Forget Christmas -- 'tis health care insurance selection season

It's that time again.

Christmas season. Or holiday season if you are a damn liberal like me who doesn't believe in saying "Merry Christmas" to every Tom, Dick, and Donald I meet. I even like the new Starbuck's Christmas cup that shows two cartoon women holding hands, at least that's how paranoid Evangelicals see it.

More importantly, 'tis the season to Make A Decision on Health Care for 2018. The U.S., in its wisdom, has the most screwed up health care system in the world and bound to get worse with Trumpists making the rules. Our family has a triple layer of coverage from private insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid. Cash, too, in the form of deductibles and co-pays.

For most of us out here who live amongst Trump voters in Flyover Land, the situation is made worse by indecision. The Republicans sabotage Obamacare in any way possible because they want to totally wipe out any sign of an African-American president. Trump's Ministry of Truth will soon create an America that is all-Trump all of the time.

Meanwhile, the American people are left in limbo. Will the ACA remain or will it be dismantled bit by bit since Repubs can't seem to muster enough votes to kill it outright? This affects millions.

I am 66 and my wife Chris is 61. I am on Medicare and she is not, covered instead by my allegiance to CIGNA via Wyoming State Government, my former employer. I pay $1300 a month to keep my CIGNA policy for me, Chris and daughter Annie, who is younger than 26, the cut-off date in family insurance created by Obamacare. For me, Medicare is primary and CIGNA is secondary. \Once I meet the deductible, I am covered like a blanket through my investment in Medicare and private insurance.

Let me pause here and say that I have no quarrel with CIGNA. While corporate-fueled insurance is expensive (must pay stockholders and CEOs a princely wage to afford those gated communities they are building for the apocalypse), it provides great coverage. When I inconveniently suffered a heart attack on Jan. 2, 2013, I ended up paying less than $1,000 for a bill that totalled $150,000, when you factored in ambulance, ER, oblation, stent, a week in telemetry and great cardiac care at CRMC. That summer, I received an ICD courtesy of  Syrian ex-pat cardiologist Dr. Obadah Al Chekakie. Since I already surpassed the $100,000 threshold, I paid spare change for a Made in the U.S.A. gizmo that monitors my heart 24-7 and sends results to master control at CRMC. It also includes a defibrillator which can kick me back into life should I ever experience Sudden Cardiac Arrest, which is as bad as it sounds.  My heart needs this assistance because it suffered damage during the long-term 100 percent blockage of my LAD artery, the so-called widowmaker. At a recent funeral, a long-term heart patient said that he had never met someone with a LAD who lived. I was pleased to hear that. I am pleased to hear almost anything. Except Trump is on Twitter again -- not that.

Chris is a diabetic so she benefits from plans that guarantee coverage for pre-existing conditions. That could go away too. So she's worried that the ACA will go away along with all of its guarantees and she has to shop for health care on the open market which may not cover a diabetic. I am worried with her, as Medicare is three-plus years away for her and we will have the clowns in the White House and Congress during that time. A dangerous time.

This brings us to our daughter. She is 24. She has been in and out of mental health treatment centers for 11 years. With some exceptions, most care was covered by CIGNA. You think our health care system is a mess? Just try to figure out the mental health care system. Annie, fortunately, moved to Colorado and got on the state's Medicaid program and when I received Medicare, she did too. So she is covered. Republicans threaten her coverage. One saving grace is her Colorado residency. It's a blue state south of our very red border. Not too far-fetched to think that we will have health care refugees in the near future, diabetics and cardiac patients and the mentally ill leaving their backward red state to find sanctuary in places such as Colorado and Oregon and Massachusetts. Canada, maybe even Mexico. Wouldn't that be ironic?

I am a retiree with a pension. Half of that goes to health insurance. In 2018, Chris will be covered by ACA and Annie will be covered by Medicaid/Medicare. I will be covered by Medicare and CIGNA. All of these programs (except for CIGNA) are in the sights of Congressional Republicans. They aim to reduce or eliminate these programs to give tax breaks to their corporate masters. We no longer live in a democratic republic but an oligarchy. It will truly be a country run by the rich for the rich if all of these lame-brain actions come to pass.

So it's decision time. You make the best decision you can under the circumstances. I have to remember to be thankful for what I have as there are millions who suffer from inadequate health care or none at all. Those ranks are certain to grow in the next few years. So be thankful -- and fight like hell to stop the Republican assault on "the general welfare" of the U.S. and its people.

On the look and smell of old-fashioned print books

The New York Times reports that sales of "old-fashioned print books" are up for the third year in a row, based on figures from the Association of American Publishers. And indie bookstores are doing well, reversing a decline sparked by big box bookstores, Amazon and e-books.

Good news for book lovers. Are the books being read and understood? No, if the American electorate is any indication.

But I am a book lover. At this point in my life, I am trying to shed books with little success. I occasionally clean up the shelves and take a few boxes of books to the library store. But I find a need to read a certain book that I can't get at the library and I end up buying it. My latest purchase was "Sons and Lovers," the 1913 novel by D.H. Lawrence. When a friend and one-time indie bookstore owner saw the book in my car, he picked it up and said, "This is how I learned about sex." I replied that I hadn't reached that part yet. Paul Morel and his potential sweetheart Miriam are still in the platonic stage.

I had a selfish motive for reading "Sons and Lovers." I discovered it was filled with wonderful details about a British coal-mining village of Eastwood before World War I. My grandfather lived and worked in a British coal-mining village before and during the early years of the war. I portray a character like that in the novel I am working on. Also, I never read a Lawrence novel. How I could be an English major and not read Lawrence is a surprise to me. I knew more about his life in Taos than I did about his books.

"Sons and Lovers" is a good read. The prose is dense at times but it was 1913, the same era as Edith Wharton, William James and Upton Sinclair. I read "The Jungle" earlier in the year and it was slow going at times.  Lawrence's prose is better that some of his contemporaries. He had an eye for detail.

This edition of "Sons and Lovers" is a trade paperback published in 2003 by Barnes & Noble Classics. It carries a scent but doesn't have that old-book smell.

But my 1921 copy of John Dos Passos' "Three Soldiers" does. It got it at an estate sale for $4 with the tag "library condition." Well used but not battered. From the Merced County Free Library. It still has the sleeve for the borrower's card and date stamps on the outside front cover. It smells like old paper. The pages are yellowing. But it's still readable, so that's what I'm doing. The novel concerns the journey made by three young men as they volunteer for service in World War I. Written after the war by veteran Dos Passos, the slang and expressions and description are of that time and are quite something. I can read about old times and smell them all at the same time. Not possible with an e-book.

Not sure what I will do with my books (old and new) after I'm finished with them and my research. I would say leave them to my adult children but they look upon their parents' accumulated goods as if it were radioactive waste. They're both big readers but my literary passions are not theirs.

It's good news to see that print books are back. Is it a trend or a passing fancy? Who knows. My habits are not likely to change. I will still get suckered into used book sales and garage sales and will just have to have that 1930 edition of "Death Comes for the Archbishop." I found that book at the annual Delta Kappa Gamma used book sale in Cheyenne. Only 50 cents. Who could pass that up?

I remember Uncle Bill

When my first book of stories was published in 2006, I drove from Cheyenne to pick up copies from Ghost Road Press in Denver. I stopped by my Uncle Bill Taylor's house and delivered a signed copy. He called me the next week to comment on the stories. He was complimentary, and especially liked the ones set in post-World War II Denver. He did have a critique, though, one I always will treasure. He commented that my stories didn't seem to have endings. True, I said. I explained that contemporary short stories don't have endings, that some writers describe them as "slice-of-life." He took that in, absorbing the words better in his mid-80s than most of my 20-something students did. He said he would take another look. I am not sure if he did. But I appreciated his diligence. He didn't read books as a rule and I was glad that he read mine. Uncle Bill's reading consisted mostly of the Denver Post sports section. This was fortunate when I was a stringer covering high school sports for the the Post in 1978-81. I knew my uncle would read my blow-by-blow account of the latest game under the Friday Night Lights.  

Uncle Bill died Sunday morning. He was our family's last link with what's sometimes called "The Greatest Generation." They were great, in our eyes. My older siblings and I had the pleasure of growing up with grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. Then my father began to be transferred around the country to build sites for Atlas missiles. We never lost touch, though, but the moving around frayed our connections. We are an itinerant bunch, we Americans. It was traveling that helped our Florida-based family reconnect with our Denver roots. In our gallivanting days, my siblings and I wandered out to the Rocky Mountains to visit relatives, drink Coors beer (couldn't get it in the South), and to see what all the Colorado hubbub was about. My brother Dan ventured to Denver in the summer of 1971 and came back with some stories. Dan's future wife and her pals ventured West that same summer and dropped in on some of our Denver family on the way to the Grand Canyon. I hitchhiked through Colorado with a girlfriend in 1972. My brother Pat and I hitched from Houston to Denver in 1975 to traverse the mountains and see our relatives. Aunt Mary and Uncle Bill always welcomed us wayward family members. 

My brother Pat was stationed at Lowry AFB in the 1970s. He found family with the Taylors and my paternal grandparents, who, as luck would have it, lived in a senior housing complex that looked out over the Lowry AFB runway where the Army Air Corps trained its pilots during World War II. My sister Molly moved to Denver for a short time in the late 1970s. She knew she was in trouble when she discovered she had to wear a sweater on July nights. Same goes for my sister Eileen, who kept having complicated encounters with ice and snow on Denver roads. The last straw was a spinout and collision on Florida Avenue in southeast Denver. She saw it as a sign and soon after decamped for the real Florida where the road hazards are real but much less icy. 

When my then-girlfriend Chris and I arrived in Denver during the very pleasant summer of 1978, Mary and Bill took us in. We stayed there until we found an apartment in Aurora at the edge of the air force base. We had family but didn't know anyone else. They took us in and we were grateful. 

The World War II generation passes and we are sad. My life is different because of the experiences of our forebears during that era. Uncle Bill told me stories of how he and my father drove the Ribbon of Death (the two-lane precursor to I-25) from Trinidad to Denver to see their girlfriends in Denver. They were two sisters, Mary and Anna Hett, who grew up in an Irish neighborhood near South High School . My father worked as a salesman for Armour Meat Company in Albuquerque and Uncle Bill sold insurance in Trinidad, a sleepy town on the New Mexico border. My father would get off work on Friday and take a bus to Trinidad. Bill drove them in his jalopy up the dangerous road to Denver, where they arrived early on Saturday morning. After some frenzied courting, the two young college grads and war veterans were back on the road, reversing the trip they had made less than 48 hours before. I can imagine their conversations as they negotiated a snowy Colorado night. Do you remember when you were in your 20s and in love? You would do anything to bridge the gap. Anything. They did, as soon both couples married and began families. I was conceived in Albuquerque after a spicy Mexican dinner and a few beers in Old Town. I have been fond of Mexican food ever since. Beer too.

We would be nothing without stories. They tell us who we are, and were. I transform tales of those who came before me into tales of the present. One of the critiques I get is "You have so many people in your stories." Yes, I do, because I have so many people in my life. I grew up in a big family and have many friends. They find their way into my stories, with names changed to protect the innocent and guilty alike. And, as Uncle Bill said, they don't always have tidy endings. 

I hate to tell you this Uncle Bill, but your story is not over. We will continue telling stories about you as long as we are part of this world. Some of those stories will outlast us, and tell our descendants what sort of people we were. 

We hope we are worth remembering. 

Cheyenne: When will you get serious about your role as a city?

Tuesday was election day.

In Laramie County, we voted on a bond issue to fund three new projects at the community college. It would generate some $30 million for the construction and revamping of three buildings: fine arts, rec center, and a new dormitory. All necessary. But this is the second bond issue for the college in four years. Still, I voted for the bonds because I would like to see Cheyenne shake off its dusty image and plan for the future.

The measure was defeated 59-41 percent.

Bummer.

Meanwhile, 90 miles south, Denver voters approved a $937 million bond issue for package for roads, parks, libraries and cultural facilities. The measures passed by large margins. They include money for the city's big cultural entities such as the botanic gardens, zoo, DCPA, art museum, etc. The central library and ten branch libraries will get major renovations. The city will build a rapid transit project on infamous Colfax Ave. It also will build 17 miles of protected bike lanes and 33 miles of sidewalks. The city will revamp the 16th Street Mall, which has needed it for awhile. Bridges will be built and repaired.

Damn. That's a community planing for the future.

I know, there is a world of difference between Denver and Cheyenne. Denver grows larger and more expensive and traffic is a nightmare. Cheyenne stays basically the same, just how the old-timers want it.

But the old ways are getting really old. Cheyenne's 60,000-plus population makes it the largest city in the state. County population nears 100,000, which makes it the largest county in the state, home to one in every six Wyomingites. It is the state capitol and home of state government. Cheyenne is seen as  the northern terminus of the Front Range of the Rockies, usually described as the area between Pueblo and Cheyenne. One of the routes proposed for the Hyperloop Project is Cheyenne to Pueblo, with the first link proposed to be built between Greeley and DIA.

Cheyenne is often seen as an aberration in Wyoming. It's a rural state and many of its residents like it that way. In some parts of this windswept place, Cheyenne is described as North Denver. This earns laughs from Denver natives such as me. Still, when you live in Lusk or Thayne, Cheyenne is a metropolis with strange ways. Denver is, well, the L.A. of the prairie.

In the 2016 election, good liberals in the state legislature were defeated. We are close to living in a one-party state. Legislation is crafted by rural white men who won seats guaranteed by Republican gerrymandering. In Laramie County, suburban Democrats are represented by Rep. John Eklund.  During the 2014 session, he sponsored a bill that repealed gun-free zones in public schools. This, apparently, was the only solution to massacres such as the Newtown school shooting.

Those of us who complain are told to leave the state if we don't like it the way it is.

Young people have no problem departing for points south along the Front Range. My daughter Annie has lived in Colorado for the past year. I am with her often as she explores ways to live with her mental illness in a state that takes mental health seriously. I meet Wyomingites at every turn. The receptionist at the dentist is from Sheridan. Annie looked at renting an Aurora apartment from young man who happened to be a Cheyenne native. One of her therapists in Fort Collins had just moved from Casper. Teachers are in high demand in Colorado. One of my daughter's former teachers just left a decades-long high school job for new opportunities in Denver. A good friend who twice ran for the legislature recently moved to Greeley, finding a better political climate in Weld County's biggest city. Airmen and airwomen at Warren AFB live in FoCo, or spend all of their off-hours there. It's become such a challenge to keep its troopers close to home that Air Force brass has looked at plans to build a mini-Fort Collins in Laramie County. How you gonna keep them at the base after they've partied in FoCO? When alerts come and the weather is bad, the base can't get the necessary staff back to the base to man the missiles that might be pointed at North Korea or, as we like to call it, NoKo.

All this is distressing to those of us who have made it our mission to make Cheyenne and Wyoming a better place. Chris and I are among them. We have served on many committees and boards. We have planned hundreds of arts and culture events. We vote and work at the polls. We attend arts events. We drink our beer here. We own a house.

My question on this post-election day is this: When will you get serious, Cheyenne, about your role as a city?

After the Trump deluge: One year later

Donald Trump was elected president a year ago.

With our fellow Dems on Nov. 8, 2016, Chris and I watched the results come in, first with elation and then with a deep darkness. So this is what it's come to? Our depression that night was only an inkling of what was to come.

Think about all that's happened in the past year. The crack-of-dawn tweets. The hirings and firings. The Russian links. The rise of hate and prejudice. Fascist undertones and overtones.

Trump represents everything venal and hateful about America. Trump represents all of those Americans who hurled venom at Barack Obama when he was in office. All our unhinged uncles and neighbors. Late night AM talk show hosts. Some of the more outrageous right-wing legislators currently sitting in the Wyoming Legislature. Cliven Bundy. Ted Nugent.

What do we do next?

Outrage and criticism will not derail Trump. It feels good. I get a kick out of watching Steven Colbert and SNL. It's good to know there will be a video and audio record of The Resistance. The New York Times and Washington Post do their research, keep punching away. Yet we are no more near getting rid of Trump than we were at The Women's March on Inauguration Day in January. If we get rid of Trump, what is waiting in the wings. Mike Pence? A horror-show right-wing evangelical straight out of The Handmaid's Tale.

The State of the Union is more than distressing. We can't give up. But it's going to be a long slog.

All kinds of helpful people have weighed in during this distressing anniversary. Notable therapists advise us how to cope "in the Age of Trump." Trustworthy columnists tell us not the lose faith in the system.

I already see a therapist that is no fan of Trump. I continue to stay involved in "the system." I will vote for the LCCC initiatives on Tuesday that will make our community college and community a better place. I will volunteer for Dem candidates and my community, which is basically the same thing. I continue to support good causes with money and effort. If I did not, the Trump terrorists would win. I want no part of that capitulation.

Your vote Tuesday will make a difference. The county clerk expects a low turnout, as this is an off-year election on one issue. Trumpenstein is not on the ballot. Or is he? Any vote is a blow for freedom and democracy.

Thousands of Denverites plan to go to Cheesman Park on Nov. 8 at 7 p.m. to "scream helplessly at the sky on the anniversary of the election." This kind of gathering may seem pointless but it gets people together in a common cause and allows us to vent, both good things. Who knows, you might meet somebody, as the park has been a meeting place for decades. And a bonus -- as a former cemetery, Cheesman has experience with helplessly screaming. Some graves are still occupied, as a contractor hired in 1893 by the city neglected to transfer all of the bodies before it began to be transformed into a park in 1894. For event info, go to
https://www.facebook.com/events/1969220523402820/

Vote on Tuesday. On Wednesday in Denver (or wherever), scream your bloody head off.

It's "Heart of Darkness" all over again as U.S. war in Africa heats up

From CNN Online on Oct. 23:

Americans should anticipate more military operations in Africa as the war on terrorism continues to morph, Sen. Lindsey Graham warned Friday.

"This war is getting hot in places that it's been cool, and we've got to go where the enemy takes us," Graham told reporters on Capitol Hill.

We are embarked on another military spree. It's best to bone up on the literature of Africa, lest we make the same ignorant mistakes we made in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Saharan Africa, Southwest Asia, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Dakota Territory, and so on.

My first thought was "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad. While a tad racist, it’s a magnificent cautionary tale for overseas adventurers with a terminal case of hubris. You know, Marlow and Kurtz, Willard and Kurtz. Francis Ford Coppola used the 1899 novel (and Michael Herr’s nonfiction “Dispatches”) as a blueprint for “Apocalypse Now.”

Four American Special Forces troops were killed in an ambush in Niger two weeks ago. Most of us didn’t know that the U.S. had troops in Niger. We had to look up the country on a map and practice our spelling and pronunciation of the country so as not to sound as stupid as Trump. It’s not Nigeria. Nijz-AIR, is as close as I can get. It’s near Chad and is poorer than that country, which is saying something. According to the Africa Guide, two-thirds of the country is desert and the northeastern part of the country is "mostly uninhabitable." Most Nigeriens live in the southern third of the country described as "savannah." That is where the U.S. has a base and where our troops were killed. 

We've got to go where the enemy takes us. 

Any Vietnam War novel should be instructive as Africa’s cold war gets hot. “The Quiet American” by Graham Greene is a good primer as it was written way back in 1955, long before our misadventure in French Indochina heated up in the 1960s. While Ken Burns PBS Vietnam War series has its flaws, special screenings should be held for Sen. Graham, President “My heel hurts and I can’t go to Vietnam” Trump, Mr. Tillerson, Gen, Mattis, and any other member of this passel of fools who hasn’t seen it. The PBS does an excellent job of following our descent into madness or, if you prefer, our own very special heart of darkness. Stanley Karnow’s “Vietnam: A History” is also an excellent historical account of the war.

Novels and poetry may be the best route into understanding how quagmires happen, and what the effects are on countries.

But Vietnam isn’t the only useful example. I have been researching World War I as background for a novel I am writing about the post-war years of 1919-1920 in my home state of Colorado. In the summer of 1914, the entire world lost its mind. Except for the U.S. – we waited until spring of 1917 to do so. A few nights ago, I watched most of the 1971 Brit film “Nicholas and Alexandra.” Nicky thought that dashing off vaguely friendly letters to his wife’s German relatives would keep Russia out of the war. Not only did Russia suffer millions of casualties, but the czar’s repressive policies fed right into the hands of the Bolsheviks. Decades of terror followed. And then the Soviets suffered their own Vietnam in Afghanistan. I have yet a read a novel about this war – I’m sure there are some good ones. We have our own novels coming out of the Afghan misadventures. It doesn’t end.

The best novel I’ve read to come out of the American Wars of the New Millennium is “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” by Ben Fountain. The juxtaposition of Billy Lynn’s shattered soul with the spectacle of the NFL Super Bowl took my breath away. It seems especially relevant now as we watch African-American players take a knee to bring attention to injustices wrought on the streets of the USA. And the critics say “Don’t mix politics with football.” Too late. America is all about these things: war and football and prejudice and spectacle and greed and cheerleaders in skimpy outfits.

I am woefully lacking in reading books by the writers of Africa. This is not a surprise, as English majors are woefully lacking in books outside those written in native English. I have read novels set in Africa by U.S. and British writers. Time to read a novel by an African author. A dedicated Ghanaian/American reader/blogger Darkowaa hosts a blog called African Book Addict! Go to her reading list at https://africanbookaddict.com/to-read-list/ It would help if you also read French, German, or a selection of African dialects. 

We've been in Africa before. "Black Hawk Down" by Mark Bowden shows what happens when a country's military ventures into a place such as Mogadishu that it doesn't understand. The Horn of Africa can be a dangerous place. The U.S., once had military and naval bases in Ethiopia. Until it didn't. The Soviets moved in and Haile Salassie was a dead man. 

Maybe that’s the lesson of all of these works of art about wars past. It never ends. Humankind keeps making the same mistakes. We never learn.

We can keep reading. We will always have that. I hope we will.

Love is love is love is love -- but not at Florida's Father Lopez Catholic High School

Below is an e-mail I sent to Father Lopez Catholic High School President Pat LaMorte in Daytona Beach, Florida. It's in response to Mary Kate Curry's "resignation under duress" at the school when it became public that she was engaged to a woman. To read more about this, go to the New Ways Ministry web site at https://www.newwaysministry.org/2017/10/23/catholic-school-teacher-fired-gender-engagement/. Thanks to fellow Lopez alum John Bartelloni (Class of '70) for alerting me about this.

My letter:

Dear Pres. LaMorte:

My Father Lopez High School education taught me that the Catholic Church should be alleviating pain and suffering in the world, not adding to it.

I just read about Mary Kate Curry's "resignation under duress" as a theology teacher and the school's decision to forbid her from coaching (even volunteering to coach) the FLHS girls' basketball team. 

Curry's letter was heartbreaking. She obviously loved her jobs as teacher and coach. To take those away from her is the worst kind of cruelty. 

And the reason? She publicly outed herself as a member of the LGBT community, someone who loves someone of her own gender. She couldn't live a lie any more and you punished her for it. Shame on you, the school and the diocese. Shame.

I attended Father Lopez from 1965-69. I was president of the National Honor Society and lettered in basketball, part of the team that went to the state tournament in 1969. I am proud of being a Lopez alum. 

Make us all proud. Alleviate the pain you caused in this young woman's life by reinstating her as a teacher and coach. 

Some 50 years from now, a 2018 Lopez grad will look upon his or her time in the classroom or on the court with Ms. Curry and say, as I do today, that I learned how to be a honorable human being at Father Lopez. 

Do the right thing.

Sincerely,

Michael Shay

Cheyenne, Wyoming

Literary Connection Part II: Craig Johnson, from book to screen to novella

For my first Oct. 8 post about the Literary Connection, go to https://hummingbirdminds.blogspot.com/2017/10/we-ask-old-question-why-do-writers-write.html

At Oct. 7's Literary Connection at LCCC, I bought three books by Craig Johnson: "Western Star," the newest Longmire mystery; "The Cold Dish," the first published Longmire novel; and "Wait for Signs: Twelve Longmire Stories," including "Old Indian Trick," winner of the Tony Hillerman award.

I have others on my jam-packed book shelves and undoubtedly in some of the many boxes of books I have stashed around the house. I've read three of the author's Walt Longmire mysteries. They are well-written and exciting, with memorable characters. They are set in the mythical Wyoming burg of Durant in the county of Absaroka. These are stand-ins for Johnson's neighboring village of Buffalo in Johnson County. Johnson is not related to the Johnson of the county name. He is affiliated with Buffalo's Longmire Days celebration which celebrates the books featuring the mythical sheriff. It's a lot of fun -- I attended it during the summer of 2015. Johnson is the master of ceremonies for events. Presenters include a roster of the actors who bring the characters to life on the Netflix series. The writer and actors sign autographs and pose for photos with fans. There's also a street dance and a pancake breakfast. The Johnsons staff a pop-up store on Main Street where they sell Longmire merch. I have several T-shirts and books galore to prove their merchandising skills.

Johnson and his wife Judy live in the town of Ucross, just off the intersection of two state highways. Johnson has written 20-some books st the old homestead. The characters that he dreamed up come to life on the Netflix series. That must be awesome. He's said as much at the various talks and book signings I've attended.

Johnson presented the afternoon talk at LCCC's Literary Connection on Oct. 7. I couldn't stay for it. I had to get home to meet my daughter and go shopping. Family matters come before the matters of writing and everything else.

Netflix airs the sixth and last season of "Longmire" starting in November. The network cited declining viewership as the main reason it cancelled the series. Chris and I are long-time "Longmire" watchers. The Netflix version is edgier than its A&E counterpart. That's the way of Netflix. I have enjoyed the edgy "Ozark," which also features a rural setting -- Lake of the Ozarks in Arkansas. Netflix just cancelled the edgy "Bloodline" set in the Florida Keys. I watched season one and was impressed with the cast and acting and the non-sequential storytelling. Netflix said it was too expensive to produce. Who knows?

What makes a Netflix success? How edgy can you be until that becomes a stereotype? Stories thrive on conflict. You need real characters, too, people that are believable and are a bundle of contradictions too. Just like a great novel.

"Longmire" had something no other show has -- Native American characters or, at least, minorities playing Native Americans on the show. Lou Diamond Philips who plays Henry Standing Bear in part-Cherokee. The mother of Denver native Zahn McLarnon, who plays tribal police chief Mathias, was Hunkpapa Lakota. We have shows with Hispanic characters and African-Americans. With the death of "Longmire," Native Americans disappear from contemporary stories on the screen. A shame. Craig Johnson has gone out of his way to bring Native characters into his fiction and onto the screen. And he does his research.

The show's success has spawned novellas such as "The Highwayman" subtitled "A Longmire Story." The novella's cover prominently promotes the show. So the novels begat the show and the show begat novellas. Kind of interesting how this business works. I knew Johnson back when he was writing his first novel. The encouraging thing is that he's the same good guy he was back then. He rides for the brand, to borrow a phrase from Wyoming's Cowboy Code. Or to quote a line from one of the my favorite movies -- he's bona fide.

For more about Johnson, go to http://www.craigallenjohnson.com/.

Get your reading groove on at FoCo Book Fest

Great line-up tomorrow, Oct. 21, for the Fort Collins Book Fest: Writers and Riffs. I have known about this for a few weeks but may not be able to attend. But you can.

My mentor and one-time colleague John Calderazzo conducts a nonfiction essay writing workshop at 10:45 a.m. in the Old Town Library. The workshop, unfortunately, is filled up. No surprise, as John is one of the best teachers around for this genre. If you are interested in the "next steps for you in your publishing adventure," author and entrepreneur Teresa Funke conducts some one-on-one sessions from 11 a.m.- 3 p.m. in the Old Town Library. Sign up by calling 970-221-6740. Buy her book, "Remember Wake" about the survivors of the battles on Wake Island (and later imprisonment) in World War II.

Some of us recall warbling late night renditions of Loudon Wainwright III's 1972 ditty "Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road" (you know who you are). If you can't remember, go here for a refresher: https://youtu.be/Uu5hzc2Mei4. Wainwright will speak about his memoir, "Liner Notes," and sing some of his songs on the Linden Street stage from 1:30-3 p.m.

The session that interests me is "For What It's Worth: A New History of the Sixties" by cultural historian Craig Werner. As Werner says, the 1960s is "a decade that has been obscured by nostalgia, controversy and a nearly impenetrable veil of politically-motivated mythologies." Couldn't agree more. See what you missed at 12:15 p.m. at the Downtown Artery on Linden St.

Another session that mixes contemporary sounds and books features Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon talking about her memoir "Girl in the Band." It's from 3:30-4:30 p.m. at Book One Events on Linden Street.

As you can see, music weaves its way through the bookfest. The organizers were anxious to seize on FoCo's newly-minted rep as one of the most exciting music towns on the Front Range. As someone who has been on planning committees for three book festivals and dozens of literary events, I like this group's vision. Face it, people don't read or buy books as they once did. They are crazy about music. Mix the two and you might get a crowd younger than book-loving me at 66. And that's what you want.

I wish you luck, FoCo Book Fest. More info at https://www.focobookfest.org

No instant remedy for mental illness; no instant cure for Trumpism

From The Hill, (10/14/17): Psychologists march through NY to call for Trump's removal

Let's talk about President Trump's mental stability -- or lack thereof.

It's too easy to label Trump as crazy. He may be unstable. He may be dumb, as is old prof at The Wharton School called him the other day. He may be an asshole.

But the name-calling concerns those of us who deal with mental illness on a daily basis. I am a normal guy. But I do have a case of depression handed down by generations of Irish peasants. I live in the suicide capital of the nation. Depression has many roots.

Our daughter is severely mentally ill. As I write this, she is on a 72-hour psych hold at a Colorado hospital. She went in for an ECT treatment. The docs were alarmed by her mutterings during the treatment, so thought they should keep an eye on her through the weekend. This is not unusual. Millions of Americans get put on these holds every year. A mentally ill person might be brought into the local ER. Maybe he was sleeping in an alley. Maybe he was yelling obscenities at a policeman. Maybe she tried to commit suicide and someone intervened. Many reasons. Your local ER crew would tell you stories, if they could. Mental illness is a problem everywhere. Lest you think otherwise, here are some handy stats provided by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI):

Approximately 1 in 5 adults in the U.S.—43.8 million, or 18.5%—experiences mental illness in a given year.  

Approximately 1 in 25 adults in the U.S.—9.8 million, or 4.0%—experiences a serious mental illness in a given year that substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities. 

People in the throes of a mental health emergency may get held in one of the four mental health rooms at CRMC Hospital. They may be transferred to Behavioral Health at CRMC East. They may be held for 72 hours, as the law allows. They may be held longer. Some go to the Wyoming State Hospital in Evanston. Others are transferred to community mental health centers such as Wyoming Behavioral Institute in Casper. Others may go to a local halfway house managed by Peak Wellness. There are options. Families often are stuck trying to figure out the health care system, especially whether treatment is covered by insurance. Or not. For family members caught in the insurance maze, life may come to resemble some of the worst scenes from "Brazil" or a short story by Kafka. Our health insurance system is a nightmare. Trump and his cronies are making it worse. What can one say about an unhinged leader attempting to snatch insurance from the ill and mentally ill? You need to call on literary and celluloid references for something like this. We find ourselves in the midst of a cataclysm. We turn to poetry and books for solace and possibly some answers. This is a marvelous time for creative people. A bad time for the mentally ill.

Alas, art will not save us. Civic engagement is what's needed. Your mentally ill family member is too busy negotiating the health care maze to be much help. The rest of us need to act for ourselves and one other person that we care about. Speak up. Write letters. Go to city council meetings. Vote, please vote. We dug ourselves a hole. A "Snake Pit," if you will. A black hole. Darkness at noon. Bedlam. All these references apply to America's current unsettled state.

Let's not call Trump crazy. Our system has experienced a nervous breakdown. We are the cure.

Artistic and mentally ill and homeless in Cheyenne

What happens when you go to an art opening and you run into an old family friend who has descended so far into mental illness that she is homeless?

Her name is the letter A. I know her real name but I can't bring myself to use it. I don't know what's going to happen to her and wonder what I can do about it.

On Thursday, I attended the opening of the new Hynds Building gallery space featuring six of our finest artists. I was perusing Georgia Rowswell's fabric work when a woman in black sidled up to me. She wore a big floppy hat and a black coat over a leotard top and jeans. I knew her right away. She once worked at the coffee shop across the street from the Hynds. She's a local, went to school with my son. She has a son, whom I remember as a elementary school kid. A is a talented artist and musician.

I hugged her. She started crying. "You recognized me," she said through tears. I asked her what was going on. She said her 12-year-old son had run away, everyone was plotting against her, and last night, as she slept in an alley, a man urinated on her.

I was shocked. It skewed my evening art adventure.

As A told her tale, I realized how far she had sunk into despondency. When I say that, I mean mental illness. She had no place to stay, although she told me that some guy had let her use his apartment but other guys kept hitting on her. This is a good-looking woman in her 30s. I am old enough to be her father or grandfather. She and my 32-year-old son used to hang out in the same artsy crowd.

Isn't it dangerous out on the streets for a homeless woman? I suggested she go to the homeless shelter. She told me that she had been banned but that was OK with her because all the people there wore pentagrams and were Satanists. She couldn't go into most of the downtown businesses because she had been banned for various reasons which I was just beginning to understand.

She said she was hungry so I steered her to one of the food tables. She ate hummus and crackers. Filled her traveling cup with punch. "For later," she said. Other people came up to talk to us but quickly veered away when they saw my companion. A looked like an artsy person but people seemed to know to steer clear. She was known. How come I didn't know? Where had I been? Retired, I guess. Old and out of the way.

Meanwhile, my phone kept buzzing. My daughter was texting from an ER at a hospital in Fort Collins. She had experienced a bad reaction to the anaesthesia used in Wednesday's ECT treatment in Boulder. I was caught up in one of those texting rounds when everyone seems to be talking over each other. I was worried that I would have to rescue my daughter from the ER and bring her home. There had been plenty of calls and texts like this during the past few years. Sometimes my wife and I went to her aid. Sometimes we did not, as she has spent time in recovery centers in L.A. and Chicago.

I felt bad for A, but kept thinking, "Hey, I have my own problems." It was clear by now that A was homeless because she did what many mentally ill do. They elude available help because they are paranoid or schizophrenic or drug-addicted or an alcoholic or any combination of these things. The helpers are out to get her because they tell her what to do and how to behave. She freaks out and hits the streets. She sleeps in an alley and a guy pisses on her.

I am upset because I know this person to be a sane, creative person, a single mom who took care of her son, at least when I knew her. I took the last resort and offered her money, I had $100 in my pocket that I was going to spend on drinks or a small art piece. I gave her $40. She said it would get her food and maybe help with a room. I was going to ask if she was going to spend it on drugs or booze. But I didn't have the heart.

As I walked her out of the gallery, we passed a musician and his son. They were homeless themselves at one time. The musician plays his guitar on street corners and the farmer's market. He took one look at A, grabbed his son and hurried off. This was odd as it is usually what I feel like doing when I see him.

I told A that I had to go because my daughter might need me down in Fort Collins. I told her that my daughter was having ECT treatments. She panicked, told me not to do that as it can erase your brain. She then turned her attention to The Hole on Lincolnway hidden behind the Atlas Theatre banner. She pointed to the corner of the rubble-strewn hole. "I used to make a fire there -- it's out of the wind," she said. OK. We walked on. We ran into a downtown entrepreneur known for his libertarian rock 'n' roll roots. He asked what I was doing. "Visiting with an old friend," I said. He shook my hand, looked askance at A. He then disappeared into the Crown Bar. "He doesn't like me," she said."I'm banned from his store."

I got to my car and got in. I said good-bye, said I would meet her a 5 the following evening across from the gallery. I didn't go, as I was taking my daughter to an ECT treatment in Boulder. While there, her psychiatrist admitted her to the hospital for a 72-hour hold. She has been self-harming and threatened to do more. I left her there and headed back to Cheyenne on my own. I carried with me that old sinking feeling, that my daughter will never get better.

On the streets of Cheyenne is a homeless 30-something woman. She once was a family friend.

My mentally ill daughter is not homeless but could be. How come she seeks out help and A does not? All mental illnesses are not alike. A does not equal B. My daughter has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, severe depression and borderline personality disorder. She can hold intelligent conversations. She is a musician and is a talented painter. She cuts her arms with razors.

I read the news today in The Denver Post. It was about a 13-year-old Latina nicknamed Bella in Thornton . She hung herself while her family gathered downstairs making fajitas to celebrate her sister's fiance's birthday. Bella had been the target of cyber-bullying and just couldn't take it anymore.

Even in death, this life doesn't make any sense.

We ask the old question: why do writers write?

When we speak about books, we often speak in the singular case: the writer's vision, the poet's voice. We talk very little of writing communities. Writing is a solitary pursuit. Beginning in childhood, we are influenced by our family and friends and teachers. The media, too, of course, a factor that surrounds us in 2017. But what turns this interest into a passion? The rewards can be substantial. Fame and riches await.

Pause here for laughs.

There are easier ways to get rich. So why do writers persevere?

My parents were readers but not writers. My father was an accountant, my mother a nurse. They read books. They bought books and took us to the local library. My mother often joked about writing a book. She had subjects: nine kids, plenty of pets, a profession that put her in contact with suffering and transcendence, skill and ineptitude. She was sociable. She had friends. She had a career, unusual for that generation. 

My father read books and hung out with his kids. He had few friends, typical of his generation of men. War chums, college friends, a few relatives. He only had one sibling and they didn't get along. On occasion, my Catholic parents made babies. How and why they did this remains a mystery. They left it to the nuns and priests to explain it to us. They were no help.

I grew up surrounded by mysteries. I remember things forgotten by my siblings. Or they remember things differently. What is memory and why does it play such strange tricks on us?

I thought about this yesterday as writer Sharman Apt Russell explored the reasons that writers write. She presented the morning talk at Literary Connection, the annual literary gathering at Laramie County Community College in Cheyenne. Russell and fellow writer Craig Johnson were part of a long line of writers who have appeared at this conference. I've attended every one going back at least a decade. Annie Proulx, Tim O'Brien, Kent Haruf, Laura Pritchett, Pam Houston, Mark Spragg. Those are some of the names you might recognize. There are so many others. Ernest Cline attended one year to talk about his best-seller "Ready Player One," now being turned into a film by Stephen Spielberg.  Connie May Fowler talked about her southern heritage and her work. Her 2005 novel, "The Problem with Murmur Lee," is one of the best books I've read with a Central Florida setting.  It's simply a great book. I had a hard time finishing her memoir because the pain and the person it was happening to were so real. I blogged about Poe Ballantine's 2013 appearance at the Literary Connection. I read his true-crime book "Love and Terror on the High Plains of Nowhere" and was dazzled by it. One of the book's subjects did not appreciate my commentary. The book world is sometimes a very small place.

Russell began to write when she was eight years old. Not unusual for writers. Her father, a test pilot, died when she was two.

People write, Russell said, for many reasons.

"We love to read, particularly when we were children," she said. "Those who fell in love with reading as children, it's entered your bones. You want to be part of something that's given you so much."

So true. My parents read to me. They taught me, and I read as soon as I could. I have fallen out of love with books and reading and writing on many occasions. I keep coming back to it, probably because it's in my bones.

Writers like to play. We make up stories to learn how to survive as a human and to try on other roles, as actors trying out different characters. We are storytelling animals. It's part of our engagement with the world.

"When you write, you find your thoughts being clarified," Russell said. "It's your conversation with the world."

Writing is discovery. It helps you to be vulnerable and honest.

Russell thinks you not only should write a book but publish it. Technology has never made it easier to publish, whether it be with a small press or one we call our own. You can publish online. You can publish here. You can publish there. You can publish anywhere.

This gave me hope. Most writers worry too much about publishing. I do. It's the goal of our writers' critique group. We want to be better writers. But we also want readers.

"Getting readers is the follow-through for writers."

She half-jokingly wrapped up her talk with this: "If you are spending a lot of money on therapy, just write books." And it got a big laugh. I thought to myself: "I spend my treasure on therapy and also write books."

In my next post, I'll post about the other co-presenter at the Literary Connection, Wyoming mystery writer Craig Johnson. 

The Good Doctor from Wyoming: Trumpcare bears no resemblance to healthcare

Driftglass blogged about the Trump and Roy Moore connection yesterday (and cross-posted by Meteor Blades on Daily Kos). An excerpt:

Donald Trump is a petty, vindictive, racist ignoramus and pathological liar who resonates powerfully with the base of the Republican party for the simple reason that they are, in the main, petty, vindictive ignorami who have been trained by decades of conditioning via Fox News and Hate Radio to mindlessly accept as gospel any comforting bullshit that comes from the mouths of pathological Republican liars. 

I don't know how many different ways we can say it........

Trump is the Party and the Party is Trump.......... 

How about this? Moore is the Party and the Party is Moore. 

Our Wyoming delegation is a telling sample of Republican lawmakers: Sen. Barrasso, Sen. Enzi, Rep. Cheney. These otherwise intelligent people have lost their minds under the sway of Donald Trump. Sen./Dr. Barrasso's resume includes stints at RPI, Georgetown and Yale Medical School. He once replaced people's busted knees for a living in Casper. He was the spokesperson for TV's Wyoming Health Minute. He led the Wyoming Medical Society. A Catholic high school grad, he must have been absent on the days social justice doctrine was discussed. He now somehow believes in Trumpcare, which is no health care at all. In an MSNBC interview with Katy Tur this week, this was the following exchange:

Tur: “There are not protections for essential healthcare benefits in this bill.” 

Barrasso: “And there shouldn’t be!” 

Barrasso, a well-educated ignoramus. Or an opportunist. Or a narcissist like Trump. Or all three. Wyomingites, normally people who will stop to offer aid if they see you stranded on a snowy highway, keep voting for Barrasso. They may help you change a tire. But they also are OK if you just get sick and die. Hard to fathom. In the same post, Driftglass included a screen shot of a tweet by Randi Lawson:

Never could've guessed in our country's divorce, that the left would get custody of football.

How did that happen? That head-smashin', rip-roarin' American religion has been subverted by ethnic activists. So, people who wear nothing but shorts and paint themselves orange and blue for a January Broncos playoff game, now say they will burn their season tickets if black athletes don't stop their uppity behavior. We lefties cheer on the athletes and fellow travelers (including fat-cat owners such as Jerry Jones) as they link arms in solidarity during the anthem. Theirs is a protest against racial injustice.

Strange bedfellows indeed.

So where are we? The United States of America 2017 seems like a banana republic on steroids.

And the doctor offers no cure.

Car-centric or people-friendly?

I have traveled to Fort Collins a lot lately, mostly to visit our daughter Annie. She lives a block from the university. She can walk or ride her bike almost anywhere. This summer she took the shuttle bus to concerts at the Mishawaka up the Poudre Canyon. The city has great bus service, including the north-south MAX line. Uber and Lyft are Ubiquitous. Uberiquitous!

FOOTNOTE: Writers might find this interesting. I first learned ubiquitous from a title of a Philip K. Dick strange novel, "Ubik." This illustrates the instructional side of sci-fi.

Our daughter had a car but it met the fate of so many vehicles in a college town after dark -- driving after partying. It now rests in a Denver junkyard, a totalled 10-year-old car with what seemed like so many more miles to go. Alas.

So as I visit and help her with errands, I notice that Fort Collins is much less a car town than when I lived here from 1988-91. That's no surprise to its residents. It is a surprise to someone from Cheyenne, a decidedly car-centric city in a very car-and-truck-centric state. Rapid transit is still exotic in the Capital City. We do have taxis and Uber and car-pooling. We have a superb greenway, although street bike paths are still a work-in-progress. You see pedestrians downtown during the day, most of whom are state employees looking for a double caramel macchiato to get them through the long afternoon. The crowds thin out at night as there just aren't that many businesses worth visiting. We have three craft breweries, all three worth a visit. And there are bars. A few coffee shops. Some restaurants.

If you look for pedestrians along the Dell Range shopping district, you won't find many. You will find a mall and lots of chain restaurants. But people don't walk on Dell Range. It's a place for cars.

One thing I notice about Fort Collins 30 years after my grad school days -- it's a car environment gradually morphing into something else. It's funny, too, since most of the older residential streets were built along Utah's Mormon model -- wide enough to easily turn around an ox cart. Ox carts are rare these days. Most of what you see are young people on bikes and skateboards. Pedestrians of all stripes. All the major streets are lined with bike paths. Some through streets have been mined with those annoyingly huge speed bumps, the kind you see in neighborhoods that include city council reps with kids. Not a bad idea -- you still see plenty of cars in FoCo, many of them going too fast. Many in this one-time cowtown still drive pick-ups, whether they use it for ranch work or just want to look like they do. The CSU Rams used to be the Aggies, which accounts for the big white A on the hill above town. Still a lot of ag and geology and veterinary students here, which differentiates it from its rival university in Boulder. The CU Buffs probably still refer to the CSU bunch as "the Aggies," especially in the lead-up to the annual Rocky Mountain Showdown on the gridiron.

Fort Collins actively discourages cars. It's every wingnut's nightmare. Walkable downtown and neighborhoods. Limited parking. Wide sidewalks. Very rare to see a coal roller. I heard an announcement on FM 105.5 that talked about a city program that closes streets on a rotating basis so people can eat and drink and listen to live music. What's the world coming to?

Not sure what the next few years will bring. Driverless cars. A light rail. A Hyperloop connection is in the works, if Colorado's entry into the project is picked as the one to be actually built. Who knows what that portends for Fort Collins, even Cheyenne.

Meanwhile, my goal in Fort Collins is to slow down and  beware of cyclists. It could be someone's millennial, maybe even mine.

One Cheney cancels, another still is coming to Cheyenne

Novelist Margaret Coel will be replacing Lynne Cheney as the featured speaker at the Booklovers' Bash on Oct. 20 in Cheyenne. The event is a fund-raiser for the Laramie County Public Library. Tix are $80. Get more info at http://lclsonline.org/blb/2017/

I love Margaret's books set on the Wind River Reservation and its environs. What I like even more is that Lynne Cheney is not coming. She sent her regrets as she faces hip surgery, which is not a pleasant experience.

Thing is, the library already sent out color flyers advertising Ms. Cheney. This is every event planner's nightmare. The postcards/flyers/newsletters are in the mail and the speaker cancels. I've been there. I can just imagine the mad scramble that ensued when  the library and its foundation heard the news.

It's also a bummer, personally because I had crafted a snarky post about Cheney coming to town. It follows, because I spent minutes on this piece and hate to waste it. Please note that Cheney's effervescent daughter, Rep. Liz, is coming to town on Oct. 6 to tell us about her plans for affordable healthcare, edible coal, and the glory of posing with Donald Trump as he signs ridiculous and dangerous legislation. You are invited to express your love and admiration for Rep. Liz by going to the Raddison Hotel on Oct. 6, 11:30-1 p.m., where Cheney will be addressing the Chamber luncheon. Bring a sign. More info here. BTW, I can't find a thing about this on Cheney's web site.

Here's my Cheney post:

Lynne Cheney advocates a whitewashed version of history.

No surprise, as she is a diehard Republican. She has a brand to promote and protect. But she is being billed as an "author and historian" for a speech at the Laramie County Library System's Booklovers' Bash on Oct. 20 in Cheyenne. Tickets are $80.

A library-sponsored event is a good time to talk about free speech.

The library board is comprised of good people. I am sure they have the best intentions for the library.

But Lynne Cheney? What has she contributed to the world of letters? What has she contributed to the world?

I realize that we live in a post-truth society. Trump reveals this with every tweet and every public pronouncement. To resist, we have to be certain of our facts. Bloggers have to do some research to see that their snark is based on truth. I use humor in my posts to make a point. A wealth of material is available. Even if you're lazy, it doesn't take that many clicks to find out if a Trump Tweet has any basis in the factual world. I didn't say Real World because that was a TV show based on a staged situation. This makes it Reality TV. People wouldn't watch it if it was Unreality TV. They want to see real people in real situations that are fake. Thus we have Reality TV and Trump in the White House.

Confusing, isn't it?

So I am going to do what I tell others to do: check it out. Read Ms. Cheney's books and her pronouncements on the arts and humanities. And then advise you, in a snarky manner, if you should attend the event or not.

Funny story. Once, the head of the Casper College Library suggested that we bring in Lynne Cheney as a featured speaker at the first Equality State Book Festival in Casper. Ms. Cheney, wrote books, was once head of the NEH in D.C., was a Casper native, etc. Also married to Dick, former Veep. He has a federal building and football field named for him.

Committee members, me and my colleague whom I will call L, voiced our objections. Later, the miffed librarian was heard referring to us as liberal twits. We have treasured than name ever since. I use it as a handle on Twitter. L has taken a less public role, although I still suspect she is a liberal twit in good standing. I only use her first initial because word comes that Jeff Sessions, the gnome who runs the Department of Justice, is considering opening detention camps for liberal twits and their fellow travelers, snowflakes, progressives and libtards. If history serves, Wyoming would make an ideal place for such a camp. Cold, isolated and crazily conservative. Just like Trump.

As far as I know, nobody has organized a protest against Lynne Cheney. It's a bit tricky as this is a library fund-raiser. When Lynne's daughter Liz arrives in Cheyenne at a Chamber luncheon on Oct. 6, a protest is planned. Get more info here. Liz is WYO's lone congressional rep, one shown often in bill-signing photos with Trump. She skipped holding town halls during the summer recess due to the fact that some crazy liberal might show up and ask an embarrassing question, such as "How can you, as a woman, support a misogynistic, racist swine such as Trump?" This language is mild in comparison with some of the Facebook comments I've seen. But of course, we are gentlemen and gentlewomen here at hummingbirdminds.

I am going to try to check Lynne Cheney's books out of the library and read them. I will not buy them. Or maybe I will after reading them. This is what thoughtful people do. This is what thoughtful Americans do. Besides, lobbyists and Halliburton and government service already enriched the Cheneys. They don't need the money. They are giving it away to charities before the Nazgul carry them off to Mordor.

The art of resistance sometimes includes the art of resigning

I am a bit late on this one. Four weeks ago, the remaining members of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities resigned. I recognize some of the names on the committee, notably Jhumpa Lahiri, winner of a 2000 Pulitzer Prize and the 29th annual PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story.

Honorary Chairman of the now-nonexistent committee is Melania Trump. What is her claim to creative fame? Well, the First Lady has her own brand of jewelry offered on QVC. Who designs it? Many creative people work in the fashion industry. You'd think someone who benefits this directly from creativity would take the side of creators. I started some online research with the keywords "Melania Trump fashion." Google came back with almost 4 million results. I quickly grew queasy reading about her "style" -- and looking at photos of her fabulous wardrobe. I looked up "President's Committee on the Arts & Humanities resignation" and found almost 500,000 Google results. That was encouraging -- Melania Trump only outdid the PCAH's action by 8-to-1. Now, this blog  will be added to both searches. In this way, electrons win.

One can get lost in the research. The idea was that this post would be an undercover expose on more Trump rottenness. But I lost heart after about 15 minutes. I need my writing time for my fiction and not the fictional reality of an oligarch and his well-appointed wife. What I can do is feature the PCAH's fine resignation letter and then move on to other things.

This is a repost from a 8/18/17 Jen Hayden post about it on Daily Kos:

In a blistering public letter, the remaining members of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities (PCAH) resigned. ... you can see the original letter below. It’s a work of resistance art: 

Dear Mr. President:

Reproach and censure in the strongest possible terms are necessary following your support of the hate groups and terrorists who killed and injured fellow Americans in Charlottesville. The false equivalences you push cannot stand. The Administrations refusal to quickly and unequivocally condemn the cancer of hatred only further emboldens those who wish America ill. We cannot sit idly by, the way your West Wing advisors have, without speaking out against your words and actions. We are members of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities (PCAH). The Committee was created in 1982 under President Ronald Reagan to advise the White House on cultural issues. We were hopeful that continuing to serve in the PCAH would allow us to focus on the important work the committee does with your federal partners and the private sector to address, initiate, and support key policies and programs in the arts and humanities for all Americans. Effective immediately, please accept our resignation from the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.  

Elevating any group that threatens and discriminates on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, disability, orientation, background, or identity is un-American. We have fought slavery, segregation, and internment. We must learn from our rich and painful history. The unified fabric of America is made by patriotic individuals from backgrounds as vast as the nation is strong. In our service to the American people, we have experienced this first-hand as we traveled and build the Turnaround Arts education program, now in many urban and rural schools across the country from Florida to Wisconsin.  

Speaking truth to power is never easy, Mr. President. But it is our role as commissioners on the PCAH to do so. Art is about inclusion. The Humanities include a vibrant free press. You have attacked both. You released a budget which eliminates arts and culture agencies. You have threatened nuclear war while gutting diplomacy funding. The administration pulled out of the Paris agreement, filed an amicus brief undermining the Civil Rights Action, and attacked our brave trans service members. You have subverted equal protections, and are committed to banning Muslims and refugee women & children from our great country. This does not unify the nation we love. We know the importance of open and free dialogue through our work in the cultural diplomacy realm, most recently with the first-ever US Government arts and cultural delegation to Cuba, a country without the same First Amendment protections we enjoy here. Your words and actions push us all further away from the freedoms we are guaranteed.   

Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions. We took a patriotic oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. 

Supremacy, discrimination, and vitriol are not American values. Your values are not American values. We must be better than this. We are better than this. If this is not clear to you, then we call on you to resign your office, too.   

Thank you.

A Baby Boomer boyhood was designed to prepare us for the USA's next war

In a July 26 post, I responded to President Trump's disturbing speech to the Boy Scout Jamboree in West Virginia.

There was a riotous Facebook debate about Trump's speech. Comments flew fast and furious. Someone brought up the fact that the Boy Scouts of America was a military style organization. Others objected, saying that the Boy Scouts have nothing to do with the military. It was pointed out that Eagle Scouts recruited into the military get a boost of two rating levels over non-Eagle Scouts. That means a lot, especially when you first join up and need all the bucks you can get.

As for official military connections, the BSA swears there are none.

I beg to differ. It's not a conspiracy by the MIC to recruit the flower of our youth into their plan for world domination. It's fun to think so. Who knows, an Oliver Stone film could be in the works to blow the lid off of this plot. We eagerly await it. We thrive on conspiracies.

A Baby Boomer boyhood prepared me for the military. The Scouts were an integral part of that.

My only military experience was an eighteen-month stint in Navy ROTC. I do have years of Boy Scout experience to draw on. I was a Cub Scout from the late-50s until I joined the Boy Scouts at 11. I served until 1965 when I got to high school. Because we lived in beachside Florida, I have all of the water-oriented merit badges offered at that time. I also have a few others. I learned flag etiquette and often served as an honor guard at Scout functions. I took my uniform seriously. I obeyed the Scout Law.

I look at the Scouts as a military training program. We wear uniforms. We salute. We respect our Scout leaders even when they don't deserve it. We go on survival hikes. We drilled on flag etiquette. And so on.

The Boy Scouts of the 1950s and 1960s were training grounds for Vietnam. We knew how to build shelters, start fires, survive in the outback, dress wounds, deal with snakebites, swim, paddle a boat. If you lived in Florida, as I did, you reconnoitered swamps and rivers. When you canoed Central Florida creeks, you watched out for snakes and gators in the red-brown waters stained by tannin from cypress trees.

Most of all, Boy Scouting taught us obeisance to other men in uniform, those with rank and seniority. Be prepared! Mostly, we were prepared to take orders.

Maybe that's why the chaos of the 1960s was such a shock. It upended all of those norms. Once we learned that our leaders, men in uniforms and men in dark suits, were trying to kill us, all bets were off. Nothing had prepared us for betrayal by the very institutions that trained us: the family, the church, the Scouts, the U.S.A.

We could have grokked this, if we were really paying attention.  Some of our elders tried to warn us. Writers and artists. Martin Luther King Jr. Folk singers. Clergy such as the Berrigan brothers. Veteran writers such as Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller. One of the recurring themes of "Catch 22" is that Yossarian considers his own people as much a threat as the Nazi's Herman Goering Division. They are trying to get him killed.

Quote from Catch-22:

As always occurred when he quarreled over principles in which he believed passionately, he would end up gasping furiously for air and blinking back bitter tears of conviction. There were many principles in which Clevinger believed passionately. He was crazy.
"Who's they?" he wanted to know. "Who, specifically, do you think is trying to murder you?"
"Every one of them," Yossarian told him.
"Every one of whom?"
"Every one of whom do you think?"
"I haven't any idea."
"Then how do you know they aren't?"
"Because …" Clevinger sputtered, and turned speechless with frustration.

And this one:

"The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on, and that includes Colonel Cathcart. And don't you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live."

Who was trying to kill you during the Vietnam era? You get three guesses and the first two don't count.

This betrayal continues. Maybe that's what led to the Dawning of the Trump Era. This long betrayal. If you were a "good Scout" in America's golden age, you didn't question the authority of the church or the family or the government. Our most trusted elders led us into the shitstorm and lied about about it. Democrats and Republicans. Nobody was exempt and nobody was spared.

I hope Ken Burns addresses this in his new PBS documentary on the Vietnam War that starts tonight. It was never just a battle between anti-war hippies and Viet vets. It was a generation coming to grips with betrayal. We never did. Now we have a man at the helm that represented all that was venal about the Baby Boomer generation, my generation. A know-it-all who knows nothing. A draft dodger who wants to blow up the world. But first, he wants to rake in more dough to be the richest bastard in creation. He lies. He cheats. He steals. Trump is the Vietnam War come home to roost.

What makes is especially sad is that serving military and veterans are among Trump's biggest supporters. Did they learn nothing? And why do they remain this way?

We (sort of) survived the Vietnam betrayal. We won't survive this one.

Where is the Wichita Lineman when we really need him?

I am a lineman for the county...

In the late-60s, I loved that Jimmy Webb song, a chart-topper for Glen Campbell. It's a fine song. And it mentions Wichita, a place where I did some of my growing up. It may be the only song that equates hanging power lines out in the sticks with aching loneliness for a loved one.

When I think power lines I think telephone pole. I have been passing telephone poles since I was a seventh-grader in Wichita, probably before that. It's many decades later and I'm still looking at the ranks of telephone poles that march up and down the streets of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Thousands of similar poles were toppled or rendered useless in hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Linemen/women from all over the U.S. and Canada are working on the outage. They are climbing telephone poles that their daddy or granddaddy knew. maybe even worked on. We desperately need these people because they are trained well to do a dangerous and necessary job. We can't just grab our gloves and spikes and shinny up our local pole to fix a problem. It can get you killed.

Some power company contractors were in my neighborhood yesterday. They dug around the base of the telephone pole that sits on the southwest corner of my lot. I was just having my second cup of coffee, searching for excuses to avoid the TV news and start my daily writing ritual. So I grabbed my coffee and went outside to chat. The supervisor was a friendly guy, but busy. He said that he and his crew were inspecting power poles to see "if they would last another ten years." We bantered about other crews like his fixing power lines in Florida. He said he'd be finished with this job in three weeks and be off to Florida. I wished him well and got on with the business of the day.

I wondered how much high-plains wind would it take to topple our poles. We don't get hurricanes. But winds have been clocked here over 100 mph. We easily get 50-60 mph winds each winter. How would my neighborhood poles fare? And why do they need to last 10 more years. Is something magical going to happen in 2027 to replace these poles with something more tech-savvy? Our smartphones need no telephone poles. If you have satellite TV, you don't require a cable strung from a pole into your house. Why can't our electric lines be buried as are lines for gas and sewer? Is it really necessary for power to go out for millions when the poles come crashing down?

I write this as everyone is abuzz about the Hyperloop One Global Challenge. Yesterday, 10 demonstration projects were selected for a transportation system that basically involves putting passengers into giant pneumatic tubes and speeding them to their destinations at 700 mph. One of those projects involves a segment from Cheyenne to Pueblo, Colo., via Denver International Airport. If I could get to DIA by tube in 12 minutes without driving I-25, I would do it in a hyper-second. But we will have to wait until the next decade to see if this happens. Meanwhile, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) has agreed to conduct a feasibility study on the 360-mile route. CDOT is the first governmental entity to form a partnership with Hyperloop One. Nothing yet from the State of Wyoming.

Meanwhile, I write this post on a laptop that connects with the worldwide web via cable lines that are strung on wooden poles that may (or may not) last another ten years.

Portrait of a poet as a young man

Back when I was a poet...

I worked as an orderly in a county hospital. I took classes at the local community college. I walked or road my bike from campus to hospital for my 3-to-11 shift. I changed into my scrubs in the restroom. Then I set off to take care of the alcoholics recovering in the 1200 ward. They weren't so much recovering as being refortified to resume their lives on the streets. The hospital staff did its Sisyphean duty. Feed them, keep them locked up and out of DTs for as long as possible. and then release them back into the wild. We had drug cases too -- it was 1973. A young longhair tripped out on LSD and ran naked down Main Street. I had plenty of empathy for him. Two years earlier, I had OD'd on acid and spent the night in the university infirmary. Bad trips were nothing to laugh about.

I gathered plenty of material for poems and stories as I watched over my charges. I wrote on yellow legal pads. I hadn't yet discovered the ubiquitous and portable composition books. One day I emerged from behind locked doors to take a break. The break room was also the meeting room. I looked for my legal pad but couldn't find it. A nurse eating her dinner pointed to the trash can. The head nurse had seen the poetry scrawled on the legal pad, the same kind that nurses used for notes on their patients. "She said that she'd like to know who had the time to write poetry -- then she tossed it in the trash can."

I was mortified. My poetry in the trash. It was probably the most concrete critique I ever received. I hadn't published anything yet. My curious friends asked me what I wrote in my legal pads.

"Poetry," I said. "Observations."

My roomie on Graham Avenue in Holly Hill, Florida, was Bob the Biker. He was saving up for a new Harley. His old Harley had met a bad end which he didn't want to talk about. I just knew that it involved the Hells Angels in Milwaukee and a statutory rape charge. He was a big dude, a fine mechanic who was helping me rebuild a 1950 Chevy truck which I bought on a whim. My dream was to get it fixed up and use it for beach trips with my dog and surfboard. We never finished it. I sold it for parts after Bob moved on, replaced by an old high school friend, Ned.

"Are you observing me?" Bob asked one night when we'd polished off a case of PBR.

"And what if I am?"

"I'd like to see it. See what you think."

"You're not in it," I said. "I do have some poems."

"That's OK. Poetry is not my thing."

Not a critique. Just a rebuff.

The 1200 Ward was a spooky place. I carried around a soft tongue depressor for patients who went into seizures. I used it more than once. Alcohol caused lesions and scars on brains that led to seizures. A seizure is an awful thing. Eyes roll back in the head and muscle spasms cause the patient to bite down hard on his/her tongue. I got called in to plunge the plastic tool into the mouth so he wouldn't bite his tongue in half. Once the seizure fades, the patient is lethargic and disoriented. I reported the incident and let the nurses take it from there.  I usually returned to the ward break room where I played cards with the patients. We drank bad coffee and played cards. They told harrowing stories of life on the streets. Most patients were middle-aged males. Some were WWII vets, but we hadn't yet seen many from Vietnam. Some were women, who had their own room. Part of my job was to keep the men and women separated. We joked about it but the women often turned tricks for a bottle. One of the women had a college education and a good job before she went into the tank and hit the streets. During my year on the ward, she was there three times, once with a black eye and a missing front tooth.

One patient came in with cirrhosis of the liver. A black man with yellow eyes and a distended belly . No insurance. None of them had insurance -- it was thee county's charity ward. The cirrhotic man was shuffled off to a room of his own. The supervisor closed the door and let him die. That seems odd to say. But all of our patients were on their way to death, some slowly, some quickly.

How did we keep the patients from all going into delirium tremens? The nurses fed them paraldehyde. What's paraldehyde? Here's a quick description from the Mayo Clinic web site:

Paraldehyde is used to treat certain convulsive disorders. It also has been used in the treatment of alcoholism and in the treatment of nervous and mental conditions to calm or relax patients who are nervous or tense and to produce sleep. However, this medicine has generally been replaced by safer and more effective medicines for the treatment of alcoholism and in the treatment of nervous and mental conditions.

To demonstrate its toxic qualities, nurses demonstrated by pouring a dose directly into a Styrofoam cup. It dissolved the cup in seconds. The nurses cautioned that you must put juice in the cup before the paraldehyde. I was impressed, but knew I would never been serving up this potent cocktail. I wondered: if it does that to a cup, what does it do to your body?

Never found out. The bodies of the patients on the ward were already compromised. The drug stopped convulsions and helped them sleep. I had already seen what the DTs could do.

"The dog! The dog!" The man's eyes were with with fear and he pointed at his feet.

"What dog?"

"He's eating my feet. The dog!"

"It's OK. I'll get the nurse."

I did. The nurse brought a healthy dose of peraldehyde and a calming voice.

"The dog," the man said. "My feet."

"There, there," said the nurse. She urged to lie down and go to sleep. It took awhile but that's what he did.

I returned to the break room and the continuing card game. Nobody said anything. They had been there.

Sometimes a call went out on the hospital address system. "Dr. Blue. Please report to 1400. Stat." Translation: "All available orderlies run to the psych ward. A patient is freaking out and we need help." In 1973, all I knew about psych wards came from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Nurse Ratched. Bull Goose Loony. Electro-shock therapy. Lobotomy.

I know a lot more now. My daughter has been in psych wards and treatment centers in five states in the past decade. I have seen patients freak out during visiting hours and the call go out for this generation's version of Dr., Blue. I have seen my daughter freak out in a Casper, Wyoming, treatment center. You look at these events differently when it involves one of yours.

The charge nurse in 1400 was Mrs. Berry. Nobody knew her first name. She was good-looking in a middle-aged sort of way -- that was the view of this 23-year-old. She reminded me of my mother, who was the director of nurses at a hospital across town. Mrs. Berry had a harder edge, maybe because of her charges. She also had a secret. She was fated to become the mother-in-law of my sister-in-law. My future sister-in-law's sister, my future wife, lived a block over from Mrs.Berry and her sons, frequent visitors at my future wife's house. I didn't know them then.

I worked at Halifax Hospital for a year. I resigned to go off to the University of Florida, where I eventually became a prose writer. My first published work was a poem about a break-up. I do not have a copy of that poem. I'm sure it was tragic and filled with a young man's angst. I began publishing stories in newspapers. I joined the staff of the Independent Florida Alligator. I covered city council meetings, trustee meetings, campus events, etc. I was going to be a journalist although I really wanted to be a best-selling author. All I can say about that is I worked as a writer and editor for most of my career. I blog. Bestsellerdom has eluded me. I still write.

I never worked as a hospital orderly again. I was a cashier in the Shands Teaching Hospital cafeteria one summer. I was the only white employee. The African-American staff gave me a hard time but I won them over by September, or so I like to believe. One of the cooks introduced me to grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches. That was what I had every day for lunch. That and chocolate milk.

Back when I was a poet...

The Summer of Love; the Winter of Our Discontent

I laughed when I saw the cover of the Aug./Sept. issue of AARP: The Magazine. Over a Peter Max original illustration was the header: "Celebrate the Summer of Love, 50th anniversary, 1967-2017."

I was almost as far away from San Francisco as a 16-year-old could get in the summer of 1967. In the waning days of summer, I was about to become a junior at Father Lopez Catholic High School in Daytona Beach, Florida.

That summer, my classmates thought that I was moving to a new life in Cincinnati, Ohio. My father was already in Cincy, crunching numbers at the General Electric Works. He moved as did so many others -- Florida's aerospace industry had come to a grinding halt.

But what about the moon landing, the one that was still two years in the future? Much of the prep work was finished. NASA and its many subcontractors (GE among them) didn't need all the engineers and statisticians and accountants that they had brought to Central Florida for the task. An engineer friend of my Dad was pumping gas. Others found tourist-industry jobs so they could continue to enjoy the splendors of The Sunshine State.

Two of my friends, Rob and Ann, had already decamped with their families to Schenectady, N.Y., another big base for GE, the one where Kurt Vonnegut once toiled in PR ("Deer in the Works"). Classmates had thrown us a going-away party. Good-bye and good luck!

I was registered to attend another Catholic high school, this one an all-boys school in Cincy that I was certain to hate. I was not a kid who made friends easily. I would not make the basketball team, as the new school was big and had a hot-shot varsity already in place. If I ever met any girls, Catholic or otherwise, they would ignore me. My good grades were due to take a nose dive and I was destined for failure. This was my dark side speaking, teen angst on overdrive. If I wrote poetry then -- and kept it -- it would be something to read. But I was a jock and a surfer and my type didn't write emo poems or any kind of poems. Or so I thought.

My mother worked at a local hospital and still had a two-year-old at home, along with eight other kids. We couldn't sell our house. All the buyers were on their way back north. Prices plummeted. My father said that he missed his wife Anna and his nine kids. Dad left me his 1960 Renault Dauphine so I could take my siblings to school and basketball practice and anywhere else they had to go. I was delighted to have a car and a license to go on the many dates I imagined that I would have.

After six months, my father surprised us all when he decided to leave GE and try to get a job in central Florida. My future was saved.

It wasn't easy for my father. He was a quiet man. I can imagine his life as a bookish professor or a secluded monk, a man without a huge family and all the pressures that brings. As a kid, he spent his time going to the library and building crystal radio sets in his basement. He wasn't a striver or a climber, which doomed him from the start in the corporate world. I know, as I spent five years as a corporate man, twenty-five years in government. I am an introvert but learned how to be a public person. I was tasked with supporting my family. I did that. But there always is a cost, and you may not know about it until you are retired.

My Dad returned to Florida late that summer. When school started, he was looking for a job. My mom worked as a nurse at a local hospital. We were together again.

What was life like in August 1967 for the average American big family? My parents never had enough money. Both worked, a rarity in 1967. Still, it was never enough. Most of the people we knew were in the same boat.

The Summer of Love? To us, hippies were an anomaly. I thought they were cool but their antics were foreign to me. Sex was dreamed of but an impossible dream, to take a line from a popular 1960s Broadway musical. We sweated and groped in the back seats of cars. There were public school girls who went all the way, or so the public school boys told us. But that wasn't for us.

Remember that this was pre-Disney Florida. Before the boom that caused the founding of dozens of fantasy worlds and caused everyone in Providence and Newark to relocate to Daytona and Sarasota. If it was a feature at Disney, it would be called "A Whole Different World World."

It's a Whole Different World World
It's a Whole Different World World
Segregated schools, no sex on the beaches
Swamps teeming with gators and leeches
It's a Whole Different World World after all

Don't get me wrong -- we admired those people engaging in unbridled sex and drug-taking in The Haight. We might have followed the lead of our parents and cursed those damn hippies. We were fascinated and jealous at the same time. It just seemed so foreign.

Happy 50th anniversary to all of you who engaged in the Summer of Love and lived to tell the tale.

Summer of '67. We all have our stories....