In this podcast episode, you’ll hear stories about a man overcoming his obesity and depression through the magic of MMA fighting, a model who escapes the insidious modeling industry, a volunteer who helps restore an historic C-47 aircraft for the commemoration of the 75th Anniversary of D-Day and a mother making a difficult decision on the day of an important hunt.

Note that the quality of the sound is not as perfect as we would like it to be. These stories are really worthwhile and we want you to hear them. Thank you.

Dave Boulter is an athlete who can no longer play sports. The resulting depression and weight gain drive him to try a sport he never thought he would try — MMA fighting. He calls his story “That Didn’t Hurt So Bad!”

Dave Boulter is a New England boy who moved to Montana early in the Spring of 1993. He graduated from the University of Montana with a degree in Forestry specializing in Recreation Management. He has been making his living as a Stone Mason for approximately 20 years and is a veteran athlete and coach in Mixed Martial Arts.

Ainsley McWha begins her modeling career at 16 and is enthralled by the glitz and glamor before she discovers the dark side of the industry and finally escapes. 

Near the end of Ainsley’s story, an unfortunate thing happens: she is heckled by someone in the audience who is not listening fully to her story. This sort of behavior is never appropriate. At the live event, I made that clear after Ainsly finished. I mention this here because I kept the heckler in the edit and bleeped her comment. Doing so retains the flow of the story and shows Ainsley’s strength in pushing through to finish her story. 

Ainsley calls her story “Seen & Not Heard”.

Ainsley McWha is a writer and essayist whose work appears in the current issue of Barrelhouse Journal and has previously been published in Grist, Tahoma Literary Review, Salon, and the Washington Post, among others. She was recently appointed as the chair of the Parks & Rec committee in the town where she lives. She has never seen the sitcom. 

Read Ainsley’s writing about her experiences as a model at Salon, The Washington Post, Huffington Post (1), and Huffington Post (2).

Mare at ainsleymcwha.com.

John  Haines knows nothing about airplanes and loves a good cause, so he volunteers to help make “Miss Montana” airworthy so she can join the D-Day Squadron and the Daks Over Normandy in commemorating the 75th Anniversary of D-Day on June 6, 2019. (Miss Montana is a historic C-47 aircraft in the Museum of Mountain Flying in Missoula.) John calls his story “75 Years is a Good Start”.

John Haines was born and raised in Plains, MT and lived in Kumamoto, Japan for ten years. John currently works at Ace hardware so he can volunteer at the Museum of Mountain Flying.

Molly Bradford awakens on the day of the hunt to the sounds of her son coughing with the croup and has to decide if she should cancel the hunt. She calls her story “The Push and the Pull – or – Spilling Milk”

Molly Bradford is the CEO and Co-founder at GatherBoard, the makers of MissoulaEvents.net. Molly takes community connection seriously, as an active member of the Missoula startup ecosystem in addition to her children’s scholastic and community endeavors. Molly is an avid yet amateur gardener, cook, skier, and hunter who likes to put up mass quantities of food for the winter, race her husband and kids down the slopes and makes telecommuting from Mexico a family priority.