In which Covid catches up with me and I ask: What if?

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 The Great Escape and the plucky William Holden in Stalag 17. 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 The Thing (watch the skies!) and showed his range by becoming all-around good guy Matt Dillon in Gunsmoke. 

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!

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

What if? 

On rewatching "Band of Brothers" and viewing "The Pacific" for the first time

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. 

Next thing we know, the fascists are back, at home and abroad. The fiction of conspiracy novels became the facts of 2023.

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..

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.

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.

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.

Resistance is futile. Read The Three-Body Problem trilogy before it enters the Netflix universe

Have you ever heard the term “Dark Forest” in reference to one of the universe’s big mysteries?

I had not until I read Richard Powers’ wonderful novel about an astrophysicist’s dilemma that crosses space and time in “Bewilderment.” Then I came across a novel on Kindle called “The Dark Forest” by Chinese sci-fi writer Cixin Liu, Liu Cixin in Chinese as the last name is listed first.

This concept posits that the universe is the Dark Forest. Intelligent lifeforms are making their way through the forest and are afraid. There are other lifeforms out there but what are they like? Are they powerful but helpful giant octopus-like creatures in “Arrival.” Or are they savage multi-limbed killers as in “Independence Day,” the creeps who just want humans to “die.”

As lifeforms make their way through the Dark Forest, they don’t know what they’re going to find. Wouldn’t it be more prudent to shoot first and ask questions later rather than being ambushed themselves? Forget “Star Trek” and its non-interference directive. Those strange-looking bastards on the other side of the trees are dangerous and can’t be trusted. Our very existence is threatened. Fire!

This helps explain why Earth, after sending our radio and TV signals and Voyager space probes for the last 100 years, has been met with silence. Maybe others have picked up the signals, have investigated us further, and decided that we are killers, which we are, invaders that have wiped out entire civilizations all over the globe.

In Liu’s novel, second part of “The Three-Body Problem” trilogy, scientists have made first contact with extraterrestrials. Residents of Trisolaris answer the call. Trisolarans are telepaths so everyone on their planet knows what others are thinking. When told that Earthlings speak from their mouths and tend to hide their inner feelings, the aliens assume that we are keepers of dark secrets and are dangerous. They plan to eliminate us as soon as they can get their space fleet to our solar system in some 400 years. Humans begin to plan for the encounter. Wallfacers are selected to come up with ways to staunch the upcoming alien invasion. Some Earthlings secretly ally with the aliens as they believe the aliens just might be more sensible than their earthly neighbors. They also suspect that resistance is futile, as the Borg like to say.

I read it with a dose of dark humor as it is true that humankind is dangerous and can’t be trusted. If I was a Trisolaran, I would get to earth ASAP, before we perfect interstellar travel and keen new weapons and pursue them in the Dark Forest.

Interesting to see that Netflix is turning Liu’s trilogy into a series due out in 2023. The Netflix web site says the series will debut next year. Director is “True Blood’s” Alexander Woo with “Games of Thrones” writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. In 2020, Netflix farmed out the English-language rights for the books which was only available in the original Chinese. So, if you choose, you can read the trilogy or get it on Kindle and start with the second book as I did. It can be a hard slog at times and wonderful in its moments.

I have read only two other trilogies in the sci-fi/fantasy category: “Lord of the Rings” and “Foundation.” Also, John Dos Passos’s “U.S.A.” trilogy. Dos Passos incorporates different points of view and newspaper snippets as he recounts his view of the U.S. in the post-World War I era. A neat blend of fiction and fact, a series ahead of its time. Eduardo Galeano and “Memory of Fire,” 500 years of Latin American history. Again, a wonderful mix of fact and fiction. Magical-realism is involved.

Do you have other trilogies to suggest?

If I may make a modest suggestion: start with book one when tackling a series. I’m pretty sure I missed out by starting in the middle. 

Saturday Morning Round-up: Snow arrives -- finally -- and "Stay Close" keeps you guessing

Saturday Morning Round-up:

I’ve been interviewing the recipients of the 2021 Governor’s Arts Awards. These are the awards given annually by the Wyoming Arts Council for "substantial contributions made in Wyoming that exemplify a long-term commitment to the arts," Recipients include intriguing artists and very interesting people running arts organizations. Sometimes the person running the arts org is an artist, That artist continues to make art while promoting the arts in their community. It’s a time-consuming task, one that pays very little. But real people keep doing it. Read the articles in the next issue of WAC Artscapes. 

Just finished watching the eight-episode Netflix series “Stay Close” from the novel by Harlan Coben. Kept my attention through all the twists and turns. Surprise ending. The murderer is a character I didn’t suspect. The series is set in an English town surrounded by lots of water which figures into the plot in ways major and minor. Coben’s novel, as are most of his works (including scripts for the "Fargo" series) is set in the U.S. It’s a funny thing to watch a murder thriller transplanted to England. It’s almost as if we don’t expect people to die gruesome deaths in the land of Downton Abbey, stiff upper lips, and way too much tea-drinking. It’s also the home of Jack the Ripper, Sweeney Todd and inventive ways to torture and kill those who have ruffled the king’s feathers. Its staid demeanor helps make throat-slitting and gang-style executions stand out. Some inventive killing goes on in “Stay Close.” Keeps you guessing. Watch it.

Jan. 6 marked the anniversary of the 2021 Capitol Insurrection. While the Democrats in Congress, the president, and TV hosts made a big deal out of it, Republicans were nowhere to be seen except on Fox and some loony right-wing outlets. For those of us in the reality-based world, the attack on the Capitol was an attack on democracy. Repubs don’t see it that way. A few do. Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney does. Her pops too. They were the only GOPers that attended the Congressional prayer service on Thursday. I know, Dick Cheney to war criminal standing up for what’s right? It was rich in irony seeing his masked face. But Rep. Cheney is one of two Republicans serving on the Jan. 6 Commission. She’s also blasted Wyoming GOP leadership as deluded radicals leading the party down a dangerous path. I’m no fan of the Cheneys. But when people do the right thing, you have to thank them.

We’re finally getting some snow. November was almost snowless but we started catching up with the season on Christmas Eve and the ground is covered as I write this. Ski areas that delayed opening are now chest-deep in the stuff. I am closer to most Colorado ski areas than I am to Wyoming's Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. But JHMR reports some incredible snow amounts on its blog this morning:

As of January 8, since New Year's Day, we have received 63"! We received 42" in the last 48 hours. As of this morning, we received 24" in 24 hours. Total snowfall is now 240" on the year.

Damn. Most Colorado ski areas have received half of that. For the record, Cheyenne at 6,200 feet elevation receives about 60 inches of snow in an average year. Last year was one of extremes when we received half our total in one March blizzard. If we received 240 inches of snow, we would be digging tunnels to our cars and those tunnels would be pointless because the city would be waiting for the sun to come out for the its primary snow removal tactic. And waiting.

Boring old college lecturer responds to "The Chair"

Watched the last episode of "The Chair" this week. I laughed, I cried. Various faculty and administrators and students pissed me off.  All in all, a good investment of six Netflix hours. 

I have never served time on a college faculty and I've been an adjunct at community colleges. I was an undergrad English major at one community college and a land-grant university in the Palm Tree South and a grad student at a land-grant university in the Rocky Mountain West. I never got within spitting distance of a small liberal arts college such as Pembroke. 

But Pembroke's people seemed familiar. As a grad student T.A., I experienced some of the same frustrations of Pembroke faculty, those f*cking f*cks referenced in The Chair's (F*cker In Charge) desk sign. Some faculty members were old and stuck in their ways. The Literature, Composition and ESL faculty didn't like creative writing faculty and vice versa. The administration was always targeting the English Department for cuts due to the fact that we all speak English so why in the f*cking f*ck do we need an English Department? Shouldn't it be the  'Merican Department since we all speak 'Merican here? 

All an MFA grad student could do was teach our two sections of comp, keep our heads down and write a lot. We had regular classes to attend on top of writing workshops. And, in my case and some others, I had a family to support. 

One of my favorite aspects of "The Chair" are insights into faculty's families. Dr. Ji-Joon Kim has a daughter who is as argumentative as faculty ("You're not my real mom"). Dobson's wife died and his only daughter went off to college. No matter he gets stoned before and after class, and sometimes doesn't show up at all. Dr. Joan Hambling gave up her personal life and career advancement to prop of the fragile egos of male colleagues. She is working on a relationship with a college IT guy who is as much as a wise-ass as she is. Dr. Rentz (Bob Balaban) chats with his wife before a college event and we find out that she gave up her academic career to raise three kids. "Someone had to cook dinner," she says as she urges her aging husband to wear his Depends.

My daughter, an English major, is watching "The Chair" but I don't think she's finished. After a couple episodes she was angry at the students, which I thought was interesting since she is a student and a Millennial. I was angry at the students too but possibly for a different reason. They didn't want to learn Chaucer and Melville? I fondly recall my red-haired prof at UF who taught us Chaucer in Middle English. She spoke it like a native and there were times I imagined her as The Wyf of Bathe. 

The Pembroke students just didn't want to learn it the old-fashioned boring Boomer lecture way. They liked the way Moby Dick was taught by Dr. Yaz, a Millennial who approached it in a new way. By the end of the final episode, I was depressed about the state of academia. No surprise -- I was a boring old lecturer and probably still am. Back in my day, etc., etc., and so on. 

It's not always a beautiful day in the neighborhood

Chris, Annie and I saw "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" on Thanksgiving Day. Walking down the corridor to the theatre, I was almost trampled by a rampaging mob of tykes on their way to see "Frozen 2." We have neither tykes nor grandtykes as excuses to see animated films. You could call them movies for children's but I like the term family films. Disney and Pixar know that the under-10 crowd needs parental accompaniment. The filmmakers throw in enough inside adult jokes and jibes to keep us interested. A good thing because these films will be watched dozens of times at home. Our daughter Annie saw "Charlotte's Web" at least a hundred times.

I knew that "Neighborhood" was a feel-good movie because Mr. Rogers was a feel-good guy. So is Tom Hanks. My younger self might not have gone to this movie. If I did, I would crack wise about it on the way home. I could never resist. When visiting from college, I gave my sisters grief for watching "Little House on the Prairie" or "Mr. Rogers." I thought I was funny. I always thought I was funny. In my youth, I teased family members and friends. I outgrew it, thankfully. Being a wise-ass has its uses. But it's not conducive to forming relationships, That takes vulnerability and humility. You know, Mr. Rogers' traits.

That's what hit me as I watched Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers. He was a humble soul, a friendly man who sought out people like Lloyd, the acerbic Esquire journalist assigned to do a short profile on the children's TV star. Lloyd was a broken man, hobbled by his hatred of the father who abandoned his family. He is struggling to be a partner to his wife and father to his baby. When his father reappears, he is so pissed that he punches Dad at his sister's wedding. When his father is hospitalized with a heart attack, he refuses to see him, opting instead to go to work. Mr. Rogers helps him to heal by being himself and asking the right questions. I  won't say what happens next as I don't want to spoil it.

I left the theatre with a warm feeling. Chris liked the film but Annie did not. She grew up with Mr. Rogers and liked him. But the movie didn't have enough oomph for her. She is a Millennial who avoids network TV and spends her Roku-fueled spare time with life looking for horror films, oddball YouTube videos, and funky indie films. She is kind and creative but impatient. We enjoy a lively banter and has picked up wiseassery from me. My son Kevin has a quick wit, too. He has always had a sensitive soul and I hope that remains. We don't see him much as he lives 900 miles away. I want my kids to be good people. Bad people seem to be on the ascendancy, at least in the public sphere.

I would love to be Christ-like in my behavior toward others. My writing style sometimes allows that, as does my daily behavior. I crave Mr. Rogers' understanding nature. I've long admired Elwood P. Doud, the rabbit-conjuring soul in "Harvey." I would wander the town introducing my pooka Harvey to strangers. I would hand them my card and ask them if I could buy them a drink. I would hope that people tolerated my quirky nature and and invisible companion. Unfortunately, those who wander from acceptable social behavior tend to be discounted even vilified. Americans, bless their hearts, like to believe they tolerate the eccentric among us.

I know a man who's a fixture in our downtown. He has a mental illness and works full time. He tells jokes when he shows up at events. He writes poetry as he hangs out at a local coffee house. On one chilly fall evening. he spotted me pushing my walker along a downtown sidewalk. I saw him scribbling on a sheet of paper as he made his way to me across the street. Before I could even greet him, he handed me the paper. On it were "get well soon" wishes. It was nice and I thanked him. I wish I would have told him it was the best card I had ever received. It was the best because it was the nicest gesture. I could see Mr. Rogers doing this. I could also imagine good wishes from Mr. Doud. He, of course, would have invited me into the Paramount Ballroom for a warm drink on a cold night.
And I would have accepted.

Is corporate America really our enemy?

I watched the entire Super Bowl, from its hope-filled opening to its bitter end. I saw an hour of the pre-game show but didn't watch the post-mortem, when Trump's boy, Tom Brady, celebrated in style. Or I assume that he did.

Funny how this football game became a forum to challenge #45. Big corporations paid big money to air their inclusive views on race, immigration, history. Budweiser told the story of its German immigrant founder, including a scene at the docks where nativist Know Nothings harass him and other "foreigners." 84 Lumber aired the story of a Latin American mother and her young daughter and their trek to the U.S., to reunite with the father. Unfortunately, the imagined Trump wall almost got in their way. Air B&B addressed intolerance by exhibiting the many faces of our neighbors. All of the ads featured Americans of varying colors and creeds and statuses. The America that exists now, not the fear-plagued, hateful nation summoned by Trump. Creative people imagined these ads, wrote them, shot them, acted in them, edited them. Creativity is one of our greatest strengths. It can reveal, in creative ways, the xenophobic ways of the fascist, who hates creativity and humor and the First Amendment.

At the end of last night's game, I wondered: Will it be the corporations that save us from Trump? You must be a huge entity to afford Super Bowl ads. To be a huge entity, you need to appeal to the largest possible audience. For years, Coke and Bud and McD's have featured a rainbow of talent in their commercials. Look at ads from your childhood in the 50s-70s. White people. Look at commercial TV now and you see America as it actually exists. We have African-Americans and Latinos, Somalis and Salvadorans. We have hearing-impaired people signing a language that it as foreign to most of us as Urdu. We have people in wheelchairs.

This apparently irritates Trump supporters, who tend to be rural and white. They look around their small town and see people like them. They watch cable TV and see a changed America, one that is foreign and scary. It's mainly urban and young. They go to Denver and Salt Lake City and Albuquerque and see this America in living color. It's intimidating. Almost like a foreign country.

Many of my city friends laugh when I say that I'm a city boy. I say I live in a capital city, the largest one in my state, one of only two Metropolitan Statistical Areas. If asked, I say that the population is 68,000, the size of some suburbs in their state. They think I'm funny.

Back to corporations. Many liberals see them as the enemy. They are trying to take over the world, make everybody live in a cookie-cutter world. They are the enemies of craft brewers and locavores and indie bands.

But corporations employ smart people and see what's going on. Corporate brewers buy up craft brewers and try to duplicate their appeal. Fast-food giants try to be like the mom-and-pop neighborhood bistro, offering artisan this and handmade that. They know things are changing. But we sneer at them, superior beings that we are. Meanwhile, they hire people of color who are dependable and smart. These companies understand that Trump's prejudices will kill their businesses.

Look around you. See who works at your favorite restaurant and coffee shop. Investigate their politics. See who they are connected to in public. You can hate Starbuck's if you want, but it is an open-minded company, one that challenges the Trumpsters. Buy a coffee there and one at your locally-owned coffee shop. Thing is, your local shop may be owned by rabid Republicans just following a proven business model. Maybe Starbuck's is more attuned to your beliefs.

Some wingnuts are calling for a Budweiser boycott. Last summer, Bud changed its flagship beer's name to "America." I didn't drink any America. I thought it was silly, and that only bikers and cowboys would fall for it. But now I will drink a Bud for every Fat Tire or 90 Shilling I drink. Not sure if my heart can take too many fast-food meals, but there must be something I can eat at Wendy's. It's important to support those companies who dared to challenge a despot on the biggest sporting event of the year

Nice horsey. Wheeze. Cough. Gasp!

In my childhood dreams, I was Roy riding Trigger while Dale Evans cheered us on. I had a serious crush on Trigger and Dale.

My cowboying experience is limited.

As a kid, I yearned to ride the range with Roy Rogers and John Wayne. My favorite shows were all westerns: Gunsmoke, Cheyenne, Bonanza, The Lone Ranger, Rawhide, Sugarfoot, Have Gun Will Travel, Maverick, and so on. I galloped through my dreams on Trigger or Silver or any number of TV horses.

In reality, I couldn't get anywhere near a horse without heavy wheezing and gasping for breath. I had asthma, and horses and hay and tree pollen and weeds and cats were the enemy. That ruled out any horseback riding, or even horseback viewing from a close proximity. Petting zoos were out of the question.

It was tough on a kid of the West.

I was 27 and living in Florida the first time I rode a horse. My asthma had abated, and a nice young woman named Chris had asked me to accompany her on a horseback ride. This nice young woman had owned a horse at one time, and had been riding since she was a kid. I asked her if she would help me pick out a very docile horse, the kind of horse which would be nice to a newbie. "What's the fun in that?" she said with a smile.

At the stables, she selected a steed with spirit, and then found an old nag for me. We rode along together for awhile, and then she asked if I minded if she galloped ahead. She took off, horse hooves pounding the ground, disappearing into the Central Florida forest. My horse and I galumphed along. Eventually we rounded a bend to find Chris standing in the trail next to her horse. Chris has sand and twigs in her hair. The horse had an innocent look on his face.

"He threw me," Chris said. She held up her right hand. "And he stomped on my hand."

I regarded her nice hand. "Is it broken."

She flexed it. "No. I'm glad the ground's sandy."

I patted my horse, urged her to not get any bad ideas from her colleague. Chris got up on her horse and we rode together for the rest of the afternoon. It was a warm January day, the kind of days tourists flock to Florida for. We rode into the sunset and later got married, moved back to the West and had kids, only occasionally taking time for horseback riding. I must admit that I have successfully ridden horses a half-dozen times.

I'm no cowboy.

But I just published a story entitled "Cowboy Stories." It's part of a new anthology from Colorado's Western Press, "Manifest West." It features poetry, essays and short stories about contemporary cowboys. My fictional cowboy is an urban variety, but has little to do with John Travolta or saloon line dancing. He's just an old cowboy who hangs around a Cheyenne downtown dive bar and tells stories. He has lots of stories. It was seem as if he's too old to have adventures, but he's not. He gets mixed up with some animal rights advocates and some coasters making a film about the New West. Hijinks ensue.

Read the story to find out what happens. Keep posted as to publication dates by going to Western Press at Western State Colorado University in Gunnison.

Hi-yo Silver! Away!

Casting call for Cheyenne Reality TV show

Alan O'Hashi's Wyoming Community Media makes fine films, launched the Cheyenne International Film Festival and is the impetus behind long-range planning for the Hynds Building in downtown Cheyenne. This guy's the real thing. He also has a sense of fun: 

Wyoming Community Media is casting locally for a TV show pilot. Please pass the info on to 100 of your closest friends. You don't need to be an actor or actress. This is reality TV!

Do you want a chance to be on TV? WCM is working with a New York City based television production company is looking for regular people to drive taxicabs for Cheyenne Frontier Days. 

This is an opportunity to drive for a local cab company, with the potential to participate in a new reality television show. If you appear between the ages of 25-45, and have a valid driver’s license, please send your name, location, phone number, a photo, and a brief description of yourself to cabcasting@gmail.com

We be ugly in Wyoming

From TV reviewer Mary McNamara's LA Times review of the "Longmire" pilot:

Where Longmire strides, Vic bounces, and though Sackhoff doesn't have quite enough to do in the pilot, the chemistry between the two will no doubt be the river running through the show. While anything can happen over time in a TV series, their relationship appears remarkably, and mercifully, free of sexual or even romantic tension, despite their being the two best-looking people in the county and probably the state. (No offense meant, citizens of Wyoming.)

"Longmire" on A&E is based on the novels of Craig Johnson of Ucross, Wyoming, pop. 25, in Sheridan County, home to several ruggedly attractive people.

Local blogger interviews Wyoming author Craig Johnson about his books and upcoming "Longmire" A&E series

Craig Johnson's latest
Walt Longmire mystery
 debuts May 15.

Cheyenne writer Karen Cotton interviewed Ucross, Wyoming, mystery writer Craig Johnson ("The Cold Dish," "Another Man's Moccasins") for a story on her new blog. She got some great quotes. Here's one with Craig describing his ongoing main character, Absoraka County Sheriff Walt Longmire:

“I was looking for an individual that would be emblematic of the American West, but still complex enough to be compelling to readers,” Johnson said. “Walt is, what I refer to as, a detective for the disenfranchised; he cares about the cases that no one else does. He’s an elected official that’s responsible to his community and I like that better than the ‘lone-wolf’ style characters that kills forty people before the book is over. Walt is a little ‘over’—over age, over weight, overly depressed, and facing a lot of the things that the readers face every day and I think that keeps him real.”

The sheriff (portrayed by actor Robert Taylor) will star in a new TV series on A&E, "Longmire." It debuts June 3.

Read more at Karen's blog: http://lifeisassweetascottoncandy.wordpress.com/2012/04/29/new-york-times-bestselling-author-craig-johnson-dishes-about-his-new-tv-series-on-ae-and-his-latest-book/

Four years after: March 2008 caucuses bring out endangered toads and grizzled old coots

In my attempt to return to the heady month of March 2008, in which hope was in the air and the Wyoming Democratic Party caucuses were mobbed, I'm reprinting some blog posts. Here's one from four years ago today:

Julianne Couch is a writer in Laramie. Her column about the caucuses appeared in this morning's Wyoming Tribune-Eagle. The Obama-Clinton surge meant a lot to Wyoming "Non-Republicans," whom Julianne likened to "a rare species to toad -- a curiousity that is easily squashed by the heel of a heavy boot when it gets in the way of progress." 

She was happy that the caucuses "took the Wyoming Democrats off the endangered species list, at least temporarily."

Julianne now lives and works in Ames, Iowa. Her move contributed to the thinning of the WY Dem ranks. And the "endangered species" remark seems especially poignant four years later.

The WY Dem caucuses also received national attention from "The Daily Show."

Monday night on "The Daily Show," Jon Stewart had a great time picking on Wyoming. He noted that there were 59,000 registered Dems in the state. "I have more Democrats in my building," he quipped. If he's in New York, I'm sure he does. Later, Samantha Bee broke down the caucus numbers for us. Supporting Obama were the rugged outdoorsmen, grizzled old coots, ornery drifters and mustache guys. Hillary won over the hearty prospectors and cowardly saloon owners. Jon Stewart asked about gay cowboys, and Samantha Bee said that hadn't been in issue for about a year (remember the hubbub over "Brokeback Mountain?") and that those numbers were no longer tabulated.

And I thought that all of those grizzled old coots supported another grizzled old coot -- John McCain?

Wyoming Sen. Al Simpson calls fellow Republican Rick Santorum "rigid and homophobic"

From Face the Nation on CBS:

Former Senator Alan Simpson had some choice words for his one-time colleague, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. 

"I know Santorum, I served with him," he said. "He is rigid and a homophobic. He believes that gays and lesbians, he mentioned in an interview in 2003, about bestiality, and gays and lesbians. I think that's disgusting," said Simpson. 

The former three-term Republican senator from Wyoming, who has always been known for both his candor and his ability to work across party lines, said Republicans are hurting themselves by focusing on social issues. 

"Here's a party that believes in government out of your life, the precious right of privacy and the right to be left alone. How then can they be the hypocrisy of fiddling around in these social issues? We won't have a prayer," he told Bob Schieffer in an interview for CBS News' Face to Face, a weekly web interview from the staff of Face the Nation. 

Those social issues are a defining part of Santorum's candidacy and his newfound support as a the leading conservative candidate. "And they asked him, well he said I want a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and they said well what about the people who are already married? And he said well they would be nullified. I mean what is, what's human, what's kind about that? We're all human beings, we all know or love somebody who's gay or lesbian so what the hell is that about? To me it's startling and borders on disgust," said Simpson, who would be considered a centrist Republican by today's standards and served at a time when the two parties in Congress were not as far apart on the ideological spectrum as they are today.

Read a transcript of the full interview with Simpson.

Clint Eastwood Chrysler ad as American as Detroit (and apple pie)

In your face, Karl Rove!

Bring Change 2 Mind teams up with "Extreme Makeover Home Edition" to provide a home to vet with PTSD

I'm not a big fan of reality shows. But "Extreme Makeover Home Edition" is one of the better ones. It's less about strange behavior and more about helping people. Producers select a deserving family and builds a new one or fully renovates the old one on camera. EMHE brings in its own team of designers and builders and enlists an array of local contractors. It has a green slant, with lots of effort to use alternative energy sources and recycled materials. The show's host is the energetic Ty Pennington. Watching the show, I imagined that Ty was a hyperactive kid who drove his family and teachers crazy. He's his own alternative energy source.

The next EMHE is co-sponsored by one of my favorite orgs, Bring Change 2 Mind. Its goal is to remove the stigma of mental illness. BC2M has a video, directed by Ron Howard, that shows a crowd in a subway station (Grand Central?). One man wears a white T-shirt that reads "Post Traumatic Street Disorder" and he's accompanied by his "Battle Buddy." A woman wears a "Depression" T-shirt and is hugged by her "Better Half." Glenn Close, "Sister," poses with her real sister, "Bipolar." The video ends with the labels disappearing from the T-shirts and people going about their business.

Glenn partners up with Pennington and company on the most recent EMHE project, this one for a veteran with PTSD and his family.

There's no bigger mental health issue now than the challenges faced by our returning veterans. That includes PTSD.

Marion Mealing sends this from the National Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health:

This Friday, November 4 at 8 p.m. (ET) “Extreme Makeover Home Edition” is featuring an organization about which I feel strongly: Bring Change 2 Mind. 

Bring Change 2 Mind is an organization dedicated to fighting the stigma of mental illness, and providing information and support to those living with mental illness.  Bring Change 2 Mind has been a partner with the National Federation in the fight against mental health stigma.

The two-hour show will take you through how Extreme Makeover Home Edition built a home that better meets the needs of Allen, who is living with PTSD, , his wife Gina, their children, Makale and Dreyson, and their dog Frankie. Throughout the episode, Glenn Close (Bring Change 2 Mind's founder) talks about the organization and their mission.

Will you join me and tune in for what promises to be a heartwarming story?

http://bringchange2mind.org/ehme

Occupy Wall Street occupies your TV

Coming soon to reality TV: jousting

Is jousting the next big thing on reality TV?

That's what people were saying over the weekend at the 35th annual Scottish-Irish Highland Festival in Estes Park.

"Jousting is the next big thing on reality TV."

That's right. Jousting, as seen in movies such as "The Adventures of Robin Hood," "A Knight's Tale" and "Court Jester," is making a comeback.

Here's an article in New York Magazine about the History Channel's proposed jousting show:

The History Channel is taking a cue from Game of Thrones and putting together a jousting-competition series, Full Metal Jousting. "It's sixteen guys and they're gonna knock the crap out of each other," vows the show's executive producer. Fully armored competitors will charge at each other on horses "bred for warfare," and "someone's going to get hurt." If that sounds appealing, and you're "proficient with horseback riding while simultaneously performing physical activities requiring hand-eye coordination," then this is the casting notice of your dreams. Last summer, the New York Times wondered if jousting was "the next extreme sport," and now it seems the answer is "well, sort of."

For awhile there -- 400 years or so -- jousting had fallen out of favor. Guys kept getting killed and some of them were the knights and nobles who made up the majority of professional jousters. It would have been O.K. if the rabble was getting killed. They were, after all, expendable. But when the King of France (Henry II) had a broken lance puncture his brain -- a fatal wound -- that was enough. 

No nobles in the lists Saturday at Fairgrounds Stadium in Estes Park. There was a guy who was a martial arts champion from Utah and a young man from Texas whose father is in the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame. But no Earl of Cumberland or Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein of Gelderland. 

There were lots of cameras. Handheld cameras, cameras buried in the ground, cameras embedded into the tips of lances.

It was fun watching fully-armored men charge each other on horseback. Lances shattered. Jousters fell to the ground.

This will make great reality TV.

Now only if we can get Snooky fitted with armor, a lance and a big horse...

Keith Olbermann first confirmed speaker at NN12

Netroots Nation has announced that Keith Olbermann is its first confirmed speaker for the 2012 conference June 7-10 in Providence, R.I.

Great news. I plan on being there. Hope I have an opportunity to discuss James Thurber with Mr. Olbermann. Thurber was a favorite of his late father's and Keith read excerpts to close out each Friday's show on MSNBC. That was before he was cancelled by corporate giant NBC. I also am a big fan of the man's righteous anger, which I miss these days. I'll have to check and see if Optimum (formerly Bresnan) carries Keith's network.

More on NN12 at http://www.netrootsnation.org

Advice to seniors: Turn off the TV and go to school

According to MSN Money:

How Americans age 65 to 74 spend their day in hours(Results for the total population age 15 and older are in parenthesis.)

• Personal care activities (including sleep): 9.67 (9.47).

• Watching TV: 3.77 (2.52).

• Household activities: 2.41 (1.79).

• Eating and drinking: 1.42 (1.25).

• Working: 1.15 (3.50).

• Purchasing goods and services: 0.94 (0.75).

• Reading: 0.62 (0.29).

• Socializing: 0.59 (0.55).

• Relaxing and thinking: 0.55 (0.28).

• Organizational, civic and religious activities: 0.52 (0.35).

• Leisure computer use: 0.38 (0.39).

• Exercise: 0.31 (0.29).

• Caring for non-household members: 0.31 (0.21).

• Telephone calls, mail, and email: 0.23 (0.18).

• Caring for household members: 0.11 (0.51).

• Education activities: 0 (0.47)

Education activities zero? That seems wrong. Every spring, I teach LIFE classes through Laramie County Community College and the classes are packed. I am 60 and my students are 65-and-up. I've also taught at Elderhostel. Zero education activities? Many colleges and universities have adjacent retirement communities. Some of these look a bit scary, such as the one at my alma mater, University of Florida. Eighteen-hole golf course? No thanks. Free paleontology and literature and ag courses at UF? And tix to b-ball? Count me in. 

Turn off the TV, people, especially if you're watching FOX. It's melting your brains. 

Go to school.


P.S.: Retirement village at UF is Oak Hammock. Here are some of the classes offered in the fall:

CLASSES
▪ Alternative Energy Sources 
▪ Native American Art 
▪ The Many Aspects of Forensics 
▪ Law and the Movies
▪ Bees
▪ Jazz III - Gary Langford 
▪ The Profound Art of Cormac McCarthy: An 
Introduction– Robert Gentry
SPECIAL PROGRAMS/LECTURES
▪One day seminar on a Shakespeare play 
 Estelle Aden 
▪Lecture by David Colburn 
▪ Cutting Edge Lectures 
CONTINUING PROGRAMS
▪Understanding and Enjoying Opera 
▪Roundtable Discussion in the Algonquin      
Genre 
▪ Conversational Spanish


Nice line-up. I especially like the Cormac McCarthy course.

Forget the MSM -- Russia Today covers Wisconsin

Remember when Pres. Reagan called the Soviet Union "The Evil Empire?" I do. This clip comes from "Russia Today" and takes a look at another Evil Empire -- Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his union-busting tactics. Link courtesy of our our fine friends at the Solidarity Wisconsin blog -- and others in the Wisconsin Progressive Bloggers Corps (and not the MSM).

Russia Today covers Wisconsin | Solidarity Wisconsin