GRASS ROOTS

In search of some other information, I serendipitously accessed some Internet info about the village of Valier. 498 people (I’ve been saying about 300 -- all I have to do to be right is wait, since the estimated decline is 5% per year. But lately we seem to be growing again in terms of houses.} 256 male, 242 female. Not many kids. 75 in high school, 85 in grade school, 29 junior high, 64 children in nearby Hutterite Colony schools. Median age: 42.7. Median household income: $30,000. Median house value: $58,600. (For comparison, I’m 67, my income is $12,000 and my house is formally assessed at $30,000. I’m an underachiever.)

A second comparison: Heart Butte, which forty years ago was hardly more than a crossroads while Valier still swelled with business, is now at 698 (339 males and 359 females). HB’s median resident age is 21.3, median household income is $20,885, and median house value is $67,500. HB is 95% American Indian (Blackfeet founders, probably a thousand years ago. It’s a very old camping spot.) while Valier is 92% white (German, English, Irish, Norwegian, and Belgian -- the founders, still only a few generations ago.) HB schools number 79 in high school, 89 in grade school and 32 in junior high.

There are a few differences that don’t show up here. The weather information at the website didn’t differentiate much between the two towns, but in Heart Butte one can’t grow corn or tomatoes while in Valier one can. Heart Butte has lots of kids, Valier has lots of grandparents. Heart Butte (altitude 4462 feet) gets slightly more snow but Valier (altitude 3805) gets slightly more wind.

There are two differences that are crucial. One is that Heart Butte’s housing stock belongs to a tribal entity rather than families. The buildings and infrastructure are owned by the housing authority and maintained by them on their schedule. In Valier the houses are individually owned. Heart Butte houses were mostly built since the 1964 flood. Valier houses are of two kinds: old, small and at least fifty or seventy-five years old, or recent modern homes, often modular. The number of people per household has got to be considerably higher in Heart Butte, but I didn’t see numbers.

This is all background to the subject of this blog, which is actually the October 11, 2006, Town of Valier council meeting. The focus of the entire first hour of the meeting was lawn. This community, like many midwestern Germanic communities, is absolutely obsessed with the importance of green, manicured lawns as an indicator of respectability, prosperity, and virtue. The three characteristics are interwoven in the minds of the home-raised Valierian. When a barking dog problem was discussed later, the mayor said, “These people [complainants] have such a nice house and maintain it so well -- they shouldn’t have to suffer from a barking dog.” This council includes two young businessmen, one experienced and competent local older woman, the mayor, and an immigrant, one of the rich people who have migrated to this area from the East Coast. The rich person didn’t come randomly but because her husband has the contract to build a huge water pipeline from Glacier Park across the Blackfeet Reservation to the parched highline towns. They live in Valier rather than on the rez.

Because the Blackfeet Reservation lies athwart the run-off decline from Rocky Mountains to High Line wheatlands, the two quite different political entities are entwined in dilemmas. Valier’s need for lawns and irrigation run up against the pre-existing water rights of the Blackfeet. (Heart Butte cares nothing about lawns and has a stream running through town, but no lake. But it was the Blackfeet who dug most of the irrigation canals, often by hand.) In the early days “Indians” were simply ignored and powerful whites in charge of the reservation and all along the railroad ran things. The Great Northern’s tracks along the High Line depended on Marias Pass through the Rockies to reach the West Coast and formed the populated “High Line” by enticing homesteaders in the early 20th century. Projects were developed that crossed boundaries.

At the top of the reservation, weaving back and forth across the international boundary, was a system of diversions and flumes that took Milk River water to communities hundreds of miles to the east. (It is now disintegrating and the subject of many meetings.) At the bottom of the reservation was an irrigation project that began with Swift Dam, in the mountains up from Heart Butte, fed Birch Creek, and ended in Lake Frances right next to Valier. (It was Swift Dam that broke in 1964 and swept down Birch Creek, nearly eliminating Heart Butte and killing dozens of Blackfeet.)

Lake Frances is seen as a recreational money-maker and community enhancement since it contributes boating, wind-surfing, and fishing, both in summer and in winter through the ice. Valier owns a little recreation area with a campground, recently improved by the addition of piped water and electricity to each space. Other plumbing includes the Fire Hall (used for gatherings), a public bathroom (no showers) and a fish cleaning station. But actually the Lake is owned, maintained and managed by the Pondera County Irrigation and Canal Company. It is the key to the prosperity to the alfalfa and grain farmers of the area. The campground plumbing is attached to the town lines, not the lake. Same with the sewer. If I took a bucket of water from the lake for my own uses, I would be stealing it from the Canal Company.

Valier does not draw its municipal water from Lake Frances, but Conrad, the county seat a half-hour’s drive to the south, does. They own shares in the Canal Company. A Hutterite pig farm is located on a ridge across the lake and a few years ago suffered a break in its sewage lagoon which drained into the lake. (They claimed the fish were unusually big that year.) A no-grow, no-spray zone surrounds the lake, but -- as we know -- inspection and regulation are not rigorous these days. Snow run-off has been so low for the last half-dozen droughty years that the lake is low. Conrad has been left sucking mud, so it is signing on to the big water pipe project. Some say the lake level is affecting the town’s wells, which get so low in the summer that restrictions must be imposed on the users.

Over the years ten wells have been drilled for Valier: three in 1915, one in 1937, two in 1948, one in 195l, one in 1952, one in 1960, one in 1961. Only four are in active use. It appears that the 1951 and 1952 wells are the same one, now called Well #1 and yielding something like 160 gallons an hour. Sometimes only Well #1 is pumping to fill the water tower. Well #2 is the 1948 one, quite nearby #1 with an unspecified flow. Well #3 was drilled in 1961 and has a flow of 160. Well #4 was drilled in 1937 and has a flow of 25. It’s rarely used. There are private wells in the area. Two of the earliest holes have been sealed with bentonite, which is a clay material abundant around here with the characteristic of swelling when it’s wet and setting up into something like concrete when dry. (This is why there are no truly square houses or doorframes in town unless they are made of steel. They flex to match the changing contours of the land as it gets wet or dry.) The town workshops are built over the earliest wells. The first pump was a big noisy piston pump that needed to be enclosed.

One could speculate that the wells were probably drilled when the town first got plumbing before WWII, , when the town got a growth spurt after WWII, and in the last major drought -- the ill-fated Well #4 drilled in 1937. Probably there was government money then. Valier is as dependent on federal subsidies for infrastructure as Heart Butte is, and the women on the council are experienced and successful “grant-hunters,” which is probably what gets them elected. They are less interested in water and sewer than they are in niceties like curbs and sidewalks.

One of the favorite projects of the immigrant lady is trees. She has pressed us all to plant trees, including quite a few out at the “rec area” by the lake. But the water was so low and the temps were so high so long this summer that even established trees are taking a beating. Opinions about trees conflict: the appearance people love them, the infrastructure people hate them for invading and breaking up sewers.

In fact, a great deal of time was devoted to resolving a sewage problem that cost a homeowner more than $400 to dig up his sewer line. The town’s position has been that since it’s impossible to know whether blockage is in the town’s main or in the homeowners privately owned line, the homeowner should prove first that the private line is clear. Then the town will dig up and amend the main. The town’s water man asserts that most of the time the problem involves both private and public, partly because it is likely to be due to boulevard trees in the grass strip outside whatever footpath there is. The homeowner wants to be reimbursed since his private sewer line was proven to be clean. The problem in the main is fixed. The final decision, after MUCH discussion of character, bill-paying habits, probable income and other typical small town speculation, was that half the money would be paid, but NOT to the homeowner -- rather to the guy who dug up the private line! It was assumed he hadn't been paid. Loyalty to him was high, since he’s pretty much interwoven with the town’s work.

Back to that all-concerning lawn problem. At one time Valier was a thriving business hub with several large hotels. That’s in the past now, partly due to consolidation of land-owning and partly due to factors like CRP, which puts much land into fallow grass on the principle that if less grain were grown, prices would be higher. (This turned out not to be true.) An unintended consequence was that no one needed new equipment, used equipment flooded the market, and since there was no crop to harvest, people migrated south for much of the year -- emptying the cafes.

Valier knows that tourists constitute a crop. They are convinced that if the town “looks good,” tourists will stop. Therefore, when one of the last big hotels along the highway -- a decrepit fire hazard -- was reduced to rubble, the idea of building a little park came up. The Valier development committee loved the notion. The landowners would give them the land, but they couldn’t do it tax-free unless they gave it to the town. Technically, now the town owns the park but the VADC is far more emotionally involved. It’s grass, flower borders (daylilies and some kind of tough rose), and a little gazebo. Of course, a necessity for this mindset is an automatic watering system. And rigorous schedules of fertilization, weeding and mowing. I never see any tourists in it.

So for an hour the council discussed whether 3” or 4” grass was better, the comparative performance of the mowing machines and what would happen if bagging the clippings weren’t regular, etc. Somehow the town employees were supposed to mow, fertilize, pick up trash, weed the borders, etc. though the original agreement was that VADC members would do the work. The mayor was generous about the town donating costs of labor, gas, machine maintenance, dump fees, etc. because “it just makes our town look so much nicer. We’ll just work out any little problems.” She resisted putting anything in writing.

Not watering was not an option, though people get angry every time they are restricted more tightly and see the water spray. So it was agreed that “someone” would go over and turn off the automatic system if it “were raining much” or turn it on “if it’s been dry for a while.” Thus it’s no longer an automatic system. A citizen was appointed to be the liason between VADC and town. He’s an easy-going, well-liked guy whose wife is a dynamo in the VADC. I’d bet money he’ll end up doing the work. The men spent time on the performance of individual spray heads, agreeing that the wrong kind had been installed in some places. No decision on who pays for this being fixed. Or who drains the system in the fall, checks and starts it in the spring.

Which all goes to show that grass is one of the most powerful symbols of community. And when someone uses the phrase “grass roots” they are talking about money.

To be continued

COUPLE FUNNY STORIES (Animal Control)

Time for some funny stories.

My first spring as an animal control officer (1974) I was feelin’ pretty good. Along came the first really warm day and I actually managed to respond to all my complaints before 3PM, so there was time to patrol. The foreman of Laurelhurst Park, jewel of the SE side of Portland, had asked me to occasionally drive the truck through on the paved trail. The long slopes of grass and lovely reflecting pond were almost irresistible to the hippie kids and their dogs from the big once-luxurious homes now run as boarding houses. The kids floated -- no jobs, no permanent addresses, no family around -- so they were impossible to pin down with a citation and if their big dogs, their buddies, were impounded, they’d never have the money and transportation to go redeem them. So the idea was just to clear the park occasionally and remind them they weren’t supposed to be running their dogs loose.

This seemed the perfect thing to do late on a spring day with the back of the truck already full of dogs. In fact, I parked and walked, handing out dog license applications, still new and earnest enough to believe someone might actually use them. And still dumb and unaware enough that I didn’t realize these kids had been into the beer long enough to be riled up. In those days all outbursts of temper were aimed at “the man.” And I was “the man.” Soon I was surrounded by shouting young people and their barking dogs. I retreated to the truck, which now had four flat tires (not slashed -- they just let the air out) and a wrenched-off handle to the back where the dogs were. I ALWAYS kept it locked. The lock held.

In the cacaphony I radioed back to the shelter, asking for someone to bring a compressed air tank to pump my tires back up. A big fat shirtless guy with a tummy like a eight-months pregnant mother of twins leaned menacingly in the door of the truck. In Portland there was a well-known restaurant called the Ho-Ti, whose icon was a jolly big-bellied Asian figure. One rubbed his belly for good luck. I had a weird impulse to rub this guy’s sweating fat stomach.

Knowing help was on the way, I got out to talk some more. I really believed this was a loud discussion, not a riot. I scooped up a loose poodle for a hostage and petted it while I sat on the hood in English teacher mode. What I didn’t know was that one of the other animal control officers, a guy who occasionally forgot to lock the back of his truck and once lost an entire load of dogs when it was opened, had called in a “Code Zero.” That means “officer in trouble.” It means “go the limit and do it fast.”

Sirens wailed as the squad cars roared into the park. They were two-man cars, meaning that they’d been patrolling NE, a place where cops asked no questions and took action first. They began grabbing people and stuffing them into the backs of the squad cars. The crowd did not disperse. Now we were well on the way to a riot.

Then the sergeant arrived, a tall red-headed woman who eventually became the Chief of Police. All the officers dived to find their hats, which they were supposed to wear at all times but hated on hot days. In five minutes the hippies were pitched back out of the squad cars, the area was cleared, I gave the poodle back, and there I was -- four flat tires, all alone, feeling silly while my truck full of dogs howled.

It was quite a public blunder since everyone heard it on the radio, including all the citizens who monitored scanners at home. I felt much better later when I overheard Burgwin talking to someone who sneered, “What was she going to do? Walk all the dogs out to the shelter on leashes?” Burgwin said, “If she were asked to do it, she could.” I glowed. (When I thought seriously about what it would mean to put ten dogs on leashes and walk them fourteen miles, the main thing I was sure of was that the first mile would be the hardest.)

The other incident was quite private -- in fact, unofficial. I was an active member of the Unitarian church where I had gotten to know a man of considerable prestige. He was a vaguely European scientist with a connection to Reed College, a man of enormous dignity and accomplishment. One Sunday morning early he called me at home, apologetic but clearly distraught. “Something terrible is happening here. Please come at once! I don’t want officials involved.”

What was the matter? “A big police dog has killed another dog and eaten it. All that’s left now is the head and he’s out there eating THAT. It’s ghastly.”

When I got there, the “other dog” turned out to have been a deer. It was deer-hunting season and the dog had raided someone’s butchering leftovers. He was happily scarfing down neck venison. “But there are no horns!” protested the brilliant professor with no experience but urban. It was a doe. “You mean someone has killed a lady deer?” Major shock at the brutality of it.

So we set out to haze German shepherd home, driving along slowly behind it. I’d slung the head into the back of my van, but the dog was still reluctant to leave his breakfast spot. When we saw where the dog lived, I wrote up a complaint for the regular officer the next day, mostly because the scientist was terrified that if the person who owned such a meat-eating dog knew who he was, the person would somehow retaliate.

To distract him, I started a conversation about other matters and soon we were speculating on the artistic merit of Henry Moore, whose huge bronzes were abstractions, mostly of the reclining female form and mostly (to the untrained eye) big blobs with holes in them. Suddenly the scientist stopped, turned sideways to stare at me, and demanded, “How can I be having a conversation about abstract art with a ... a dog-catcher?”

Which all goes to show that people, from half-stoned hippie kids to esteemed scientists, have stubborn stereotypes about animal matters. Sometimes they are funny, sometimes a nuisance, and sometimes a real danger. Mostly people forget what is the map (the stereotype) and what is the reality of the territory so that there’s always a dissonance, always an inefficiency, in what needs to be done, because of reacting to the wrong signals.

TRUMP THE ATROCITIES

The last New York Times Book Review, the one with the review of the book about the holocaust on the front page, had an account of cruelty that I have not been able to get out of my mind. I won’t pass it on to you by giving details, but it was about a Jewish woman found in the process of giving birth -- neither mother nor infant survived. We have been asked to ponder torture in the aftermath of Abu Graib and the disclosure that US officials routinely keep adversaries in foreign countries in order to evade US laws that would make torture illegal. Bill Schultz, former UUA president ( who famously said when campaigning for the UUA head, “after this I only want to humbly serve a congregation” but who subsequently became the head of Amnesty International with a fabulous salary and an elegant penthouse condo) gave a speech at the UUA General Assembly this year that contained some very good tips for someone wanting to torture people. (No, not the fact that Lauren Bacall ran into him at a cocktail party and called him “a little man” which he is not, at least in terms of physical dimensions.) There were no insights into how to stop torture.

The African amputations horrified many so much that they no longer read the news. Suffering is advanced in political agendas of many kinds, each expressed in terms of individuals and stories, each more shocking than the next, often mixing sexual humiliation and abuse with common beatings and starvation, even in American cities. Native Americans have their holocaust stories. So do blacks and elders and out-groups of many kinds. The goal of the rhetoric in many cases is simply money: “I suffer, therefore you owe me!” “These babies suffer -- so you must allocate money for them.” And so on. We know, of course, that much of the money goes to the administration of whatever entity is pushing the agenda, not to the sufferers.

Humane societies are not immune from this strategy. One of the most productive abused animal ad campaigns showed a puppy bound and muzzled with a tin can over its nose because it was going to be eaten. The photo was from the Phillipines or Africa or some other place short of protein sources. Puppy eating is not that common in this country.

Should such images, plus stories of torture and suffering, be kept out of the media? We did that for a long time. We’ve always kept the suffering of the enemy out of our depictions of war and made the sufferings of our own people seem like heroism. Otherwise, any war becomes as unbearable as the Iraqi situation is becoming now.

But the ordinary miseries of our citizenship ought to be worth something, too, and the media often plays up stories of foster children starved, sub-teen girls forced into marriage, people living in “cardboard condos.” These are the things we agree to tax ourselves to eliminate so as to have justice and equity for all. But the money seems to evaporate.

It seems to me that we’re feeding on terrible images at the same time that we’re more callous. Maybe we’re splitting between those who face horrors and those who deny them so they can go on with their lives without having to think about it -- or give up any of their money. It seems to me that the real and best use of suffering is the deepening of human grief and empathy -- to look and forgive without turning way, even if it is necessary to weep. I despise “teddy bear” kindness that is willing to put a $10 stuffed toy on a tree for a child beaten to death but not give $10 to intervention. On the other hand, a tree full of teddy bears can be a powerful symbol if it is spontaneous and sincere.

This last week there were four school shooting incidents in the US. Some were students and some were deranged adults. The consensus is building that there is something wrong with our culture. There is admiration for the Amish girls, raised in a culture of simplicity and compassion with faith so strong that they were not afraid of death. The older girls asked the killer to shoot them first, hoping that this would create enough time for an intervention to save the younger girls, in complete faith that such an intervention would come. The killer is claimed to have been motivated by the death of an infant daughter buried with a pink heart-shaped headstone, whom he obsessively mourned.

Many of us are ready for a cultural shift that will take us closer to the Amish without having to revert to horse-and-buggy lives. Is this possible? Why not? What’s preventing us from even developing a national political consensus about basics -- unless you count the coalition of international corporate forces that have melded the Republicans and the Democrats into nearly identical “alternatives”?

Or isn’t our task to develop some other driving force as powerful as the craving for money? In other times we have clung to the notions of Heaven and Hell to enforce better behavior, but such ideas will not grip the educated in a world of cosmic forces, origins in an explosion, climate change, species extinctions, an uncertain future. It’s easy to say “love,” “beauty,” “harmony” “justice” and so on.

But give me three examples as good as those three little Amish girls. Tell us what the good stuff looks like. We may be a world caught in labor. Do not prevent this birth.

COMPASSION FATIQUE IN THE ANIMAL CARE COMMUNITY Part Three

The third and final section of “COMPASSION FATIGUE IN THE ANIMAL-CARE COMMUNITY” by Figley and Roop, is practical strategies for self-management and community management of the condition.

Included for a person to do alone are:

1. Breathing exercises
2. Visualization
3. Self-hypnosis
4. Self-talk, Self-advice
5. Gestalt Chair Technique, when you sit in a chair facing a person with whom you have unfinished business, except that they are not there. Instead, you sit in your chair, speaking for yourself, and then you sit in the other person’s chair, speaking for them. Moving back and forth often reveals and relieves useful forces. An observer or video might be used.
6. Acupressure stress-relief: you don’t insert needles, but rather press or tap the appropriate place.
7 Meditation.
8. The Eight Step Rewind Technique: a structured way of recalling and replaying something stressful.

If a community is involved, there are other structured techniques:

1. Six Step Defusing Model for Support, Reassurance and Provision of Information
2. Five Step Crisis Debriefing Model

Then there’s a 47 item checklist of stuff a person ought to be bringing to consciousness in their private life. You know -- all that stuff about diet, exercise, enough sleep, smoking, etc. It’s too easy to skip over a few things without a list.

That’s not the end. There are some useful appendices about standards and bibliographies.

This is almost banal advice -- we hear the same things over and over as we trek along from one crisis to another through our lives. But some people take it seriously and make it work. I’m going to embarrass Phyllis Johanson, who was also there in the Seventies in Portland trying to understand what we ought to do for the animal community and now STILL saying, “I really want to get out of all this animal stuff” forty years later. Then she says, “Someone brought me this homeless cat. I’d better hang up and get to work.” And she does.

She and George eat according to the “Diet for a Small Planet” suggestions, nearly vegetarian but hardly boring food, including a few daring ethnic experiments and some very nice wines. They believe in exercise, enjoy sculling on the Willamette River at dawn for instance, and throw wonderful parties where the talk is hilarious. Because George is an outstanding well-known artist, they belong to a group of artsy people who have a long history together. Trust is high, inventiveness is even higher, and reasonable (if indignant) political talk and action is valued most of all. They do for each other what the exercises above suggest, but without having to think up strategies -- this sort of questioning and confronting is just a part of their ordinary community style.

Here’s a sample of Phyllis’ style. http://www.petoftheday.com/talk/showthread.php?t=94193
It’s a little story about arriving at a hotel for a conference, opening her suitcase and finding... aaaiieeee!

The Johansons live on a side street just across a high bridge over a highway which is often called “suicide bridge” because hopeless people throw themselves off it. One day a woman on that street saw a man standing on the bridge, looking morose. She ran out and asked him, “What would it take to keep you from jumping off this bridge?” “Five bucks for booze,” he said. She got him the money and from then on the people on that street have kept a five dollar bill by the front door. So little to make a big difference. But it was not provided in judgment -- rather in generosity. And that’s the difference between Phyllis and the people many animal control officials privately call “humaniacs.”

Phyllis is a member of PETA. She thinks they go off the deep end sometimes, but also they do a lot of good work. She’s an includer, not an excluder. She’s fascinated by all sorts of things: psychology, other cultures, and always animals. Branching off from her sidestreet is a path up into the shrubbery of the West Hills, and in the mornings Phyllis used to take a walk up that path. Along with her always went the dozen or so cats who were with her while waiting for new homes, all of them with their tails stuck straight up in the air like kittens following their mum. When there was a railing, the first cat jumped up on it, so all the other cats did the same in follow-the-leader style. Pretty soon they all came back down the trail, looking calm and cheerful. Life is good. George puts Phyllis in his paintings and often a cat or two.

This a sort of life many people yearn for. It's very simple really. One must be open to others, ready to reach out. Save oneself so as to have the strength and skills to save others, including animals -- not JUST anmals.

QUESTIONS UNADDRESSED IN MISSOULA

The blogger at SBpoet.com didn’t feel the panel I was on responded to the title,"WHO SHOULD TELL THE STORIES" and little wonder. It didn’t. The blogger said:

“Briefly, this panel had a lot to offer, but little on the subject I was anticipating -- who owns what stories; who can tell or write these stories; what are the implications of white writers telling stories from cultures not their own? Are the implications any different than they are for any writer tackling stories/ subjects/ cultures/ characters that are not their own?”

Okay. Let’s go back and address these questions since they are so nicely clear, unrhetorical and sincere. This is what I think and couldn’t really say on the panel:

Who owns what stories? “Ownership” seems to be the word that needs defining. Of course, in the world of publishing there is a copyright, a legal matter supposedly controlling work originating with one author and sold for profit. Repeatedly in early years, individuals came to the reservation, took notes on communal stories meant to tell the tribal members who they are and how they ought to act -- but then wrote them up, sold them to publishers as original works, and collected the income. None of that income was sent back to the tribal storytellers. Some of the white writers claimed to be scientists who would use the stories to analyze and record the society of the tribal people -- others were simply acquiring stories the same way they would acquire beadwork, attractive curiosities. None of the whites attempted to live according to the stories, giving precedence to stories of their own culture: the Bible, the movies, the newspapers. Thus they not only made money from the stories, but also drained them of significance.

It is a strange phenomenon that white people who have never known any Indians will leap to acquire Indian stories, even phony ones that have nothing to do with real tribal life: say, Longfellow or James Fenimore Cooper. Indians who themselves have declared war on the way Indians are treated will accept parts in movies based on these stories, be grateful for the income, and proud of their roles without debunking them. When Indians write books about the tough side of reservation life and later make movies of them, people hurry to read them and the Indians are happy to star in them, illustrating drunkenness and depravity with great gusto.

A typology of stories:

1. Oral tribal tales, traditional and often told by old people.
2. These tales written down, possibly changed to fit Euro morality, and considered scientific inquiry.
3. These tales, even more edited, offered to a curious public as “authentic” and “primitive” and therefore uncontaminated by Euro culture and therefore suitable for children because they are “natural” and “primitive” in the same romantic way.
4. These tales retold by Indians to incorporate Christian ideas -- for instance, identifying Scarface with Jesus -- and sold in print to prove to whites that Indians are “civilized.”
5. The original oral tribal tales, now presented in print without any editing but with many footnotes, all Euro-shocker elements present to show that they are authentic.
6. Nearly the ultimate: the stories told in their native language and presented with translations. Tellers identified by name, place and date. Maybe on tape. This takes us back to 1.
7. Modern Euro-style short stories and novels, written by people at least partly Indian, about their present lives.
8. The same except written by whites pretending to be Indians. "The Education of Little Tree."
9. Faux Indian stories written by whites for children: Paul Goble’s book are a good example. Often beautiful picture books.
10. Modern Euro-style short stories and novels written about old-time Indians by modern Indians.
11. Modern Euro-style short stories and novels written about old-time Indians by modern whites.

One might construct a little graph of typologies considering: speaker, oral/written, nature of content, intended audience, expected reward.

Okay, now let’s compare with a list of kinds of stories that I might write or do write about Bob Scriver.

1. Just the facts: a biography. There are dozens of bios of Bob Scriver on the Internet. Most of them are at least partly inaccurate, leaving things out or getting things wrong. Many are slightly garbled versions of publicity I wrote for Bob in the Sixties.
2. An interpreted biography written by someone who never knew Bob Scriver. There are few of these around.
3. An interpreted biography written by myself, who knew him well and whom he asked to write his life story. (Although he had little idea what I might write and was dead when I finished, so couldn’t review it.)
4. Family stories told many times that I picked up and used without comment: for instance, how Mrs. Stone gave a birthday party for Wessie Scriver (Bob’s mother) and was upset when someone gave Wessie a joke gift, a giant set of long red underwear.
5. Family stories that I repeat but correct: Bob claimed that his father was a “Vermonter,” but in fact the Scriver family left Vermont when it seceded from the British Commonwealth and re-established in Quebec, where Scrivers fought against the new United States -- they were Loyalists to the English King.
6. Stories about Bob I’d just as soon no one knew. (Censored)
7. Stories about Bob that I think show something about who he was: how when the boys unintentionally shot at me, he bent their gun into a horseshoe, but never said a word to them.
8. Stories about people in Bob’s life. How Hubert Bartlett had a chance to shoot two wolves on the elk flats in Marias Pass, but didn’t.
9. Riskier stories about people in Bob’s life: drunkenness and violence on the part of the Indian help.
10. Stories about myself, positive or negative. Who is qualified to decide whether I’m telling the truth?
11. Stories that Bob told people that I know are false. That his father was the first government-authorized Indian trader among the Blackfeet. (More like the fifth or sixth.)
12. Stories that others tell about Bob that are false. Phil Scriver constantly claims to be related when he simply is NOT.

All these stories affect Bob’s reputation as an artist and therefore affect the value of his sculpture. People or institutions that own his work are concerned that the value not decline and therefore are motivated to control them. But I intend to make money from telling these stories and I intend to make them true and vivid. Our interests are not congruent.

In the same way, the interests of Indians of whatever kind are not necessarily aligned with the interests of those who tell the story. This is human. Somewhat political. In the end economic. And very hard to control or even to evaluate in terms of justice.

COMPASSION FATIGUE IN THE ANIMAL CARE COMMUNITY, Part Two

This is the part specific to animal care workers. Frankly and clearly, “compassion fatigue” is something specifically afflicting people who take care of others. This book is meant to address those who are taking care of others who are a different species. It is not framed or necessarily intended for those who are dealing with dangerous people and animals who live entwined in the underclasses of society. It is this latter problem that distinguishes animal control from humane society. Still, particularly if there is a kennel involved, taking care of animals is a major part of both jobs.

This book is careful to define its terms, but seems largely unaware of animal control problems and solutions, which relate more to law enforcement and emergency response. We need a second book but it’s a big help to have this one.

People who are callous, indifferent to animal distress, are unsuited to animal shelter work but may accumulate there and make the jobs of those who DO care deeply even more difficult than they already are. Addressing compassion-fatigue can supply the criteria for weeding out people who are there for the wrong reasons and help those who are struggling with the right reasons to become better self-managers so that they can last effectively in the jobs.

The claim of the Humane Society of the United States in a survey of more than one thousand shelter workers, is that compassion fatigue is NOT related to length of service, age, gender (except women come out a little more vulnerable than men), or performing euthanasia. (I’m not sure I really believe that last.) The manager or education officer is as likely a victim as the hands-on poop scooper. Because so few people really understand even the basics of what goes on in animal care, isolation and exasperation constantly pry at everyone in the field. This study found that over half of the workers score at extremely high risk of compassion fatigue. As Fakkema vividly puts it, “After a while you begin to get the idea that it would be more effective to euthanize the pet owners than the pets.”

Studies were also made of compassion SATISFACTION. What are the factors that make the work seem valuable and effective? Those who were able to cope said they felt they were doing the right thing, doing it well, and keeping in mind every small success.

Veterinarians, probably because they are seen as doctors, are not supposed to suffer from compassion fatigue or burnout. Most people see their pets as children and their veterinarians as a kind of pediatrician. (This is probably less true in livestock country where the veterinarian is more related to asset-management -- though the idea that ranchers don’t care about their animals is wrong, at least in my experience.) Again, the animals are not so much a problem as the owners. And a veterinarian makes enough money to get into big trouble with drinking, gambling, and the other stress-traps of our society. On the plus side, the veterinarian is in a position to really help and heal animals and has considerable status in the community.

The authors distinguish between compassion fatigue and burnout. Burnout is when there is never enough money, enough help, enough supplies or training to do an effective job. One can become worn out and bitter over it -- esp. when it is the direct result of the low regard the public and many politicians have for animal workers. But that’s not the same as having one’s heart broken by witnessing and addressing suffering in humans or other animals. You don’t need empathy to achieve burnout, but you do for both real care-giving effectiveness and the resulting stress.

Now I’m going to depart from the book to describe what I see as a major problem, the fanaticism of people who claim to be animal lovers but in fact have put so much exaggerated and unrealistic emphasis on what they consider to be cruelty issues that they interfere with the ordinary tasks of animal organizations.

I think there are three elements that are underlying the extremism.

1. An attempt to directly suppress end results rather than looking for and addressing root causes. For instance, attacking euthanasia itself rather than the failure to spay and neuter that creates far too many unwanted animals.
2. A failure to confront some of the greatest cruelties in our culture, which are related to the commodification of food animals rather than the mistreatment of pets. Taking on the slaughterhouses of this country is quite beyond attacking the local poundmaster.

3. Vulnerability and displacement in some people’s emotional lives, so that they project their own suffering onto animals and try to secure their own happiness by fancying that they are somehow making animals safer or happier.

We are in a time made chaotic by a scientific reframing of the cosmos that questions the nature of humankind in the universe. At the same time the translation of everything into money issues and the huge pressure calling for prosperity -- rather than honor, service or achievement -- as the source of happiness has left people feeling empty.

We are indeed suffering from trauma. Every night we see people starving, displaced, mutilated, and killed in war. Some of them are “other,” maybe Africans, some of them are ours, like our soldiers. Like any other victims of compassion fatigue, we citizens become rigid, unreasonably demanding, over-concerned, punishing. In my opinion, the whole country needs the self-evaluation and amelioration that this book outlines for the animal care community. If those workers were able to lead the way, it might have real political impact.

COMPASSION FATIGUE IN THE ANIMAL CARE COMMUNITY Part One

COMPASSION FATIGUE IN THE ANIMAL-CARE COMMUNITY
by Charles Figley and Robert Roop
Humane Society Press, 2100 L Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20037 $19.95
ISBN 0-0748400-7-6

This book is in three parts:
Part I: Compassion Fatigue: An Overview
Part II: Compassion Fatigue in the Animal-Care Community
Part III: Revitalization and Resilience

PART ONE:

The first part is meant to convince the reader that caring attention is what calls out trust and comfort when one is trying to help someone. They can feel whether you do indeed understand and “feel with” (empathize) with them. This is true of human beings and other animals, at least mammals. (Hard to tell about snakes, etc.)

If a person really “feels with” others, whether they are students, welfare clients, medical patients, pets or soldiers, the cost can be high and can result in phenomena in the helper that don’t help anyone. For instance, feeling powerless, being scared and paranoid, feeling guilty, getting into a rage (sometimes unpredictably), depression, hypersensitivity, sleep disturbances and simply being worn out. A person can begin to walk through the job, on the verge of incompentency.

This part spends some time on persuading the reader that compassion stress and fatigue are real, because denial is such a temptation, both for one’s self-regard and because of the need to look competent on the job. The section called “The Neurobiology of Compassion Stress” makes the point that there are detectable brain changes in someone who is sharing pain and loss with no hope of help. The evidence given is a little old-fashioned: left and right brain theory, fight or flight, stress hormone overload. The most recent excitement has been about “mirror cells,” which are tiny structures just behind the forehead bone that make it possible for us to “feel with” other beings. These are thought to be recently evolved and part of the unique nature of human beings, a basic element of bonding and community. (This is why one should avoid blows to the forehead!)

Recently there has also been quite a bit of investigation into why some resilient people “go down” under tragedy, emergency, and outrage but then rebound. Why are some ghetto children -- exposed to drug abuse, starvation and violence -- able not just to survive but also to dig themselves out of the troubles? And others, seemingly much the same, break and die?

Some definitions are introduced in order to draw attention to dimensions of compassion. “Stress is a sense of demand for action.” Feeling sorry is not enough -- DO something. Vicarious suffering might get out of control if it echoes some trauma in the helper that has never really healed. It can be a temptation to avoid painful confrontations. The work situation might be toxic, that is, critical of or punishing compassion. One might be putting in so much time on helping as to prevent one’s own recovery. It’s possible that the helper’s “real life” begins to weigh the helper down instead of refilling their energy tank. No one is immune from home tragedies, set-backs and hard times. It’s at this point in the book that Doug Fakkema’s five phases are introduced.

There might be unnecessary stressors in the job itself. Maybe the job is too high-pressure, too boring, too lonesome, or provided with too little training and equipment. One of the worst offenses is lack of clarity, particularly when the ambiguity is used to discredit achievement. (The old rule is that clarity gives energy -- if you are really focused, things get done.) Bad juju with other workers is a tough one. Unreasonable work conditions (crazy split shifts, too much night-time on-call duty, rigid schedules that don’t allow accommodations for real life, real danger from working conditions) are sure sources of stress. Maybe the worst one is a weak or insecure leader who never gives clear signals and is likely to turn on workers. None of this is unique to animal care workers -- it might apply to surgical nurses or combat lieutenants or even clerks at the 7-11. Those who are most idealistic and dedicated may be those most at risk.

The authors are at some pains to describe “burn-out” as a real, documented phenomenon and suggest that others can easily see it. In fact, it will soon lead to physical symptoms: hypertension, lethargy, maybe a heart attack. In shelters it often shows up as “bad backs.”

Secondary trauma is the reflected and empathized damage in families, friends and caregivers of the primary trauma victims. Secondary trauma can spread out and out through circles of friends and co-workers. Consider the huge and spreading impact of a catastrophe like 9/11. First the people actually destroyed, then those who pulled them out of rubble, then their families, their neighborhoods, and so on. Consider the marriages of cops, whose spouses must deal with secondary trauma.

Therefore, professional caregivers and emergency responders need to INSTITUTE routine strategies for addressing secondary trauma. They need to “download,” to share, to check themselves and their co-workers for signs of distress. Don’t deny, evade, postpone. Good management is always alert and checks out those who seem to be sleep-walking.

If someone gets really stuck -- knows they are burning out and can’t seem to get a handle on it -- there are strategies such as Green Cross Foundation programs called “Wellness Transformation” that might be available as weekend workshops.

They call their stages “building blocks:”

1. Motivation. Deciding you’re really going to commit to making whatever changes in one’s life that are necessary for survival. This takes more courage than might be guessed.

2. Assessment. Checklists, procedures, consultations or whatever will reveal lots of information.

3. Self-reflection. Feeling around inside to see how much of this information seems really true. Check out POSITIVE internal resources.

4. Transformation. Deciding what sort of person you want to be and making a plan to get there.

5. Evaluating. Go looking for the exercise, diet, stress management techniques, new habits, sense of humor, and all that other previously dumb-seeming stuff that will change your life.

6. Reviewing. Thinking about one’s previous life, maybe by journalling, maybe in a group, maybe with a trusted mentor or friend, and then -- as one gets stronger and more healed -- going back over that life plan for the future to fine-tune it.

7. Studying. Reaching out for more ideas, ways to grow. Hey, it’s a big world out there! And you’re part of it!

You might have to go through these steps again. It’s a process rather than an achievement.

Tomorrow I’ll go over the specifically animal-care part, Part Two.

COMPASSION FATIGUE Part 1

They say that one of the problems with burn victims is that their caregivers come to hate them. It took a long time to realize this, because doctors, nurses and aides try hard to hide such a counter-intuitive and reprehensible feeling, but some “cracker” (in the sense of the BBC series about an aggressive psychologist) of an investigator finally realized what was happening. First of all, burn victims are constantly in agony in spite of pain-killers, and second, burn victims often suffer a long time -- then die. They constantly beg for help and no help is enough. Even when they get well, there is much trauma left. Thus, the satisfaction in taking care of them, healing them, is eroded beyond tolerance. The caregivers become victims of “compassion fatigue.”

In fact, these days it seems as though we are all exposed to so much hate, destruction, genocide, trauma -- both in real life and through the media -- that we are all victims of “compassion fatigue,” which can cause some people to inflict even more trauma and suffering as they try to blame, punish, and demonize their way out of their own pain. Others try to save themselves by turning away, not “going there.”

In the best cop shows, the characters who are in trouble sometimes speak of “reaching out” to an older officer or some kind of professional who is likely to understand. In the Seventies Mike Burgwin in Portland and Doug Fakkema in Corvallis reached out to other people in the same work and found each other. The two were the most progressive animal organization managers in the state and learned much from each other, aside from supporting each other in a quietly emotional way. Yet they were very different.

Burgwin came to the work through a police force in a port town in California. He saw some terrible things, took actions that had unforeseen consequences, saw injustice and destruction beyond what most of us know about, and reacted to it -- possibly because of a strong father and good professional mentoring -- with a drive for justice and protection of the innocent. He sought competence and control, through strategy if simple strength and skill wasn’t enough, and he had a high consciousness of court protocols.

I don’t quite know where Fakkema was coming from before animal welfare work, but he was more of a lover than a fighter. Not a pushover (he’s a motorcyclist), he was a thinker and philosopher. His thoughtfulness finally led him to develop one of the cutting edge documents in the field, a description of the five phases a person working in an animal shelter is likely to go through. (It’s available online at animalsheltering.org/resource_library/magazine_articles/mar_apr_2001/four_phases.html

The five phases are:
Phase One: The Dream
One dreams of a job that really helps animals.
Phase Two: The Start
One arrives to work and leaps to the tasks, full of energy.
Phase Three: Losing Our Breath
It’s not working. It’s not what we expect. It’s eating us up.
Phase Four: Desperately Seeking Rhythm
This is what the cop shows call “reaching out.”
Phase Five: Finding a rhythm
Coming to philosophical terms, taking pride in skill, being part of a team, and finding ways of relief and healing in outside life.

In turn, this simple schematic, which Doug taught in workshops alongside workshops that teach injection euthanasia so that it’s done well, converged with a whole movement coming out of the social sciences and social work. The key to these ideas and practices, specifically for animal care and control professionals, is a book called “Compassion Fatigue in the Animal-Care Community” by Charles R. Figley, Ph.D. (a professor of “traumatology”) and Robert G. Roop, Ph.D. (a psychologist and human resource development professor) Laura Reeves Figley is also active in this area. (Fakkema’s wife is a shelter veterinarian. One of the keys to survival is a marriage in which both partners understand what this work can do to a person.)

This book is invaluable. It will work for an individual, for a group, for a manager, for any sort of job. In many places animal shelter and control employees are young because the jobs are low-pay. Turnover is high. No one will pay for the training available at workshops. There is a shortage of veterans who can mentor as Burgwin’s sergeant did. Managers don’t tend to be very sophisticated about the sort of material in this book. There’s nothing too “far out” for ordinary people to use and the skills and theories will be helpful to any person who is under pressure.

When I went from being an AC officer in the street to being the education coordinator, I simultaneously discovered the Unitarian Universalist church. At that point the PNW District, under the urging of the Reverend Peter Raible in Seattle, was innovating “Leadership School,” which was based on organizational design and human resource development blended with spiritual growth in community. It was material moving along the same lines as the questionnaires, stress-relieving techniques, stage analysis, as what is in this book. My response to the trauma I witnessed with animal work and -- before that -- among my Blackfeet students translated to broader questions that took me into the ministry. And then the reluctance of seminaries and church communities to be progressive in real-world areas brought me out the other side of professional religious work and gradually into something that might be called green philosophy. Possibly that’s where I had really been all along. It's not that different from what is often called "The Perennial Philosophy." It's not an institution, but institutions use it.

The Green Cross Foundation is an organization that studies how to heal trauma. The Delta Foundation is an organization that studies and supports healing through animal companionship. There are probably many other such foundations that choose a specialty from broader movements. They do research, isolate factors and give them names, find solutions and respond to intolerable situations ranging from something so catastrophic as Katrina to something so personal as being stuck in a wheelchair. There is a foundation that studies the phenomenon of animal hoarding, when someone with few resources accumulates so many animals that they can’t be sheltered humanely.

But people are NOT getting the news! Over and over the news is full of the same old cliches. Municipalities and counties continue to understand animals only in terms of mean monsters and kind little children, without ever considering social dynamics or progressive responses. The burden is made heavier. And much of the compassion fatigue is expressed in an unnecessary clash between people in the humane movement (like Doug Fakkema) and people in the animal control movement (like Mike Burgwin).

I’ll continue this later.

JACK HOLTERMAN: He Begins a New Journey

Yesterday I went to Jack Holterman’s funeral, a three hour drive up through the reservation and then across the mountains through Marias Pass, a route I’ve followed so many times in the last half-century that it is layered and layered with memories of seasons and friends and emotions. St. Richard’s Catholic Church is on Highway 2 as it passes through Columbia Falls. Jack was a lifelong member. As a former seminarian, the mass held deep meaning for him. His good friend, Darrell Kipp, with whom he so enjoyed discussing religious issues and the teaching of Blackfeet language, spoke and so did Jack’s son, Mark Talas, a Hopi. Jack had many adopted and fostered sons. I first met him in 1961 because he was building a cabin at St. Mary’s just up the bluff from Bob Scriver’s. It was a reassembly of a stone house he had found somewhere, much more charming and durable than Bob’s or any of the other wooden cabins on that allotment.

St. Richard’s Catholic Church is large, the kind of high arched space made possible by the invention of curved glu-lam beams. Two white-haired priests performed the mass and the casket had no flowers -- rather an open book of the liturgy. Used to the soft laments of country-music guitar at Browning funerals, I was stirred by the soaring music of Mary Burgess whose marvelous voice was accompanied by her own piano playing.

Afterwards Darrell and Shirlee Crowshoe, who was riding shotgun, went to the lunch but I gracelessly went to my true church: the bookstore. “BooksWest” is one of “stations of the heart” where I always stop, partly because I knew the owner is tiring, worn out by the struggle with chains and the pressure of population growth -- not many of them readers. She had many Holterman books on her shelves. (1-800-471-2270)

We enjoyed gossiping about folks both dead and alive, both readers and writers -- plus artists. A virtual community. There is a many-layered weaving of friends, small businesses, and years and years of interaction that is the real Montana. Casual visitors never find it. True members never leave it, even in death.

The tamaracks are turning yellow at the top of the continental divide, but only partly turned as one descends the other side. (The east side is an abrupt drop to a relatively high altitude -- the west side wanders down gradually to the Flathead Valley.) In the Valley it’s still late summer -- hanging baskets still blooming.


Rudolph John ‘Jack’ Holterman Jr., 91
Posted: Sunday, Oct 01, 2006 - 12:02:35 am MDT in the Daily InterLake.

Rudolph John Holterman Jr., “Jack” to his friends and family, 91, passed away Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2006, of natural causes.

Jack was born April 18, 1915, to Rudolph and Florence (Stelter) Holterman in San Francisco. Jack was formally educated in California public schools and graduated from Lowell High School in San Francisco. He received a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in Spanish from Stanford University, and did additional work in Spanish and philosophy in Mexico, Arizona and Washington.

After college, Jack looked for a teaching job, which brought him to Montana. He taught for one year in a private home near the Canadian border. From there, he taught at Starr School on the Blackfeet Reservation. For the next two years, Jack studied at seminaries in Seattle and Camarillo, Calif. After World War II broke out, Jack served in the U.S. Navy as a hospital corpsman, stationed in Japan and China.

When the war ended, Jack came back to the United States via a trip around the world, the first of four such trips. For many years, Jack taught on the Navajo, Hopi, Blackfeet and Salish Reservations. While teaching in Winslow, Ariz., Jack was afflicted with Bell’s palsy and was released from his teaching job in order to rehabilitate himself with the help of his mother.

Once his health improved, Jack made his way back to Montana, with two brothers from the Navajo Reservation, Roy and Albert Pete, and Mark Talas from the Hopi Reservation. Roy was 15 years old, Albert was 5 years old, and Mark was 16 years old. In addition to teaching Spanish, Jack raised Roy, Albert and Mark in Whitefish along with boys from the Hopi, Navajo, Blackfeet, and Rocky Boy reservations and other troubled boys seeking a home. As the years went by, Jack’s generosity extended to his grandchildren. Jack taught at Whitefish High School and Flathead Valley Community College.

Jack’s love of the Spanish language continued throughout his lifetime. He spent a summer studying at the University in Mexico City. He also loved genealogy and spent hours and hours researching his own heritage.

As a linguist, Jack put the Blackfeet language in written form for the Piegan Institute in Browning. He was a familiar face in Glacier National Park headquarters and Glacier Natural History Association offices. Jack wrote many historical monographs, the result of hours of research of western history. In the process Jack wrote “King of the High Missouri,” which tells the story of the Culbertson Family. Jack was best known for his book “Place Names of Glacier National Park,” which he recently revised and published after being out of print for 15 years.

Jack resided in Apgar for several years before selling his property to the National Park Service. He moved to Nyack were he resided until 1988. Until a year ago, Jack resided in West Glacier.

Jack’s second home and love was for the country of New Zealand. He spent many winters residing in Rotorua on the North Island. He loved the Maori people along with the study of their culture. He was well known by the residents of Rotorua. On Nov. 5, 2005, Jack attempted to return to his favorite winter haven, which also included a scheduled round the world jaunt. Unfortunately, Jack fell at the airport, which hindered him from living alone and further travel. Jack’s final residence was the Montana Veterans Home in Columbia Falls. He left with a sense of peace after finishing a fictional historic novel — a first for him.

Jack will be missed by many, including adopted son, Albert; his wife, Mary Pete; and grandsons, Justin, Cory and Travis; Mark Talas and family; Roy Pete and family; Reggie Talayumptewa and family; Frank Talayumptewa and family; Louie De Cora and family; cousin Rosemary and Dave Delameter and family; and Greta Holterman and family. As a scholar, world traveler, author and friend to many, including those who sought his knowledge and wisdom, “We love you, Jack.”


The following URL will direct you to an excellent essay about Jack:

Riverbend, MT News
For writer Jack Holterman, the places in Glacier Park are a song rich with history. May 21, 2006 | Missoulian. If you grew up speaking English, then Jack ...
www.topix.net/city/riverbend-mt

USURY ON THE REZ

(From the Glacier Reporter, Sept. 21, 2006)

Imagine this scenario. A 59-year-old man living in Browning, named John, wakes up to find that his truck, a used 1998 F-150 is gone. Earlier that night XYZ Auto Sales illegally repossessed his truck after John missed the last two payments on his high interest auto loan. XYZ Auto says that they repossessed the vehicle legally off the reservation in Albertson’s parking lot in Cut Bank. The unlucky man in Browning was the victim of the common scheme of predatory lending.

The Blue Book value on John’s F-150 was $13,999. After paying $2,000 for a down payment, John agreed to an $11,999 auto loan financed by XYZ auto, with an interest rate of 19.65 percent. He had paid all but two of 72 payments, owing only $700 the night his car was illegally taken. With the high interest loan, John’s F-150 ended up costing him nearly $23,000, and only to have it repossessed. John was the victim of a predatory loan targeted at his community. Although this story was fictional, it is a story often told by real people on the Blackfeet Reservation.

XYZ Auto Sales is based out of Billings but has a smaller office in Kalispell located closer to the Flathead and Blackfeet reservations. This business, like many other car dealerships, preys on communities more susceptible to economic exploitation. Their loans are structured to extract the highest amount from Native Americans. Using high interest, misinformation and hidden costs, dealerships like these funnel money away from the community. After repossessing cars they are once again offered to vulnerable citizens to begin another loop.

What can you do? Be a smart consumer. You should know what the true Blue Book value of the car you want to purchase (online at www.kbb.com). Understand what the loan’s conditions are and any hidden fees. Do not pay an unfair price. An aggressive car salesman should alert you that this deal may not be smart for you. Above all take your time and do not be rushed. Go to the dealership with the willingness to leave without a car. If you are unsure of anything in the agreement, wait.

Oftentimes used cars break down soon after being purchased. It is important for you to continue to make payments on the vehicle. Even if you received a bad deal, the car-salesman can and will repossess the vehicle. If you find yourself in trouble with a car dealership, you can contact the Montana Legal Services Association Hotline for free advice at 1-800-666-6899. (If you are in Montana.)

WHO TELLS THE TALE

“Who Tells the Tale?” was supposed to be the focus of the panel at the Montana Festival of the Book, but the panel seemed curiously reluctant to take on the question, so I’ll address it here.

The heart of the matter is the Sixties and Seventies empowerment movement that changed everything in many circles. (I was surprised to hear Adolf Hungry Wolf talk about this culture revolution as containing the revitalization of the Blackfeet. I mean, I thought so, but hadn’t heard others speak of it.) Suddenly, the old pattern of Grinnell, Linderman, Wissler, and other patriarchal educated fellows coming to the reservation in summer and gathering up charming tales and legends to publish -- carefully bowlderized and diluted to suit women and children -- just wasn’t enough anymore. Why couldn’t the Indian people themselves tell their stories their own way?

The Indian people quickly discovered that their stories, songs and ceremonies were worth money and began to ask for payment when they related them, abandoning the gift economy that had always been traditional. Some white people grasped the idea of the symbolic payment and were happy to hand over only a cigarette or two in exchange for some privileged information they could sell. Privilege was very important to these white people: they wanted to be singled out as worthy recipients of the magic of the Noble Savage.

However, they were usually in a hurry, so -- as Adolf Hungry-Wolf vividly related in his presentation -- they rushed into the cabin of someone like Mike Swims Under out at Heart Butte, asked their vital question or two, and when their authoritative Oldman gave a kind of preliminary thought or two in the process of getting a grip on the subject, they wrote it in their notebook and charged back out the door. By simply hanging around the rest of the day, Adolf discovered that hours later the Oldman would reflect on the topic at length, maybe sing some songs. Then Adolf would write it down or maybe tape it for translation later. The answer might even last until after supper, though the question had been asked in the morning. In fact, by the time the translation had been made and a few things had been clarified, days might have passed. By then the anxious whiteman was back on the East Coast at his famous university, writing up his paper. Telling these people that the stories were secret was doing them a big favor, since they never got them right or whole anyway.

A few years ago a famous anthropologist died, leaving tape recordings of forbidden stories. They had been told to him on tape with the understanding that they were secret because they were only to be told at certain times and places. This was what kept them valuable, because if people heard them all the time they would think they already knew everything and they wouldn’t listen. The anthropologist’s wife destroyed the tapes, scandalizing her husband’s colleagues and gratifying the people whose stories they were. In part, it was a matter of keeping her husband’s word. In part, it was a matter of not unmasking what might have been mocked or discounted -- keeping things secret preserves their magic.

In some tribes there are stories that are only to be told in winter when the children and old people stay rolled up in bed to keep warm. If the stories are told in summer when they should be doing things, the stories will already be worn out and stale in winter when there is nothing to do but listen. Then what will the old people tell the children to keep them settled?

In part, stories, songs and ceremonies are kept secret to preserve their ownership by the people who created them or feel they “own” them. They are a sign of privilege for the Indians themselves and a source of empowerment. A few will take advantage of the situation to sell stories or charge admission to ceremonies -- sometimes thousands of dollars. On the one hand, they need the money. On the other hand, they may be selling themselves cheap -- a form of prostitution, an intimacy usually granted only in a real relationship.

There is another consideration never mentioned by Indians because they are embarrassed by it and some of them don’t realize it anyway. It is caused by different cultural boundaries. Some ceremonies were related in Latin by the early researchers because they involved things like ritual intercourse. Not an imitation, but the real thing in hopes of modeling for the buffalo what they ought to do. Lately the Latin has been translated into plain English to get rid of the privilege the Latin speakers imposed on them, thinking that a person who could speak Latin would be educated enough to understand ritual intercourse. Authorities (assumed NOT to know Latin) might impose penalties if they knew.

In the Sixties and Seventies, some rebellious professors began to publish Napi stories that were really authentic. Napi had not been influenced by Victorian white missionaries. In one version of what Napi did, the Latinate translators agreed among themselves to call Napi’s penis his lariat. It was an amazing lariat that was constantly reaching between the legs of young women, even if they were swimming in the middle of a lake while Napi stood on shore.

If a modern assimilated Indian heard such a story, he or she might be deeply upset because of constant conditioning to always to conform to propriety, once Blackfeet propriety but now white propriety fairly old-fashioned. This allows the sharing of the real (“dirty”) meaning to be privileged knowledge among men, reducing them to dirty jokes. If a young Indian of the 21st century told the stories bluntly, he or she might feel privileged because of having a modern frank sensibility that doesn’t shrink from saying “penis.” A penis is simply a penis. No need to feel ashamed.

In this time period of the Sixties and Seventies, the effort to get beyond stereotypes of Indians and any other ethnic groups was often addressed by forbidding anyone to tell ethnic jokes that depended on making the person look silly or stupid or habitually drunken. Yet much of prairie humor from the Euro-homesteaders was about dumb mistakes and bad behavior -- it was a way of blowing off tension and relieving shame. John Tatsey, an Indian who wrote a column about the people of Heart Butte, mocked them all the time and told preposterous half-true tales about them. In his time these were very popular, published in the local paper, read into the Congressional Record by John Tatsey’s good friend Mike Mansfield, and published again in a book. One can hear older Indians today talk about how proud they are that Tatsey was such a big success without ever realizing that he made them all seem to be the ridiculous inhabitants of Dogpatch.

On the other hand, there are tribal people who will only allow good things to be said about their tribe and will invent all sorts of rationalizations to excuse the actions they now consider shameful. Heart Butte school searched the continent to find a drug program for high schools that was created by Indian people. Then the Blackfeet drug counselor had the kits destroyed because she said they portrayed drug-addicted Indian students as stupid, dizzy and disgraced. She thought that was wrong -- the portrayal of Indians must always be positive.

If white people say things about Indians, they can be attacked on the harshest terms as racists. Yet Indians have many racist notions about white people that go unexamined because everyone thinks they are TRUE, not stereotypes! (White people have hidden resources, white people have no families, white people will not stay...) And white people say the same thing in their defense: “but Indians really ARE like that: drunken, quarreling, feckless, illiterate, etc.” These are not magic stories but they are power stories and sometimes historically focussed. If a person wanted to keep things peaceful, it might be a good idea to suppress them.

The American holocaust atrocity stories are the hardest to handle. In the 19th century they were likely to be about the torture and mutilation of whites by Indians. Now they are more likely to be about the torture and mutilation of Indians by whites. In a time when we hear about such things daily on the media, these stories are no less incendiary and are often political fodder involved in a demand for reparation, maybe money or maybe apologies. And yet, stories about such things as the abuse of students in mission schools were kept secret for a long time. It’s good to get them out in the open -- isn’t it? How else can change happen?

Who tells the tale? The Indian? WHICH Indian? What IS an Indian? Can a Cree tell a story about Blackfeet or vice versa? Can a city-raised or college-educated Indian tell reservation stories kept in the traditional way among family members? There is a federal law that only an Indian can sell art work certified to be Indian art work. Ward Churchill was friendly with a tribe who agreed to give him an honorary membership in the tribe so that he would technically be an Indian and the government could not prosecute him for selling his “Indian art work.” He looked like an Indian (long dark straight hair) and pretty soon even he thought he was an Indian. He has been able to write intensely fiery post-colonial attacks on the white world from his “Indian” point of view. Revealing his genetic identity has destroyed his writing career besides losing him his academic job. He was attacked by Indians for not being a genetic Indian, and yet the upshot is beneficial to whites.

Every story ought to be heard while “considering the source.” Whether or not they ought to be silenced is a different issue. If one thinks that telling the story or performing the ceremony is efficacious, that is, really “works” on reality to change it in a supernaturally powerful way, then its use ought to be controlled. But we are of several minds about whether such acts impact reality.

A related issue is photographing sacred objects or opening Bundles normally kept closed. Photographing sacred objects is a taboo sometimes observed and other times neglected. Since the uses and protections of Bundles grew up around them as they were assembled, which was for the most part before cameras were invented, the matter is simply unaddressed in the oldest settings. It makes sense to open Bundles as little as possible to protect them from contamination by bugs or from theft of the contents. When Bob Scriver and I became Keepers, we discovered that we had been buying small objects from inside Bundles for years without knowing what they were. These objects were not missed until the ceremonial opening once a year. In general, the Bundles were kept by the most traditional people who felt they should resist modern “different” ways, so that many of the taboos we were given as Keepers were things like never using a fork. A metal fork is a modern innovation.

But by now many, if not most, Bundles have been opened, photographed, and otherwise recorded. It would be harder to steal from the contents, but a little of the magic has been rubbed off. It’s already happened. There’s no way to go back.

I would argue that the more serious damage was caused by not knowing what the contents of the Bundle were trying to evoke. Far more damage to ceremonial life has been done by the replacement of real nature with television nature -- Walt Disney stuff. To pick up a kit fox hide and dance its song is impossible without really knowing a kit fox, having sat on the prairie and watched one for hours. The Amskapi Pikuni know this and are interested in nature programs on the land.

As the old buffalo people have died, the ceremonies have had to transform in order to remain relevant. For instance, women now dance, when traditionally Blackfeet women did not. The ceremonial foods no longer include buffalo tongues as they once did. Substitutions are necessary. The “feast” might include oranges, hard-boiled eggs, frybread, and Sailor Boy hardtack. It may not be convenient to meet in a tipi. Nevertheless, the heart of the ceremony, the Bundle itself and the songs, are as intact as effort can make them. And new songs or practices may be added if the ceremony is part of a living stream. Even the Catholic mass has changed over the centuries.

When I told people about my book “Twelve Blackfeet Stories,” they said, “Who gave the stories to you?” When I said, “Nobody. I just made them up!” they thought at first that I’d invented Napi stories. But I write stories in the way that Sherman Alexie or Tony Hillerman or Louise Erdrich do -- ordinary modern short stories about Indian people. Should I do this since I’m white? Particularly since I wrote about non-mainstream characters like a two-spirited man, a warrior woman, a cut-nose woman, a black Blackfeet, and so on? But people write stories about other people all the time. If they don’t know the people they write about well enough to be convincing, that’s a different kind of problem than recounting once more a traditional story properly told in a ceremonial setting. It’s an artistic issue, not a religious issue.

In my opinion, the white insistence that “Indian stories” are only myths, legends and traditional tales, has held back the development of dynamic writing by Indians. For a while the Native American Renaissance was bursting with new ideas and voices -- then they went silent. Publishers didn’t believe in them and didn’t know how to present them. They printed too many copies, didn’t hold them long enough for the public to understand, and then remaindered them in cities where Indians couldn’t find them. Some of these problems have been solved by technology. Now the whole Internet is a bookstore. Every library includes a computer.

Now anyone can go to a Publish-On-Demand website and make available a book they wrote, even in their own indigenous language. This will create a new set of problems, since any self-important fool can pretend to be a great shaman with true ideas (which he copies out of an anthropology textbook the night before). The public will have to scramble a bit to understand what is reliable and what is moonbeams. Who Tells the Tales meets Who Reads the Tales and there are illusions on both sides.

I think the solution is Adolf’s -- taking time. Really listening. Spending the day. Becoming part of the scene. Learning how a kit fox really moves. Learning what stories mean to the tellers of them.

I think that whether one is IN or OUT of the group, one can witness. One has an active obligation to witness accurately and possibly to record that somehow. It is the way to wisdom.

MONTANA FESTIVAL OF THE BOOK 2006

Rather than Christmas and Fourth of July, my annual trip around the sun is marked by the Charlie Russell Art Auction in March and the Montana Festival of the Book right now in Missoula. This year more of you will be aware of the latter since they snagged the Prairie Home Companion as the Saturday “anchor” of the event. Last year it was “Selected Shorts,” the program that has actors reading fine short fiction, one of my favorite NPR shows. (There are a website, CD’s, and book anthologies.) Of course, even as I type, the Rolling Stones are warming up in Missoula. It’s hard to know whether all this means that Missoula is becoming a culture magnet, or a venue for remaindered culture. They say the Stones are having a little trouble selling tickets.

This is the first year that I’ve read in the Festival. I’ve been attending since I got back to Montana, which is about the time it started. It has morphed a bit -- I think in a good way by opening up a bit to lesser beings, other then the local gods. This is the first year that I’ve been at a session where a double row of young Indians, complete with well-behaved babies, arrived specifically to listen to the speaker, who was Adolf Hungry-Wolf explaining how he developed “The Blackfoot Papers.” (There have been Indians at the lecturn before, since Jim Welch and Debra Magpie Earling were professional U of M grads.) Adolf spoke eloquently and elegantly for 45 minutes with no notes, then took questions.

Vic Charlo, noted poet and chief of the Flatheads, was the chair of an ensuing panel and some of the audience carried over. Dorothy Patent, who writes scientific children’s books about animals, spoke at length about the wonder of albino buffaloes.

Her cultural advisor, Curley Bear Wagner, then orated a bit about the Blackfeet past. (Curley Bear was in the high school English classes I taught in Browning in the Sixties. He claims I did him the enormous disservice of trying to force him to read “Macbeth” and threw him out of class when he refused. He’s probably right.) His “book” was a CD of him telling the Native American version of the coming of Lewis and Clark, so I suggested that the name of the event ought to be changed to “Montana Festival of the Text.” To my mind, CD’s, DVD’s, and videotapes are as much text as books are. I’d even include music. Maybe art.

I spoke about the novel the 7th grade at Heart Butte wrote in 1990 when we decided the reader they had was patronizing and childish -- we threw the BOOK out, refusing to read it. That tells you the change between 1960 and 1990. The other difference was that we wrote our story on the early Macintoshes, the ones that looked like R2D2, only square. That’s when Penny Hughes-Briant came to visit us.

The truth is that I woke up early for the drive to Missoula -- had set the alarm for 5AM but woke up at 3:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep -- and the effect of the resultant fatigue was about like three stiff drinks: I was loud and funny. This novel, “One Windy Day,” is now on www.lulu.com where anyone can order it, either as a softbound book or as a download, which means you’ll get it on your computer right away, but have to print it yourself, if you want a print version.

My own writing, “Twelve Blackfeet Stories,” is also there on the same terms, but I’ve paid for it to have an ISBN number and be listed with Amazon, etc. after Thanksgiving. It was very hard for people to get their heads around the idea that I was writing modern short stories about Blackfeet. Over and over, convinced that I’d gathered another anthology of legends and myths, they asked, “But who gave you these stories?” When I said, “Nobody -- I just made ‘em up!” they looked shocked, SHOCKED! I handed out a flyer with the two lulu books on it, as well as the list of NA writers that I posted on this blog earlier. I’d made fifty copies of each and didn’t see leftovers, though it’s possible they just got dumped someplace.

We had envisioned a discussion about who was entitled to tell NA stories, why and under what circumstances, but there seemed to be little appetite for argument or even discussion on the panel. The audience was primed to argue and I kept trying to interrupt Curley Bear, but he’s been practicing ignoring me since 1962 and is very good at it. I have no idea what Dorothy thought and Vic was inclined to let things play out as they would. I’ll write a blog on some of my ideas, which I suggested there.

I did manage one pretty good joke. Someone had asked Adolf in a challenging way how Bob Scriver could be allowed to open the Sacred Bundles for photographs in his book, “The Blackfeet: Artists of the Northern Plains.” Adolf’s answer was that the Blackfeet way was always to let every man’s conscience be his guide and let him take the consequences of his decisions. (Which, depending upon how you think of it, might have been pretty dire for Bob Scriver, since he had a series of health crises after that.) There was also talk about how Sacred Objects should never be photographed. So when I talked, I noted that on many of the occasions photographed by Adolf, I was there but never in any photos. I quipped, “I must be a Sacred Object.” That was the best laugh of the session.

In the afternoon, I read a short redaction from my book about Bob, “Bronze Inside and Out,” which won’t come out until Spring when it will be published by the University of Calgary Press. I had practiced and timed it and, as I say, I was a little punchy and therefore pretty dramatic. The other two readers were less exciting. One was a closely reasoned argument by Liza Nicholas about the advent of dude ranches, which oxymoronically proved that rich people can play by imitating the work of poor people. (Marie Antoinette as cowgirl.) The other was a rousing and timely account of goose hunting by Buddy Levy. Both are adjunct faculty. There was no discussion.

Though I didn’t get to attend my quota of sessions this time, but I did get to touch base with a lot of people. Sue Hart was at the entrance when I came in and we had a few minutes to talk. A big Western male friend of hers and Richard Wheeler’s approached and Sue introduced us. The guy (I didn’t get his name) was peering at the name tag slung around my neck and said, “I’m just trying to see your name, not staring at your bosom!” I said, “Well, why not? Is there something wrong with it?” Later Richard attended the panel, so I got to give him a big hug.

Dale Burk and his wife were setting up their book table for Stoneydale Press, and we talked for a second about touchy Ernie Kraft and his excellent book about the Bison Range where Bob and I used to ride in the roundup. Stan Lynde, incredibly handsome and beautifully turned-out as usual, was crossing the parking lot so there was time for a howdy. (Sharon Brogan was with me and was rendered breathless!) Russell Chatham was deep in conversation with an intense man, but I interrupted for a second, confident that Russ would rather talk to a female. I wanted to tell him that we were born on the same day, me in Portland and him in California, so we were twins delivered on the same “stork flight” and he should think of me if he needed a twin. He said he liked that idea a lot! Stephen Bodio’s name was mentioned and his book was on the table for Chatham’s press.

But the funniest encounter was at the U of Nebraska Press table where the man looked at my nametag and got a strange look on his face. I’m sure the same happened when I looked at his tag: he was Gary Dunham, the editor at the Press who turned down my book about Bob Scriver, saying it was trivial and of regional interest only. We fenced for a few minutes and then softened. He says his real love is sci-fi! He also said that thanks to digital technology now NO BOOK at U of N. Press will ever be out of print again. They have shed their physical inventory for the least likely books to be sold, switching to Print On Demand, which gives them a big financial boost. I was very relieved because I’ve dreaded the day some of the Bison Books go out of print. Incidentally, the U of Neb. Press is co-selling Mary Eggermont-Molanar’s “Montana 1911” at one-third the price it is through the U of Calgary Press!

Rex and Judy Reike were tearing their hair out because they badly wanted to buy a copy, but by then Gary had gone off to receptions and auctions so there was no one to sell the books. I told Rex to just write a check and take the display copy, but he’s far more law-abiding than I am. They bought me supper. I obeyed all the rules for diabetics and he, having been diabetic for ten years, broke them. So that shows that books are more sacred than food.

Rex and Judy Rieke, Dale Burk and his wife, Stan Lynde, Adolf Hungry-Wolf, Cyn Davis/Kipp and Curley Bear Wagner have been good friends of mine for almost half a century now. Penny Hughes-Briant, whom I sat next to at Adolf’s session, has been a friend since she wrote a glowing review of my teaching for the NCTE in Heart Butte in 1990. The Wheeler/Harts have been friends for several years. And I made a terrific new friend, who has been an email and blog friend for a year or so: Sharon Brogan. excellent poet and extraordinary photographer who lives in a condo a few blocks away. () She made the NY Times for her Cat Friday compilations, when her blog is dedicated to cat portraits and jokes. Check out why “Spike Is Evil” on this Friday’s post.

When there was a bit of a gap in time, Sharon and I went for a little Mexican pick-me-up snack and established a lot of wave-length connections. Whisker quivers. Nose touchings. For lunch, I have to admit, I had ducked out on everyone and ate the PB sandwich I brought in my pocket, quietly and alone for the half-hour there was. Otherwise, I might not have made it through. It’s a long time since I spoke and campaigned like this. A lot of people needed to be connected. I never did talk to any of those young Indians. Or give Richard Wheeler a couple more hugs.

The four hour drive over was uneventful except for an egg and toast in Lincoln. The four hours back was the same, except that it was unusually warm so I could drive with my elbow out the window. The moon was first an apricot-colored satin shoe and then went nearly red as clouds moved in, torn, smelling of smoke and windrows down-but-not-dry. There were female mountain sheep along the Blackfoot River!

When I got home, my big fat cats were alert and explained that they were abandoned all day and that Caspar, that rotten cat, came over and threatened them again and that they MUST have treats immediately. Then we collapsed in a heap and the next thing was morning. I have no glamor tales about the major events.

LULU DOES IT DIFFERENTLY

Readers of this blog already know that I’ve been publishing via Lulu.com which is also a Print On Demand website, but one with some differences. There are also differences about me. For folks who are trying to figure out what they themselves ought to do, maybe there is some value in tracing them out specifically.

First of all, I started out “publishing” by writing handouts for Bob Scriver, both in the Museum of Montana Wildlife and to accompany sculptures. He did the editing and he was good at it, clear about what he wanted and why. So it was purposeful writing, not just a creative endeavor. For a while I had a column in the Glacier Reporter, which got me in political hot water, so I learned to consider my audience more than my psyche. Then I preached every Sunday for ten years, for three years repeating each sermon four times. It was structured and presumably reasoned writing, pitched to a specific consumer.

I’d written very little fiction until I came to “Twelve Blackfeet Stories,” which is the manuscript I’ve published through Lulu. But it is didactic fiction, written to a tight structure and meant for a specific audience. Hopefully, it will inspire Blackfeet to write stories of their own and release them from the trap of having to be 19th century Indians with feathers on horseback. Personally, I’d love to see more stories about the beginning of the 20th century, the Campbell years when a tall red-headed agent neglected oil rights because he believed in mixed agriculture. He was the first agent to systematically visit every Blackfeet household on the reservation. What a tale that might be!

Even for myself, equipped with guides and insider advice, it is a formidable project to get anything Western past the Eastern establishment that dominates publishing. Even the editors of the Western university presses tend to be young, academic, from back east, and full of Red Empowerment politics. Anyway, like me, most local Blackfeet have no money. But Lulu doesn’t cost a darn thing. Type your manuscript, post it, there you go. It’s essentially a blog that you can order bound into a “blook.” (You WILL have to give up the idea that anyone will pay you to publish your writing.)

Let’s compare with AuthorHouse.

1. There is no base price. If you use a library computer, you could theoretically spend no money at all. Of course, you’ll probably want printouts, might have to do some research, and stuff like that. It turns out that historical institutions charge $20 per photo plus you must seek formal permission to use them. This can feel pretty bogus when the photos were collected from your own relatives in the first place. All the photos in Bill Farr’s book of Blackfeet images were once in bureau drawers and boxes under beds around here.

2. If you want to sell in bookstores, you need an ISBN. That will cost you $99. If you just sell from Lulu.com, there’s no cost.

3. You don’t get any free copies. You get a discount, so you can buy some copies yourself and then sell them locally, but that costs money up front. You have access to a database that will tell you how many copies are sold and when. Royalties are paid out quarterly.

4. When I got my two test copies of the book (for which I paid) they looked like any other book I would get in a bookstore. This is not a thick book (about a hundred pages). I designed my own cover, which is plain red with black words: TWELVE BLACKFEET STORIES. A pair of moccasins is dropped over the “ee” in Blackfeet, because in Canada they say BlackfOOt, and I thought it would be good to sell on both sides of the border. Lulu sells anywhere in the world except two African countries which are too unsettled for commerce to be dependable.

I could publish this book in Blackfeet if I could type it that way. They’ll print any language because they don’t edit -- they define themselves as printers and only printers. What the author sends is camera-ready, which is a two-edged sword.

Also, they will make picture books, CD’s, and other media. Since it doesn’t matter how many copies are made, one could easily produce a family album to use for Christmas presents.

Copyright remains in the name of the author. The law protects the rights of any writer as soon as the work is published with the declaration: “Copyright (the year) by (author).” Some of the earlier Print On Demand houses tried to own the copyright and ran into terrible problems. Once in a long while, against all odds, a P.O.D. book becomes valuable.

One of the things I like about blogging is that as soon as my work is posted on the Internet, it is copyrighted. It may be copied, quoted without proper credit, sent here and there, but the earliest publication is provably mine and therefore the copyright rests with me. What we learned in the sculpture business is that it’s nearly impossible to keep other people from copying, but it’s important to keep a record of the earliest creation so that they don’t keep YOU from using your own material by claiming they were first. Even then, it’s rare to be able to collect damages. You can only force them to admit you wrote it.

(The other important thing about blogging is that if writing is on a blog at Blogger, then if one’s own computer crashes or someone at the library erases your novel, it’s still there on the blog.)

All the stories in “Twelve Blackfeet Stories” were posted on my blog and, in fact, circulated in manuscript form even earlier. The first story was written more than ten years ago and I made it a point to hand it around among Blackfeet to see what they thought. They are famously noncommital, so I didn’t find out a lot, except that the “two-spirit” story made some of them very nervous and others very happy. I’ve discovered that the people least likely to read my blog or order books are my relatives and the friends who always encouraged me to write. I don’t know why.

Currently I’m accumulating material for a blook on Animal Control. More slowly, I’m collecting weather essays for a blook to be called “Valier Seasons.” It’s meant for local Christmas trade, presents for grandma and so on. Aside from publishing on Lulu, I’ve been making books on my computer or by using outfits like Kinko. I sold 350 copies of a biography of Bob Scriver, just locally, with a wire binding.

The cost of homemade books breaks out this way: a dollar for cover glossy paper (books that are not glossy don’t sell), .02 per page, .10 for the wire binding, .05 for the last page which is poster board. That’s materials. (The bio of Bob was 57 pages, which some thought was too long!)

The binding machine, a GBC product, sells for a little less than $300. The Pagemaker and Photoshop software can cost up to $1,000 but I got educator’s versions for less. I used my own slides to illustrate. That’s capital investment.

Then there’s my time and the gas or postage to distribute. I figure it takes a solid week -- say 40 hours -- to get the manuscript in shape to duplicate AFTER it’s written. Duplicating and assembling probably takes a little more than twenty minutes each copy. I can assure you that punching holes and crimping wire bindings takes a certain amount of muscle and doing 300 copies at a time will make your arm sore.

I sell at tourist venues with few exceptions, and they are at least thirty miles away, so a quarter-tank of gas to get there and back. Last summer I compiled the earliest of my blogs on prairiemary.blogspot.com, entitled them “Blackfeet 101 for Napi-kwans,” (napi-kwans are white friends) and sold them to stores for $10 each. In turn, they sold them for $17.50 which some people thought was outrageous. I always end up giving some away to friends and influential people. I’m not making any profit, except that I’m learning, so I can count it as education.

No one edits these books except me. I’ve laid them out to be large print, in two columns per page, on letter-sized paper so they’ll be easy to read. “Twelve Blackfeet Stories” includes a time-line, which is what got me started on the idea in the first place. I’m arrogant about it on the one hand -- after all, I was an English teacher for ten years -- and humble about it on the other hand. (My next-door neighbor, who considers me an educated fool, pointed out that in my first book I’d gotten my own phone number wrong!)

Lulu doesn’t market. If books are sold, they credit one’s account. If those books come back, they debit. I don’t know where the books end up. Lulu doesn’t promote. Lulu doesn’t do layout. The system they’ve worked out is listing a little circle of approved professionals who DO do some of these other things. I just do all this myself.

A blog is a good way to promote a book -- so long as the provider doesn’t decide to charge commercial rates for the blog all of a sudden. People could just download the material and bind their own book for free, but I doubt that many do. The angle I’m coming from is that there are certain categories of people (a tribe, an occupation like animal control, a locale like Valier) who look for materials specific to them and use both Google and Amazon. They often have newsletters that accept ads or meet for conferences where readings might be presented. Most important, word of mouth is likely to be high energy and valued. The commercial publishing world ignores them.

I’ve been slow to understand that if a book does well as Print On Demand, a publisher might ask to include it on their list, buying the right to do so. Books sometimes start out self-published or published by a small company, and then “catch on” so that it is worthwhile for a bigger publisher to buy the rights. By that time often the editing and layout investment has already been made.

Of course, everyone dreams of selling the movie rights! Even if the movie never gets made! It's so much fun to pretend to cast it! Let's see -- who should play ME? A little modest narcissism is a reward for most authors!