When all else fails, the arts help make sense of the senseless

Every so often, I pick up a book that I can't put down. "The Winter Soldier" by Daniel Mason is one of them. I hadn't heard of it until I came across it on a table of trade paperbacks at our local Barnes & Noble. The title grabbed me as did the cover art of a city that looked like it could be the Vienna of 1914.

The back cover blurb said it was about a Viennese nobleman and doctor who goes off to serve the empire during World War I. He falls in love with a nurse.

That's pretty much all I needed to know: medical personnel in WWI. I just finished a draft of a novel set after the war with medical personnel as main characters. Research! I didn't count on being drawn into a story that wouldn't let me put it down. But that's what happened.

In "The Winter Soldier," Lucius Krzelewski is about what you'd expect from a privileged product of the decaying Austria-Hungary empire. A talented but self-absorbed med student. He works hard to establish credentials that will lead to a cushy practice. He's an understudy to a prominent but old-fashioned professor. He prefers his books over contact with ill humans.

War comes. Lucius takes his time joining the army. He does, finally, and his father wants him to serve in the Austrian cavalry and his mother wants him safely in Vienna.

He joins the medical corps and is sent to a little army hospital tucked into the Carpathian mountains. When he arrives, he finds that he is the only doctor. He has never operated on a living human. He does not know the first thing about trauma medicine, amputation, or anything else. Head nurse Margarete, a nun, has to teach him about battlefield medicine. The nun may or may not be a nun. A soldier who arrives near-death in the midst of winter plays a key role.

That's the set-up. No spoilers here! I started to read it for background on war-time medical practices. But the human drama is what captured me. It's thrilling and worth the read.

The author is a medical doctor and this is his third book. I look forward to reading the others.

I read other books too. During the last four years, I've discovered some fine World War I books. I've read "A Farewell to Arms," "All Quiet on the Western Front," "Johnny Got His Gun." I've read "The Good Soldier Svejk" by Hungarian author Jaroslav Hasek several times. A novel of the absurdity of war and a precursor to "Catch-22." and other darkly humorous novels. "The Daughters of Mars" by Thomas Keneally tells of two Australian sisters who go off to war as nurses. Their trial by fire is the ill-fated Gallipoli invasion. And then they are off to France. Great  novel.

What about women authors? Vera Brittain, another well-to-do Brit, signed up as a nurse. She witnessed lots of bloodshed and lost both her brother and her fiance. She wrote about her experiences in "Testament of Youth."

Another memoir, "Goodbye to All That,"  is by English poet and veteran Robert Graves. And speaking of poets, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen wrote some devastating work, antidotes to some of the more celebratory verse from the war's early years.

Monty Python's grandfathers-in-humor found a printing press and published The Wipers Times on the Ypres (Wipers) front. The brass was not fond of their efforts. You can read some of the issues online and see the blokes in action in the film, "The Wipers Times."

There's an amazing amount of war-related work out there. It's even recreated in the Oscar-winning film "1917." After immersing myself on the subject for four years, I understand the era better. However, I'm not willing to forgive humankind for embarking on such a slaughter. That may be the key element of my book. Young people return from war as changed and damaged creatures. Yet, life goes on. Why and how? Can they forgive their elders for sending them off to the killing fields? That may be the most difficult task of all. What if war-making is not a forgivable crime? "Thou shalt not kill" is 10 percent of the Ten Commandments. So is "honor thy father and mother." What if they were the ones who sent you off to kill? Are they as guilty as the politicians for sending you to war? It's the worst kind of betrayal. It seems to be coded in our DNA, this sacrifice of our children for nebulous aims. It continues from generation to generation.

When all else fails, the arts serve to make sense of it.

The subject may be roaches but, if you look closely, you see so much more

My latest piece for Wyofile's Studio Wyoming Review has the header "The subject is roaches," a review of Laramie artist Shelby Shadwell's exhibit at Blue Door Arts in Cheyenne. Pretty good header for an arts review as cockroaches and bugs in general don't come up that often. For good reason -- nobody likes a roach, at least the kind in the animal world (none of the other kind in WYO, at least not legally). I have never seen a roach of any type in WYO. Bugs prefer the hot sweltering climes of the South.

I grew up in the South and have seen hundreds of cockroaches. You turn on the kitchen light at 2 a.m. for a snack, and you hear them skittering back to their hideouts -- you might even catch a quick glimpse of one. You can wake up on a sunny Florida morning and see one staring at you across the pillow. You might be driving along and see one riding shotgun in your rusty 1972 Ford Torino. It's not merely bad housekeeping, although I have been guilty of that. Roaches will inherit the earth. It's not too much to imagine that roaches and their pals in the insect world will be running the show in the year 5020. Of course, we may be living in Kevin Kostner's Waterworld by then. But if I know my roaches, they will find ways to backstroke their way into your giant catamaran or floating fortress or wherever our soggy future relatives live.

Shadwell's show is a small one in a relatively small gallery. The art is big. Blue Door Arts proprietor Terry Kreuzer cracked me up when I asked her how she got a rising star such as Shadwell to show in her gallery in Cheyenne's most famous downtown building that would be deserted if it weren't for the enterprising artists on the ground floor.

"I asked him," she said.

Later, I was puzzled by the fact that the artist has shown rarely in Wyoming. He's been at The Nic in Casper and at the Jackson Art Center. Never in Cheyenne, according to his artist resume. Ironic since I note in my SWR piece that he has received two visual arts fellowships from the Wyoming Arts Council headquartered right here in Capital City. It just shows there are few exhibit spaces for contemporary artists in Cheyenne and Wyoming. You might say that is fitting in a state where artists are more interested in quaking aspen and the Grand Tetons than in abstractions and gigantic roaches. Au contraire, I say. I worked at the Wyoming Arts Council for 25 years and came to know plenty of artists who walk on the wild side in their work. For artists, it makes it tough to survive in an already tough place if there are no places to show your work,

It's not all about artists and galleries. It's never been more important to express yourself. That goes for everybody. Members of the ruling junta, Trump and his cronies, have no aesthetics. Art is just a commodity to them, like a yacht or a 50-room garish Shangri-la on the beach (any roaches at Mar-A-Lago?). It's no accident that Trump wants to review all government architecture, make sure it is "classical" instead of some crazy-quilt modern architecture that doesn't imitate the Parthenon. Trump and his GOP pals are working to defund the arts, humanities, and museums. The creative world is what threatens their destructive impulses. No accident that artists have worked to transform Trump's No Brown People border wall into something artistic. The odds are stacked against them as they are up against the monoliths of power and money. But you gotta try.

Their daily assault on our democracy is also an assault on our senses. It's important to create to counter that. It doesn't have to be a direct blast at No-Nothingness. The creative act itself is a blow against negativity.

Go make something. And vote. Get involved. Participate in your community. Be kind. And get out and view some art. It might inspire you to do all of these other life-affirming acts.

Can't wait to see how this book ends

I am coming to the end of a first draft of a novel set in 1919 Denver. I wasn't around then so I've done a lot of research to get a feel for the time and place. I know the Denver of the 1950s and '60 when I spent my childhood in various Denver south side neighborhoods. I know Denver from 1978-88 when I lived and worked there as a young man. My soon-to-be wife and I lived in apartments in Aurora, SE Denver near Evans and Monaco, and City Park South. We rented a house in Cherry Creek North (before the first wave of 1980s gentrification) and bought a house in Platt Park where I walked to my job at Gates Rubber Company.

None of this really matters when writing a book set two generations earlier. Nobody alive in 1919 could envision the Denver of 2019 unless he or she is 100-plus and in possession of their faculties.  My Uncle Bill was in his 90s when he passed. He was born in Denver in 1924 and told some great stories of the city in its pre-WWII days and after. Most were true, I suspect. My parents told good stories of their youth and young married life.

World War I was my grandparents' war. Each generation gets to have one (or several). My grandfather Shay was a cavalry officer with the Iowa National Guard. He served on the Mexican border with Pershing and later followed the general to France. He didn't know my grandmother then but she served as an army nurse in various base hospitals near the front. My sister Eileen unearthed her war diary and transformed it into a family book project. While trying to put some context to Grandma's story, I developed a fascination with the teens and twenties of the last century. Not only the war and flu pandemic but what came after. Prohibition. Women's suffrage. Labor unrest. The First Red Scare (Bolsheviks!). The rise of the KKK. The heyday of U.S. railroads. Automobiles taking over the streets. Passenger travel in aeroplanes and zeppelins The tens of millions of deaths by war and disease gave everyone an acute sense of mortality. They also seemed to put Americans in motion. Unmoored from farms and small towns, they left to find work in cities as industry boomed. Cities were where the action was.

All four of my grandparents arrived in Colorado in 1919. A farm boy from Iowa, a nurse from Baltimore, a farm girl and small town postmistress from Ohio, and an Irish immigrant from Chicago. They were all in their twenties. In my book, I decided to place four young people in Denver in 1919 and see what happened. That was 450 pages ago. I have changed the storyline several times as my characters come alive and muscle me out of the way. This is what writers hope for and what all writers dread, especially those who outline their books. There's a good reason for outlining. If you have a multi-book contract, it keeps you on track. You may have a story in mind but are uneasy about its end. For some, that structure makes sense.

For me, I like to get the story started and see where it goes from there. I have no book contract although will entertain offers. It's exciting not to know where the story is going. Thing is, I have written my final chapter three times when it looked as if I knew where it was headed. It's chapter 38. I'm not writing chapter 36 and 37 to link things up. I may revise the final chapter again. I like the art of revision. It's a puzzle.

That's enough about the book. The old belief among writers is that it's bad luck to discuss a book while writing it. The fear is that you'll get tired of talking about it, that it will lose some of the magic that goes with making up a story. As for my book, all you know is that it's a novel featuring four or more characters who all end up in Denver in 1919. My hope is that you will buy the published book just to find out what happens.

Stay tuned...

Here's to all the decent people

What makes me most angry about Donald Trump as president of the U.S.A.?

All of the kind and decent people who live in my country. They deserve better. We deserve better.

I remember Dr. Kobayashi of Denver who made house calls and rescued me from extreme pain when I was 8 years old. Dr. K served his country, the one that locked him an internment camp at war's outbreak, and became a doctor in a city that wouldn't lease a space to him and his Nisei partners outside of The Red Line.

The group of young LDS members who picked up my girlfriend and I from the side of the highway along the Bonneville Salt Flats in 1972. The two drunk gamblers who gave us a ride in their Cadillac from Elko had been busted by the cops and we were left to fend for ourselves. The teens took us to SLC, bought us dinner, and did some mild proselytizing but I didn't mind.

My mother and father who voted Republican who now rest side-by-side in a Florida cemetery. They would have been shocked by Trump's behavior and by the curse words I use to describe him most of the time (sorry, Mom).

My friends I surfed with at Hartford Approach in Daytona Beach during my high school years. They weren't all angels but would lend a hand when you wiped out and your board surfed alone to shore. This was the 1960s, the big board days before leashes.

My Never Trumper sister who drove 650 miles round trip this weekend to help my Always Trumper brother celebrate his 60th birthday.

The retired African-American preacher who I mentored at a tutoring class run by a nun. He was learning how to read after decades pretending to read scripture from a Bible which he memorized as a youngster in church. He came to the class after his little granddaughter called him out when he couldn't read her a bedtime story.

My college calculus professor who tutored me for hours in a lost cause.

The Latino marine who saw me, recovering from surgery, struggling with a full grocery cart and loaded them in my car and assisted me to my seat. He's a fellow YMCA member who, for reasons known only to himself, always salutes me in the gym. I should have been saluting him this whole time.

The nuns at Mercy Hospital who got me to the nunnery so I could watch my favorite Saturday morning shows ("Mighty Mouse," "Sky King," "Fury"). No TVs in hospital wards in the 1950s.

There are scores of others. Small kindnesses and huge ones. You have your own stories -- feel free to share them here. I urge you, in their names and millions like them, to get to the polls on election day and vote out the narcissistic blowhard who occupies the White House. All of his acolytes, too.

A dry spell comes into the life of every blogger

It's been more than a month since I posted here. I guess I could say that I'm in the midst of a dry spell. That wouldn't be accurate. I've written some blog posts on healthcare and politics that bored me so much I couldn't finish. So, I turned my attention elsewhere. wrote five feature articles for Artscapes Magazine. I started a piece for Studio Wyoming Review on Wyofile. I revamped the last section of my historical novel and almost finished it. I discovered halfway through the last section that the narrative didn't make sense in its present form. Maybe I should have waited until I actually finished because finishing is the goal. But no -- I had to be different. I do have most of a final chapter, my third attempt. I have read about other authors who begin the book and write the final chapter so they know where they're going. Those are the same writers who outline the book before they write. They're called plotters.

Writers like me are called pantsers because we write "by the seat of their pants," making up the story as we go along. I believe I'm in that group due to my early training in daily and weekly newspapers. Sports reporting, especially, makes writers write down what they know because there is 20 minutes to deadline. It's a handy way to learn writing as you always have the score to fall back on. "Cheyenne Central shellacked Cheyenne South Friday night 52-0 to cinch its record at 10-1 and win a trip to the high school boys' football regional playoffs." All the 5Ws are in there. I used fun action verbs -- shellacked and cinch -- that aren't usually seen elsewhere in daily news writing except in election season. That lede gives you a gateway into the rest of the story that you will keep writing until time is up. Often the ending can trail off into noweheresville as you throw in stats or add a lame quote from the winning coach or quarterback. You're finished. On to the next game!

Ledes aren't always easy to come by in feature writing. You're lucky if some attention-grabbing quote or fact can be fished out of your notes. You really have to dig sometimes, depending on the pizazz of the interviewee. In fiction, I usually start with an image. In my novel, I wanted to put my two main characters on a train together. Nothing too exciting about a passenger rail car in 1919 Colorado, although there are train fans out there who might disagree. My characters, however, are so different that they clash in interesting ways that might (you never know) lead to romance somewhere in the middle of the book. It works for me. No telling if it will grab the interest of editors.

I began writing this because writing is something I am invested in. Not so politics and healthcare. I love to read and talk about those topics. Debate them, too, as long as its a two-sided contest. But tackling these topics rally requires some research. The Internet is key to that. I know which sources to turn to for facts and which to turn to for snark. I like both, so sometimes I turn to opinion pieces in newspapers such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Miami Herald. Carl Hiaasen of the Herald is the best columnist in the USA. I also look to conservatives mouthpieces such as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and others. For liberal snark, you can't beat Wonkette. I often wonder where Hunter S. Thompson would have plied his trade on the WWW. The Trump Era was made for him.

In conclusion, let me state that I needed to write and post something that interests me so I can move on to the next things. Finishing the novel. Watching the NFL conference finals. Eating lunch.

See you in the funny papers.

Profiles in courage: The men and women who fought for civil rights

"Did you say that President Trump wrote a book?"

The questions came from a middle-aged African-American staffer in the Martin Luther King, Jr., room at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta. I had just turned away from the replica of MLK's library that lines the wall to the gallery. My collegian nephew Morgan, pushing me in a wheelchair, had spotted a book by Nixon on the library shelves. "Nixon wrote a book?" he asked.

I told him that all presidential candidates write books. They're campaign tools, a chance to outline their philosophy and goals should they rise to the highest office in the land. I pointed out a paperback copy of JFK's 1956 "Profiles in Courage." I had devoured that book in the months leading up to President Kennedy's election. I was a voracious reader at 9.

"Trump wrote a book," I replied to the question from the museum staffer."They don't always write them. Some use  ghost writers." It was an attempt to explain the inexplicable.

She seemed bemused by the concept. I was too. Trump's book, "Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again," was published in November of 2015, a year before the election that changed America for the worse. A glowering Trump adorns the cover, reflecting the ugliness that waits inside. He looks like your angry old neighbor, the same kind of person who flocks to Trump's white-power rallies.

"They just threw 200,000 people off the food stamp rolls," the staffer said as Morgan, my sister Mary and I exited.

"Can we be any more cruel?" I replied.

The answer, of course, is yes they can be more cruel. Trumpists demonstrate this every day.

We were in a museum that remembered some of the cruelest chapters in American history. The South's Jim Crow laws, lynchings, murders, sundowner ordinances, miscegenation statutes, segregation.

The exhibits remembered those outrages. And also celebrated the response of outraged Americans involved in the Civil Rights struggle. You know some of the names. Those mostly unknown faces look out from the exhibits. Freedom Riders, college students who came from all over to register black voters, priests, ministers, and rabbis who left their flocks to administer to the dispossessed and disenfranchised in the rural South. There are the murdered and the martyred. Four little girls killed when the KKK bombed a black Birmingham church. Emmett Till, tortured and killed in 1955 by redneck vigilantes for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Medgar Evers, the World War II veteran who challenged segregation at the University of Mississippi and was shot down in 1963 by a member of the White Citizens' Council.

Millions now know the names and faces of these brave people who challenged the  status quo.

The most frightening exhibit recreates the sit-ins at the Greensboro, N.C., Woolworth's. You sit on a lunch counter stool, place earphones over your head, and hands flat on the counter. For the next few minutes, you experience what those black college students went through in the name of equality. Name-calling, threats, slaps upside the head. The lunch counter stool vibrates with the kicks from racists in their jackboots. I was shaken when I stepped down. I've heard the same invective coming from 21st century racists.

On the way to the gift shop, we passed a large mural by Paula Scher that features protest posters from around the world. I really liked it so bought a few items in the shop that celebrates that work of art. Christmas is coming, after all. And I want to always remember this place. I also urge everyone I know to visit it.

Welcome to the Poetry Hotel

Write short, said all the experts. Be concise. 

I first heard this advice as a student reporter for my university paper. Give me 500 words. Give me 750. Later, when I covered high school sports for a big city daily, I sometimes had to rush back to the office and knock out a piece in 15 minutes or file by phone or via the Jurassic fax machines of the 1970s. Keep it short. And for God's sake, get the score right. 

Naturally, I went on to write a novel and a passel of short stories which weren't very short. It was nice to have all those words to work with. A well-crafted short story can still be a challenge. You have to limit the number of characters and set the story in a few scenes. Still, a 5,000-word story gives you some room to breathe.

I've reached 106,000 words in 424 pages on the historical novel I'm writing now. I am not finished with the draft. Not sure what the final count will be before I query publishers. Much revising to do.

My latest published works are much shorter. They're prose poems featured in YU News Poetry Hotel, Paul Fericano prop. Five pieces. The longest is "Flying Nurse," which comes in at 340 words. The shortest is "Welcome to Zan Xlemente, Zalifornia" with 182 words. Each tells a story and might be labelled flash fiction if they were on another site. I don't see how it makes much difference if people read and enjoy them. Maybe not enjoy so much as make you think about worlds not your own. Read them at https://www.yunews.com/mike-shay-poetry-hotel.

A writer uses different techniques with each form. A novel requires expansion while a short-short involves winnowing. If a traditional short story is a slice of life, a short-short is a slice of a slice. Some of mine start life as a short piece and stays that way as I've said what I wanted to say. "Zan Xlemente" is an example. Some, however, start life as longer pieces that I take the scalpel to. "The Future of Surfing in Wyoming" started  as a multi-part story, "The History of Surfing in Wyoming." In it, I imagined the surf scene 1,000 years from now if global warming does its worst. I added rewritten versions of surf songs and turned it into a performance piece I presented at readings in Casper and Sheridan. It wasn't easy to transform a 4,000-word piece into one with a mere 252 words. Check it out on the Poetry Hotel site and see what you think. I'm in Room 66.

It's not always a beautiful day in the neighborhood

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are those radishes growing out of your ears?

Last weekend, I had radish seeds in my ears.

It had nothing to do with hygiene or gardening. Instead, it's an extension of my acupuncture treatments.

My acupuncturist Savannah conducted a standard treatment Friday and then asked if I wanted to extend it over the weekend. No needles, she promised, but plenty of radish seeds. They are attached to tiny sticky pads. She put four of them on each ear. She said they have the same effect as the needles. I can gently massage them a few times each day to duplicate acupuncture. Thus far, I can't tell if they make a difference. Acupuncture itself is working, though, which is a pleasant surprise. 

I used to group all alternative medical treatments into the New Age Netherworld of crystals, aromatherapy, chanting. I always put my health care into the hands of the medical establishment. Its members had done a pretty good getting me to 68. I think of antibiotics, which may have saved my life multiple times in childhood. Those inoculations against smallpox, measles and polio. All the miracle drugs of the post-war period that kept a generation alive into obnoxious old age. Our children and grandchildren, too, whom we rely on to explain tech to us.

Minds can change.

I fell in the spring of 2018. A stupid fall, but aren't they all? Four days later, I had terrible back pain. A few days later, I experienced some trouble walking. First I needed a cane and soon after, I was using a walker. A month later, I underwent spinal surgery.

My problems were just beginning. Recovering from spinal surgery takes a long time. Sixteen months, so far. I recovered the feeling in my hands and right leg within a few months. The left leg was a problem. My balance was off and the nerves in my ankle and foot didn't respond to two rounds of physical therapy. I had hoped I could retire my walker by the beginning of this summer but that didn't happen. The bottom of my feet were numb and my toes, traumatized, so said my podiatrist. My bowels and bladder misbehaved and I developed a prostate infection. A urologist conducted some tests and prescribed some antibiotics and prostate pills. I found a new neurologist. She conducted some tests and diagnosed me with neuropathy. She did some blood tests and said she had no idea why I had neuropathy but it could be an outcome to my spinal surgery. She suggested I return to physical therapy, work out in the YMCA pool, and wear compression socks. She suggested that I change my diet and take food supplements with nerve-energizing properties.

I did all those things and still have trouble getting around. I decided to try something new. I contacted acupuncturists in Cheyenne and none of them accepted my private insurance. And forget about Medicare -- acupuncture not covered. I found a clinic in Fort Collins that does take CIGNA. I am five treatments in, and I'm beginning to make progress.

Which brings me back to the radish seeds. I haven't noticed much difference in my gait. But it's no worse. Next week, if the weather allows. I return to Fort Collins for more acupuncture and possibly an earseeds' recharge.

After 16 months letting traditional medicine have its way with me, I am open to all new venues. A writer friend in Louisiana said he was attended to by a witch doctor during a recent injury. He said her treatments helped. He also gave me her email. It's been tempting to contact her. I know up front that witch doctoring is not covered by Medicare. CIGNA, or other traditional health plans.

But who knows?

My eyes (and ears) have been opened to alternatives.

"OK Boomer!" is a good retort. A better one might be "Go, Boomer, Go!"

OK Boomer!

It's a thing now, a quick retort by members of a younger generation when a Baby Boomer rambles on about the good ol' days and why youngsters are causing the USA to go to hell in a handbasket.

First question from a Millennial: What's a handbasket?

Baby Boomer: A basket carried by hand.

Millennial: We don't believe in hell.

Boomer: The hell you say.

We're always talking around one another. That may be the case until every last Boomer goes to his/her/its heavenly reward.

Millennial: We don't believe in heaven.

OK Millennial, what I'm actually pointing out is that the Baby Boomer Death Clock at Incendar shows that a Boomer dies every 18.2 seconds and that already today (as of 11:47 a.m. MST), 4,746 Boomers have died. As of right now, 64,914,430 Boomer are "still alive" and 20,443,571 are "dead." Percentage-wise, this is 23.9503896% of available Boomers. In the world of demographics, this is known as "cohort replacement."

A better Millennial chant might be: Go, Boomer, Go!

Meanwhile, we waste precious time in clashes with each other instead of concentrating on the real threat which, of course, is Donald Trump and Trumpism. We can find common ground here. I am a Boomer Liberal and many Millennials are liberal, much more liberal than their parents and grandparents. This is especially true if you are an urban dweller. Wyoming is much more rural than urban which partly explains Trump's continuing popularity. I live in the state's largest city, Cheyenne. But even here, I am an anomaly. Cheyenne is located on the cusp of blue-state Colorado, but it is almost as conservative as the rest of the state. County Democrats were devastated in the 2016 legislative races. MAGA hats are not everywhere but there are enough of them to make a Liberal pause before launching an anti-Trump tirade in public. Being a blowhard is a Trump thing. But liberals can be obnoxious, too. When I was part of a Democrat/Republican panel interviewed on radio the night of Obama's 2008 win, the radio host said the worst thing about Obama's election was having to listen to remarks from his liberal friends for the next four years. Eight years, as it turned out.

And then came Trump. His diehard fans haven't STFU since.

OK Millennials, listen up. I won't give advice to, or cast aspersions on, your generation if you do just one thing: get out and vote in 2020. If Millennials registered and voted for the Democrat a year from now, Trump would be history. I realize that I am an elder giving advice, and that it's appropriate to roll your eyes and then say "OK Boomer." I can handle that. What I can't handle is another four years of Trump.

Can you?

Democrats hold Chili Cook-off Fundraiser Nov. 14 in Cheyenne

When I tell people that I make a killer no-sodium-added red chili, they are dubious. To compare, your average canned chili on grocery stores shelves packs a thousand kilotons of sodium, maybe more. And I've eaten my share, no doubt contributing to my 2013 widow-maker heart attack. Most recipes don't skip on the salt. So I took it as a challenge to make good-tasting chili sans salt. That means salt such as that found in nature and that found in cans of beans, chopped tomatoes, tomato paste, etc. If I was a more dedicated cook, I would use fresh ingredients. Soak the beans overnight (without salt). Use my own tomatoes, onions and peppers. Butcher my own meat.

But I'm not. When you think about it, it's easier today to be a lazy cook that ever before. My local Albertson's stocks salt-free cans of nearly everything. Low-sodium foods, too, such as Amy's Kitchen soups and some Progresso offerings that for some unknown reason are always on the bottom shelf. The Salt Lobby -- handmaiden to the Illuminati!

I use fresh herbs and a variety of spices to exorcise the blandness of the saltless. People like it. So I'm making a batch of it for the Nov. 14 events explained below. At past events, cooks have brought in vegetarian, vegan, beef, chicken, turkey, and varieties of green chili. While I have not followed this path, a few cooks add fire to their recipes causing watery eyes and much munching of chips, tortillas and cornbread. Not for the weak-hearted! And neither is being a Democrat in the reddest state in the union.

Read on...

Democrats hold Nov. 14 Chili Cook-off fundraiser at IBEW Hall

The Laramie County Democratic Grassroots Coalition invites you to a Chili Cook-off Fundraiser on Thursday, Nov. 14, 6-8 p.m. at the IBEW Local 415 Hall, 810 Fremont Ave., Cheyenne. Tickets are $15.

Attendees may enter their homemade food items in three categories: chili, salsa, and dessert. You can enter one, two or all three categories. Vote tickets will be available at the door for $1 or six for $5. Framed certificates will be awarded to the winners. People can also bring other side dishes.

The LCDGC planning committee will provide all the condiments for the chili, homemade cornbread, and beverages including iced tea, lemonade and coffee.

LCDGC will raffle a bottle of Maker’s Mark Whiskey. Tickets will be $5, 5 for $20. Must be 21 to win. There also will be a 50/50 raffle.

The night’s speakers include Ben Rowland, president of the Laramie County Democrats, and Rep. Sara Burlingame. There will be time for any Democrat who has announced a 2020 campaign.

All proceeds from the night’s event go to Democratic Party candidates running in the 2020 election.

For more information, contact Michael Shay, 307-241-2903, or go to laramiecountydemocrats.org 

Reading and writing about Florida women

After reading Kristen Arnett's recent New York Times essay, "Florida women are no joke. I should know," I wanted to go out and buy or borrow all the books she referenced. There are a lot of them. Our excellent library stocks two of them: Arnett's novel "Mostly Dead Things" and Lauren Groff's "Florida." I read Groff's stories about Gainesville and environs and its inhabitants. "Dogs Go Wolf" is a wondrous story about two young sisters (four and seven) stranded on an island. Spooky but funny, too, told with great wit. Arnett mentions this story in her NYT piece because her subject is not just Florida but its women.

Arnett writes about new books and TV series about Florida women. One of those is her debut novel,
“Mostly Dead Things, which I'm reading now:

The protagonist, Jessa-Lynn Morton, works in taxidermy, at a family business based in Central Florida. The story concerns grief and loss and love, but also how death and birth feel intrinsically linked in the Sunshine State. 

Here are three others that get right the "details and nuances" of being a woman in Florida.

Earlier this year came T Kira Madden’s memoir, “Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls,” which takes a specific look at young queer girlhood in Boca Raton. Last year, in the story collection “Florida,” Lauren Groff wrote about a Central Florida that focuses more deeply on Ocala and Gainesville, places that have a deep tradition of life lived in the natural environment. Jaquira Diaz’s “Ordinary Girls,” a memoir of growing up in Miami and Puerto Rico, drops this fall.

Arnett also talks about the legacy of Zora Neale Hurston who grew up and wrote about Florida long before Disney arrived. Hurston grew up in the little town of Eatonville, now surrounded by housing developments. Hurston interviewed African-Americans around Florida when collecting traditional folk tales and slave narratives. Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" is considered a classic.

My sister Eileen, who lives a few miles from Eatonville in Winter Park, sent me a copy of Hurston's "Barracoon: The Story of the Last 'Black Cargo.' " It's the author's account of interviewing Cudjo Lewis, the lone survivor of the slaver Clotilda, the last known slave ship to dock in the U.S. in 1860. A barracoon was a barracks where slaves were held on the African coast before shipment to America. Many died waiting, but Cudjo did not. Hurston, a writer, folklorist and anthropologist, tracked down Lewis in the 1920s and wrote the book about the experience. She couldn't find a publisher in her lifetime. The first edition was issued last year by the Amistad Imprint of HarperCollins.

Why does this writer who lives in Wyoming care about Florida? I spent my formative years in Central Florida. Our father moved us to Florida in 1964, when I was 13, and I moved to Denver in 1978, when I was 27. Fourteen years in one state gives me some perspective on the place. I lived there when all my senses and sensibilities were sharp. Lessons learned (or not) experience gained (or not) remain with me.

I go there now for funerals and weddings and reunions, as my six surviving siblings live there. The Florida in 2019 is vastly different from the Florida I moved to before Neil Armstrong landed on the moon and the Disneyfication of Orlando. I spent hundreds of hours on Volusia County beaches and roamed the coast between St. Augustine and Cocoa. My high school basketball team played in every cracker town from Oviedo near Orlando to Callahan north of Jacksonville. I canoed lakes and creeks and springs and hiked the back country. In Florida, the back country is wooded areas away from settled places. Ocala National Forest, for instance, or the forests that used to crowd the Tomoka and Little Tomoka rivers back before the Florida boom that goes on and on and on....

On the relationship front, I dated Florida natives and recent arrivals from Massachusetts and Ohio. I married a woman from Ormond Beach whose parents came from Brooklyn and then traveled the world as an army family before landing in Florida. I have stories to tell about them all. I've published stories about Florida women. I have written from a woman's POV. I count on the women around me, including those in my writers' critique group, to let me know if I'm on the right track.

In my published book of short stories, four of the 12 stories are set in Florida. They feature Florida women who don't fit easily into the scrappy female survivors described by Arnett. One of my stories centers on just such a person, a young New Jersey woman who finds herself pregnant and isolated in Wyoming. The story, "The Problem with Mrs. P," was also included in the Coffee House Press anthology, "Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams."

I thought about Arnett's essay as I read "Mostly Dead Things." I also remembered a big debate I had during a Wyoming Arts Council board meeting about whether taxidermy is an art or a craft. I came down on the craft side while our board member from Ten Sleep described it as an art.

As I'm finding out in Arnett's book, we were both right -- taxidermy is an art and a craft. And if you are queasy about the details of taxidermy, you may not get past chapter one. I'm in chapter three and still reading.

Excuse me while I get back to the book.

My presidential library, so far

I update my presidential library with books about No. 45. 

When my father died, my four brothers and I divided up the books in his library. He liked history, especially presidential history. The core of the library were books dissecting presidencies from Washington to Bush the Elder. He didn't much care for Clinton and he died 16 months into the first term of Bush the Younger. His books represented the first 40 or so.

The books I hauled from Florida to Wyoming include Grant's autobiography, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s "The Age of Jackson," David McCullough's Big Book of "Truman, " and Eric Larrabee's "Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants & Their War." My father never reached lieutenant status but he was in "their war" as were millions of other GIs. This was a point of pride to him and his family. He never fired on Roosevelt and Truman, possibly because they were his commanders in chief during his army years. He may have voted for them both, although he never said. He did vote for JFK. He had a history of voting for Democrats until the Southern Strategy reached into the Sunshine State and corralled former Dems for Nixon. 

My father was conservative and a reader. I have some of his books although they are dwarfed by my fiction library which, I swear, I am finding other homes for. At the library, I could scan entire shelves of books about presidents, some of them bordering on hagiography and others Hunter Thompson gonzo. I do not know how many books have already been written about the current resident of the White House. I know that some day, they mighty fill entire libraries, if there are libraries in the future, or if there is a future. 

I've already started my Trump library.  So far, it includes three volumes: "Trump Sonnets I, II, and III" by Ken Waldman and "Things That Go Trump in the Night: Poems of Treason and Resistance" by Paul Fericano. Waldman's Trump books are published by M.L. Liebler's Ridgeway Press of Michigan. Fericano's publishers are Poems-For-All Press/YU News Service. 

Waldman, a traveling poet who splits time between Alaska and Louisiana,  began writing his sonnets the day after the 2016 election. He thought he might write one book, maybe two, but that would be it, boom, we'd recover our sanity as a nation and remove the pretender. Then came the third book and, soon, the fourth volume will hit the shelves. Waldman is as flummoxed as the rest of us. He has other books of poetry and prose. He also plays a mean fiddle and has recorded several CDs. He just came through town on his way to teach elementary students in Fort Collins. He reads from the Trump books but he has to carefully discern his audiences, wondering if he will get laughs or rotten tomatoes (or worse).

In his third volume, Waldman adopts the POV of a litany of the world's people: Here's a sample sonnet:

A Spaniard
On the bus one day I met a tourist
and she seemed perfectly reasonable.
She called her president an unstable
gangster, which didn't seem wrong. She listed
her grievances and felt quite sad. She missed
the welcome she once received. The label
American dogged her now. Terrible,
she said, how people spit, how they'd insist
she was like him, that all Americans
were just like him, too, or worse. We're all friends,
she said to me. I had to look away.
I want nothing to do with her country,
or anyone from it. Her president
is a part of her. He's no accident.

Anyone from the U.S. who's traveled overseas lately, especially those who despise Trump, have run into the same thing. You may do your best to distance yourself from him, but the fact remains: Trump is US. He represents us (and the U.S.) to the world. That may be the most horrible part of this -- Trump is an American.

Fericano, a San Francisco poet and satirist, knows his literature, his history and his Trump. He combines the two in humorous and scathing ways. He parodies William Carlos Williams's famous (and much mocked) poem "The Red Wheelbarrow."

So much offends
about 

an orange peel
barrel 

filled with waste
water 

inside the white
house

Parody is tricky. The reader has to know something about the source or the power is lost. To assist, Fericano includes a "Notes" section in the back of the book. If you're a bit confused by "Humphrey Bogart Tries to Register at Trump University," the author refers you to Gold Hat's "stinking badges" lines to Bogie in "Treasure of the Sierra Madre." Watch the movie and return to read the poem. You'll get it. For a poet's take on the book, go to Jack Foley's review in the September "Poetry Flash," the locus of the Bay Area's poetry culture. Here's a shout-out to Flash's publisher, the indomitable Joyce Jenkins. 

So I have shelved my Trump books among ones about The Father of Our Country and The Man Who Led Us Through the Most Destructive War in Human History. Trump looks a little puny up there among the giants of history. But who knows? Number 45 may have his moment. He may surprise us yet with daring leadership skills and a presidential tenor that will ring down through the ages.

And this week, I will donate all of my books to the library bookstore and never think about them again. 

Fat chance. 

Boomers and Millennials live in different worlds when it comes to books

A university professor complained on Facebook that her upper division literature students don't know the name Gerard Manley Hopkins. Never heard of him, never read any of his work.

These youngsters have also never read Gwendolyn Brooks. They don't know Gwendolyn, they also don't know the greatest spoken word poem of all time.

The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We
Left School. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

Ms. Brooks recited that poem in a room in the CSU student union one night in 1990. It's hard to find more meaning in 24 simple words. Kind of like the poet herself -- so much talent in a tiny frame. Nobel Prize winner.

Some English majors have never heard of her. Take heart, youngsters. It took me awhile to discover our Ms. Brooks. I had to read up on her as I planned her trip from Chicago to Fort Collins. I'd never encountered her work in any of my undergrad or grad courses. I discovered her by meeting her when I was 39, a late-blooming M.F.A. student.

Better late than never. Probably won't see that over-used phrase in any good poem. And what if you did? At least you'd be reading. That seems to be the problem. Kids are reading but only certain things. Sci-fi and fantasy. Harry Potter. Superheroes. Graphic novels. Zines. Manga. Etc.

Lest I be another Baby Boomer ranting about Millennials, let me say this: "I'm not." I am glad that Millennials continue to read. Some of their reading is online and on smart phones but it's still reading.

Millennials complain about Baby Boomers, those aging humans that are parents and grandparents to new generations. Millennials are tired of Boomers asking for computer advice. Much like the techs in BBC's "The IT Crowd," many are basement dwellers surrounded by high-tech gizmos, When we call them for help, they advise us, "Have you tried turning it off and then back on?" Even worse, sometimes we call them from land lines which youngsters regard as quaint items from another century, which they are.

Other things that annoy Millennials are our tendency to accumulate things, especially old china sets and fine silver. Chris and I have three sets of china gifted to us by various relatives. Chris has art and figurines from Japan, Ethiopia, and German, parents where there army family was based. Should Antiques Roadshow ever come to Wyoming, Chris is ready to haul her treasures to the stage and rake in some cash. Our kids hope she does as they do not want to deal with them when we pass into the other realm. I am told that businesses have cropped up aimed expressly at disposing of all the collectibles Boomers leave behind. 

Books are my treasures. Many of them are in boxes in the basement. My basement-dwelling daughter occasionally brings me a box to go through, saying she will be happy to take the castoffs to the library bookstore. I open the box and cull the castoffs. Unfortunately, I often find an old favorite
or one signed by a writer friend. I insist on going through these thoroughly lest some classic should slip through my fingers. Annie comes along hours later and is flummoxed that I have added just a few volumes to the library pile while  the box remains nearly full. Often I am in my easy chair, reading a book I enjoyed decades ago. She feigns anger, vowing to wait until I die to get rid of all the books. Who cares, I say, I will be in the great library in the sky. All the universe's books will be at my fingertips. I will be able to read them in any language, including Tralfamadorian. That would be heaven.

Hell would be TrumpWorld with no books. We already live in that hell.

SANKOFA African Heritage Awareness presents Oct. 12 conference on timely topic of racism w/update

This Cheyenne conference addresses the very timely topic of racism in the U.S. 

From a press release:

Nate Breen, LCSD1 board member, to Speak at Sankofa Conference

Laramie County School District No. 1 and Wyoming State Board of Education Trustee Nate Breen will address the eighth International Africa MAAFA Remembrance Day Conference, "Wake up America and Speak!"

It begins at 9 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 12, at Laramie County Community College, 1400 East College Drive.

Breen will discuss “Civic Education and Educating to Respect Differences.”  The conference panel includes Dr. Mohamed Sahil: “(Un)Welcome to America, Historical Immigration Practices.” Dr. James Peebles will address  “The Great American Dilemma, Racial Discrimination versus Racist Ideas.”

The conference is free.

For more information, contact Jill Zarend 307-635-7094 or jillmerry@aol.com or visit www.SankofaAfricaWorld.org    

Sponsored in part by: LCCC Department of Student Engagement & Diversity; Think WY-WHC

Update 9/23/19:

The Sankofa planning committee is happy to announce the addition of three notable scholars, who have given indication to contribute to the historical MAAFA Remembrance Day on October 12: Delvin B. Oldman, Northern Arapaho Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, Wind River Reservation, Riverton, WY; Dr. Justin Conroy, Ogalalla Lakota, Principal of McCormick Junior High School, Cheyenne. Both participants will serve as stand-ins to receive from Reverend Tim Solon, The Article of Contrition to Native Americans. 

 Also joining us, Dr. Frederick Douglas Dixon, Assistant Professor of African American Studies, University of Wyoming, acknowledging the Mis-Education of the Negro, a historical writing by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, Father of Black History Month.

Cold War nuke site open for visitors on Wyoming’s high prairie

M as in Mike

I as in India

K as in Kilo

E as in Echo

That’s the spelling of my nickname in the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, commonly known as the phonetic alphabet. You’ve used it if you have a commonly misspelled name, or if you find yourself on the end of a Mumbai-based IT help line. Help: H as in Hotel, E as …….

The alphabet is helpful but can be crucial in a military operation or if you’re a pilot on an international airline flight.

Or, let’s say the unthinkable happens and you are charged with the launch of a nuclear strike from a hole in the ground beneath the frozen Wyoming prairie. “Attention Quebec Zero One, we have some bad news for you and the rest of the planet….”

It never happened at the Quebec 01 Missile Alert Facility located about 30 minutes north of my house in Cheyenne. Coincidentally, that’s the amount of time it would take from missile launch in Wyoming to detonation in the former Soviet Union. On Friday, I thought about that as we returned from our tour of Q-01, now a Wyoming State Historic Site. Born in 1950, I’ve had nightmares about a nuclear apocalypse. But it’s been awhile since those duck-and-cover drills of elementary school and the very real scare of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

My father worked at Denver-based Martin Company, later Martin-Marietta and now Lockheed Martin. He supervised subcontractors building the earlier iteration of Minuteman and MX sites – Atlas and Titan. He did that job in Colorado and Wyoming and Nebraska and Washington State and Kansas. He dragged his big family along, which gave us a unique view of the western U.S. and fodder for future therapy sessions. 

I was 11 when he arrived home from work in Wichita laden with canned goods and water jugs and commanded us all to get down in the basement. That spooky, musty place was where we were going to ride out the nuke firefight unleashed by the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba.

The fear was real. History provided a better ending, thankfully. We avoided life as cellar dwellers or death as crispy critters. Two years later, we moved to Florida. Dad’s work with nukes was over and he now turned his attention to getting Americans to the moon.

Our family history is part of the fabric of American history. Maybe that’s why I was so anxious to take my visiting sister Eileen to the state’s newest historical site. She loves history, as do I. She is eight years younger than me, so we experienced those times in dramatically different ways.  But, as curious historians, we both know what happened in the world since World War II. The nuclear age began with the twin bombings of Japan that ended World War II. The arms race began between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. that many thought would end with M.A.D. – Mutually Assured Destruction. 

The western U.S. played a major role with Los Alamos and the first tests in the New Mexico desert. Many nuke tests followed, their fallout drifting over many cities, including Denver. We were all downwinders. Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant was established between Denver and Boulder. Coloradans built plutonium triggers there. It was the site of at least one major accident that created a crop of local downwinders.

According to interpretive exhibits at Quebec 01, the government chose the interior West as hidey holes for its missiles for several reasons: Low population density (more antelope than people}; distant from the coasts and possible Russki nuclear sub strikes; the northern Rockies and Plains were closer to the Arctic Circle, the quickest missile route to Moscow and Red nuke sites. 

B-52s took off from western sites on their way to their fail-safe lines. Many a missileer did stints in the frozen wastelands of Minot and Great Falls and Cheyenne and still do. You can forgive a young airman/woman from Atlanta getting orders for Cheyenne and saying something about going to the middle of nowhere.

But I live there and it’s not so bad. I spent much of my working life touring Wyoming on behalf of the arts. You might be surprised by the art that’s created in this big semi-empty space. The humanities play a major role in our lives. Thus, we spawn some fine state parks and historic sites, even have a state agency to oversee them. Wyoming State Parks and Historic Sites employees staff the sites spread around the state. They are based at Quebec 01 to conduct tours and answer many questions posed by the curious. The site opened just three weeks ago after the feds gifted it to the state in 2010.  Staff say that it was stripped to the bone after being decommissioned in 2005. The Air Force brought back some items. Former missileers, retired airmen, and just plain collectors donated other items, such as the VHS player located next to one of the launch chairs (the TV is no longer there). The space looks fine now but it still a work in progress, according to our guide.

There are entrance fees, as there are at most state sites. If you are disabled and use a wheelchair or a walker as I do, call ahead and staff will deploy ramps over the challenging spots in the underground launch capsule. An elevator takes visitors from the topside facility and its historic exhibits to the capsule. Step off the elevator and pass through the gateway that, back in the day, could be sealed by a 30-ton blast door.

For background, go to https://wyoparks.wyo.gov/index.php/places-to-go/quebec-01. The site includes photos going back to its building in 1962 all the way to the recent renovation.

Our history, and maybe your family’ history, is just a short drive away.

Democrats' Sept. 8 fund-raiser features cake walk, garden tour

We'll save you a seat in Joe's Garden. 

Help us celebrate the final days of summer at the Laramie County Democrats Grassroots Coalition’s garden party and cake walk on Sunday, Sept. 8, 1-3 p.m. at Joe’s Garden, 3626 Dover Road, Cheyenne.

Light hors d’ouevres and desserts, as well as iced tea and lemonade, will be served. Attendees are invited to bring a cake to donate to the cake walk. Joe Corrigan will conduct tours of his award-winning garden and give tips for next year’s growing season.

Admission is $15. All proceeds go to local Democratic Party candidates running for office in the 2020 election. Come out Sept. 8 to meet and mingle with your fellow Democrats.

FMI: Mike Shay, 307-241-2903.

What are pop-up galleries and why do they matter?

My 1,600-word piece on pop-up galleries appears in the summer issue of Artscapes, the magazine of the Wyoming Arts Council. Council staff calls on me occasionally to do some free-lance work for the mag. I worked at the WAC for 25 years so I have some sense of what it takes to put out a statewide publication on a consistent basis. A print publication has appeared in many forms in the WAC's 52-year history. Artscapes is the most recent iteration and the slickest one. In fact, it is what they call in publishing a "slick," featuring a cover in coated stock and lots of color inside, like the fashion and lifestyle mags that still survive in the grocery store check-out aisle.

Pop-up businesses have been around for awhile. A clothing boutique takes over a busy downtown storefront during a summer festival. A toy store takes over a vacated mall space for Christmas. They set up, exist for a few days or a few weeks, and then disappear. It cuts down on the heavy overhead costs of a physical site. This is a real bonus in this day of failing brick-and-mortar stores. A pop-up can generate some visual excitement in a formerly empty space. And it can take advantage of increased traffic brought in by a festival or holiday.

Cheyenne is investing in a pop-up gallery trial run in its downtown. Instead of writing a whole new paragraph, here's a short explanation from my story:

May's exhibit at the Fill the Space Gallery is the first outing in a pop-up pilot program, a collaboration among local artists, the Downtown Development Association, the Cheyenne Artwalk, and Arts Cheyenne. The five-month program will feature a different theme and different artists each month. Steve Knox and his partners hope that this effort not only promotes artists but brings some after-hours life to downtown. Get more info on upcoming pop-ups on the Cheyenne Artwalk and DDA Facebook pages. 

The article goes on to profile the pop-up project at Cheyenne's Blue Door Arts and the Pop-up Artwalk scheduled each September in Laramie.

Read the rest in the print magazine or on the WAC web site.

Next Cheyenne Artwalk is set for Thursday, Aug. 8, 5-8 p.m.

When young people say "I don't feel safe here," you know you have a problem

"I don't feel safe here."

This isn't a Baltimorian, besieged in his (Trump's words) "disgusting rat and rodent infested mess" of an apartment building, one possibly owned by his slumlord son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

They aren't the words of a Salvadoran mother, fleeing with her children to an unknown and possibly worse future in The Land of the Free.

Not a Syrian fleeing his country's mess, one caused, in part, by the USA's ham-handed policies in the region.

The quote above comes from a well-educated, young Caucasian gay man who lives in Cheyenne, Wyo. I spoke to him at a recent party. I don't use his name because I do not have his permission and I'm not sure he'd give it to me if I asked. He's soon to be married and then, he and his Air Force husband, will relocate to Larimer County, Colo. That's the Colorado county that neighbors Laramie County, where he lives now and where I live too. The man and his fiance don't venture outside much, not even during our glorious summers, because they feel threatened by their neighbors. I didn't ask him if his neighbors had threatened or done violence to him. I know what he means. The couple's very presence is an affront to their conservative neighbors. And conservatives these days feel free to let their hatreds run wild. Trump and his henchmen loosed the dogs of hate. Now they unleash their venom at Trump rallies ("Send her back!") and daily in cities and towns across America.

In the Obama days, it seemed as if the U.S. was making strides in tolerating "the other." They were those who looked differently than the average white person, those who practiced a religion other than White Evangelical Protestantism (or no religion at all), and LGBTQ Americans. We should have known that just the act of electing an African-American president couldn't dampen hatreds brewing for hundreds of years. The signs were all around us. Trump's Birtherism. Rise in hate crimes. Tea Party rallies. The tilt to the Right by many state legislatures, especially our own. Even the Republican-dominated Congress's efforts to stymie Obama at every turn had racism at its roots.

With Trump, America's worst instincts have been turned loose.

Wyoming's population ages. Politicians wonder why young people, raised in the "western Way of life," nurtured in Wyoming churches and schools, and beneficiaries of full-ride UW Hathaway scholarships, kick it all over for life in crowded cities. Cities on the Rocky Mountain West have benefited from this great migration from Wheatland, Wyo., and Sterling, Colo. Denver, Salt Lake City, Boise, Albuquerque. That's where the jobs are. That's where young people congregate. They may be afraid of losing their job or their house, but they aren't scared of their neighbors who are a rainbow of ethnicities and lifestyles. They live in peace. Learn tolerance at work. They pack up their family and return to Cheyenne during CFD. Amongst the parades and night shows, they hear Rep. Liz Cheney rant about how Native Americans are ruining our "Western way of life." WTF? They read letters to the editor praising Trump's non-racism and cursing liberals. Republican legislators convene at summer meetings and speak about their latest efforts to curb open voting, immigration, LGBT rights, reproductive freedom, etc. Then they ask: "How can we keep our young people in the state."

Stop being assholes. That would be a start. Then, dear legislator, you can go about the task of funding education, alternative energy, community development, arts and culture and all those amenities that make life worth living.

Then, maybe, young people will stay in Wyoming, maybe even move back home from their $500,000 bungalow in Denver's Wash Park or their $2,000-a-month studio apartment near downtown. They won't be afraid. They will be invested in the present and future of their home towns. They will say, "I feel safe here."

1969 moon landing memories linger on the beach and in The House of the One-Eyed Seahorse

I like to think that I was a witness to history during Moon Landing Week in July 1969.

I witnessed the launch from the beach the morning of July 16. The Hartford Avenue beach approach in Daytona is located 62 miles northwest of Cape Canaveral. The Saturn 5, NASA's largest-ever launch vehicle, lit up an already bright morning and its sound waves seemed to ruffle the smooth Atlantic. The rocket arced into the sky and out to sea. It was visible only a few minutes. When it was gone, we went back in the water. Or maybe I was in the water already. I forget, as I saw so many launches during my 14 years in Florida. They merge into one big launch that shows the U.S. commitment to space exploration in the 1960s and into the 1970s. JFK showed the way with his 1961 speech. Congress shoveled money at the program as it took seriously Kennedy's vow of a man on the moon in 1969. An American man on the moon. Take that, Russkis!

It was all about the Cold War. The USSR ambushed us with Sputnik, Laika the Space Dog, and Yuri Gargarin. We fought back with Mercury and Alan Shepard and Gemini and finally Apollo. We won the Space Race with the moon landing. It was important to win something in the mid-60s, since we were losing in Vietnam and young people were lost to their elders and some of our biggest heroes were gunned down by assassins in 1968.

My father was a rocket man. He didn't fly them or test them. But he was a contract specialist with General Electric and later NASA. He worked out deals with suppliers of nuts and bolts and many of the gadgets that went to the moon. He could look at a launch with pride and announce that the big hunk of metal ferrying Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin to the moon was partly his doing. He and thousands of other Americans had worked together to get the U.S. first on the moon.

But all was not well in Rocketland. Workforce cutbacks had started two years earlier. One day, GE honchos told Dad that his services were no longer needed in Florida. He accepted a transfer to Cincinnati where GE was building all kinds of new and wonderful things. He said he would go on alone and the family would join him when school got out in June. Dad didn't like Cincinnati and we couldn't sell our house in Daytona as hundreds were leaving and  it was a buyer's market. This well-educated workforce that had come from New York and Ohio and New England in the fifties and sixties were no longer needed. It hurt Daytona. It was not exactly the Silicon Valley of the 60s. Most jobs were in the service industries that fed the tourist industry. I worked some of those jobs. Busboy, bagboy, laundry pick-up guy for beach motels, worker on a beach float stand. My brother was a gremmie selling suntan lotion by a hotel pool. One of my sisters was a nursing assistant taking care of old people who flocked to Florida's Promised Land. The engineers who made the rockets (and their families) would be missed by local businesses and schools.

But Dad grew tired of city life and found a job with NASA back on Daytona. I was happy because I had just made my high school's basketball squad after a year's worth of practice and visualized a bright future as a power forward.

On the afternoon of July 20 when Apollo 11's Eagle landed near the Sea of Tranquility, I was parked by the Atlantic Ocean with my girlfriend K. The radio news followed the ship's descent which we only partially listened to. When "The Eagle has landed" was announced, we paused our kissing and fondling for several minutes to let history wash over us. It rained heavily and the beach seemed deserted, odd for a July afternoon. Minuscule waves broke on the sandbar 50 yards in front of us. No surfing today. Once the announcers returned to just talking about the landing of the Eagle, we returned to our previous engagement.

I know the exact spot where this happened. When I'm in town, I walk by it and remember that historic afternoon. I see my rusty red Renault Dauphine with the light blue door that replaced the original, sheared off in a hasty back-up from my garage. Two people are inside, at least I think it's two people, as the windows are fogged. The spirit of that day drifts over that spot as does the memories of an eighteen-year-old me. This presence remains at the beach even when I'm back home in Wyoming. It may still be here when 68-year-old me and then (God willing) the 78-or 88-year-old me toddles down the beach, cane poking holes in the soft sand. When I'm gone, will the ethereal presence remain of the radio broadcast and the automobile and the young man and young woman, their thumping hearts and hopes and dreams? I like to think that beachgoers in 2069, parked in the same spot in their futuremobile, will pause their canoodling to listen to the voices of astronauts landing on Mars or orbiting Saturn. Maybe in the background they will hear a faded voice: "The Eagle has landed." 

That night, in The House of the One-Eyed Seahorse, I joined my family to watch Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon. The video feed was grainy but I could make out Armstrong and then Buzz Aldrin cavorting on the lunar surface. We watched on a TV that struggled to pull in signals via antennae supplemented by a coat hanger and a broken channel changer replaced by vice grips. Nine kids are tough on TVs, even ancient ones that received but three channels. We no longer live there, haven't in a long time. My brothers and sisters and I carry around those memories. Fifty years ago, we were plotting our escape. Now, in quiet times, those memories swirl in our aging heads. They also exist somewhere in the house that almost burnt down in August of '69. We could have lost everyone but for the quick actions of my sister Molly. I was on a date and running late so I salvaged one of the cars, the other one burned to a cinder in the garage where the fire started. My memories would be vastly different as a lone survivor.

This all will be on my mind as I watch film of the July 16 launch and the July 20 walk on the moon and the July 24 splashdown.

Return of the Jackson Hole Art Blog, and other arts news

I was excited to see that Tammy Christel restarted her Jackson Hole Art Blog. Back when I was the communications guy at the Wyoming Arts Council, I borrowed liberally from Tammy's blog. It was chock-full of news about Teton County arts and artists. She teased upcoming events and critiqued exhibits and happenings. She took off a couple years to take care of some family issues. Just yesterday she posted her first JHAB blog. Take time to read it.

Jackson has long been recognized as an arts hotbed in Wyoming and the region. It is the epicenter of Teton County, possibly one of the most picturesque in the country. Home of Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks, you can't open your eyes without ogling a magnificent view. Naturally, it draws landscape artists  which has enriched the community. It's been a draw for writers, too, and is home to the Jackson Hole Writers Conference every June. Residents include starving artists and conservative gazillionaires. Millions of tourists flock to Teton County for the scenery and hiking and skiing and rock climbing. There are a fair number of liberals in the mix but also conservative cranks such as Dick Cheney and Foster Friess.

This heady mix causes many Wyoming residents to insist that Jackson is not a part of Wyoming, as if it existed in its own universe which, sometimes, it does. Those same critics spend an inordinate amount of time enjoying Jackson and Wilson and Teton Village and the slopes of Jackson Hole Ski Resort. But Jackson can't be denied. It's as much a part of Wyoming as Yellowstone and coal mines and rodeo and wind. And its clout as an aesthetic destination can't be ignored.

Jackson isn't the state's only arts town. You can find out more by regularly perusing the Wyoming Arts Council web site. Many Wyoming communities have their own arts councils. Look up Pinedale Fine Arts Council, Casper's Artcore, Arts Cheyenne, and many others. Look them up on social media. Get involved locally.  Often you find that the arts in smaller communities is spearheaded by one or two residents. That can get mighty lonesome. Volunteer!

And finally, badger your legislators when they are close to home. Remind them that you are a voter who cares deeply about the arts and he/she should too. Be cordial but insistent. However, should that legislator disappoint you with crackpot bills and anti-arts behavior, you might vote for someone else or even run for office. That may sound extreme, but I have worked for more than one candidate who won or lost by fewer than 20 votes. If just 11 of those people had changed their votes, the make-up of our legislature would be different.

Now get out there and appreciate the arts. I am a front desk volunteer at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens this afternoon. Come see me and I will point out the wonderful animal sculptures by Don Ostermiller that are scattered about the grounds. I will also direct you to the art show on the conservatory's second floor. I also may remind you that all of the blooming flowers are nature's works of art. You might even see a plein air artist out in the plein air painting the scenery. I will remind you that tickets are still available for Thursday's Summer Concert Series performance by Jason Burge, the Dauphin of Mississippi who's from Mississippi, once worked at the Wyoming Humanities Council and now lives and works in New Zealand. A very talented singer/songwriter.

See you there.

The Fourth of July bash at the National Mall will feature lots and lots of Trump and big tanks -- don't forget the tanks!

In February, when Trump announced plans for his grandiose Fourth of July celebration, conservative commentator Bill Kristol responded on Twitter: 

"The last president to try to hijack July 4th was Richard Nixon, who staged Honor America Day on July 4, 1970. It was widely ridiculed. Nixon later left office in disgrace."

What's past is prologue. Trump's "Salute to America Day" on the National Mall will feature Trump (of course), VIP seating, a Soviet-style military parade with lots of hardware (tanks included), and fireworks.

There were lots of fireworks at the July 4, 1970, event, not all of it in the sky. American Nazis attended to protest Vietnam War protesters and the Yippies staging a smoke-in at the Washington Monument. Police tried to maintain a DMZ between the protesters and Silent Majority picnickers. Then that failed, park police fired tear gas at the rowdy hippies and gas clouds drifted over the multitudes. This led, as one reporter wrote, to a "mad stampede of weeping hippies and Middle Americans away from the fumes." At the same time, the U.S. Navy Band played the Star Spangled Banner from the Lincoln Memorial stage.

I was in that mad stampede. I picnicked with my buddy Pat's family. When the fumes reached us, Pat and I scrambled to lead his grandmother and younger sisters to safety. Pat and I had been tear-gassed several times that spring during campus protests of the Kent State killings. It was no fun for young people but could be dangerous for the elderly. We made it out of the gas cloud and, when the hubbub died down, we returned to our picnic. Later, we listened to Honor America Day jokes from Bob Hope and Jeannie C. Riley's version of Merle Haggard's "The Fightin' Side of Me." Then, despite the chaos or maybe because of it, we admired the bitchin' fireworks display. 

Back at Pat's family's house, Pat and I and his brother smoked a joint and remarked on the day's strange happenings. Looking back, I can see that it was a fine snapshot of those confusing times. The next day, I hitched back to Norfolk Naval Base which my buddy Paul, one of my companions on an eight-week midshipmen summer cruise on the John F. Kennedy. On Monday, I called my girlfriend in Florida to say good-bye and she broke up with me because she was tried of saying good-bye to me all of the time. .Here I was, not yet officially in the Navy, and I got a Dear John phone call. I spent the next six weeks sailing the Atlantic and sampling the aircraft carrier's many jobs. And moping, I did a lot of moping. I remember how nonsensical it all seemed. I was 19 and confusion comes with the territory.

So here it is, 49 years later, and I am still confused. Trump is president. He's staging a Nuremberg Rally an our National Mall. As it was with Nixon in 1970, there seems no end to Trump. But Nixon did come to a bad end, as even conservative stalwarts now admit. But the confusion at the National Mall on July 4, 1970, only cemented Nixon's hold on the voters. Hippies interrupting Bob Hope was just too much to bear. America needed a strongman to stem the rising tide of anarchy. So, he cruised to victory in the 1972 election. I was depressed -- I voted for the man from South Dakota, an honorable man, a warrior who wanted to stop the war.

The big question for 2019: when will we see the end of Trump? Think about that as he rants on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Independence Day.

Artists go where the cautious fear to tread

People who open businesses in downtown Cheyenne are cockeyed optimists, to steal a line from Nellie Forbush in "South Pacific."

The failure rate is sobering. Rents are high. The consumer's taste is fickle. Parking is a problem, Cheyenne is just short of the population base needed for a thriving downtown. Sometimes, it's just too damn cold to venture downtown.

And the booming cities of the Colorado Front Range are just down the road.

Still, they persevere. New restaurants are opening in Cheyenne almost as fast as others go out of business. Downtown residences are being built and people explore ways they can live in those second stories that sit empty in almost every building.

Artists are busy occupying empty spaces. I recently wrote an article for Wyofile about artists invading the Hynds Building at Capitol and Lincolnway. See my commentary and get a Wyofile link here. I just wrote an article for WAC Artscapes about pop-up galleries in Cheyenne and Laramie. That appears in the summer issue.

The Hynds is a big block of a building. Its main claim to fame was that it was built by Harry Hynds, an early settler in Cheyenne. It's been empty for decades. Next door is the infamous "Hole." Nothing says downtown redevelopment like a gaping hole on your main drag. Like a black hole, it has threatened to suck the entire downtown into oblivion.

Then came the artists. Still, they persevere.

A group of artists has moved into the Hynds, encouraged by building owner and Cheyenne native David Hatch. Arts @ the Hynds features work by Mitch Guthrie, Mike McIntosh, Kevin Robinett and Greg Fladager. Next door is Blue Doors Arts, a space occupied by Terry Kreuzer and Georgia Rowswell. On the building's east side is Three Crows Gallery & Gifts. This triumvirate gives the Hynds that live/work look, even though the artists don't live in the building. One of the many plans floated for the structure was a live/work facility by ArtSpace, a Minneapolis-based non-profit property manager. ArtSpace promoters envisioned living spaces on the upper floors and a gallery and some retail spaces on the main level. This would liven up this part of downtown. As it is now, the Cheyenne Artwalk is the best time to visit these spaces. It's held the second Thursday of each month.  Get more info at http://www.cheyenneartwalk.com/

One of the most interesting downtown exhibits is "The Hidden Language of Horses" at Clay Paper Scissors Gallery, 1513 Carey Ave. Here's a short description:

For the July Artwalk, Clay Paper Scissors will feature artwork that showcases the beauty and utility of horses. A variety of paintings, prints and mixed media will be on display from John Giarrizzo, Mark Ritchie, Lynn Newman, David Klarén and Eric Lee. The horse represents freedom, energy, strength, endurance, stamina, and power. Don’t miss this creative interpretation of one of our state and nation’s enduring symbols!

Part of Artwalk is Fill the Space Gallery. The 17th Street storefront has been the site, so far, for two versions of a pop-up gallery. Artist and art teacher Steve Knox is the catalyst for this project, supported by a collaboration among local artists, the DDA, the Cheyenne Artwalk, and Arts Cheyenne. Go see the next pop-up during the July 11 Artwalk, 5-8 p.m. Go here for the list of artists.