Drumlummon views: the online journal of Montana arts & culture, volume 2, number 1 (Fall 2008) (2025)

OCR

THE ONLINE JOURNAL OF MONTANA ARTS 8L CULTURE

HELENA, MONTAN[...]

The editors welcome the submission of proposals
for essays and reviews on cultural prod[...]to DV Content is free to users. Any reproduction of
original content from Drumlummon View: must a) se[...]and b) acknowledge Drumlummon View: as

the site of original publication.

Cover Image: Pairic[...]

THE ONLINE JOURNAL OF MONTANA ARTS & CULTURE

Editorrianbief[...]

Education 151

“‘The People’ of Montana: In Exegesis of Indian
Education for All,” by Nicholas CP

Vroo[...]evisionism, and
Post—Revisionism in the Fiction of the American
West,” by Karen Fisher I60[...]

“Long Lines of Dancing Letters: The Japanese Drawings
of Patricia Forsberg,” by Rick Newby 314.

REVIEWS[...]offman 34.8

Poemx Arron [be Big Sky/4n Antbology of Montana Poem,
edited by Lowell Jaeger, rev[...]

Welcome to the fourth issue of Drumlummon
Viewx, the online journal of Montana arts and culture.
For those of you who have followed DV from our
beginnings in 2[...]had originally
envisioned publishing three issues of DV per year, but
it’s become clear that one and[...]. We take some solace in the fact that
each issue of DV is truly substantial, essentially the
equivalent of a large book. And we are grateful for the
patience and kindness of our supporters, readers, and
contributors.

Speaking of books, Drumlummon Institute has

launched its boo[...](2007) and Notex for aNovel: 777e Seleeted
Poemr of Frieda Fligelman (2008).These two books, in
turn,[...]LUMMON MONTANA LITERARY
MASTERS SERIES. A reissue of Thomas Savage’s first
novel, 777e Pan, with an[...]y historian Kim Allen Scott. A first
publication of Grace Stone Coates’ second novel, Clear
Title,[...]so in the works.

Finally, we have begun a series of offprints from
Drumlummon V iewx, featuring essays and portfolios
of particular interest. The first is Patty Dean’s[...]s for the Montana Club. The
second is a portfolio of Patricia Forsberg’s marvelous
Japanese drawings[...]w.blurb.com/bookstore/
detail/313138.To order any of Drumlummon’s books and
offprints, go to http://[...]intshtml.

***

Like its predecessors, this issue of Drumlummon
Viewx ranges over a multiplicity of terrains. We
have expanded our offerings of original works, with
substantial selections of fiction and poetry, together
with a movin[...]

We continue our coverage of science and health
issues with an excerpt from a[...]Nicholas Vrooman acknowledges the

importance of the Indian Education for Al, initiative,
and we continue our serialization ofof
post—revisionist western fiction (like Karen Fisher’s

A Sudden Country) to the development of western
literature by such figures as playwright[...]iewr—the last twelve months have seen downloads
of more than 30,000 files from the Drumlummon site.[...]ill focus on the built environment and landscapes of
Butte and Anaconda, Montana (in conjunction with
the June national meeting in Butte of the Vernacular
Architecture Forum); this i[...]

To see a complete listing of our financial sup—
porters, visit the Drumlumm[...]r utmost gratitude:
first, our hardworking Board of Directors, Jeff Wil—
liams, Matt Pavelich, Niki[...]d Rennan Rieke;
second, the knowledgeable members of our Board of
Advisors (on the DI home page, click on Drumlum-
mon Board of Advisors); and third, Drumlummon
Viewr’ contributing editors, who come up with many of
our story ideas and indeed contribute their own w[...]ou will find their names in this
issue’s Table of Contents and their biographies in our
contributor[...], Montana
Preservation Alliance; the entire staff of the Montana
Historical Society Research Center; Liz Gans and
Marcia Eidel, Holter Museum of Art; Barbara Koostra
and Manuela Well—Off—Man, Montana Museum of
Art and Culture; Debbie Miller, Minnesota Histori—
cal Society; Julian Cox, High Museum ofof Wyatt
Design, Drumlummon Viewr’Art Direc[...]

from In the Scatter of the Moonlight, a novel
in progress
Scott G. Hibbard

Army of Utah, Camp Scott, Utah Territory,
November 27, 18[...]and have lost one hundred and thirty-
four. Most of the loss has occurred much this
side of South Pass, in comparatively moderate
weather. It has been of starvation. Ihe earth
has a no more lifeless, tre[...]ns scarcely a wolf to glut itself
on the hundreds of dead and frozen animals
which for thirty miles ne[...]ark, perhaps beyond example in history, the
steps of an advancing army with the horrors

of a disastrous retreat.

ipbilip St. George Cooke,[...]legs to lessen its weight. His musket

lay on top of the glistening meat.

“Do you see that soldier[...]’s edge. Carl Heinrich had been
detailed as one of the hunters charged with providing
fresh meat to lessen the number of oxen the army
would butcher.

“Hey, soldier!”[...]r in the cottonwoods, as if defining a
migration of mice. “You can stop right here, footman!
Put yo[...]assed by.

“We’ll spare you the embarrassment of makin’ the
Colonel eat deer meat!” Mos[...]

“He was assigned to t[...]e was real proud she could read. Read

them words ofof
it.”

Moses looked at Nathan. His voice came ba[...]if the panhandle heated in his
hand.

“Got out of the army after chasin’ Apaches. Had a
little mo[...]rses whinnied in the cottonwoods.

“Took to one of the elders.Thought him the Lord
his—self, all t[...]she went, straight
off to paradise in their land of

Troopers walked paths through camp with
armloads of twigs and sticks and branches to break.
Voices wa[...]es
looked Nathan in the eye. “I might shoot two of “em.”

“You didn’t tell me any of this.”

“I told you now, and you don’t need[...]ess.” Moses stuck the axe in the standing

half of the chopping block and the handle hinged again.[...]ors, using the point to sever threads
at a corner of the appliquéd apple tree and beehive

and intric[...]the excised patch to Thankful Everett, President
of the Seventeenth Ward Female Relief Society.

“L[...]nt
Everett said. “In accordance with the bylaws of the
Seventeenth Ward Female Relief Society[...]

Thankful Everett held a piece of weatherworn
canvas cut from a wagon cover. “We[...]te cloth into the quilt, serving to remind
us all of the blemish of unchristian behavior. I ask us
all to pray that Sister Sophronia regain her good sense
and her love of the Lord, and be forgiven by Him who
judges all.”

Thankful Everett lifted the piece of canvas
overhead for all to see, as a priest bless[...]er for it.”Thankful

Everett surveyed the faces ofof the Lord or it is done in vain.”

“Amen,” E[...]is quilt. We raise money in doing so
for the good of our militia, whose purpose is to protect
t[...]

Emma Taylor, Secretary of the Seventeenth
Ward Female Relief Society, said, “I understand.” She
chuckled. “The Mormon version ofof that.”

Isabella said, “I still say this quil[...]ed. “Actually, he needs to put it in
the hearts of two men,” she smiled, “to bid on the quilt
because of its reminder of human weakness, and the
endless vigilance required to improve as a Latter—day
Saint. And, of course, to clothe our troops who guard us
against the invaders.” Thankful Everett smiled.

“The army of the Pharaoh,” Emma Taylor said.
“May the wint[...]did you learn that?”

“Why, from Mr. Everett, of course. Our husband,
the Bishop.”

In the style of the Baltimore Album, the quilt
was a patchwork of floral patterns and fruit, birds and
butterflie[...]o split evenly between
recent emigrants destitute of food and clothing, and
Lamanites pushed from thei[...]round the globe to the new Zion. With the advance of
the United States army, however, the purpose shif[...]ing
in Echo Canyon guarding against the onslaught of the
army. The Seventeenth Ward Female Reli[...]

doing the work of the Lord.” Emma Taylor shook her

head. “The[...]her lap, holding
needle and thread and a section of quilt, and looked
at the women seated in the sewi[...]n accordance with
Christian principles. I ask all ofof the Lord, and you left
a husband who was deaf to[...]voice trailed away.
“He was a good man.”

“Ofof the Lord. The

world is full of good people who misspend their lives.”

Thankfu[...], and may
the Good Lord forgive me, has the faith of a snake.To
think of it, at her age.” Emma made a tsking sound with[...]Thankful’s hands were still. ”You must let go of your
spite.” Emma reddened. “Truman Fox would[...]I appreciate your leadership as the
Presidentess of this Society, but I hear the word of
the Lord as well as you, and I don’t need you t[...]Emma stitched quickly, her work
showing the skill of a practiced seamstress.

“Oh dear me,”[...]

in cordwood that grew further away. At the end of

day they gathered the animals by the coulee wher[...]men.

The crowded tents kept the noise and stench of
men: snoring and flatulence, the rank unbathed b[...]watched one and then another one fall. He thought of a
brace of wagons fired by Mormons pulled by panicked
horse[...]n
a tree—lined street? Did she plow with a yoke of oxen
carving a field a furrow at a time?[...]

fires. When he reached the end of it Moses turned to
return to his tent and the smo[...]eed for the oxen, mules,
and horses, these mouths of thousands they herded for
the Army of Utah. He wondered at the endless winter,
the relentless windchill the thief of heat, and the snow,
always the snow, as though the beast of winter were
the General Commanding. He thought of Napoleon in
Russia and the frozen soldiers.

“Push it away,” he said.

He thought of his daughter, Flora, married
to James Stuart, a l[...]in
Kansas. Like himself, Lieutenant Stuart was an officer
of horse, a gentleman of Virginia, a graduate of West
Point. Cooke chuckled thinking of the change the
young man made after meeting his d[...]he grew a good one, he’d
allow that. He thought of the wedding at Fort Riley, its
military majesty and his beautiful Flora, so young and

full of promise, wife now to a life of waiting, wife to a
husband’s love of honor.

Beauty, Cooke thought. “For God’s sak[...]s initials for a nickname sparing Flora,
daughter of a Lieutenant Colonel, the embarrassment
of a husband called “Beauty.”

“What gentleman[...]n Stuart
advanced faster than he had.

He thought of Rachael’s radiance that day, so
proud of her daughter following her footsteps and the
vali[...]n me,” he said.

He placed blame on the relapse of malaria and its
feverish thinking, the dem[...]

he turned under his buffal[...]you can do, why bother? His life had been a trail of
tribulation, he thought. The waterless marches of the
Southwest desert and the oxen with bleeding f[...]liating court—martial
questioning. Those rumors of squaw killer. Cholera,
dysentery, the impairment of malaria. Sick and dying
dragoons and always horse[...]paches. The Sioux at Blue Water Creek,
the scalps of white women. It’s been a tiring and trying
ride[...]perience, and hope like the Bible likes. Not much of a
life, he thought, if hope is the highest promot[...]ned Indian style, and
it was warm, the heavy hair of the buffalo’s shoulders
over his shoulders movi[...]arded on a bedground bigger than a farm,
the hair of the buffalo robe waving in the starlight.
Nathan did not know which was noisier—a tent full of
men, or bedded oxen. Among this many animals ther[...]legs underbelly. Oxen chewed cuds as if in
dreams of green fields. Others groaned and twitched[...]

promised adventure, the horses and the riding of them.

The hardship marching surprised him. He’[...]me. He had it
better in Pennsylvania, the comfort of the forest and
the close hills, the fieldwork and the meals, the warm
bed of a farmstead.The grit required to survive here had
astonished him. There had to be something at the end
of this that would make the journey worth it.

This too was new, this herding of animals
like the drovers in Kansas did. At home they had a
handful of cows and plow oxen, but nothing like this
expanse of animals. It would take an hour to ride
aro[...]

felt the mu[...]ood one shot would do other than to
mark the time of his passing.

He’d see the Great Salt Lake at a[...]ich
the freighters had said was as big and devoid of life as
the desert it lived in. He’d see the ci[...]condDragoom, Uta/J
Territory, juneu, 1858

A city of wickiups stood at the foot of the mountainsides
that defined Echo Canyon. Many[...]ain faces as though huddled there. A construction
of huts crafted with poles and woven willow gave the
look of poverty and pride, a village replete with thatched
roofs sealed with matted grass and a mud mix of clay and
coarser soils placed to slow snow and it[...]m the fires inside. Firewood piles stood
by some of the huts to feed fireplaces cut in the banks

of the canyon side. The comfort of the makeshift village
surpassed that of the army’s camp under canvas. Some of
the huts had Dutch ovens cut in the clay bank nex[...]osted there and reported the certain
annihilation of the Army ofof

The canyon amplified the sound of the marching
column till the soldiers sounded twi[...]hat aren’t guarded. Tis another to face an army of
United States infantry. You mark me words, laddy.[...]y’d covered since Fort
Laramie, that masquerade ofof order. This was tough
country with its rock—sid[...]r
seasonal goats, the ground that showed the work of

wind. This would be a country where snow was bor[...]boy. We
have dragoons who will breathe the fire of hell itself.”

“The dragoons have done nothin[...]mewhere,” Garrison Lloyd said.

“For the love of Saint Patrick, laddy. If the
dragoons had ’a been with us instead of sent away by
some general the Mormons would ’a[...]’s beard
widened when he smiled. “Tis a thing of beauty truly, to

see the horsemen charge.”

The four hundred horsemen of the Second Dragoons
halted at the mouth of Echo Canyon. All were mounted
now with many on re[...]Marcy’s
expedition to New Mexico. At the mouth of the

canyon Colonel Cooke ordered a regime[...]

bishop the insignia signaled an aura of authority, its hint
of intimidation.

Officers shouted sounding like an army volleyed
voi[...]rain rail fell
on train rail for the full defile of the canyon and then,
for a moment, the canyon sto[...]rrow, and fifty yards wide. Ihe houses are
built of stone and sun-dried brick, and, as

a general rul[...]stories high,
each house having about four acres of land
in the enclosure, which is loaded with grain[...]etables, and flowers without limit.
On each side of every street runs a small
stream of clear water. . . . Along all these little
streams, or irrigating ditches, are rows of
beautiful shade-trees; every dwelling nearly
has a nice paling fence in front, and many of

them apple and peach orchards in rear.

—Wi//i[...]exact right angles to each
other. Along the sides of some of them run
small, rapid streams, in which gr[...]

Colonel Cooke thought of Lafayette Frost,
Corporal ofMormons. He saw a sha[...]if standing to horse, holding a
torch as a sword of the Lord ready to immolate their
city. Colonel Cooke shook his head at the memory of
Lafayette Frost steady as steel as the bull closed with
the momentum of a locomotive. Lafayette Frost had
reenlisted, enticed by the new uniform and the addition
of eighteen cents a day to occupy San Diego with the[...]ur pardon, Colonel?”The voice came from
a staff officer riding behind him.

“Nothing, Lieutenant.[...]inary soldiers.” Colonel Cooke rode at
the head of the dragoons and watched with head
uncovered.

Mo[...]o. Nathan Slater rode at
his side in their column ofof horse hooves filled the boulevard
then quit at t[...]standing sentinel and to the gardens and
orchards of the citied homesteads.

“If it was up to[...]

never give us a tip of the brim.”

“Hold it down, Moses,” Nathan s[...]gardens
brighter than a Pennsylvania forest full of fall splendor.

“Not once,” Moses said.

Nathan thought of framed paintings in a
Philadelphia museum. “App[...]e we see this again.”

Moses looked at the back of the dragoon riding
in front of

The long, green—eyed girl gave us hope, a vision of
a human being perfected.

My mother weighed seven[...]er puréed peas,
strained carrots, tiny spoonfuls of mashed potatoes. I
was always afraid. I thought h[...]stnuts, cherries, pears, almonds—all the fruits of
Tu B’Shvat, the new year ofthe trees, God’s R[...]ed my
mother, the ease with which she moved, free of her
body. She waited for me. She said, 77m ix rometbing.

By noon, sun shattered of snow, the day suddenly
fierce, the blue sky unbe[...]n coat, sweltering. I believed, yes: in this rage of
light, the Tree of Life, all life, might be reawakening.

I t[...]

Seth already knows he’ll be a[...]y hips through tight spaces,
Seth Betos, unafraid of smoke—filled tunnels—our
beautiful sa[...]

I loved her for this, the absence of all arrogance.

Today, everyone looked perfect. O[...]women,
ones whose hair had fallen out in the grip of
chemotherapy, ones healing now with her, their gu[...]nd was not afraid, because she gave them a vision
of how they might reclaim their strength in water—[...]urpose, stroked his smooth head, suddenly
ashamed of this indulgence.

We were whole, each one ofus, and all of us
together.

I remembered my father’s blessing[...]b’riyot. Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the
Universe, who makes the creatures different.[...]secrets
underwater. Idris emerged from the tunnel of the
dressing room, white towel wrapped like a ski[...]e
and before her second, Idris gave me a tiny cup of
espresso at his coffee shop—warm and delicious[...]any time, really.

I didn’t come. I was afraid of him, his beauty and
his kindness, the way[...]

I tho[...]s crippled by
polio, soldiers with stumps instead of legs, old women
terrified of water. My father said: Wby be afraid of [be
[bing [ba[ boldr m? My father said: I ’m ri[...]forgot
about God as wine and swallowed a mouthful of water.
He left me sputtering, separate fro[...]

a girl with a[...]red—
headed girl with powerful thighs like one of those
miniature gymnasts; and Louise Doren touchi[...]s mouth, and the girl pressed
hard with the heels of her hands, and Helen’s bones
broke and her body[...]the lungs might heave, the heart clench, the love of life
return, the delicate pulse throb in her neck[...]egitimate
or foolish? She’d left us in the care of two teenagers
who had done the drill ninety—nin[...]pled boy, Samuel Killian,
the buoyant woman—all of us—how strong she was,
how ridiculous we[...]

She wrote her phone number on a little scrap of
paper. Call me 1f you neeal rome[bing la[er.

I t[...],
pomegranates and grapes, three fat pears, a jar of black
olives, all that fruit, Hir fruit, in my ki[...]tight, Mother’s white on white scroll, the Tree of

Life embroidered in satin stitches, a wed[...]

I smelled Helen Kinderman in me—soot of
adrenaline, burn of chlorine—we shared this: one
scorched body. I w[...]to stand, too light in the head, and I was afraid of the
water, my father there, dead of a heart attack at fifty—
seven, Leonard Lok cr[...]ecrets.

Any day you might be the one, or the one
of a thousand chosen. Beeuure you rerirted, b[...]

In the camp, he extracted gold from the mouths
of the dead, found emeralds stashed in the bowel,
sa[...]ugh like
them, almost a soldier. He wheeled carts of the dead
and almost dead. He heaved them into ove[...]ck dust everywhere
falling. Music muted the cries of children, and they
thought: Iftbe musie aloexn’[...]e boy

lost, a waif abandoned. Lilike and the son of a stranger

My fat[...]

saw the dead—in pits, in[...]

They lived by chance, by grace, the sacrifice of another.

Beeaure I lied wben [bey arked y” I e[...]e, rome[imer I rueked milk pumped from [be brear[ of
bir mo[ber, and I war alwayx afraid, bu[ rbe never raw and
rbe never killed me.

They told of the ones set free who died anyway,
hundreds a day[...]a girl who still loved her life, the
thin thread of it, who weighed thirty—four kilos, nine[...]

On the last day of my mother’s life, I saw the
sores on her feet c[...]th, still cling
to your precious body. At the top of the mountain, you
might insist God kiss your eyel[...]still wish to touch the body, the
face, the mouth of every one taken before you.

Four hours go[...]

How can tbis be?

There are a t[...]ittle girl devoured by
the wolf cuts herself free of his bowel and walks out
of the woods into the sunlight. One woman in a pit
m[...]n, this doctor, this human
being, holds the heart of another man in his hand while

he repairs it.

Ar[...]ches, and my mother
and father appeared, smelling of rosewater and myrtle,
shimmering behind lush whit[...]me
too, on the same bus, but not together, a kind of
agreement they have, to pretend to be stra[...]

Helen has come to walk this scrap of earth beside him.

He sees a small Indian woman moving toward
him, slowly gathering herself out of the dust until she
becomes a shape he recognizes.[...]len
has revealed his mistakes to him, the failure of practiced
words, the hopelessness of his precise Spanish.

He knows what his sister wo[...]he Rio Sonora. His throat
is too parched to speak of God and salvation. Even
the chickens refuse to sq[...]opened the door, and here they were, alive,
both of them, home, my precious ones, to help me slice
pe[...]njugating verbs in
French or memorizing the names of tribes, learning to
spell, to say, to imagine Hob[...]foolish and blessed it
would seem, this life, all of it!

Liam returned to us, just in time, just before dusk,
in the hour of twilight. We blessed the wine of every
season: white, pink, rose, red. We drank it[...]love, our
frail bodies—to restore Him, the Tree of Life, to give
God life in the world. Every[...]

Later, our children passed some secret sign[...]earing the song inside her song, the
first words of unborn children. Davia was waiting for
the one wo[...]se her, but she trembled
with pure joy, the bliss of finally going. And then it
came. I don’t know[...]roared down a narrow canyon—imagine the wonder of

it all, how you’d laugh and leap as you ceased[...]Davia’s voice, life beyond hope and fear, proof of love,
God unfathomable. Seth brought his fingers to the keys
in a jubilation of sound, three times Davia’s speed, but
with asto[...]y—Nina, Dorothy,
Matthew, Eric—I saw each one of them and all their
children; I saw fathers and mo[...]e more day, one more bour? If tbe
eloudr are part of God and part of you, wby ean’t tbey be
good? Wby ean’t[...]

throbbing pulse in my skull and pelvi[...]d, who held me even
now, floating on the surface of their music.

I kissed them, and I left th[...]

to create his own deer song, a prayer of praise and
wonder. He hears the words of the prophet Isaiah too,

strikingly in ton[...]

If you approach i[...]at
a single, common spirit has possessed each one of
us in turn, and moving on has established a certa[...]men and over continents
as she flees before it.

Of that life called my own boyhood, I have
but drab,[...]Jens. Their stories overlap
my own like snatches ofof our affair (it would be as tedious
as anything el[...]t as I
tell this story I’d like to relate a few of those old loves

so you’ll see the forces in motion.

The bell rang for recess and a tumble of dry leaves
skittered and hesitated over th[...]

away by the tussle of school children, then it opened
up in a baseball[...]worn and spacious acre. There, on the other side
of the yard, was a chain link fence meant to keep the
kids out of the thick, brown water, but the fence had
holes i[...]ould soar over the fence into the thick branches

of the willows along the ditch banks. A very hard

o[...]along the ditch’s
north side.

On the far side of that fence, old men in
sleeveless, v—neck sweat[...]ay through among the blue spruce and mountain
ash of the seventh hole. The greens and fairways were
well tended without being lush.The golfers gave of
a reified happiness, an intent and complex seren[...]rbarian melee.
So foreign, sometimes a loose pack of third graders
would stand there briefly, finger[...]cements, or an adversary.

One day, in the middle of the schoolyard’s hue
and cry one kid in the thi[...]just moved into the
mad, high house to the north of town. She was on her
mother’s elbow in her ratty clothes, the foof of her
bangs like a ray of sun—blonder then—her skip—to—
my—loo le[...]d beaten you, and then we all
switched sides. Out of everyone, Miss Jens had legs. I
saw her go after[...]roaned and shouted, Ir it over?!, almost
a parody of ourselves. Which is why the Corner—
between the[...]and the girls would
scream and if kissing was out of the question altogether

they would just hug. To the surprise and horror of the

That eve[...], I went upstairs to my
room, slowly, and thought of nothing to do. The dresser,
the bookshelves, the[...]arrow at
the front but flaring out in back, full of knotty pine,
smudged brass, and dusty bottles lin[...]g me a prize, between us the sometimes
solidarity of guys. “I don’t think you two have met.[...]

“Do you mind?”I said. No reply.

So w[...]toward each other or
away, just talking out ahead of ourselves like two people
riding next to one anot[...]assenger,
our minds and mouths two spinning pairs of tires that
would not touch or cross. The streets[...]off the gardens that
bloomed darkly in the shadow of a church downtown,

their hedges exhaling[...]

Nevertheless, as I walked back through the[...]slow as life, at my sudden heart.

“Even a hint of hope,” Stendhal wrote, “is

enough for the birth ofof those natural phenomena whose immediate
and overw[...]nce dictates that however
implausible the origins of a feeling may be, our
judgment of its truth must stand or fall on what is
manifest[...]r, here is the
toadstool army, here are the barns of ash.

Month in month out all through the summer I[...]s only Miss Jens can
know, she kept me at arm’s length. Sometimes I think
she even forgot my name. Perha[...]ensed that something wasn’t right. But the heat of the
season waxed, then waned again with fa[...]

After weeks of torment, after dozens of nights
running one or two lines over and over thr[...]t in ballads long
on heavenly gyration

that tell of my claire de lune

and her distant castiga[...]

from the gelid grass and frozen ground
of earth, whose light you are.

A love letter, a poe[...]And once it has been
sent, the aching becomes one of expectation. With what
eyes will it be read? How[...]nd yet the poem sat there on my desk like a
chunk of my own flesh, loud and red. Whatever existed
bet[...]nating, and I tried not to kill it
with an excess of emotion, so those feelings stayed pent
up inside, flying on their trapezes before an audience of

one while I planned the next step.

*******

W h[...]ion, flooze a little, and inflate my years. One of

the world’s favorite people, mine uncle, he’d weekly sent

me letters, for ideas grew out of his head, outstralling
inspiteof a baseball cap t[...]ine uncle turns to me and says: “We are
masters of time, son, not of space.” (Coke cans rolling
by the pedals, deep and mingled strata of hamburger
wrappers and receipts across the backse[...]ly time for truckstops. Beside us birds the
color of dirt flew like dirt clods through the air above

aspen and stands of pine, sparrows and starlings arching
forward on i[...]—Hi, the girl.

—Where to!? mine uncle kind of yelled.

—Seattle. What about you?!

—We’re[...]dy’s got a
mouth!

And the car did us the favor of saving the
conversation even if we didn’t have[...]it pass, her 1air covered with highway, eyes full of
illusions, skin shiny with a silken grain, which seemed
to sharpen my mind. The backseat smelled of old
oranges anc the sun was shining like it might[...]lungs filled
up with the whole joyful obligation of air. —How long
could it take, mine uncle[...]

dozing on and off. Viscous skiffs of snow flashing
through a dark city of trees while mine uncle, to

keep himself awake, fiddled with radio and muttered,
waving his hands, of a trek through Mexico and of the
Amazons before the Spanish won, and the volleyball
champions of nubile Tehuantepec who reign on even
now, and how[...]rom the knuckles
like the bored erratic scribbles of a ninth—grade
notebook, in which he claimed he could read at least a
chapter of his life.

In that moment at a crossroads west of Idaho,

a hundred yards away, a signboard flew u[...]areened, its front wheels crunching over the curb of the
lot as we skidded and raked through gravel and dirt up
to the bare, used and dimlit porch where a herd ofof decayed piss and abused varnish,
its walls jumped[...]posters, its jukebox
bragging an extinct species of rock and the local boys
roud and lowdy. Momentous[...]Miss Jens said.

—Too many, I said.

—Middle of nowhere, too.

—Nowhere to go. . . . , I[...]

first and second floors, sh[...]that’s when i told her i had a

poem.

“sort of rhyming couplets,”i said.

“i want to hear it[...]her.
“that’s good,” she says, “i’m kind of shocked.”
“i meant to send it weeks ago.”[...]ngland. back sunday.

so, with a deeper knowledge of one another, a

deeper uncertainty.

Often in the act of love as Miss Jens rose above
me, sculpted as an a[...]nd her hair in
disarray, I perceived that we were of one flesh. And we
attained a mystic union parall[...]tial way, and
we knew something beyond either one of us by virtue of
that union. The whole issue of mind control or osmosis
aside, I felt we were in[...]t we’re
“taking a break,”I will be thinking of her at the same
moment that an e—mail from her arrives. Even though
Miss Jens is of two minds about me, we remain one.

Can you blame[...]ns, nights, heady
with low laughter and the scent of limbs. It was that
second of all our double lives, the one that sidles[...]

“I haven’t told her, but we have a kind of
unspoken understanding.”

“How unspoken is it[...]splatters in the chest, began to rattle the rest of
my life.Take the office, for example: a dead—end job,
maybe illega[...]g I’d show up unshaved,
unwashed, unfed and out of breath from the mad dash
between her place and wo[...]and love will do the
trick.

The situation at the office naturally grew worse: I
was wearing my spare[...]ife barreled along carefree and flushed for most
of November and December—the love, the stin[...]

Now Christmas is a carnival at my paren[...]re between a cross—town football
game and a war of the worlds.There is too much food,
too much noise, too little space, and a spirit of rumbling
inclusion and activity that succeeds for a week at least
in making all of us—aunts and uncles, brothers and
sisters, gran[...]ust not
talk,” and she laughed that curt giggle of hers which
indicates how much she feels this to be desirable as well
as true. A giggle of embarrassed sincerity, an appeal.

“I’m glad[...]uss
this,”l said, as it was still the last week of December. In
situations like this I stall and thi[...]et back . . . perhaps one evening.”

The signs, of course, had been everywhere.

As far as Miss Jens[...]commitment
called for a modal verb, an arm’s—length if and when.
Discussing our couple in the future tense required that
we shift into the realm of the probable, or improbable,
rather. Despi[...]

matters of the heart, Miss Jens would toss her hair and

say[...]nce I met Miss Jens, I’ve experienced a rebirth of
sorts, reborn down a rabbit hole in a Wonderland[...]ther towards purging
our poison than the theories of Hippocrates. Such
contemporary ten—den—eier a[...]emical
reeducation, a contingent, punctual remedy of
symptoms while our discontent abides. For cause,[...]determinations. And to locate the
deepest causes of that morass called the mind in the
serotonin reuptake inhibitors of its synapses is too
mechanical and complacent an[...]urotransmitters, another says neuroses, I say All of
History. Put another way: Is melancholy a disorder of
the individual in time or a disorder of the world? And if
it were the latter, what would[...]aw her high in the amphitheater on the first
day of zom—century French literature. She did n[...]

month of those sessions, she started coming all dolled

up, dressed in a series of 1950s get—ups. I would see her
and sense my professorial persona begin to crumblefl
larger economy of feeling opened up. Once she arrived
looking like[...]eed, for moments, I wanted to dance.
Epiphenomena of a tease, she stopped reading halfway
through the book, complained of boredom. So what do
you think I did?

I told her[...]se, for we
are without culture or the possibility of it.) I sought to
correct this happy illiteracy in[...]from the task
at hand: the thorough restructuring ofof melancholy and
its depths. I do not accuse Miss Jens of media, no, but

rather myself. In regards[...]

Miss Jens bad need of melancholy. That much
was clear. Contrary to popu[...]as in French. If she had
trouble with the gender of nouns, it is because she did
not care enough to l[...]en one thinks. Yet you mmt
think.I endeavored, at length, to teach her the dry
and circular art of thought, knowing that once she
graduated she woul[...]ng our
differences, but building a new ethics out of their
collision. Her feelings would develop and c[...]that there was no
one who would be more indulgent of her foibles than I.
Her whole life was ahead of her: Latin, Greek, Europe,
an assistantship, peer[...]ater (one week before our
wedding), she was gone. Of course I know why, and I am

not bitter. We may have a relation of nonrelation now,

The first three weeks of the new year have been
a wash. Lethargy . . . I haven’t been able to get out of
bed. Day is just a grayer form of night. In love, but lazy,
I am a bear half hibernating in this den of a studio on
the square east side of Paris, where every morning the
whole room is coat[...]’tget up. [mt go bark to deep. Before me a year
of mornings, as inexorable as a bowe movement, where[...]ed
to tbink tbere tbougbtr.

The fact of the matter—but how to separate

bitter fact fro[...]haven’t been able to
get a straight answer out of her about why we don’t
talk any more. She shudd[...]has died down.

And what can I think? In the wake of our last
year’s love is a lone water ski[...]

En[...]asure it. Doesn’t the
government have some kind of website?”

unapromemy un rurpimr

“I don’t[...]ve our best
interests in mind?”

“As a matter of fact, I—O.K., look, forget it.
How about[...]

“Yeah, me neither come to think of it. How bout
some chocolate?”

“No, I don’t[...]etters like I used to, it’s because
I’m tired of making a fool of myself. Victor says I
should try to see her as much as possible now so as to
tire of her more quickly, but I’m not up for it. Lack t[...]ard to get: Women need to conquer, too, she
says. Of course everyone gives that advice and no one
take[...]Last time her crowns, delicate things
in the best of times, broke under the stress of the
separation (she clenches her jaw to hold her[...]was a root canal. So during the very
maybe month of January, against my better judgment,

I sent Miss[...]annibal!

Indeed, Miss Jens is a man—eater, but of the
most delightful sort. Like her, I too practice a kind
of cannibalism, of which this chronicle is the proof.
Sometimes you[...]s your love
eats you.

If I bring up that snippet of correspondence,
however, it is to drive home anot[...]le at play and least

comfy in couples. In or out of love, however, her aim

Pursued by this surfeit of love, Miss Jens moves
from place to place and fro[...]te somewhere. I hope she finds
it—that’s one of the few hopes I still cling to. Miss
Jens is at o[...]chasing
herself through Greece to Egypt (the land of exodus
serving suddenly as a refuge). In her part[...]fectly matched: mine being gods ofloss, hers
gods of departure.

The second night I spent with Miss Je[...]and piss ofdrunks. Inside: a bed. So at the end of night,

a long shipwreck of inattention, Miss Jens rolled over
and laid her body next to mine. The dawn had turned
a deeper shade of blue as the sun crept round, and the
stripes cut[...]to Victor, I
am to her: she’s not sure how much of me she wants.
In the back of my mind, though, where things do work
out,[...]

Miss Jens: The literature of the East has much to
teach us, don’t you think?

Me: Oh, I think it’s been said, most of it.

Miss Jens: I’m talking about the other literatures
of the East.

Me: I see.

Miss Jens: Yes. I’m thinking in particular of the

one that instructs us in the art of letting go,
non—attachment.
Me: Have you been t[...]I’ve just been doing some reading

and thinking of you.

Me: . . . Are you leaving me? Is this how
B[...]u
want to talk. It’s not like I’m walking out
of your life. But I think I need to leave this

coup[...]uld
occasionally break down and call, perhaps out of guilt,
perhaps from genuine affection.I thought of those calls

as her little gifts, gifts of atonement and farewell, a final

dose of the poison I adored. Her voice still echoed in
me sweet as ever, but it was a voice of leaving.

If those weeks of deepening solitude have
taught me one thing, it i[...]trails disappearing
among clouds. It was the end of the end.

Our chronicle spent, the will to write[...]407:?

want to be.

Mart/13'd

nothing reminds me of her like a phone call from
her. she calls[...]

probab[...]acArthur
had even shaved. He didn’t have a hint of red whisker
on his chin.

“Where you comin’ f[...]w Garland Tabor from REA
meetings, and he was one of the more diffith men I’d
ever met.

“[...]

For the rest of the walk to the barn, and the time
it took to mil[...]handshake
that this man had a job.

Although most of the ranches had become more
efficient since the[...]ith so
many people leaving in the thirties. Those of us who
stayed acquired land in chunks. So there was a lot of
work to do. The bigger ranches needed haying crew[...]e crews, moving from place to place,
earning most of their money during those seasons.
There were also[...]ion was to hire on as a year—round hand for
one of the bigger ranches. So ever since the war ended,[...]arrying a satchel filled with
work clothes. Many of these men were fractured
somehow, if not by the war, then by a lost love, or the
loss of their own family place. They were generally hard[...]or four days, and come
back with the battle scars of a bender. We always asked
them to leave after the[...]erate the unreliable with so many prospects.

And of course, there were also a fair number
of shady characters, who showed up with remarkably
b[...]turned
away the boys who were obviously just out ofof times,

for one simple but mysterious reas[...]

I laughed. “What the hell kind of negotiation is
that?”

“Oh, are we neg[...]

“Was I smiling?”

She set a plate of eggs, bacon and fried potatoes
in front of me. “Like a circus clown.”

“I think[...]

out of the Navy. Your postwar economy was an awful
sweet[...]Town and Country model. Built my own hi—fi out
of parts I got through a mail order catalog.

We’d throw up one of those GI—financed
crackerboxes, frame it at le[...]d spend. Course, I had my diversions, too,
couple of bad habits. Drank quite a bit, like everyone
did[...]wn. I
knew a few girls, too, and almost every one of ’em liked
to cruise. That Philco was the best r[...]had forearms on me like Popeye, had a little
bit of a savings account and a brain no bigger than a
wa[...]ts—she knows I never get anything from the post
office, not even bills, so she knows I’m n[...]

reeking. Immediately overhead of you, just under the

So the next day I’m at sick bay with what I think
is the worst case of strep throat I’ve ever had, but the
corp[...]

up to petty officer again, and I got that medal, which I
still have somewhere, I think, and all of it together was
pitiful little to show for being twenty—three months
seasick. I was not much of a sailor, and I’m still not
much of a patriot. But, there you have it. You do what
yo[...]ties you really didn’t
want to make a big thing of it if you thought somebody
was a little off, cause they were taking out pieces of
peoples’ brains back then. Had a gizmo they’d[...]say, can’t help but freely admit
it—Moira was of no earthly use to anybody, but she
was also harmless, so I couldn’t see her as a ward of
the state. You hear how Warm Springs is really pr[...]d, that’s what I couldn’t hack—
the thought of my sister talking to that boy all the time

about[...]on,
big old console model; we got the one channel of some
crummy airwave, picture and the sound were b[...], and we generally made

our little bit every day of the year, that’s how many

I might’ve been afraid of him. Maybe I was afraid
of getting carried away and getting my ass kicked.

Oslavski wasn’t much of a man until he was in a fight.

She had the prettiest, healthiest head of hair.
Moira did at least keep herself clean, and[...]he kept herself clean, and even
kept herself kind of nice for as much as she’d wasted
away, and I ha[...]ng to forgive, so where does that leave
you? Most of the time I thinkI must’ve treated her
like a piece of expensive furniture, cause, you know, I
just coul[...]e her an opening to get off onto
fluoride or one of her other topics. She hated anything
she considered chemical. But Qlent’s growing up;
Qlent’s of running or at school or in his room, and
pretty soon I’m Moira’s company most of the time, and
she’s mine—I gotta say, there w[...]nterest in me, I can tell you.

So I had my stack of National Geographer, and I
read every page of those many times. Guys with hoops
in their noses,[...]And poor Qlent
built himself a trestle bridge out of popsicle sticks, that
thing eventually took up two whole walls of his room.
One Christmas I found a locomotive, too[...]as a very narrow gauge, and we put that
up on top of the structure, damn near to the ceiling. H[...]

the walls in that house.

I could[...]one whenever he could be, and I saw less and
less of him all the time, and here it is getting closer t[...]he ever left.

You know, we stood two years there of visits from
assistant coaches, and head coaches, and alumni, and
a whole herd of people who probably never before or
since set foot in a class C town.That was hell for all of
us. There you’d be, trying to be polite with so[...]ver to that
specimen in the living room, and some of ’em even try
and sweet talk her. That must’ve[...]imited potential,
they say, if he ever breaks out of his shell. So he tells me
he’s decided to go down there and study Anthropology,
which I ’ve heard of in my Geograpbitr, but I’m not real

He st[...]lege
dropout. That’s when I should’ve got out of Elisis, too,
that was probably my best chance, bu[...]t
up in my little trailer out by the highway, one of those
things like a guy might take up hunting, ab[...]rry for myself? Yes. But I did
have the same post office box, and I had phone service
with the old ph[...]pany was formed. Big deal. All it shows
is a lack of imagination. I think that’s what kept me
in town, I could never come up with a clear idea of
anything better. But, little by little I put myse[...]e I’d get a picture, but it was never a picture
of him. After he’d been down there a while he star[...]sm, and I am just praying I don’t catch a
whiff of Moira in this stuff. Police states, he says. He
d[...]t was like
shouting at each other from either end of a tunnel.
I didn’t ask what he was doing[...]

house with a nickel in her jeans, come back[...]a pretty sociable couple, considering I was half of it,
and we’d go over to somebody’s house for[...]Blood or a Piegan, I don’t remember, but a
part of the tribe that was eligible for their health care[...]d it takes
you about a day just to get over a day of doing rough
carpentry. But that’s okay.[...]

he worked a fishing boat out of Sitka. And if he still
never stayed put for very[...]uess he came twice. Once he came with another one
of those hippy girls, and the next time he’s got a[...]to tell you the truth, that gave
me a little case of the yips. How’m I doing? How am
I suppos[...]

She says they are very happy together, that[...]computers, and that’s
practical, that’s more of a plan than I’ve heard from him
in quite a spel[...]fee machines. What in the hell? Seemed

like kind of a step down for him. And [[7372 he tells me
he’[...]’, cause she doesn’t seem to me like the kind
of girl to settle for any kind of mechanic, much less a
guy fixing coffee machines[...]m. And at this
wedding you got the groom’s side of the aisle, which
is me and the crew of a coc boat and some little dark
gal who doesn’t have a word of English, turns out she’s
a net mender, comes fr[...]the other
side you got Rebecca’s peop e. A lot of’em. These are
people what we would’ve c led s[...]broug1t . . . it was ridiculous.
There was a lot of those envelopes tied up in silver

twine, you kne[...]iler, gave ’em a cottage sitting on five acres of

Vashon Island, piece ofofof your head. You get ugly, is what you do.
Real ugl[...]Just tickles me pink. I
went ahead and put a lot of windows in my kitchen, tore
those appliances out[...]guess you could
call it—there’s this species of spruce up in the Thompson
River country, and I ca[...]ine because I buy it raw. If I
cure it right, cut of short cants and kiln cure ’em, I can

do almost[...]e always colors
up somehow and it takes on a life of its own. There’s
been a surprise in everything[...]ll take my addiction over most others I can think
of. Before I know it, my stuff’s in the shops in M[...]fine.

There was a time there where I just kind of let
him alone while he was making a success of himself.
Took quite a while, I have to say[...]

an odd duck to begin with, and I really can’t[...]nd a note
to say he was sorry he hadn’t thought of it sooner. That
forced my hand, of course, and a good thing, too. I’m a
little ashamed of the wayI get. One way or the other,
it’s always been Qlent who grabs me by the scruff of
the neck and shakes me out of it. So there he was at the
airport, waitin[...]

Now, this property of theirs didn’t look a thing
like I remembered fr[...]their own
landscaping, and there’s not an inch of their ground
that hasn’t been planted and prune[...]cedar shakes, and it’s gussied up in some
kind of copper trim that was new to me. I’d never seen[...]floors and marble countertops and about an acre of
windows looking out over the water. That one wall[...]nstairs with little Daisy
on her hip. The females of this family are something
else, I tell you[...]

So then we had a drin[...]I can see where they were making a production
out of supper. I smell salmon on a grill somewhere, but[...]y
think I might like is in there, including a set of very fancy
Japanese carving knives, and some pieces of cherry wood
and walnut. There’s a card on my pi[...]hould
I mind? His business takes up the best part of a three—

story building smack in the middle of downtown
Seattle. You got your showroom on the gr[...]ating over that, and on the top floor

there’s ofoffice and makes me the best
cup of coffee I ever drank. No, he says, it’s errpremo[...]little walk around Seattle. Got in the wrong part of it,
of course, and some wino mugged me, and he damn
near[...]t—
you got pasta and a big old salad and a slab of pig in

of Qlent than Qlent did. He was always so terrible
easy to embarrass, and I remember that was one of the
things that made me so awful tender about him. He’s
kind of a heartbreak, and neither one of us really knows
why. So I tell him I’m proud of him. Tell him I”ve never
been anything but prou[...]a whizbang
lacrosse player, and I caught a couple of his games before
he graduated. Daisy just kept li[...]not a
year passes when I’m not a little fonder of

This country has changed a good deal since he
was young in it, or some of it has. Sprinkler systems.
They managed to put water on dry ground up at my
end of the valley, and there might be fewer people here[...]t. It’s empty out that
way, which is why I kind of

of reflection before coffee and traffic,
be[...]

fires catching the nearby homes, I wasn’t myself
breaking the windows of the dying; my friends
for whom I wept I didn’t[...]stiff carcasses

pass through town in the pickups of happy men.

A real war smoulders far away in dayl[...], cold air,
clear under stars, reveals the breath of life,
how quickly it disappears in a rifle shot[...]speaking.

I hear each car appear, distinct,
out of the unknown dark, driver unseen,

destinat[...]

made possible by my warm[...]

that the largesse of our passion only increases

territory. In the dar[...]ars equally to the brim, spills
over as the birds of morning drink.
Yesterday Morning

In this poem is[...].
We see the clock through the cold white

clouds of breath that accompany our words.

Sitting[...]

the gritty music of time passing. The moon
loses her grip and disappe[...]agile breath that births
them.

Sculpture

Salmon of copper
tube; koi, bright orange

against t[...]

108

with the insubstantiality of words.

This house is for those travelers

who mi[...]stop in the same place thinking

it is the center of their journey.

say better make it six of‘em—that’s three

apiece, one for every twen[...]t we go whole hog and you and me

get us a couple of Frito Big Grabs, you say

as she sacks up the pin[...]y a whole bag, and hey,
you get two for the price of one. Well, sure

you say, you better throw in a couple of those,

but no more deals or I might have[...]

so I wouldn’t dream of pulling anything funny,

but I was wondering, er,[...]ed while Athens burned. This was the fated
result of Hamlet finding himself mated

with his mo[...]

One orchid

one jar of Katydids
one broken mirror
two limes

one[...]

As a child, I carried fillings of mercury around inside of my head.
Mother would call and call, but I could only hear the train in my ears,
moving down its tunnel of blood toward the dark heart

my father gave me in[...]ocolates—

no, she was eating the cooked hearts of chickens

one after another.

you will ree[...]

weary face reddened. A f[...]notices for
two newspapers and a letter for out—of—town friends. In
coming weeks she would[...]

I live in and out of those endless days marked by
a ventilator’s pulse when the earth careened. Of course
my own family’s traffic claims my love and attention but
the details of Dad’s dying cling to me like an unfolding
scent[...]mano Island changed.I take its pulse, at the
dawn of the twenty—first century, sifting the evidence of
the contemporary scene just as I accustom myself[...]and I glance, as always, at
the barns and fields of the Danielson Farm north of the
highway, and my eyes trace the white lines of Camano
Lutheran Church.These symbols of Camano past are
balanced by paired symbols of Camano present and
future: Cascade Lumber, on the[...]s building boom, its
milled lumber supplying much of it. A big operation
through which scads of money pass, it centers a dull,

blessedly short c[...]urban anonymity as the Island may see,
since most of it, like Clyde Hill next to Bellevue, is
not comm[...]oreground strip
threatens the background pastoral of the Danielson
place, generations old—nostalgic[...]hose
soothing hay pastures) for the wide majority of us
who’ve never worked a farm. Down the hill an[...]Camano
Gateway, whose meanings differ from those ofof the southern peninsula—the most island part of the
Island. A big flat sign and, years la[...]

Anomalous Amer[...]d out ofClyde Hill decades ago. Mom and a
handful of others who arrived before incorporation in
1953 play the role of historical curiosities—remnants

from another c[...]m piece.

I scoff at yet envy those recent swells of permanent
residents as I look behind the new look[...]ly
across the Stanwood isthmus, as the daily tide of cars
attests. Beaches, bays, and Saratoga Passage remind
resident or visitor of island, but in the new century it

is more than ever an appendage of the Sound’s metro
area further south. Not so mu[...], they see the Island’s trach a minor
extension of Bellevue’s: pieces from the world of burbs
that lies, mostly, beyond our ken. They don[...]st as they look
forward to the occasional novelty of cities. Resident of
a town of pickups with one or more dogs in back, I jog
around part of Camano’s southern peninsula or west
Bellevue, b[...]ly
judged “his” suburb a vapid terrain bereft of genuine
cultural expression or diversity. That’s an unfair
judgment, of course. Bellevue has become a multi—
racial, in[...]nclave—my Bellevue High School graduating class
of over 500 lacked virtually any racial minor[...]

The first couple ofof hours of free labor, my
skepticism modulated to respect. C[...]complex suited us fine because it kept thousands of—
Island, but 1—5 proximity and a short bridge promised
mass discovery: it was only a matter of time for the
Sleeping Beauty to be kissed awake,[...]annual Mother’s Day
(weekend) Studio Tour, two of the Island Chamber
of Commerce’s most conspicuous sponsorships,
confirm and sustain the in—migration. One brand
of sophistication has arrived, and I laud the Island[...]role as planners.

Gateway Park fused the vision of a few oddball
Islanders and artists and ar[...]

Since the 19205 and[...]and small pastures, occasional horses
and plenty of cutover Doug firs and Western red cedars.
The Ch[...]owth,” but mistakenly dubs it a
“remote byway of Puget Sound”: “In the quiet erosion
of our old ways can be found the first stirrings of new
beginnings, fresh attitudes and evolving iden[...]“Bah, humbugI” “Old ways”
include stories of old couples on fixed incomes getting
taxed off their land. Many resent the infusions of
newcomers and new money—an old script with
pred[...]the Island, and puffs Islanders’
common “love of beauty, both natural and man—made,”

t[...]

But given the inherent value of public art, I like
this little Park which could h[...]ritical mass and diversity. By 1999, near the end of the
decade in which the Island led the region in growth
rate (82 percent), that mass of artists and art lovers and
idle curious had emerg[...]ay not always play out this way, but the
catalyst of sharp population surge sets off a series of
transformations, not all of them aesthetic or predictable.

While some won’[...]” “beauty,” the
commitment and volunteerism of a vanguard of artists
deserves only praise. Few other Puget Sou[...]nd. The
site solicits praise. A landscaped island of shrubs shows
of David Martiz’s 7773 Return, four bronzed snow g[...]tti smiling contentedly, at rest
on a flat piece of granite, hugging a blue fish. Who
could dislike[...]xt to the Information
Hut’s door? The depiction of two guys clamming on a
Camano beach with plastic[...]ong Puget Sound’s tidebeds, reinforces a cliche of
regional privilege. I later learn the series has[...]patiently, and I hasten on,
“‘The possibility of stepping back through a threshold,
the possibility of return and the entrance back to our

past[...]

One of the first artists,Jack Archibald, arrived in
the[...]tly monkish look,
he was “searching for the end of the road” and, for a
few years at least, though[...]d suit—it’s always that way. I study examples
of his stained glass in “the shack,” the early D[...]op a hill on their six acres. I wander in and out of
other log cabins and admire the rhododendr[...]

a commuter island. Post Office personnel want the

usual look. Artists want a stained—glass front entryway
for the post office that blends in with the art park,

but bump[...]n
or pond.

Archibald takes seriously his mission of public
art for public buildings, which a Stanwood[...]d Washington in the 19905 alone, and recently
six of his installations were selected for inclus[...]

of Archibald’s “fourth major glass mural” of that year
and plans for his next three “large g[...]e for the myriad consequences, known and
unknown, of growth—that ever thickening clot of cars
and ourselves.

In this island’s story, ar[...]evelopers have
promoted in their ad copy for most of a century—what
islanders, particularly summer r[...]evelopers.

Jack Gunter, a “co—conspirator” of Archibald’s,
interprets the artist’s role mor[...]rive

the short distance to Gunter’s “History of the World,
Part IV Gallery”—move over, Mel Br[...]rs in his wake. He can’t help it, nor
can they. Of average height, bespectacled, and with
the longish hair of an artist—impresario, Gunter rushes
through a c[...]keep up while studying pieces
from “The History of Camano Island Including the
Future” and “‘H[...]2000). A natural self—promoter with a deep well of
satire, Gunter grandstands irrepressibly, and his[...]e same brand and pulls me through a detailed
tour of Setretr oft/.773 Mount I/érnon Culture, r[...]

I notice an E Series Jaguar parked in f[...]chibald,

Gunter settled on south Camano a couple of decades

ago and moved his Gallery out in 1994., promoting

the new “remote” location with lots of interactive
advertising. Gunter attracts attention through legions of
friends and acquaintances, regularly exhibits in[...]well above
$1,000. Even ifI could afford a piece of Pilchuck art
glass, there is no place for it in o[...]einforces regional self—esteem,
sells well. One of his gigantic murals hangs in “the
Pavilion,”[...]tably small.

I own a large postcard—sized copy of his egg
tempera panel, twenty—six inches[...]

Tired of new art, after that Studio Tour I retreat
to our cabin and look again inside the childish whimsy
of great—grandfather Oscar Weltzien’s panels, ey[...]lay their work through a free,
self—guided tour of 27 working studios and galleries.”
This baby grows like the population. Of the four color
photos accompanying the article, t[...]rked near the Pioneer Cemetery and
joined a crowd of well over one hundred at Gateway
Park for its Ded[...]missioner representing Camano cited the
thousands ofof Park and Ride funding
for the lot in the expanded site. Rows of empty cars,
with nearby sculpture. Commuters whir[...]e and
the Commissioner both read from the Chamber of
Commerce’s vision statement extolling public ar[...]my Island

passed another threshold.These pieces of public art
individualize it. Commercial strips, l[...]trike an attitude
I applaud.The homes and studios of artists tone up the
place. I get in the gr[...]

“Well, it’s part of the new Camano, and you’d
better get used to it[...]dress both sons: “I want you to understand
some of the ways the Island has changed.Just as our
Beach looks different now. You might like some of it.”

Lynn, remembering her closeup view of Portalx,
raises her eyebrows skeptically.

Alec p[...]eyes around it. It has joined my private gallery of
Island fixtures. I hope an expanded sculp[...]

by permission of Wes Mills,Jennifer A. Gately, and

the Portland A[...]ateful to Wes
Mills, Ms. Gately and Ingrid Berger of PAM, and G. B.

Carson for their invaluable assis[...]phite
and ink drawings emanate an intuitive sense of the
universal. His daily drawing practice, like a[...]s current thoughts and practice and is the result
of numerous conversations between the curator and th[...]ortland Art M meum.

Wes Mills: Yes, this thought of authenticity is
important to me. As I work[...]

JG: One of the earliest drawings here was created in
1995, during a time of transition from work that was
highly self—refer[...]itten over and over. This drawing is probably one of
the last from that period. The use of text originated
from my childhood school days. Occasionally I would
get into a bit of trouble, so in turn I was made to stay
indoors du[...]s a certain point when
I’d get lost in this sea of words. This repetition, which
I returned to in these early drawings, became a kind of

safe haven for me.

JG: At that time, after aban[...]to work with great deliberation, and

your choice of materials shifted as well.

WM: There was a point[...]acted.I began to make drawings using the
simplest of materials, mainly a graphite pencil and
white pow[...]erial. I feel the same way
about ideas too. A lot of artists come to their work
with ideas. For me, it[...]ou work these materials heavily into the surface

of a very specific color of paper.

WM: Many of these drawings have been touched
quite a bit in their making, and not just with the tip of
a pencil.I have almost always made drawings on th[...]ite paper, almost a sandalwood color. After years
of making drawings on this tone of paper, I discovered
some [Islamic] writings that[...]system. Briefly, in
order for the true qualities of black and white to reveal
themselves, thes[...]

seen this relationship of black and
white in connection to a neutral
ground[...]e

so, in my life, I was drawn to the
possibility of being able to better
see a thing for what it is i[...]ut my drawings.

I am often taken by the thought

of Universal Truths and how they
intertwine through everybody. In

a lot of ways, they connect us as
individuals, and perhaps for me

drawing is that link.

JG: Yet, the ground of the drawing
Haft Rang (1997) at first appears to[...]drawn, what has been removed. I like
the thought of this neutral ground or this place, and
whe[...]

JG: With this notion of the ground upon
which your drawings exist in mind, you created
a group of drawings called Fi<ve Ingredientr of

a Cow (1999) that alludes to your interest in
Bu[...]see your own

reflection. I try to be conscious of where this

ground exists in my drawing and in my[...]n culture understands this. They

have a practice of desecrating the earth before

they create their s[...]wash and coat the ground with five ingredients

of a cow—the dung, the piss, the snot. . . . When[...]his years ago, it made me think about this notion
of the ground and how one builds or exists on[...]

a sudden the experience of the

drawing unfolded into its initial thought.

JG: I’m particularly drawn to one type of line that

reappears in your work, which s[...]

to the place you[...]nature.

WM: One time, I was sitting on the bank of the
Bitterroot River near my home, watching sticks and

leaves float by. I was thinking about the flow of the river

and the linear space it covered. In my[...]lapping shoreline was
only taking up a foot or so of space, yet I could see the
history of this line going up the side of the bank and
valley. The drawings that followed were more about
this type of space and the possibility it encompassed.
Around[...]specks that simply follow
the natural progression of my hand.

Earlier I talked about the ground on wh[...]stand where the drawing existed on the
page. Many of them have a central, hard—edge vertical
line th[...]ut I found that this drawn line
lacked some sense of truth. I found that when I cut
through the paper surface with a razor blade, all of a
sudden the drawing existed near this new physic[...]utside the drawing, almost like bringing
the edge of the paper inside, the outside in.

various b[...]pt the
form and now I really like them.

JG: Much of the palpable energy in your drawings
stems from t[...]e space in between things really defines
so much of what a thing is about. The paintings of
[Italian Metaphysical painter] Giorgio Mor[...]

Ada Melville S[...]rst-person narrative written from the
perspective of a woman homesteading alone
near Billings, Montana[...]e Shaw,
writer and editor, suffragist, and author of
the lyrics to the hymn, “All the Day” (ca.
19[...]ideas,
letters, and experiences, employing a crew of
field editors who traveled across the United
Sta[...]n, 752 Farm2r’i Wg'f2 brought Shaw’s

account of her homestead stay to its readers
in several inst[...]like best to call her—deals heavily
in “pairs of opposites”—heat and cold, black and white,
go[...]was in semi—
arid country where every particle of moisture was worth
more than its weight in gold,[...]as—so far as I was concerned—literally “out of
sight.”

My faithful water boy, Hedrick, from a nearby
homestead, at last had to give up the task of keeping my
barrel filled—they had found someth[...]home. I hoped in time to be
able to toss the dice of chance for a well but was not yet
in position to[...]ave Heathlowe’s and I thought that at least one of
their two younger sons could be spared to[...]

Six days of the week Dave Heathlowe farmed.
On the seventh da[...]his big family and went to town
to preach in one of the two small box—like churches
of Nesterville—neither one of which could in
any sense support a preacher and neither one of
which commanded anything like a proportionate
membership out of the rapidly incoming army of
homesteaders. But Dave Heathlowe was nothing if
h[...]his family over what he conceived to be the
path of duty.

I had all of my life been a regular churchgoer but
I found mys[...]ar around and whose one door was the sole

source of ventilation, had, however, a reason for being

as[...]g that might well be compared to the
alkali water of the plains and led our feet over spiritual
cactus of the most painful type, but after he had done
his[...]he pioneers had a real meeting “around a
throne of grace”—the grace of natural, essential, kindly
human fellowship. All[...]f an hour to exchange friendly
handshakes, scraps of news, and enjoy together,
perhaps not a “communion of saints” but a community
of human feeling and fellowship which they needed
fu[...]and
the little wooden box, filled with the odor of bodies
more or less unwashed and of breath from lungs more
or less unclean, and resounding to the harsh shouts of
the preacher was not an inviting proposition. But[...]express as best I might
some decent appreciation of his strenuous endeavors to

set our feet i[...]

timber, and spent a minority of his time on his claim.

He kept some stock on the[...]ndmill and a trough. His tiny, one—roomed
house of unhewn stone, so low and gray that it fairly
melt[...]way was so rough that, between lame
feet and fear of loose cattle, the distance was practically
prohibitive. A blank wall of his house turned toward
Cabin OWildwinds so that[...]semi—
occasional lamplight. Only the thin trail of smoke that
semi—occasionally came from the low stovepipe that
served him instead of a chimney reported his presence.
His cattle barn, low—built of logs, lay still farther away
and he used a gate l[...]water need I was really
curious for another study of character! City life does
not give one quite the sharply—defined opportunities
of getting at the very core of people’s selves as does life
under such conditi[...]wires. Therefore I selected a spot with a
minimum of cactus and apparently clear of snakes,
cautiously lay down flat on my ba[...]

I made fo[...]tone hut, passing as I
did so, at least an eighth of a mile of fence decorated
with the owner’s washingfl clean array of blankets,
overalls, shirts, socks—all of them showing need for a
woman’s needle but all of them as decent as plenty of
water could make them. I “cried the house” an[...]out to meet me, flushing scarlet up to the roots of
his fair hair and with a frank honest gleam in hi[...]was blowing so hard that it
snatched spoken words of our lips, making speech
almost impossible, so my[...]ough which there still protruded knobby

vestiges of greasewoodflnd began industriously to

braid the[...]re woman” was wanting. I explained. He was slow ofofof religion
ain’t no kind a—tall . . . . But cou[...]like you be can’t use such an all—fired lot of water?”

I still further explained certain disabilities in the
way of unable feet and ankles and the daily need of my
sixteen chickens, but he did not seem much impressed.
I could see plainly that to him I was one of “these
here” city women, a helpless breed he[...]use for. However, he was gravely respectful.

“Of course, I could carry a little water at a[...]

But the Lord does take care of children and fools,
they say. During that particular period of enforced
drouth, no less than three different neighbors came to
see me, none of them knowing my stress, but each of

them bringing with them cans of water freshly drawn—

On another occasion Lassie, in an excess of
spirits, managed to upset the stand supporting a pail
into which I had just strained through several folds of
clean cloth the last of the stale barrel water. A. Qwas
away. There was n[...]But that night a quick shower came
up and by dint of putting a row of receptacles across the
entire width of the house, ranging in size from washtub
to a tin[...]days. It tasted
roofy for I dared not let enough of it to run offto wash
the shingles but even at tha[...]y when A. Q35 cattle were grazing
at the far side of the land, I had an inspiration. I nailed
a stout[...]rough with cattle
holes and gnarly, thorny clumps of greasewood and
cactus. But, breathless, I arrived[...]thtubs.

Are you who read growing a bit impatient of
these homely details regarding the watery phase of
my homesteading venture? Sorry! But, do not most
ofus take the common blessings of life too much
for granted? In these my ripe years[...]have thirsted for cool,
clear water than to think of it so commonly as not
to know what a gift it is and not to feel the thrill of
appreciation in the soul.

I had filed on my quarter section under the
description of hay—claim and could have satisfied the
Governm[...]tall. I was filled and thrilled with the thought of
soil redemption—the taming of the wilderness so that
it should produce g[...]

While these first months ofOf course,” he drawled, “cultivation can do
some[...]garden,
flowers, and, as a beginning, ten acres of oats. That
was settled. I had bought seeds in the very earliest day
of spring—I laugh now as I think ofof the ground I had prevailed on A. Q.J the only
ava[...]horses and machinery, to promise
to break an acre of ground for my garden near the

house and ten acre[...]could find about
the breaking up and cultivation of new ground and
had my campaign all mapped out! Oats, that first year,
ten acres of them; then winter wheat on that ten acres
and an[...]ter on—was over, I would have a
permanent stand of thirty acres of alfalfa and if I had
two crops a year, that would be a big help. The father
of a distant neighbor was an alfalfa enthusiast and[...]alfalfa tea—a brew that
was supposed to be full of nourishment and vitality—
essence; the word vit[...]e first
furrow, I begged to have my hands on one of the plow

I had studied Government bulletins about
plowing. Ever since I can remember, the sight of a
smoothly plowed field ready for the living see[...]d. Ah me! I suppose
A. Qdid his best but the rows of overturned sod
that should have been even, level,[...]ed by A. Q35 inadequate
strength would leap clear of the ground refusing to do
battle with the tough sod and snags of greasewood.
Then again the bright steel would bit[...]cast up a mound out ofall proportion to the rest of
the furrows. ’Twas a rough job. And although he[...]bove the horizon in marvelous peaks and shoulders
of shining, snow—crowned beauty; the birds—meado[...]to the soil.I forbear
to write the complete story of my defeat. Enough to
say that after three days of futile struggle I staked out a
scrap of ground about the size of a kitchen table and by
dint of sweat of brow and ache of back, thrashed it into
an appearance of smoothness and planted a few hardy
seeds—lettuc[...]morning—glory and scarlet bean
seeds in memory of a vine—covered summerhouse that
had been the joy of my early childhood.

Somewhere in my reading a wo[...]en ploughed lay
fallow,I understood, the fingers of the light and the
rain did a work all thei[...]

Then the hay was ripe. The skies had b[...]hated—sentimentally—to see those lovely acres of
rippling life laid low but cash is cash and anoth[...]prompt,
honest, thorough—going in every detail of the work,

wasted no hay, took no more than his s[...]hiring a well drilled was “the
gamblingest kind of a gamble” they said. They “hated
to see a widder woman lose out.” But then I might win.
One of the brothers had drilled thirteen times on his
cl[...]to
anything like a farm I’ve got to have plenty of water.
When can you start drilling?”

For three[...]ndi

I/Von’tyou [Mme a drink?

On the afternoon of the third day a shout:
I/Vaterl The men sa[...]

I even rashly opened a can of salmon; made all the
coffee, clear and strong, we[...]itcher filled with water on the table—the last of the
barrel stuff I should have to use, for by nig[...]the morningI should draw
heaven’s free gift out of the bosom of the earth.

In the morning I pumped.

Woe, woe, u[...]st slap yet. For the water that
gushed easily out of that pump mouth was salt, bitter,
acrid—I could not hold it in my mouth.

News of the “widder’s” good luck had spread
and bef[...]hey had tapped a lower, freer stream
flowing out ofof the distant
mountains, fastened my flag in place and thanked the
gods of things as they were for a neighbor and a barrel.[...]to dig me a well by
hand for a very moderate sum of money and I bade him
go ahead. He struck water no[...]wanted a truly
marvelous drinkI hacked out chunks of ice and melted
them. 7774! was water! Abso[...]

“The People ” of Montana;
In Exegexix of Indian EducatianforAll
Nicholas CP Vrooman

A sto[...]eyenne homeland
along the Tongue River just north of Birney. It’s 1992.
Tribal elders Bill Tall Bull[...]ht out the pipe, offered tobacco, and
spoke words ofof earth. I handed them
the master tapes.

As we com[...]rget, they
said, and always have at the forefront of my thoughts
whenever I brought out the pipe. This[...]ngs were now documented for posterity. The secret
of the pipe, they said, was to never ask too much of it.

There is a trick involved.The trick, they sa[...]brother, your helper, they said. Don’t
ever ask of it anything you would not ask of yourself.
If you would ask it of yourself, and then ask it of your
pipe, the pipe will help you, will answer yo[...]ayers. Then your pipe will have a
high percentage of miracles coming true, they laughed.
That is the secret of the pipe.

It is a simple story, but there’s an[...]ere, five hundred years following the beginnings of
European migrations to the western hemisphere. In
the first hundred years of contact nine—tenths of those
already here died from disease—an estimat[...]ng they
were still alive have suffered a fistful of centuries fighting
for human rights in the face of ignorance and violent
oppression—along with racial policies that served up
a menu of apartheid or extinction as the only choice.
Yet t[...]lk Shoulder, and me (an
eleventh—generation son of a Nieuw Nederlander Indian
fur trader from Beverwzjtk), enveloped in a scene of pipe,
song, and story that had been performed wit[...]There
I was, deep amidst and sharing in the world of the ten
percenters. So much survives.

A metaphor[...]Doesn’t seem like
much at first, when thinking of the loss of the other

ninety percent. But then, if we[...]

As with the Nort[...]na society. By
increments, the dreams and askings of the survivors of
this world’s most tragic human catastrophe are[...]growing in population. There
has been a reversal of fortune—for all of us. And are
those bison in the meadows and on the[...]rive East, West, North, and
South over the hiways of the Northern Plains and
Rocky Mountains? It is go[...]e People?” It’s an ancient name early

groups of humans gave to themselves, the world

over, to sa[...]us from all else in nature. In Montana,
our part of the world, Indians have been saying “We
the People” for well over 10,000 years. As citizens of
these United States, “We the People,” are onl[...]old aphorisms that when
coupled beautifully speak of our national identity.
One is from our European h[...]in connection to all
things. They tell us “out of many, we are one” (from
the Latin—E Pluribm U[...]about being American.
There are also two sources of knowledge that help
us understand the lives of our ancestors. First are
our origin stories. Oral[...]through
generations, speak the memory and belief of who we
are and from where we’ve come, whether N[...]Our memories seek
support from critical analysis of evidence in the form
of tangible artifacts that read like clues yet to be[...]Troy, the Flores Island Little People, and Crown of the
Continent vision quest sites—each once existing only

as legend—now affirm oral traditions of humanity’s

In Montana, the Pikani (Blackfeet) tell us they
have always lived along the backbone of the world.
Archeological work done in Glacier, al[...]ualifies as
forever.

The Apsaalooka (Crow) tell of a schism within
their family. After years of wandering in search of the
best land on Earth, they settled where we fi[...]ribes were drawn to make the Northern
Plains side of Montana home. The ecology of the
North American steppes both provided and requ[...]i—sedentary lifeways for a successful
symbiosis of culture and environment.

The west side of the Continental Divide tells
a different history.[...]ple moved up river
over generations to headwaters of the Columbia, the
Clark Fork, the Blackfoot River[...]between competitive
neighbors, fleshes out much of Montana’s early history,

as both sides forayed[...]traditions can
be understood within three epochs of tellings: the
primary stories are of the mythic era that rumbles with
gods; next is th[...]o
survive together; finally, there is the period of true
happenings. Much of the latter period overlaps with
Euro—American h[...]ia people have checked

out every nook and cranny of this land. People have
walked from the headwaters of the smallest stream,
following the flow to the mouths of the largest rivers.
And the reverse, as well: tho[...]have been multiple
migrations at different times, of people coming from
all directions to be part of this land, including Africa,
Australia, Asia, and Europe. Critically, the story of
those occupying this land before mass Euro[...]

of race. Over millennia of human ebb and flow, allies
and enemies, peace an[...]ghout the North Sea territories and
river systems of pre—Reformation Europe.

In a sense, today’s Montana can be seen in the
children’s dance of musical chairs. When the music
stopped, that is t[...]ations) stayed in the dance.They became
residents of what we now call Montana. Thusly, we
have our ele[...]g an
unresolved circumstance from the Indian Wars of the
nineteenth century.

The magnificence of human culture in Montana

is long and deep. We ar[...]rous

primary resources accessible that allow all of us to

view a time before time of human existence on this
land—from a primordial[...]African,
Middle Eastern, Asian, Australian—all of uSflre
descendants of indigenous peoples. Here, in this part of
the world, it is Montana Indians who hold that pl[...]o maintaining our relationship
to the foundations of our existence, rooted in the earth.
Ecological ca[...]hugely significant in commemorating a new period of
human history when one half of the world seemed to
subsume the other with Gum, G[...]hough few recognize it) we are right in
the midst of a fifty—year—long Qlincentenary of a time
called “The Strange Zone,” signifying the first half
century of The Conquest in the Americas. It was the

We live daily the effects of events set in motion
from those times. Still, in the dawning of the twenty—
first century, we know so much mor[...]sion America’s civilization in 1491, on the eve of
mass European migration, through New Revelatiom of
[be Ameriem Before Columbm (here a nod to Charles[...]ere is no longer any question: humanity lost
half of its accumulated knowledge—millennia of culture
comprising what we now know were equally[...], India, or China at the same time. It was a
loss of as much again as all that’s come to us from the
history of western civilization. It was, as a species, our
m[...]n failings with
those still washed to the margins of civility in times of
great need, or those yet suffering violence from policies
of questionable motives, at best. But not in Montana[...]about “going back.” It’s about
bringing all of us forward, not leaving anyone behind.
When the n[...]ore. We know better now. Luckily, we
have volumes of information that help us recover an
understanding and appreciation for Aboriginal life

in our part of the world.There are fur trade journals;
winter co[...]collections; and scholarly
interpretations—all of these giving great insights about
the lives of Montana’s earliest peoples.

Most importantly, however, in the last generation
we have a new confidence of expression coming from
within the Indian communit[...]eing shared, but for the asking. A
new generation of highly educated Indians, in the
American sense of the term, has taken the buffalo
bull by the horns[...]willingness to
open up and share in this new era of Montana’s and
America’s history. It is a fulfillment. Recognition of the

value of our past, our common destiny, and mutual need

Why do we need to think of Indians as distinct
and unique when considering all Americans and
Montanans? Why are they one of only three sovereign
entities named in our nation[...]those
whose societies suffered dearly as a result of America’s
borning. Americans and Montanans can[...]tal elsewhere
in the world until we do. The whole of America
and Montana owe the descendants of those Indians
who negotiated with Europeans and Americans, as
fulfillment of treaty obligation in perpetuity, the same
certain[...]ts among these are
Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” shared by
all Americans. History has[...]out turf, determined
to overcome the shortcomings of the past, and make of
our society all that is best about our people. If America
and Montana are to hold high the standards of our
founding national and state documents, we rem[...].

The world is shifting. Montana is in the midst
of significant social transformation. Indian Edumtion
for/411 is a big piece of that change. Montana is
becoming more whole. It is only 112 years (the time of
my grandparents) since the then new Euro—Americ[...]t it demanded a round—up and
human cattle drive of Little Bear’s, Stone Child’s,
and Litt[...]

to hear me say I believed he was part of history in the

making; that Indian Edutation for/411 will prove to be
the single most important piece of Indian legislation
that has ever been written. Mo[...]would help
shape that ever better society dreamed of at our 1972
constitutional convention. But we are[...]nt in bringing equity and truth to the foundation
of Montana life, in a way only public education can[...]n,

and how we are remembered in the Elysian eyes of our

children’s children.

Karen Fisher

Although I was one of those children who grew up
knowing I’d someday[...]s eighteen, naive, a happy child from
the suburbs of California. When commanded in my
first fiction[...]at
my persistently blank pages were a reflection of a blank
mind, a blank life. I was in no way prepa[...]stand who I was, what I knew, to find any aspect
of an authentic voice. I retreated to an easier—seeming
study of History. This allowed me to write easily, using
s[...]enjoyed it, graduated, and
flirted with the idea of higher degrees and the kind of
academic career that might have provided me with[...]r, a former high school teacher, a

former farmer of sorts, a former carpenter of sorts, and

all I’ve done to earn a place up he[...]t history and
literature, but never with the kind of collegial support or
insights that I might have welcomed. I did most of my
thinking in the bathtub, or digging ditches, or sanding
boards, or splitting wood, and some of the rest of it in
front of an empty page. I don’t know if what I’m about[...]r interesting or both or neither, or
whether much of this has been better said by others. I
can only h[...]ce might in some ways be
an advantage, since most of what all of us know and are
shaped by comes not from academia[...]popularly available, common, superficial. If any of us can
forge this into some deeper understanding of our place
in the culture, of how our histories have shaped us and
our work in[...]an offer here this afternoon is
only my own story of the West: of my long inarticulate
struggle with my western identity, of how I came to
recognize and understand the forces that shaped it, of

profound a record of a person, a place, a time, an event,
that they take your breath away, and this is one of them.
I am a small girl in pigtails wearing blue[...]m wearing gifts from the most memorable Christmas
of my life: a leather cowboy vest, chaps, and toy six—gun
holsters. The object of my focus is the plastic palomino
horse held proud[...]mething else he had
brought for me, something old of his, and I’ve had them
on every desk of my life since then: a little pair of solid
copper cowboy boots, paperweights. With the[...]al and practical, the willing and
eager recipient of his western legacy.

It was 1966. I was already a child of television
westerns, the Golden Book of I ndianr, had spent my
fourth year in borrowed ch[...]squinting out over imagined prairies from the top of the
preschool slide—looking for Injuns, of course. I learned
to read from the homogenous and[...]t Wm Won in Cinemascope. Clyde Robert
Bulla (Star of Wild Home Canyon) was my first favorite

author.[...]me romantically involved
with the whole pantheon of American mountain men,
beginning with Jim Bridger[...]ith matching funds and
cowboy boots, with stories of his boyhood on a Montana
ranch, of his half—Cherokee mother, of his exciting life
as an early Hollywood stunt man[...]een killed by Indians. The other was a grandchild of her
namesake Emma Ruth Ross, a woman who had cros[...]and gold rush
emigrants.

In the popular culture of that time, the West as I

and many others[...]

Brave adventuresome pioneers, in search of

a fairer land, set out from the East into an
unc[...]the many challenges presented:
by hostile tribes of Indians (though some
tribes, of course, were friendly), by inhospitable
terrain, by extremes of weather, by hunger
and disease, and, almost mirac[...]were likely to become Bad Men
and to cause no end of trouble. But because
of their adventures, all of these people were
no longer merely men and women,[...]roes

and, more modestly, Heroines.

The myth was of Man the Conqueror, and it is

the story of Western Civilization since the Romans,

I suppose[...]myth to the American

West, because this history of transition is so brief, so
compressed, so raw. Th[...]ying. A
cowBOY.

That was my first understanding of the West. But
at the same time, a second, almost[...]the Old West, my
reality was a fabulous landscape of long—haired hippies
in mini—skirts, ps[...]

the first I knew of the environmental movement. I

heard the Song of Billy Jack, and that was the first I
knew of the American Indian Movement. And then
it was Pin[...]. It was the radicalization, the
dehomogenization of my culture; all of a sudden even
trees had rights. By the time I ent[...]ould not in
good conscience align myself with any of his victims.
And if I could not be among the victims, I must, I felt,
bear the burden of being a victimizer. I developed, for
the first time in my life, an acutely conscious sense

of guilt: mine were the wrongs, I was the spawn of
destroyers, and it was my liberal white secular h[...]lmon, the silting rivers, the very native
grasses of the plains?) It seemed to be my job to make

amen[...]h and domination and conquest.

By my second year of college, I did not want to be
a cowboy or a novel[...]an not just to read history, but to ask questions
of it. I changed from eager listener to a confused c[...]to denounce and condemn the thoughts and
actions of my own ancestors. I was a good child, but
this wa[...]to protests, I wrote letters, I
became a teacher of history and environmental studies at
a very liber[...]evelatory,
hilarious, intelligent beyond anything of its kind. N.
Scott Momaday’s House Made ofDuwn[...]s,
intriguingly unreadable, from a different kind of mind

entirely. By college, I was assigned to rea[...]1982 I
saw Koyuunirqutxi.
And my private history, of course, was revising

itself as well. My b[...]

If I could have summarized this new and equally
compelling revisionist myth of the West, it would have

sounded something more like this:

Greedy white Americans, in search of
unearned bonanzas of furs, soil, timber, and
mineral ores, left their[...]propriated
from indigenous people) to cut a swath of
destruction through a region they ignorantly
termed the Great American Desert, a place

devoid of significant human life only because

earlier visi[...]ly depopulated it
through the clever distribution of smallpox-
infested blankets. Ihe unfailingly wise[...]and robbed in a consistent and deliberate
policy of genocide, from which they defended
themselves bot[...]tly but
whose stories ended inevitably in a state of
Plight. During this long migration west,
white families starved and froze and suffered
because of their vast pride and civilized
ignorance (while t[...]zlies and anything else
that posed a problem, all of which began the
demise of the culture in which we live today,

a culture that epitomizes the fall of man from

So there was the di[...]e

revision, all contained in my personal history of the West.

By the early ’90’s I was married,[...]said.

So I began. I began on instinct, with none of the
analysis I just expressed. I only knew that n[...]to View that time and place
from the perspective of those who had experienced
it directly, in[...]

But because of some strange combination of luck
and inclination and stupidity, my husband an[...]the world by buying an old
homestead on the edge of Idaho’s Nez Perce reservation,
fifty acres abo[...]would leave all the
artificiality and corruption of our lives behind. What
drove the Pilgrim S[...]

I learned, after six months of nothing but white snow
and black trees, what pric[...]trary, a common
fur could buy an unattainable hue of red or blue that
one could own or give away, that[...]would gain enough
meaning to dance with. My life of seven years in Idaho

was made of hundreds of little lessons like those, small

particular real[...]entury eyes.

As we were at last making a real go of things in

Idaho, my husband got an itch to sail[...]ng. Now I was horrified. I realized in
one night of tears anc argument what, for seven years,
I had n[...]and set out across that desert,
through hundreds of imagined dangers, with nothing
but a myth of paradise on the other side. I felt it. My
pioneer[...]at we got to
buy an old steel ketch and ten acres of Northwest island
land. We had a few small voyages which, like covered
wagon journeys, were cramped and full of packing and
unpacking, bad weather and wet beddin[...]mes transcendent, sometimes terrifying.

But most of all, diffith to sustain. We moved ashore

c1aracters of Lise and Noonday and Timothy spoke

for my wish t[...]nce, beyond
sentimentalization and the bland lack of understanding
so typical of the revisionist pan—Indianism I had learned,
to convey the particular awkwardness and confusion

of the confrontation between two specific cultures, to

show how the approach of European culture divided and
disrupted and dilute[...]ne on either side had
understood the implications of those differences. And
the trapper, James MacLare[...]wn journey
from despair at the impossible tragedy of human life, its
ignorance and futile ambition, it[...]more accurate and perhaps forgiving understanding of
the forces of which he was a part. He spoke for my own
journey,[...]nce, some acceptance, some
forgiveness that comes of knowing the confusing and
particular stories that[...]n becomes complete as he is
riding west on a kind of diplomatic mission, to do what
little he can to t[...]cestors were among those who had brought a
plague of measles to the Whitman Mission that fall,

a plague that claimed the lives of over half the nearby
Cayuse Indians. More emigran[...]ned to leave and had pledged to remain,
convinced of their own good work and of the benefits of
martyrdom for the Christian cause. Stunned by parallels

and by the repetition of our histories, I wrote this

passage ten days aft[...]to him
that by some terrible accident, the genius of
each race was opposed at its foundation. He
belie[...]n exists, and appears to us as
evil. It is a part of life, and sorrow is its natural
consequence.

He[...]ld suffer,
from the greed or ignorance or charity of this
other race. From accident or fate. Ih[...]

was an adult understanding of the inevitable complexity
and contradictions of life, and that nothing was more
appropriate (not[...]gap
in the ’70s was actually a mass abandonment
of ancestry, a rejection of those from whom
we had begun to inherit the entire weight of
generations of mistakes. A whole generation
metaphorically or li[...]m
home. For the first time, significant numbers
of people chose not to reproduce on moral
grounds—[...]he same thing happens in the briefer

generations of family cycles, in families who
abandon each other[...]give, the parent is no longer
honored. Ihe wisdom of ancient generations
has been that you honor parents, regardless
of their deeds. Even if you fail to forgive, you
mus[...]d to history.

I want to end with another example of what I’ve
learned by putting myself on the grou[...]My new book is,
in part, based on the true story of Jane Gay and Alice
Fletcher. In 1889 Alice Fletcher was sent, as a Special
Agent of the United States Government, to enforce the

provisions of the Dawes Act. What better subject on
which to ba[...]nroll for legal and individual title to 160 acres
of land per head of household. During my education,
Dawes and his Con[...]ng for and representing the causes and
complaints of Indians in the field and in Congress.

In the ro[...], so we condescend

to her, give her the benefit of the doubt, a good but
ignorant woman in a time of Manifest Destiny. In the
revisionist tradition, we ignore her as a fool, condemn
the act. In fact, a reading of her letters shows a much
more confusing story, a story of internal division among
the tribes, of traditionalists allying with Indian agents
against progressives in favor of allotment, of death
threats against their stalwart surveyor by[...]g else occurred to me as I was
studying the lives of these people.Jane and Alice had
both been nurses[...]two decades after the Civil War, almost
a quarter of those in cities foreign—born—Italian, Irish,[...]thing they saw coming off the
train was a throng of men from six different countries
betting on the outcome of a pig fight. They learned that
Mexicans and Chin[...]It was in this context, I think, that the birth
of the virtue of homogeneity was born. Survival, as a
country, as an individual, quite literally depended on the
will of its people to accept one language, one religion,[...]ble, with
liberty and justice for all. The pledge of allegiance was
formulated, written, and adopted in the final year of
Alice Fletcher’s work on the Nez Perce reservat[...]cultural assumptions, it is diffith to conceive of an

intelligent person’s wish that homog[...]

become the order of the day. It was only when I
learned and thought about the particular events of
these women’s lives, when my general ideas about their
lives hit the actual hard ground of their realities, that

I began to sense something[...]not imagine who we
would become. We are a result of their success, a people
with a culture so strong,[...]ive that
not only subcultures but whole countries of the world
feel threatened by it. Our thought today is shaped

by this new power, by the loss of the more personal
identities and heritages, custo[...]a theory. I don’t know. It’s just one
example of the ways of thought the practice of historical
fiction can encourage, of the questions it can lead us all
to ask, and has[...]have all shown
me new ways to look at the history of the West and have
given me more subtle and complicated and sometimes
more unsettling interpretations of who we are and what
our stories mean, than I ever[...]lebrate their
efforts, as I celebrate the efforts of all who came before
and have been a part of this great western conversation.
I am glad to be[...]xamples, and with a hope that I might add a voice of
my own to the story.

Caroline Lockhart (1871—1962) wore many of the brands
of the classic Western genre novelist: a love of horses,
a nostalgia for the open range, a stylist[...]tern landscape could pose physical threats to
men of adventure. But in other ways she was remarkably
u[...]haracters were based
not on the heroic prototypes of James Fenimore Cooper
and other frontier mythmake[...]needed a success.
After the widely admired debut of MerSmith (a
bestseller in 1911), her career had s[...]blish for fifteen years—with a justified lack
of success. With slow sales, Lockhart’s money like[...]re to produce a blockbuster. Worse, her only copy
of the new manuscript had been accidentally destroye[...]rewrite it, and quickly.

Lockhart never thought of herself as a pulp
novelist, so she tried to make[...]the Bitter Rootx received better
reviews than any of her books since MenS‘mith.2 It
apparently sold[...]g William Farnum, both leading Hollywood
figures of the day.3 And it set the stage for two later
nove[...]ude
Wrangler (1921), which today are seen as some of her
strongest.

But what may be most successful a[...]erpretations. This is not a Western about the
end of the cattle era, about the conflict between havin[...]nce to tame a wild land, or about man’s pursuit of
freedom and woman’s civilizing influenc[...]

Such descriptions are common of frontier heroes:
physical strength, personal dete[...]ot a cowboy. He’s a miner.
Though he has plenty of frontier skills, they are not the
horsemanship or[...]ancier befriends him, but treats him as something of
a pet. And though his father is a successful Midw[...]uld reinvigorate his
return to society.

The plot of most formula Westerns—especially
at the time, j[...], Indians, outlaws,
or other threats to their way of life. They felt a tension
between their love of wilderness and their need for
civilization, between their personal code of honor and
the lawless world they inhabited, and/[...]tbe Bitter Rootr, by contrast, the plot consists of
Bruce’s attempts to develop a mine.

Though Bru[...]es—including
blizzards and the raging main fork of the Salmon
River—he faces equal challenges in the form of
financial plans. He must raise $25,000. He must[...]is true heroism
is demonstrated in his overcoming of engineering
obstacles.

The lead female character[...]ry.T. Victor Sprudell, the self—
important head of the Bartlesville Tool Works and the

It was 1914., after all, si[...]underdog with a passion. His goal
is the process of processing rock. He’s a geologist: the
childhoo[...]nd said to himself: ‘If only there was
some way of getting water on it!”9 Bruce is still driven
by money, of course—as is any capitalist. But where t[...]

Certainly, Lockhart implies i[...]inst the canyon wall— is a highest and best use of
the rugged, remote canyon. That’s a familiar ph[...]the

landscape. But it doesn’t match our vision of cowboys,

who celebrated unspoiled territory and lamented the
coming of the very industrial civilization they had fled
W[...]Bitter Rootx. Lockhart establishes
Bruce’s love ofof sheep, and when Bruce finds the carcasses,
“he[...]They shone black and vindictive
through the mist of tears which blinded him as he cried
in a shaking[...]t further portrays uncharted territory
as capable of coexisting with industrial mines. On the
v[...]

of a government that has spent millions on
useless d[...]irs,
but continues to pay cheerfully the salaries
of the engineers responsible for the blunders;
footing the bills for thejunkets of hordes

of

comfort, independence, and most of all the

ability to choose, to a great extent, one’s
friends instead of being forced to accept such
as circumstances may[...]o his
matrimonial entreaties when she sees a sort of ghost
of her future: “Mae Smith had been young an[...]

Smith emanates “that indefinable odor of poverty—
cooking, cabbage, lack of ventilation, bad air”flnd is
always in need of[...]bin—style espresso stands. But for the purposes
of this essay, let’s explore the following ideas t[...]y myth and the literary
Western genre. The facets of today’s West that
are not “cowboy”—cities[...]ry,
technologyflre New West.

2. The application of traditional heroic values
to new concepts. The Ol[...]eld. A telecommuter is New West only
if he thinks of himself as a “modem cowboy.”
The confusion th[...], nature—oriented, pragmatic,
and libertarian. (Of course this is also the classic
“America[...]

ideal of the honorable cowboy.

Where fact meets fiction[...]imilar
pioneer. Because for today’s reader, one of Caroline
Lockhart’s most interesting traits is[...]fiction.

Lockhart moved to Cody, Wyoming (home of
a government—sponsored dam, pumping plant, and[...]gard with personal enmity), in
1904., and set all of her novels in the West. Like many
Western writers[...]e Bitter Rootx was no less fact—
based than any of her other work.

For as many as ten years prior to the publication
of 777e Man From tbe Bitter Rootr, Lockhart had a
re[...]was trying
to develop a remote mine at the bottom of Idaho’s
Salmon River canyon. He faced continual[...]ry to it even trickier. Lockhart spent the summer
of 1911 with him in Idaho; its highlight was a wild[...]es as well.

But in its broad outlines, the story of 777e Man
From tbe Bitter Rootx really did happen.[...]—really did try to develop
a mine at the bottom of the Salmon River canyon,
facing challenges[...]

Somehow L[...]lly during Prohibition—but
later took advantage of government giveaways in
the Homestead Act to build gigantic landholdings.
Even as she fenced of roads that her neighbors
traditionally used to ac[...]daho,
developing his mine. A fire destroyed much of his work in
1918 (he blamed the Germans). But he[...]uing his passion. But others saw him in the
sorts of terms old—timers love to use to denigrate New
W[...]ofNo Return, a
historical guide, “J. R. was out of his element—too proud

to cut hay, and not wild[...]ttle: Buffalo

Bill Historical Center/ University of
Washington Press, 1994), 74— 5.

2. See reviews[...]any, 1915), 40—41.

Heritage Center, University of
Wyoming, Laramie (hereafter CLC).

A[/ax of [be New Wex[ (New York: WW
Norton, 1997), 12—13[...]'Aa[ben[iei[y and
Aa[borxbip (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 2003).

21. Me—Smi[b was based[...]ozen barely—disguised Cody residents.

Ybe Fall of[be Moon was based on
Lockhart’s own 1898 sojour[...], 1984).

25.]ohnny Carrey and Cort Conley,
River of No Re[arn (Cambridge, ID:
Backeddy Books,[...]

Bert Hansen, arguably one of the great directors
of his time, was also a teacher, a playwright, a producer,
and a prominent member of the controversial Montana
Study. His life and car[...]levels.
He respected and accorded dignity to men of all colors,
religions, and occupations. He saw the value of people
working together to tell their community’s story, warts
and all. Bert Hansen made the people of Montana’s
cities and towns realize they had much to be proud of
and much to hold in trust for the future.

Bert Benjamin Hansen was born to Paul and

Mary Hansen of Viborg, South Dakota, on April 12,

1895. His fat[...]especially,
took in owning a complete collection of Horatio
Alger books. In 1914. Hansen attended the University
of Michigan as a chemistry major, but as with many
of this classmates, World War I interrupted his plan[...]ixteen months,
later recalling that he spent much of his off—time
contemplating the futility of war.‘

After his return to the states and a bri[...]Hansen headed home
to America and the Yale School of Fine Arts. While
at Yale, Hansen received instruction from one of the
preeminent professors of drama in America, George
Pierce Baker, whose tale[...]ited Professor Baker with teaching
him the basics of playwriting, acting, directing,
stage desi[...]

of Washington, Bert began his teaching career in
Boz[...]more
important to his life’s work, he made many of the
acquaintances who later would participate in[...]ing the Depression to study the studio techniques
of motion—picture production. Hansen later told

a[...]iques he learned in Los Angeles to the production
of his historical pageants.4

In 194.5, at a convent[...]met philosophy professor Baker
Brownell, director of the newly commissioned Montana
Study. Brownell as[...]uld change Bert’s life and make
the celebration of community history in Montana more
interesting, fo[...]the “Montana Study”
came about at the request of Montana State University
Chancellor Ernest O. Mel[...]program in the humanities to
improve the quality of living in Montana. In 194.4. the

two—part Stud[...]ed
research program exploring the human resources of
a small community, designed to develop a pattern[...]lby, the study was conducted by a former director of
the Tennessee Valley Authority, Arthur E. Morgan. The
founders of the Study shared a belief that a better future
for mankind relied on the preservation and cultivation
of the human values intrinsic to a small community.“

First, community members assembled in a series
of ten weekly meetings to discuss common problems
an[...]dy members in their discussions and understanding
of their relations to the community, state, region, and
country.

The second part of the Montana Study, and the
part in which Bert Han[...]al pageants,
which would enrich the cultural life of the community.
As Hansen would write in an articl[...]rounded in the belief that as

long as the people of American communities will work

together as neighbors, the democratic way of life will
endure.” After study members completed the first ten—
week segment, a bibliographic outline of integrated
activities and the basic outline for t[...]ped with assistance from Hansen.

The first test of this theory for Bert and other
members of the Montana Study came in September
194.5, in the little town of Darby in a pageant entitled
“Darby Looks at Itself.” According to an account of
the Study, Small Town Renaimmte, “It was a kind of
modern morality show depicting the conflict between
traditional practices of wastefully exploiting natural
resources, and the moderns [sic] scientific use of
resources by careful planning.”The drama included
125 of Darby’s 500 residents.The cast ranged from
thre[...]tremendously rewarding. The overwhelming success of
“Darby Looks at Itself ” sparked Hansen to de[...],”
a term he borrowed from Dr. J L. Moreno, one of
the first to use drama as a means of restoring mental
health} Bert identified the plays of the Montana Study
as “rehearsed sociodramas.”[...]It was always a means to an end:

the improvement of the community through integrated
activity.

Of course, Montana in the mid—194.05 might seem
a[...]es on drama as
it relates to solving the problems of society. One visitor
to a Study group in Stevensv[...]t!” With that, the outraged visitor stormed
out of the meeting.9 Eventually the term “sociodrama”
evolved into the more popular reference of “historical
pageants” which Hansen wou[...]

According to Hansen, “It was a drama of willful
aggression, the tragedy of a minority people first

frustrated, then demora[...]see, and to let others see.They
were fully aware, of course, that it was not without
contemporary para[...]was remarkable.
“Many, not only among the 2,500 of the audience but
among the older Indians, wept, for the scene was one
which many of the older people had lived through
when the India[...]le on October 15““, 1891.”

The celebration of the Lewis and Clark
Expedition’s Sesquicentennial in 1955 afforded Hansen
plenty of opportunity to put his sociodrama theories to
wor[...]iving,
realistic drama . . . against a background of nature, in
the actual setting of the events enacted, so that the story
seemed to be the truth it was, and not the whimsical
display of theatrical affectations such as we have come
to a[...]ord, pageant.”” In keeping with
his standards of historical accuracy, Hansen required
the inclusion of more than fifty Salish Indians from
Arlee and the involvement of all segments of the Three
Forks/Manhattan community.

By the time of the Sesquicentennial, Hansen
had directed twenty—five plays—including three using
the theme of Lewis and Clark and the same natural

amph[...]

the aid of five microphones and a public—address
system hidden from view—supplied the voices of

the characters out on the stage.The actors perfo[...]nd moving in synchronized
harmony with the voices of their counterparts who
spoke through the micropho[...]d by his colleagues at the
University. University of Montana Dean of Students

Andrew Cogswell repeated a familiar sentiment in his

letter of October 2, 1964., included in a book of such

tributes and presented to Bert upon his ret[...]school house and to the
best pastures and fringes of our towns. You
blended the efforts of bartenders, bankers,
janitors, teachers, housewiv[...]genius at getting people
together. The 1955 cast of “Outward Bound” included
not only the fifty[...]nfant on a
cradle board but also their encampment of lodgepole
tepees at the west end ofof
the pageant. These dances—including the[...]

Newspaper clippings from the week of the
celebration highlight Hansen’s talents at p[...]September 24., 1964., in his capacity as Chairman of the
Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, “I[...]rt Erickson, assistant manager for the MAA, wrote
of Bert, “I don’t know if Bert is a native Monta[...]rth certificate
and make him a lifelong resident of the Treasure State.
He deserves it. He is the mos[...]ard
Bound” came in, Hansen was a hero. The town of Three
Forks came away rejuvenated and full of pride. Each

night’s show drew thousands including, “descendents

of the original expedition’s members from Canada
a[...], the
Cbronitle stated, “KOPR radio technicians of Butte who
located at the pageant site said it was magnificent. They
said the portrayal of the character parts was magnificent
and the entire performance was worthy of a town
twenty times the size of Three Forks.”‘7

Often Bert relied on the same core group of
performers and supporters in a given community. F[...]ortray Captain William Clark. Bellach’s
account of Bert’s patient, yet persistent, directing skills
reveals some of the challenges Hansen faced in putting

on a pageant.

I recall your weeks of instructing the group
of local townspeople and businessmen, all
amateurs, and most of whom had never
seen a pageant of this type, let alone taken
part in one. And how evening after evening
only part of the cast showed up for practice
and each e[...]

Bert Hansen died in Missoula in December
1970 at the age of seventy—five. He was survived by
his wife Marg[...].
Remembering his friend and colleague University of
Montana Professor of Education Kenneth V. Lottich
wrote, “One may ar[...]ocal history and
incident, the lives and fortunes of the frequently
unheralded and unmarked—this is[...]basis for chapters in the dry and dusty

volumes of antiquarianism. Professor Hansen knew this
well a[...]he helped people to love
one another.”9

Those ofof a community. Bert Hansen was a man
ahead of his time. Certainly he set the standard for
commemorating history in Montana.

The power of pageants, in Hansen’s own words,
is that, “th[...]at
drama can exist without the fabulous trimmings of a
motion picture story. They will know tha[...]

8. Lokensgard, “Bert Hansen’s Use of
the Historical Pageant.”

9. Ibid., Hansen inte[...]).
Undated letter.

11. Bert B. Hansen, “A Tale of

Robert Baker

For man has clo[...]p, till he sees all things

thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.

Blake

There are times we are so los[...]ear.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bles[...]cise, or a morning prayer recited over the
course of a year. Roethke, so often lost and disoriented
in life, in this poem composes a space of wonder that

is a space of patience, balanced between inward poise

of Wordsworth’s, and this seems to be the sort of light
invoked in Roethke’s poem as well. The pa[...]o the death toward which a life lived in
the open of freedom unfolds. At the same time it recalls
the[...]sion. Yet it is not the ecstatic
Keatsian version of this condition, evoked in “Ode to

a Nightingal[...]recalls.
In “Tintern Abbey” Wordsworth speaks of

that blessed mood
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lightened:—tha[...]e affections gently lead us on,
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame,

And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asl[...]soul:

While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,

We see into the life of things.

The speaker of Roethke’s poem perhaps remains
more bodily present than the trance—like speaker of
this passage, yet Wordsworth’s vision neverthel[...]e”becomes not something fearful (as in the case
of Oedipus) but something affirmative (as in the
case of Wordsworth himself), permitting one “to
feel on[...]he romantic and in particular
Wordsworthian theme of an organic journey of life
where it is the spirit of the journey itself, not the
destination, that matters.

The poem traces an expanding movement of
participatory attention. In the first two[...]

The final stanza describes both this state of being

and the very activity of composing this echoing poem.

It clearly evokes the speaker’s intuition of a calm that
steadies him as he touches it, a pres[...]same time it refers
to the composed oscillations of this villanelle itself, the
refrain lines and the first two lines of the stanza coming
together in a fiction of form that embraces the whole of
this spiritual exercise.This is Roethke’s deft version of
what the ancient stoics called “the discipline of assent,”
a reflective measuring of the soundness of what one is
saying. “This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.”
The shaking or oscillating movement of this poem
holds the speaker in the space of poise it composes. He
“should know” because,[...]th author and reader are meant to draw its shape

of

of the poem, then a full rhyme again at the end), th[...]he
recurring refrain lines: all these “figures of sound” at
once fall away and stay near, recede into the past and
return in the unfolding present ofof recovery
at work in the very echoing of patterned language.
And the magic this spell would cast, no doubt, lies

in the suggestion that this sort of composition in art
could become a composition in life, an actual forming
of composure, a spiritual practice available from day

to day, even in those passages of life far from this
place of patient openness. So the last two lines of the
poem, placing the refrains side by side, evoke at one
and the same time a fiction of spiritual orientation
and a fiction of poetic practice. “I wake to sleep, and
take my waking slow”: I awaken to the mystery of the
whole, including the certainty of my coming death,

in a condition of wonder that involves embracing the
gift of what is transiently there, while at the same time
I awaken to the mystery of poetry, the play of words
forming patterns, with all the attention to[...]going where I have to go”:

life is a sequence of guesses and errors that guide the
spirit supple e[...]nto a deepened
awareness, as a poem is a sequence of words that move

in part as guesses guided by sou[...]Patience
and poise, care and wonder, are the way of a grounded
levitation in life as in poetry. And w[...]rcise showing
that any such passage is a question of faith and practice.
In the life of faith we learn by going where we have
to go. “P[...]isten far is to see and walk otherwise. The
roots of lyric, Northrop Frye writes, are riddle (or
image, figure, metaphor, disclosive shift of perspective)
and [17mm (or echo, spell, rhythm, disclosive play of
sound). Roethke’s “The Waking” sounds these[...]er.
Roethke has composed what Rilke in the first of his
Sonnetr to Orpbem calls a “temple deep inside [our]
hearing.” According to Rilke’s vision of the amplitude
of transient life disclosed in words, it is through the
inwardness of hearing that the outward rising of a
tree is felt in all its presence. “The tune i[...]Man with the Blue Guitar,”
presenting a figure of sounded outwardness exactly
complementary to Rilke’s figure of sounded inwardness.
It is a passage into this space of “the unimpeded and

the interpenetrating[...]

“The poem in itself is a ceremony of initiation,”
Charles Tomlinson says in a short[...]is well describes the way his own poems turn acts of
attention into ceremonies of discovery.5 He suggests,
too, that “living as we do in an age of demolition,” we
tend to be impatient with cerem[...]ironically suggests
that the ceremonial movement of so many modern lyric
poems is little more than the play of a child, an elegiac
anachronism, a pastoral nosta[...]ce, shaped by the ancient turnings
characteristic of poetry: the patterning of sound in
echoes at once recurring and surprising, and the turning
of meaning through semantic indirections. For these
turnings of language are expressions of turnings of the

spirit. Going beyond his own irony, Frost hi[...]ke will have a power proportionate to the quality of
attention, spirit, and faith that is brought to i[...]des (a passage I’ll return to
below).The motion of discovery would seem to require
a faith, however precarious at times, that one is moving
toward a source of value—a source of which, at the
outset, one has only a premonition.[...]nal initiation involves both an outward
discovery of a transformative source and an inward
discovery of an otherwise dormant dimension of the
self. This twofold discovery, further, typica[...]e, error, guilt, and mortality. Why has this
sort of initiatory search had such a distinctive place
in the tradition of the modern lyric? Surely it is not
rpetfit to th[...]ist, and contemporary poetries

work as practices of resistance akin in their stance to

ambitious, more capacious[...]piritual exercise is perhaps a
compressed version of a quest.

Third, it is my sense that older patterns of
initiation travel into modern poetry in part because
there is a parallel between the mode of attention to a
presence or a promise that any initiatory movement
enacts and the mode of attention to the patterning of
language that is a defining feature of the lyric. In other
words, this movement, in a range of poems, may involve
not only an initiation into a domain of the world and
a dimension of the self but also an initiation into the
texture of language. The movement of searching in this
sort of poem (as, finally, in any accomplished poem)
involves an exploratory sounding of words themselves.
Indeed there is a vital paradox[...]. In such a movement we are drawn toward
a source of value or horizon of promise. Yet along the
way we have only premoniti[...]anticipatory guesses occasionally taking the form of
riddles—as they are on the rourter or bo[...]

are taking us.9

Is philosophy, too, a kind of initiation? Perhaps. And
yet we know, or think we[...]ato has defined itself in opposition to the sort
of riddling, humming, guessing, troping movement of
discovery at work in a poem like “The Waking.” Plato’s
attack on poetry in the Republit, ofof poetry that Plato makes
in this dialogue. He clai[...]sk. These are all serious challenges to the work

of poetry. They are also, implicitly, serious challenges to
the work of any philosophy that would assume them
as definin[...]to which Plato, whatever
his polemics, conceives of philosophy itself as a kind of
initiation, a journey of the searching soul, a tranformative
conversation in which guessing and going on faith turn
out to be of great importance.‘0

The greatest of Plato’s middle dialogues—the
leedo, the Sympo[...]sophy, radiant invitations to the
philosophic way of life as the highest way of seeking
to live the good life. They can be characterized, further,
as philosophic versions of what in literary history we
know as romance. They all trace a path of erotic and
psychic transformation whereby a self can find its way
beyond the cave or prison of darkened perception,
conventional opinion, and severe political conflict.
Plato’s cave of shadows is the cave of both a psyche
and a city driven by chaotic strugg[...]t, though
a subtle puritan, wise in the mysteries of eros). We
become what we behold, Blake teaches, and Plato, like
Blake, wants to change the horizon of our care. His
philosophic romance, as many[...]

of the ascetic, spiritual, and occasionally ecstatic

paths of the Pythagorean, Orphic, Bacchic, and
Eleusinian religious movements of his time. The path of
transcendence is now to be pursued, not simply th[...], or secret rituals,
but through a full unfolding of the life of thought in
concepts, critical questionings, diale[...]lucidity is to accompany spiritual longing.
Each of these middle dialogues provides a different
account of the sort of inner turning of the soul required
for the philosophic way of life. The search for wisdom

is variously shown to begin in the meditation on death,
in the erotic love of beauty, in the divine enthusiasm
stirred by eroti[...]oncern with shadows to a concern

with true forms of being, as Charles Kahn has shown,
demands not only a cognitive turning, though that

is of course essential, but also an erotic turning, a
transformation of the soul’s otherwise unruly appetites
and affec[...]logues, drawing the reader into
small communities of conversational quest, speculatively
unfold, as it[...]ng,” sounding to the depths just

this question of existential worth, responding to our

fear that o[...]paque. Yet, again, this invitation to the
romance of philosophy is far more ambiguous than one
might initially gather on the basis of Plato’s attacks on
poetry throughout the Republ[...]ugh the Republit. This dialogue is an
exploration of the question ofjustice; as it unfolds,
it turns into an exploration of the soul, the state, the
education of the philosopher, the nature of knowledge,
and the light ofthe good, among many o[...]ist” claim that justice is simply
an expression of power, a norm established by those
who have the power to shape the ethical and political
codes of a given state.Then Glaucon and Adeimantus
change the direction ofthe discussion, raising the
question of appearance and reality, showing that this
old que[...]vented to plague empiricists, in fact emerges out
of the everyday decisions and judgments we ma[...]

the recogn[...]t we have believed to be

truth is in fact a play of illusions to which our desire
and thought have been chained. The breaking free of
illusions is the first task. Further, as I’ve already noted,
this radical turning of the inner eye of the soul from
shadows to true forms, and ultimately to the light of the
good, demands a transformation of the entire person.
It is this transformation that[...]r
to approach, and at least to glimpse, the light of the
good, without which glimpse, we are told, a just and
wise life is impossible. While the last three books of
the dialogue take up important issues—including
a typological hierarchy of political regimes and a
concluding myth of reincarnation—there is a sense
in which the extraordinary searching movement of
the dialogue reaches its center with this discussion of
dialectical ascent at the end ofBook VII. It is w[...]nderline
the initiatory and indeed poetic quality of the search for
the good life in this dialogue.‘[...]Yet he assures his
companions that the soundness of this analogy can be
clarified at a later stage in the dialogue: the structure
of the soul is a mystery that can be clearly approached
only through the method of dialectic. Later, in Books
VI and VII, aft[...]

of dialectic. Yet at the same time Socrates emphasizes
that knowledge of the good itrelf exceeds any discursive
account (505a, 506e). He thus develops, in place of this
mining amount of the good, three analogiex of the good:
first, the analogy of the two suns (according to which
the intelligible light of the good, which allows us to see
what is thought, is akin to the sensible light of the sun,
which allows us to see the world); second, the analogy
of the divided line (according to which nour, or gen[...]or discursive thinking); and,
third, the analogy of the cave (according to which the
philosopher, in[...]on
and dialectical ascent, journeys from the dark of mere
opinion to the truth seen in the light of the good).
Socrates carefully works through these[...]. In a
slightly earlier passage he calls his myth of the cave a
“surmise” (517cd).This is a nice i[...]sional
analogy is clarified through an unfolding of three
further analogies. The whole dialogue turns out to be

shaped around a subtle play of interconnected analogies.

There is thus an élan of guess, a turning of trope, at

work in the dialectical quest for truth. This e’lan of
guem is linked to both eror and the love oflzenut[...]t once a longing and a
talking: at once a turning of the soul and a following of
words in conversation.

This does not mean that P[...]t Plato is not teaching, either, exactly the
sort of rationalist foundationalism that he is generally[...]aintains a “blurred picture” between a
notion of philosophy as mathematical truth (or exact
correspondence) and a notion of philosophy as poetic
construction (or ungrounded[...]at these can be approached only
through the élan of guess carefully accompanied by the
movement of reflection and discursive elaboration. It
is thi[...]epublit might be read as a parable about the sort of

spirit, a radical renewal, for wh[...]

of the “new heart” and “new spirit” at once[...](11.19). Only
through this turning can a “heart of stone” be turned
into a “heart of flesh” (11.19). Yet, too, this ethical
teachin[...]demptive horizon
promising a total transformation of the person, of
society, and ultimately of nature itself.”

The prophets’ ethical teaching, thus, is interwoven
with the other major strand of their teaching: a
vision of the dialectic of suffering and meaning in an
individual or a colle[...]—this is simply the teaching
that the suffering of the peoples of Israel and Judah
is a punishment that their God h[...]his is the visionary
teaching that the experience of suffering is potentially
a purgatorial passage, a furnace—like burning away of
the opaque, which leads to expanded insight, deepened
sense of purpose, difficult clarification of spirit, ultimate
redemption of self and community. All the visions of
a joyous return ofIsrael to a restored Jerusalem, all the
proto—apocalyptic visions of a total transformation of

self and society and nature, form an essential pole of

this visionary perspective: for, from this persp[...]question that returns wherever a secularized
form of this vision returns in modern thought (from,
say,[...]:
is this a descriptive or a prescriptive account of human
experience? Clearly it is the latter. For w[...]nd the community to a purgatorial
passage, a task of assuming the burden of suffering

in a spirit of freedom: the demand is to turn the
suffering into[...]orphic horizons undiscovered in the blinded
world of the half—hearted and the stone—hearted.

This[...]es later. Influenced by the apocalyptic currents
of late Second Temple Judaism, closer to the Pharasa[...]ally acknowledged, he revives
the prophetic theme of a radical turning or metanoia,
the Greek word typ[...]above all a rpiritual metamorpboris or a
turning of [be rpirit. Jesus calls the lost and the darkened[...]ing toward a coming
spiritual kingdom.”

Jesus, of course, is many things: an exorcist; a

healer; a miracle—worker; an apocalyptic teacher of

both the imminent end of history and the emergent
kingdom of God; and a courageous martyr who dies
for his willingness to live out the implications of his
teaching. My concern at this point is not with the Jesus
of early Christian communities. It is with the Jesus[...]ices anew the prophetic call
for a re—awakening of ethical life through both a
spiritual realization and a concrete actualization of
ethical principles: this double—concern is perhaps the
distinguishing mark of this whole line of teaching. It
is fair to say that Jesus places less emphasis than the
prophets on the question of social justice, and more
emphasis than the prophets on the question of inward
renewal, though this is a question of emphasis, not
of opposition.Jesus, of course, is wholly concerned
to reaffirm the prophetic teaching of love of one’s
neighbor. And, like the earlier prophets,[...]a
close, corrosive link between the callous heart of stone
that has no concern for others and the holl[...]ss
and moralism (or, as Blake puts it, the stance of
accusation) go hand in hand.Jesus calls his follo[...]reorient one’s life in relation to the
promise of eschatological redemption is the second
dimension of Jesus’ teaching that recalls the earlier
prophetic teaching. While Jesus speaks of an end—time
of severe suffering to come, he does not, prior to his
trial and death, speak out of a sheer crisis of suffering
here and now, at least not in the way t[...]teaches a bearing that involves a different
sort of transformative passage through suffering: he
call[...]ounters to a radiant unmooredness, an
abandonment of all the routines and forms of security
they have known, a kind of extravagant trust in spiritual
amplitude alone, untied, open to what Ernst Bloch calls
the reality of the not yet.‘7

It is often through parables that Jesus evokes this
coming kingdom and the sort of spiritual commitment
it requires. Indeed these parables take one far into both
dimensions of his prophetic teaching. The first parable
that he tells in the Gospel of Mark, the parable of the
sower, is in fact a parable about the point of his teaching
in parables (Mark 4.1—20). He says[...],
and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil.
And when the sun rose, it was scorch[...]

his teaching—like that of so many ancient religious
teachers—involves a d[...]The words immediately

following his explication of the parable suggest that
what is at stake is not[...]an initiation by response, trust, faith, crossing of
spirit: “He said to them, “Is a lamp brought[...]? Northrop Frye writes: “Jesus
sometimes speaks of his central doctrine of a spiritual
kingdom as a mystery, a secret impart[...]tiated and uninitiated is between
those who think of achieving the spiritual kingdom as
a way of life and those who understand it merely as a
doct[...]here we
have to go.‘9

This preparatory parable of parables in the
gospels, then, suggests that partitipation in the mystery
of “words of power” is a condition of any illumination

of those words: the energy and openness of spirit given

Jesus evokes an initiatory crossing of a sort that
illuminates, outside any particular religious context, the
élan of faith in any substantive adventure of life. “The
measure you give will be the measure[...]ks and the gospels as among
our greatest parables of poetic faith, of faith in creative
power and premonition. We learn[...]lyric sound like if
understood as a door to a way of life? Perhaps it would
become a long poem,[...]

word of legend (literature), and the word of promise and
reconciliation (religion).The latter, he says, is a word that
those of us without religious faith know in the experience
of forgiveness, a grace that permits a rebeginning.[...]another in all their differences,
because in some of their fundamental expressions they
have all involved a turning of [be xpirit. Philosophy
involves a turning from closed—up unfreedom amid
shadows to freedom in the open air of speculative
thought, unforgettably evoked in Plato’s story
of the cave. Religion in the prophetic tradition,
in[...]heart to the call ofa
transcendent source, a call of care and transformative
promise. Literature, it i[...]nfident that reflection alone will carry us out of our
broken condition, and he sets against this philosophic
faith the power of tragic literature to reveal to us the
sheer bleakness—though also the creative energy—of
our ultimately pointless existence. Nietzsche wou[...]resonantly resists

the comic plots and horizons of idealist philosophy,
prophetic religion, and the politics of progress. Here,
he argues, we are turned from the illusion of an
orderly cosmos or a meaningful history to the truth
of an abyssal ruin in things. (In the long tradition[...]l those poems that
undertake meditative soundings of death.) Yet this

is not the only voice in[...]

only a sweep of creative power can bring about. This
is the passa[...]ed in Zaratbmtm. And, even as
early as 7773 Birtb of Tragedy, Nietzsche describes tragic
art itself as a creative overcoming of this sort, a joyous
affirmation that, dialectically, at once discloses the
vertigo of nothing and surpasses the nihilist despair
stirre[...]r, in some strange
way, both at once? The turning of romantic and post—
romantic art is often a turn[...]on,
from a blank death—in—life to a discovery of horizons
ofpromise in the face of nothing.

In all “three words” that Gadamer c[...]d “eye—deep in air,” the
good, “the light of things,” even the sheer wonder of
sheer nothing that Whitman felt in the murmur of the
sea, come to startle us awake. “I wake to s[...]y are, at their
most resonant, exemplary passages of finding a way to
begin again, to turn again in life and language. In the

words of the first of Blake’s Song of Experiente:

Hear the voice of the Bard
Who Present, Past, & Future sees
Whose e[...]The watry shore

Is giv’n thee till the break of day.”

1953 by Theodore Roethke, from
COLLECTED POEMS OF
THEODORE ROETHKE by
Theodore Roethke. Used by permission
of Doubleday, a division of Random

House, Inc.
1. Oppen, New Collected Poemx, 152.

2. Roethke, Re Colleeieol Poemx, 104.

3. This sort of spiritual exercise seems to
be one of the things Yeats has in mind
when he speaks of the “ceremony” of
art. My passing references to ancient

stoicism i[...]are drawn from

Hadot, Re Inner Ciiaolel, a study of
Marcus Aurelius’ thought.

4. Frye,Analomy ofCr[...]s cited in Cage, Silence, 46 (Cage
in fact speaks of“unimpededness”

and “interpenetration”).[...]vokes a sounded outwardness in the

first sonnet of Part II of the Sonneix
[o Orpbem (Abeaol ofAll Porting,

462—63)—and of course one could well
say that this outward space is already
evoked in the first sonnet of Part I.

5. Tomlinson, Re Poem ox Iniiiation,
and[...]cal sketch should
serve to suggest the prominence of this
type ofmovement in the modern lyric.
At the origins of modern vernacular
poetries, troubadours and, in their
wake, Renaissance poets of courtly love
develop a poetry of displaced prayer
that has important parallels with older
movements of spiritual search. Later,
seventeenth—century de[...]has shown in Re Poetry
ofMeolitation, shape many of their
poems around the threefold movement
of Loyola’s spiritual exercises: a
passage from an estrangement from
God, through an analysis ofthe

causes of this estrangement in the
fallen self, to a restor[...]on, and often
concluding without any third phase

of recovery (other than that implicit

in the writing of the poem itself).
Further, over the last century a number
of poets—including, notably, Montale,
Vallejo, and Celan—have revived a
poetry of fractured prayer, marked by
an apostrophic movement that guides
an “I”lost in a place of ruin toward

a redemptive “you” sought throug[...]ovement. One could
call to mind, as well, a range of other
initiatory practices in modern poetry,
incl[...]those evoked in Keats’
odes, Whitman’s “Out of the Cradle
Endlessly Rocking,” Rimbaud’s voyages
into light and the whole in the riddling
“charms” of 1872, Mallarmé’s sonnets
exploring his encount[...]winter ofthings,

H.D.’s meditative unfoldings of

death in his last sequences. One could

easily e[...]wal
ofLilerature; and Bernstein, “The
Causality of Fate: On Modernity and
Modernism.”I discuss thi[...]lixm.This is
closely linked to the whole question
of auibenlieily in modern poetry:
from the romantic[...]which corresponds
exactly to the emotion or shade of
emotion to be expressed. A man’s
rhythm must be[...]w when it is
ascertainable; in the trampling down
of every convention that impedes or

obscures the determination of the law,

or the precise rendering of the impulse”

(Lilerary Exxayx, 9). Or, in more general
terms, the shaping of the lyric as a
kind of initiation or spiritual exercise
brings with it three important features
of modern poetry: the emphasis on
the xearebing itxelf as the substance of
imaginative life; the emphasis on the
value of auibenlieily or genuinenexx

in this searching movement at both
the subjective level (the quality of
thought and feeling) and the linguistic
level (the quality ofpatterned sound);
and, with the gradual erosion of the
transcendent in an increasingly secular
culture, the tendency to find in the
patterned sound of the poem a space

of widening irreducible to conceptual

schematizatio[...]ndency is
a recasting ofone ofthe oldest features
of lyric language: the incantatory

power of words.

IO. Plato, Re Republic, II—III
(376d—4o3c) and X (595a—6o8b). The
irony involved in the third of these
criticisms—that dramatic poets fail to
speak in their own person—is vast. For
of course the exact same charge can be
lodged at the Plato of the very dialogue
in which the charge is lodged a[...]ler ironies
at work in Plato’s other criticisms of
poetry, or in his broader account of
what he calls the “ancient quarrel”

b[...]

12. In describing the radical
transformation of the entire person
demanded by this turning,I foll[...]egory not ofthe

city, as is usually claimed, but of the
psyche, Plato} Republic, 268—75. Rosen
suggestively characterizes this interplay
of the mathematical and the poetic

as an interplay of what Pascal calls

l 'exprii ale ge‘ameirie and[...]age in Plato’s Lefler
VII concerning the spark of insight
that flashes up only once the long

labor of the dialectical journey has
taken place: “it is[...]human
capacity is stretched to its limit, a spark
of understanding and intelligence
flashes out and i[...]fguess, or what
Socrates himself calls a practice of
“surmise,” not only arrives at the end
but al[...]the imprecise pictures and
contradictory opinions of everyday
life: the philosopher, questioning these[...]e’ Angel Valente says,
“involves an attention of all the senses
to what the words are perhaps goin[...]ugh I’m sure I read this long
ago in some study of Williams. The
late Gillian Rose, in her philosoph[...]ntemporary tendency]
misunderstands the authority of reason,
which is not the mirror of the dogma
of superstition, but risk. Reason, the
critic[...]

Jesus as aJewish holy man, see Vermes,

Re Relig[...]h
more value are you than the birds!

And can any of you by worrying add

a single hour to your span o[...]olomon in all

his glory was not clothed like one of
these. But if God so clothes the grass
of the field, which is alive today and
tomorrow is[...]the oven, how
much more will he clothe you—you of
little faith! And do not keep striving
for what y[...], and
do not keep worrying. For it is the
nations of the world that strive after
all these things, and[...]en, when trouble
or persecution arises on account of
the word, immediately they fall away.

And others[...]ese are the ones who hear
the word, but the cares of the world,
and the lure of wealth, and the desire
for other things come in a[...]4.13—20). Only

a few words later the unfolding of

the kingdom itself is evoked as a
mysterious process of growth from
seeds: “The kingdom ofGod is as if[...]nd grow, he does not know how. The
earth produces of itself, first the stalk,
then the head, then the[...]which, when
sown upon the ground, is the smallest
of all the seeds on earth; yet when it

is sown it g[...]and puts forth
large branches, so that the birds of the
air can make nests in its shade” (Ma[...]

as a substantial qualification of Paul’s
“anti—Socratic” thought in the Let[...]larger
sense ofvocation, it risks becoming a
word of complacency, an excuse for bad
faith. It is possi[...]ionship
that is coming to be, the beliefin a
work of art whose pattern and meaning
are coming to be, a[...]ion by Poetry” in Selected Proxe,
44—46). All of these sorts ofbelief, he
says, involve going on intuition, going
on searching faith, and, of course, going
without any assurance that the goin[...]Jesus was asked by the
Pharisees when the kingdom of God
was coming, and he answered, The
kingdom ofGo[...]it is, or, there it is.
For, in fact, the kingdom of

of confusion. The prelude to philosophy
was a simple[...]One could put it this way. We come

to awareness of ourselves, first of all,

as lost, disoriented, badly off balance.
Ho[...]we try to begin again. Thus the abiding
relevance of Plato’s great allegory of the
cave: the movement toward wisdom
begins in disillusion. Thus the abiding
relevance of the prophetic cry: why
have you turned away from,[...]back to, what matters?
Thus the abiding relevance of Blake’s
renewed prophetic voice: “0 Earth 0
E[...]ound? Harold Bloom writes: “After
halfa century of teaching poetry,I
have come to believe that I mus[...]is too large,
too Homeric for that. At the gates of
death,I have recited poems to myself,
but not sea[...]the suggestions, first, that an
internalization of the words of poetry
brings a power of insight in itself,

and second, that poetry or li[...]some parallels
between the inifiatory movements of

poetry, philosophy, and religion.

VVar/es Cited[...]by Robert Hullot-
Kentor. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1997.

Altieri, Charles. Painter[...]s, 1984.

Baker, Robert. He Extravagant: Croningr
of Modern Poetry and Modern
Pbi/oropby. Notre Dame: University
of Notre Dame Press, 2005.

Bernstein,]. M. “The Causality of Fate:
Modernity and Modernism.” In He
Reto‘very of Etbita/ Life. London:
Routledge, 1995. 159[...]

Edmundson, Mark. Wby Rea[...]Jovanovich, 1982.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. In Praixe of
77)eory. Trans. Chris Dawson. New
Haven: Yale Uni[...], Abraham. Bet-ween God and
Man'An Interpretation of fudaixm.
Ed. and with an introduction by
Fritz A.[...],
1962.

Howland, Jacob. He Repul7lit: He Odyxxey
of Pbiloxopby. Philadelphia: Paul Dry
Books, 1993.[...]versity Press, 1996.

Langbaum, Robert. He Poetry of
Experiente: He Dramatit Monologue
in Modern Liter[...]Point, CA.:
Ardis, 1997.

Martz, Louis. He Poetry of Meditation:A
Study in Englixb Religioux Literature

of tbe Se‘venteentb Century. New
Haven: Yal[...]

Poirier, Richard. 'Ibe Renewal of
Literature: Emerjonian Reflectio n5.
New Haven:[...]ss,
1978.

Stevens, Wallace. 'Ibe Palm at tbe End of
tbe Mind. Ed. Holly Stevens. New
York: Ran[...]

On the first day of the conference, Aaron Dorfman,

executive director of the National Committee for

Responsive Philanthro[...]t “inadequate organizational capacity” is one of
the key barriers NCRP identified that constrains[...]rofits by regional and national foundations.
One of the sessions on the last day addressed
how to bui[...]ntion was given to the lntergenerational Transfer of
Wealth. Participants pointed to the vital role th[...]foundations can play in helping capture
a portion of the wealth transfer as a community—
focused phi[...]and
assist rural residents regarding the Transfer of Wealth
and the possibility of leaving a philanthropic legacy.

Disparities in F[...]merica that can guide and nurture the development
of philanthropy and nonprofits is a core strategy f[...]hilanthropy and attracting a
more equitable share of the nation’s annual foundation
grantmaki[...]

the Advancement of Nonprofits (BSI), to undertake
research to docum[...]documented long—term systemic under—
funding of a number of low—population rural states,

a phenomenon BSI[...]The Philanthropic Divide is a complex
phenomenon of limited philanthropic and nonprofit
sector resou[...]with their counterparts in other states.
For most of the last fifteen years, the ten Philanthropic
Di[...]r nonprofits represent the extreme manifestation of
the challenges and barriers facing rural America[...]ion Center, the ten

states with the least amount of foundation assets had an

average of $63 million per state. The ten states with the
most assets had an average of almost $9.26 bilion per

state. The asset gap, comparing averages of the bottom

ten states with the top ten states[...]2007 by the Foundation
Center, the average amount of assets among the bottom
ten states had increased[...]w assets were needed to satisfy
the funding needs of these states’ nonprofits. However,
when BSI ex[...]st assets at
$34., compared to a national average of $117, and $171 per
capita for the states with the[...]op ten
states showed a per capita grantmaking gap of $73
according to 2000 figures, with that gap increasing to
$137 seven years later.

The paucity of foundation resources in the

Philanthropic[...]

the question of how infrastructure can be built to assist
in the development of philanthropic and nonprofit
capacity for these rural states. In Montana, for example,
the great majority of the in—state foundations are

small and unstaff[...]ts over
$100,000 are scarce at best. The building of nonprofit
and philanthropic infrastructure has generally been

the domain of foundations that can make large grants
ranging fr[...]king by the Top 50 Foundation
Grantmakers to each of the ten Divide states during the
years 2000 throu[...](by
giving) to each state increased from a total of $205.9
million in 2000 to $320.9 million in 2004. Most of
this growth, however, came from in—state founda[...]n
their respective states in 2000 granted a total of $22.5
million that year; this increased to $122.6[...]to $96 million. More importantly, the
percentage of total Top 50 grant dollars from national

foundat[...]g, and management support
services to nonprofits of all sizes throughout
this vast state with many re[...]e and help strengthen
the state’s growing ranks of family foundations,
as well as a consortium of twenty—six local

community foundations.

' In New Hampshire, a consortium of in—state

oppo[...].

BSI has partnered with a growing collaboration
of in—state foundations to develop the Montana
Non[...]tween $150,000 and $200,000. Following six
months of program development during the first half of
2008, the OEG Program will begin making grants fo[...]ment projects. Current plans call
for three years of demonstration activities, followed

by evaluation[...]in growing philanthropy
for Montana and the rest of rural America is strongly
mirrored by the interests of the state’s governor,

Brian Schweitzer. Govern[...]sation on Endowments and Philanthropy in
November of 2006 that generated keen interest in
building phi[...]ndian reservations
in Montana and the Coordinator of

In both of these examples, Montanans have
taken “stuck sit[...]ecome involved.
Historically, the localized focus of so many of the
state’s grantmakers, the lack of a statewide grantmakers
association, and the overall problem ofof
interest in developing infrastructure that can he[...]overall positive tone and constructive
direction of the rural philanthropy conference in
Missoula, those of us living and working in rural states
are[...]

from “Trio,” Beyond [be Morex: Poemx of Frieda
Fligelman (Berkeley: Athe Press, 1965)

Legend bax i[ [ba[ [bere were [breeprineex of Serendip,
wba[eq)er [ba[ ix or wax, and [ba[ [beg[...]g [be

unknown.

Norman J. Holter, “The Genesis of
Biotelemetry,” Bio[eleme[ry (New York:
Academic[...]e southeast corner ofWomen’s Park in the heart

of Helena, Montana’s capital city, stands a grand[...]ck destroyed by fire).
Affixed to the left side of the arch is a bronze plaque that
reads, “In Loving Memory of Norman JeHeris Holter,
1914—1983, and His Many[...]he Arts, and Learning.”
Inscribed at the bottom of the plaque (donated by Joan
Treacy Holter,[...]

before his death, in memory of his parents, Norman B.
and Florence J. Holter, an[...]P. and Anton M. Holter, “Pioneers and
Builders of Montana and of Helena.”

Although he was certainly a local her[...]efferis “ eff” Holter—nor the global impact of his
scientific contributions—have been fully appreciated
beyond a small circle of physicians and researchers.

This essay seeks to[...]t, attempting to
shed light on both the character of this singular man
and his important work. At the[...]na, Montana,
and La Jolla, California—was a man of the world,
passionate about ideas and the arts (e[...]and dedicated
to making a difference in the lives of his fellow humans.
The scion of a remarkable Montana pioneer dynasty,
he believed in the virtues of education, hard work,
and intellectual independen[...]by logic.Jeff Holter was an
articulate proponent ofof what is today called “noninvasive
electrocardiology” and his invention of the Holter
Heart Monitor (and related technologie[...]hly portable Holter Heart
Monitor (today the size of the smallest iPod) allows a
physician to record the heart rhythms of a subject over
many hours, while the patient enga[...]ormation available was that collected in a matter of
minutes while the patient was stationary. In desc[...]rately needed, Jeff
Holter compared the recording of the heart to the
assaying of ore (an apt comparison, given his family’s
long connections with the gold and silver mining camps

of Montana). He told an interviewer:

If I owned all of Mount Helena [the
mountain, now a city park, that[...]would conclude that all ofMount
Helena consisted of the same amount. That’s
what’s called poor sampling, in any kind of
science. . . .The idea that I should conclude
that that mountain has those percentages of
minerals is absurd. But that’s exactly what
you do when you take an electrocardiogram
in the office. You take twelve to fourteen
heartbeats. But[...]beats 120,000 times a day. So you look at

twelve of them, and you say, “Oh, you’re very

healthy,[...]e went on to add:

[S]ince when does life consist of holding
your breath and lying down and not moving[...]airs? People
having three meals, one right on top of the

other? Or getting drunk as a skunk? Or being
hit in the butt by an automobile? None of

that is measured when you’re lying down. . . .[...]ntless lives and helped launch a whole new field of
medicine. As William C. Roberts, editor—in—chief of 7773
Amerimnjournnl ofC’nrdiology, wrote soon a[...]former train station
in a town with a population of less than 30,000, and
unassociated with a medical[...]iscovery received further
validation when a group of physicians and research
scientists formed the Int[...]eated ISHNE to “promote and advance the science
of noninvasive electrocardiology in all its phases and
to encourage the continuing education of physicians,

scientists and the general public in the science of Holter

C. Craig Harris noted in a 1996
history ofthe Society, “The Society
of Nuclear Medicine was created
and constructed by persons from
many branches of medicine

and the physical sciences, but it

originated mostly in the mind of a
chemist—physicist—engineer named
Norman ‘Jefi’ Holter.” Holter and

a handful of colleagues launched
the Pacific Northwest Society of Nuclear Medicine in
1954., only fifty—seven ye[...]made
the first clinical therapeutic application of radiation
when he used phosphorus—32 to treat leukemia. Holter
served as the president of the national Society from

its founding in[...]

concluded in his history of SNM, “[Jeff Holter] was
a clever innovator; his name is known to thousands
of cardiologists and their patients from the Holter
Monitor, which he invented. He also invented the
Society of Nuclear Medicine.”5

Nearly all the commentator[...]cientific community—from his home
in the wilds of Montana. However, Joan, the scientist’s
widow, speculates that, because of his relative isolation
(and therefore relative fr[...]as
a “Specialist in Physics” in the Institute of Geophysics
and Planetary Physics at the University of California,
San Diego), he quickly found that it[...]tead, he favored an environment where he was
free of rigid thinking, arbitrary boundaries, and jealous[...]s frankly
uncomfortable with his fame. At the end of his life, he
told historian Bill Lang:

I get a funny little feeling when I get very far

out of Helena, and doctors begin to ask me

for my autog[...]I
just have been doing what gives me a great
deal of pleasure. And that’s to search out the

unknown. 5

The life of Jeff Holter might well serve as instructive
in a[...]House
hearing in 2006, Dr. Joseph Heppert, chair of the
American Chemical Society’s Committee on Ed[...]he life sciences]. She will be
competing with all of the outstanding students in her
field on the pla[...]s. In such an environment, she and other
students of

international tests of science knowledge, declining
student interest in[...]ant figure in American science, not only
because of his laboratory’s discoveries, but also because
he stands as an exemplar of an independent researcher
whose approach resembles that of an artist as much as it
does that of a traditional scientist.

O’Brien notes, “Inv[...]s long prized individual creativity and
the power of great ideas. In recent decades, tinkerers
and res[...]ovation consultant Peter Arnell
on the importance of independent research, “When
inventors work inde[...]s are seen as failures. When people exist outside
of the corporate model and have vision and passion,[...]adly, O’Brien reports, the U.S. is on the verge
of losing its advantage in the field of innovation. He
writes, “[P}rivate and public capital [i]s not being
adequately funneled to the kinds of projects and people
that foster invention. The study of science is not valued
in enough homes . . . and s[...]ncture when the United States stands on
the verge of losing that distinctly American mix of
inventiveness, independent thinking, and pleasure[...]lping to keep alive that grand American tradition of
genuine innovation, a tradition that includes Benjamin
Franklin and Thomas Edison, as well as thousands

of less well—known inventors who dared to break the

tlye xtreetx of Helena, no date. Plyotograplyer unknown.
Collection of joan Treaty Holter.

rules. As a report from Massachusetts Institute of
Technology’s Program for Inventors asserts, “Indeed,
invention itself can be perceived as an act of rebellion
against the status quo.”“JeH Holter[...]greater exposure, well beyond the
limited spheres of the medical community and highly
specialized jour[...]6 essay, “The History, Science, and Innovation

of Holter Technology”:

It is memorable to have kn[...]c endeavors in Helena,
Montana. . . .

Every form of electrocardiographic
information of humans who go about their
daily activities and is protracted over a long
duration of time “without touching" (i.e.
without cables) i[...]be widely regarded and
accepted as the “Father of Ambulatory and
Long-Term Electrocardiograp[...]

of a giant [who] lived within our own time.”

In a[...]ty and integrity are not just cliches
but sources ofof his adult life. The physician
who delivered him was John Lear Treacy, the father

of his future bride,Joan Treacy Holter. His paternal[...]indomitable energy.”‘5 A. M. Holter was one of Montana’s

greatest entrepreneurs, and it can b[...]tinguished forbear—who was
knighted by the King of Norway for his contributions

to educationfl pre[...]achieved success). Anton was known as the father

of Montana’s lumbering industry (he started[...]

Anton M. Holter, tbepioneerpatriartly of tbe Montana
Holter clan. From Progressive Men of Montana (Clyicar
go'A. W Bowen 59’ Company, ca.[...]AC 942*6’20).

paramount problem. After a great of thought
and experimenting we finally succeeded i[...]later was
patented and widely used under the name of
“Rope Feed." . . .

[Hm order to construct this[...]emper
the chisels so they would stand the cutting of
iron. . . .We finally got the mill started and
sawed about 5,000 feet of lumber before we

ever had a beast of burden in the camp.’6

By his own accoun[...]

Jeff Holter came of age in a time when American
science education was seriously deficient. In an
interview at the end of his life, he recalled—with
considerable chagrin—the failures of his science
education in the Helena public[...]

exp[...]

spent most of their time analyzing cowsy
stomachs and what not.[...]nice,
small, pretty well-equipped laboratory. And
of course, the smells and everything else

thrilled the hell out of me. . . . And he was a

charming old gentl[...]

Holter spoke of Starz with considerable emotion,
and it is clear[...]ould
sit there and I would ask him ifhe’d heard
ofof analytical weights,
the same I used when I first[...]fer his protege best wishes—in
1939, on the eve of Jeff ’5 receipt of his master’s degree
in physics from the University of California, Los
Angeles—with some prescient wor[...]make a mark in your chosen profession &
cognizant of the fact that science will hear from you in
the y[...]he success & fortitude
to master the final proof of your proficiency.”22 Though
Jeff Holter would[...]the PhD Starz alluded
to, the “final proof ” of his proficiency would come just
as certainly, th[...]ng fine and I got all these God-
knows-what-kind-of merit badges, most of
which were a breeze. Go down and rescue a
flat iron from the bottom of the pool at the Y.
. . . And go into the f[...]

foremost, he wrote, “I am glad to h[...]oped capacity for compassion (like other children
of the chronically ill), he was intent on making a real
difference in the health and well—being of his fellow
humans. As literary scholar Elaine Scarry has argued
in 7773 Body in Pain, the obverse of pain’s destructive
nature is its ability to sti[...]ng; it can lead not only to the “deconstruction
of the world, but [also] to that world’s construct[...]alright with my chemistry
and am now making a lot of stuff.” At the moment
(in March 1928), h[...]

always the battle cry of the Holters and they
succeeded as history has proprerly recorded.
With such a family record back of you you

can not fail to add more honors and fame to

the name of the Holters!4

With high school behind him, Jeff[...]os Angeles Junior
College and then the University of California at

Los Angeles (UCLA), where he received his AB. in
Chemistry in 1937.The summer of 1937 took him to
Heidelberg, Germany, where he st[...]for graduate school.

This journey into the heart of Germany just
before the Second World War seems to have marked
him profoundly. Despite the rise of Nazism, he found
much to love about German cultur[...]e visual arts,
architecture, and literature. Much of his later book
collecting would focus on first editions of classic
German scientific texts, like Goethe’s 1790 study of
plant metamorphosis, Vizrrutb die Metamorpbore de[...]brecht Durer’s stunning
work on the proportions of the human body, Hierin rind
[regrfim vier Barber won memtblitber Proportion of 1528.

While in transit to and during his stay in[...]tures. On the outgoing
voyage, on the Deutrtbland of the Hamburg—America
Line (which advertised itse[...]d”), he wrote to his father that, in a few days
of speaking with his fellow passengers, “1 have picked
up more German . . . than in many weeks of college
study.” He found one elderly woman espe[...]all on my side.”
He also made the acquaintance of a “very intelligent
and attractive girl from Ca[...]is very good
practice.“5

On the twenty—sixth of June, he reported, “Today
we are seeing land fo[...]his

accommodations: “a room on the top floor of this very

nice house owned by Dr. Fohnenb[...]

I didn’t begin to see it in two solid days of walking

Jeff Holter had reason to be i[...]ist Doug Dowd has written:

Mention has been made of Germany’s large
aims and limited resources. Tha[...]lization was
partially but importantly an outcome of its
earlier checkerboard existence as hundreds
of principalities and their associated
bureaucracies[...]e society in the world and the
highest proportion of skilled craftspeople:
a deep mine of talent that provided
Germany with much of the “social capital”
it needed to deal effectively with problems
of organization, science, and technology.
For Germany, more than others in its era,
“necessity was the mother of invention.”

The successful fusing ofscience and

technology was the source of Germany’s

ability to develop substitutes (“ersatz”) for
resource deficiencies. The most important
of these substitutes was coal tar derivatives,
which[...]or

Germany’s vanguard explosives industry.”

Of course, this fusing of science and technology
(including the development of ermiz products), when
joined with fascist ideolog[...]expansionist
aggressions during the coming years ofof
every nationality in Europe and only German can be
spoken.” Because his course of study was the German
language, he spent his day s[...]ng to lectures in German “covering
a wide range of subjects.”He was free to choose the
lect[...]

xoldier witly flye Zein" Contax camera b[...]ically and mechanically . . .
without being aware of the fact that many
times Iwould much rather read[...]hy or article in a non-technical field.
In spite of my interest, it has been a struggle
and a constan[...]raction even in
Heidelberg, though the “novelty of speaking German
[to German girls]. . . is now no[...]Sometimes I round a corner and run into a
crowd of girls from Vassar or Smith touring
the cou[...]

At the end of July, he reported that he had
“about exhausted the supply of things to see.” Most
importantly, he and his fr[...]ited
“every hospital and clinic within a radius of ten miles”
of Heidelberg. At the Kaiser—Wilhelm Institute, a[...]ocabulary is necessarily more complete”
because of his intensive language studies.44

In his effort[...]regime:

I have had fun trying to locate a book

of short stories by Thomas Mann who is
decidely diso[...]in what a horrible menace

Mann is to the welfare of Germany.“

On a day when his professor was ill,[...]cycles (“we are both in

good condition”) out of town, hoping to “round up a
symphony concert or[...], seeing all the castles,
museums and exhibitions of which the country side is
full.”They covered mo[...]or school.”The
trip, Jeff wrote, was “so full of interesting details that I
couldn’t begin to re[...]used Harrison’s
smaller camera to take pictures of a “tremendous crash
in Stuttgart between three[...]I] will be able to accurately
record all the rest of my trip. This camera is
especially made fo[...]

kind of journal of this final trip. Penned on Hamburg—
America Li[...]His account would be, he wrote, a “hodge podge of
impressions patterned after [Walter] Winchell’s[...]usual to see a sign which is written in
a mixture of languages.” He and Harrison enjoyed a
Schubert concert on the shores of Lake Constance, and
in a Swiss nightclub “where waiters were busy carrying
around trays of pastry and ice cream instead of gin and
seltzer water,” he visited with a Germa[...]ad recently toured in the Soviet
Union, where two of the members of his band had
“spent three months in prison for discussing politics
“out of school.”

Jeff declared himself “not overly i[...]here existed in Europe
“about the same minority of people who are genuinely
interested in something[...]almost exclusively to the tourist tradefl

sort of commercialized culture.” Only the “tou[...]

I took some pictures of one of Bach’s pianos.

The next day he visited the fam[...]epository thrilled him with its “current issues of 1000
scientific monthly journals as well as bound volumes
of all previous issues.” He lamented, “I only ha[...]the heavy military presence, and at
the changing of the guard at a “tomb of some Nazis,”
he found himself “caught in the midst of a bunch of
goose stepping soldiers and marched through most of
the ceremony with them.” He and Harrison also visited
the impressive new “House ofof work made
him “suspicious about some of the quality.”

At a concert of Richard Strauss’ comic opera
Der Roxenkamzlier,[...]ed in
Berlin, where they “passed several groups of soldiers . .
. practicing dragging cannons up and[...]t Dr. Starz’s relatives in Potsdam, but ran
out of time; “I am sorry,” he wrote, “as I really[...]they boarded the ship bound for
home. To the envy of his traveling companions, Jeff had
“eigh[...]

This whole business of higher education
demands some thought.I realize t[...]he benefits. It means

three, four or more years of being seen only at
meals or not at all if my betterance indicates
periods of study away from home. The work
will be of the most difficult and exacting kind.
. . . I ha[...]take time now to read all the
books from the book-of—the-month club,
take time now for enjoying the broadening
interests which are a part of me, and remain

forever mediocre as a scientist.[...]erprise. Although he
would not realize his dreams of attending MIT. or
obtaining a doctorate, J[...]

Notes

1. Norman]. Holter, “The Genesis ofof the Montana Historical Society,
December 1982—][...]. C. Craig Harris, “The Formation
and Evolution of the Society of
Nuclear Medicine,” Seminar; in Nuclear

Medicin[...]F.E.S.C.,“The History,
Science, and Innovation of Holter
Technology,”Anmz/3 ofNoninvoJive[...]

39. Doug Dowd, “Against Decadence:

The Work of Robert A. Brady (1901—
63),”jommz/ ofE[...]

on Education for the Cerami[...]e, “they are thin—skinned.”This
confluence of our thoughts and feelings with our bodies
is one of the most profound aspects of our human
experience. We are the only animal that[...]when
happy or sad.

I am interested in the senses of the body, because
I believe there has been a dram[...]e world becomes flatter and the joy and fullness of

our lives is diminished.