tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-128806712024-03-18T20:01:46.388-06:00Michael Shay's Hummingbirdmindsprog-blogging WyomingMichael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.comBlogger3670125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-32608638947995533582024-03-18T11:40:00.000-06:002024-03-18T11:40:12.839-06:00Poetry Monday: The Letter is in the Wind<p><b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Letter is in the Wind</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I
could dry up and blow away before<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">A
letter arrives<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I
drag a lawn chair to a breadbox of a mailbox<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The
kind 1950s teens used for bathing practice<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I
sit, and imagine letters<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Dear
Mike: My love is like a red, red rose.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Mike,
I miss you terribly I ache with it<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I
would gladly read whatever missive lands here even<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The
bad or sad news<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Michael,
dear: F--- you and the horse you rode in on<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Note:
my asthma acts up around livestock<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Mike:
Grandma died today. She was surrounded by<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Friends
and family and you<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Were
not one of them<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Mike:
Our dog Zeke got run over by the truck delivering<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Your
Christmas package, the box containing the latest<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Brautigan
book and a chew toy for foundling Zeke.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I
would read them all, even the letter that promised<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">A
scholarship in a far-off place and an ensign’s gold bar<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">A
job as reporter in a strange city that will have<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Plenty
of stories and you will be lonely.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Dear
Sir: You too could be a winner!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">As
I said, I will read them all perched along the<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Lonely
rural blacktop named Expectations Road.</span></p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-39809651967038328482024-02-04T15:51:00.005-07:002024-02-04T20:56:36.776-07:00In which Covid catches up with me and I ask: What if?<p>I remember how careful we were during the first weeks of the Covid-19 plague. We got our groceries delivered, left on the porch or (if snowing) just inside the front door. The deliverer wore a mask and we work masks. We brought the groceries into the kitchen and wiped them down with disinfectant and, early on, wiped down each plastic and glass container. They told us that was SOP now, be careful, don't let this coronavirus sneak into your home, invade your nose or mouth, and send you to the hospital where you might not make it out alive. The grocery stores ran out of disinfectant wipes and spray and toilet paper. Our neighbor's son, just back from overseas wars, felt challenged by the circumstances and prowled the town looking for TP -- and usually found some, maybe a few rolls or a four-pack but nothing like the eight-pack we use in the average week. He was a master scrounger, much like James Garner's character in <i>The Great Escape</i> and the plucky William Holden in <i>Stalag 17</i>. In the latter film, Marshal Dillon's brother, Peter Graves, turns out to be a Kraut spy, which made sense with his Nordic good looks. Arness, meanwhile, went to war and was wounded at Anzio and returned to become a vegetable-like alien electrocuted by the good guys in 1950's <i>The Thing</i> (watch the skies!) and showed his range by becoming all-around good guy Matt Dillon in <i>Gunsmoke</i>. </p><p>But I digress. We took precautions in those pre-inoculation days. We stayed home. When we did leave the house, we wore whatever masks we could find such as the Colorado Rockies masks I found online late one night. Family members got their first shot in February, followed by another in May. There was something about that shot that gave me some hope, took me be back to a childhood where it was our patriotic duty to fight polio with infused sugar cubes and later lining up for shots at my elementary school. The scientists were in their labs! There was nothing Americans couldn't do! We soon would be practicing our golf swing on the moon!</p><p>Crazy days, right? I skated through, avoided the plague like the plague. It was so nice when life opened up again, when we could convene at the movies or at concerts. We went through some political difficulties when Prez T thought the plague was all made up and did almost nothing EXCEPT get the vaccines rolling out to all Americans or at least all Americans that weren't anti-vaxxers. He gets credit for that but it helped little in the election even though he had experts such as Rudy Giuliani and The Pillow Guy as advisors. Then came the pre-inauguration Capitol Riots and finally a president that believed in science and wasn't a buffoon.</p><p>Which brings us to today. My son brought Covid home and we all caught it. This surprised me as I had received five Covid immunizations including the 2023 booster and, for good measure, was inoculated against the seasonal flu and RSV. I shouldn't be sick, but I am. At the tail end of this thing, I hope. In our household of four, I am the only one still testing positive. Beginning in the second week of 2024, I accumulated the symptoms until I finally understood that I had a case of Covid. I thought I had Covid. We had used up all of our antigen tests so we ordered free ones from the Feds which took seven days to arrive and then paid for tests that rapidly flew off the shelves. I needed a trip to the hospital ER to get a Covid test. And I was positive. Hey doc, I asked the bleary-eyed resident, what are my treatment options? We have nothing for you, he said. I thought he was kidding but he was not. I was not eligible for the Paxlovid-type infusions my daughter was getting. Heart patients don't tolerate it, said the doc. And I am a heart patient. So, my treatment regimen became Tylenol for headaches and body aches, Mucinex DM and Robitussin for my hacking coughs, and don't forget to take your cardiac meds. He also said I should drink plenty of liquids and try some chicken soup. </p><p>They released me into the wild and I still test positive which keeps me at home. I sit by the window and watch the snowflakes fall. Today the flakes are melting, providing nourishing H20 to my flower bulbs. </p><p>I am lucky. I welcomed those Moderna-made shots into my body and for the most part they did their job. I am sobered by the fact that I was very sick for 26 days. If I caught it in Covid's early days, I would have been very, very sick. I am in Covid's bullseye. I am an elderly man with a heart condition. Covid would have ripped through me as it did with so many. I lost my stepmother and two of my high school friends. Millions died. We don't actually know the real numbers due to some of the lunkheads in charge of our larger states, DeSantis and Abbott to name two. I thought about this at 3 a.m. when a cough woke me up and sent me out to meditate in my easy chair. </p><p>What if? </p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-22348085948738825832024-01-06T11:33:00.000-07:002024-01-06T11:33:16.346-07:00It's time again for the Wyoming Governor's Arts Awards<p>This time every year the Wyoming Arts Council hires me to write the story on the annual Governor's Arts Awards recipients. Some of them I know from my 25 years working at the Wyoming Arts Council. Others are new to me.</p><p>I have worked or met all the 2023 awardees:</p><p>Mary Jane Edwards, recently retired director of the Jentel Foundation</p><p>The Munsick Boys, a father and his three sons from Sheridan County finding inventive ways to thrive in the music world</p><p>Geoffrey O'Gara, filmmaker and author from Lander</p><p>Milward Simpson, a live theatre guy in Cheyenne who was my former boss at State Parks and Cultural Resources</p><p>Mike and Jane Sullivan, Mike as Wyoming governor 1987-1993, and Jane as First Lady </p><p>A great list. I learned a lot interviewing them by phone. We didn't do the Zoom thing as I am much more phone-friendly than Zoom-friendly. My background is in journalism and feature writing. I have interviewed hundreds of people remotely and in person. I prefer face-to-face but it's not always possible. For this assignment, I needed a firm desk to take notes as my right hand is still not behaving properly due to ulnar nerve surgery. Thus, my handwriting is worse than it ever was -- and that's saying a lot. People have looked at my notebook and asked: "Is this your kind of shorthand?" I usually answer in the affirmative, labeling my method Shay Script which sounds better that terrible penmanship. </p><p>There's another aspect to the story. The nuns taught me cursive. When I began roaming around to find stories, I recorded interviews in cursive. I couldn't read it when I got back to my desk. I switched to printing when I began reporting for my college newspaper. Instead of long swoops and swirls, I now could just abbreviate words with a few letters and be able to translate it at the other end. I sometimes get confused but that is what phone and e-mail and Internet are for.</p><p>I learned a few things. Mike Sullivan is a James Joyce fan and tickled Bloomsday fans in Dublin reciting snippets from "Ulysses" while wearing cowboy duds. There is a thing called cowboy rap which I discovered interviewing musician Tris Munsick. He sent me to YouTube to see his brother Ian's performance at Cheyenne Frontier Days. Ian brought his buddy Ryan Charles on stage and he rapped cowboy and the fans down in the pit loved it. Mary Jane Edwards has retired twice, once as a UW faculty member, and once as executive director of the Jentel Foundation and its artist residency program. She now is officially retired, or so she says.</p><p>Those are just a few tidbits from the features you can read in the February edition of <i>Artscapes Magazine.</i> I am busily translating and transcribing my notes. Wish me luck.</p><p>You will hear from the recipients at the annual awards gala on Feb. 23 at Little America in Cheyenne. Order your tickets <a href="https://GovernorsArtsAwards.eventbrite.com.">here.</a></p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-30319649073817769942023-12-18T11:22:00.000-07:002023-12-18T11:22:54.922-07:00Bananas at night, Cheyenne Botanic Gardens<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">This is just to say…</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">At night, when I clean the Botanic
Gardens Conservatory, I unlock the door to the tropical wing, sneak in with my
stepladder, and eat a banana. Just one at a time, so nobody notices. Short
squat bananas, the size of a deli dill pickle. More yellow than the
store-bought variety brought from far away, their skin thick and tough,
designed by science to cushion the rough handling of pickers and packers and sorting
machines. But this banana? Grown right here, from a tree transported from
Honduras. The staff planted it four years ago while a Wyoming blizzard raged
outside. It found shelter here, rich soil, constant care. I climb the ladder
and pick a ripe one from a stalk and smell its rich scent. I perch on the tip-top
of the ladder, just above the warning signs. The misting machines go off,
hundreds of nozzles spray a fine mist through the gardens. The trees lose their
shape in the fog. I expect a monkey’s call, the cry of an exotic bird. Tiny water
droplets cling to the hairs of my arm. The cold winter wind whips the building and
it groans like a living thing. I peel the banana carefully, the skin thin as
paper that comes off in pieces. A rich scent greets me as I bite. Smooth as
banana pudding going down. I sit high in the jungle mist, waiting for my break
to end. I hope to eat another Gardens’ banana when they ripen again, just a few
at a time. They are delicious, so sweet and so warm, something worth waiting
for.</span></p><p></p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-25830050681422305452023-11-19T11:55:00.001-07:002023-12-18T11:32:45.816-07:00Orderly disorderly orderly<p>Jerry
Lewis played a hospital orderly in “The Disorderly Orderly.” In it, he’s a
bumbling idiot with a heart of gold, a type he’s played before. I am not a
Lewis fan but did laugh at some of the “Orderly” hijinks on YouTube film clips.
He mixes up two skeletons bound for the research lab. His supervisor warns him
not to mix them up. He asks his supervisor how to tell the difference. Her reply:
“You don’t know the difference between boys and girls?” He makes a goofy face,.
“Yes, but I like my girls [wait for it] upholstered.” Laughed here and shook my head. Let’s face it,
not a bad joke, good enough for a laugh. Typical Lewis humor, one which he
parlayed into many films, Vegas stage shows, and TV specials.</p>
<p>You don’t need orderly experience,
disorderly or not, to appreciate Lewis’s shenanigans. But, with a little
research, you find all sorts of info under the topic of “orderly.” <i>Merriam-Webster Online</i> cites two meanings for orderly the noun: a soldier who carries messages and performs services for an officer;
a person who waits on others, cleans, and does general work in a hospital.</p><p>I have never been the first variety and don't even know if they exist any more. You can find orderlies in war movies especially those focused on the British army. "Orderly, get me a cuppa. Sorry sir, the Huns have blown up all our teacups. Blast." Orderlies in the world wars provided all sorts of services at The Front. In WW1, orderlies often were stretcher bearers and spent some of their time under fire rescuing wounded from No Man's Land. Very dangerous duty indeed. Some were COs who resisted shooting other people and wound up being shot at anyway. A very interesting and readable memoir of this side of the war was written by a member of Evacuation Hospital No. 8, Frederick Pottle, who taught in the Yale English Department after the war. "Stretchers: The Story of a Hospital Unit on the Western Front." Published by Yale University Press in 1929 and available to read at <a href="https://net.lib.byu.edu/estu/wwi/memoir/Stretchers/PottleTC.htm">https://net.lib.byu.edu/estu/wwi/memoir/Stretchers/PottleTC.htm</a></p><p>I have worked as the second kind of orderly, although my duties went beyond those described. Hospital orderlies are now classified as nursing assistants and you get training for that. There still exists men and women in medical facilities who wait on others, clean, and do general work. </p>
<p>During college years, I worked as
an orderly in a succession of three different hospitals. I think of the patient
populations I served in this way: one for dying old people, one for critically burned
children, and one for the crazy drunks who also were dying slow deaths.</p>
<p>I was young, 23 at
my third and last position minding alcoholics at a county hospital. I could be
irreverent with my coworkers while still doling out empathy for patients. Face
it, I was never going to grow old, turn into a homeless alky, or get caught in
a raging fire. That’s the joy and curse of youth, ignorance of what’s waiting
down the line. Blessed, blessed, cluelessness. I dated nurses, went to some
wild parties, and made friends. Because I could not envision old age, I
couldn’t fathom the fact that some of my youthful experiences would be forever
burned into my memory. Therein lies the joy and curse of old age: there is no
forgetting.</p>
<p>Ormond Beach Osteopathic Hospital
was across the street from a nice beach break. When I got off my 7-3 shift, I
checked out the surf. If it was good, I would borrow one of my brothers’ boards
and go out. If not, I’d call one of my friends and we’d get high while driving
along a usually deserted wintertime beach. I was killing time, waiting for my
draft notice to arrive. I was 20, just the right age for Vietnam. I’d lost my
ROTC scholarship and dropped out of a university I could no longer afford. At
the hospital, retirees kept coming in and passing away. They were my
grandparents’ age, born at the turn of the century, now in their 70s. A Mr.
Fanchon came from Montreal to bask in the sunshine and now was bedridden and
developing bed sores on his back end. He moaned all the time, announced his
pain in French. My fellow orderlies and I were tasked with turning him every
two hours. His moans came from a deep place, a place that me and Jim and Sharon
and Marlene had never been, not yet. We said calming things to him in English
and he moaned and then barked out a French expression. We were kind. During
smoke breaks (we all smoked), we parodied Mr. Fanchon’s French, made up our own
expressions. The nurses came in the break room and asked what was so funny. We
told them. They jumped right in with their own fake French lines. There’s
something about working around the dying and near dead. We needed humor to keep
the dreads at bay. Mr. Fanchon was on his way out but we were not. There was a
morning when I came in and Mr. Fanchon’s room was empty, already made up for a
new patient. I asked about him at the nurses’ station. “Old folks home,” they
said. I couldn’t think of anything funny to say. I worked my shift, went home
to see what was in the mail.</p>
<p>During my six
months working the graveyard shift at a Boston children’s burns center, two
patients died. The nurses and doctors worked frantically to save them but could
not. We orderlies and nursing assistants were on the periphery, going about our
appointed rounds. We knew. I brought water to the boy who had been messing
around and fell on a downed high-voltage cable. He now had just one arm and no
penis. Electricity has to find a way out, it seems. I brought ice cream for a
little boy with bandaged hands. I sometimes changed his dressings when the
nurses were busy. The burns on his small hands were in concentric circles. I
asked a nurse about the burns, asked if he climbed up on a stove and fell, or
something. She grabbed my hand, told me to spread my fingers, then she pressed my
hand on a table. She released my hand. “His mother,” she said. “His mother.” I
was never the same after hearing that. On that death night, staff waited until
the unit was quiet and the other kids were asleep. That’s when they moved the
body. A few weeks later, the nursing supervisor took me aside , said the
hospital would pay for me to get my nursing degree. I was flattered. It was
good to be far away from home and wanted. I turned down the offer, and thanked
my boss, told her I wanted to be a writer. A few months later, I was back in
Florida with new plans, thoughts already fading of my live-in girlfriend, the
one to whom I’d plighted my troth but would only see twice more before she called it quits via long-distance telephone.</p>
<p>The 1200 Ward at
the county hospital housed people the cops peeled off downtown sidewalks and
brought in the sober up. It was a locked ward, staffed by one orderly of
sufficient bulk to corral anyone in DTs and ring the buzzer for help. That was
me. The orderly. I took temps and filled water pitchers. I carried a soft
plastic tongue depressor for those times when patients suffered seizures. Scar
tissue on the brain, that’s how it was explained to me. Again I summoned the nurses
and they gave the patient something to settle them. The usual cocktail was paraldehyde
mixed with orange juice. Paraldehyde is a relative of formaldehyde and was,
into the 70s, used to treat DTs. Nurses demonstrated its power by pouring a
shot of P into a Styrofoam cup. It always ate its way through the cup, pooling
on the nurses’ station counter. “Orange juice first!” Mrs. D was tiny and
weathered but had been a nice looking women in her youth. I worked in 1200 for
a year as I eased my way through community college. During that time, Mrs. D
was inside the locked doors three times. As we gathered in the break room to
play cards, Mrs. D told the best stories, the most disturbing stories. They
were funny too in a twisted sort of way. She’d been married and divorced a
couple times. She traded sex for booze. Slept in crash pads or on the beach hidden
behind hotel seawalls. A week before I quit to go off to the university, she came in
with a black eye and broken finger. “You should see the other guy!” When I walked
out the locked doors for the last time, she wished me well. “Be good, hon.” Well,
Mrs. D, I haven’t always been good. But I did OK. And I remember you."</p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-25426190812869754692023-11-08T23:29:00.002-07:002023-11-08T23:33:31.739-07:00Finn Murphy’s “Rocky Mountain High” may give you a “Hemp Space” buzz<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Rocky Mountain High” reminds us of how we
sat around a campfire everybody getting high on Colorado in the summer of ’72. John
Denver’s melodic version of Aspen and the Roaring Fork Valley. Longhairs from
all over stoned on this beautiful slice of paradise. I was there, a traveler
from flat, muggy Florida. The air was sweet. So were the sights. The Rainbow Family
gathered a few mountain ranges over. Longhairs clogged interstate on-ramps.
Meanwhile, our parents’ generation was all in a dither, nervous about drugs and
sex and rock’n’roll, nervous about the fate of their offspring.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">We got jobs, married, and had kids that
don’t listen to us. The marijuana that was such forbidden fruit then is now
available at your corner dispensary in Colorado and many other states that
aren’t Wyoming. The other cannabis sativa, hemp, grew into a commodity akin to
oil, gas, and coal, subject to the same boom-and-bust cycles. Guys who looked
like hedge-fund managers (they were) began showing up at farms along the Front
Range asking where all the hemp was and did the farmers have any for sale?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">If the present situation seems ripe for
dark comedy, Finn Murphy spells it out in “Rocky Mountain High: A Tale of Boom
and Bust in the New Wild West.” Murphy’s a Boomer, an enterprising capitalist
and Ivy League grad from Connecticut. He sees hemp as they new big thing and moves
to Boulder County, buys a 36-acre spread, and strolls out in his Wall Street
suit to greet his rural neighbors. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">It didn’t go well. There are some high
times to celebrate but, as the reader knows from the subtitle, both boom and
bust await Mr. Murphy and his colleagues in “The Hemp Space,” the
countercultural term for this new business. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">First, the boom. Hemp is a cannabis
product that cannot register more than 0.3% of THC, so says the Colorado
Department of Agriculture (and the one in Wyoming). The CDA inspects your
crops, makes sure that you are not growing smokeable marijuana because that’s a
whole other thing. That’s being grown a few fields over. Hemp is made into CBD
among other products. CBD was a thing in the 2010s, the cure for every Boomer’s
aching joints. CBD stores popped up on every corner. Many of us bought the overpriced
oils, put drops under our tongues, rubbed it on aging body parts, and eagerly
awaited the cure. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Murphy saw the promise of legal hemp. Over
the decades, he had birthed and sold many businesses, some in areas he knew
little about. In the book, he leads us through his decision-making process and into
the growing, harvesting, and selling of the product. He thought the harvesting
end would be the most lucrative. He told his neighbors (he calls them the “Weedwhackers”
– and they shall remain nameless) he would harvest their crop and since nobody
knew the costs of such a venture, agreed to settle up when the work was done. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Murphy spends way too much time telling us
about the costs of this enterprise. But it is instructional. Farmers need farm implements
to harvest fields of five-foot hemp trees. Murphy buys three big hoophouses in
which to dry the hemp. They are $10,000 each. He later has to buy thousands of
dollars of tools and equipment to erect the hoophouses. He spends more than the
$150,000 he budgeted for equipment on bucking and trimming machines, fans,
generators, and humidifiers. He hired a band of trimmigrants to do the tough and sticky work.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">But it’s the author’s self-effacing humor
and eye for life’s strange contradictions that kept me reading. He also knows how
to keep the reader turning the page. He concludes the “Start Me Up” chapter
this way:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span></p><blockquote>We’d all be rich and happy. We agreed then
and there on handshakes to go forward, and the room was awash with good
fellowship and excitement.</blockquote><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">My thought: This is really going to be bad,
isn’t it?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">And it was. Nobody died but the “fellowship”
didn’t last.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Murphy’s first book is “The Long Haul,”
also by Norton. It’s about his foray into the long-haul trucking business.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">For information on the Wyoming “Hemp
Space,” go to the <a href="http://wyhemp.org">Wyoming Hemp Association</a>.</span></p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-88747332333569415502023-11-01T19:25:00.005-06:002023-11-03T15:16:07.707-06:00Poem for my November brothers<p>All Saints Day, the day after Halloween, the</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">day the nuns set us free from Catholic school only to<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">corral us later in church for mass of the saints<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">St. Daniel, St. Patrick, the namesakes without the intro</p><p class="MsoNormal">S-T, my brothers with November birthdays.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The days are still theirs, 18 for Pat, 25 for Dan<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">which sometimes fell on Thanksgiving.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The years pass and still I miss them. No birthday<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">cards to send, no phone calls to make, talk about<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">family and football. Pat passed in the spring, pneumonia, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">the really bad kind. He got a bad break in his 55<sup>th</sup>
year. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Dan passed a week before his 61<sup>st</sup> birthday,
multiple <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">myeloma, the really bad kind. Both too young. I see them<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">now even younger, I surf summers with Pat and Dan, backpack <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">in Colorado with Pat before he went to the Air Force and
Korea. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We're at a school dance, Dan with 30 stitches across his brow</p><p class="MsoNormal">skegged on the morning's big waves, the school now gone, </p><p class="MsoNormal">named for the first priest to celebrate a mass in Florida, Spanish for</p><p class="MsoNormal">flowery. Someday in the future, our photos will be all that’s left,</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">an ancestor with travel plans for Mars wonders who<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">are those young guys posing with their surfboards in<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">front of The House of the One-Eyed Seahorse in Daytona, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">sunburned youth wild and free. We forget, that’s the truth
of it, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">it’s our lot to forget where we come from. But now, this first<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">day of November 2023, I remember it all. The images are in<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">my head; memories, my heart; poem right here, right now, </p><p class="MsoNormal">on
this blog.<o:p></o:p></p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-37012395591855605612023-10-27T16:18:00.005-06:002023-10-31T23:17:58.115-06:00For book and bookstore fans: "Bloomsbury Girls" probes the inner workings of a 1950 London bookshop<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">I can see why a few members of the Historical Fiction Book
Lovers Facebook group wrote “DNF” when discussion rolled around to “Bloomsbury
Girls” by Natalie Jenner. It’s about books and bookstores. The time is 1950, a
very boring year which launched a million Boomers me included. In London and
all over the world, the war is over. Women are finding jobs but it’s a hard
slog through male-dominated society. A few years earlier, these women were
building ships and planes and tanks. Those warmaking items are no longer in
demand so neither are working women. Bookshops in London’s better neighborhoods
attract workers who love books and may even be writing one of their own, as
happens in “Bloomsbury Girls.” Patrons come from all economic levels but tend
to be well-educated with money to spend on books during a post-war period when
necessities such as fuel and foodstuffs are still being rationed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The book’s conflicts do not come from warfare and skullduggery and shady politics. Women try to claim their places in the working life and
men stand in their way. It’s another form of warfare that the female characters
in the book have to negotiate with skills equal to army strategists. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">As the story progresses, Jenner features cameos of
female literary figures of the era. Daphne Du Maurier, Ellen Doubleday, Sonia
Blair (widow of George Orwell) and Peggy Guggenheim, one-time lover of Samuel
Beckett who also shows up at the bookshop just as he finished writing his new
play, “Waiting for Godot.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">There is a bit of a Wyoming connection. Ellen
Doubleday was mother to the late Neltje Blanchan Doubleday whom we in Wyoming
know as Neltje of Banner, Wyo., artist and arts patron. Neltje founded the
Jentel Artist Residency Program along Lower Piney Creek and adjacent to her
homestead and studio. She endowed writing fellowships in the names of her grandparents.
She willed millions to the University of Wyoming for its arts and culture
programs. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">I have undergraduate and graduate degrees in English
and read lots of books. I am a writer. I once worked in a chain bookstore in a
dying mall. Barbara Cartland sold better than James Michener and Irwin Shaw. We
sold more romances than any other category. Classic literature gathered dust on
the shelves, although an occasional high school kid might wander in looking for
“Catcher in the Rye.” I loved it when patrons bought books I loved so we could
conduct a book discussion right there at the cash register. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">I have fond memories of those days. But the daily
workings of the Paperback Booksmith were not high drama. Somehow, Natalie
Jenner turns the proceedings of a London book shop into a series of
interpersonal dramas. In good hands, any situation can be exciting. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Jenner also is the author of “The Jane Austen Book
Club.” <i>Book clubs? Kill me now! </i>It’s not always a soul-stirring topic
although World War II dramas have hung on the concept. I’m thinking about you,
“The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">I have been reading a lot of books on my Kindle. Not
this one. I found it in my local Albertson’s Grocery Store while waiting for
prescriptions. A small book bin is located nearby. Bins for discontinued items
are located through the store. This one features lots of children’s books. I
recently picked up “Pop, Flip, Cook!” for $5, a nifty interactive tutorial on
cooking including a cardboard slice of toast and knife to spread jam with. It’s
almost like if you have a book, you don’t even need a computer. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">I found “Bloomsbury Girls” in the same bin for $3.99. The
enticing cover features three young women – the book’s main characters –
strolling down a street in what must be London, bookshop in the background. Big
problem: the characters are decapitated. I have begun to notice cover art with
headless characters. Sometimes, they are shown from the rear so faces are
hidden. Members of the Historical Fiction group say the publishers do this so
as not to spoil the characters’ image we have in our imaginations. I get it. Publishers
must have no faith in readers’ imaginations. Stop this trend immediately. It
reminds me of the ridiculous trend on house-flipping TV shows to show bookshelves
with pages showing but spine hidden. I am told that this is an attempt by
realtors to not prejudice a sale when you see when you see a row of books about
Trump. <i>What kind of idiot lives here? They must be hiding something. Check
the basement for bodies!<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">One thing about bargain bin books. Authors make
nothing from the sale. At one point, the books were sold new and the writer
ended up with a few pennies. The book supply chain is a long and weird one. Get
your bargains when you can so you can go to Cheyenne’s new bookstore, Bonsai
Books, and buy a new book at full price and begin reading it while sipping a
latte in an easy chair. Bonsai Books debuts the same week as the new Barnes
& Noble opens in the space that once housed Natural Grocers which now is in
the original Barnes & Noble building on Dell Range. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i><o:p></o:p></i></span></p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-72362414555470607222023-10-20T11:56:00.001-06:002023-10-20T11:56:34.353-06:00On rewatching "Band of Brothers" and viewing "The Pacific" for the first time<p>Here’s how I used to think about World War 2. It was our
father’s and mother’s war. My father joined up early in ’42 and served as a
radioman in the ETO with the U.S. Army Signal Corps until 1946. My mother trained on the
U.S. Navy nurse program and would have served when she graduated in ’46 but the
war was over. They were my heroes, members of what Tom Brokaw labeled The Greatest
Generation. Time marched on. We forgot about the war. The fascists had been
licked and would never return. The Boomers got old and complacent. </p><p>Next thing
we know, the fascists are back, at home and abroad. The fiction of conspiracy
novels became the facts of 2023.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, again, I think a lot about World War 2. The Nasties of
1939 Germany, Italy, and Japan are back except they are right here in our
neighborhoods. Trump is Il Duce. Storm troopers rampage at the U.S. Capitol. Chinese
militarists plot mischief in the Pacific. Hungary elects a right-wing strongman
beloved by the MAGA crowd.. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I was glad to see that Netflix returned “Band of Brothers”
and “The Pacific.” I’ve watched the first one several times and was impressed.
So I watched it again and was struck by the sacrifices made by Easy Company as
they fought the Nazis across Europe. The Nazis were our enemy and they and
their fascist ideology needed to die. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As for “The Pacific,” that series bowled me over. Saddened
me too, for all of those young men who died on islands they never knew existed
growing up in small-town America. The savagery of the marine battles for
Guadalcanal and Peleliu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, were recreated in gory detail. Men
who were there wrote memoirs about their experiences that they couldn’t get out
of their souls. The Japanese militarists had to be defeated, their twisted
philosophy had to die, for the world to have a semblance of peace.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We’ve been told over the years that there was nothing like the
scope of World War 2 and the world would never see its like again. The U.S.
wasted its treasure and young lives in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan. Such a
waste. It left a vacuum that China aches to fill over the next centuries. They
think in terms of centuries while we measure our lives in microseconds. We must
think in longer intervals to survive what’s coming. <o:p></o:p></p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-61238250110292369692023-10-09T16:04:00.005-06:002023-11-18T11:32:26.897-07:00When you see glowing footprints on the night beach, it means I was there<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">When I moved away from Daytona Beach, Florida, the beachside still had sand dunes and you could drive the entire World's Most Famous Beach. I drove the packed sand many times. At night, I drove and then parked between high-tide-line and dunes to discuss the state of the world and Catholic doctrine with my girlfriend. Sometimes, the whitewater was lit up with a bioluminescence provided by nature. Sometimes I was the one who was lit up.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Florida I loved has become joke fodder for late-night comedians. I will give you this: the governor is a joke as are his right-wing minions in the legislature. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">I've been
reading interviews with people who have moved to Florida from other places. They are asked whether they are fine with the decision or regret the choice. Some love the Florida they discovered during a family vacation and
vowed to return for some old people fun in retirement. Some have had it up
to here with the likes of killer hurricanes, retiree-chomping alligators, and
nitwit politicians. They are decamping to other warm-weather
beachside communities in the Redneck
Riviera, Texas, or the
Carolinas, both the North one and the real one in the South. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt; mso-ligatures: none;">I just read an online
article on Max My Money with this header: “Boomers – Florida Doesn’t Want You” 10 Places In
Florida Where You Won’t Survive On Social Security. Gosh, it’s tough the be unwanted. These 10
snobbish Florida locales include Miami, Naples, Palm Beach, and Sarasota, none of which have surf. I grew up surfing in Florida and that's how we graded the livability of any place. Key West is on the list. It also has no surf but it
does have Hemingway’s house and Tom McGuane used to hang out
there when writing “92 in the Shade.”
In 1982, Christine and I honeymooned in the Conch Republic following our May wedding at St. Brendan the Navigator Catholic Church and the Ormond Beach Knights of Columbus Hall. In Key West, we drank at Sloppy
Joe’s, counted the toes on Hem’s cats, snorkeled offshore. Tourists! </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt; mso-ligatures: none;">My Florida is a large triangle from Daytona to
Gainesville to Orlando and back to Daytona. That’s the Florida I know best. When
this Baby Boomer retired from my 25-year
career with the Wyoming Arts Council,
Chris and I looked at retiring in Florida. Too expensive. Not enough choice in
dwellings. Crackpot governor. We stayed put and watched from afar Florida’s human comedy.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt; mso-ligatures: none;">My youthful encounters with Florida retirees were from a distance. We surfers gathered at Hartford Approach and watch them walk the beach. You could tell the long-termers by their leathery skin and hip bathing suits. Many were daily walkers, on the beach early like surfers. Better rested than most surfers, up until 2 a.m. and jolted out of bed at 6 a.m. by friends shouting through the window to get your ass up. We knew a lot of these old-timers, men and women both. New Yorkers under Yankee caps, Canadian accents. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt; mso-ligatures: none;">Then there were the sojourners in town for a weekend of a week or maybe the entire winter. They were in couples or groups, mostly kept to themselves. They yelled at us when we drifted out of the surfing area. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt; mso-ligatures: none;">Those seniors of the 1960s and 1970s are all gone now, every single one. Their footprints live on. You can see them glowing late at night on the beach. Their memories of what lured them to Florida.</span></p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-79187128032021349422023-09-30T11:36:00.003-06:002023-09-30T21:28:28.624-06:00The lateness of my cherry tomatoes and other Wyoming gardening tales<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">On May 29, I wrote about Eudora Welty’s garden in
Mississippi, prompted by a post from another Mississippian and musician Jason
Burge. In May, hope is in the air and in the ground. My daffodils and tulips were
fading away, replaced by a mass of asters that took it upon themselves to
reseed my front garden. Asters are tough. I’ve been deadheading them all
summer, taking care not to grab a blossom currently occupied by a bee. Bees
love my asters, whether purple, blue or pink. Such a beautiful little flower
from such a spindly stem. They’re a wildflower and you can find them out on the
prairie. Wonder how much of our locally-produced honey can be credited to
astrum which is the Latin name for star. They are shaped like stars in the sky
and they are stars of my garden. Aster is in the sunflower family, Asteraceae. Sunflowers
also grow wild in Wyoming. I planted a variety of sunflower in my big flower
pot, now surrounded by transplanted petunias. My sunflowers have not yet
flowered and they probably shouldn’t be in a pot but at least I know what they
are. I took tons of Plant ID photos and had it identified as everything from knotweed
to a large variety of poison ivy. At one point, they were identified as
Jerusalem artichokes. I dug some out by the roots hoping to find a Jerusalem
artichoke that is neither an artichoke or from Jerusalem. I just found a
tangled mass of roots that were wrapped into a batch of petunias which also
came out of the pot. Petunias, of course, are the workhorses of a garden,
blooming all summer, attracting bees and the first hummingbird moth I had ever
seen. Such a creature. It buzzed me and sounded exactly like a passing
hummingbird. I have grown tons of pink four-o’clocks or I should say that the
four o’clocks grew themselves. I had them in a pot last summer and when they
died with the frosts, I took the twigs and stuck them in the ground. There was
no sign of them for awhile and then boom, there they were and the plants are
about three-feet high and festooned with pink. Also sprouting nearby were three
deer tongue plants which are odd grasses and sprout sprays of tiny flowers. The
sprouts actually look like corn. No surprise, corn is also the grass, Zea mays.
Deer tongue are considered an invasive species which I can see because they are
propagating themselves. One final word on my 2023 garden. I planted only one
veggie this year -- a red cherry tomato whose name I can’t recall. I grew them
from Seed Library seeds and they got a late start that curtailed pollination
and led to some late-appearing cherries that may not have time to ripen on the
vine. My bad. I usually get plantlings about four- to five-inches along. They
need the head start. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">They didn’t get
that this year. Frost will be here within the next couple weeks. Lesson
learned.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-67862555218742354782023-09-17T11:02:00.000-06:002023-09-17T11:02:17.787-06:00A buried cold case comes to light in Icelandic crime thriller "Reykjavik"<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The closest I’ve been to Iceland is the Maine coast.
No recent volcano eruptions in Maine. Maine weather can be cold but Iceland has
it beat. If you speak Icelandic as do 330,000 of the island’s inhabitants, you
may be really good with languages but have few people to converse with in
Portland or Kennebunkport. Both places offer great seafood and rugged terrain.
They share another facet of life: fiction, mainly atmospheric thrillers. Maine
claims Stephen King. Iceland claims Ragnar Jonasson.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If you watch Netflix, “The Valhalla Murders” may have
popped up on your much-watch streaming series list. Valhalla is Norse heaven or
their version of it. A majority of Icelanders share Viking DNA and Iceland was
once part of Norway. But the Valhalla in the series written by Thordur Palsson -is,
to paraphrase one former resident, “a living hell.” It’s a facility for
troublesome youth. It’s also home to predatory adults. You won’t be surprised
to find out that one of its youthful residents is now an adult and bent on
revenge for beatings and torture and rape by staffers. It takes eight episodes
for the police to get their culprit. Along the way, you get many views of snowbound
landscapes and slate-gray skies; frigid small towns and one big gray city,
Reykjavik. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">You don’t need me to tell you that the countries of
Scandinavia have a reputation for gloom and doom. Norway claimed Iceland until
1944. Vikings were bloodthirsty conquerors (great sailors though). Icelandic
sagas feature much bloodshed. You’ve seen Ingmar Bergman movies. There are also
the bizarre worlds of Lasse Hallstrom in “My Life as a Dog” with a 12-year-old’s
ruminations on a dying Soviet dog in space and “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” with
its Iowa teen protagonist as caretaker of his intellectually disabled brother
and morbidly obese mother. Also, Sweden is known for the graphic violence of Stieg
Larsson, author of three posthumously published novels that begins with “The
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” It gave rise to films in Sweden and the U.S. that
were not designed for family popcorn night. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The latest energetic crime thriller from Iceland is
“Reykjavik” by Ragnar Jonasson and Katrin Jakobsdottir. The title is important
as the 1986 scene for most of the narrative. It also is the setting for the
city’s 200<sup>th</sup> anniversary bash and the famous summit meeting between
Ronald Reagan and Mikeal Gorbachev. Murder happens against this dramatic
backdrop along with the investigation of a 30-year-old cold case. On the way,
we meet a terrific roster of characters and a plot that kept me guessing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Reykjavik” was translated by Victoria Cribb. Hats off
to her for keeping the author’s pace and vision. Also, all the Icelandic names
of people and locations. We get lots of details of everyday life which includes
lots of coffee drinking. This story of death hums with life and makes it an
enjoyable read. I have a feeling a filmed version is in the works for the
streaming services. The author creates scenes that cry out for the cinema. We
shall see what transpires.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">One more thing: the co-author of Reykjavik holds a
master’s degree in Icelandic literature. She wrote her master’s thesis on
another Icelandic crime fiction author, Arnaldur Indridason. She now is prime minister
of Iceland and previously was the Minister of Education. So there’s that…<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Kudos for the books authors and editors who include a pronunciation
guide to the characters’ names and also placenames. I’d like to see more of
that in translated works.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-90922592084391258822023-09-12T10:37:00.004-06:002023-09-12T10:37:25.113-06:00Naomi Hirahara weaves a murder mystery into a 1940s historical novel and it's swell<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Just
when I think I’ve read every World War Two-era novel….</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">“Clark
and Division” by Naomi Hirahara brings us into the life of Aki Ito. She’s a
spirited young woman, smart and attractive and a bit self-conscious living in
her talented older sister’s shadow. She yearns for just the right job and
boyfriend, likes to hang around with friends, and knows how to dance the Lindy Hop.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">So,
she’s just like any other Southern California teen. But you add in the setting
conjured by Hirahara and things get serious. Aki is Nisei, born in the U.S. of
Japan-born parents. In 1942, her entire family is shipped to Manzanar internment
camp, leaving behind their home and property and all-American dreams. Aki
spends two years at Manzanar and, at 20, lucks out when selected for the
government resettlement program which allows Nisei to move to middle America
away from the coasts and start new lives. Aki chooses Chicago because that’s
where her sister Rose has resettled. Before Aki and her parents can get off the train, her
sister is dead, ostensibly by suicide. She allegedly jumped head-on into an El
train and is killed instantly. Nobody knows why. Aki is crushed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">A
great set-up for a mystery. Aki is still in shock when she discovers the secret
behind Rose’s death and realizes she seems to be the only one interested in
figuring out what really happened. She plods along at first but then discovers the
strength to take the risks that will solve the case. Along the way, we meet the
Nisei of the Clark and Division neighborhood. She has to hide her quest from her very traditional Issei parents. Along the way, we learn
about Japanese-American lives, the foods they eat, their jobs, their dreams and
fears. The most charming thing about this book are life’s daily details.
Hirahara writes the Japanese terms for food, clothes, and many other things. I
felt the crushing heat of a Chicago summer. I know how people got around in the
city. Some especially good details about riding the El or Elevated Train. I got
to see the workings of the famous Newberry Library. I know, the details of a
library aren’t exactly high drama. But maybe they are. All this makes the book
so down-to-earth and thrilling.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The
ending is heartbreaking but also guides Aki into the future. And into the just-published
sequel, “Evergreen.” In it, Aki has become a nurse’s aide and returns to
southern California where she and other Japanese-Americans have to start from scratch
– again. There’s also a murder, of course. While the book is listed under mystery,
I’m sure it’s filled with the cultural and location detail that also makes for
great historical fiction. Hirahara now has a series on her hands which she’s
done before with her earlier books: Mas Arai and Leila Santiago. "Evergreen" is now the second book in the Japantown Series. I’ve ordered a copy. You should too. <o:p></o:p></span></p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-69266803398613864452023-09-07T18:51:00.001-06:002023-09-07T23:14:28.382-06:00A big thank you to President Biden and a big raspberry to Sen. Romney and other GOP skinflints<p>I received the following email from President Biden or someone on his staff and signed by Joe. It was in response to a thank you email I wrote to him following my student loan being forgiven through a program initiated by his administration. Here's Biden's letter:</p><p></p><blockquote><p>September 6, 2023</p><p>Dear Mr. Shay,</p><p>Thank you for your support for our shared values, particularly on the issue of student loan debt relief. </p><p>We are facing an inflection point in history, and the decisions we make today are going to decide the course of this Nation for decades to come. We still have a lot of work to do, but I know there is nothing we can’t do if we do it together. </p><p>I have never been more optimistic about America’s future than I am today. Keep the faith!</p><p>Sincerely,</p><p>Joe Biden</p></blockquote><p></p><p>I blogged about the loan forgiveness here. I admire the fact that President Biden is optimistic about America's future. I shall try to follow in his example although Republicans make that a challenge.</p><p>This came from a recent post from the office of U.S. Senator and multimillionaire Mitt Romney of Utah:</p><p></p><blockquote>The Administration’s new student loan rule would worsen inflation and add to our $32 trillion national debt. Proud to join my colleagues on this resolution to overturn this irresponsible and unfair student loan scheme.</blockquote><p></p><p>Reminder to Romney: Much of that national debt can be traced back to the tax cut for millionaires and billionaires pushed through Congress by the GOP under Rich Guy President Donald Trump. But Mitt would rather make life difficult for the 4,000-some Utahans (according to the Deseret News) who could qualify for loan forgiveness under Biden's new plan. We aren't as numerous in Wyoming. yet there are plenty of student-loan debtors working low-paying full-time jobs or two even lower-paying part-time jobs. Give them a break. Give us all a break.</p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-47521286370708464422023-09-04T10:15:00.004-06:002023-09-06T09:48:52.699-06:00After watching Oppenheimer in Missile City, WYO<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">After watching <i>Oppenheimer</i> with my daughter Annie</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Storm clouds on the Wyoming horizon looked like giant mushrooms.
No surprise as movie scenes roll through our minds. We recall Oppenheimer’s
quote from the <i>Bhagavad Gita</i> “now I am become death, the destroyer of
worlds.” Backdrop for the morality play spread before us, a prairie of missiles
perched below ground each with a hundred times the killing power of Fat Man and
Little Boy sculpted not far from here on a tableland at the eastern edge of the
Rocky Mountains. The statistics don’t really matter but I have lived my whole
life in the Nuclear Age and so has Annie. The Strontium-90 in my bones will always
reveal my origins, child of The Bomb, fallout drifted east to Colorado from
desert tests, accidents at Rocky Flats and Hanford, a thousand tiny mistakes. Dr.
Oppenheimer, I don’t cheer you as did the delirious nuke workers after Trinity.
I don’t curse you. I can’t, father, I simply cannot.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-49594612060837175112023-08-31T10:30:00.000-06:002023-08-31T10:30:30.620-06:00Personal reflections on the student loan forgiveness policy<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
got some very good news last week. An email was tagged: “Your student loans
have been forgiven.” First I thought it was fake and then I checked it out and
yessiree, no more student loan payments. I have been paying off $20,000 in grad
school loans since 1993. Successfully, at first, and then as our financial situation
experienced some serious ups and downs, I worked with my student loan provider,
one of the businesses that the government contracts to provide this service. I
would get them down to a payment I could afford and then they would suddenly,
as if some invisible switch was pulled, jack it up to a higher level I couldn’t
pay. I then would request a forbearance for six months or a year and that
would expire, the company added in all of the unpaid interest, and my payments
would be higher than ever. Or I would sign on to a payment plan and suddenly my
company shuffled me over to another and I had to start all over again. When my wife's coffee shop/art gallery business failed (she was ahead of her time) 20 years ago, we declared bankruptcy which I thought would include my student loans. I neglected to read the fine print.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
consolidated my loans in 2012 when they reached the $102,000 mark and worked out
payments with Nelnet and the amount with accrued interest and fees reached $165,000.
Interesting to note that the federal government paid off the student loan
servicer and it, conceivably, was very happy to have the money and scratch me
off their to-do list. Not such a great deal for the feds and my fellow
taxpayers. But, as a taxpayer, I was also supporting the government to contract
with this servicer which didn’t seem to give a damn about me and millions of
others in debt for attending college. One of the worst servicers is FedLoan Servicing, an arm of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, a
company co-owned by Betsy DeVos, Trump’s “secretary of education.” The PHEAA was, for a short while, my loan servicer. DeVos made
millions while arguing forcefully against student loan forgiveness. She now is
back under the rock she came out from under. A very fancy rock to be sure.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">But,
in good faith, I was paying off my debt. All I asked is that the servicer find
me a level I can afford and I will pay it until its paid off or Doomsday arrives, whichever comes first. We all got a reprieve when Covid hit and payments were suspended. According
to Mohela, a new loan servicer that picked up my account under President
Biden’s watch, when my future payments resumed, I would be billed $1,963 a
month. My Social Security deposit (I am 72 and retired) each month is $1,940, slightly above the average Social Security check of $1,701. My wife, who
volunteered to go on this journey with me, gets $1,240 a month, below the
national average because her working years were spent with
childbearing and childcaring and household management, none of which enhanced her Social Security benefits. I am disabled and my wife in a Type 1 diabetic
and breast cancer survivor. It’s ludicrous to think that a retiree should remit
his Social Security check to the government which deposits it into his credit
union account every month. But there you have it. Then again, we have GOPers
who believe that Americans should not be allowed to retire at 65 or should
never retire and, if they do, don’t deserve the funds that came from their
paychecks for 40 years.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
Supreme Court aided by GOPers such as Wyoming's entire Congressional delegation and
Governor Gordon, stymied Biden’s forgiveness plan so he found new and
interesting ways to relieve the burden of millions, many of whom are senior
citizens. Because I made a certain number of payments and loans older than
20-25 years were considered time enough to pay, I was forgiven. My loans were
30 years old. I also worked in public service so I was credited with monthly
payments I made which go toward forgiveness. All of Biden’s positive ideas to
solve this crippling debt were fought by Republicans because CRUELTY is their
middle name. Also, they despite higher education, education of any kind – witness the New College fiasco and GOP-mandated public education requirements in Florida. GOPers,
even Harvard-educated ones such as DeSantis, have used the loan forgiveness
issue as another cudgel for the MAGA crowd to use against the so-called elites.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">I send thanks to Pres. Joe Biden and his allies. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Remember
that the Loan Forgiveness Program could be reversed if the wrong people take
control of governance in 2024. </span></p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-28955435648683194642023-08-19T11:54:00.003-06:002023-09-12T10:47:11.357-06:00In the good ol' summertime, we hear about The Great War and Scott Joplin ragtime<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Last time I was in
Casper, I could walk on my own. August 21, 2017, the total solar eclipse cut
across a swath of Wyoming that ran from Jackson, across Casper, and on to
Torrington and a slice of Nebraska and into Kansas and beyond. My first total
eclipse and maybe my last as they rarely take the same path. On April 8, 2024,
you’ll have to travel to Dallas for totality. In 2033, a slice of Alaska will
have totality, and in 2044, it’s northern Montana. On Aug. 12, 2045, your best
bet will be Colorado Springs or somewhere in central Utah. In 2045 I will be
94. I may not see it in person although my spirit will be floating around the
Rocky Mountains. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Casper staged a
big downtown party with vendors, food trucks, and live music. My wife Chris and
I drove up to `stay with our friend Lori. We watched the eclipse from Lori’s
backyard, looking through special glasses you could buy anywhere that summer.
It was magnificent. I blogged about it <a href="https://hummingbirdminds.blogspot.com/2017/08/music-fiction-out-loud-and-company-of.html ">here</a>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Monday night, my
daughter Annie and I traveled to Casper for Poetry & Music, a summer </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">series sponsored
by Artcore that features music interspersed with a writer’s reading. I was the
writer that night. Music and writing share some commonalities but some obvious
differences. Both stir our souls, when done well, and that’s always the case.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">The setting is the
Bluebird Café at the Historic Cheese Barrel. The brick building dates from
post-World War 1 with first the Bluebird Mercantile and then the Bluebird
Grocery. The latter served as one of Casper’s corner groceries, of which there were
many but only one remains as a grocer. The Cheese Barrel was a restaurant serving
fantastic breakfasts and lunches. I ate there many times. The breakfasts, when
you could get a seat, were divine. Catered lunches made their way to many
Casper College events such as the annual literary conference that I helped
organize.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Owner Jacquie
Anderson has rehabbed the place to look like the grocery store of the 1940s and
it is charming. Tables are scattered through the main room. For the Artcore
series, Jacquie and her staff line up 50-some chairs facing a small stage. There’s
a lights-and-sound tech on hand to make it cozy. This was especially important
Monday. On my way in, I noticed the Primrose Retirement Center van. “My
people,” I joked with Annie. Sure enough, the place was packed with people my
age. This is a challenge for me – acting my age. I can’t quite get that I’m 72
and disabled. My spiffy red rollator walker reminds me daily as does my drop
left foot and back pain. Neuropathy tingles my hands and feet. My mind is
active as ever although I sometimes can’t remember an actor’s name in an old
movie and have to dredge the info up from the Internet. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The reading went well. Some acknowledged they
also had grandparents from that time, some of them serving overseas during WWI.
One was a retired nurse. People our age really seem to like historical fiction
maybe because they’ve lived through so much history and it connects to their
past. Wasn’t sure how all of these white folks would take to the relationship
between Frannie and African-American character Joe Junior or the sex references
but they seemed to take them in stride. They laughed in the right places. We
took an intermission right before Frannie goes up for her speech, one woman
even asking me to give a clue about it but I just said, “Cake first.” Annie
says I should read before more people of an advanced age because they connect
with it in different ways than some of the younger folks in the room. Carolyn
Deuel and Artcore, sponsors of the event, said her grandmother’s card-playing
club volunteered on the home front during WWI and even rolled bandages for the
soldiers overseas. All these people from previous generations are gone now and
people our age may be the last generation that actually knew the grandparents
with connections of The Great War.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">The night’s bill began with a classical
music performance by woodwinds quartet Rara Avis. In then read the first
section. Then came the cake break (the chocolate was chocolicious). I then read
the second part of the story and took a few questions. Rara Avis closed the
night with performances of some American classics such as Scott Joplin’s “The
Entertainer” and “In the Good Ol’ Summertime.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Keep in mind that all events like this
take a lot of time and energy to set up. Funding, too, as writers and
performers get paid. Supporting the arts has never been more important.
Writing, in particular, has been under fire by the MAGA-inspired Moms for
Liberty who attack books and librarians. They are fascists and must be stymied
in their bid to transform us into bobblehead dolls. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I will let you know when my book is ready
to be read and/or banned.</span></p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-59747908524536305152023-08-13T21:03:00.001-06:002023-08-13T21:03:37.662-06:00On stage in Casper: Historical fiction and woodwinds with a Baroque emphasis<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">So
excited to be featured at the Artcore Music & Poetry Series on Monday, Aug.
14, 7:30 p.m., at The Bluebird at the Historic Cheese Barrel, 544 S. Center St., Casper.
I'll be on stage with Rara Avis, a quartet of musicians that "explores
music for woodwinds with an emphasis on the Baroque." I will be
reading a chapter from my newly completed novel, "Zeppelins Over
Denver" that explores life in post-World-War-1 Colorado. Here's a bit of a
teaser:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><b>Nurse Lee Speaks
to the Garden Club</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Nurse Frannie Lee
clutched the pages of her speech as she sat at a round table with her mother
and two sisters at The Old Line State Garden Club in Baltimore. Her mother had
talked her into this. As March 1919 stretched into April and then into May,
Frannie’s home-bound boredom was showing. As the spring days grew longer, she
saw no end in sight for her ennui.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
Army had mustered out its civilian wartime nurses and now she didn’t know what
came next. One day her mother suggested a speech to “the girls” at the garden
club. This struck Frannie as hilarious since most of the club’s members hadn’t
been </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">girls</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> for decades. She and her sisters once referred to them as The
Stale Old Ladies Gabbing Club. Now her married sisters both were members.</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">To be continued...</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">For info and tickets ($8): <a href="https://artcorewy.com/mec-events/music-poetry-rara-avis-michael-shay/">https://artcorewy.com/mec-events/music-poetry-rara-avis-michael-shay/</a></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-33343615931184069352023-08-11T10:57:00.000-06:002023-08-11T10:57:14.411-06:00Elmore Leonard: great stories, memorable characters, and snappy banter<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-themecolor: text1;">There’s magic in
Elmore Leonard’s writing. In his novels, he tells a whopping good story and
entrances the reader with the banter among characters. I can’t get through one
of his books without laughs and a few sighs. Audiobooks do justice to his work and
I’ve passed a few engaging hours with “Out of Sight” and “Tishomingo Blues,”
among others that I’ve listened to driving through miles of Wyoming sagebrush.
The wide-open spaces figure in Leonard’s early writing, when he wrote westerns as
stories (“3:10 to Yuma”) and novels (“Hombre”). I’ve seen the movies, too. “Out
of Sight,” “Get Shorty,” and Tarantino's “Jackie Brown” (based on “Rum Punch”) were
delightful.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-themecolor: text1;">Just finished “Cuba
Libre,” a bit different from most of his work. Cuba during the Spanish-American
War is the setting. Just a snippet of Cuba’s long and violent history. I
sometimes forget that Havana was capital of Spain’s New World Empire going back
to the 1500s. It was a thriving city while Seminoles ruled the Florida Glades
and panthers roamed the forests. Air conditioning was just a distant dream. Leonard sets some
of his books (“Maximum Bob,” “Be Cool,” "Pronto" which led the “Justified” series) in South Florida. And why
not – kooky characters and Florida are a match made in heaven and/or hell,
depending on your POV. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-themecolor: text1;">“Cuba Libre” begins in
1898 with one of the main characters surveying the wreckage of the battleship
Maine in Havana Harbor. I won’t tell you how it ends – it’s a wild ride, and
worth reading. Intriguing characters encounter one another and all hell breaks
loose. There’s an American cowboy escaping a shady past, a young marine from
Arizona who survives the Maine sinking, a rich American expatriate, bad guys
from Spain, barefoot Cuban revolutionaries, a hotel filled with U.S. reporters trying
to drum up a war, many horses, and many, many guns. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-themecolor: text1;">Leonard keeps the
story moving. Along the way, he violates all the rules that seemed important in
MFA writing workshops. That’s something I’ve been learning reading historical
fiction. Keep the story moving. No Proustian monologues. No settings in
academia. I had just come from reading Ann Beattie’s stories featured over the
decades in <i>The New Yorker</i>. Way too much academia. I liked the early
stories better. They were leaner and meaner and more fun. Maybe they had the
caring attention of a good editor? I did like the one story I read from her new
collection which all center on the Covid-19 Emergency. I want to read the rest
of those. Lauren Groff teaches writing at my alma mater UF yet writes amazing stories of Floridians in wild places. Check out her collection "Florida" that features a panther as cover art.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-themecolor: text1;">Look, I have an MFA
in Creative Writing. I wanted nothing more than a career in the academy but
that wasn’t in the cards. I still love teaching but take my writing cues from
other sources, other lands, other time periods. The most fun I had recently was
watching “White Noise,” a send-up of academia as well as American life. Don
DeLillo – that guy can write and the folks who did the movie like it too. Hitler
Studies! Airborne Toxic Event! <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-themecolor: text1;">Go read Elmore
Leonard. Plenty to choose from at your local library. Better get them before
Moms for Liberty get their grubby mitts on them for the big book burning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-57201504113332515442023-08-05T11:07:00.001-06:002023-08-06T10:33:20.109-06:00What's really in that Paris apartment, and why is it so important?<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">“The Paris Apartment” by Kelly Bowen is the second
book recommended on the Historical Fiction Book Lovers Facebook site to take me
back to France in World War II. “The Nightingale” by Kristin Hannah was the
first. They both impressed me with the sacrifices made by women behind the
lines. They are well-trained operatives such as Sophie in “Paris,” or
small-town young women such as Vianne and her sister Isabelle in “Nightingale,”
women who lose husbands to the war or best friends to Nazi death-camp roundups.
They all did the right thing when they resisted the Nazi onslaught. Some paid
with their lives. Others emerged from the experience forever altered.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">I’m a bit of a newcomer to the category of historical
fiction and I’m particularly impressed by women’s stories. My childhood reading
about the war were books by men about men. I read first-hand accounts such as
“Guadalcanal Diary” by Richard Tregaskis and “Brave Men,” Ernie Pyle’s accounts
of men in combat in Europe. I read war novels and watched war TV (“Combat”). I watched
war-era black-and-white war movies, many of them featuring John Wayne. Most
were hokey, not that I cared about that when I was 12. A great one is “They
Were Expendable” about PT Boats fighting the good fight against the Japanese
invasion of the Philippines. My father told war stories which were mostly
unwarlike. He carried a rifle for four years but more importantly, he was in
charge of the radio, his unit’s link with the rest of the army. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Meanwhile, brave women fought the good fight. It was
“The Good War,” as Studs Terkel labeled it, because the enemies were so evil
and we were so good. The Nazis were cruel fascists and the Japanese cruel
militarists (also, they were a different shade of people). Even Donald Duck
hated these guys. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">But it’s not the global issues that motivated these
fictional women. Sophie was not waving the flag for democracy. She was getting
even for Ptior, her new husband killed at her side when the Nazis terror-bombed
a Polish village in 1939. Estelle Allard’s best friend, a Jew, was rounded up
by French collaborators and shipped to Auschwitz. They join the fight for
personal reasons but find themselves enlisting in a righteous cause. It’s
always personal. This time, the women tell the story. One compelling aspect of
this book is the two time periods that move the story forward. One if the war
itself, with Sophie and Estelle, the other is told from the POV of Estelle’s
granddaughter who inherits the abandoned apartment. She thinks she is getting a
luxury apartment in the City of Light. What she’s really getting is a history lesson.
Lots of art history, too, as one of the main story lines of the book has to do
with the massive art thievery by the Nazis.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The books mentioned above aren’t the only ones. The
group site takes the big view of historical fiction. For more targeted lists, go
to this group site: “<span style="background: white; color: #050505;">BOOKS - </span></span><span style="background: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Cambria Math",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Cambria Math";">𝘽𝘼𝙎𝙀𝘿</span><span style="background: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="background: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Cambria Math",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Cambria Math";">𝙊𝙉</span><span style="background: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="background: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Cambria Math",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Cambria Math";">𝙏𝙍𝙐𝙀</span><span style="background: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="background: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Cambria Math",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Cambria Math";">𝙎𝙏𝙊𝙍𝙄𝙀𝙎</span><span style="background: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">: About Women, By Women Authors.” You’ll
sometimes find yourself in the midst of discussions about what is true
historical fiction and what is not. It is great to argue about books instead of
politics, although that sometimes enters the fray. Have at it. You’ll discover
some great books in the process. </span></p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-52977688580161676402023-07-26T23:10:00.001-06:002023-09-17T11:16:52.328-06:00It's a perfect day for Bananafish, until it isn't<p>Just one more thing about Jerome Charyn and J.D. Salinger...</p><p>In "Sergeant Salinger," the author stresses Salinger's "battle fatigue" (PTSD) which is a major part of the story. But not all. Charyn writes that some of the signs were there as a youth. An unusual boy with loads of imagination and talent. He struggled in school. First he was in a NYC public school that he liked and then went to a private academy when his father started being successful and moved to Park Avenue. He struggled here. His parents pulled him out, enrolled him in a military school in Pennsylvania where he thrived. The discipline and routine was good for him. It appears he had the makings of a soldier at an early age. And he was a good soldier in the war although a bit unorthodox. His teen years also gave signs of genius and mental health challenges. </p><p>I bring this up because some experts have traced many cases to PTSD to a soldier's early life. Maybe they had trouble learning or maybe they were just a bit off-kilter. What would he have been like without his war experiences? Who knows? But he did and he was a recluse and very careful with his privacy and reputation. Not everything he wrote later in life was as good as "Nine Stories" and "Catcher in the Rye." He joins a long line of writers who hit it big early on and then not so much. Jerome Charyn, on the other hand, just keeps getting better at 86. </p><p>I have no first-hand knowledge of military service and combat. But good books and movies can impart some of that experience. Charyn does it in this novel. Vietnam vet writers such as Tim O'Brien and Larry Heinemann and Bill Ehrhart and Yusef Komunyakaa do it in print. It took flyer Joseph Heller 17 years to write and then publish "Catch-22." It took Kurt Vonnegut even longer to serve up the Dresden firebombing in "Slaughterhouse Five." Silent movie film director W.S. Murnau took his years as a World War I German combat pilot and created a monstrous creature in "Nosferatu." J.R.R. Tolkien transferred the horror of the trenches into a blighted netherworld called Mordor with its pitched battles and fiery pits and humans adrift in murky holes -- you know, The Somme, July 1916. </p><p>"No soldier ever really survives a war" -- Audie Murphy</p><p>Make that two more things...</p><p>In a chapter near the end of "Sargeant Salinger," Sonny Salinger and his sister Doris vacation at the Plaza Hotel in Daytona Beach, Fla. The Plaza was a post-war vacation destination for Northerners. It was best known for the tunnel motorists blasted through to get to "The World's Most Famous Beach," back when you could drive freely on it. That was my introduction to the Atlantic Ocean when our father drove us through it on our first day in Daytona. </p><p>In the novel, Sonny breaks away from his sister's watchful eye and joins some kids making sandcastles on the beach. The kids eye him suspiciously as he joins in, shows them some techniques he perfected during family trips to Daytona. A concerned mother fetches her kids and eventually Doris fetches her brother. Nothing is mentioned about bananafish but you can see the beginnings of the short story. </p><p>This became my beach in the late 60s, from the Plaza down to Hartford approach where we surfed. The only thing I knew about Salinger then is that I had to read "Catcher in the Rye" for English class. We chatted up girls, played frisbee and made sandcastles when the surf was flat, as we used to say. We eventually headed home and off to our night jobs at restaurants and hotels. My mind was mostly on surf and girls, getting enough pay for gas so we could find surf when none was to be found in Daytona.</p><p>Next time I visit Daytona to see family and friends, I'm going to the beach in front of the Plaza and try to see what Salinger saw. I know now that writers see things others don't. I may spot a bananafish struggling to get out of a hole in the ocean because it got too fat eating underwater bananas.</p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-54392708581388666262023-07-20T10:01:00.000-06:002023-07-20T10:01:08.145-06:00It's official -- Happy Moon Landing Day, Wyoming<p>California-based filmmaker Steven Barber wants to put up a memorial to the Apollo 11 astronauts. He wants to place it in Wyoming because it's the only state in the U.S. to celebrate Moon Landing Day. State Senator Affie Ellis of Cheyenne brought this bill to the Legislature over the winter and now it's official. Nobody gets the day off and nobody is touting a Moon Landing Day Mattress Sale. But at least we remember a historic first. And in Wyoming. Barber wants to build a replica of the memorial at the Kennedy Space Center which features the three Apollo astronauts. It was created by Loveland, Colorado, artist George Lundeen. You can read more about it on <a href="https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/07/18/wyomings-first-moon-landing-day-is-thursday-apollo-11-monument-a-done-deal/">Cowboy State Daily</a>. </p><p>Barber estimates he will need $750,000 for the monument:</p>
<p></p><blockquote>“I’m going to do a replica there. Period,” he told the Daily. “This is real simple. I find a billionaire, he writes a check and I build it.”</blockquote><p></p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-2208119863739910922023-07-19T13:50:00.001-06:002023-07-19T13:50:56.523-06:00The accountants who got us to the moon, July 1969 -- Part 4<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Fate had other
ideas. We couldn’t sell our house in a down market as hundreds of other Apollo
pioneers were trying to do. My father reported that he hated Cincinnati. He
took a job with NASA which still needed space accountants and returned to
Daytona just in time for the new school year. School chums asked me to return their
going-away present but my dog had chewed up the nice Frisbee they gifted me. I
made the varsity in my junior year and started dating a girl who drove a Canary-yellow
GTO but she liked driving my rusted little car so we switched up often.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Over the next two
years, I attended my first rock concerts in Jacksonville and in December 1968,
my buddy Rick and I took our military draft physicals downtown and his lifer
Chief dad arranged for us to spend the night aboard his ship. In March of ‘69,
our b-ball team went to the state tournament in the Jacksonville Coliseum where
we lost in the semis. Thus ended my basketball career.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">In July 1969, as I
pondered an uncertain future, our family huddled around the TV watching Neil
Armstrong on the moon. The day before, my girlfriend and I were making out on
the beach in my little car. The rain came down as the news came on: “The Eagle
has landed.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Two weeks later,
when the Apollo astronauts were back in the U.S., our house burned down. No casualties except...</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">As the day faded
into history, my mother went to work as a nurse and my father got a job crunching
numbers with the State of Florida and commuted to the Jacksonville office. Dad
still didn’t know how to swim but the rest of us did. We were water people, for
now.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Bio: Michael Shay
did some of his growing up in Florida but now lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming, with
his wife and two grown children. He graduated from Daytona’s Father Lopez High
School in 1969, Daytona Beach Community College in 1974 and University of
Florida in 1976. He applied for reporter jobs at every newspaper in Florida but
none would hire him so, like Huck Finn, he lit out for the territories. He gets
to Florida as often as he can to visit family and friends. His story
collection, “The Weight of a Body,” is available on Amazon. His novel, “Zeppelins
over Denver,” is due out later this year.</span></i></p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-47638742735576921462023-07-18T10:23:00.002-06:002023-07-18T10:24:11.392-06:00The accountants who got us to the moon, July 1969 -- Part 3<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Hurricane Dora hit
a couple weeks into the new school year. The lead story in that morning’s </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">News-Journal</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">
featured an illustration of a swirling Hurricane Dora with an arrow pointed
right at Daytona. Still, our parents sent us to school. Midway through the day,
the nuns made us pray for Dora to hit somewhere other than Our Lady of Lourdes
Catholic Church/School/Shrine/Nunnery. They finally sent us home. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt;">My father evacuated
us to the mainland. We went as far as a motel along U.S. 1. I spent the night
listening to WROD 1340 on my transistor radio and tracing Dora’s progress on
the tracking map I ripped out of the morning paper. At the window, I watched
the gusts batter the palms. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">The storm brushed
by Daytona and moved on to St. Augustine and Jacksonville. We returned to our
modest house in an Ormond Beach community designed for middle-class vacationers
and now was temporary home to the migrating hordes of engineers, technicians,
and accountants planning the moonshot. The hurricane had turned our house into
a white cinder-block island surrounded by murky water. We turned our picnic
table upside down to make a raft and poled across the backyard.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">During the next couple
years, we bought a house in Daytona and stayed put. The ninth kid was born. We
visited the Jacksonville zoo and marveled at the city’s new shopping mall. In
January 1967, right in the middle of Father Lopez Green Wave basketball season,
my father announced that the need for accountants on the Apollo Moon Mission was
coming to an end, at least in Florida. He could stay with G.E. but only if he
agreed to be transferred to Cincinnati. He had a big family to feed. Other G.E.
employees who declined to move to Cincinnati or Schenectady or Boston now were pumping
gas or checking in Georgia tourists at beachside motels. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">The good news about
him leaving is that he didn’t want to drive his 1960 Renault Dauphine to Ohio
during the winter. Since I had conveniently passed my driving test in December,
he was leaving me his car and chauffeuring duties for the ten people remaining
at our Hartford Avenue house which was going up for sale on Monday.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"><i>Next: Cincinnati or bust?</i></span></p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12880671.post-69756586373219619062023-07-17T10:15:00.001-06:002023-07-17T10:15:20.542-06:00The accountants who got us to the moon, July 1969 -- Part 2<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">I stepped off the
plane at the old Jacksonville airport expecting the worst. It was after dark and
August’s heat and humidity wrapped me in its stifling embrace. I herded my
mother and brothers and sisters down the airplane stairs, across the tarmac,
and into the terminal. I greeted my Dad and complained about the heat. “You get
used to it,” he said.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">We loaded kids and
luggage into our Ford Falcon station wagon and headed to a motel as it was
getting late and the babies were crying and the rest of us were cranky. We
drove by a car and its window was wide open and the guy driving was not wearing
a shirt. Seems ridiculous to remember that decades later but in Colorado or
anywhere else in the West I had never seen a guy driving without a shirt. We
landed at a motel and my brother Dan and I saw a family swimming in the pool.
Swimming at night? My God, this was a different sort of universe. We bugged our
Dad to let us go swimming and he did, probably because he’d been on his own for
a couple months and had forgotten how many unruly children he had spawned and
wanted to get rid of a few of them. The pool felt great after a day spent on
planes and in airports.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">The next day, we
drove to our new home in Volusia County. Every bridge we crossed had at least
one person fishing on it. It was a workday in the middle of the week and
everyone seemed to be fishing. We breezed into town, crossed the Intercoastal
Waterway, drove through a tunnel under a big hotel and right onto the beach. I
had seen the Pacific during our vacation trip to the Seattle World’s Fair in
1962 (we lived in Washington State then) but I had never actually been in an
ocean. And so many girls in bikinis.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">The next day, we
all went to the beach. The water was kind of rough but being in the ocean was
so cool. Mom made us wear shirts when not in the water to cover skin vulnerable
to the sun like any other Irish-American kids who’d spent their youth in snow
country. Mom came in the water with us but Dad watched from the beach because
he never learned how to swim. Hurricane Cleo was coming up the coast and passed
through Daytona the next day, stirring up the surf on its way to St. Augustine.
It dumped plenty of rain, more than I’d ever seen in one storm.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"><i>Next: Trial by hurricane</i></span></p>Michael Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08622613457420118934noreply@blogger.com0