WSM Fall 2005
Where Have You Gone, Edward R. Murrow?
Legends of the Palouse
The Work of Wolves
Reading Kent Meyers’s The Work of Wolves reminded me of a time when I loved horses. To watch them gallop, to see them stoop and eat grass, to feel their breath as they’d nuzzle my hand for oats. To sense in them an innate sovereignty that people in our century seem sometimes to have abandoned.
Which is why this story of South Dakota’s iron landscape, compassion battling possessive hatred, and the plight of three horses, appeals so.
Stoic rancher’s son Carson Fielding takes a job he doesn’t want teaching an obsessively arrogant man’s wife to ride. Over the course of her training they fall into … » More …
Common Courage: Bill Wassmuth, Human Rights, and Small-Town Activism
“While those who act out violently—hate groups or lone wolves—may be few, the sentiments that lead them to believe their actions are acceptable stem from every-day bigotry and an unwillingness to confront it.” So writes Andrea Vogt to reflect the views of the late human rights activist Bill Wassmuth (1941–2002), as well as, one suspects, to warn the rest of us who are now left without his courageous leadership in the Northwest.
In Common Courage: Bill Wassmuth, Human Rights, and Small-Town Activism, Vogt chronicles Wassmuth’s life in the context of a discussion of the respective roles of education, religion, and community in eradicating the every-day … » More …
The Actual Moon, the Actual Stars
While undertaking a 15-minute workout on the elliptical machine at the fitness center, I read a dozen poems from Chris Forhan’s 2003 Morse Prize-winning book, The Actual Moon, the Actual Stars. Some poetry lovers might regard this as a shallow gesture, perhaps even a kind of sacrilege. Of course I intend no such disrespect to the high art of poesy, or as Dylan Thomas so memorably wrote, the “craft or sullen art.” The word “sullen” here means “silent,” and the North Idaho Athletic Club is no such site. No, I was reading and enjoying such poems as “Piet,” “Dumbwaiter to Heaven,” and “Some Words for … » More …