Happy Friday!
I'm OOO, so I'm keeping today's newsletter short. But I did want to share a dispatch from the desert:
1 thing making me hopeful
I spent a good chunk of yesterday driving across southern Idaho, a journey even the most passionate desert biologist would have to admit, on some stretch of highway, to be a little desolate.
But between Richfield and Carey, tiny drops began to fall on the windshield. It was the first rain I'd seen after weeks in Boise's smoke, and it proceeded to sprinkle off and on for the next couple hundred miles.
The desert transformed. Swiftly, with just a little rain, the grasses greened, the bitterbrush and sagebrush saturated their leaves, and the horizon — this seemed impossible — began to clear. The steppe is slow-paced, dominated by the sagebrush and its progress of only an inch or two of growth per year. But within seconds of an initial cloudburst, the plants and my lungs all began to breathe a little easier.
The beauty itself was inspiring, maybe a little awe-inspiring (if that sounds dramatic, I hope that someday you get to see Craters of the Moon after it rains).
So a little water in the desert made me feel hopeful today, if for no other reason than it reminded me that amid spreading wildfire crises, there is still a lot of hardy land out there, saying: not burned, not yet.
Friday, August 14
⚾ Boise Hawks Home Game | 7 p.m. | Memorial Stadium | $20+
🎬 “Cry Baby” | 7 - 9 p.m. | Idaho Film Society | $11+
🎵 JÜN | 8 p.m. | $11 | Treefort Music Hall | an album release party!
🎭 “The Winter’s Tale” | 8 p.m. | Idaho Shakespeare Festival | $30+
Saturday, August 15
🥕 Boise Farmers Market | 9 a.m. - 1 p.m. | 1500 Shoreline Rd.
🥒 Meridian Main Street Market | 9 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. | Meridian Rd. & Broadway Ave.
🛍️ Capital City Public Market | 9:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. | Grove Plaza
🇰🇷 Idaho Korean Festival | 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. | Gene Harris bandshell | free, reserve a spot
🎬 “Indiana Jones”: Dinner & A Movie | 5 - 10 p.m. | Idaho Film Society | $70
🏮 Water Lantern Festival | 6 p.m. | Julia Davis Park | $31
🎧 Patio Party: A Summer Residency | DJ: NOFO | 6 - 9 p.m. | Hap Hap Lounge | free entry
⚾ Boise Hawks Home Game | 7 p.m. | Memorial Stadium | $20+
🎵 Widowspeak | 7 p.m. | $33 | Shrine
🇺🇸 Boise Baroque Orchestra: “1776” | 7:30 p.m. | Cathedral of the Rockies | $49
🎭 “The Winter’s Tale” | 8 p.m. | Idaho Shakespeare Festival | $30+
🔆 Zona De Perreo | 9 p.m. | Treefort Music Hall | free
Sunday, August 16
⚾ Boise Hawks Home Game | 1 p.m. | Memorial Stadium | $20+
🎵 Mungo | 4 p.m. | $13 | Shrine Basement | a delightful former Boisean! 🤎
🍿 “Point Break” | 4 p.m. | Egyptian Theatre | $11 | Rated “R”
🇺🇸 Boise Baroque Orchestra: “Tea Party” | 5 p.m. | Chateau des Fleurs | $90
🎷 Sunday Jazz | 6 p.m. | Hap Hap Lounge | free
🎬 “The Mask” | 7 p.m. | Idaho Film Society | $11
🎭 “The Winter’s Tale” | 7:30 p.m. | Idaho Shakespeare Festival | $30+
🇺🇸 Boise Baroque Orchestra: “1776” | 8:15 p.m. | Chateau des Fleurs | $39+
— Blake Hunter
