Bozeman News

Western Book Roundup

Helena-raised Kevin Connolly is on the road talking about his new memoir, Double Take.  He’ll visit Bozeman today (Country Bookshelf, 7 p.m.), and he’ll be in Helena on October 28 (Montana Book Company, 7 p.m.), and in Missoula on October 29 (Fact & Fiction, 7 p.m.). 

The 24-year-old Connolly was born without legs, but according to his bio on his publisher’s website, he “was otherwise a healthy baby and grew up like any other Montana kid; getting dirty, running in the woods, and getting dirty some more.”

Connolly began taking photographs four years ago, traveling around the world on a skateboard and “documenting the reactions” people had to him.  The photos in this series became ”The Rolling Exhibition,” which Connolly’s website describes as: 31 Cities, 32,000 photos, one stare.” Double Take is getting great reviews; Kirkus Reviews described it as “A courageous, immensely rewarding chronicle expressed in arresting words and pictures.” Visit Connolly’s website for an entertaining trailer about his experience reading an ebook on an over-sized PC.

Also in the Roundup: A Utah State senior wins the national Norman Mailer Award for nonfiction, two forthcoming regional novels, and David Sax finds some good Jewish delis in the Rockies.

Wolf Pelts Piling Up

As Montana’s wolf hunt wags on, and so does the one in neighboring Idaho, it’s interesting to note what’s come to pass—and what hasn’t. Here are a few factoids to chew on:

--More than 70 wolves have been killed in Idaho, where hunters are allowed to bag 220 wolves total.

--Twenty three wolves have been shot during Montana’s wolf hunting season, 11 of them this past weekend alone, according to the Great Falls Tribune. The state quota is 75.

--Wolf hunting has already been shut down in the southern section of the Montana, just outside Yellowstone National Park, because the 12-wolf quota there has been met.

--Before the start of the hunts this fall, wildlife officials in both Montana and Idaho predicted that shooting a wolf or even seeing one would be tough. Chin scratching has now ensued.

--Twenty three wolves have been killed during Montana’s wolf hunting season, 11 of them this past weekend alone, according to the Great Falls Tribune. The state quota is 75.

--Wolf hunting has already been shut down in the southern section of the Montana, outside Yellowstone National Park, because the 12-wolf quota there has been met.

New West Book Review

Twisted Tree
by Kent Meyers
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 289 pages, $24

Kent Meyers’ haunting new novel, Twisted Tree, opens with an invented quote from a police officer speaking in a 2003 article in the fictional Spokane Plain Dealer, entitled “Is There an I-90 Killer?”: “We believe it’s the same man.  Both victims were female, extremely thin.” On the next page Meyers begins his complicated narrative with the first-person voice of a serial killer, a man who targets anorexic women along I-90, kidnaps, rapes, and kills them, and breaks their bones, although as one character chillingly observes, nobody knows in exactly what order he carries out those vile acts.  He researches his victims on pro-anorexia sites on the Internet, and as Twisted Tree opens, he discovers his target, Hayley Jo Zimmerman, or HayJay, at the store where he knows she works in the Rushmore Mall in Rapid City, South Dakota, and entices her into leaving with him.

Meyers brings the chapter to the moment where Hayley Jo realizes what her fate will be, then he leaves her, plunging the reader into the thoughts of the supermarket checkout clerk in Hayley Jo’s hometown of Twisted Tree, South Dakota.  The clerk, Elise Thompson, spent some time as a missionary in South America, and vaguely knew Hayley Jo, as did everyone in this small town.  The book carries on like this, jumping from one character’s first-person narrative or third-person perspective to the next, moving back and forth in time, offering up many sharp, moving passages, such as the story of a poor Native American boy’s brief triumph as an elementary school marble champion.  In this way Meyers fashions a portrait of the town, filled with the large and small tragedies, the frustrated hopes and the minor triumphs of its people.  Meyers brilliantly displays the abuse, the secret loves, and private dreams that form the hidden motivations of this community.

MICROBREW MONTANA

For craft beer lovers, Bozeman was rocking Friday night, October 23, when about 900 people crowded into exhibition buildings at the Gallatin County Fairgrounds for the first-ever Octoberfest sponsored by the Montana Brewer’s Association (MBA).

All seventeen brewery members of the organization were on hand featuring their favorite brews, 54 choices in all, and since I was among the 900, I can testify to the fact that the crowd loved every minute--and every ounce--of it.

Health Care

In Whitefish, Montana, the average yearly cost of taking care of a Medicare patient over a three-year period ending in 2006 was $3,950.

Across the country in the Florida Panhandle town of Graceville, the cost of tending a Medicare patient during the same time was nearly $15,500.

People in Graceville are poorer than people in Whitefish, it’s true. But the difference in cost of caring for a Medicare patient in these two towns is astounding — more than four times more expensive in one rural Florida hospital than in one town in rural Montana.

The map above shows the wide range of costs in caring for Medicare patients among 2,990 rural and exurban hospital service areas. The map, the first of its kind, is based on a remarkable set of data collected by researchers at the Dartmouth Medical School. Doctors and economists there take a sample of Medicare costs from every hospital. They account for differences in race, sex and age from place to place, but not income. What they have discovered are large differences in medical costs from one part of America to another.

Car Talk is Out, Wait Wait is In!

This just in: Montana Public Radio is switching its schedule to offer extra news in the morning and new shows—while booting some old ones.

Starting November 2, the morning news on MTPR will run until 9 a.m., complete with NPR’s “Morning Edition” and two new additions, “Marketplace Morning Report” and an expanded “Montana Morning News.” The latter will feature segments from Missoula anchor Edward O’Brien and reporters Emilie Ritter in Helena, Katrin Frye in the Flathead Valley, and Kevin Maki in the Bitterroot Valley, according to a press release from the University of Montana.

The changes were made after two years of building the regional news team and gathering feedback about what listeners wanted most, the announcement said. MTPR officials specifically tried to satisfying two key camps—classical music lovers and newshounds—by offering more news in the morning and three to six hours of classical music programming each day, according to the press release. “Morning Classics” will now start later in the morning, airing from 9 to 11 a.m.

From the Flathead Beacon

A highway dedication last week near Glacier Park International Airport called to memory a tragic anomaly in which three Montana Highway Patrol troopers died on Flathead County roads in an 18-month span. Before that span, between October of 2007 and March of 2009, only four troopers in state history had died in the line of duty.

Two stretches of U.S. Highway 2 were dedicated to David Graham and Evan Schneider, and one stretch of U.S. Highway 93 near Somers was dedicated to Mike Haynes. But the ceremony also served as a reminder of something that’s much more of a reality than an anomaly: Rural roads still account for the majority of highway fatalities in the United States, despite the fact that more traffic and more crashes are found on urban roadways.

A report released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows that, while overall highway fatalities continued to decline in 2008, more than half of highway deaths occur on rural roads even as states seek to remedy this trend. In 2008, according to the report, 56 percent of fatalities were on rural roads.

WASHINGTON TO THE RESCUE?

Unnoticed by many, two members of Congress from Washington have decided it’s about time to do something to resolve the seemingly endless debate over the future of our last roadless lands.

Senator Maria Cantwell and Representative Jay Inslee, both Democrats, have re-introduced the National Forest Roadless Area Conservation Act (S.1738, H.R. 3563) to codify the Clinton-era Roadless Rule that has been on a legal roller coaster for the past nine years.

GUEST COMMENTARY

President Obama isn’t the first American President to win the Nobel Peace Prize.  The first President, as well as the first American, to receive that coveted honor was a one-time member of the Montana Stock Grower’s Association. Theodore Roosevelt was also the first and only future President to win the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Roosevelt was awarded the peace prize for successfully mediating the end to the bloody Russo–Japanese War. He received the Medal of Honor for leading his Rough Rider’s in their hell-for-leather assault on San Juan Hill.

In my opinion Theodore Roosevelt (he disliked the moniker “Teddy”) was the most remarkable American who ever lived.  His portrait has been on my office wall for three decades. I have over 60 volumes by him or about him.

Western Book Roundup

This year’s Montana Festival of the Book, which begins Thursday, has an incredible lineup scheduled.  The October 23 reading with humorist David Sedaris is sold out, but there’s so much else going on that nobody who missed out on tickets for that event should go home with an empty brain. 

On Thursday, October 22, four renowned crime novelists will participate in the panel discussion ”The Last Good Kiss: An Appreciation of James Crumley.” Michael Koepf will interview Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Laura Lippman and James Grady about “the work of Montana mystery writer James Crumley and its impact on the mystery genre and literature as a whole” (Wilma Theatre, 3 p.m.).

Many writers of some of the great books I’ve reviewed here over the past few years will offer readings, including Maile Meloy (with Dennis Lehane and Andrew Sean Greer on Thursday, October 22, Wilma Theater, 7:30 p.m.), Marianne Wiggins and Kevin Canty (with James Lee Burke, October 24, Wilma Theater, 7:30 p.m.), and Rick Bass (October 24, Holiday Inn, 11 a.m.). 

Bass and Wiggins will participate on a panel discussion called “Locating the Novel” that sounds fascinating, described in The Missoulian in this way: “Some novels are ‘high concept.’ Some authors start out with a setting, a room, a landscape. And sometimes the story begins with the sound of a voice, a character. How does the ‘initiating impulse’ affect the final product? And do some authors only hear voices while others always see visions?” (October 23, with Andrew Sean Greer, and Peter Orner, Holiday Inn, 2:30 p.m.)

The one presentation that makes me wish teleportation existed so that I could just zap myself up to Missoula is “‘The Wire,’ An Interview,” with the show’s creator David Simon, and George Pelecanos, one of the show’s co-producers and writers (Holiday Inn, October 24, 1 p.m.).

Also in the Roundup: A call for submissions to an anthology about living and working in the National Parks, Sun Valley’s Hemingway festival, a Boise man wins Esquire’s fiction contest, Denver novelist Carleen Brice shares her home with the Denver Post, and David Wroblewski kicks off his paperback tour.