Mark Sundeen, author of 'The Man Who Quit Money'

Try to imagine, if you can, never earning, spending, or receiving any money. How would you live? Where would you live? What would you eat and wear? How would you stay warm in the winter?
 
The Man Who Quit Money is an account of how one man, Daniel Suelo, learned to live, sanely and happily, without earning, receiving, or spending a single cent. Suelo doesn't pay taxes, or accept food stamps or welfare. He lives in caves in the Utah canyon lands, forages wild foods and gourmet discards. He no longer even carries an I.D. Yet he manages to amply fulfill not only the basic human needs -- for shelter, food, and warmth -- but, to an enviable degree, the universal desires for companionship, purpose, and spiritual engagement.

In retracing the surprising path and guiding philosophy that led Suelo into this way of life, Mark Sundeen raises provocative and riveting questions about the decisions we all make, by default or by design, about how we live-and how we might live better.

Find out more 'The Man Who Quit Money' and Mark Sundeen and listen to this program on the radio or online.

• Thursday, March 1 at 7:30 p.m. on Montana Public Radio
• Thursday, March 1 at 6:30 p.m. on Yellowstone Public Radio
• Online, anytime at MTPR.org
• Via the MTPR podcast

Monday Poems: "Water Picture" -- by May Swenson

In the pond in the park 
all things are doubled:
Long buildings hang and 
wriggle gently. Chimneys 
are bent legs bouncing 
on clouds below. A flag 
wags like a fishhook 
down there in the sky.

The arched stone bridge 
is an eye, with underlid 
in the water. In its lens 
dip crinkled heads with hats 
that don't fall off. Dogs go by, 
barking on their backs. 
A baby, taken to feed the 
ducks, dangles upside-down, 
a pink balloon for a buoy.

Treetops deploy a haze of 
cherry bloom for roots, 
where birds coast belly-up 
in the glass bowl of a hill; 
from its bottom a bunch 
of peanut-munching children 
is suspended by their 
sneakers, waveringly.

A swan, with twin necks 
forming the figure 3, 
steers between two dimpled 
towers doubled. Fondly 
hissing, she kisses herself, 
and all the scene is troubled:
water-windows splinter, 
tree-limbs tangle, the bridge 
folds like a fan.

*     *     *    *     *

May Swenson, born in Logan, Utah, is considered by some critics to be one of the most important poets of the 20th century. Her work has been recognized with fellowships from the Guggenheim, Ford, Rockefeller, and MacArthur Foundations, as well as a National Endowment for the Arts grant. She received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Bollingen Prize from Yale University, and an Award in Literature from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. 

Swenson produced a dozen books of poetry over the course of her career, which spanned five decades. They include Another Animal (1954), To Mix with Time: New and Selected Poems (1963), Iconographs (1970), and Nature: Poems Old and New (2000). She taught poetry at Bryn Mawr, the University of North Carolina, the University of California at Riverside, Purdue University and Utah State University. And she served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1980 until her death in 1989.

A review of Richard S. Wheeler's novel, 'The Richest Hill On Earth'

A review by Chérie Newman, producer of The Write Question, originally published in the Billings Gazette.

In the spring of 1892, an ambitious newspaperman looked through the grimy window of a passenger train as it arrived in Butte. Thick "sulphurous smoke" stung his eyes when he stepped outside and looked around. But John Fellowes Hall was not in Butte for the scenery. He didn't care that "the russet hill was burdened with a cancerous mélange of buildings, cramped into gulches, teetering on slopes, while Butte, as far as the eye could see through the jaundiced smoke, seemed to seethe."
This was a place to make money, to advance his career, and to form an alliance with one of the wealthiest men in American: William Andrews Clark. And indeed, in Richard S. Wheeler's novel "The Richest Hill on Earth," Clark hires Hall to edit his newspaper, the Butte Mineral. From there, however, Hall's plan to get rich and make a name for himself fizzles, although his journey into obscurity turns out to be more exciting than he could have imagined.

Hall's career is ground up in the nefarious politics and shenanigans associated with the battle between the Copper Kings: Clark, Marcus Daly, and F. Augustus Heinze. But Hall was only one of the tens of thousands who were exploited, often to their deaths, by this greedy triumvirate. Many of Wheeler's characters endure brutal weather, squalid living conditions and the drudgery of work in unsafe mines. That people would stay in such an unappealing place and allow themselves to be exploited seems proof that money has an irrational power over otherwise rational human beings.

In spite of the undertaker's brisk rate of business, the population grew rapidly as people from around the world, especially Ireland, poured in. By the early 1900s, Butte was home to around 100,000 immigrants, all hoping for a better life. What they endured is so much the stuff of legend that after more than a century, the story still fascinates us.

Wheeler has done his homework. The novel includes sensational historical events and larger-than-life people, the men who made headlines at the turn of the last century. But "The Richest Hill on Earth" is also populated by well-rounded fictional characters, people who are imbued with the right amount of desperation, vice and stamina. A widow with children to support refuses to allow a union boss to marry her off to the highest bidder. A mortician, one of the few with the means to escape, squanders his ample income on drugs and prostitutes. A reluctant psychic takes donations in order to feed herself, although she'd rather not "see" the future.

This is the story of what happens when the disparity between the 1% and everyone else reaches outrageous proportions. It's a story about monumental greed and the massive environmental exploitation that rendered a place nearly uninhabitable. It's a story that's been told many times in history books and novels. But, in the hands of six-time Spur Award winner Wheeler, a well-worn bit of Montana's history has become an entertaining tale of human resilience, adaptability, and hope.

Sheryl Noethe, Montana's Poet Laureate

Montana's last Poet Laureate, Henry Real Bird, rode a horse across the Hi-Line, talking to people and handing out books of his poetry.

But Sheryl Noethe, the current Poet Laureate, has a different mode of transportation. "I decided that I would be the Greyhound Bus Poet Laureate." And she sits in the back of the buses, "with the fun guys," exactly where her husband told her not to sit.

During this week's program, Noethe will read several new poems she wrote about people on buses, which were published in issue #10 of the Whitefish Review. Also published in that issue, the transcript of a conversation between Noethe, David Allen Cates, and two WR editors.

Find out more about Sheryl Noethe and her poetry and listen to the program on the radio or online.

• Thursday, February 23 at 7:30 p.m. on Montana Public Radio
• Thursday, February 23 at 6:30 p.m. on Yellowstone Public Radio
• Online, anytime at MTPR.org
• Via the MTPR podcast

Monday Poems: "Underpants" -- by Prageeta Sharma

My sweetie's underpants have argyles on them and grip his thighs.
O his European underpants with pastel colors,
how they illustrate his unassuming ways.
His secrets are feasts and traumas
and he is sometimes the loneliest under blankets.
His underpants represent the unconscious,
innocent, nervy, and true.
I can't help feeling eager.
O how he is an old man in his underpants.
When he is sleeping he has the softness of a child,
unquestioning and quietly fitful;
I kiss his head and wings,
for he in his underpants travels like a Griffin
to himself, a fabled monster of certain
sadness, when he sleeps it all goes inward,
in his lion and eagle.


*     *     *     *     *



Prageeta Sharma is the author of three collections of poetry—Infamous Landscapes (2007); Bliss to Fill (2000); and The Opening Question (2004), winner of the 2004 Fence Modern Poets Prize, in which the above poem appears. 


Sharma is the recipient of the 2010 Howard Foundation Grant and is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Montana in Missoula.

David Shapiro and Ice Age Cataclysm!

In Terra Tempo: Ice Age Cataclysm!, a graphic novel for young readers, Ari, Jenna, and Caleb unlock the secret of time travel and journey back 15,000 years to witness the great Missoula Floods, the largest floods to have ever washed over the face of the earth.

This daring trio encounters a charging short-faced bear, giant mammoths, and saber-toothed cats. They tour changing landscapes from the back of the mythic Thunderbird and work together to survive the dangers of the Ice Age Cataclysm!

During this week's program, TWQ producer Chérie Newman talks with David Shapiro about this graphic novel, which is the first in a series titled Terra Tempo, and about his passion for making scientific information fun for kids. He also imitates the roar of a short-faced bear while reading from the book.

Hear the program Thursday evening at 6:30 (YPRadio.org) or 7:30 (MTPR.org), or listen online, anytime.

Find out more about David Shapiro and his creative partners, Erica Melville and Christopher Herndon.

Monday Poems: "True Love" -- by Barry Gifford

Your sickness made me
a little sick, it's
true—-I still
feel it
     Mayakovsky got down
          on his knees
     and declared
               his love
to his last 
          mistress
        a few hours after
           he'd met her
Remember me 
at the hotel
            in Paris,
         on my knees
            in the lift?
We're all the same
men of too much passion
and a little talent—-
    some a little more
                  than others
    We fool ourselves
       into thinking
                  we're strong
           then complain
      the rest of our lives
          crippled by
            the consequences

*     *     *     *     *

Barry Gifford is a novelist, librettist, screenwriter and poet who lives in the San Francisco Bay area. His work has been translated into twenty-eight languages and has received awards from the PEN Center, the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Library Association, the Writers Guild of America, and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. His novel Wild at Heart was made into a film by David Lynch; the film won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990. 
His novels include The Phantom Father, named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; and Wyoming, named a Los Angeles Times Novel of the Year. His most recent poetry collection, Imagining Paradise, comes out in 2012. 

Bonnie Nadzam, author of LAMB

Lamb traces the self-discovery of David Lamb, a narcissistic middle aged man with a tendency toward dishonesty, in the weeks following the disintegration of his marriage and the death of his father. Hoping to regain some faith in his own goodness, he turns his attention to Tommie, an awkward and unpopular eleven-year-old girl. Lamb is convinced that he can help her avoid a destiny of apathy and emptiness, and even comes to believe that his devotion to Tommie is in her best interest. But when Lamb decides to abduct a willing Tommie for a road trip from Chicago to the Rockies, planning to initiate her into the beauty of the mountain wilderness, they are both shaken in ways neither of them expects.

This novel explores the dynamics of love and dependency that challenge the boundaries between adolescence and adulthood, confronts preconceived notions about conventional morality, and exposes mankind’s eroded relationship with nature.

During this week's program Bonnie Nadzam talks about reactions to her award-winning novel, and reads from the book.

Find out more about Bonnie Nadzam and listen to the program on the radio or online:

• Thursday, February 2 at 7:30 p.m. on Montana Public Radio
• Thursday, February 2 at 6:30 p.m. on Yellowstone Public Radio
• Online, anytime at MTPR.org
• Via the MTPR podcast

All Indians Do Not Live In Casinos (or teepees), by Catherine C. Robbins

A book review by Cherie Newman published in the February 06, 2012 issue of High Country News

 

All Indians Do Not Live In Teepees (or Casinos)
Catherine C. Robbins
408 pages, softcover: $26.95.
University of Nebraska Press, 2011.

"This is a personal book," Catherine C. Robbins writes in the preface to All Indians Do Not Live In Teepees (or Casinos), a collection of her journalistic essays. Robbins is not Indian, but she is also "not an Indian wannabe," she says, and is "neither 'going native' nor finding salvation in Indian life." Rather, her goal is to document the mistreatment of American Indians -- something she often witnessed during 25 years as a journalist -- while revealing how contemporary Natives are generating new energy and vision from their turbulent past. Robbins does more than simply report facts; she provides cultural commentary through her personal experiences, and infuses present-day events with well-researched historical context.

Robbins focuses largely on the tribes based in her home territory, the Southwestern United States. She begins with a detailed account of an eight-year repatriation process that ended in 1999, when Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology returned 2,000 ancestral remains and artifacts to the Jemez/Pecos Pueblo in New Mexico. According to Robbins, that repatriation "united and strengthened" the Pueblo people and inspired other tribes to make formal requests for the return of artifacts. Another chapter chronicles the brouhaha over a zoo on the Navajo Reservation. Some tribal members viewed caging wild animals as a violation of their sacred relationship with nature, while others envisioned the zoo as a teaching facility for students. "Tribal members," Robbins writes, "debate about the proper proportion of traditional to modern as noisily as classical philosophers in Athens might have argued their own issues."

No single book can do more than scratch the surface of the complex contemporary lives of Native peoples. But Robbins has helpfully provided nearly 60 pages of detailed notes, along with  useful lists of books, places and websites -- a plethora of resources readily available to anyone willing to look beyond the popular culture's stereotypes of American Indians.

Monday Poems: "Meriwether and the Magpie" -- by Linda Bierds

Did he know the one as sorrow, the one
he held, gun-shot fallen, its
remarkable long tale . . . beautifully variegated?

For the viewer, fate’s in the numbers legend says:
One magpie for sorrow, two for mirth,
three for a wedding, four for a birth . . .

And wedded in their way they were—Lewis, the bird—
their fragile union finalized with a narrow ring
of yellowish black just at the rim of the bird’s dim eye.

September. Morning. A breeze
through the aspens, fine. (Five for silver, six for gold . . .)
Two centuries still, until language could cup,

in the binary digits of zero and one, all
it could name. And so he cupped the bird,
and framed in script its glossy frame:

the belly is of a beatifull white . . . the wings . . .
party coloured . . . changeable . . . sometimes presenting as . . .
orange yellow to different exposures of light.

Time still, until sorrow’s variegated wing
would bisect the land, would sever from the whole
each singular figure. Here was wonder,

chipped from the western sky, its legs and taloned toes,
black and imbricated, the shifting tint of its shape,
parti-colored, changeable. (Seven for a secret not to be told.)

The wings have nineteen feathers . . . it’s usual food
is flesh . . . beautifull . . . yellow . . . a redish indigo blue . . .
at this season single as the halks.

September, the little rhyme fluttering above him,
dragging in from the far Atlantic its swift, domestic echo.
Did he wonder, then, why the story closed so suddenly?

(Eight for heaven, nine for hell, and ten
for the devil’s own self.) Why abundance alone
could stop the heart’s progression?

Morning. Nine’s beak, eight’s weightless wings.
Then ten, heartless with promise, sets down
on a dipping branch, the click of its digits—

black and imbricated—beginning
the cycle again: the one and then the nothing
from which the one sets forth. 

*     *     *     *     *

Linda Bierds, born in Anchorage, Alaska, has taught English and writing at the University of Washington since 1989. She has received several Pushcart Prizes, as well as grants and awards from the Seattle Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Poetry Society of America, and the MacArthur Foundation.

She has published several books of poetry, including First Hand (2005), The Seconds (2001), The Profile Makers (1997), and Flight (2008), in which the above poem appears. She lives on Bainbridge Island in Washington state. 

Fred Haefele's EXTREMOPHILIA

The book's entire title is Extremeophilia: River Rats, Timber Tramps, Biker Trash, and Realtors: New and Selected Writings. It's a collection of 17 essays written by Fred Haefele during the past 20 years. From working as a timber faller and a tree doctor to profiling environmental protestors and parsing through his own preoccupations with Ken Kesey, Haefele has followed his curiosity into the most extraordinary corners of the place he’s chosen to call home. This anthology of seventeen pieces of nonfiction gives us access not only to one of our most talented writers, it shows us the unique emotional and social topography of a region. It’s an essential addition to any western bookshelf.

During this week's program Fred Haefele talks about why he writes nonfiction (after starting out in fiction) and reads from "Jesus Just Got Evel."

Find out more about Fred Haefele and listen to the program on the radio or online:

• Thursday, February 2 at 7:30 p.m. on Montana Public Radio
• Thursday, February 2 at 6:30 p.m. on Yellowstone Public Radio
• Online, anytime at MTPR.org
• Via the MTPR podcast