I shifted gears and wrote a book about horses and horse racing.
Montana Horse Racing: A History was published in 2019. Then a funny thing happened: Marcus Daly demanded the better part of two chapters there, I knew I had my next project! But once I signed the book contract, I changed hats again. Horses were only part of his life. I wound up digging into mining technology (pun intended), railroad history (see here for details on that side trip), and the totally fascinating "free silver" movement of the late 19th century. What was going to be one book turned into two—and a six-year project! Whoops! Rabbit holes!
Today, if a hat fits, I will wear it. And if a rabbit hole of research opens, I follow it wherever it goes!
* I'm somewhere north of 100,000 edits to Wikipedia and created over 250 new articles there. If you read the articles Arabian horse, Thoroughbred, American Pharoah, California Chrome, or Yogo Sapphires, I had a lot to do with them.
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