goodbye/Hello!

With the end of the university's school year upon us, I will no longer be posting articles written for the UM Kaimin. I will, however, continue to publish interesting thoughts, ideas, and interviews as they occur. Life at large! Stay tuned, and keep reading! annie

A Talk with Robert Hass on Poetry in Society

Robert Hass graciously took time out of his uber-busy teaching and lecturing schedule to speak with me about the impact of poetry on society, and whether or not such art can influence the public's viewpoint on war. This interview was conducted April 26th, 2007, from Missoula MT, in anticipation of his April 30th talk at the University of Montana, “Study War No More.”

Robert Hass is an outspoken poet, reflecting on world affairs, environmental issues, and most recently, the war in Iraq. Currently serving as chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, he was our US Poet Laureate from 1995 through 1997, under the Clinton administration.

Though best known for his poetry, Hass teaches literature at UC Berkeley, calling it his "paying job." "Every artist has two full time jobs," he said. "One that earns them a living, and thier art. Inevitably, you must do something (other than writing) to pay the bills."

Hass is now on the lecture circuit, speaking about art's influence on consciousness and war. The progression from artist to activist happened early for Hass, who was a grad student during the Vietnam War.

Married with children, he was deferred from the draft, and became active in the Sixties antiwar movement. Hass remarked on our current war: “I don’t think there’s apathy about it; I think people are very worried about it.” Yet he noted students aren’t actively campaigning against the US involvement in Iraq as they did against Vietnam “because there’s no draft.” With no disincentive, they can be blasé.

Hass emphasised the full impact of the war is not being felt by the American public because “people aren’t asked to foot the bill for it.” He said our current increase in gas prices would have happened anyway, due to the scarcity of the resource, and that the real cost of US involvement in the middle east will not be felt for a generation, just as happened with Vietnam. "It wasn't until the mid-seventies, in the Carter administration, that society felt the impacts of the cost" the government had borne to fund Vietnam.

"Suddenly we had seniors living on fixed incomes from social security who were eating dog food, because it was all they could afford," Hass said.

Another barrier to emotionally involving the public in what Hass called the "true cost of the war" is a ban on taking or running photographs of deceased soldiers, he said. “The government will not allow anyone to take pictures of the dead Americans coming home,” nor does it “keep track of Iraqi civilian deaths.” This artificially cleanses the war, making it no more real to most people than a TV show.

Hass said as long as the real costs of war - both economic and social - are hidden from the public eye, the war will continue. And once it ends, Hass believes society will feel the impact of the government's current budget deficit through the loss of social programs, coupled with commodity cost increases.

Still, Hass isn't necessarily trying to make a particular statement through his poetry. When asked if he writes about the war in order to change society's thinking, Hass replied “I find myself writing about war for the same reason I write about divorce or nature or my children growing up. It’s there to be dealt with and thought through and felt through.”

“I’m not trying to reach anyone,” he said, “I’m making something.”

Poetry is an art form of the educated middle class, Hass said, and most poetry is a reflection of the world. Yet, “there are poets who are profoundly talented, like Shakespeare, who generate new ideas.” Some, he said, are able to “crystallize a whole society around an idea.”

“Writers come to this in different ways. All artists need to say things in public. In my own case, it comes down to growing up in a household with alcoholics. I have a strong impulse to (reveal the truth) if I think it’s there unspoken.”

Hass doesn’t believe writing will lose ground as an art form, but the medium which is popular at any given moment is the medium which shapes that moment’s heroes. At one time, he said, it was newspapers, and writers were held in esteem. Now, he said, visual media dominate, creating Hollywood's version of celebrity and importance.

With most young people more concerned about Paris Hilton than great literature, Hass said he doesn’t “have any illusions about the reach of poetry in the short run.”

As for poetry impacting society on a large scale, Hass said he’s always held that poetry works by the trickle-down effect. "It takes about a hundred years in the economy of the industrial period," he said, "for a poet to influence government."

Still, “the world is changing and as it does the role of poetry is going to change.”

“Mass literacy is a new phenomenon” which could broaden poetry’s reach, said Hass. With a college education becoming common, and access to publishing one’s work more readily available, “more people are writing than ever before.”

“Emily Dickenson said, tell the truth, but tell it slanted.”

Ruminations

As Virginians mourn and sit in shocked silence, North Easterners are having their lives turned into flotsam. Thailand, too, is flooding, and our new pope turns eighty.

Does anyone else out there remember Malachi? Has anyone else read Revelations?

I am in that blessed spot on the continent, where fires may rage come summer drought, but floods are few and far. Shooting sprees are typically kept on the news, and not in our own back yards. No wonder so many people are moving here, where life, to urban dwellers, must still seem charmed.

The world is changing faster, even, than those affecting the changes know.

As I watch in stunned reaction, I continue to live. Plnats grow. We plant vegetables, plannng for the future. Flower buds are forming on the chives, and the second wave of tulips starts to bloom.

The marjoram is thick and green, while in New York it's flooding, and there's snow. What can I say to this reversal of fortune but Thank God?

I don't wish any illness or tragedy upon my fellow man, but truly, I feel blessed, to be here now, where the air is fading dove-wing grey, and rain looms, but we do not fear flood.

The sun that warmed my breast today was sparkling, while in Virginia, blood ran. I biked home alert for speeding cars (for drivers here are insane) but did not fear random gunfire.

I have no answer for why the world is warped, except it has been ordained, that if we, our planet's stewards, do not care for her rightly, the tilt will become skew, the balance broken, and the circular yin/yang will fall like an egg from the counter and splatter.

I fear we have unbalance. It is, though, not too late - to put down our hatred, to dissarm our disdain, to focus on rebirth and renewal that is spring, and carry those seeds of wonderment to every interaction with another.

Certinaly, many will be rebuked. Some people are not ready for a world view of faith, of hope. Yet those of us who can, must persist.

And so, as Earth Day is upon us, I wish you all faith, sprouting seeds, and hope.

Community and Campus Join to Celebrate Earth Day

Earth day was established on April 22, 1970 to focus on ecological issues.
This year, University of Montana students and Missoula residents will be able to celebrate Earth Day twice, with campus events this Thursday and on Sunday with a huge party in Caras Park.
The dual celebration is the brain child of the Missoula Urban Demonstration Project(MUD) in conjunction with the University student group MontPIRG.
In previous years, Earth Day events were predominantly riverside and community cleanups or weed pulls, said MUD director Lou Ann Crowley. This year, MUD wanted a true celebration, albeit with an educational component.
MontPIRG organizer Bill Pfeiffer is excited by the collaboration.
“We wanted to have a concert on campus, but it wasn’t gonna happen,” said Pfeiffer, “so we decided to see what we could do to throw in to the celebration MUD was planning.”
The result will be a bigger bash than either group could have organized alone, Crowley said.
Although Earth Day is officially Sunday, the campus will celebrate on the Oval Thrusday, Pfeiffer said, because “we know from experience that turnout at weekend events on campus is always low, so we decided to do something on a day students were still here.”
One of Thursday’s events will be an eco-footprint race, in which participants complete a number of “Survivor-like” tasks based on the size of their ecological footprint. An ecological footprint is a determination of how much energy you use to maintain your personal lifestyle, Pfeiffer explained.
Thursday evening will feature an outdoor movie. Pfeiffer wasn’t sure what that film would be, only that it isn't “An Inconvenient Truth.” He said the group is trying to get a bicycle-powered generator to pop popcorn during the film.
Sunday’s day-long event runs from noon through 7 p.m. downtown in Caras Park.
Local musicians Amy Martin, Tom and the Tomatoes, Reverend Slanky and the Gravely Mountain Boys will provide entertainment via a solar-powered PA system.
Three Montana car dealerships will hold a “Green Car Show” featuring hybrid and electric vehicles and “Smart” micro-cars. (The Smart car was the tiny vehicle driven by Steve Martin in “The Pink Panther.”)
In addition, forty exhibitors will offer information and examples of sustainable living.
Local food, wine and beer vendors will be on hand to feed the need as it arises. And there’ll be plenty of free activities for the kids, including a Karelian Bear Dog demonstration (with a costumed “bear” attacking trash cans), a giant paper mache globe to paint and more.
A primary example of the “town and gown” crossover is a portable glass pulverizer being rented for the event by the student group, said Crowley.
Campus organizers will collect recyclable glass during UM Earth Day events Thursday, and on Sunday, crush the glass in the machine to create a landscaping mulch called cullet, that will be distributed to Caras Park event goers free of charge.
The pulverizer is housed in Helena, and is used by eight Montana counties to recycle glass, Crowley said. Students are renting it for about $1800, Pfeiffer added, and held fund raisers throughout the semester in anticipation of the event.
The theme of Sunday’s event is “Living Sustainable Solutions.”
“We want people to be able to take away simple lifestyle changes that will contribute to the sustainability of our community,” Crowley said.

Jim McKusick uncovers Coleridge's Faust

Jim McKusick, Dean of the University of Montana’s Honors College, has cracked the code.

McKusick, a scholar of 19th century English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, has all but proved an
anonymous translation of Goethe’s Faust is really the work of famed poet Coleridge.

The discovery was a long time coming, and may never have been as provable as it is today, thanks
to modern mathematics and computers.

McKusick used a tool called stylometrics to analyze the 1821 coffee table publication.
Stylometrics is a computerized statistical analysis of a writer’s style, focusing on such things
as word counts and word usage. However, McKusick says, it’s “not a matter of matching up exact
phrases.” That’s what’s done to test for originality versus plagiarism, he adds.

McKusick used stylometrics to compare known Coleridge works with the anonymous Faust translation.
Word counts, pronoun use, conjunctions and prepositions were all examined by McKusick, and found
to be a match with Coleridge’s distinctive writing style. “Everyone has a characteristic
fingerprint of style,” McKusick points out.

To be sure the 1821 publication could only be traced to Coleridge, McKusick also did comparative
analyses with other known German translators of the time. There was no other match. Stylometrics,
McKusick says, does not offer proof of Coleridge authorship, but a high probability of it – and,
importantly, evidence that the other translators of the time were not the author.

Before 2003, when stylometric software became widely available, such analysis was the province of
mathematicians. “You still have to have a good understanding of mathematics,” to use the programs,
McKusick says, but it opens up the world of statistical analysis to others.

The work in question was published as an illustrated “coffee table” volume in 1821, and due to its
popularity, reissued in 1824. “It was widely read back then,” McKusick says, “but in the twentieth
century it’s been an obscure, rare book.” That rarity, oddly, is what first brought it to light as
a possible Coleridge work.

Paul Zall spent his career as a research scholar at the Huntington Library in California.
According to Fred Burwick, co-editor of the newly revealed work, Zall suspected the anonymous tome
was the work of Coleridge. “He showed it to me and said, ‘This looks a lot like Colerdige.’”

“I didn’t believe it,” Burwick adds.

Eventually, though, Zall convinced other scholars of his theory’s viability. As the findings were
set to be published by the New York Public Library, the library closed its press. Discouraged,
Burwick says Zall “gave up on it, until he met Jim McKusick.”

McKusick was a newly-minted PhD working at the library at the time. With their common interest in
Coleridge, Zall literally handed the project to the young McKusick. Zall gave McKusick the
two-foot tall stack of notes he had on the volume, with the statement, “Jim, this is my legacy.
Good luck and Godspeed.”

As we all know, God works in His own sweet time, and the speed that Zall wished for the project
has taken almost two decades.

The wait, perhaps, has been worth it. “Faust is arguably the greatest work of the modern literary
world,” says McKusick. Proving Coleridge’s authorship is “not only of historical importance,” the
work, he says, is “magnificent. It’s a gorgeous translation. It’s a book people will want to
read.”

The Oxford University Press agrees, and has just begun taking advance orders for the book, which
will be released in September. McKusick said the Press’s acceptance of the work for publication
was the key factor for finally releasing the evidence he has held “for several months.” The
credibility of Oxford University, the dean says, tells the scholarly community “they regard it as
a legitimate discovery.”

McKusick is quick to share the credit for validating Coleridge’s Faust with his fellow scholars.
Visiting professor Robert Pack is “one of the very few people in the whole world who has read the
complete translation.”

Professor Dave Patterson, chair of the University’s Mathematics department “has carefully read”
McKusick’s analysis. “It’s a very nice use of stylometrics and statistics to prove the case,” of
Coleridge’s authorship, Patterson adds. “This is a strong piece of evidence in conjunction with
the other evidence.”

One of those pieces is a letter from Goethe himself, referring to Coleridge’s translation of his
Faust.

Co-editor of the forthcoming work, UCLA’s Fred Burwick, unearthed the corroborating evidence.

“I do specialize in Anglo-German literary translations,” Burwick said. “I was doing a presentation
on Colerdige in Germany, and I remembered Paul’s argument. I became convinced my skepticism was
totally out of place.”

“Once I knew there was a connection,” Burwick explains, “I went through Goethe’s published
correspondence and did an electronic search. Goethe mentions Coleridge twice,” although he
misspells his name once, Burwick says. But he does say expressly “Coleridge is translating my
Faust.”

Burwick contacted Zall, Zall told him he’d passed the torch on to McKusick.

Burwick had been doing work regarding “verbal echos,” the repetition of particular phrases in a
writer’s work. “Our computers can’t do this very well, but a trained scholar can,” said Burwick.

Unlike the stylometrics, which looks for recurring words, “verbal echos won’t show up on frequency
lists,” Burwick explained. He said Coleridge used certain stylistic phrasings, such as
adjective-modifier-participle, like “wild singing birds” that was unique. “He loved to say things
were wild, but then he’d modify that, whereas another writer would not.”

Contacting McKusick about Coleridge, Burwick said “Jim had found 21” verbal echos. After reviewing
the work, Burwick said “I discovered more than 800.”

“In the following year,” Burwick went on, “we turned to computer-based authorship software.”
Using the stylometric software produced by Leeds University, McKusick “did a really remarkable job
of comparing other translators of the period and the Coleridge,” Burwick said. “Coleridge’s
version is distinctly Coleridge.”

Still, “without Jim’s computer-based analysis, we’d still have a lot of skeptics.” Burwick added
the computer analysis of word structure is similar to DNA analysis, “when your probabilities get
above 98 percent, it’s pretty certain. It’s the biggest breakthrough in Coleridge scholarship in a
hundred years.”

McKusick hopes the inherent poetry of the work will draw its own fans, not just scholars. “It’s a
scandalous work and everyone (will) want to read it,” mentioned McKusick.

Burwick agrees that Coleridge’s translation of Faust is special. This translation “was written
fairly late in Coleridge’s career. Like Faust, he’s looking back… Faust has squandered his life as
a scholar and now wants love and companionship. I think Coleridge related to that.”

Both Faust and Coleridge, Burwick said, were philosophers who contemplated Theism and Pantheism.
In Faust, Mephistopheles leads the main character to the top of Mount Brocken. Coleridge himself
had climbed the mountain twice while in Germany. Both were troubled men. “There were so many
touching points it’s almost uncanny,” says Burwick.

In addition, the story itself reflected an ironic twist in Coleridge’s life. Faust’s popularity in
the 1800’s led to it being widely translated in England. Coleridge was first commissioned for the
job in 1814, when he received a hundred pound advance, but failed to produce a full translation.
“I think it was too much for him,” Burwick says. Coleridge was known as an opium addict, though
McKusick is quick to point out, opium “was cheap and legal” and being an opium addict in the
mid-1800s was akin to being an alcoholic these days.

“Coleridge translated half the play into beautiful English verse,” says McKusick, and connected
those scenes with prose transliterations. In 1820, he was approached by another publisher, Thomas
Boosey, who had a number of German engravings of the play. Boosey’s intent was to produce a
coffee-table volume, and he didn’t need a full translation for that book.

Still, it made sense for him to Coleridge. “He was known to be a poet of the supernatural and
demonic,” says Burwick.

There is extant correspondence between the two in which Coleridge insists upon anonymity for his
part in the work. Because Coleridge had reneged on his arrangement with Murray, the first
publisher, it makes sense he would want his authorship to remain unknown on the newer volume.

In addition, McKusick says, Faust, though widely popular, was “morally questionable.”

“it’s hard for me to evaluate the relative importance of these two reasons for keeping anonymous,”
says McKusick of Coleridge’s decision. “Was it about the money (he owed Murray) or moral
squeamishness? Both of those are valid and significant.”

Both McKusick and Burwick will present their findings at a one-day conference in California on
March 16, honoring “Colerdige’s Faust: A celebration of Paul Zall.” In addition, Anne Basinski of
the UM Music department will give a talk on the musical history of Faust, while three UM student
musicians, sopranos Immanuela Meijer and Veronica Turner and pianist Emily Trapp will present
musical selections of the operatic version of Faust.

Faust is not only a literary work, but a great play, said McKusick. “UM could have the honor of
staging the world premier of this play.” His co-editor, Fred Burwick, just happens to be “a
talented producer of 19th century plays. It would be a beautiful translation to produce,” says
McKusick.

Allitt Expounds on the Why of Conservatism's Rise

More animated a presentation than the title might lead one to expect, “The Transformation of American Conservatism” was presented by Emory University History Professor Patrick Allitt as an afternoon seminar in the President’s lecture series.

Fifty people watched the powerpoint progression of philosophers and tomes that mark the evolution of American conservative thought.

Conservatism, Allitt expounded, has a “profoundly anti-utopian view of the world.”
Its base is “belief in original sin,” he said, requiring people to struggle to be virtuous, “but they will always have a will to power.” Allitt explained Conservatism holds that “conflict can never be abolished. Therefore, there will always be war.”

Allitt’s talk presented a broad overview of America’s return to conservatism on many fronts: political, economic and social among them.

From the 1930ís thru the 1960ís, Allitt said, political conservatives “complained about the degree to which the government was taking over the civilian economy” as social programs were instituted to combat the Great Depression.

Ayn Rand, for example, was a conservative philosopher and writer who believed that bureaucrats were cowards, but entrepreneurial spirit would lead to personal freedom, he said. Other schools of conservative thought held different points of view, but all were united in that era against a common enemy: communism.

“Conservatism is very contextual, it looks very different depending on what it finds threatening at the time,” Allitt explained.

As a response to the cultural changes of the sixties, and a settling of society after the upheaval and insecurities of the Great Depression, conservatism began to regain popularity and took over ground previously held by the lofty ideals of social welfare programs.

With the implementation of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society reforms, which ushered in desegregation and affirmative action, conservatives found a new common “enemy” White Southerners, who previously had voted democrat, began voting republican in retaliation to the preferences given to blacks. Conservatism, Allitt said, “believes in the reality of human inequality.”

The “social revolution” of the sixties cemented the shift, Allitt said. “The development of the hippie movement … really embodied everything that the conservatives hated.”

However, the cold war was still a factor in political thinking, and fear of communism played out in the voting booth. Nixon coined term “the silent majority” to reflect the growing conservative base of American voters.

Ronald Reagan, Allitt said, may have won the 1980 presidential election because of that fear. “Regan’s view of the cold war was that someone had to win it, and it can’t be them, so it’s got to be us.”

The Cold War’s successful end, wherein the USSR dissolved into independent republics, validated conservative thinking, Allitt said. “Karl Marx had been superannuated. What more marvelous way of proving the point than by ending the cold war?”

President's Lecture Review

“I don’t want a comfortable class. I want an anxious class. You learn better when you’re on edge.” Emory University History Professor Patrick Allitt explained his philosophy to a full house in the University Theater during the President’s Lecture Series Monday night.

Allitt’s talk, on “The Crisis of Education in America,” met with a willing audience who jotted notes throughout and asked a plethora of questions after the talk.

Allitt, who is from England, said his teaching methods are a bit stricter than the usual American student is used to. On the first Monday of class, for instance, he gives his students a vocabulary quiz. “Most walk off and get a zero,” he quipped. On the first Friday of class, he insists that students discuss their first reading assignment.

Inevitably, he says, a number of students won’t have read the work, and are duly embarrassed when questioned it. “In that one embarrassing moment,” he said, “you transform the entire atmosphere of the classroom.”

Allitt believes if you do not, you have accepted illiteracy as par for the remainder of the semester. Some of his colleagues disagree with his methods, but Allitt emphasises “these people didn’t come here to be your friends. They came here to learn something.”

Allitt had a few other suggestions as to how the American educational system could be improved.

In Britain, students begin their specialization after age 16, he said, while American students are learning a “defiantly impractical” liberal arts education. Still, he agrees “it enriches your life to be educated in things other than what you’re going to specialize in,” but American students do not learn their specialties as deeply as European or Japanese students.

Make students use a dictionary. And teach them to read and write. “There’s no discredit in not knowing a word before reading a passage,” he said, “but there certainly is if you did not look it up.”

“Student writing,” he explained, “is like listening to someone pick up a violin for the first time.”

Probably the biggest improvement could be made if American Universities eliminated multiple-choice tests, Allitt said. “The American population would take a quantum leap upwards,” if writing and critical thinking were taught, rather than multiple choice’s process of avoiding the wrong alternative when testing.

Allitt’s suggestion to students to improve their education was simple. “Write,” he said. “Keep a diary. You’ll be absolutely astonished when you read it twenty years from now. And, it will teach you to write.”

“Here’s what it comes down to in education,” he said. “You educate yourself. If you care about it, and you want to learn, you will.

The whole history of the world tells us this.”

Random Ramblings on April's Birth

Thnak God for Global Warming: It's Spring!

My crocuses are up and gone, withered to memory as the tulips take thier place. I have to keep reminding myslef of the date. It's April 1st, and it's spring.

Stranger things can happen, I suppose, but this global shift in climate is noticeable to a gardener. I've planted herbs. My son has spinach. And it's up- growing despite the light frosts of early morning, sending green fingers to the sky.

"It's April 1st," I keep reminding myself. I don't recall ever planting this early before. The peopnies are poking vein-red noses from their soil bed. The flax is feathery and getting taller. Tulips are blooming, for goodness sake!

I let my mind jaw on the implications, the possibility of death-dry August, of smoke-beleagured air, of drought. Yet how can anyone complain when salad greens will come up in spring, as they are meant to be, if one believes in old nursery rhymes, old tales of four seasons...

I don't love winter. Can't say I ever have. I enjoyed the fabled Blizzard of 77 with it's mountians of drift, it's tunnels my brothers and I dug in eight-foot snow, playing eskimo. We stood higher than cars that winter, walking onthe ridges of the mounds shoveled to the side where the saidewalk ought to be. It was like walking in air, or being an adult. "How lucky they are," I thought back then,"those grown ups who see from on high all the time."

And now spring has touched me with her softening glance. Her chapped wind hands graze my cheeks.

The green shoots come up to beautify the impoverished earth. The brown decay seems dingy now, out-of-place, like trash on a polished museum floor. I hold my breath. Soon, all this weight will lift, and like birds our spirits soar. Thank God for Global Warming. Man may have created it, but it is a gift, nonetheless. ak

Monday Night Scrabble

Sure, you're feeling erudite- but can you spell it? And more importantly, can you make it stretch to that triple word score in the corner?

“That would be the wow of the game,” says Missoula Scrabble League founder Suzanne Reed, “to get a triple word score and use all your letters.”

While everyone else was watching the final game of the final four, a dozen Missoulians were lively debating whether ur or ar are acceptable words. And what about aa?

The game is on at the Monday Night Scrabble League.

I've come for my second visit. Welcoming smiles and calls of "Well, you came back!" greet me, and I feel "yeah, this is a good crowd." Disappointingly, I notice the Super Scrabble board is full. Too full. "Hey! Can you have five players?" I ask the knowing elders. "Sure," they say, referring to the oversized board. "It's got double the tiles, why not?"

This is not cut throat Scrabble, and I'm glad of it.

This winter, my latent Scrabble obsession came out of remission, and I got hooked on an Internet version of the game. (I'm ranked at 500.) The Internet Scrabble Club is populated by players all over the world, but lacks the camaraderie of live play. That's why I've come here tonight.

"Hi. My name is Cindy and I'm a Scrabbler." Laughter fills the Missoula Public Library boardroom. "We don't give last names because we're addicts." More peals ring out, and the shuffle of small wooden tiles is lost in the din of too many conversations happening at once.

Newbies are welcomed with inquiries as to what they do, while players who've been at it longer are deep in the scuffle of matching letters upon the board, raking up the points in an effort to beat their friends.

The Scrabble League draws a lively group of word aficionados that appreciate both the beauty of the language and the beauty of the tiles.

"I've never played with tiles this color before," Paula Strong said, placing a rosewood E on the deluxe game board. Next table over the Super Scrabble players found uses for two q's, two z's, two x's.

Suzanne Reed, an adjunct professor of Organizational Psychology at the COT, is the club's founder. She's using an original board. "Original original?" I ask incredulously. "Yes," she says. "This board is from 1948."

It's owner, Frankie Morrison, chuckles when asked how long she's been playing. "As long as there has been Scrabble," says her compatriot Sarajane Savage.

The two women, both over seventy, have been playing the tile crossword game since it’s inception. They play together at their condos in the Maplewood Apartments, and they play at the library -- but they refuse to play at the senior center. “That was a fiasco," Frankie says of their one journey there. The women tell me of improper play styles, of botched rules, of sore losers. “We don’t play with senior citizens anymore,“ Savage finishes. “We’re too young for that.”

Tonight’s crowd is anything but the senior circuit. Twenty-something Lauren Monroe has come for his first visit, learning as he plays. Other players range in age “from 12 to 82,” Reed tells me.

“Hey! You used the word bogarted!” one player shouts out. “Yeah?” comes the repsonse.

In a different league, the word might be challenged. Here, “it comes down to agreeing which dictionary you’re going to use,” says Reed.

Most folks learn of the league through ads in the newspaper. Some become regulars. And some come just to watch. “We have a lot of photography students come. We’re a very attractive subject,” Reed states.

The Missoula Scrabble League welcomes all players every Monday at the public library. Maybe we’ll see you there next week.