{"id":365,"date":"2014-01-29T09:01:48","date_gmt":"2014-01-29T16:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=365"},"modified":"2014-02-08T22:12:00","modified_gmt":"2014-02-09T05:12:00","slug":"a-column-in-search-of-a-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2014\/01\/a-column-in-search-of-a-name\/","title":{"rendered":"A column in search of a name"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last time I started writing a column, the first thing we had to do was come up with a name.<\/p>\n

It was late in 1999 and my editors had proposed that my weekly column would debut in the Billings Gazette on the first Sunday in 2000.\u00a0To find a name,\u00a0I indulged in a blue-sky exercise, which involves coming up with as many ideas as you can as quickly as you can. You are supposed to turn off any filters, too, giving free rein to your unconscious mind.<\/p>\n

The result was a lot of bad puns, some juvenile word associations, a few inside jokes and several rude or vaguely obscene titles.<\/p>\n

And one keeper: City Lights. My editor Tom Tollefson and I both thought it had a nice ring to it. I was the city-beat reporter at the time, for one thing, and Billings was more or less this island of city lights on the vast prairie of Eastern Montana.\u00a0And then there was \u201cCity Lights,\u201d my favorite Charlie Chaplin movie, and the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, that incubator of the Beat movement and all its offshoots.

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/p>\n

Not that any of these things had occurred to me when I scribbled down the name during my blue-sky exercise. And it wouldn’t matter if none of those associations occurred to readers. Tom and I simply liked it, which made for a unanimous vote.<\/p>\n

I still have the hand-written list of possibilities, running down three pages of a pocket-size reporter\u2019s notebook. Here they are, in the order in which I wrote them down, with explanations where they seem necessary:<\/p>\n

From the Rims
\nRoughing It
\nWar and Peace
\nThe Bible
\nMontana Musings
\nBig Sky Baloney
\nAll That Fits
\nLadies and Gentlemen … Ed
\nPatter from Pari’s Pap (Pari being my youngest daughter.)
\nVariations on a Theme
\nPits ‘n’ Feces (This was a play on Bits and Pieces, Roger Clawson\u2019s long-running column in the Gazette.)
\nThe Tattler
\nRandom Ruminations
\nAs I Was Saying
\nHuh?
\nMiscellany
\nMiscellaneous Musings
\nTrivial Pursuits
\nUp North
\nA Place Called Home
\nA Guy from Minnesota
\nYou Bet
\nThe Last Best Space (A prescient nod to my current adventure!)
\nFlying Column
\nA Little Wisdom…
\nMiles from Mencken (That would be H.L. Mencken, the great newspaperman and critic.)
\nOut and About
\nHere and There
\nNow and Then
\nYes and Know
\nCease and Desist
\nFar and Wide
\nEd the Word Blacksmith
\nSalutations, Pedophiles! (A reference to public radio\u2019s Chrysti the Wordsmith, who would sometimes open her segment by saying, “Greetings, Verbophiles.”)
\nHammers and Tongs
\nEach to His Own
\nOne Man’s Beet
\nWretched Wordplay (I was disappointed with myself, apparently.)
\nOn the Loose
\nLoose Talk
\nSturm und Drang
\nFulminations
\nBut Seriously, Folks
\nNone but a Blockhead (A reference to Samuel Johnson\u2019s famous dictum that \u201cNo man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.”)
\nSecular Sermonizing
\nThat’s All, Folks
\nWalk This Way
\nFollow Me
\nBelieve You Me
\nForgive Me
\nPencil Shavings
\nDiary of a Half-Wit
\nObiter Dicta
\nPensees
\nNot Bragg (A reference to Clawson\u2019s predecessor, Gazette columnist and Billings institution Addison Bragg.)
\nEd About Clawson (I think this was a lame attempt to play on the phrase \u201cMan about town.\u201d)
\nClawson’s Humble Servant
\nThe Big Bill
\nMagic City My Ass
\nInk-Stained Wretch
\nFrom the Street
\nIn the Gutter
\nCity Lights
\nCity Scene
\nA Bunch of Ditches Run Through It
\nCoarse Whisperer
\nNo-Research Bullshit
\nDeadline Drivel
\nOn My Mind
\nOn My Butt
\nViews from the News
\nEd’s-Eye View
\nKemmickal Reaction
\nBright Lights, Big City
\nBelow the Rims
\nRimshot<\/p>\n

So there you have it. If I’m counting right, I had to come up with 63 ideas to reach “City Lights.” I don’t know that I have that many ideas in me at the moment, but I’m going to try blue-skying again to find a name for this new column.<\/p>\n

Please let me know if you see a favorite in this list or the one above, or send in your own idea. I will select a name for this new column, which I propose to post once a week, on Sundays, in keeping with tradition. The choice will be completely arbitrary and will be made by me, unless the response is overwhelmingly in favor of one particular idea. And if I do choose a name suggested by a reader, I will come up with some kind of reward. I promise. Here we go:<\/p>\n

Prairie Lights
\nLast Best Fulminations
\nLast Best Lights
\nLast Best Space
\nLast Best Column
\nWeekly Ed
\nWeakly Ed
\nNearly Dead Ed
\nMontana Musings
\nMontana Murmurs
\nMontana Viewpoint
\nBig Sky, By and By
\nThe Bakken\u2019s Humble Servant
\nThe Other Side of the Divide
\nRoche Jaune Jottings
\nRimrock Rambles
\nTrailhead Trivialities
\nTreasure State Treatise
\nTreasure Trove
\nPleasure Grove
\nHigh Plains Perspective
\nHigh Plains Patter
\nPlains Talk
\nPlain Talk
\nThoughts from the Ancient Sea Floor
\nRim Lights
\nDim Lights
\nYellowstone Connections
\nYellowstone Meanders
\nLewis and Clark \u2026 and Ed
\nHome on the Range
\nWhere the Antelope Play
\nElk River Revels
\nThis Here\u2019s Montana
\nMontucky Musings
\nJust Below Canada
\nNorth of Wyoming
\nWest Dakoty
\nOro y Plata y Ed
\nHigh, Wide, Handsome and Home
\nJust in from St. Paul
\nTrail Blazer
\nTrail Headings
\nHigh Plains Guidepost
\nHigh Plains Cairn<\/p>\n

So let me know what you like, or what you\u2019d suggest. You can leave a comment under this column, but if you don\u2019t do Facebook or for some other reason want to keep your comments private, drop me a line at edkemmick@lastbestnews.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last time I started writing a column, the first thing we had to do was come up with a name. It was late in 1999 and my editors had proposed that my weekly column would debut in the Billings Gazette on the first Sunday in 2000.\u00a0To find a name,\u00a0I indulged in a blue-sky exercise, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[70,60,72,68,69,71],"class_list":["post-365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prairie-lights","tag-addison-bragg","tag-billings-gazette","tag-charlie-chaplin","tag-city-lights","tag-roger-clawson","tag-tom-tollefson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}