You are browsing archives for
Marty’s photo of the day #3373: I miss live music! This is Grace Potter, photographed at the Wilma in Missoula a few years ago. The next concert I plan to attend is Nightwish at the Wiltern in Los Angeles at the beginning of October 2021. Will October 2021 be too soon? I guess it depends […]
Marty’s photo of the day #3356: My sixth book, Hits, Heathens, and Hippos: Stories from an Agent, Activist, and Adventurer, is complete and will be published sometime next year. In that book, I share a hilarious story about Montana’s Democratic Governor Brian Schweitzer “coercing” me into paying way, way too much for a signed Hillary […]
Marty’s photo of the day #3352: Today is National Dog Day, so of course I have to feature a photo of Nellie. We adopted Nellie from the local animal shelter, and she is approximately nine months old. During the three weeks we’ve had her, Deb and I are in agreement on two things: 1) No […]
Marty’s photo of the day #3348: Here’s a short excerpt from my second book, Endangered Edens: Exploring the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Costa Rica, the Everglades, and Puerto Rico: When we planned our hike to the farmhouse, I immediately thought of the two-story farmhouse my grandparents had owned in northern Minnesota. I knew the Costa […]
Marty’s photo of the day #3320: Bats do not like baths! Every summer, I move my office/writing room out onto the front porch. (The porch runs the width of the house and is covered, but not screened in.) This year the flies were a bit pesky, so two days ago my wife, Deb, bought me […]
Marty’s photo of the day #3251: This is a Cape buffalo, photographed in Zimbabwe. From my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents: Brian carried a high-powered rifle as a defense against animal attacks. He paused to warn us about animals that could force him to use it: “Contrary to what you […]
Marty’s photo of the day #3249: From my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents: Even though we were hundreds of miles away from any significant landmass, our Drake Passage voyage was never boring. I spent much of my time outside on the bow enjoying the crisp Antarctic air and photographing the […]
Marty’s photo of the day #3207: Those who regularly follow my posts know about all the far-right Republicans that live within a few miles of Deb’s and my house. We do have one liberal family a quarter mile away from us, however, and the husband, Aaron, and I do most of the maintenance on our […]
Marty’s photo of the day #3200: Back in the 1990s, I had a side business selling No Newt is Good Newt T-shirts and sweatshirts. When Newt Gingrich resigned as Speaker of the House in 1998, no one wanted the shirts anymore (or, to look at it more positively, the shirts worked!), and to this day […]
Marty’s photo of the day #3197: If you’ve read my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents, you know the story of Deb’s and my near-death adventure backpacking with the Iban tribe on the island of Borneo. Later we spent a day at an Iban longhouse to rest and recover. The COVID-19 […]
Marty’s photo of the day #3191: Being self-employed often means seldom taking a vacation. Before Deb and I traveled to all seven continents in four years, we had gone ten years without taking a vacation, other than occasional long-weekend backpacking trips. Even then, our seven continents of adventures were technically work, because I turned them […]
Having been a radio station DJ and a manager for rock bands, my ears took a beating—especially in my teens through mid-thirties. Now that I am um . . . a little older, I can still hear fine, except for, apparently, the distant sound of crickets. Consequently, I now try to balance my love of […]
Marty’s photo of the day #3190: This is my wife, Deb, north of the Arctic Circle, demonstrating social distance. Other than me behind the camera, there was likely no other person within fifty miles. The two of us were talking last night, and life during the COVID-19 pandemic won’t change much for us. We live […]
I love writing the Time Is Irreverent series of novels, because the characters allow me to demonstrate how things would be different with a single change to history. For instance, in the first novel time-traveling protagonists Marty Mann and Nellie Dixon show how life today would be different if Christianity hadn’t taken hold, and in […]
Marty’s photo of the day #3187: If I were able to go back in time and re-do my trips to all seven continents, the first thing I would do is buy a different camera for my Borneo adventure. I always travel with two cameras, and for a while I was updating one new camera each […]
Marty’s photo of the day #3184: This is Eve, my nineteen-year-old rainbow boa. I thought of her last night when I watched a BBC show about polar bears that have developed an unusual way to hunt beluga whales (they perch on big rocks at low tide and then wait for the whales to swim by […]
Republicans frequently state that they don’t care about Donald Trump’s behavior; they only care about his results. That sounds innocent enough—until you realize that people made similar claims during the reigns of the worst autocrats in history. Even Robert Mugabe had his fans. Where Trump will ultimately rank among the world’s authoritarian rulers is yet […]
Marty’s photo of the day #3161: The following short excerpt is from my second book, Endangered Edens: Exploring the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Costa Rica, the Everglades, and Puerto Rico: As a writer, I know it’s my duty to add excitement here by spelling out the sound of the call—with lots of dashes and exclamation […]
I took the New York Times Democratic candidate quiz, and for me it showed Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren tied at the top, followed by Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar. In a normal election I would agree with those results, but this is not a normal election. What the quiz did not ask was, “How […]
Marty’s photo of the day #3149: A leopard seal on a foggy day. This excerpt from my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents, summarizes the many leopard seal encounters Deb and I had when visiting Antarctica: As inviting as the water looked, its temperature wasn’t the only reason to stay dry—a […]
