Anthology
The literary arts include demonstrations and classes in poetry and various types of writing. Instructors often work with attendees in groups and individually to ensure each person has the basic skills to write on their own.
Join Us Sunday, January 26, 2025
MONTANA HISTORIC CHINESE COMMUNITIES
with Author MARK T. JOHNSON
This presentation is made possible by a grant from
HUMANITIES MONTANA
THE PARADISE CENTER HOSTS MONTANA CONVERSATION
“MONTANA’S HISTORIC CHINESE COMMUNITIES” WITH MARK JOHNSON
The Paradise Center hosts Montana “Montana’s Historic Chinese Communities” with Mark Johnson at 2 pm on Sunday, January 26, 2025. The Center is located at 2 School House Hill Road in Paradise. The presentation is free and open to the public.
In 1870, Chinese residents made up more than 10% of Montana’s population. Yet this population, so crucial to Montana’s history, remains underrepresented in historical accounts. Using documents left by Chinese pioneers—translated and interpreted for the first time—Mark Johnson recovers the stories of Montana’s Chinese population in their own words. Learn how Chinese Montanans advocated for their rights, and how they fought to keep their culture alive in an often-hostile environment.
In “Montana’s Historic Chinese Communities,” Mark integrates primary source research on the history of Chinese communities in Montana, notably through the translation and interpretation of hundreds of letters back and forth from China to Montana that testify to the experience of Chinese Montanans as straddling two worlds. From primary and other sources such as photographs, this talk examines the development and changes within Montana’s Chinese communities; and the growth and decline of Montana’s Chinese population.
Born and raised in Montana, Mark has always been interested in the region’s history. He had the opportunity to teach in China for eight years. During this time, he spent each summer in Montana and explored the connections between China and Montana. In these explorations, Mark found several large collections of documents in Chinese that had never been translated or interpreted. He crafted several transnational translation projects to bring students with the necessary language abilities to Montana to translate these documents, allowing for the first ever telling of the history of Montana’s Chinese communities in their own words. Mark has worked on elements of this research and storytelling since 2010, which will be utilized in his program, “Montana’s Historic Chinese Communities”.
Mark is an associate professor with the University of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education. In this role, Johnson partners with Social Studies teachers who serve in Catholic schools across the country. In his history interests, Mark focuses on the Chinese experience in his home state of Montana. Previously working in China, Mark brought students with the necessary language abilities to Montana to translate several collections of documents from the state’s historic Chinese residents to work to tell their history in their own words. Born and raised in Great Falls, he now lives in Helena.
Funding for Montana Conversations is provided by Humanities Montana through grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities United We Stand Initiative, Montana’s Cultural Trust, and private donations. We are funded in part by coal severance taxes paid based upon coal mined in Montana and deposited in Montana’s cultural and aesthetic projects trust fund.
Thank You For Joining Us For
Author ARNOLD “SMOKE” ELSER
A LIFETIME IN THE BOB MARSHALL WILDERNESS
HUSH OF THE LAND
This inspirational memoir chronicles the six-decade quest of packer and outfitter Arnold “Smoke” Elser to protect wild lands by bringing thousands of people deep into the mountains of Montana on horseback. With limited financial means and while still in college, the young man from Ohio decided against a promising career in forestry and chose instead to share his love of wilderness with city dwellers by working as a professional outfitter.
Based on hundreds of hours of interviews, Hush of the Land tells the captivating story of Elser’s early days as a packer in the Bob Marshall Wilderness and Bitterroot Mountains. Share the joys and thrills of summer rides, harrowing grizzly bear encounters, fishing in clear mountain streams, and many nights around a campfire within some of the West’s last wild lands. In this lively narrative, Elser recounts how his testimony for the Wilderness Act, and the fight to preserve and expand Montana’s wilderness lands, influenced his career as an outfitter and educator and gave him a voice at the center of Montana’s conservation movement.
Arnold “Smoke” Elser is a professional animal packer and a semi-retired instructor of wilderness outfitting and packing at the University of Montana, from which he received a 2023 Distinguished Alumni Award. Elser’s work as an educator and outfitter has been covered in National Geographic and the PBS documentary Three Miles an Hour. He is the coauthor of Packin’ In on Mules and Horses. Eva-Maria Maggi, PhD, is a writer, social scientist, and packer and teaches courses on wilderness issues at the University of Montana.
Thank You For Joining Us For
Author Bryan Douglas
THE UNLIKELY STORY OF MISS MONTANA AND THE D-DAY SQUADRON
EVERY REASON TO FAIL
The mission seemed simple enough. Completely restore a 75-year-old historic DC-3 and fly her from Montana to France for the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. Starting with no volunteers and no money. In under a year. With a crew that had only a few hours of experience flying one. Ride along with author and pilot Bryan Douglass, the rest of the flight crew, the volunteers, paratroopers, World War II veterans, and others on this inspirational story of an impossible dream that almost didn’t come true. The underdog of the D-Day Squadron faced insurmountable odds, constant delays and a shortage of nearly everything except determination. The idea of crossing the north Atlantic in a 75-year-old, newly restored airplane only a few hours after her first flight would terrify most, but you’ll meet the people who believed it could be done. The transatlantic journey of the D-Day Squadron’s “Mighty Fifteen” was an incredible feat, but the story of Miss Montana is the best of them all. Laugh, cry, and be amazed as you get the entire inside story from a pilot who was there.
Thank you for joining us for Author John Maclean!
Author John Maclean
WINNER OF THE MONTANA BOOK AWARD – HONOR AWARD
Home Waters
In the spirit of his father’s beloved classic A River Runs Through It comes a gorgeous chronicle of a family and the land they call home: Home Waters is John N. Maclean’s meditation on fly fishing and life along Montana’s Blackfoot River, where four generations of Macleans have fished, bonded, and drawn timeless lessons from its storied waters.
“The trout completed its curve in an undulating, revelatory sequence. A greenish speckled back and a flash of scarlet on silver along its side marked it as a rainbow. One slow beat, set the hook … in those first seconds I felt a connection to a fish of great size and power.”
So begins John N. Maclean’s remarkable memoir of his family’s century-long love affair with Montana’s majestic Blackfoot River, which his father, Norman Maclean, made legendary. Now himself past the age that his father published his bestselling novella, Maclean returns annually to the simple family cabin that his grandfather built by hand, still in search of the fish of a lifetime. When he hooks it at last, decades of longing promise to be fulfilled, inspiring John, reporter and author, to finally write the story he was born to tell.
A book that will resonate with everyone who feels deeply rooted to a place, Home Waters is chronicle of a family who claimed a river, from one generation to the next, of how this family came of age in the 20th century and later as they scattered across the country, faced tragedy and success, yet were always drawn back to the waters that bound them together. Here are the true stories behind the beloved characters fictionalized in A River Runs Through It, including the Reverend Maclean, the patriarch who introduced the family to fishing; Norman, who balanced a life divided between literature and the tug of the rugged West; and tragic yet luminous Paul (played by Brad Pitt in Robert Redford’s film adaptation), whose mysterious death has haunted the family and led John to investigate his uncle’s murder and reveal new details in these pages.
A universal story about the power of place to shape families, and a celebration of the art of fishing, Maclean’s memoir beautifully portrays the inextricable ways our personal histories are linked to the places we come from—our home waters.
Taken from https://johnmacleanbooks.com.
Montana Poet Laureate
Melissa Kwasny
Montana Poet Laureate
2000
