John Warner
The last rays of daylight splash across the prairie between Alzada and Broadus.
When I was very young, I was not happy to be an Ed.
I didn’t know any other Eds, which was probably the most important consideration. No young boy wants to stand out, especially at my Catholic school, where the highest weeds were likeliest to be lopped off.
The name also seemed so abrupt and dull. My siblings were John and Mary, my best friends Bill and Mike, sturdy, common names. But I think I understood that this first decision our parents make about us was probably permanent, and that I needed to get used to being an Ed.
All those early thoughts resurfaced during this process of christening a new column. I was quite happy with City Lights, the name my column wore during its 13-year existence at the Gazette. And I think I’m happy with the name I have chosen for this new, online column.
It will be, for reasons I will explain, Prairie Lights.
But regrets and second thoughts are inevitable. If it wasn’t so long, I really think I might have chosen “We did not come to Montana for our health,” the motto of the first newspaper in Billings, the Vociferator.
For that matter, Vociferator might have been a dandy name, if somewhat difficult to live up to week after week.
I am also bound to have regrets when I think of some of the excellent suggestions that readers sent in — and that I have now rejected. Among these were A Horse Is a Horse, Montana’s Trailhead Minutia, Ed Cetera and Ed’s Best Lights. I also liked Modern Times, which, like City Lights, is the name of a Charlie Chaplin movie.
My favorite was way too much of an inside joke but damned funny. I used to be in a band called the Longtime Lonesome Dogs, so one reader suggested the name Longtime Lonesome Blogs.
I also have some regrets because one of the most intelligent, thoughtful people I have ever met, who happens to live on the eastern edge of Montana, specifically argued against any name with “prairie” in it. Using “prairie” or “plain” in the title would exclude the mountains, he said, and “rimrock” and “rim,” which appeared in some of my own suggestions, are “too Billings-centric.”
Why Prairie Lights, then?
For one thing, it was the clear favorite of those who responded to my plea for help in choosing a name. I heard from something like 40 people in online comments and emails, and they cast votes for about 15 of the names I cooked up and then came up with another 15 or 20 of their own.
Ten people voted for Prairie Lights or said that name was the best of the lot, if their own suggestions were not adopted. The next-most-popular name was another one I came up with, Last Best Space, which got three votes. Coincidentally, Prairie Lights and Last Best Space were my own first and second choices.
So there you have it, a democratic system of voting followed by an autocratic decision by me. I like Prairie Lights because it seems to do the best job of carrying the old column name through to this new venture, with its emphasis on Eastern Montana.
I also like the feeling of expansiveness implied by the name, and it conjures images of all those little towns, those beacons of light, spread out across the vast landscape of Eastern Montana.
There are no mountains in the column name, but there are mountains in the name of this state, and we probably don’t need to be reminded of that. Besides, any tinhorn tourist can appreciate our soaring mountains. We all need to better appreciate the flatter but by no means featureless expanses of this part of the state.
We will try to foster that appreciation at Last Best News and in Prairie Lights. I hope you will agree that John Warner’s breathtaking photograph accompanying this column also advances that goal admirably.
Thanks to everyone who took part in selecting a name. If there are any hard feelings, so be it. I did not come to Montana for my health.
