At last! A book is born by Marjorie Smith When Chrysti Smith, '94 Anth, returned home one day in May this year and found a UPS carton in her entry porch, she knew exactly what it contained, even though the delivery wasn't due for another three weeks. It had to be the first copies of her book, Verbivore's Feast: A Banquet of Word & Phrase Origins (Farcountry Press, Helena, Mont., 2004). She was surprised at her own reaction. "I didn't tear into it right away. I walked around those books, warily, like a coyote, and I half expected them to go off like little bombs," Smith confesses. "I even took a picture of them, in their box, before I opened it. I guess I was afraid my life would never be the same." And have there been major changes? "Not yet," she laughs. Bookstores in the Bozeman area immediately launched a series of book signings. Smith finds it very gratifying that people come to hear her presentations and then buy her books. But people have been coming to hear Smith talk about her love affair with words ever since she started her radio series "Chrysti the Wordsmith" at MSU's KGLT in 1990. Publication of Verbivore's Feast is especially satisfying following three previous unsuccessful arrangements with publishers. At last, Chrysti the Wordsmith fans can buy a collection of some of her word discussions -- 359 of them to be exact -- written with the concise clarity and quiet delight that is the soul of her success. Since earning her anthropology degree, Smith has found "regrettably few gigs in my field" -- usually short-term assignments doing survey archaeology, "optically grazing the ground for signs of habitation to ensure that prehistoric sites are not molested when development is proposed." But after 15 years, her efforts in etymology continue to attract fans. Her two-minute studies of word origins are now heard on Armed Forces Radio, as well as Billings-based Yellowstone Public Radio and Missoula's Montana Public Radio. Whenever she gives a live presentation, people show up an hour in advance to get good seats. The radio series has long been a labor of love, "but now I'm getting some financial backing for the radio show," she says. "If the book actually sells, this whole wordsmith business may move me a little closer to the upper crust." Meantime, she supports herself framing pictures, gallery sitting and painting houses, and amuses herself and audiences as the percussionist with a notorious all-woman band, "The Awesome Polka Babes."