Like digital wildfire

Here’s A Short Article from the Missoula Independent on that goofy blog thing that happened a couple weeks back. When Absarokee-based Episcopal priest Jane Ellen Schmoetzer recounted a conversation she had with a small-town librarian on her blog, janellen.blogspot.com, on Jan. 9, she had no idea the post would trigger a long-distance game of “Telephone” that would change the way she approaches her four-year-old blogging habit.

In her post, “Libraries are dangerous places,” Schmoetzer recounts a conversation she had that morning with Larrie Hayden, director of Joliet’s tiny public library. According to the post (since removed), Larrie told Schmoetzer that she had submitted a book request to a Billings library for copies of The Last Jihad and The Ezekial Option by novelist Joel C. Rosenberg, which she received along with a letter informing her that the order had earned her a spot on a government “watch list,” and that she would have to “appear in person in Billings” before she would be able to order any more books.