December 10, 2023
Hi all! Here’s another update. It’s finally looking more like winter here in northern Idaho!
Last month, I received word from the Idaho Humanities Council that I won a research fellowship grant to work on a new book project and share that research here and in other venues! This was wonderful news, obviously.
The new book project is an extension of my work on the first book, directed more toward a wider (national) audience, and focused more on the post-WWII era and FBI intervention in the closing years of Wallace’s wide-open century.
At this point, the working title is Busted: Sex Work, Gambling, and the FBI in America’s Last Western Town.
Or maybe, For Amusement Only: Federal Intervention in America’s Last Western Town.
At the risk of allowing people to participate in naming my baby, I’ll admit that I’m open to further suggestions…
I recently made the short hop over the 4th of July pass to Coeur d’Alene to visit with David Bourgeois of the Guys in a Garage podcast. You can go check out his show on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, or other places where you listen to podcasts. I’m episode #43.
I’m going to be working on my own podcast series as well as recording and publishing my Selling Sex book as an audiobook. Go subscribe to my YouTube @heatherleebranstetter for more to come soon—probably beginning around early June 2024.
For now, I’ll be continuing to update this site and gradually starting to gear up my socials again, after a long (needed) hiatus. We’ll see how far I get with that project, as I have mixed feelings about social media at this point…
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From the update I wrote here back in May 2023:
The Barnard-Stockbridge Photography Museum held its season re-opening celebration this month. I’m on the board and helped Tammy out with the exhibit concepts upstairs and information downstairs.
The upstairs exhibit features some cool panoramic photos. Here are some of my photos of parts of some of those photos (click on the pictures for a bigger image):
The upstairs panoramic photos are all from 1912/1913. It’s an interesting time when the streets were still dirt but the sidewalks were paved, and there were both horse and buggy and cars on the roads. The downstairs exhibit is about sex work again this summer. If you haven’t seen it, go take a look!
You can take a photo in front of Nellie’s 100 year-old canvas backdrop! You can find one upstairs and one downstairs. I highly recommend dressing up and finding a friend to pose with!
I’m hitting the road in my camper with my dogs as soon as school is out, and traveling to Alaska. It’s more about the journey than the destination. I don’t have any solid plans beyond that, really. Thinking I’ll hit up some hot springs, old gold mining towns, a brothel museum if I can find one open, and do some hiking.
Seems like we went right from winter to warm weather. I’m looking forward to summer!
At the end of July, my friends and I are going to take Seaweed Salad/Dragonfly, my 15 foot raft, on a whitewater rafting trip down the Salmon for almost a week-long trip!
Well, that’s it for now. The last day of school is the next Friday, so my road trip north will soon be revealed above the horizon.