Monday, October 8, 2018

Flathead Lake, Montana -- Nothing About The Bakken -- October 8, 2018

Wow, I get tired of misuse of statistics.

From the article that went viral today regarding the homeless in Portland:
In Portland, the police oversight agency is reviewing how officers interact with homeless people - many suffering from drug addiction and mental health issues - after a report suggested they accounted for 52% of the arrests recorded last year, despite being a tiny fraction of the local population of some 640,000.
Here's another statistic regarding crime:
  • Almost 100% of bank robberies occur in or near banks.
And:
  • A disproportionate number of those in US prisons are criminals.
Homeless in Portland, and sleepless in Seattle.

************************************
Nirvana

Montana.

Flathead Lake.

Autumn. Sun setting early. Cozy, warm kitchen table.

Time to read.

The Last Best Place: A Montana Anthology, edited by William Kittredge and Annick Smith, c. 1998, University of Washington Press, Seattle and London
1,143 pages (does not include a dozen pages of bibliography at the end)

Contents
  • Section 1: Native American Stories and Myths
  • Section 2: Journals of Exploration
  • Section 3: Stories of Early Pioneers and Indians
  • Section 4: Writings About Butte
  • Section 5: Remembering the Agricultural Frontier
  • Section 6: Literature of Modern Montana
  • Section 7: Contemporary Fiction
  • Section 8: Contemporary Poetry
Hundreds of authors and poets

One example: George Bird Grinnell, p. 49
  • 1849 - 1938
  • Zoologist, anthropologist, and historian of the American West
  • trained at Yale
  • first expedition out west: 1870
  • returned with Custer's expedition to the Black Hills in 1874
  • explored the Yellowstone in 1875
  • "Yellowtop-to-Head-Woman" was brought to Grinnell by John J. White, Jr. -- Grinnell said "it was a sacred story and must not be told except at night, and a prayer made for forgiveness for having told it."
Authors and poets featured in the anthology: Native Americans; native Montanans; from many different states in the US; a very few from outside the US; but what surprised me were all the authors and poets from Iowa:
  • Con Price, p. 430: born in Iowa in 1869
  • L. A. Huffman, p. 433: born in Iowa in 1854
  • Joseph Kinsey Howard, p. 524: born in Iowa in 1906
  • Jason Bolles, p. 673: born in Denison, Iowa, in 1900
  • Wallace Stegner, p. 675: born in Iowa in 1909
  • Dorothy M. Johnson, p. 719: born in McGrrgor, Iowa, in 1905
  • Norman MacLean, p. 765: born in Iowa, in 1902
  • James Crumly, p. 822: born in Texas in 1939; MFA from University of Iowa
  • Gary Holthaus, p. 1092: born in Iowa in 1932
************************************

Come Away With Me, Norah Jones

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.