The ballad of Baba the Thin Man and the Good Ship Cameronia

My sister sent me a packet of stuff she cleaned out of her attic. In it, I found a printout from The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation. I took it from there.

My maternal grandfather, Irish immigrant Martin Hett, boarded the S.S. Cameronia on a late May afternoon, 1915. He was 15. The ship was five years old. Spiffy little vessel, the Anchor Line, flew the British flag, built in Glasgow. 10,963 gross tons, 515 feet long, 62 feet wide. Top speed 17 knots. Two masts and two funnels, steel hull with four decks. Carried 1,700 passengers, 250 in first class, 450 in second class, and 1,000 with Grandfather in third class. Port of departure: Liverpool. Port of arrival: New York City. Arrived with all hands June 7, 1915.

RMS Lusitania: First British four-funneled ocean liner, called an “ocean greyhound” by the Cunard Line, six passenger decks carried 2,198 including almost 600 in sumptuous first-class compartments, Launched June 7, 1906; sunk on its voyage from New York by Germany’s SM U-20 on May 7, 1915 with loss of 1,197 souls, some bodies found floating, some washed up on Irish beaches, some just disappeared into The Deeps. A Vanderbilt was among the dead. 

Grandfather was originally booked on the Lusitania along with more than 1,000 other third-class passengers. Now shipless, Grandfather had to hang around the Liverpool docks looking for an alternate booking. Apocryphal family stories have him booking steerage on another ship that is also torpedoed and sunk. We like this because we can tell listeners that our teenage Grandfather tempted fate during the war but made it to America after all. Grand tale, no?

I don’t know why I keep calling him grandfather. As a precocious American toddler, a future English major and writer, I called him Baba so everyone else did. My cousins called him Gramps. My father, his son-in-law, called him Mart. Mom called him Dad.

Not sure what Liverpool looked like in spring 1915. My guess is that it looked a lot like the post-war city of 1919-1920 in the first episodes of “Peaky Blinders.” The Great European War was wrapping up its first year with hellish fights in France and Belgium and the Battle of Gallipoli in far-off Turkey. The war in what we now call the Middle East doesn’t get much movie time except for “Gallipoli” and “Lawrence of Arabia” but it was crucial to what came after and the fate of The Good Ship Cameronia.

Baba made his way from Ellis Island to Chicago and in 1917 worked on the El with his brother.

In 1919, David W. Bone’s book “Merchantmen-At-Arms: The British Merchants’ Service in the War” was published. An experienced merchant seaman and author, Bone explores in great detail the war at sea. He relives the April 15, 1917, sinking of the troopship Cameronia in Chapter XII: 'THE MAN-O'-WAR 'S 'ER 'USBAND'. The ship carries almost 3,000 troops to Egypt. You can read the full text at Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/31953/31953-h/31953-h.htm#. It features drawings by Muirhead Bone, an etcher and watercolorist who was a war artist in the First and Second World Wars. Here are excerpts:

An alarmed cry from aloft—a half-uttered order to the steersman—an explosion, low down in the bowels of the ship, that sets her reeling in her stride!

The upthrow comes swiftly on the moment of impact. Hatches, coal, shattered debris, a huge column of solid water go skyward in a hurtling mass to fall in torrent on the bridge. Part of a human body strikes the awning spars and hangs—watch-keepers are borne to the deck by the weight of water—the steersman falls limply over the wheel with blood pouring from a gash on his forehead. . . . Then silence for a stunned half-minute, with only the thrust of the engines marking the heart-beats of the stricken ship.

*****

Uproar! Most of our men are young recruits: they have been but two days on the sea. The torpedo has gone hard home at the very weakest hour of our calculated drill. The troops are at their evening meal when the blow comes, the explosion killing many outright.

*****

Many of the life-boats reach the water safely with their heavy burdens, but the strain on the tackles—far beyond their working load—is too great for all to stand to it. Two boats go down by the run. The men in them are thrown violently to the water, where they float in the wash and shattered planking. A third dangles from the after fall, having shot her manning out at parting of the forward tackle. Lowered by the stern, she rights, disengages, and drifts aft with the men clinging to the life-lines. We can make no attempt to reach the men in the water.

*****

It is when the most of the life-boats are gone we realize fully the gallant service of the destroyers.

*****

We are little more than clear of the settling fore-end when the last buoyant breath of Cameronia is overcome. Nobly she has held afloat to the debarking of the last man. There is no further life in her. Evenly, steadily, as we had seen her leave the launching ways at Meadowside, she goes down.

Many of the troops were rescued by destroyers Nemesis and Rifleman.

Baba loved his ice cream. The Thin Man died at 90.

P.S.: There was another S.S. Cameronia built by the Anchor Line that sailed on its maiden voyage in 1921. It too was requisitioned as a troopship at the outbreak of World War 2 and took part in the 1942 invasion of North Africa, was torpedoed and towed to Algiers for repairs. She was the largest troopship to participate in Operation Overlord on June 6, 1944. She carried passengers to Palestine in 1948. Scrapped in 1957.

Finn Murphy’s “Rocky Mountain High” may give you a “Hemp Space” buzz

“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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

My thought: This is really going to be bad, isn’t it?

And it was. Nobody died but the “fellowship” didn’t last.

Murphy’s first book is “The Long Haul,” also by Norton. It’s about his foray into the long-haul trucking business.

For information on the Wyoming “Hemp Space,” go to the Wyoming Hemp Association.

Joan Didion and "Slouching Towards Bethlehem"

I was a bit shocked to find out that the Saturday Evening Post was still alive and celebrating its 200th anniversary. I know the Post from my youth, when it arrived in the mail with a new Norman Rockwell cover. My grandparents has copies of the Post and Life and Reader's Digest all over their houses. Required reading, and encouraging in an all-American sort of way. In 2021, for $15 a year, you can get six issues of the print magazine, a digital subscription and access to the online archive. I'd love to dig into the online archives -- that alone is worth the price. I will recognize many of the covers from the 1950s and 1960s. Display ads tout cigarettes, appliances, and shiny big cars made in Detroit.

I won't always recognize the articles. That was clear to me when Joan Didion's piece "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" appeared on Facebook with the news of Joan Didion's passing. It was a variety of journalism known as the long feature. She was among the coterie of American writers known for "new journalism" which blended reporting with fiction techniques. Some of you may know it as creative nonfiction or, in the case of Hunter S. Thompson, gonzo journalism. 

"Slouching Towards Bethlehem" was published during Didion's prime in June 1967 and republished by the Post in 2017. Didion dropped into the Haight-Ashbury scene on the cusp of the Summer of Love. The famous Human Be-in had been held in January at Golden Gate Park with lots of acid, hip speakers, and bands such as Jefferson Airplane and the Dead. Word about this Hippie Utopia spread and by summer, school was out and thousands of young people crowded into the city. Media, too, even Saturday Evening Post.

Didion, of course, was no TV talking head who dropped in to marvel and possibly be shocked at the ribald behavior. She was an incisive reporter who dug into the culture and found it wanting. She sets her tone with a quote from W.B. Yeats's poem "The Second Coming." Yeats' poem is much-admired for its stark symbols. It is also much abused. It employs Biblical Revelations-style symbols to warn humankind of what becomes of society's upheavals. He specifically addressed the Irish "Rising" of 1916 and its after-effects, which included a revolution and a civil war that involved much bloodshed. 

Didion's "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" records what she sees. Reading it now, I thank my Lucy in the Ski with Diamonds that I didn't bug out and go to the Haight. Sure, there was drugs, sex, and rock-n-roll, but also addiction, STDs, and poverty. Lots of teen runaways looking for adventure and a place to call home. I was 16, the age of some of the girls in Didion's piece. If I had read "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" in the summer of '67, it would have seemed as if it was happening in another world, which it was. My summer was spent in Daytona Beach. I surfed as much as I could. I worked evenings at the Village Inn Pancake House and KFC outlet. But I also had to help Mom with my eight brothers and sisters. My father was working at GE in Cincinnati. We thought we were going to follow him and move there as soon as we sold our house. My Father Lopez High School classmates even gave me and two of my peers a going-away party. They moved. I did not. We couldn't sell our house in a down market so Dad decided to accept a job at NASA in Daytona and forget about Cincinnati. Such good news. 

But what about the hippies and The Summer of Love? I thought the music was cool but was much more interested in the Motown sound. It was beach music, music to dance to at sock hops. I was keen on dating tourist girls from Kentucky and Georgia down in Daytona on family vacations, just itching to break away from Ma and Pa and meet some of the local hunks, or so we thought. The Catholic Church had ruled that underage sex was taboo and Catholic School girls were the first to take the edict seriously. But we boys didn't know anything either. That mutual ignorance was not a good thing. 

In Didion's essay, a five-year-old girl is high on acid. An older guy is turning a teen girl into addict and sex slave. Everyone is high. I've been on both sides of LSD, the experiencing and the observing. Have you ever been the only non-high person in a room full of acid heads? The experiencing can be fun. The observing, not so much. You might get the idea that this is cool and join them. Didion observed the scene and with a keen and sober eye described it to the world. She wasn't judgmental. She was known to have a good sense of chaos and what she saw was the "rough beast" that lurked within the frivolity. 

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, 

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 

The ceremony of innocence is drowned; 

The best lack all conviction, while the worst 

Are full of passionate intensity.

Conservative institutions, such as the Catholic Church, along with cultural critics of the Right, blame the '60s for this blood-dimmed tide. There's a kernel of truth in that. 

I watched "Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold" last night on Netflix. A fine 2017 documentary by her nephew, director Griffin Dunne. I went to bed pondering what it takes to be a writer. Didion knew early on that's what she wanted to do. After college, she moved to NYC, worked for Vogue Magazine, met her future husband, also a writer, and spent her life illuminating the universal through the personal. She left a template that many writers have followed, some better than others.  

What does it cost to save a life?

I am pleased that WyoFile published my review of Katherine Standefer's nonfiction book, "Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life." In it, the author recounts her diagnosis of Long QT Cardiac Syndrome and how the cure can sometimes be as daunting as the ailment.

Standefer walks Planet Earth with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD). It's a high-tech device about the size of a Zippo lighter (remember those?) that surgeons implant in a cardiac patient's chest. If that person's heart experiences irregular rhythms or stops, it shocks it back to life. As one research center noted: "It is like having paramedics with you at all times." 

Tiny paramedics.

Standefer playfully calls this intricate medical device her "titanium can." When we met online in November, she said, "Welcome, Cyborg." 

Surgeons installed my ICD in July 2013 when I was 62. Read my blogs about it here and here. 

Standefer is at least a generation younger than me. However, her cardiac problem is genetic and is a killer. 

In 2009, she was a 24-year-old college grad living in Jackson. She busily balanced outdoor jaunts, a budding relationship, several jobs, and performing in a local band. In what Standefer calls "the last morning of my first life," she passed out in a parking lot and was rushed to the hospital. After tests, a cardiologist said she had Long QT Syndrome and needed a defibrillator implant. If she didn't get one, she was vulnerable to Sudden Cardiac Death which is as final as it sounds. Problem is, she had no catastrophic health insurance for a procedure that could cost as much as $200,000.

This is when Standefer's saga began. 

“Lightning Flowers” explores two questions, Standefer told an audience during a Nov. 18 Zoom reading co-sponsored by Jackson Hole Writers Conference and Jackson Hole Book Trader. The first is: What happens to a 24-year-old who passes out in a parking lot and tries to access proper medical care? And the second: What does it cost to save a life?

First things first. Wyoming residents without means have few options for procedures like this. She found out that Colorado had an indigent care program for state residents. She made the decision to leave her life in Jackson behind and move back to Colorado so she could get the life-saving operation. She did, but there were complications. Once in recovery, she wondered about the second thing: what is the true cost of modern medicine? Her journey takes her to the California lab that made her device and the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. She traveled to Madagascar and Rwanda. She interviewed miners and the impoverished people who lived with the poisonous byproducts of modern medical engineering. And then it was time to write the book.

The U.S medical establishment does one thing very well: research and development. New life-saving gizmos come online all of the time. I have an ICD and artificial knees. My diabetic wife is equipped with an insulin pump. During the Covid crisis, Moderna and Pfizer and others used new technology to develop a vaccine in record time. I received my first injection two weeks ago. I had a passing thought about all the materials the nurses used at the hospital. Syringes, vials, the medicine itself. Where does it all come from and where will it go? 

"Lightning Flowers" prompted me to ponder this question. Last night, the nightly news reported that people in developing countries are less likely than those in developed countries to get vaccinated against Covid. Some countries are raising holy hell about it and I don't blame them. It doesn't take much imagination to conjure a world war caused by lack of access to a cure for a plague. Countries that have vaccine supplies (looking at you, U.S.) are having a difficult time getting it into people's arms. One-percenters fly to places to get vaccine intended for the 99 percent, as in the recent case where a white couple traveled to the Yukon to get vaccine intended for elderly indigenous people. Capitalism at its worst. 

I am a First Worlder with insurance and access to miracle drugs. Millions of others do not have such an advantage. I aim to find out why and report what I find.

Meanwhile, read Standefer's book to trace her journey of discovery. Order a copy from your local indie store. Click the JH Book Trader link above. 

Help save the University of Wyoming Creative Writing M.F.A. Program

This comes from a Nov. 17 Facebook post by writer and UW prof Nina Swamidoss McConigley of Laramie:

Hey friends -- due to budget cuts, UW has proposed eliminating the wonderful, nationally-ranked creative writing M.F.A. program.

As a current student pointed out, this program is a vital way to provide a diverse set of writers fully-funded opportunities to write from and about an underrepresented place. Graduates from the program have published so many books -- last year, Kali Fajardo-Anstine was a finalist for the National Book Award.

If you care about the arts, communication about rural communities, and opportunities for young writers, it would mean the world to me if you could sign & share this petition to save the program:

https://www.change.org/.../university-of-wyoming-save-the...

You can also email your comments to: progrevw@uwyo.edu

This is a travesty. Many fine writers have been through the University of Wyoming Creative Writing Program. It sponsors many visiting writers and has strengthened state's writing community. Along with Performing Arts and Visual Arts, the program makes UW a destination for creative people all over the country and especially in the Rocky Mountain region. To jettison the program just as its value is being appreciated would be a terrible thing.

The state legislature has wasted years ignoring that hard times were coming for oil and coal, traditionally major sources of revenue. The handwriting was not just on the wall but everywhere you looked. Still, nothing was done and now we are facing the loss of an entity that helps make Wyoming great. Don't let them do this.

Sign the petition at the link above. Send your comments to progrevw@uwyo.edu

I earned my M.F.A. in creative writing at Colorado State University. I then went on to be the literature program manager at the Wyoming Arts Council and spent two years as assistant director of the National Endowment for the Arts Literature Program. The M.F.A. took me in unexpected directions. I was a published writer when I entered the M.F.A. program in 1988. I I had no idea there was such a thing as the Colorado Council on the Arts (now Colorado Creative Industries) that gave fellowships m to individual artists and grants to orgs to put on readings, workshops and festivals.

In grad school, I signed up for the artist roster that funds writers in schools. I had my first assignment to a school on the high prairie when I landed the job at the Wyoming Arts Council. My experience in arts administration was limited to a stint on the CSU Fine Arts Series. I helped bring some incredible writers to campus with a budget provided by student fees and grants to the local arts agency, the state arts council and the National Endowment for the Arts. My first grant to Fort Fund was rejected. Damn -- this is harder than it looks. When I interviewed with the WAC in the summer of 1991, I had no experience in what it took to generate money for arts programs. I was a writer with corporate PR experience and stints as a newspaper reporter. The WAC hired me anyway.

I'll write more about my arts council experience later. Now it's time to save the UW program that will allow its graduates to pursue writing careers and act as springboard to the arts administration world. Other grads teach on every level from K-12 to graduate school. They all are on a mission to present the written and spoken word to the world. A tall task. But we are up to the challenge.

As I was writing this, WyoFile published a piece by Jeffrey Lockwood, a prof who splits his time between creative writing and entomology (arts and sciences). He makes some good points in the essay but it comes back to this: UW can eliminate and outstanding yet small program in the liberal arts and nobody will care. As Lockwood tells it:

Perhaps the creative writing faculty and our students have done ourselves no favors by publishing essays, articles and books that are critical of powerful individuals and structures. However, our task as writers is the pursuit of beauty, truth and right — and this may not align with corporate profits, legislative orthodoxy and status quo ideology. I don’t want to believe that the cut is political retribution, although those in power have demonstrated their willingness to punish troublemakers. Rather, I believe that the university’s course of action is based on the assumption that there will be little or no blowback.

It could make all the difference if you found the time to communicate with the UW Board of Trustees, president and the (acting) dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. Or send your support to an email dedicated to public feedback: progrevw@uwyo.edu

Writers write. What are you waiting for?

Blood, Water, Wind, and Stone anthology reading tonight in Laramie

Some fantastic writers will be reading tonight in Laramie. I won't be one of them, as I am here in Denver helping my daughter Annie. As you see from the list, I was originally scheduled to read from this new anthology but family called. See you next time. Meanwhile, anthology editor Lori Howe sends this announcement:

This gala opening from 6-7:30 p.m. at Night Heron Books & Coffeehouse, 107 E. Ivinson in downtown Laramie, features readings by Alyson Hagy, Erik Molvar, Art Elser, Mike Shay, Sunnie Gaylord, Jason Deiss, Birgit Burke, Autumn Bernhardt, Celeste Colgan, Edith Cook, and many others. The reading is upstairs, and will be followed by a book signing. Refreshments served; free and open to the public. A generous percentage of profits from this anthology go to support writing conference scholarships in Wyoming. Come down and join us, and support the arts in Wyoming! 

Refreshments! Night Heron has some great ones, as well as scads of books.

What I learned in graduate school, part one

It seems as if I've read hundreds of critiques about M.F.A. writing programs over the years. They usually fall into two camps.
No. 1: I spent three years and tens of thousands of dollars on an M.F.A. program and all I got was this lousy diploma.
No. 2: Grad school was worth it -- I learned more than I thought I would.

Alas, I've read more of the former than the latter. They usually are written by young people who have joined the system without much life experience which, of course, is what it means to be young. Does this 65-year-old retiree remember how it was to be 19 or 21 and flummoxed by a university system -- any university system? I was an overachiever, a scholarship student, who crashed and burned after two years at a major American university. The fault was my own, although I spent many years blaming the university and the government and my parents and the phases of the moon. I am an ex-newspaper reporter and satirist who loves it when people take on any system. Doesn't mean the writer is correct in his/her critique. It's fun to be pissed off in print and get attention. 

I'm going to say some nice things about my M.F.A. program. Stop here if you prefer to read the negative over the positive. You may learn something but no guarantee, just as there is no guarantee that an M.F.A. program will make you a stellar writer and a denizen of the Literary World. 

Before I begin, let me thank writer Marian Palaia who wrote a recent essay, "The Real World vs. the M.F.A." for Literary Hub at http://lithub.com/the-real-world-vs-the-mfa/. If fact, you can skip this blog and go read Palaia's piece, as it covers most of the same ground that I do. She's close to my age (pushing 60) and earned her M.F.A. as an older student, older even than I was at 41. Such a wonderful essay that I'm ordering her novel and reading it. The least I can do for a fellow writer.

I liked these lines from her essay:

I do not advise waiting as long as I did to get an MFA, if you are sure that what you want to do is to write. What I do advise is gaining some awareness of the world, and of the people in it who are not like you, before you go into a program.

At 37, I had met a lot of people not like me. Gang-bangers, corporate CEOs, jocks, cabbies, political activists, druggies, yuppies, loonies, etc. I had held tons of jobs, some temporary gigs as hospital orderly and warehouse worker, to full-time jobs as corporate editor and newspaper reporter. When I began to look around for creative writing programs, I had one goal in mind: become a better writer. I had written articles on teen-age swimming phenoms to automotive fan belts. I'd written a novel, which earned me an agent but not a publisher.  My agent advised me to quit my job, go down to my basement and write full-time. I knew that hunkering down in my basement with my typewriter was a bad idea. I could see myself typing, the clatter of the keys clanging off of the basement walls. But I could also see myself wandering the basement rooms, haunted look on my face. Not good for an introvert depressive to be alone all day in his basement. Visions of Emily Dickinson, tormented in her attic. Ernest Hemingway and shotgun at his writing desk in remote Idaho.

I also wanted to meet interesting people. I guess you can do that anywhere. But writers, even in academia, should be interesting, right?

Thee first interesting person I met was writer and faculty member John Clark Pratt. My wife, son and I were in Fort Collins looking for a rental. I decided to drop into the CSU English Department. Dr. Pratt (I could call him John but he'll always be Dr. Pratt to me) was the lone M.F.A. faculty member hanging out in the Eddy Building on a July afternoon. He welcomed me, told me a bit about the program, which only began the year before. Only later did I learn that Dr. Pratt was the author of "The Laotian Fragments," a pilot in Vietnam, and one of the country's experts on the literature of the Vietnam War. He helped establish the CSU library's special collection on Vietnam. In the late 1980s, it featured unpublished manuscripts by veterans, published works by some well-known writers and an assortment of notes and research and ephemera. You can visit it still. Might even be online now.

When school began in late August, I met the rest of the faculty and my fellow students. For the most part, the faculty was closer in age to me than the students, but I had expected that. John Calderazzo was the creative non-fiction guru, A world traveler, he wrote mostly on environmental issues and wrote an excellent book on volcanoes. He'd been a free-lance writer for years, writing articles for corporate, real estate and automotive mags to make extra cash. We free-lanced a real estate piece together, since I also was on the lookout for extra cash.

David Milofsky was a novelist and short-story writer. He'd just left a position with Denver University to take the job at CSU, and commuted from Denver. Milofsky had been an investigative reporter in Milwaukee and still had that hard-bitten city reporter attitude. He was my adviser as I liked his fiction and he liked the fact that I was a bit older than the other students and not so naive and wide-eyed. Poet Bill Tremblay was from Jack Keroauc's hometown and played football before turning to poetry. He was more coach than academic. Mentor to many poets and the faculty member that you knew would turn up for every student reading. I worked for him as student editor of the campus literary magazine, the Colorado Review.

Mary Crow was the other poetry prof. She may have been the most academic of the bunch. She traveled widely, was bilingual and made sure that students got a taste of writers from all over the world through the visiting writers program. Receptions were always held at her house, potlucks where us budding writers got a chance to gnosh and chat with writers such as Paul Monette, Linda Hogan, Tomaz Salamun, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Mary talked me into being the M.F.A. student rep to the university's Fine Arts Program, which led to my career in arts administration -- more about that later. Leslee Becker was a fine short story writer and quirky human. She mentored us short story writers and also LGBT students in the English department.

One of my four semester-long workshops was with short story writer Steve Schwartz. I learned a lot in the workshop, but possibly the best info I got from Steve was about the Colorado Council on the Arts' Arts Education program. I applied, was accepted, and next thing I know, I'm signed up to spent a month in Peetz on the prairie as a paid visiting writer. The goal was to mentor high school students for half the day and write the other half. I never made it to Peetz as a writer/teacher, The students never knew what they missed, and neither did I. My job in Wyoming would place me in charge of a visiting writers program called Tumblewords, brainchild of the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF), then located in Santa Fe, now in Denver.

Most of these writers who also were teachers are now retired, as I am. A new crew took over, which is the way of things. I learned so much from them, and I was able to work with them in new and interesting ways when I found my calling.

In my next installment, I'll talk about all the good stuff I learned during my three years in the M.F.A. program. Stay tuned...

New Flash Fiction Review: "Welcome to Zan Xlemente, Zalifornia"

New Flash Fiction Review published one of my pieces April 27 in its "New Work" section online. It's a fairly new online mag with a wonderful group of editors: San Francisco's Meg Pokrass, the excellent Boston short story writer Pam Painter, Texas short-short fiction writer Tiff Holland, and advisory editor and anthologist James Thomas. I read on the W.W. Norton web site that James and his colleagues Robert Shepard coined the term "flash fiction." I met Meg Pokrass through Facebook. She's one of the few writers daring enough to feature new work on FB and ask for feedback. She talked about this experience, and read some of her work, on a snowy mid-September day at the 2014 Equality State Book Festival in Casper.

I consider myself a writer of short stories that aren't that short. Stories in my first published book are of traditional length and follow a structure similar to those penned by writers I've studied, everyone from Hemingway to Tobias Wolff.

But over the past 20 years, I've published three short pieces, including the one below. I had a 1,000-word piece in the Norton anthology, In Short: Brief Creative Nonfiction. I published a short-short called "Flying Nurse" in High Plains Register a few years ago. I've been writing short blog pieces here for ten years. In my youth, as editor and columnist for a Denver arts and entertainment weekly, I wrote columns that were 750-1,000 words. Most of my magazine and newspaper pieces have been fairly short, although I've also written some long-form mag pieces. Humor and satire, which I purport to write on these pages, is better short. It's challenging to write short. And fun. Which is why I'm going to stop right here, referring you to my latest flash fiction:    

WELCOME TO ZAN XLEMENTE, ZALIFORNIA 

My daughter M went to a nuthouse in San Clemente and all I got was this lousy metal keychain with CALIFORNIA writ large the blue of the sea under a gold-and-orange/red sun.

Read the rest at New Flash Fiction Review.

ISLE Journal issues a "call to writers" on behalf of climate change

Saw this call for entries on the Facebook page of author and environmental activist Terry Tempest Williams. Terry divides her time among Utah, Wyoming and assorted worldwide destinations. She will be the closing keynote speaker at the Wyoming Arts Conference in Jackson Oct. 12-14. I'm really looking forward to her talk, as are many others. Register for the conference here. 

This "Call to Writers" on behalf of climate change by Kathleen Moore and Scott Slovic for the ISLE (Interdisciplinary Studies of Literature and the Environment) Journal.

A Call to Writers

As the true fury of global warming begins to kick in — forests flash to ashes, storms tear away coastal villages, cities swelter in record-breaking heat, drought singes the Southwest, the Arctic melts — we come face to face with the full meaning of the environmental emergency: If climate change continues unchecked, scientists tell us, the world’s life-support systems will be irretrievably damaged by the time our children reach middle-age. The need for action is urgent and unprecedented.

We here issue a call to writers, who have been given the gift of powerful voices that can change the world. For the sake of all the plants and animals on the planet, for the sake of intergenerational justice, for the sake of the children, we call on writers to set aside their ordinary work and step up to do the work of the moment, which is to stop the reckless and profligate fossil fuel economy that is causing climate chaos.

That work may be outside the academy, in the streets, in the halls of politics and power, in the new street theaters of creative disruption, all aimed at stopping industry from continuing to make huge profits by bringing down the systems that sustain life on Earth. These activist efforts need the voices of writers, the genius of thought-leaders, the energy of words.

But there is essential work to be done also in our roles as academics and writers, empowered by creative imagination, moral clarity, and the strength of true witness. Write as if your reader were dying, Annie Dillard advised. “What would you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?” Now we must write as if the planet were dying. What would you say to a planet in a spasm of extinction?[2] What would you say to those who are paying the costs of climate change in the currency of death? Surely in a world dangerously slipping away, we need courageously and honestly to ask again the questions every author asks, Who is my audience—now, today, in this world? What is my purpose? 

Some kinds of writing are morally impossible in a state of emergency: Anything written solely for tenure. Anything written solely for promotion. Any shamelessly solipsistic project. Anything, in short, that isn’t the most significant use of a writer’s life and talents. Otherwise, how could it ever be forgiven by the ones who follow us, who will expect us finally to have escaped the narrow self-interest of our economy and our age?

Some kinds of writing will be essential. We here invite creative thought about new or renewed forms our writing can take. Perhaps some of these:

The drum-head pamphlet. Like Thomas Paine, writing on the head of a Revolutionary War drum, lay it out. Lay out the reasons why extractive cultures must change their ways. Lay out the reasons that inspire the activists. Lay out the reasons that shame the politicians. Lay out the reasons that are a template for decision-makers.

The “broken-hearted hallelujah.” Like Leonard Cohen, singing of loss and love, make clear the beauty of what we stand to lose or what we have already destroyed. Celebrate the microscopic sea-angels. Celebrate the children who live in the cold doorways and shanty camps. Celebrate the swamp at the end of the road. Leave no doubt of the magnitude of their value and the enormity of the crime, to let them pass away unnoticed. These are elegies, these are praise songs, these are love stories.

The witness. Like Cassandra howling at the gates of Troy, bear witness to what you know to be true. Tell the truths that have been bent by skilled advertising. Tell the truths that have been concealed by adroit regulations. Tell the truths that have been denied by fear or complacency. Go to the tarfields, go to the broken pipelines. Tell that story. Be the noisy gong and clanging cymbals, and be the love.

The narrative of the moral imagination. With stories and novels and poems, take the reader inside the minds and hearts of those who live the consequences of global warming. Who are they? How do they live? What consoles them? Powerful stories teach empathy, build the power to imagine oneself into another’s place, to feel others’ sorrow, and so take readers outside the self-absorption that allows the destruction to continue.

The radical imaginary. Re-imagine the world. Push out the boundaries of the human imagination, too long hog-tied by mass media, to create the open space where new ideas can flourish. Maybe it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism or fossil fuels or terminal selfishness. But this is the work that calls us—to imagine new life-ways into existence. Writers may not be able to save the old world, but they can help create the new one.

The indictment. Like Jefferson listing the repeated injuries and usurpations, let facts be submitted to a candid world. This is the literature of outrage. How did we come to embrace an economic system that would wreck the world? What iniquity allows it to continue?

The apologia. Finally this: Write to the future. Try to explain how we could allow the devastation of the world, how we could leave those who follow us only an impoverished, stripped, and dangerously unstable time. Ask their forgiveness. This is the literature of prayer. Is it possible to write on your knees, weeping?

And a Specific Invitation

In the case of global climate change—or, to put it directly, global warming—the importance of this call to the world’s most eloquent voices and most powerful imaginations cannot be overstated. The virtue of applying literary—and more broadly humanistic—voices to this issue is, in part, the fundamental pluralism of such voices. Our goal is not to ask for a single, unified perspective, but to draw forth a chorus of diverse responses to global warming. At this time, we urge our colleagues to apply their talents and their wisdom to the phenomenon that is altering the inhabitability of this planet more profoundly than any other anthropogenic impact. What do you have to say on the subject of global warming? How might your poetic, narrative, philosophical, teacherly, or scholarly voice make a difference?

Are you a poet or a storyteller? A philosopher or an ecocritic? A journalist or a script writer for film? Perhaps a literary essayist who weaves together many different modes of expression? Or is your medium the letter to the editor or the course syllabus? Recognizing the diverse forms of writing employed by writers throughout the world—and perhaps the need to invent or reinvent forms of writing equal to the emergency of global warming—we call upon you not only to feel the heat we all feel in this warming world, but to think about the heat and to find find le mot juste to match this unparalleled environmental and social challenge.

We have previously published climate-related articles and literary work in the pages of ISLE, but there has never been a focused cluster devoted to this essential topic. Now, with a short turn-round time that reflects the unprecedented urgency of this challenge, we invite readers of ISLE to send us scholarly and creative work for a global-warming cluster that will appear in the Winter 2014 issue of the journal. We can consider work received by September 30. Please contact us if you have any questions (kmoore@oregonstate.edu and slovic@uidaho.edu).

We also wish to encourage our students and colleagues throughout the world to devote their efforts to this pressing issue with an eye toward publishing in future issues of ISLE; in other scholarly, creative, or popular forums; and through untraditional and even non-public media, such as behind-the-scenes letters to elected officials or corporate leaders.

Your voice is needed. We call upon you to put your mind to the meaning of climate change. Do you have something better to do?

Kathleen Dean Moore and Scott Slovic

Workers urged to share their voices in a "community-building, creative investigation of what it means to labor in Wyoming"

Today's news from Michigan shows that the Republican war on workers continues unabated. Southern Wyoming once had a strong union presence in the mines and on the railroads. But most of the railroad jobs were moved out of Rawlins and Rock Springs and the mines got all "Right-to-Work-State" on its workers.

Mark Nowak is a documentary poet, teacher and labor activist who will will serve as eminent writer-in-residence for the University of Wyoming creative writing program in February. He and I are two of the writers featured in Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking out the Jams, a 2010 anthology from Coffee House Press.

This is an excerpt about working in a steel mill from Mark's poetry series, "$00 / Line / Steel / Train," which is included in the anthology:

Because the (brake) past is used because the tearing  (past) of the (brick) form is used is used because the fence (in) of the (goddam) frame is used is used is utterly used against us and by us and upon us and for us is used is used in the present (past) future (form) we are used yet users yet used.

Every day you put your life on the line when you went into that iron house. Every day you sucked up dirt and took a chance on breaking your legs or breaking your back. And anyone who's worked in there knows what I'm talking about.

Mark sent along this info about the "Working (in Wyoming)" project he'll be conducting when he's in the state. Here it is:

Working (in Wyoming) is a community-building, creative investigation of what it means to labor in Wyoming. A series of creative writing workshops will be held in southeastern  Wyoming (Laramie and Cheyenne) in February of 2013.

These workshops will be facilitated by Wyoming writing instructors and students in the University of Wyoming's MFA program in creative writing. In these workshops, Wyoming workers of diverse backgrounds will have the opportunity to collaborate with others in the Wyoming community to create a short piece of creative writing (a poem, a parable, a short story, a piece of flash fiction/nonfiction, etc.).

Working (in Wyoming) will culminate in a large-scale yet intimate evening event in Laramie on February 28. Here working people from across the state will have the opportunity to share what it means to work in Wyoming with a presentation of pieces created in workshops. 

To get involved in the project, contact Kay Northrop at knorthrop@uwyo.edu or Brie Fleming at briennafleming5@gmail.com Read more on the project's Facebook page.

Mark's blog is filled with info about union organizing and strikes worldwide. If you think that workers in the U.S. don't have anything in common with coal miners in China or maquiladora laborers in Mexico, think again, and take a look at Mark's Coal Mountain blog.

Essayist Poe Ballantine explores "the imperatives of virgins in volcanoes and the ghosts who watch over us"

Laramie County Community College writing professor Leif Swanson invites us to a presentation by Nebraska writer Poe Ballantine on Monday, April 9, 7-9 p.m., at Recover Wyoming, 512 E. Lincolnway, Cheyenne. It's free and open to the public with refreshments provided. Poe will be at LCCC"s Conferences and Institutes Building on Tuesday, April 10, for a writing workshop at 2 p.m. and a reading at 7 p.m. These events also are free and open to the public.

Here's some background info:

Share in the insights of Poe Ballantine, his writing life and the experiences he draws from decades of tramping about the country, taking odd jobs, living on $400 a month and failing spectacularly. Poe has been called “The Voice of the People” and “The King of the Personal Essay.” You are invited to view into his writing life, how he got here, how he sustains, the imperative of virgins in volcanoes and the ghosts who watch over us, matters of process, magic, mechanics, flambéing with banana liqueur and whatever else you want to know.

Call for submissions: Veteran Voices, Open Window Review, Issue III

Open Window Review invites you to submit your poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and creative nonfiction for Issue III: "Veteran Voices." This special topics issue of Open Window Review is devoted entirely to writing from, for, and about the experiences of veterans, service members, their friends, families, and their communities. We at Open Window are glad for the opportunity to provide a venue for all kinds of discourse on the military, military life, and conversations on what it means to live in a country at war. Also see the Open Window Review Facebook page for more details and a link to Issue I and Issue 2 (due out later this month)

Categories:

Poetry: Please submit up to three standard-length poems (no more than 12 pages, total)

Fiction: Please submit work in flash-fiction (250-1,000 words); short fiction (1,000-5,000 words); novel excerpts (up to 20 pages, standard.)

Creative nonfiction: Please submit up to 15 pages of creative nonfiction

Non-fiction: Please submit up to 15 pages of straight non-fiction/personal essay/journalism.

Deadline and contact info: Please submit your work, along with a brief, third-person bio (no more than 150 words) and a photo (optional), to Senior Contributing Editor Oscar Lilley at veteranvoices.owr@gmail.com by 10 p.m. on May 31, 2012.

Prizes/Awards: One $100 prize will be awarded to winners in each of the four categories: Poetry, Non-fiction, Creative Nonfiction, and Fiction.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Wyoming poets may also want to submit their work to the Wyoming Arts Council's 2013 creative writing fellowships. Fellowship judge is soldier-poet Brian Turner, U.S. Army Iraq War veteran and award-winning author of "Here, Bullet" and "Phantom Noise." More info at http://wyomingarts.blogspot.com/2012/03/soldier-poet-brian-turner-is-judge-for.html

John D'Agata to read from his new book March 7 in Laramie

On Wednesday, March 7 at 7 p.m., John D’Agata will give a reading from his new book, The Lifespan of a Fact, at Second Story Books, located at 105 Ivinson Avenue, Laramie. This event is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a book-signing. For more info, visit the UW MFA Creative Writing Program web site at www.uwyo.edu/creativewriting or contact Gwynn Lemler at cw@uwyo.edu or 766-6453.

The acclaimed author of About a Mountain (W.W. Norton 2010) and Halls of Fame (Graywolf 2003), D’Agata has also edited The Next American Essay (Graywolf 2002) and The Lost Origins of the Essay (Graywolf 2009). During his two-week residency at the University of Wyoming, he will visit university classes, consult on manuscripts with graduate students in creative writing, and discuss the writing life with a wide range of campus members.

D’Agata’s latest project is The Lifespan of a Fact (W.W. Norton 2012), which reproduces the extensive correspondence between D’Agata and Jim Fingal, a fact-checker for The Believer. Publishers Weekly describes the book as “very apropos in our era of spruced-up autobiography and fabricated reporting,” adding that “this is a whip-smart, mordantly funny, thought-provoking rumination on journalistic responsibility and literary license.” The Kirkus Reviews suggests that “[The Lifespan of a Fact] will be eagerly devoured and loudly discussed by creative-nonfiction writers and readers who thrive on books about books.”

ADHD Parenting Book: Win a Copy of ''Easy to Love but Hard to Raise''

Enter now to win a free copy of "Easy to Love but Hard to Raise: Real Parents, Challenging Kids, True Stories." This is an excellent volume to add to your library. How do I know? One of my "true stories" is in it. Go and enter now. Win a Copy of ''Easy to Love but Hard to Raise''

Occupy Writers -- poetry and prose from the field

Occupy Writers is a web site where writers and poets report on Occupy events. They’ve either attended the events in person or have been moved to write poems or essays on events they’ve observed from afar. Other writers have added their names to OW in support of the cause. Hundreds of names on the list now (mine included). And dozens of dispatches from the field.

Ursula LeGuin reports on Occupy Portland:

Our mayor has been very Taoist in handling the whole business, gracefully evading decisions and ultimatums, then going off to China…. So far, so good!

Jerry Stahl reports on Occupy L.A.:

The other night, for example, outside LA City Hall, a representative from nearby Skid Row took his turn speaking during the general assembly. (Because the Homeless, after all, were living on the Street before it was cool.) The rule was two minutes or less. And after filling in the assembled patriots – a word I don’t use lightly; one, in fact, I don’t think I have ever used before, without irony, which I am not using now – the Skid Row speaker invited everybody to breakfast the next day at 6:30 at one of LA’s best-known shelters, the Midnight Mission.

And yes, to me this is the wet, palpitating heart of Occupy Wall Street. Of Occupy The World. The impromptu, part desperation/part rage/part idealism fueled Rising Up – or in this case, Showing up of Americans for the beautiful and long-forgotten cause of… America itself. Mister Rogers meets Thomas Payne. Which is great. And the ultimate, redemptive silver lining in the hell cloud created by the derivative-driven, un-regulated (with apologies to Ginsberg) Fiscal Moloch itself.

Anne Waldman pens a haiku from OWS:

Haiku from Zuccotti Park
Moloch’s motor got stuck
on the roof of Casino Wall Street
look up! moon, a ghost chip in the sky…

10/10/11 “Columbus” Day/Liberty Plaza

Chicago’s Larry Heinemann observes it all from afar:

I live in extremely rural Texas–I’m the Writer in Residence at Texas A&M in College Station–and getting out of town even to Occupy Austin is a large problem. Right now, all I can contribute is encouragement and praise to the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators. What news of the Occupy movement and events around the country, and now the world, makes it this far into the Great Flat Place makes me think that they are our conscience, and I cannot admire them enough. Let us hope that this ‘movement,’ this state of mind, this way of conducting oneself with dignity and poise endures, and develops into something really fine. It involves the kind of persistent patience leavened with humor that produces no body count and effects the way political business is conducted. I am particularly impressed that The Suits and Talking Heads are baffled, and a little irked, by the lack of a ‘program’ or ‘demands’ or high-profile ‘spokesmen.’ ”What do these people want?” If you have to ask, ladies and gentlemen, then you’re not paying attention.

Amirah Mizrahi reports from Occupy Oakland on Oct. 25:

today
i was wadi salib 1959
i was musrara 1971
i was palestine in oakland
like never before i was
all the places
in all the radical histories
i know and don’t know 

i heard a trumpet in a marching band
play a tune i recognized
bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao
clapping hands marching feet i gave
away shirts as scarves
to shield faces 

today i was a time
place comma date
that some day some one will be
when she is again marching
in the streets and
knowing history
holding it
making
it.

Read more at Occupy Writers.

So that's what gives the Vegas Strip its unusual glow...

Just finished reading John D'Agata's book, "About a Mountain." It's a nonfiction account of the on-again, off-again status of Yucca Mountain, where the U.S. wants to store its nuclear waste.

But, in the tradition of creative nonfiction, D'Agata combined this journalistic journey with his own Las Vegas story -- and that of a young man who committed suicide by jumping from the observation deck of the Stratosphere Hotel.

Seems like an odd juxtaposition of subjects. But the author ties it together neatly with facts and speculation.

Nevada Sen. Harry Reid comes off looking like a bad guy. It's odd that Reid recently faulted Pres. Obama for not being tough enough against Republicans, especially when it came to the battle over health care reform.

Burying tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste under Nevada rock won't impart many health-giving properties to Nevadans. It will bring jobs, no doubt about that. Those jobs will have health insurance, which is a good thing. There will be accidents in shipping and handling, which won't cost you any extra but could cost you your life.

Sen. Reid did a pretty nifty job of rolling over for the nuclear power conglomerates and home-state cheerleaders for Yucca Mountain.

But Harry has enough problems, what with Nevada Tea Party types hounding him at every turn.

The book's most compelling sections are these:

1. What happens when a truck carrying radioactive waste wrecks on the overcrowded Vegas freeways and catches fire?
2. How do you make signage for a nuclear repository, a sign that will be understood by humans 10,000 years in the future.

The answer to number one is: Shitstorm.

The answer to number two is a thoughtful treatise on human communication. A panel of artists and linguists and teachers and scientists were asked to come up with effective signage. The challenge was a huge one. Where was humankind 10,000 years ago? Battling sabre-tooth tigers in caves and trying to stay warm during the Ice Age. They weren't doing much recreational reading -- nor consulting any signs.

In 10,000 years, we may be back in caves. That cave may be in what used to be Nevada. There will be a sign that warns of terrible danger if you go any further into the cave but humans may not understand the sign. They may say to themselves, "Hey, this cool sign says there's a nifty surprise at the bottom of this cave." "Great -- I love surprises."

John D'Agata's book comes at a good time. The U.S. is now contemplating building more nuke plants. Uranium is being mined again in Wyoming and Colorado. Turck and rail shipments from the East Coast will have to come through either Wyoming or Colorado.

Read the book for its angst-producing sections. Read it for its fine writing.

"About a Mountain" is published by W.W. Norton, 236 pages, $23.95.

To read the L.A. Times review of the book, go to http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/14/entertainment/la-ca-john-dagata14-2010feb14

Can a blog post be literary in a "narrative, narrative, narrative" sort of way?

This comes from Poets & Writers:

Inspired by a rumination on the New York Times Paper Cuts blog that asked whether a blog could ever rise to the level of literature, the literary magazine Creative Nonfiction is asking blog readers and writers to nominate "vibrant new voices with interesting, true stories to tell" for a special issue of the magazine. Specifically, the magazine is looking for entries of literary ("narrative, narrative, narrative") blog posts that were published between November 1, 2009, and March 31 of this year.

The winning essays will be published in the July 2010 issue of Creative Nonfiction and each author will receive a fifty-dollar reward for one-time reprint rights.

Can a blog post transcend the tendency of its kind toward, as Gregory Cowles of Paper Cuts puts it, being "too topical and too fleeting to count as literature"? The deadline for nominations of previously blogged essays—your own, a friend's, a stranger's—totaling no more than two thousand words each is Monday, April 26. More information is available on Creative Nonfiction's Web site.