Discussing Montana at the Open Book Club

SEELEY LAKE – The Open Book Club (OBC) held July 13 featured Russell Rowland's book "Fifty-Six Counties: A Montana Journey." Three things were unusual about the event.

First, it was a summer event held at Holland Lake Lodge rather than one of the fall-through-summer readings OBC traditionally holds at Grizzly Claw Trading Company. Second, published writer, Sheila Scobba Banning, functioned as a moderator, alternately interviewing Rowland, prompting him to read selections from his book and soliciting questions from the audience. And third, the requisite travel and research Rowland needed to do before writing his book was financed through a Kickstarter campaign.

Though Rowland and Banning were introduced to one another in San Francisco through a mutual friend, their friendship was actually a virtual one, forged through email and social media.

Through Kickstarter, Banning found out about Rowland's proposed project to visit each county seat in Montana and weave resident's stories and his own observations into a non-fiction book.

Kickstarter is a website dedicated to helping artists, writers, filmmakers and other creative people find the resources and support to allow them to bring their projects to fruition.

In describing his proposed project in Kickstarter, Rowland wrote: "I am going to ask people from all over the state to help me tell the story of Montana's past and its present, as a microcosm of what is best about our state, and about America in general."

Banning said when she read his proposal, "I was eager and delighted and very excited about it. I thought he had a brilliant idea."

She was not the only one who thought so because 120 people (called backers) signed-in to pledge their support. Not surprisingly, most of the backing came from Montana, although Portland, San Francisco, Dallas, Canada and even South Africa were also represented. Although one backer pledged $500, most of the contributions were in the $35 to $75 range. Rowland anticipated he would need at least $4,000 to finance the project and listed that as his funding goal; in the end his pledges amounted to $7,012.

Rowland's first reading at the OBC event came from the introduction to "Fifty-Six Counties" where he wrote: "Here's the secret. The secret is we Montanans are completely bi-polar. As a state, as one big entity, we are completely manic-depressive."

To support that statement, Rowland referenced a 2014 Gallup poll which concluded Montana was the happiest state in America. That same year several studies ranked Montana in the top three states for suicides and he said it has stayed in the top five for the past three years. Rowland said that was one of the many contradictions he wanted to address in his book.

Asked to comment further on the suicide issue, Rowland said, "Probably like many people, I assumed the high suicide rate was because of the reservations. And it turns out it's not. Yes, there is a high suicide rate on the reservations but a lot of the top ten counties for suicides in Montana are nowhere near the reservations. So I felt that talking about the dark side of our history was vital. Some of the patterns that create these situations where people are just struggling to make a living still happen."

To illustrate his point, Rowland cited the Bakken oil fields. He said the pattern there was a few people discovered the resource, tons of people rushed out to get jobs, and then everything fell apart and those people suddenly found themselves unable to make a living. Rowland said that pattern has been repeated many times in Montana history and he really wanted to try to understand why Montanans keep letting that happen.

Rowland was also asked to comment on what he noticed regarding the prevalence of drinking in the state.

He responded, "The number of saloons in some of these small towns was unbelievable."

Rowland added he didn't really understand why drinking is still such a part of Montana's culture but he said it definitely is. As a partial explanation he noted that historically many towns in Montana were started by veterans of different wars seeking escape and by miners rushing to stake claims. He said many of the towns were not really civilized until women started to move in a little later and by then a culture of drinking had already been established.

Rowland ended the evening by comparing the relationship Montanans have with their state in contrast to other places he has lived. He said, "The identification we have with this place is really amazing. It's one of the more moving things that I noticed on this trip. It doesn't matter how bad things are, people here love where they live and they're going to fight to the death to make things work. It's one of the things I love most about Montana."

 

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