February 26 marks the centenary of Grand Canyon National Park, its designation issuing from the pen of President Woodrow Wilson in 1919. Coincidentally, the Grand Canyon’s great champion, ex-president Theodore Roosevelt — who had named the canyon a national monument…
I’m intrigued by the notion that despite their futuristic ideals, liberals are obsessed with the past in nostalgic ways. On the one hand they reject days-gone-by as politically and culturally retrograde, on the other they seek the past’s simplicity in…
Wonderlandscape: Yellowstone National Park and the Evolution of an American Cultural Icon By John Clayton (Pegasus Books, 285 pages, $27.95) A common cliché used to describe the national parks is that they are being “loved to death.” The “crown jewels”…
Songwriting is the backstage, disreputable cousin of poetry. Audio poetry for the masses, if you will. Its highbrow priesthood (Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, the Gershwins) touched the transcendent. The popular guys (Lennon-McCartney, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Joni Mitchell,…
A Sportsman’s Library: 100 Essential, Engaging, Offbeat, and Occasionally Odd Fishing and Hunting Books for the Adventurous Reader By Stephen J. Bodio Foreword by Jameson Parker (Lyons Press, 256 pages, $18.95 paper) Stephen Bodio is Edmund Wilson with a shotgun….
My friend Happy Jack Feder lived in Missoula, Montana, in the early 1980s in the same neighborhood as the writer Dorothy Johnson, who lived in a small house on Dearborn Avenue. Johnson was retired from teaching by then, but had…
On an anonymous day in June I will celebrate 25 years of sobriety. On that night in 1988 I came careening down a hill in Vermont and slammed my Honda Accord into an empty parked Subaru. Dazed, but unhurt, I…
Stories from Montana’s Enduring Frontier: Exploring an Untamed LegacyBy John Clayton (The History Press, 175 Pages, $19.99 paper) Montana’s history really began when it ran out of “frontier.” That is, when growing towns and economic development began to give it a…
I saw the “Yonder Mountain String Band” (Jeff Austin, Ben Kaufmann, Adam Aijala, Dave Johnston) in Missoula recently and it was a delightful, if musically heterodox experience. I’ve been listening to both recorded and live bluegrass for years, and I…