Street Librarian

Chris Dodge Utne Reader

To reach a desired location, one must sometimes travel in the opposite direction.

For the past six years Street Librarian has focused on media that matter, small-circulation periodicals, and independent presses deserving wider attention. In an age of info glut and wisdom dearth, the column has highlighted publications whose creators are motivated by passion for ideas instead of profit. At its best, that's what this magazine does: presents diverse voices and views, not necessarily popular ones, and lets readers think for themselves.

This last column will be different. It's both good-bye-I'm no longer the Utne Reader librarian-and hello from a new place, with assertions, questions, and observations from a higher altitude.

The news, in brief: I've moved from Minnesota to northwest Montana with my partner, Martha. After a lifetime within walking distance of the Mississippi River, I now watch the sun appear and disappear over mountains. Here I've touched a glacier, seen black bear and coyote, picked and eaten wild huckleberries. Here too I've learned where to buy tempeh and miso, started an online publication called Thoreau Today, and hung up a shingle advertising my services as writer, editor, indexer, proofreader, and fortune-teller. Who knows what the future will bring? For now, I aspire to pay attention.

We live on the edge of heaven and hell. Here, that's just within the borders of boomtown Kalispell, on the perimeter of a new subdivision where streets are named for venture capitalists. On the edge of town, where the sprawl meets the wheat, one can hear the grass sing. Killdeer, kestrels, and kingbirds patrol the fields. Overhead, spectacular and ever-changing clouds appear. Where the valley meets the sky, Lombardy poplars rise.

The Flathead Valley is a land of extremes. Daytime air temperatures in August may exceed 100 degrees and drop the same night into the 40s. Humans coexist with grizzlies. Mobile homes abut million-dollar mansions. In this third least densely populated state, Flathead County's human population has grown more than 10 percent since 2000. Through Kalispell's center runs a sane Main Street surrounded by tree-shaded neighborhoods, but beyond that lie more big-box retail stores than I can imagine a town of 18,000 supporting.

We've moved here. We're part of the problem. How many more farms can be turned into parking lots before this place becomes unlivable? Can humans make a place better? Why can't we leave wonderful places alone?

The very name 'Kalispell' suggests an invocation from the Hindu goddess of darkness Kali, a friend in New York alerts us. For now we leave our windows open and unlocked, aspire to make sense of local 'property rights' debates that rage like forest fires, and have joined Citizens for a Better Flathead, an organization devoted to checking unexamined, uncontrolled growth. In Kalispell no one stares at a man on Main Street with a rifle on his shoulder, except us newcomers, perhaps. The editor of the Daily Inter Lake shills for George W. Bush. We haul our own trash.

Outside my window the jagged tops of the Swan Range appear blue, a few miles away. Up close they look otherwise, green, white, violet, yellow, scarlet, and pink with blossoms. Adjacent to these wild gardens, fields of snow linger, even in August. Climbing here, at a certain elevation near and above the tree line, human matters recede in importance. Here dwell higher gods, ones with no pity, bringers of lightning, fire, and avalanche. The gentle curves seen from a distance are actually sharp angles.

I'm grateful to begin to know such a grand, majestic, stark, and possibly unforgiving place. Ravens live here, thank gawd. Mountain bluebirds, too. Every place is a source of something, but these wise rocks signal an even earlier, more primordial start. Just beyond them lies our home.

What have I been reading here in Montana, besides the clouds and the Daily Inter Lake? Guidebooks, mostly, to aid in differentiation of species-of lousewort, lupine, penstemon, and paintbrush-and to remind me that the fringed white flowers I saw yesterday are called fringed grass-of-Parnassus (Parnassia fimbriata). I've also been reading real estate ads (an exercise in reading between the lines); Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid; Tim O'Brien's novel Going After Cacciato; the diaries of Norton Pearl, who was a ranger at Glacier National Park in 1912 and 1913; and Kelseya, the newsletter of the Montana Native Plant Society.

Although this is the final Street Librarian column, a look at this issue's masthead will show that I'm staying involved as a contributing editor. I will continue to write for the magazine, but I'm happy to turn over Utne librarian duties to Danielle Maestretti. Watch for a successor to Street Librarian in a future issue of Utne Reader. Meanwhile, check out Utne.com for From the Stacks, a weekly review of what's new and most cogent from the independent press.

Further Reading

Three more recommendations:

The Road-RIPorter is the quarterly publication of Missoula-based Wildlands CPR, an organization working to prevent 'off-road vehicle abuse of public lands' and promoting 'wildland restoration, road removal, and the prevention of wildland road construction.' The Spring 2006 issue reports on the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act that allows federal agencies to charge de facto entrance fees to enter public land, looks with a skeptical eye at road-building in Alaska, and summarizes scientific literature on 'off-road vehicle emissions and their effects on human health.' The organizers of Wildlands CPR seem upfront about their agenda, but how does that jibe with a name change from Wildlands Center for Preventing Roads? $30 membership from Box 7516, Missoula, MT 59807; www.wildlandscpr.org.

Anders Nilsen's Monologues for the Coming Plague, just published by Fantagraphics, is a strange, wonderful, funny book of captioned drawings compiled from two of Nilsen's sketchbooks. Reading it is like watching an absurdist stand-up comic testing punch lines. Get inside the heads of birds being fed by a woman, a man talking with a dog about getting a job, a man in prison for killing the Buddha, and a semiotician whose head appears as a dark scribble and who asserts, 'There are enormous boulders of lint that rumble through the wilderness now and then, crushing everything in their path.' Each page compels one to the next, even while it says 'Stop! Think about this!' or evokes laughter. Brilliant, sweet, and possibly demented.

Jim Lowe's zine, Time Is the Problem, seems to have been cobbled together by an introspective teenager. Handwritten using capital letters, its 32 photocopied pages look a little messy, but don't be fooled. This zine is the work of a mature mind. In three previous issues Lowe presented anecdotes about coincidence, posed deep questions, and examined paradox and meanings. In his new issue (#4) Lowe focuses on fan letters he's written throughout his life and surprising developments that ensued. A boyhood query to 'Information, Department of Justice' drew a response from J. Edgar Hoover himself, but failed to dampen Lowe's inquisitive nature. A letter to Brazilian pianist Bernardo Segall opened a door to weekly music lessons. A note to English author Lucy Boston (whose autobiography is titled Perverse and Foolish) led to a 10-day visit with Boston and to multiple friendships. This zine should come labeled with the warning Lowe posted along his driveway, from a British traffic sign: 'Caution: Altered Priorities Ahead.' $3/issue from Box 152, Elizaville, NY 12523.