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  • THE GATES TO PROGRESS

    Number of comments: 1
    These days education is in roughly the same shape as the economy: that is, those at the top are doing fine, in fact, probably quite a bit better than in the past, but those at the bottom aren’t even included. They are out there somewhere mysterious, existing in some kind [...]
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    Posted: November 23, 2009, 11:46am EST
    by prairie mary

  • SELLING MEADVILLE/LOMBARD

    Number of comments: 0
    Meadville/Lombard Theological School is selling its building. This is my alma mater seminary, though much -- if not most -- of my classwork was done at the University of Chicago where I also earned an MA in Religious Studies. Most of these academic labyrinthine arrangements are pretty mysterious to those [...]
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    Posted: November 22, 2009, 11:31am EST
    by prairie mary

  • BEN YAGODA & THE EGG & I

    Number of comments: 0
    From the review of Yagoda’s “Memoir: A History” by Judith Shulevitz: “Ben Yagoda asks the question we’ve been waiting for: How do we know when we’re being duped? The answer is almost worth the delay, even though it’s a quotation from nearly a half-century ago: Think of the memoirist ‘as [...]
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    Posted: November 21, 2009, 10:04am EST
    by prairie mary

  • FROZEN RIVER: A Review

    Number of comments: 0
    Indie films and Native Americans -- okay, “Indians” -- seem like a match so natural as to be inevitable. The newest one I’ve seen is “Frozen River,” just now being mentioned on the new West Lit blog. (The cowboys have discovered the Indians! And they’re female!) This film is also [...]
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    Posted: November 20, 2009, 9:55am EST
    by prairie mary

  • CAMILLE PAGLIA: OH, HELLO!

    Number of comments: 2
    Camille Paglia has always been at the periphery of my vision as one of the femme terrible writers who stalks the edges of polite scholarship -- sort of the Patricia Limerick of sexuality. It MUST be about sexuality, right? After all, she’s lesbian. Her life must be all about that. [...]
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    Posted: November 19, 2009, 10:31am EST
    by prairie mary

  • INDIAN ARTIFACTS: THE BADGER TIPI

    Number of comments: 0
    Out beyond the fancy tourist Native American artifacts, the authentic, the historical, and the humble ritual objects, is something else that is beyond the intangible: the core of the Native American process and the materials from the land, just as Native Americans would create according to precedent, but without any [...]
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    Posted: November 18, 2009, 10:37am EST
    by prairie mary

  • INDIAN ARTIFACTS: INTANGIBLES

    Number of comments: 0
    Earlier in this series I talked about Uhlenbeck and his collection of linguistic material, which he took (without removing) in the form of stories and later analyzed for grammar and structure. He did not publish books of stories for popular consumption like the many versions of Napi stories. (See Monday, [...]
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    Posted: November 17, 2009, 10:48am EST
    by prairie mary

  • INDIAN ARTIFACTS: HOME COLLECTIONS

    Number of comments: 1
    Many people in the West have collections in their basements or garages of things that they’ve simply found or bought from someone else who found it. In Portland, Oregon, my mother had a whole row of stones that had clearly been used for something: mortar and pestle, grinder, pounder. (She [...]
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    Posted: November 16, 2009, 10:18am EST
    by prairie mary

  • INDIAN ARTIFACTS: PAUL DYCK

    Number of comments: 0
    Paul Dyck’s collection of Indian artifacts is the star in the crown of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. Paul Dyck himself was extraordinary and his wife, Star, even more so. She was the sort of glamorous tomboy whom we associate with old-time major film stars, competent, protective and very beautiful. [...]
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    Posted: November 15, 2009, 7:48am EST
    by prairie mary

  • BUY LOW, SELL HIGH

    Number of comments: 1
    Imagine a gold candlestick: nothing fancy, just a single candle. One person figures it’s only brass. A professional evaluator sees that it’s gold and of very high quality workmanship. To another person it’s the candlestick his grandmother always had on the mantel. Maybe this turns out to be the candlestick [...]
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    Posted: November 14, 2009, 4:48am EST
    by prairie mary

  • INDIAN ARTIFACTS: JOHN HELLSON

    Number of comments: 1
    Here comes a story at the opposite extreme from the Uhlenbeck’s, one I can only tell now because a confirming article showed up through Google. I had to pay $4 to get a copy from the New York Times, but I already knew the information. I was just afraid to [...]
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    Posted: November 13, 2009, 5:08am EST
    by prairie mary

  • ARTIFACT COLLECTORS: UHLENBECK

    Number of comments: 2
    Let’s try some local case studies before we go to the SW law cases which have not come to trial yet. I have a hunch that by tracing out some very different artifact collectors, we can uncover issues. Too many people reach a point of view by excluding any evidence [...]
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    Posted: November 12, 2009, 9:59am EST
    by prairie mary

  • VETERAN'S DAY OVERCAST

    Number of comments: 1
    Today is still -- no wind -- with rain threatening, so I’ve been up on the garage tarping the roof. Don’t worry. I’m very careful, it’s a flat roof, there’s a little parapet around it, and my ladder is good to 300#. I also read the directions pasted on it [...]
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    Posted: November 11, 2009, 10:52am EST
    by prairie mary

  • HEAD FAKE (ARTISTIC)

    Number of comments: 1
    When I was about six and the movies still meant going to a theatre to see a double feature, one major and one minor, plus a newsreel, a cartoon and maybe a couple of shorts, there was a funny short about Fibber Magee and Molly, who were normally on the [...]
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    Posted: November 10, 2009, 9:30am EST
    by prairie mary

  • WHAT IS ART? PAUL SCHILPP & ALVINA KRAUSE

    Number of comments: 2
    When I was an undergrad at Northwestern University in what was then the School of Speech, I kept worrying my advisor, a kind but conventional man who wanted to make sure I’d be able to earn a living, by signing up for courses in religion. It was bad enough that [...]
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    Posted: November 09, 2009, 5:22am EST
    by prairie mary

  • WRITING: Orientalism Out West

    Number of comments: 0
    Tim and I and the Cinematheque boys have been talking about writing techniques and genres. This phrase that starts with “Madly Anointed, etc.” collided with Donald Pittenger’s thoughts on 2blowhards.com talking about how 19th century Western art is essentially Orientalist, and I created the following satire which is also mock-porn. [...]
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    Posted: November 08, 2009, 8:46am EST
    by prairie mary

  • STUDY IN PURPLE AND RED: writing

    Number of comments: 0
    Purple prose is a term of literary criticism used to describe passages, or sometimes entire literary works, written in prose so overly extravagant, ornate, or flowery as to break the flow and draw attention to itself. Purple prose is sensually evocative beyond the requirements of its context. It also refers [...]
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    Posted: November 07, 2009, 7:54am EST
    by prairie mary

  • ARTIFACTS: FLESH & PAPER (Part 9)

    Number of comments: 1
    “Blood” is the preoccupation of Indians and yet the identity of an Indian is not determined by actual genetics after all. The criterion is “pedigree” or “provenance” (which are approximately the same thing) created by People self-announcing identities about two hundred years ago when the army began making lists of [...]
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    Posted: November 05, 2009, 9:49am EST
    by prairie mary

  • ARTIFACTS: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY Part 8

    Number of comments: 1
    There are two assumptions here: first, that a thing like an idea, a story, a poem, a song, can be owned; the second that the creator should have control of it, any profit that comes from it. Most of us would accept these ideas: they are the basis of our [...]
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    Posted: November 04, 2009, 8:56am EST
    by prairie mary

  • ARTIFACTS: CEREMONIAL OBJECTS Number 7

    Number of comments: 0
    The crux of the matter is that for the American autochthonous people, everything was sacred: land, people, animals, plants. But some hundreds of years ago, in order to keep the peace when science began to depart from religion, the Europeans invented the idea of the “secular” and divided life into [...]
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    Posted: November 03, 2009, 9:42am EST
    by prairie mary

  • ARTIFACTS: PAN-INDIAN POP CULTURE (Part 6)

    Number of comments: 2
    Recently there was an uproar over a YouTube post that put “synchronized pow wow dancing” (which is already controversial) to Chubby Checkers’ twist music. Four guys wore ribbons and feathers that furiously thrashed around them as they exactly matched their steps to the drum and each other -- and the [...]
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    Posted: November 02, 2009, 7:52am EST
    by prairie mary

  • ARTIFACTS: TRADE GOODS (PART 5)

    Number of comments: 1
    We tend to think of trade goods as being the result of European contact, but in fact there has always been vigorous trade along routes that networked both North and South America, as well as very early detectable trade around the Pacific Rim many thousands of years ago.

    One [...]
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    Posted: November 01, 2009, 10:12am EST
    by prairie mary

  • ARTIFACTS: BIG STONES (Part 4)

    Number of comments: 0
    TIPI RINGS

    Only a few miles north of Valier along Birch Creek which is the southern boundary of the Blackfeet Reservation, is a place called “Willow Rounds.” Via Google you can find some wonderful photos of the place because the ranch called that is currently for sale. You’ll see [...]
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    Posted: October 31, 2009, 10:07am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • ARTIFACTS: STONE OBJECTS, Part 3

    Number of comments: 1
    LITHIC OBJECTS

    “Lith” means stone. Sometimes American indigenous people are called “stone age people,” though we used to kid each other in the foundry that the Blackfeet present were now up to the “bronze age.” The truth is that much of the early material culture must have been organic: [...]
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    Posted: October 30, 2009, 8:51am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • ALL OUR BONES (ARTIFACTS: Part Two)

    Number of comments: 7
    Back to the bones.

    We are constantly digging up things, including skeletons. Some on purpose, like paleontologists searching in Africa and finding the remains of eohumans that are six million years old, and others accidentally (possibly homicide victims) when making highway cuts or excavating for basements. When rationalizing their [...]
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    Posted: October 29, 2009, 10:29am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • ARTIFACTS: A SERIES

    Number of comments: 1
    The ever on-going discussion and actual events around Native American artifacts have gotten tragically heated, resulting in arrests, jail terms, suicides and rented trucks carrying away literal tons of materials. Most people either have nearly violent opinions or can’t figure out what the heck to think.

    In the past [...]
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    Posted: October 28, 2009, 10:03am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • SEVEN DECADES

    Number of comments: 10
    BORN IN 1939. So today I’m 70.
    Looking at the decades in reverse:

    In 1999, at 60, I was just moving to Valier, a huge jump. It was freedom. It was going home. At last I could read and write all day and have two cats. I DID [...]
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    Posted: October 27, 2009, 10:05am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • THROWAWAY KIDS

    Number of comments: 1
    “Small Beneath the Sky” by Lorna Crozier was one of the books offered to be reviewed by one of the environmental groups I belong to, one based in Canada. I’m only an hour’s drive south of the border and have many family roots in Canada as well as having served [...]
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    Posted: October 26, 2009, 11:20am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • SINGPOD

    Number of comments: 0
    http://www.ourmedia.org/ia/details/null

    In theory at least, you should be able to hear my first “published” sound blog by clicking on the above link. You might have to copy and paste to your browser.

    There must be another step, namely installing a gizmo to play ON the blog. Nope. That's' [...]
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    Posted: October 25, 2009, 9:56am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • BECOMING A PODCASTER

    Number of comments: 1
    Years and years and years ago “Bend in the River” was filmed on the shoulder of Mt. Hood. It was about the Oregon Trail pioneers struggling through the last part of the trek, which was probably also the hardest part, getting over the Cascades, slashing through timber and lowering the [...]
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    Posted: October 24, 2009, 11:46am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • VENUS: A Review

    Number of comments: 0
    Last night’s movie was “Venus,” in which a tottering Peter O’Toole relates to a teenaged girl bluffing her way along because she really has no idea at all what’s going on. Her only source of nurturing seems to be Top Ramen noodles and beer. The main strategy of those in [...]
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    Posted: October 23, 2009, 11:13am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • PRAIRIE COLORS (or colours)

    Number of comments: 0
    It’s a still gray day, not even the skritching of dead leaves killed by cold before they could change colors and drop from the tree. If you were to paint the landscapes I saw when I drove to Cut Bank (thirty miles north), you would only need a few tubes [...]
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    Posted: October 22, 2009, 9:41am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • NEEDLE OR ROPE?

    Number of comments: 0
    Two very different movies, “Dancer in the Dark,” (2000) and “The State Within,” (2006) both show -- in detail -- two people on death row. “Dancer in the Dark” is about a woman going blind and dedicated to a course of action meant to save her son’s eyesight. It takes [...]
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    Posted: October 21, 2009, 10:14am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • FRENCH-MILLED SOAP: Fiction

    Number of comments: 4
    The mail order bride had turned out better than he had really expected. She was neat, healthy, and hard-working. Pleasant looking, really, though not fancy. But there was a little part of him, left over from his youth, that had hoped for a bit of a love affair and there [...]
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    Posted: October 20, 2009, 9:40am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • WRITING Part 2

    Number of comments: 5
    There’s really no end to writing about writing or teaching writing or accounting for the success of writing, which is all to the good, isn’t it? In the nonexistent end what really counts is sitting down and just putting one word after another. Staying in the chair is the first [...]
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    Posted: October 19, 2009, 8:59am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • TEACHING WRITING

    Number of comments: 2
    I’m always wary when people ask me for feedback about their writing or even, like that reckless Lance, think I might be a good writing teacher. In the first place, I soon discovered that what they really wanted me (or someone) to teach them was not about writing, but rather [...]
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    Posted: October 18, 2009, 11:39am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • BLACKFEET EYES: A Partial Review

    Number of comments: 3
    http://books.google.com/books?id=0KT4avNDjbIC&dq=Blackfeet+Eyes&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=dxpWiGwkHS&sig=D0Rb3mgEPfY6dBrH_7K2SV896q8&hl=en&ei=U8PYStrXIYSksgPZ7NSMBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false

    If you go to the above url -- and I hope the link holds, because it’s too long to type out -- if it doesn’t, try googling “Blackfeet Eyes - Google Books Result” which is where I got it. Or you could cut-and-paste. It links to a big [...]
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    Posted: October 17, 2009, 10:07am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • A TEA PARTY ON THE LAWN

    Number of comments: 2
    Two years ago I stopped attending the Montana Festival of the Book in Missoula. It was my fault. I got cranky. I’d been put on a panel about the controversial issue of memoir versus autobiography -- at least I thought of it that way -- and welcomed the chance to [...]
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    Posted: October 16, 2009, 10:50am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • HOME ON THE RANGE, and elsewhere

    Number of comments: 0
    Yesterday we buried Wayne Anderson, my neighbor, in the Manchester Cemetery. Since the forecast had been freezing rain, we were all a bit nervous, especially the mortician who was going to have to do the service if I went off the road. He’d done that before, but this service, in [...]
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    Posted: October 15, 2009, 12:06pm EDT
    by prairie mary

  • BE DANGEROUS -- USE NEW WORDS.

    Number of comments: 2
    I rarely read Anu Garg’s weekly “compendium” of responses to his Word A Day automated mailing. (Sign up at http://wordsmith.org/awad/index.html) I was put on the mailing list by a poet friend in Oregon. There’s a similar series on Yellowstone Public Radio called “Kristi the Wordsmith,” which has developed into a [...]
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    Posted: October 14, 2009, 10:07am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • LEAPING INTO THE FUTURE

    Number of comments: 4
    Technically, the first computers I knew anything about were punch cards that the principal in the 1960’s used to sort the kids into classes. The edges of the cards had holes or notches, corresponding to today’s X and O, and one stuck an awl through so that only the holes [...]
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    Posted: October 13, 2009, 11:03am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • PERSEPOLIS: A Review

    Number of comments: 4
    Last night’s movie was “Persepolis.” It’s a cartoon. That is, the images are drawn rather than photographed with actors. The story is simple but subversive. A little girl growing up in Tehran (once called “Persepolis” -- which rather echoes Persephone, that daughter snatched to the underground by the god of [...]
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    Posted: October 12, 2009, 11:56am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • C'EST VRAI? BELL ON VOLLMANN

    Number of comments: 0
    Madison Smartt Bell’s book “Narrative Design: Working with Imagination, Craft and Form” with the cover showing a man writing with his pen connected to an IV bag of ink, impressed me -- and a lot of others -- deeply. (I blogged about the book on January, 2006.) So when I [...]
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    Posted: October 11, 2009, 11:54am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • WANNA SEE A TRANSFORMER FIRE?

    Number of comments: 0
    Want to see a transformer fire? Go to:

    http://www.metacafe.com/watch/39058/transformer_fire_video/

    Until I saw this, I had thought of a transformer fire in terms of an electrical fire, a dancing sheet of blue light maybe. I thought transformers were surrounded with cyclone fence and barbed wire to keep people from [...]
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    Posted: October 10, 2009, 10:22am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • POWER OUTAGE FOLLOW-UP

    Number of comments: 0
    This situation in Valier is this - The Valier Substation (which is on the Williams road) the transformer in that sob [not the usual meaning of S.O.B.!] burned up.

    It is a major type transformer that utilities do not carry in inventory. Causing equipment poles and special type [...]
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    Posted: October 09, 2009, 12:45pm EDT
    by prairie mary

  • ALL THE NEWS FIT TO PRINT

    Number of comments: 0
    My first act every morning -- after I check my email -- is to read the Great Falls Tribune except for the sports section. I only glance at classifieds except during the Russell Auction week where there is a lot of art for sale. (I don’t buy/sell. I just like [...]
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    Posted: October 09, 2009, 10:26am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • CAR CRASH

    Number of comments: 0
    I had been thinking that I should trot across the alley to see how Wayne, Rose’s widower, and Eli, his “guest,” were getting along. I did NOT want to babysit them or even make a daily trek to get Wayne’s britches on as I did when Rose was dying of [...]
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    Posted: October 08, 2009, 10:02am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • INFRASTRUCTURE, INFRASTRUCTURE, INFRASTRUCTURE!

    Number of comments: 1
    They say the most important thing about real estate is “location, location, location,” but if you are relocating to a small town, my advice is “infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure.” Real estate people sell lot-by-lot and try to direct your attention way from such an un-sexy and global issue as “infrastructure.”
    [...]
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    Posted: October 07, 2009, 10:32am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • MERCILESS AUTUMN

    Number of comments: 1
    When I got up in the night at 3AM, as I often do, only not exactly at the same hour every night, the floors were strewn with squares and trapezoids of silverplate. The moon was full, as big as if seen through a telephoto lens. In the Sixties an artist [...]
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    Posted: October 06, 2009, 10:16am EDT
    by prairie mary

  • CHILDREN & WEALTH

    Number of comments: 1
    With very little effort but consciously and voluntarily, I’ve managed to avoid acquiring either wealth or children. However, I’ve paid attention to those factors in other lives.

    This morning when I sat down to the read the paper, I noticed that more than half of the stories were [...]
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    Posted: October 05, 2009, 11:43am EDT
    by prairie mary
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