Hunkered down at the pop-up drive-in on a May Wyoming evening

Our first public outing of the COVID-19 era was to a combination drive-in concert and movie. It was held in a pasture on the Terry Bison Ranch south of Cheyenne. It had a gentle slope so cars could park and most of us could see the inflatable screen and the covered bandstand. 

When we arrived about 7:15 p.m., a line of cars, trucks and SUVs stretched out of the ranch onto the I-25 service road. Chris said it was a sign that everyone is just aching to get out and do something normal and fun. I agreed. A great idea that entertains and keeps us safe. Kudos to the ranch and Blue Pig Productions. They planned for everything including the rain squall that swept through just as the headliner band started playing. We had seen the storm front assembling as we drove to the event along Terry Ranch Road. A typical one for late May. A black swatch against the sun lowering over the Rocky Mountains. Pretty and ominous. But these storms are hit or miss. Sometimes you get missed and sometimes you get hit. 

This one hit us just as we got settled into our space. The sounds of the warm-up band came over the car radio at 90.7 FM. Raindrops speckled the windshield as Sean Curtis and the Divide took the stage. As the band played the rain fell harder, swamping our windshield and the band. But they performed uninterrupted until the lead guitarist's amp shorted out and he had to flee. The rest of the band members played on, wet and cold. "I can't feel my fingers" said the bass guitarist after one of the songs. But they played on. Good stuff, too. A C/W band with a touch of alt-country and Americana, a sound a bit like Drive-By Truckers or Turnpike Troubadours. 

The emcee, Dominic Syracuse, had prompted us to applaud by honking our horns. We did. By the time the band wrapped up their last song, the sky was clearing and the sun colored pink the retreating clouds. 

We picnicked in the car. Daughter Annie joined Chris in a preemptive strike at the port-a-potties. Annie returned with some chicken nuggets and fries from the snack stand. I ate ham and cheese and crunched chips. Cookies for desert. I drank sparingly because I didn't want to face the trip to the johns with my walker. I would have felt silly, all those people staring at the poor cripple poking along on the prairie. I don't know why I should care but I do. More my problem than anyone else. 

Everyone returned to the car and the movie started after some of the staff adjusted the screen that kept tilting in the post-storm wind. Wyoming not the place for anything inflatable. We're seen inflatable Halloween and Christmas decorations flying down our street. Unanchored bounce castles have gone airborne in summer gusts. A brisk wind came through the annual Superday event a few years back and blew tent awnings and brochures and hot-dog wrappers to Nebraska. 

But "Back to the Future" came on with the darkness. There was only a brief period when the wind tilted the screen and the actors' heads disappeared. I forgot how much fun the movie was as I hadn't seen it for decades. I didn't think of COVID-19 for two hours. That's what it's about, right? We want it like the old days when people could venture out safely and go to concerts and drive-ins. We want to be closer to people that a car-length away but that's still in the future. 

The ranch staff cleared us out quickly. They had some cleaning-up to do and we had the trek home via the interstate. I hope the ranch does it again. This high-risk guy wants to stay safe but I also want to be back out in America again. Summertime America. It's a short season here in the High Plains. Short and glorious.

See you next time. 

Still sort-of hunkered down somewhere in Wyoming

Listening to "Dear Prudence" on WPR's Throwback Thursday. Song from the Beatles White Album. Not sure if I bought the White Album but listened to it a thousand times. Many of the songs were in the movie "Across the Universe," a movie that tugged at the nostalgia that comes with the 1960s.

Beautiful morning here in the High Plains. Heard some good news yesterday. The Cheyenne Botanic Gardens Conservatory opens for business on June 2. Only the ground floor will be open. Each group gets an hour to tour so more people can visit. Not sure how we're supposed to time them. "All right, people. Scram. Your hour's up. Vamoose!" Still, it shows a slight return to normalcy. I've been in touch with the staff over the shutdown. Talked to Amelia to see if we could arrange an August literary reading at the Conservatory. Amelia said that she's not booking anything new for the summer. They are going to rent out rooms for paying customers but nothing new until fall. Rick Kempa of Rock Springs asked me to schedule a summer reading for his new book and mine. I will try the library.

Masked up yesterday and ventured out to Lowe's to buy some plants and replace a window screen. I got the plants but no screen. I did get my money back. I had to wait in line six feet behind the first customer. Two people behind me. My cart was filled with plants, herbs and a few veggies, and some potting soil. The clerk, not happy, gave me my money back and pointed out the aisle where I could find screens if there were any. There weren't. Did find some twine to make a trellis for my herb rack. Trying to do everything on the cheap in this pandemic year. I planted herb seeds in egg cartons and then into pots. But two weeks later and no sprouts. The egg carton approach does not work for me. The soil and the egg carton gets soggy and I think it damages the seeds. Anyway, as I dug up the transplants yesterday there were no seedlings there, nothing of anything. I replaced the nothing with something. I had requested the free seeds from the library seed bank and thought I would be growing my garden from scratch this year. The other day I did plant seeds for cukes, pea pods, and pole beans and am waiting for them to sprout. I have two growing racks on the back porch that get full morning and early afternoon sunshine. I'll be doing more transplanting today.

Local business are opening up. A new downtown craft brewery opened on Monday. Black Tooth Brewery's second location -- its first in downtown Sheridan. During my work travels I visited the Sheridan site and liked it. Sheridan has a neat downtown with lots of indie businesses. Great coffee shop that I frequented when I was at the Jentel Foundation writing a novel that I am now going to finish. The pandemic has been deadly for indie businesses and reviving downtowns. Trends for the last decade have been toward gathering places most located in downtowns that had seen better days and were trying to come back. Black Tooth is the fourth microbrewery in downtown Cheyenne. They've been closed since March 18 except for takeout and the brewing of hand sanitizer. Chronicles Distillery downtown made lots of hand sanitizer and I bought nine spray bottles since none could be found in the grocery stores. Chronicles donated most of their supply to health workers, hospitals and clinics. Then they started peddling the goods to the citizenry. I ordered online and then pulled up outside for the exchange of the goods. Other customers were ordering some of the locally brewed whiskey and vodka which is a whole different kind of sanitizing..

Chris, Annie and I will attend a concert and drive-in movie Saturday night at the Terry Bison Ranch. Tickets for each car were $25 and we registered online. Must stay in our cars which may be a challenge for those of us of a certain age who need to pee. Not sure how we will manage. Might have to leave mid-way through "Back to the Future."

It's ugly on the national scene. Our ugly president wants to reopen the economy no matter how many people it kills. 93,000-plus have died in the U.S., and there are probably many more that went uncounted. The U.S. leads the world in confirmed cases. There's been no direction from the federal government and that's a crime that Trump and the G.O.P. will have to answer for it at the ballot box. Trump is trying to prevent people from voting by mail but this is a state responsibility and not a federal one. Democratic Party-led states are having none of the president's blather and neither am I. I ordered a mail-in ballot and plan to use it. The better the turnout the more likely it is that we can get rid of the criminal element in D.C.

Chris, Annie and I continue to take safety precautions. Annie wears a mask during her shifts at Big Lots. Chris and I wear masks going out and if someone needs to come in the house.

Wyoming reports 11 deaths statewide with more than 500 confirmed cases. The worst hot spot is on the Wind River Reservation in Fremont County. The Navajo Nation in Arizona has more per capita cases than New York and New Jersey, the epicenters of the virus. Very sad. Minority communities in urban centers are being hit hard. All of this points out the many holes that exist in our slapdash health care system. And did I mention that the GOP-led feds are clueless in the face of a national emergency?

Barrasso and his GOP pals have a COVID-19 message: Forget Trump, Blame China

Note of paranoia from Wyoming Senator/Sawbones John Barrasso.

Somehow I got on his email list. I haven’t yet unsubscribed because it is so telling to see what he’s sending out to his broader constituency.

On May 1, I received an e-mail with some helpful hints about the pandemic. It opens on a hopeful note: “We are all in this together.” I had to laugh. Together? The senator, thanks to deluded Wyoming R voters and those who stayed home, has a guaranteed job through 2024. A guaranteed paycheck and staff goes with it as does health care paid for by you and me. He can get a COVID-19 test whenever he wants. He’s become a millionaire since going to Congress. If Trump is reelected and the GOP keeps its majority in the Senate, Republican Barrasso will be up for a major leadership role. Meanwhile, he joins #MoscowMitch in opposition to the new stimulus bill approved by the House and now a-mouldering on Mitch’s desk.

In an interview on, of course, Fox, Barrasso said that :

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "must be living on Fantasy Island" if she thinks her $3 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill will become law…. It's bloated and partisan, and it's a payout to her liberal constituencies. 

Barrasso may look thin on TV but he's usually all about being bloated and partisan. Remember, he voted for Trump’s tax cut for the rich and he hovers around #MoscowMitch in every blasted press photo and every televised news conference.

In the meantime, Barrasso and his right-wing pals stir up a war with China. It’s a dandy way to take our minds off of Trump’s ineptitude in handling this health crisis. Here’s his May 8 message, courtesy of Friend of John Barrasso:

The coronavirus has changed our daily lives and brought our economy to a standstill. 

We’ve had to adjust to social distancing and making tough calls between health and safety, and keeping essential parts of our country going. 

China’s response, or lack thereof, led to our current pandemic, shutting entire countries and the global economy down. Rather than warn the world, it appears the Chinese government chose to cover up their deadly mistake.  

Mike, China has a history of being a bad actor, from human rights violations to privacy concerns, and their role in the coronavirus pandemic is no different. We must hold China accountable - will you add your name to our petition? 

SIGN THE PETITION 

We must stand together to hold China responsible. Not only did China choose to withhold information about the virus, they have been actively pushing propaganda and attempting to deflect blame to the United States. 

We must take a stand. Add your name to join us in holding China accountable. 

HOLD CHINA ACCOUNTABLE 

Thank you for your commitment to our fight, 

Team Barrasso

I disabled the links as I don’t want to lead you astray. If you must blame China, don’t buy anything at a big box store or in one of America’s disappearing malls. That’ll show ‘em.

Pandemic Days: Wyoming Legislature convenes and experts try to get a handle on virus death count

Our legislature gathers for a short special session tomorrow to decide how to divvy up the federal pandemic stimulus funds. I’d vote to give it all to hospitals and health care workers especially those in smaller communities. These small hospitals have been hit hard by lack of elective surgical procedures which pay most of the bills. They could also be helped by Medicaid expansion. Unfortunately, the majority-GOP lege has decided to once again study the issue until the Obamacare-related program rides off into the sunset just like Obama.

Governor Gordon has stipulated that the opening of the state shall proceed in a step-by-step plan that most seem to be ignoring. Social distancing and mask-wearing have been crucial in stemming the COVID-19 tide. The state has registered 600-some cases and only seven deaths. We see numbers similar to those in neighboring Montana and South Dakota, other places where social distancing is the norm. Populous Colorado, on the other hand, has more than 20,000 cases and 1,009 deaths. Neighboring Weld County on our southern border shows 2,190 cases, the fourth-highest tally in the state – the top three are in the Denver metro area.

Whenever my wife and I go out, we wear masks and carry hand sanitizer. We had a dryer delivered yesterday because our old one conked out. The delivery guys showed up with no masks so we happily lent them some. They put them on once we explained our high-risk status. Chris and I are both Democrats and are much more open to COVID-19 due to our Godless status and opposition to Donald Trump. Governors of hard-hit urban states have been labeled “blue-state whiners” when they complain about lots of death and no testing or PPE for health care workers. Apparently health care workers in red states just quietly get sick and die. Especially vulnerable are staff members in nursing homes and long-term health facilities. One-third of U.S. fatalities come out of those places. Since retirees congregate in warm places such as Florida, Arizona, and Texas, many of the casualties are from those states. My stepmother was one of them (see previous post).

Other visitors to our house have included Instacart delivery people. They don’t come in but leave the groceries on the porch. We had the crew from Skyline Solar here ten days ago to install the wiring and panels for going solar. They wore masks to the job at our request and were very nice. One young worker was tasked with adding support beams in our attic. It couldn’t have been easy working in our hot attic while wearing a mask and work gloves. When he reappeared, he was drenched in sweat. The electricians were in and out and wore masks. 

Our house was built in the middle of the previous century so needed some upgrading to join the 21^st century. They installed a new breaker box on the patio wall and tackled the interior breaker box with a mixture of awe and frustration. We have one of those punchbox types so popular in the 1950s and woefully inadequate in 2020. The electrician said he could replace it with a new breaker box but it was a bit expensive for our current budget. So we had to make do.

Annie is a Millennial so she orders food via Door Dash and all of the rest. A few days ago she ordered a chocolate pie. I like pie but the only kind I’ve had delivered is a pizza pie, a name that’s fallen out of favor. Chris and I now are used to the doorbell ringing and opening the door to find a sandwich or wings or burger in a bag on the porch. We wipe them down when we bring them in. All of us have to trust in the cleanliness of the purveyor when it comes to the making and bagging of the food. It would be so much easier if stainless steel bots did all of the work but we’re not there yet. Before the pandemic, most fast-food outlets took pride in assembling your order while you watched. Subway is a prime example. So is Chipotle. Not sure how that will change when bistros return to some sort of normalcy.

One thing about COVID-19 deaths. This morning’s New York Times carried a Nicholas Kristof op-ed about the virus’s true death count. It’s not a number that Trump will like but it’s more in keeping with what experts such as Dr. Fauci say. Taking into account “excess deaths” during the first seven weeks of the pandemic ending April 25, the U.S. has already passed the 100,000 casualties mark. In the early weeks of the plague, people were dying of COVID-19 but because they had other maladies and they were elderly, their deaths were logged in as heart failure, respiratory failure, acute dementia, etc.

I know at least one example of this in my own family. My stepmother bore a litany of health issues before the virus snuck into her nursing home and killed her. But the cause of death wasn’t listed as such until she was swabbed for COVID-19 at the medical examiner’s office because she came from a nursing home experiencing an outbreak. The test came back positive. So, her death was not recorded properly by the State of Florida. That state’s excess death count is estimated by the NYT as 1,800. In Wyoming, its 100 which puts our tally at 107 instead of 7.

We don’t really know what we’re dealing with. Coronavirus causes strange sicknesses in children. It applies the coup de grace to old people in nursing homes and the younger workers who take care of them. So many outbreaks have occurred in these facilities from Florida to Colorado. A tragedy and a travesty. In the nurturing industries, the people we pay least work with our young children and our old people. It’s almost like we didn’t care about our future and our past. Our present isn’t doing so well either.

Telling the story behind the statistic

My stepmother died at a Florida nursing home on April 9. She was 94 and suffering from an assortment of maladies. She had end-stage celebral atherosclerosis. She was blind and bedridden and very weak.

It was coronavirus that dealt the final blow.

Our family didn't know it at the time. Her obituary said nothing about coronavirus because nobody knew she was yet another COVID-19 casualty. The nursing home, the Opis Coquina Center in Ormond Beach, Fla., said nothing. It was only through the efforts of the Daytona Beach News-Journal and other Florida papers that the medical examiner's office issued the names of those in nursing homes diagnosed, mostly post-mortem, with COVID-19.

This is from an April 20 article in the News-Journal by Nikki Ross:

Constance Shay, 94, was an Ormond Beach woman with coronavirus, who died of end stage cerebral atherosclerosis on April 9 at Opis Coquina Center, a nursing home in Ormond Beach, according to the Volusia County Medical Examiner’s report. 

Her medical history includes coronavirus, vascular dementia, hypertension, GERD and atherosclerosis. 

Since Shay resided at Opis Coquina Center, which has an active COVID-19 outbreak, her cremation was flagged. She was swabbed for COVID-19. 

She’d been a patient of the nursing home since 2016. Over the years her health declined and by February 2018 she was unable to care for herself or make decisions, and she had lost a significant amount of weight. She was placed in hospice. 

Her death is not included on the Florida Department of Health’s list of coronavirus related deaths.

The newspaper article was the first time that any of us, including my Florida siblings, knew about this. The newspapers dug deep to get this info and find out that the many of the Central Florida nursing home deaths were not included in the state's count of coronavirus-related fatalities. This is crucial because Florida is one of those states accused of undercounting the death count for political reasons. The Florida Office of Health reported this morning that more than 40,000 in the state have tested positive and 1,735 have died.

Today's New York Times had this:

While just 11 percent of the country’s cases have occurred in long-term care facilities, deaths related to COVID-19 in these facilities account for more than a third of the country’s pandemic fatalities. 

At least 28,100 patients and workers have died at nursing homes and long-term care facilities for the elderly.

None of this tells us who Constance Shay was as a person. She was Connie to us. She and my dad married in 1992. Both had lost spouses. My father had been devastated by my mom's death of ovarian cancer in 1986. The CPA was keeping busy doing people's taxes when he dropped by Connie's house to square her with the IRS. One thing led to another and they got married and stayed that way until my father died of prostate cancer in 2002. Connie stayed in Ormond Beach and eventually sold her house and moved into a long-term care facility. The last time I visited from Wyoming she had lost most of her sight. My sister and brother-in-law came over from Winter Park to visit and chat and read to her. She had other visitors from the family that remains in Florida, which is quite a crowd.

Connie was a lifelong Catholic like my father and they attended mass together every Sunday. One of their hobbies was tending to the flower gardens at St. Brendan Catholic Church, the same place Chris and I were married in 1982. They also had a verdant garden at their home. They both read a lot.

They are both gone now. I don't know if I will one day meet with them in heaven because I am no longer certain there is such a place. But I do know that we are made of stardust that will be floating around the heavens for eternity. We will run into each other somewhere in the cosmos. I hope to tell my birth mother and my father that we found a cure for cancer at long last. I hope to tell Connie that nobody ever died alone again and had the real cause of their death printed 11 days later in the morning paper.

Hospital stories on Nurse Appreciation Day

On the one side, you have Trump and his narcissistic minions.

On the other, you have nurses.

I align myself with nurses. They are on the front lines of the fight against coronavirus. They run toward the danger and, thanks to the Trump administration's incompetence, lack the necessary PPE to keep COVID-19 at bay.

Today is Nurse Appreciation Day and it launches National Nurses Week which ends on Florence Nightingale's birthday on May 12. They should be celebrated everywhere and every time. Mostly nurses are taken for granted until we are gasping for breath with COVID-19 or, in my case, from a heart attack.

I lie in the hospital bed in the ER. I am hooked up to oxygen and poked and prodded by doctors and nurses and techs. Chris is with me so she holds my hand when she can. When she can't and the nurses are tending to me, I feel a strange sense of calm.

I see my mother's face in theirs. She was a nurse from 21 to her early death at 59. Tomorrow, May 7, is her birthday. Happy 95th birthday, Mom. She took care of strangers and she nursed her family. I was born in December of 1950 at Denver's Mercy Hospital. Mom trained there at the tail end of the war thanks to the U.S. Navy and the Sisters of Mercy. She worked there when I was born. Later she joked that she was working the night I was born and took off a few minutes to deliver me and then was back at her job. The truth is that Mom took a week off to chill in the hospital after each birth. It was important the first time out with me. It was even more crucial in the 1960s when she had 5-6 kids at home and needed a break as the new ones arrived.

She could have been the poster child for nurses' week. We came to her for our miseries. As a nursing supervisor at a Florida hospital, staff members came to her to unburden themselves. For awhile, I was both -- son and employee. A university dropout with a low draft lottery number, I figured that I would surf and work as I waited for the inevitable. I worked an as orderly or nursing assistant, now known as Certified Nurse Assistants (CNA). People actually go to school for this now and I'm glad of it. Me and my coworkers got OJT. The nurses were patient and, at times, stern. There were a couple nurses we didn't challenge. We didn't mess with Mom, either, although her management style was more encouragement than stern lectures.

I do admit here and now that sometimes, taking temps and inserting catheters, I was a bit stoned. When my coworkers Jim and Sharon picked me up at  6:45 a.m., a smoke cloud greeted me when I opened the car door. When we abandoned the car for work ten minutes later, the cloud followed us inside. It's a wonder we never were caught. We tried to cover up our shenanigans with after-shave and perfume. One day I heard a nurse proclaim that she always liked Jim to work at her station because he always smelled so good. A blend of Jamaican herb and Hai Karate. I can still smell it 49 years later.

My youthful indiscretions faded at my next job as orderly. I worked the graveyard shift at Shriners' Burns Institute in Boston. It was a serious place. All patients were children under 18 who had sustained bad burns. House fires, electrocutions, accidents, and, yes, child abuse. The staff of nurses and nursing assistants were all young and energetic even at 3 a.m. Some of the NAs were enrolled in nursing school. My girlfriend Sharon (the same Sharon) was making plans to return to school, this time for a nursing degree. I was thrilled when the nursing supervisor brought me into her office one day and offered me a nursing school scholarship paid for by the hospital. I was doing good work, she said. I thanked her and said I would think about it. It felt good to be noticed. I talked about it with Sharon and on long-distance calls with Mom from the corner pizza parlor (we didn't have a phone). But I already knew my answer. My practical side urged me to do it. But I was just beginning to explore my creative side.

I blame it on the Boston Phoenix and The Real Paper. Both were distributed weekly on Boston streets I always snagged both of them and read them from cover to cover before I settled into my daytime sleep. The writing, at turns, was spectacular and sloppy. The subjects tended to revolve around the counterculture which is where I placed myself. Music, books, politics, wacko cults and conspiracy theories. I also liked reading Boston's daily papers. They were in their heyday in 1972 and 1973. Dynamic political coverage and great sports sections. But they ignored most of the topics the Phoenix reveled in.

The alternative press ruined me. I wanted to be a writer. Nursing was a great calling and would provide a steady income. Maybe my girlfriend and I could attend the same nursing school and work at the same Boston hospital..

But I wanted something else. I quit my job, returned to Florida, and went back to school as an English major. Write and teach, teach and write. That was what I wanted to do and that is mainly what I did.

Mom is just one generation of nurses in the family. My grandmother, Florence Green Shay, was an army nurse in World War I and two of my sisters are nurses. Another sister works at a Florida hospice center. I am so glad that nurses are getting their due during this plague. Let's keep them safe and pay them what they deserve. .

In the spring of 2020, we live in an absurdist novel

People are struggling. They are sick and dying; their businesses are shuttered or they are unemployed, either for the duration or for good. Many are caught in a virus hot zone such as New York City or New Orleans. Health workers battle it out with an invisible enemy every day. Sometimes, the enemy wins.

Sometimes you eat the bear and, sometimes, well, he eats you.

As in The Big Lebowski, the world is, at turns, hilarious and deadly serious. Creative types take to Zoom and Instagram to sing, dance, and read poetry. Poetry, especially, is a balm for hard times. I've been reading a lot of it. It's also a counterweight to the heavy and feckless hand of Trump. Whenever he weighs in, I feel like Atlas with the weight of the celestial heavens on my shoulders. Trump should be like Roosevelt or Churchill, sharing the weight with regular folks and, sometimes, removing it altogether. But he lacks all empathy and compassion and leadership skills.

For now, we're stuck with him. His minions, too, like Turtle-face McConnell and the right-wing wing of the Supreme Court and the knuckleheads with guns who barge into state capitol buildings. All this repulses me. And, as a writer, it fascinates me. I am a big fan of absurdist lit with big themes: Catch-22, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Good Soldier Schweik, anything by Terry Southern (Dr. Strangelove, Candy, etc.), Fran Liebowitz, National Lampoon writers, Lewis Nordan and other writers whom I can't remember right now. As I said, though, I'm reading poetry which is more about feelings and images that ripping off the mask of contemporary society. It's about that, too, but primarily the power of words. So much great poetry is short.

"The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell:

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

"The Pool Players: Seven at the Golden Shovel" by Gwendolyn Brooks. 

Sylvia Plath wrote "Poppies in October" on her last birthday following several suicide attempts. Her next attempt would be fatal.

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly – 

A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky  

Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.  

Oh my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frosts, in a dawn of cornflowers.

Not many of us could write so movingly of deep depression. And we can forgive her for palely and flamily, her turning strong adjectives into pale adverbs. But they work with carbon monoxides and eyes dulled to a halt under bowlers. She wrote this while living in London in the 1950s when men wore bowler hats. It invokes a grey day in London, crowds of faceless men wearing bowler hats.

You could say that these are depressing poems, and you would be right. But life is not a sitcom or a stand-up comedy routine. I take that back -- it is those and a thousand other things. Plath's last stanza echoes what happens to most of us if we live long enough and experience enough horror. Late-blooming poppies that "cry open" amidst the frost while dawn brings beautiful cornflowers.

I leave you with a Dad joke. These are the dumb jokes Dads tell which elicit groans and may be remembered fondly by their kids. The joke, as always, is on us.

Helvetica and Times Roman walk into a bar.
"Get out," shouts the bartender. "We don't serve your type here."

After hunkering down, what comes next?

Excellent article in The Atlantic about how the pandemic will change the nation's retail businesses and our cities. I've always loved these long-form articles and remember reading each print issue of The Atlantic from front to back. I now pick and choose on the mag's reader-friendly web site. There is a limit of the number of freebies you get each month. Annual online subscriptions are $49.99. Crucial to support those pubs that allow us to think bigger than we do on Twitter.

So what will COVID-19 do to retail such as restaurants? It's the end of so many of those quirky city joints that serve Ethiopian or Moroccan or Salvadoran. Many are not going to make it through the crisis as they have limited cash reserves and won't be able to survive to the normal with fewer customers spread further apart. Same goes for bars and brewpubs. The raucous atmosphere is what we crave along with our IPA. Quaint bistros, places that serve organic chocolates and exotic teas, they'll be gone too. Those city rents are killers and you have to sell a lot of notions to make ends meet. Millennials won't find a shopless Adams-Morgan in D.C. or Denver's LoDo very appealing and they will leave all those cool lofts and walk-up apartments for cheaper pastures in smaller cities and even the burbs. Chains will take over downtowns and we will be bored to tears with the same ol' same ol'.

It's not just Millennials. Raise your hand if you know retired Boomers who have downsized their suburban digs for lively downtown lofts or small condos? I'm raising both hands. One only has to leave Cheyenne and drive to Colorado's Front Range to see what that looks like (wear your masks!). When I was a grad student in Fort Collins in the 1980s, nightlife was lively in Old Town FoCo but nobody lived there. Lots of new buildings have brought hundreds downtown, young and old. Loveland has a revived downtown. Greeley, too. Denver is Denver and Boulder is Boulder. Problem is, you need big money to live in these downtowns. Some have set aside affordable housing with the unaffordable. A few years ago when our daughter lived in Denver, we spent the New Year's weekend at the downtown convention center hotel. We were waiting for our car and chatted with one of the valet guys. He pointed over to the old Denver Dry Goods Building on California and said he lived there. He told us they set aside a number of affordable units with the pricey ones, although he had to get on a waiting list and wait for two years. The kooky Northern Hotel in Old Town FoCo was renovated and now houses low-income seniors. Chris and I don't qualify but it seemed like a cool place to live.

Affordability is an issue. Those of us who worked for Wyoming wages usually fall into a netherworld. We've paid down on our Cheyenne houses but really can't sell and move to a $300,000 Colorado condo. Strangely enough, new condos in Cheyenne also are unaffordable and there are no new nifty retirement developments as options. Retired friends who've moved to Colorado (and there are many) either moved to Front Range cities before the housing boom or bought in smaller mountain communities that aren't Aspen or Vail. All of them are liberals looking for a friendlier political climate.

Back to The Atlantic article. Winter is coming! Maybe not winter -- let's call it autumn, after the leaves fall and before big snows. Big changes are in the works and many lives will be upended. We love cities but will have to experience them as visitors. Some of those urban amenities will no longer exist but enough will survive to offer us plays and concerts and good food. Not sure how DCPA performances of The Book of Mormon and Hamilton and Hadestown will look. We won't be jammed together feeling the rush of excitement that comes with it.

COVID-19 has changed almost everything. More surprises to come...

To see today's COVID-19 briefing from WyoFile, go here.

In the COVID-19 era, what happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas

For my novel set in 1919 Denver, I've conducted research on World War I, women's suffrage, Prohibition, transportation, and the Flu Pandemic of 1918-19. There's plenty of info on all of them. The most chilling stories outside of Europe's trench warfare come from the pandemic. I was rereading historian Phil Roberts' account of the flu pandemic in Wyoming. It originally appeared on wyohistory.org and reprinted recently on wyofile. This was part of a story in the Thermopolis newspaper on Jan. 8, 1919:

“Entering the home of a neighbor a few days ago J. B. Baer, of Ismay, found the farmer and his wife with two children lying dead in their beds, a third child dying on the floor. All were victims of influenza. The last child died shortly after he had been taken to another ranch for treatment. Indications showed that the entire family had been stricken together and had died partly from starvation, being unable to help each other.”

Wyoming's Bighorn Basin was the last part of Wyoming to be settled at the turn of the 20th century. You can still see a whole lot of wide open in the Basin. Imagine how it looked in 1918, a few decades after settlers wandered in. More than likely, that neighbor in the article lived miles away instead of right next door. Wyoming's towns had it tough enough in the 1918 pandemic with proximity breeding contagion. Just think how it would be if you lived miles from nowhere in winter-bound WYO, caught the flu and brought it home to the family.  

CNN featured an opinion piece by John Avion on the pandemic's course in Denver. The flu had swept through the only city of any size in the northern Rockies. The mayor called for a shutdown in October. Flu cases subsided and in early November and the city decided to  have a parade to celebrate the armistice. A week later, the flu came back with a vengeance. On Nov. 22, new cases began to spike and on Nov. 27, the Denver Post featured this headline: "All Flu Records Smashed in Denver in Last 24 Hours." All told, 8,000 people died in Colorado, compared to 700-800 in Wyoming.

Avion sums up his piece this way:

As Harry Truman said, "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know." Public health is among the most difficult government actions -- when actions work they seem like overreactions. What's unforgivable is for leaders to remain willfully ignorant of history and therefore doomed to repeat it. Their weak-kneed decisions could result in the death of someone you love.

Think about this as we see governors such as Brian Kemp in Georgia want to open up tattoo parlors and gyms. Or when a mayor such as Carolyn Goodman in Las Vegas offers up her city to be the country's  "control group" for removing strict social distancing measures. 

Hate to tell the mayor this but when COVID-19 parties in Vegas, it does not stay in Vegas. 

I could protest the protests but I'd be a hypocrite for it

The Wyoming governor updates us regularly on the coronavirus pandemic. A good thing, since he's come under fire for both not issuing a mandatory stay-at-home order and for issuing a suggested stay-at-home order. He issued several orders that closed businesses and schools.

On Monday, Gov. Mead walked put of the capitol building to speak to a crowd of people protesting the Gov's stay-at-home suggestions and mandatory closures. Following cues from right-wing social media sites, protesters have gathered at state capitols to vent their spleens. Their constitutional rights are being trod on because the Gov won't let them die in their own stupid way. They've held rallies in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Colorado, to name a few. More to come...

The president eggs them on as do GOP activists. We high-risk Boomers stay at home and wonder how many of these protesters will get COVID-19 and infect others. Chris and I have attended some memorable protests in our day, including Cheyenne's first Women's March in 2017 and a big Occupy rally in Denver. I'me marched against several wars although now the conflicts just blend in together. I protested the Vietnam War in 1970 and 1971 and the Nicaraguan Contra War in the 1980s. I joined a friend's family at the Honor America Day Rally on the National Mall in the summer of 1970. We ran for cover when tear gas clouds drifted over the picnicking Silent Majoritarians as the cops misjudged wind direction when gassing the Yippies smoking pot below the Washington Monument.

I believe that everyone deserves a right to protest, no matter the cause. I attended some of the Tea Party rallies in 2010-2011 on the state capitol grounds. The crowd mostly made up of white people my age -- over 60. Many looked just like me. Gray-haired (or bald), wearing glasses, probably lugging around a per-existing condition or two. I listened to the speeches and wondered how my sensibilities were so different from theirs. Some are white supremacists without knowing it. Others know it and show it with their signs and stars-n-bars flags. I didn't know it at the time but these were the same people who went to the 2016 polls in droves to elect Trump. And now they're back out yelling about the COVID-19 hoax and governors stomping on their constitutional right to die at work.

So, protest away, all you White Lives Matter people. I can be understanding to a certain point. Not as understanding as Gov. Gordon, who spoke over shouts from the angry crowd Monday. The best revenge is to get to the polls and elect Democrats. Wyoming now is a one-party state kind of like North Korea and the countries of the old Soviet bloc. Trump and his GOP minions like it that way.

They must go.

Coronavirus impacts the West's writers, artists and performers

Millions of Americans await federal stimulus checks or unemployment benefits during the current crisis. Artists are entrepreneurs (artrepreneurs if you prefer) and have been hit hard by social distancing and stay-at-home orders or, in Wyoming, stay-at-home-pretty-please-why-don't-ya. Galleries and museums are closed. Touring musicians are at home. Literary events (readings, book signings, spoken-word performances) don't have venues. Some artists have transitioned to an Internet presence by hosting online concerts, drawing classes and poetry workshops. But, as with most online efforts, it's sometimes difficult to make them pay. For writers, libraries and bookstores are shuttered. On the plus side, online book sales are up. Amazon is an OK resource -- it started with books -- but best to order from one of the indie stores such as Powell's in Portland or Tattered Cover in Denver. 

For writers, resources are available:

The Wyoming Arts Council is sensitive to the inherent economic challenges that are rising in relation to the CDC recommendations for social distancing. In the midst of this ever evolving situation, we will be processing grants to eligible individual artists who have lost significant income due to COVID-19. The Wyoming Arts Council believes that artists must be able to maintain their livelihood during this time in order to continue to create and contribute to the creative economy in our state. To apply visit: https://forms.gle/CPjpEif4adh7jsaY9 or contact Taylor Craig at taylor.craig@wyo.gov or 307-274-6673.

PEN America is supporting writers affected by the crisis through the Writers’ Emergency Fund, with grants of “$500 to $1,000 based on applications that demonstrate an inability to meet an acute financial need, especially one resulting from the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak.” They expect to take 10 days to review and respond to applications.

Summer is an incredibly busy time for writing conferences. For obvious reasons, locales in the West are popular sites. Some, especially those scheduled for early in the summer, have been cancelled, postponed or shifted online.

The Wyoming Writers Conference, originally planned for Lander June 5-7 has been canceled. Visit the conference’s website for additional information. WWI President Kathy Bjornstad said this: "We are tentatively hoping to travel to Lander in 2021 and shift as much of our programming to that conference as possible."

The Jackson Hole Writers Conference, originally planned for June 2020, has been canceled. In response to the cancellation, starting in late April 2020, select components of the originally scheduled programming will be offered online, including workshops, panels, and manuscript critiques. Visit the conference’s website for additional information on the cancellation and on alternative online programming. 

The Squaw Valley Writers Workshops, July 6-13, have been postponed. Workshops in fiction, nonfiction, and memoir have been canceled; the 2020 summer workshop in poetry will be offered online as the “Virtual Valley” from June 20-27. Visit the conference’s website for more info.

Summer Words set for June in Aspen has shifted online. FMI: http://www.aspenwords.org/programs/summer-words/

The Northern Colorado Writers Conference was cancelled and rescheduled for April 29-May 1, 2021, in Fort Collins. FMI: https://www.northerncoloradowriters.com/Conference

Montana's Beargrass Writers Workshop retreat set for May at Ruby Springs has been cancelled. Get updates at https://www.beargrasswriting.com/rubyspringmay

Hunkered down, somewhere in Wyoming, part 7

As of the end of the day on April 15, the U.S. had reported 639,628 COVID-19 cases. Confirmed deaths are 30,980. New York leads the list with more than 14,000 deaths. New York has been one of the nation's hot spots and the daily counts blow my mind.

Just to compare, last Wednesday, April 8, the U.S. led the pack with 432,132 confirmed cases and almost 15,000 deaths. Confirmed cases haven't doubled in a week but the deaths have. A sobering reminder of the pandemic's scope. Wyoming is showing 287 cases and two deaths with Laramie County in front with 64 cases. Just 6,329 have been tested which is woefully inadequate.

Our family remains hunkered down. No idea when we can get back to work. When I say "we," I mean "they" as I am retired, Chris has been laid-off and Annie is taking her two college classes online. The weather this week has been snowy and cold which has stymied our walks in the park. Last week I was barbecuing on the back porch.

I got a bit stir-crazy yesterday. As I was writing, it suddenly dawned on me how many days I've been doing this. Darkness descended. I turned to my writing which is the only task that keeps me away from Coronavirus stories and stats for hours at a time.

We keep checking our shrinking account for stimulus checks and unemployment deposits. The State of Wyoming made Chris's first unemployment payment overnight. It's not much but we are thankful to have resources.

Where's Herbert Hoover when we need him?

In times like these, we need a guy like Herbert Hoover.

Hoover has long been a joke for his poor performance in reacting to the Great Depression during his presidency. Prosperity is "just around the corner," or so he said. Can you say Hooverville?

When World War I erupted overseas, while his country remained neutral, Hoover jumped into the fray and chaired the Committee for Relief in Belgium. He was responsible for feeding thousands of starving people in Belgium and northern France

When the U.S. joined World War I in April 1917, Hoover was the man they called upon to get shit done. He was named head of the Food Administration and came to be known as the "food czar." Most people know of Victory Gardens on the home front in World War II. But there were War Gardens in The Great War. While President Wilson called on Americans to make sacrifices for the war effort, Hoover fed the civilians at home and the doughboys in France.

After the war, he led the American Relief Administration which shipped four million tons of food to Central and Eastern Europe and post-revolutionary Russia. In 1920, the newly-elected President Harding made him head of the Department of Commerce. His competency earned him the title of "Secretary of the Department of Commerce and Under-secretary to all of the other departments." During the big Mississippi River flood of 1927, Hoover ran the relief efforts.

Hoover ran for president as a Republican in 1928 and decisively defeated Al Smith. The stick market crash came less than a year later and, in 1932, FDR took over the White house for 13 years.

Hoover was, as I said before, a guy who could GSD. So why did this go-getter from modest Midwestern roots lose the 1932 election to a rich guy from New York? He never took seriously the suffering of Americans during the Great Depression. FDR made a lot of promises and ended up keeping many of them, earning him the hatred and some envy from Republicans. Hoover had tried to get the economy moving again. But he was adamant that the government should not be directly involved in relief efforts.

Sound familiar?

It;s one of the ironies of history that Hoover could feed millions across the globe but let those in his backyard starve. He was all food food relief efforts as long as they didn't come from the gubment. He wasn't a cruel egomaniac like Trump. But his Republican small-government stance was almost America's undoing.

I'm no historian but Hoover's dilemma seems to be playing out inside the Beltway almost 90 years later. Unlike Trump, Hoover was an accomplished administrator in the private sector and in government. But their approach to an emergency seems the same. It's no big deal. Americans can't starve. We are immune to Third World viruses. The suffering was all around.

Last night, as I watched the third season of "Babylon Berlin," the stock market crashed in October 1929. In the Berlin streets, men ran madly to their banks and brokerage houses. One of protagonist Inspector Rath's colleagues goes crazy and takes hostages at a bank, threatening to kill them if they don't hand over his money. Outside an office, a businessman shoots himself in the head. As Rath walks down stairs, a man's legs hang limp above him, obviously a case of hanging. Rath is not oblivious to the suffering. He knows a little bit about it. He's a combat veteran of the war and treats his serious shell-shock symptoms with hits of morphine. He also knows that Nazi sympathizers plot to take over the police department and he is on a mission to do something about it.

There are those who are oblivious due to political orthodoxy. That is not Trump. Remember that he was a Democrat for much of his life, probably because he had to deal with lots of Dems in NYC. Trump is what he has always been, an unscrupulous narcissist. Yesterday, when threatened by America's governors charting their own way out of the pandemic, he said that they couldn't do that because he alone was in charge. Period. Spoken like a true autocrat. One of these days, he will read the Constitution and discover that we have three branches of government. They've all been compromised by the GOP but we know how it's supposed to work. In November, we will have the opportunity to return the country to its roots. I hope that all those nurses and doctors and CNAs and first responders will remember that it was Trump who left them unprotected against the COVID-19 scourge. When it happens again, and it will, we need an adult in charge.

Hunkered down, somewhere in Wyoming, part 6

Is anyone else checking those daily COVID-19 tallies from Johns Hopkins University?

It's become a habit. It's always bad news. Thousands of new cases and thousands of deaths. The USA leads the pack as of right this very minute with 432,132 confirmed cases and almost 15,000 deaths. New York is still the epicenter, with NYC reporting the highest death count.

We are lucky and/or blessed in Wyoming as we have 230 cases and 0 deaths. I don't really trust those numbers as only 4,000-some tests have been done in a state of 580,000. We've seen in other states that deaths are being uncounted due to various reasons, notably the shortage of tests. The  Worldometers site has started including U.S. military cases provided by the Department of Defense. Its page reports 3,160 more cases than JHU.

The numbers are sobering. They scare me. I'm not as scared as I was when the pandemic swept into the USA and some hysterical reports made me believe that all of us over 60 were doomed. And then the toilet paper and hand sanitizer ran out. What will become of us? That was three weeks ago and friends and neighbors have kept us supplied and my family is still intact. We don't leave the house except to take walks in the park on nice days and maybe get ice cream cones at the DQ drive-up. This "social distancing" policy is working to "flatten the curve" of infections. The University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation has feeds COVID-19 stats onto its super-computers every day. The numbers are beginning to be reduced, showing fewer infections and deaths if we continue social distancing through August. If restrictions are relaxed too soon, we risk another outbreak.

We shall all go mad if we need to hunker down until August. Of course, some states do not have mandatory social distancing in place (looking at you Wyoming) which may affect the numbers. And there's a guy named Trump who wants everybody to return to work by May so the country's employment numbers will get better and everybody will be happy and vote for Trump and then he can finish fucking up our democracy.

People are dying. Time to listen to the scientists and statisticians and tune out the white noise from the White House.

Baseball in the time of Coronavirus w/u

So many good causes in this time of COVID-19. Health professionals need PPE. Local small businesses need us to buy their wares so they can survive the pandemic. Elderly and disabled need neighbors to bring food and meds.

Speaking of food, there are those who have none and rely on food banks to survive. Food Bank of the Rockies serves those facilities in Colorado and Wyoming.

On Friday. The Colorado Rockies Baseball Club Foundation joined with Food Bank of the Rockies for the Stay at Home Opener. On what was supposed to be opening day 2020, the Rockies broadcast nine innings of opening day highlights dating back to the team's first game in April 1993. Highlights included the first inning of the first match-up at the old Mile High Stadium vs. the now defunct Montreal Expos (now the Washington Nationals). Attendance was 80,000-plus, an MLB record that still stands. There was rookie Trevor Story's two home runs in 2016 and some fine pitching in 2018 by Denverite Kyle Freeland. On opening day 2014, Charlie Blackmon tied a hitting record held by Hall-of-Famers Ty Cobb and Jimmie Fox.

While the highlights played, donations rolled in for FBOR, the first $300,000 matched by the foundation. During commercial breaks, players urged us to stay at home and stay well.

Opening day in Denver is a holiday. Its absence, due to the Coronavirus, created a void that the Rockies tried to fill. Baseball seems insignificant when compared to a pandemic from a virus unknown on opening day 2019. That really sunk in when Friday's broadcast featured the player intro from last April. So much is promised when baseball starts. Dreams of a World Series, home-run records shattered, some 9th inning nailbiters.

But the big thing is sitting in the stadium on a warm summer night. You are with family and friends who may love baseball as you do or at least pretend they do. Added bonuses include beer and hot dogs, pricey but necessary.

Opening day begins the possibilities. It also gives me something to dwell on beside COVID-19. Baseball highlights took Chris and I away from bad news for awhile. We all need that. It also gave us an opportunity to make modest donation to FBOR.

We need food for the body and food for the soul. And a home run or two.

Updated 4/8/20: A Colorado Rockies press release:

Over 1,100 individuals made donations during a “Stay at Home Opener” broadcast and “Feed the Rockies” fundraiser, as the Rockies Foundation provides funds for two million meals. 

The Colorado Rockies Baseball Club Foundation announced today that a total of $502,425 was raised for food banks in Colorado and Wyoming during the “Stay at Home Opener: Feed the Rockies” event that aired on AT&T SportsNet and on Rockies.com on Friday, April 3 at 2 p.m. MDT – the date and time of the originally scheduled Rockies home opener.  

A total of 1,134 Rockies fans and players made online donations throughout the weekend, totaling $102,425. Additionally, it was announced Friday that the family of Rockies first baseman Daniel Murphy had donated $100,000 to the effort. The Rockies Foundation, which had pledged to match all donations up to $300,000, donated the entire $300,000 pledge, bringing the grand total to $502,425.

Hunkered down, somewhere in Wyoming, part 5

I've started two blogs with Coronavirus stats. By the time I finish, the figures are outdated. Just shows how fast this thing is moving.

I've been hunkered down for two weeks or so. I'm retired so time stretches and contracts anyway. Insert a stay-at-home order (in WYO, it's more of a suggestion) and who really knows what day it is?

My most recent abandoned blog began by wondering how many Coronavirus cases there really are. I've been checking stats from a variety of reliable sources but nobody really knows exact figures. Due to equipment shortages, testing is sporadic or nonexistent. Some states, New` York for example, are testing thousands every day but still require a physician's order. Cuomo, not really a guy who likes Trump, had nice things to say about him and Pence in one of his impressive early press conferences. The D.C. duo had answered New York's call for more test kits. Maybe it was Cuomo's desperation. Maybe Trump still has feelings for his home state. Maybe it was good PR for a bungling administration. It happened, The state leads the nation in all categories. Cuomo said the other day that 21,000 medical workers from out-of-state have responded to pleas for help. New York City is the epicenter. Reminds me of the response to 9/11 when Americans answered the call to the World Trade Center attack. We can respond in an emergency. We're just not that good at taking care of each other on a daily basis.

On the other end of the scale is Wyoming. We have the same brand of Coronavirus -- COVID-19 -- but our numbers are much lower because our numbers are always much lower. Our population is sparse (580,000) as is COVID-19 testing. As of this morning, WYO has 162 active cases after some 2,000 tests by the state lab. No deaths, thank goodness. Our hot zones are Laramie, Teton and Fremont counties. My county of Laramie leads the list with 37. We're the capital city with the largest population so that makes sense. Fremont includes Lander, Riverton and the reservation. Teton is gateway to the national parks, which are closed along with ski areas, so it gets many travelers from all over. Colorado also closed ski areas when Eagle County became a hot zone with as many cases as Colorado Springs.

But how many are there really? I read in the Gillette News-Record that there are 131 possible COVID-19 cases in the county who have been asked to shelter at home. The Fremont County Incident Management Team has directed 608 people to self-isolate. Most of these people show symptoms but can't be tested because there are no test kits. That makes it even more important to stay home.

Colorado, our neighbor with the largest population, reported 3,728 cases as of yesterday. Those stats come from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. On Thursday, neighboring Weld County listed 329 cases, twice as many as Wyoming's state total. It's a bit daunting to see a map of the COVID-19 hot spots in Colorado and see two of them (Weld and Larimer counties) clustered at the Wyoming border. There is an incredible amount of travel between Cheyenne and Laramie, Wyo., and Fort Collins and Greeley, Colo.

Colorado has tested eight times as many people as Wyoming. No surprise there, as Colorado has about eight times the population of Wyoming, most of whom are on I-25 the same time as I am.

Numbers are important. But what we'll remember are the stories spawned by Coronavirus. I will remember that my family declared its own quarantine when things started getting bad about two weeks ago. I'm a cardiac patient, Chris has diabetes and our daughter Annie had elective surgery the day before the hospital cancelled all non-essential operations. We have ventured forth a few times to get take-out or just to take a drive to nowhere.

On the afternoon of March 31, as I was applying 2021 stickers to my license plates, I saw my neighbor Mike in his yard and asked if he had any toilet paper. He was on his way out to buy some and said he'd see if any was available. An hour later, he came to the door with two four-packs he had found at Dollar Tree. He left them on the porch. My wife wiped down the shopping bags and the two TP packages.

The next thing we will lack are cleaning wipes. We started the lockdown with five rolls of those and we're down to one. I tried to order some yesterday with my groceries. Not available, the King Soopers site said. I ordered groceries to be delivered by Instacart, the contractor that selects and delivers from KS. Instacart employees on the East Coast went on strike for more pay and better working conditions. I hope they get it, and hope they seriously consider unionizing after seeing how little the bosses care about their safety. Ditto for amazon.com employees who run ragged trying to fill our orders for TP and sanitary wipes and Fitbits.

Most talk show personalities are broadcasting from home. You see family members meandering by in the background. TV personality and philanthropist Bethany Frankel was being interviewed on Good Morning America when her dog entered the scene and licked her face. Andrew Lloyd Webber is taking requests to perform songs he plays from home on his piano. YouTube is filled with homebound people singing or playing an instrument. We are watching a lot of YouTube videos. Chris was overjoyed to discover vids of Jane Fonda workouts, the same ones she did in our living room when they kids were little. Sitting at my desk in the office, and the Fonda soundtrack came on, I flashed back to the eighties.

I am impressed by the major and minor contributions to the cause. Since today is payday, the family is donating to several good local causes. Cheyenne crafters have been making masks for doctors and nurses. Police officers deliver groceries to shut-ins. Students at Newcastle High School are making masks for the volunteer fire department. Cheyenne Botanic Gardens staffers deliver soup to their elderly volunteers. New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft flew his own plane to China to fetch equipment for medical personnel. This blog has no love for the Patriots but it was a great gesture.

It's odd to be at home watching the world go by. It's in pretty sad shape but we find ways to be human. And there are ways to contribute, both in money and time. I will list some of those resources in my next blog.

Hunkered down, somewhere in Wyoming, part 4

I suddenly wondered if I was using "hunkered down" correctly in my headers. Is it redundant to use the two together? Is it enough to say that I am hunkering in my house during the pandemic? And, yes, I do have too much time on my hands to wonder and ponder which, for some reason, are pronounced differently.

Hunker is a Scots term, first noticed by linguists in the 18th century. An online dictionary described it this way: "squatting on the balls of one's feet, keeping low to the ground but still ready to move if necessary."

I haven't hunkered since my spinal injury two years ago. I can neither squat on the balls of my feet, keep low to the ground, or move if necessary. I can crouch, if necessary, but struggle to get back up again. I could say that I am "sitting down, somewhere in Wyoming." But that doesn't quite capture our present plight. Hunker implies that I am responding to a threat, something that makes me want to take cover instead of stand or sit.

Other languages recognize "hunker." In Dutch, it is huiken. In Old Norse, huka. Germans say hocke. The Scots have even turned a verb into a noun with the phrase "sitting on one's hunkers." All civilizations, it seems, have had to huka down at some time in their history.

Ben Zimmer explored the history of "hunker down" in a September 2017 Wall Street Journal feature. Hurricane Irma had blasted through the Caribbean and U.S. and Zimmer noticed the many times that TV reporters used the term "hunker down." Orlando Sentinel editor John Cutter noticed an uptick in "hunker down" as Irma approached Florida. He invented a drinking game in which every mention of the now-cliched phrase prompted listeners to take a shot. A neat idea but probably redundant as Floridians are pretty good at taking shots during hurricanes, especially monstrous ones such as Irma. A hurricane and a pandemic share a lot of qualities. Hunkering seems appropriate in each case as does a few shots of Jack.

Our neighbor Colorado found this out the hard way. Denver Mayor Michael Hancock announced that liquor stores and marijuana dispensaries would be closed to thwart the spread of COVID-19. This caused a furor and the ban was lifted. The Governor tried something similar with his order to close all bars and restaurants. He later agreed to let businesses sell booze as takeout along with the tacos and sushi.

We don't have marijuana dispensaries in Wyoming. We do have lots of liquor stores. Our Governor has spared closing establishments with full retail liquor licenses. A good thing as it's inconceivable to have everyone hunker down for weeks or maybe months without the proper beverages.

For accurate updates on Coronavirus in Wyoming, go to the page for the Wyoming Department of Health's Infectious Disease Epidemiology Unit. As of 11 a.m. Sunday morning, Wyoming has 86 reported cases. Fremont County leads the pack at 23 with Laramie at 19 and Teton with 14. The Wyoming Public Health Laboratory has tested 1,203, commercial labs have tested 436 (they are bound to only report positive cases), and the CDC lab has tested 1.

Notice how these last two links take you to state government offices. Some sites may not be maintained by state employees but their info comes from people who regularly get kicked around by GOPers in our state legislature. City and county employees pick up our trash and maintain infrastructure. Federal employees will be working overtime to make sure millions get the checks stipulated in the recently-passed stimulus bill. They also maintain Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, so crucial in this time of plague.

Hunkered down, somewhere in Wyoming, part 3

I've used three video-conferencing apps in the past week. Before that, I had used exactly no video-conferencing apps. Didn't need to. I was never quarantined by a pandemic before. I  attended public events with other humans. I dined out with the family. I volunteered in a public place where germs circulated freely.

None of that is possible now. It is possible, as Wyoming has no mandatory shelter-in-place order as of yet. We've been advised to stay at home. As I reported in my previous post, I have ventured outside to tend to business at drive-through facilities: library, post office, credit union. Last weekend the family went hunting for ice cream and we joined the queue at Dairy Queen's window. Yesterday Annie went to a physician's appointment. When she arrived, a nurse told her to leave because an earlier nervous patient had admitted that she was afraid she had coronavirus because one of her relatives had a cold and they had been together the day before so maybe she was contagious.

Paranoia is the new normal. But, as the old saying goes, you ain't paranoid if someone really is following you. Millions of us are now being followed by COVID-19. It's OK to be a bit paranoid and a lot careful.

I've read first-person accounts of the 1918-19 flu pandemic. It killed millions of young people. It killed older people too. But researchers believe that the virus hitched a ride on the revved-up metabolisms of youth. Doctors and nurses told stories of people in their prime hemorrhaging from the mouth, nose and eyes. They turned blue as lungs ceased to work when they filled with pus. Toddlers starved to death as parents wasted away in their beds.

Most of these gory details went unreported because of wartime restrictions on publishing bad news that might frighten the populace and disrupt the war effort. The fact that the flu might have originated among soldiers at Ft. Riley, Kansas, was hidden. Soldiers continued to come and go, infecting the population along the way. A little more governmental openness would have saved thousands, maybe millions. The final worldwide tally of pandemic deaths is estimated between 50 and 100 million. 

As author John M. Barry concludes in "The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History: "The final lesson of 1918, a simple one yet one most difficult to execute, is that...those in authority must retain the public's trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one. Lincoln said that first, and best. A leader must make whatever horror exists concrete. Only then will people be able to break it apart." 

Barry wrote in the March 17 New York Times that he served on pandemic working groups after the bird flu plague of 2005. The groups recommended the usual non-pharmaceutical interventions, Barry wrote: social distancing, washing hands, coughing into elbows, staying home when sick. Sound familiar? If followed closely, those techniques could go a long way in curtailing a pandemic. But people are people, politicians are politicians. We stray and the bug spreads.

I keep thinking that our first-person accounts of COVID-19 might be read 100 years from now. People may be shocked by the quick spread of contagion, the many senseless deaths, the lackadaisical, even criminally negligent, attitude of POTUS and his minions. Those poor people, our descendants might say. Such a tragedy. It's a good thing it can't happen now, here in 2120, with our sophisticated knowledge and our advanced medical techniques.

COVID-19 might be the pandemic to end all pandemics, just as World War I was "the war to end all wars."

Latest update: Wyoming Department of Health Epidemiology Unit reported this afternoon that 73 people in the state have tested positive for COVID-19. Laramie County had the most at 18. Fremont was next with 17.

Hunkered down, somewhere in Wyoming, part 2

A week later and so much has changed.

Chris was laid off from her job at the YMCA. The place is closed except for childcare for essential personnel such as doctors, nurses, and military members who can't be spared. She applied for unemployment on the same day, On Tuesday, she received notice that her claim had been approved and she will receive about 58 percent of her weekly salary. With my pension and Social Security, we should be able to make it. We're fortunate that we live in a sparsely-populated state. Also fortunate to have a responsive state government. Am proud to say I worked for that government for 25 years. Some unemployment web sites in big cities have crashed due to the rush of applications. So many businesses are shuttered and many suddenly out of work.

When I started this blog Tuesday morning, the U.S. Senate is working on a bill that would pump a couple of trillion bucks into the economy. Here's what I had to say at the time:

Unfortunately, Republicans have loaded up the bill with giveaways to corporate America. Democrats have stymied its passage because there is a provision that the names of recipient corporations will be kept secret for six months which, coincidentally, is after the 2020 election. The Senate bill still does not have enough remedies for working people such as my wife. It does call for checks of up to $1,200 be sent to individuals. Even in Wyoming that won't get you very far. Other provisions call for a 60-day grace period for student loans, increases in unemployment benefits, etc. All good. But they pale in comparison with a $500 billion secret slush fund for Trump's corporate pals ( and possibly even Trump himself). The Dems are fighting the GOP on this and I hope they carry the day. Bernie Sanders proposed monthly checks of $2,000 to Americans until the crisis is over. I saw a proposal yesterday to add $200 a month to SSI, SSDI and veterans' benefits for the rest of the year. That would benefit me and my family. I'm for it. I also want businesses to get help as long as some of our largesse goes to employees. Remember -- rich business owners (Trump included) already got a generous tax cut from McConnell's Senate.

See how quickly things change, even on Capitol Hill? The Republicans and Democrats have agreed on a $2 trillion relief bill. Don't know all the details yet but anxiously await them.

Trump said at his daily spiel yesterday that he wants America to get back to work sooner rather than later -- by Easter on April 12. He said that "we don't want the cure to be worse than the problem itself." Indeed. Sending people back to work before the coronavirus has run its course will be a cure worse than the problem itself. We already have a president making the problem worse than it should be itself. Still wondering why we have a shortage of necessary medical supplies. Our doctors and nurses are going above and beyond the call treating coronavirus patients without the necessary protections.

We still are sheltering at home. Latest cases of COVID-19 in WYO is 37 with more than 700 tested and no fatalities according to the according to the Wyoming PBS Facebook post today. Gov. Mark Gordon's press conference is available at 1 p.m. today on WY PBS. My county has eight known cases awhile Fremont County as the most with 12. We are pretty lucky. As one wag pointed put, Wyoming has been practicing social distancing since statehood in 1890. We've been doing it a lot longer than that, as the wide-open-spaces have been here for millennia. Sure, at some points in our long history the place was mostly underwater. An occasional pleisiosaurus would swim by, looking for a snack, and a pterodactyl might fly by. Humans weren't around but you can assume that viruses were. Life was brutal and short. We now live long and mostly happy lives. One day you wake up and realize that a critter you can't even see has stolen into your body and is hijacking it. If you are over 65 as I am, your prognosis will not be good. What we want we cannot have, which is more life. But as my father used to say, "who says that life is fair?"

Chris and I drove to the post office late yesterday afternoon. The car is a place where you can practice social distancing from others. You can drive up right next to a car filled with active coronavirus cases and, even if they sneeze at you out of open windows (it's nice enough for open windows) and your windows are up, you should be OK. Not advisable to go around coughing on Wyomingites, some of the most well-armed people on the planet.

The arts world is under a lot of stress. Many art forms are enjoyed in groups. Music especially has been hit hard. Most venues have already lined up their 2020 artists. The local music scene been lively lately and it would be a shame to see that stop. The Lincoln Music Hall is getting ready to open and everyone I know can't wait to see their favorite groups on stage at the historic performing arts space and movie theater. There are ways to support the state's artists and arts venues. Some were outlined on Wyoming Public Radio. The Wyoming Arts Council has some helpful links on its web site. Some musicians are staging online performances. And, in the non-participatory arts category, there are books. Revisit your favorite or take a chance on a new title.

Hunkered down, somewhere in Wyoming

Homebound. For a week. Only ventured outside to drive to credit union drive-up and library book drop-off. Never left the car. Never interacted face-to-face with another living creature. A new way of living in the time of coronavirus.

I'm retired so I don't have to be anywhere on a regular basis. I'm at high-risk during the current crisis because I'm 69 and a heart patient. I am also writer and reader so long stretches of indoor time is not a hardship. Annie and Chris are here with me. Chris, 64 and a diabetic, is off work for the foreseeable future. Annie underwent surgery on Monday and is recuperating. From my office, I can hear Chris exercising to YouTube videos. Great part about 2020: YouTube exercise videos. I do chair aerobics with Hasfit duo Coach Kozak and Claudia. I could go to the YMCA, which is still open, but I'd be paranoid the whole time that I would inhale a spiky COVID-19 germ. No use risking it.

I cancelled this morning's appointment with my podiatrist. I no longer travel to my acupuncture appointments in Fort Collins. Medical appointments have been postponed or cancelled. I won't be volunteering in March at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. The city ordered that all volunteers 65 and older and those with serious medical conditions to stay away. Yesterday, the Botanic Gardens announced the closing of the conservatory and children's village. This gives kids out of school fewer things to do but parents are probably keeping them home anyway.

One aspect of the pandemic I hadn't counted on was a mad dash to the grocery store for everything from toilet paper to milk to boxes of mac and cheese.I had those very things in mind Sunday when I shopped King Soopers online. Toilet paper not available. Deli was closed. It listed the rest of the items I ordered groceries to last us at least until the next paycheck. I opted to pick them up but no times were available through Tuesday. Instead, I opted for a delivery on Tuesday afternoon. As my shopper reported Tuesday, many of the items I requested were gone. She texted my photos of empty shelves in the toilet paper and pasta aisles. When she finally left the groceries on the front porch later that day, some items were missing and some substitutions were a bit sketchy. A First World problem, to be sure.

As for sports -- spring training is cancelled and the MLB season is delayed two weeks. March Madness has been cancelled as has the NBA season. A bummer but they both take second place to the pandemic. High school tournaments have also been cancelled. As of this morning, our county now has two confirmed coronavirus cases. That puts Wyoming's count at 15.

The local community college is on spring break but is still deciding what to do when the kids return as pale as when they left -- No Cabo this year kiddos! Actually, some students are at beaches for spring break. A few were interviewed at Florida's Clearwater Beach. One young guy was asked about the risks associated with major partying and much touching. His answer was priceless. He and his cohorts were spending all their time in the sand so they didn't have to worry about touching doorknobs and other nasty things. I had this image of the kids spending day and night in the sand, all alone but for the crabs and the sand fleas and sandpipers which we know aren't COVID-19 carriers.

That's not how I remember spring break.

Levity is welcome relief during these trying times. Lord knows we've had enough bad news. If you listen to the president and his lackey Mike Pence, all is well in the U.S.A. as we have two such capable people in charge. No advice from Melania lately, not even BE BEST!

Rest easy, America.

The pandemic comes to Wyoming

I awoke in the middle of the night and had the strange feeling that this week had been a nightmare.

But it’s real. A plague has been loosed upon the world. Like something out of an apocalyptic novel. The run-up to the post-apocalypse featured in novels and films. The Road. Dawn of the Dead. The Book of Joan. 28 Days Later. The Stand. Children of Men. Mad Max. WaterWorld. Something in us that loves these "what if" scenarios. What if a zombie plague erupted in our hometown? What if climate change turned the earth into one vast ocean? What if a medical experiment goes awry and wipes out most of the population except characters imagined by Stephen King?

But the Coronavirus is real life. It looks mean and nasty in artist’s renderings. A sphere with spiky red nodules. Once it’s inside your body, it plants itself in your lung tissue and begins replicating in your body’s healthy cells until it takes over and shuts down your systems.  What if these microscopic orbs were human-sized? They might be almost comical. Zombies might even laugh at them. Its lethality depends upon its miniscule size. It allows it to migrate into our nasal passages and mouths and start its dirty work. It’s brand new and we have neither antibodies nor vaccines.

No wonder I’m awake at 3 a.m.

I’m in the high-risk zone. I’m 69 and a cardiac patient. My wife Chris is 64 and a diabetic. The virus makes quick work of those over 60 with chronic medical conditions. So we hunker down and survey the fridge and pantry to see if we can hold out until the Albertson’s trucks make their next deliveries. And toilet paper? Go figure.

I've been reading about the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918-1919. Research for my novel set in 1919. As many U.S. soldiers died from the flu as they did in combat in WWI. Experts estimate that up to 100 million worldwide died. Young people were hit hard, just the opposite of what we see now. Katherine Anne Porter may have written the best fiction on the pandemic with "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," a novella or, if you prefer, a long short story. 

Wyomingites should take a look at the Wyoming Department of Health’s Epidemiology Unit COVID-19 page. Good info and guidance there. 

Prayers in the dairy section

Praying in the dairy section

I have nothing against prayer in the grocery store.

Yesterday, as I headed to the dairy case, my legs tired from piloting the cart through the aisles, a woman asked if she could pray for me. My face had revealed the pain, a crease in the eyes, a grim set to my mouth. She picked it up, this gray-haired woman with a kind face. She asked about the cause of the pain. Spinal surgery, I replied, my exercise regime included pushing this cart from produce to bakery to dairy.

She -- her name was Diane -- pressed one hand into my cervical spine, at C-4 and C-5 where metal meets bone. She raised her other hand is supplication and prayed. Short and to the point, a plea to God to heal. I looked at her raised hand, small and slim, so as not to look at other customers who might wonder what was going on among the coffee creamer and almond milk. Diane wrapped the prayer. I expected a Bible tract from her, an invitation to her Jumpin' Jesus church. She just asked how I felt. I said we should give it time, don't you think?

We parted. No change in my pain or stuttering walk.

But there were a few moments when my soul left body and sailed around the store.

March of the Red Caps

A young man in a red cap opens the heavy convention center doors for me, an old guy propelled by two legs and four wheels. I thank the man in the red cap, so polite he is. He nods. I see the writing on his cap: Keep America Great. I shake my head and power through. Keep America Great? Initials KAG, cousin to MAGA. Red Cap is a fool to think that Trump made America great and will continue the greatness. I am a fool to think that Trump can't be reelected to KAG for four more years or maybe more. Once inside, Red Cap struts down the carpeted hallway and is joined by other Red Caps who march to the local GOP Trumpfest. I head to an evening to celebrate the arts in the reddest of red states. The arts can save us, so says this man who moves with difficulty. He believes that a Brahms concerto or a Joy Harjo poem can save us from the Red Caps of the world.