On Monday, March 22, 2004, middle western poet and essayist Tom Montag will speak about "The Idea of the Local" as part of District 206 Community Education's series Humanities For the Inquiring Mind. The presentation will be held at Discovery Middle School from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. For registration information, contact program coordinator Sue McGrath at 763-0894. The fee is $3.00.

Calling his current project "Vagabond in the Middle: An Expedition Into the Heart of the Middle West," Montag is currently investigating "place" on a broad scale by studying twelve middle western communities, including Alexandria, Minnesota. He is searching the region, he says, for the true stories that tell us what makes us who we are.

For his presentation in Alexandria, Montag will introduce his Vagabond project and then will explore, through readings and discussion, the idea of the "local," what it is, and why it should be appreciated and celebrated.

Montag was born and raised in Palo Alto County, Iowa, on a farm a mile south and a quarter-mile west of Curlew. His memoir, Curlew:Home, presents vivid prose about his farm childhood during the 1950s, interspersed with the journal of a trip he made back to his hometown in October, 2000. Montag believes that, while Curlew:Home tells his story and that of his family, it also represents many other middle western farm people who have no one to speak for them. Several readers have told the author: "This could be the story of my life." Columnist Myram Tunnicliff wrote in the Emmetsburg Democrat that Curlew:Home should speak to every person "for whom the land holds meaning." It is a tribute "to the values of the entire middle west," she said.

Donna Seaman at Booklist magazine called Curlew:Home a "companionable and reverent memoir" and said "Montag's prose is thoughtful and unhurried, opening out into moments of beauty and wry humor, echoing in its quiet rhythms and low-key observations the gentle roll of the rich midwestern landscape he loves.... He celebrates the country's most overlooked and underestimated region and movingly portrays his hardworking and loving parents."

For the past year and a half, the popular public radio show Prairie Home Companion has kept a selection from Curlew:Home on its web site in the "Stories from Home" feature at www.prairiehome.org .

In October 2002 Montag published his collection of essays about writing and being a writer, Kissing Poetry's Sister. Jessica Powers at newpages.com wrote of this book: "Tom Montag has a gentle style; he writes with depth - thought and emotion are carefully balanced and you get the sense as you read this that here is a wise man - not a perfect man, but a good man - and he is letting us into his house and his life for a few moments each day so we can experience the richness that is his.... I look forward to reading whatever Montag writes in the future." The editor of Creativity Connection, Marshall Cook, called the same essays "a marvelous book of prose."

In his "Statement of Intent" for the Vagabond project, Montag has defined the scope of the effort in this way: "Who are we and what are the middle western emblems common across our area, I want to ask. Landscape, environment, people, and history all factor into the definition of the middle west, all shape what we've become. In coming to understanding, I expect to mix interview and personal experience, history and geology, essay and journal entry and meditation. I'll walk, I'll drive, I'll listen, I'll read, I'll listen some more, I'll watch. Always I will be looking for the true stories that tell us what is it that makes us who we are. I will burrow into the life of each community, to find the stuff it is made of; I will record that, then compare the communities to determine what they hold in common, what they keep as difference. There will necessarily be a peeling back of the surface sheen of the landscape to see what pulses beneath, to understand the land not in some generic, historical sense, but in terms of particular lives lived here. The truly local: these lives, in their times, in these places."

The focus communities for the Vagabond project are: Smith Center, Kansas; West Point, Nebraska; Redfield, South Dakota; Rugby, North Dakota; Alexandria, Minnesota; Emmetsburg, Iowa; Maysville, Missouri; Vandalia, Illinois; Ripon, Wisconsin; L'Anse, Michigan; Fowler, Indiana; and Eaton, Ohio. In January of this year, Montag started visiting these communities and he reports on the progress of his project in an irregular newsletter as well as on his web site at: www.wlhn.org/vagabond .

Of Montag's newest poems, The Sweet Bite of Morning, Denise Hill at newpages.com said: "I was able to visualize a literal blossoming, as the poems moved from observations of snow shifting across roadways and fields, to the warmth of spring, the emergence of new life, and on to the intense clear blue sky heat of summer. Montag provides an incredible journey across time and season that any true Midwesterner can actually feel in their skin.... Montag's strength in this work is his brevity and concise use of language, with a special ability to create strong and lasting images through his choice of details."

Montag's forthcoming Big Book of Ben Zen (March, 2004) is a compilation of 238 little poems in the voice of Ben Zen, an Oriental monk with an ancient wisdom wandering in modern America.

Montag's poem "Lecturing My Daughter in Her First Fall Rain" is one of 60 works by Wisconsin writers permanently incorporated into the design of the Midwest Express Convention Center in Milwaukee. He has read from and talked about his work on the Wisconsin Public Radio programs "Higher Ground" and "Hotel Milwaukee."

Montag has published essays on a wide array of topics in such magazines as The Baybury Review, Bellowing Ark, Cream City Review, Flyway, The Heartlands Today, The Journal of Unconventional History, The Midday Moon, New Stone Circle, North Dakota Quarterly, Northeast, and Rosebud.

In October 2002, Montag retired from a career in the printing industry to devote himself full time to his writing. He and Mary, his wife of more than 30 years, live in Fairwater, Wisconsin. The couple has two grown daughters, Jenifer and Jessica.