Welcome to e-book land w/update

Friend and writing colleague Liz Roadifer is my mentor to the e-book world.

She has formatted five of her titles and they are featured on Amazon. To access, write Liz's name in the Universe of Amazon search box and there you are. The books are in five different categories: suspense, fantasy and young adult. I have read them all in manuscript form because Liz and I are members of a local critique group, Cheyenne Area Writers Group or CAWG. You won't find a listing for us on or off the Internet. We're not so much a secret organization as a nondescript one. Members are five now and we meet via Zoom every two weeks to critique one another's fiction projects. Members have come and gone over the past 20 years. But all of us, past and present, are published thanks in part to the good graces and fine eyes of CAWGers.

Most of my colleagues write what's labeled as genre fiction, a category MFAers are taught to loathe. Silly MFA programs. I wrote a suspense novel back in the day which never sold even though I had an agent I met at a writing conference. It taught me a lot mainly that I wanted to be a better writer. So I left the corporate world for the academy and the rest is history. I now write better than I did in my 20s and 30s. How much of that is due to maturity and voracious reading and how much is due to writing workshops is hard to say. Let's say 50/50. 

So here I am, formatting my first book of stories for Kindle Direct Publishing. Rights for the book reverted back to me after my press folded. I have a few print copies flitting about but have resisted the e-book world. I have written another book of stories and a novel, still unpublished. I am putting them all online. I've been writing on Blogger for 16 years, having signed up on a whim in 2001. I've posted almost 3,600 blogs. I used to be part of Blogger's AdSense program but never made any money. It requires you to have ads on your site and I found some disturbing and others stupid. 

So now I am signing on to the largest corporation in the known universe, the people who gave us spaceships, delivery drones, and free shipping. The KDP program is easy to learn and widens the audience. What's not to like? I'm almost finished with the formatting stage and ready to release it into KDP's care. It would be wrapping it up right this very minute but I am blogging instead. I spend too much time on my blog but it does give me a platform for promotion that not everyone has. Platform, of course, is the thing that all writers must have these days. Writers you see on TV usually have a platform or they wouldn't be on TV. I saw an interview with George Saunders on Stephen Colbert a few years ago and went out and bought "Lincoln in the Bardo" and his wild story collection, "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline." I love those stories. It was fantastic to see a real author on the airwaves. We need more of that.

So back to e-booking. Kudos to Liz for her persistence and patience. The book should be available soon, just in time for Christmas and the next Covid lockdown. 

UPDATE 12/6/21: "The Weight of a Body" Kindle edition now available on Amazon.

In Memoriam: Stevon Lucero

Sad news arrived from Denver today. Stevon Lucero, the Chicano artists who I profiled in a Oct. 29  WyoFile story and linked here, passed away Nov. 28. He was 71. 

Lucero was a mentor to generations of Latino artists in Denver and around the West. He grew up in Laramie, attended UW, and then moved his family to Denver to pursue and art career. He helped found the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council in Denver. CHAC was instrumental in transforming Denver's Santa Fe Drive from a downtown shortcut into a certified Colorado Creative District lined with galleries, museums, and studios.

CBS Channel 4 noted Lucero's death with a feature today. In it, Arlette Lucero says this about the husband:

"He would take young artists under his wings and tell them the beautiful things about themselves, to bring them into the fold."

Poet and performer Adrian Molina (a.k.a. Molina Speaks), another Wyoming artist now living in Denver, teamed up with Lucero to build one of the immersive exhibits at the new Meow Wolf arts outpost in downtown Denver. Called the "Indigenous Futures Dreamscapes Lounge," it brought to life dreams and visions Lucero experienced over the years. Lucero painted the dreamscapes, and Molina recorded the soundscapes and videos. It fit right in with Meow Wolf Denver's theme of Convergence Station, "the convergence of four different dimensions." 

Family members have started a GoFundMe page to help defray funeral expenses.

Molina, quoted in the Channel 4 piece, said this: 

“Stevon became one of my best friends. A humble genius, a visionary. He’s an elder who’s deeply respected, and he taught me so much about life and about art over the last few years. His mission was to put God back into art, to bring the spirit and that was his meta-realism.

“It was a joy to paint with the master, and be in his presence every day."

R.I.P. Stevon.

Just what are the origins of that tuna casserole my Mom used to make?

CBS Sunday Morning was all about food and drink. An historic Mexican cafe in San Bernardino, a Yemini coffee speakeasy, the origin of Ranch dressing, the rise and fall of NYC Automats, the art of making Italian Orecchiette pasta, the refined tongues of taste testers, and so on.

It caused me to think about my food traditions. I have none. I cook Mexican enchiladas, Asian stir-fry, Kansas City-style barbecue, U.S.-style Thanksgiving dinner. Typical American diet, right -- a sampler of cuisine from elsewhere. Or a smorgasbord, a Swedish type of cafeteria that was a thing back in the 1950s. Because Americans come from everywhere, so does our food. 

I should have Irish-American foodways. If only I knew what those were. Corned beef and cabbage? Irish oatmeal? Irish Stew? Rashers? Soda bread? Guinness-infused desserts? Irish coffee? 

No idea. My mother passed along recipes for Jello molds and tuna casserole. My father made his Scots-Irish mother's spaghetti and meatballs. One could live off of that I suppose, but would you want to?

The anti-tuna-casserole stance involves a bit of food snobbery. I began to think of my Mom in the kitchen, faced with the hungry stares of her many children, and I realized that a couple cans of tuna, a can of cream of mushroom soup, a dash of milk, and a handful of corn flakes for crunchiness made dinner for eight for a few bucks. All she needed was a can opener and a stove (no microwaves yet). Many "homemakers" of the 1950s faced the same challenge. Bless you Mom. Sorry I made such a fuss. 

I Googled tuna casserole recipes and there are thousands. Still. Heather Arndt Anderson wrote a witty "Brief History of the Tuna Casserole" for Taste Magazine. In it, she traces the origins of the dish to a traditional German noodles and fish casserole. The first recipes in the U.S. show up in the 1930s. It started in the Pacific Northwest and then migrated to Middle America. Modern conveniences such as COMS and canned Charley the Tuna was all that was needed to feed hungry groups of fledgling Baby Boomers. That led eventually to Tuna Helper and a recipe for tuna casserole that's "not for wimps." 

As an American, I come from nowhere and I leave no food traditions for my offspring. A sad state of affairs. My daughter Annie will help me cook Thanksgiving dinner. The recipe is a 16-pound roasted turkey, mashed potatoes and turkey gravy, stuffing, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie. I bought cranberry sauce but use it on my turkey sandwiches. I like sweet potatoes but the family does not. I have a childhood memory of my Aunt Ellen's sweet potato casserole topped with marshmallows. It was a revelation -- marshmallows on taters? What wondrous world is this? I brought the recipe home to my mom but she never made it. I never have either. 

My parents and my wife's parents were meat and potato people. Who could blame them? Growing up in the 1930s, they were lucky to eat regularly. The Depression cast a pall on my parents' generation. That's why food companies found a willing populace for beef roasts, hamburgers, hot dogs, and, eventually, TV dinners. What miracle is this, an entire meal in an aluminum tray? Mystery meat, whipped potatoes, green beans, and an apple crisp dessert hot enough to burn away the roof of your mouth. We loved them. Mostly, though, we lived on casseroles, macaroni/cheese, hot dogs and burgers. Cereal for breakfast. Baloney sandwiches for lunch. 

I continue these non-traditions. Sure, I try new things from other cultures but keep returning to the tried-and-true. We eat a lot of stews and chilis in the cold months, many kinds of salads in the summer. But if I was asked about traditional foods, I would draw a blank. Why do I cook chicken on the gas grill? Why do I use a certain marinade? When I make Irish stew, how Irish is it really? Research shows that stew is a catch-all for whatever you have around the house. Hobos cook Irish stew from veggies they scrounge in the fields. Who invented the chili  make and why? I cook Italian sausages made in Boulder, Colorado. How Italian are they anyway? The Tex-Mex dishes I make are not the same ones you find in El Paso and Mexico City. I do not like corned beef and cabbage and have no ideas about its origins. The most Irish thing I imbibe is beer, usually stouts like Guinness which is made in Dublin and now in a Baltimore brewery. 

Now I'm rambling. But the same question remains: what am I eating and why? One of the reports on CBS today was about the rise of plant-based diets. Vegan and vegetarian restaurants have been a thing for awhile but there's a rise in popularity. You can assemble a vegan meal at most restaurants in Cheyenne but there isn't an all-vegan one. Closest WYO vegetarian restaurant is Sweet Melissa's in Laramie and quite a few in Fort Collins.

I do not want to go vegan but I do grow vegetables and eat them. Fruits, too, but all of mine comes from Colorado, California, and Texas. I eat less red meat but I eat a lot of chicken. There's a company called Daring Foods making veggie-based chicken and I plan to try it if I can find it in Wyoming stores. Tabitha Brown grew up in the meatcentric South but now is vegan and wrote a vegan cookbook, "Feeding the Soul." Her reasons for changing her diet is to stop chronic pan and fatigue. A very good reason. My heart condition makes it crucial to cut down on bad cholesterol and its tendency to cause inflammation that upsets the heart. 

My goal is modest. Replace a few meat-based meals with plant-based. Some practice Meatless Mondays which sounds reasonable. Alliterative, too. I also want to track the origins of the food I eat. I like to lose myself in the maze of research. It's habit-forming. Like bacon.

India press picks up Ken Waldman's first novel

I received a head's up notice from friend and traveling writer/performer Ken Waldman. He has a new Kickstarter project for his 20th book, a first novel, "Now Entering Alaska Time." I will contribute, as I usually do, because Ken is a good guy and he always finds new and interesting ways to get his work into print. He also has been a burr under the very large saddle of Donald Trump since Inauguration Day, 2017. He is eight volumes into his "Trump Sonnets" series. Other writers have plagued Trump with poetry but none quite like Ken. See a sample and some performance videos here. 

As I wrote in 2019, the books are shelved in my presidential library. Ridgeway Press in Roseville, Michigan, printed all of the Trump Sonnets titles. 

What will future generations make of them and us?

Ken's novel is being published by Cyberwit.net Press located in Prayagraj in India. I checked out its web site and the press boasts a big stable of writers from all over the world. As far as I know, Ken has not yet traveled in India. But soon will, I expect.

The story of the dead sculptor's homecoming in Sand City, Kansas

Great article in the Nov. 12 edition of Flatwater Free Press: How a 101-year-old linked to Willa Cather altered a small town's future. Talks about Antonette "Toni" Willa Skupa Turner, a resident of Bladen, Nebraska, just down the road from Red Cloud. Toni Turner died at 101 in August. She was the granddaughter of Anna Pavelka, the real-life inspiration for Willa Cather's "My Antonia." Turner spent her life talking up Pavelka and Cather, a dynamo who helped turn Red Cloud into one of the most vibrant locations dedicated to any American author. More than 10,000 Cather fans journey to Red Cloud annually. Turner was the local literary celebrity everyone from Cather scholars to rabid readers wanted to meet. Cather based so many of her books and stories on Red Cloud and its people. Cavelka, a Czech immigrant, and Cather, intelligent girl of the town doctor, were from different worlds but forged a friendship that gave birth to a famous novel. 

My interest in Cather goes back to high school when I read "The Sculptor's Funeral" for American literature class. It was on of the classics in the typical 1960s lit anthology with all of the usual suspects: Hawthorne, Twain, Dickinson, Hemingway, Faulkner. Nary a writer of color in the batch. But Cather's story spoke to me. I couldn't pin a name to it. A famous sculptor's body is transported back to his Kansas small town on Sand City. Turns out the sculptor was a weird kid who got the hell out as soon as he could. He died young from TB and his final arrival causes much talk among the populace, most of it negative. Jim Laird, Harvey Merrick's childhood friend who is drunk, hears their snarky comments and confronts them:

Harvey Merrick wouldn't have given one sunset over your marshes for all you've got put together, and you know it.

Laird leaves in a huff. The final paragraph wraps things up:

The thing in him that Harvey Merrick had loved must have gone underground with Harvey Merrick's coffin; for it never spoke again, and Jim got the cold he died of driving across the Colorado mountains to defend one of Phelps's sons, who had got into trouble out there by cutting government timber.

It's a sad story. Lots of sadness in Cather's work and moments of triumph. She draws distinctive characters and it's hard not to be moved. When I read the story at 16, I knew something significant had happened but didn't exactly know what. Artists are different -- everybody knows that! -- and Merrick's differences made him an oddball in Sand City. Jim was an educated guy, a good guy who died helping out one of the town's worthless sons.

Why are all of these stories so damn sad? Cather's sculptor, Hemingway's soldier home from the war or the old man and his fish,  Algren's young punk who just wants a bottle of milk for mother, Dorothy Parker's big blonde. I thought I knew what sadness was but did not. I do now. I write sad stories because life is sad. The story is in the telling of the sadness lightened up with wit.

Cather changed her identity when she went off to the University of Nebraska. She dressed in men's clothes and went by Willie. She excelled in writing and journalism and worked her way out of Nebraska. But she escaped the sculptor's fate. She is celebrated in the town that inspired so much of her work. Not everyone is a fan. Her struggles with sexual identity make some Nebraskans nervous, even some of those in Red Cloud who reap economic benefits from the writer's legacy. 

I've read the novels but I keep returning to her stories especially the one about the dead sculptor coming home to a hometown that never knew him.  

Two Chicano artists from Wyoming tell their stories at Meow Wolf Denver

There's a story here.

That's what I said to myself when I found out that two Chicano artists with Wyoming roots were charged with installing their artwork in the trippy Meow Wolf Denver.

WyoFile agreed and published it today. Go read it here.

Adrian H. Molina (a.k.a. Molina Speaks) is "an artist, performer, master of ceremonies, and human bridge." He grew up in Rawlins, earned his undergrad and law degrees at UW, and then departed to Denver to pursue not law but art.

Visual artist Stevon Lucero grew up in Laramie, attended UW and, in 1976 departed for Denver with his young family in tow.

The two artists are members of the burgeoning Denver Latino arts community. They still maintain ties with Wyoming but their careers now radiate from the big city to the south.

Two more members of what Grady Kirkpatrick on Wyoming Public Radio refers to as "the Greater Wyoming Diaspora." Young people grow up here, attend UW, and then depart for greener pastures. Cities are magnets for creative people where they find encouragement and audiences. Disappointment, too, as artists from rural communities find they are competing with scores of equally talented people. That may beat them down or it may challenge them to excel. One never knows.

I've worked in the Wyoming arts scene for 30 years. Creativity prospers in the expected places and ones that surprise you. Sometimes artists become part of the Wyoming diaspora but you can see the place's influence in their work. That's true of Lucero's paintings at Meow Wolf inspired by lucid dreaming about an oddball Wyoming landmark. 

Meow Wolf Denver opened Sept. 17. Some interesting articles about it have appeared. Here's one. Molina is quoted therein. 

GoFundMe for my brother, Tim Shay

My brother Tim the postman/father/grandfather is undergoing radiation treatments at the Mayo Clinic Hospital in Jacksonville, Fla. The docs successfully operated on Tim a few years ago to remove a non-cancerous brain tumor. It grew back, this time with an unwelcome surprise of "atypical cells." Tim's large family depended on his paycheck but now he's on disability and things are a bit tight. If you've a mind to, please contribute to our family's GoFundMe site

I pray for Tim daily and keep sending him goofy cards to lift his spirits. 

Weekend Round-up: Wolf says Meow, gigantic garden seed pods, and Notre Dame Cathedral visits the West

The garden has been winterized and the bulbs are in the ground. A pretty good year for tomatoes and Purple Podded Pole Beans, which I keep getting from the library's seed library because I like the name. Sounds like a crop a Martian might grow. The vines took over my container garden. Not tasty raw but can grow to incredible lengths because the beans blend in with the purple stems. There are some big ones, too. Not "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" big, but they're scary. The bigger they are, the tougher they are. Tomato varieties: Gold Nugget and Baxter's Early Bush Cherries. 

Mystery foliage still thrives in my big front yard flower pot. Looks like parsley but at first I thought cilantro since I was throwing around cilantro seeds in the spring. I used Plant ID but came up with nothing. I'll take some leaves into the Botanic Gardens and ask the experts. 

My two crabapple trees seem to be taking hold. Planted by Rooted in Cheyenne in August, they're six-feet tall and the leaves are dropping with the seasons. Must remember to water them on a regular basis. Weather Channel has mega-storms hitting the West Coast but whether the moisture makes its way to the Interior West is yet to be seen. Forecast calls for hurricane-force winds and giant waves on the Washington coast and up to eight inches of rain in California and multiple feet of snow in the Sierras. Pray for snow! Fortunately, Halloween is nigh and we all know what Halloween usually looks like around here.

I finished an article for WyoFile this week and it should appear online mid-week. It features two Wyoming-bred artists now living in Denver who highlight their work at the new Meow Wolf Denver. The four-story art outpost, wedged between I-25 and Colfax Avenue, opened Sept, 17. More than 300 artists contributed to the immersive art exhibit called Convergence Station, “the convergence of four different dimensions.” Haven't seen it in person yet but traveled there virtually through the imaginations of the artists. Look for my byline this week.

I just read "The Lincoln Highway" by Amor Towles. Color me clueless but I had never heard of this writer who has written many books. I will read more now that I blew through the latest on Kindle. The title attracted me. I live along the Lincoln Highway which was Hwy. 30 until it was swallowed up by I-80. I've researched the origins of America's first transcontinental highway for my novel. Fascinating stuff. Billy, an eight-year-old Nebraska boy in Towles novel, is fascinated by it and wants to travel it. But wanting to travel it in 1954 as Kerouac did just a few years earlier is tougher than it seems and launches his 400-page adventure. Great read. 

I'm also reading the new book of poetry by Betsy Bernfeld of Jackson and Laramie. Betsy is not only an accomplished poet but also an attorney and former librarian. I still treasure the tour of the old Jackson library Betsy led me on when I first came to work at the Wyoming Arts Council. That was the old log cabin library that smelled of wood. The new library is a work of art. I visit it every time I'm in Teton County. Betsy's book, "The Cathedral is Burning," was published by the fine Finishing Line Press in Lexington, Kentucky. It's one of the small presses that keeps literature alive in the U.S. and around the world. The book's cover features "The Mothers: Las Madres Project. No Mas Lagrimas, a public artwork about migrants in the Arizona desert at Pima Community College in Tucson. 

The other day I was thinking: how come there aren't more movies about poets? There are a few big names who have made it to the screen: Dante Alighieri, Allen Ginsberg, Shakespeare, Sylvia Plath, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Emily Dickinson. That's a pretty good start. 

Surfing the streaming channels, I came across a film on Netflix about John Keats. I know Keats as a suffering English poet of the Late Romantic Period who died young at 25. He excelled at odes -- you don't see to many of those these days. "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," etc. I wasn't familiar with "Bright Star," a poem that speaks of mortality and youthful love. It's a beautiful poem that became the title of Jane Campion's movie, "Bright Star." Set in 1819 in a rural area just outside London, it tells the tale of a morose Keats and Fanny Brawne, a lively young woman was makes her own clothes and loves to dance. She is smitten with the scrawny poet. He eventually is smitten enough to write her several poems. His consumption gets supercharged after a night out in the rain. 

It's all over but the suffering. 

Thing is, Keats is doomed but the film is about Fanny's lovesickness. She is obsessed with Keats and she gets little in return. When he travels to London, she's in bed for five days, asking her mother why love hurts so bad. I kept hearing Nazareth's "Love Hurts" in my head. But her infatuation puts any pop song's lyrics to shame. She is physically ill when Keats goes to Rome to heal and won't take her along. She is torn asunder when word reaches her about the poet's death. They weren't married but were only informally engaged because her mother won't consent because she thinks her daughter is tetched and "people are talking." In mourning, she makes her own widow's weeds, cuts off her hair, and walks the heath for six years reciting her man's poems. That is worth a collection of odes right there. So sad to see her walking the heath reciting "Bright Star." She eventually marries and has three children but her future is also tied to Keats' gathering fame. 

Today I read a batch of Keats' poems and they are impressive. I also read some criticism that followed Keats post-mortem. I've always been more taken with Wordsworth and Coleridge and Blake of the Early Romantic Period. Later, Shelley was pretty cool although his wife was more cool. Lord Byron dies the true Romantic's death when he leaves poesy to fight a war that had nothing to do with him. Strange thing is, it seems as if Keats has a stronger legacy as the suffering creative genius. He was poor and unknown in his time. But the poet who suffers is still with us. And the poet's betrothed is the one whose suffering I felt most. 

Where does one get Micro Kale and Wasabi Arugula in the midst of ski season?

We move our lives indoors as frost and snow shuts down another outdoor growing season in Cheyenne. Yesterday, I plucked all of my tomatoes and brought them inside to finish ripening. I found some purple pod beans lurking in the foliage. I snipped off my basil, oregano, and rosemary and stored them in the freezer. I'll use them in sauces throughout the winter. 

This is usually a somber day for me. Winter is coming! October through March is when I spend more time thinking about gardening than actually gardening. What grew well this year and what am I going to tackle in 2022? Thing is, much growing has moved inside. Locals have built small backyard greenhouses. Some of us take advantage of big south-facing windows to continue the process during the dreary months, just as our rooftop solar panels reach out to the sun dipping into the southern latitudes.

Just read an Inc. Magazine article about vertical farming operations around the U.S. Former industrial sites in New Jersey and Pennsylvania have been transformed into hydroponic farms. Vertical Harvest in Jackson grows greens and tomatoes year-round in its three-story farm built on a strip of land adjacent to the city parking garage. Teton County visionaries found this unused bit of land, a rarity in Jackson, and then planned, funded, and built VH. Now, according to the Inc. article, it's going nationwide with facilities planned for Westbrook, Maine, and North Philadelphia, Penn. VH's mission from its early days was to employ people with developmental disabilities, which they are doing, a mission VH promotes on its packaged produce: "Sustainably produced by community members with different abilities." 

This fascinates me. I am a gardener and cook. My daughter has "different abilities." I volunteer at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. Botany is not my trade -- writing is -- but I've always been interested in growing things. I'm moderately tech-savvy but am intrigued with ways that tech can change ways we grow our food. Computers, efficient L.E.D. lights, and robotics are feeding what Inc. calls "the future of the $5 trillion agriculture industry." Outdoor gardening has its thrills but also drawbacks in hail, pests, and diseases. So-called urban farming impacts all of this. It also addresses climate change variables: hurricanes, deluges, drought, massive wildfires. In southeast Wyoming, we look forward to this week's snow because the summer and early fall have been so dry. Meanwhile, Northern Italy last week was swamped with almost 30 inches of rain in a 12-hour storm. 

The Inc. article wraps with mention of a book by botanist Stefano Mancuso, "The Revolutionary Genius of Plants." Mancuso posits that not only have humans been nurturing plants for some 10,000 years, but "plants have brought us along on their evolutionary journey, employing us as a means of transportation." Now we bring them inside, away from most of their pests and plagues, and refine them along the way. A photo in the article shows Irving Fain, Bowery Farms founder, behind a crop of wasabi arugula. Some diners already consider arugula pungent, but a wasabi mix? Holy moly. Some crops are brand new and some are being resurrected from the dustbin of history. 

Tech and business brainiacs are in the mix with Micro Kale and Beet Greens. Lots of start-up dough is going into these projects. "Geeks and quants" are involved, says Inc., and I think I know a geek when I see one but a quant? That's what the Internet is for. According to Investopedia, it comes from "quantitative (quant) trading" which "involves the use of algorithms and programs to identify and capitalize on available trading opportunities." Quants do this. They read pubs such as Poets and Quants which, as far as I can tell, has more to do with the latter than the former. Bowery's Fain might be a quant as he says this: "The question for me is, can tech generate scalable opportunities and an exponential increase in outcomes." 

It's a good question. There's another way to put it:

Salad on table/Where to find arugula/That inflames the tongue

Just asking for a poet friend.

Book banning in Gillette: A Wyoming story

The American Library Association wrapped up Banned Books Week and now there are no banned books in the land.

Wishful thinking. Know Nothings keep intruding into our book-reading lives. The most recent and newsworthy attempt comes from Gillette in Campbell County. The first salvo came when a few crackpots decided that the library should disinvite an LGBTQ author slated to give a children's workshop. The library received threats. The author received threats. For safety's sake, the author cancelled her appearance and the library moved on to other things. That included fielding challenges for various books, most with LGBTQ subject matter. As staff sorted through the complaints from a cabal of Christian Nationalist zealots, they celebrated Banned Books Week. The county commission held a hearing in which the following exchange occurred (as noted in an Oct. 4 Casper Star-Trib article):

On Sept. 27, during a meeting between the library board and commissioners, Commissioner Del Shelstad suggested cutting the library’s funding.

He said the library shouldn’t come asking the county for more money because in his opinion, “we shouldn’t fund you at all.”

Commissioner D.G. Reardon, who had called into the meeting, asked if he’d heard Shelstad correctly, and if Shelstad meant he wanted to close down the library.

Shelstad said he wanted to cut funding to the library, and ”if that means closing it, then we close it.”

Shelstad received a salvo of complaints and a few days later he back-tracked, sort of:

“I didn’t mean 100% of their funding,” he said. “I said cut their funding. That comes in a lot of shapes and sizes.”

A threat is a threat. He obviously supports and/or is threatened by the naysayers in the county. We know who those people are. Trumpsters. People who go to extremes to “own the libs.” The see any diversity initiative as a threat to their ignorance, which it is. There is a voting bloc of these people and their influence is felt every day at the library, in the media, county commission meetings, and at the polls.

Gillette parent Matt Heath, who spoke up for the library at the commission meeting, summed it up: "hypocrites and bullies need to be stood up against."

Amen, brother. These dogged bullies have always been with us. Trump unleashed them. It is too much to hope they go back into their hidey-holes. We must out-vote and out-talk them. Support your local library. Read a banned book today. And vote, as our complacency as people who value democratic principles have allowed this to happen. Far-right politicians and legislative bodies continue to suppress voting rights and gerrymander the hell out of our states. Misinformation spreads freely.

So get out there, go do that voodoo that you do so well. 

Custer's ghost asks: Where have all the flowers gone?

Last week, the Wyoming Public Media page featured an article by Kamila Kudelska about a new book, Wyoming History in Art, compiled by the Wyoming State Historical Society. The book showcases paintings by Osage, Wyo., native Dave Paulley, who passed away in 2020. The paintings were commissioned in 1989 to celebrate the state's centennial. Historian Jeremy Johnston wrote the narratives that accompany the paintings. To buy a book, send an email to linda@wyshs.org

The WPM feature story showed one of the paintings, "Custer's Troops in Floral Valley, 1874." It shows troopers picking flowers and making bouquets. In the background, a wagon train rolls. At first, I thought it was a fanciful scene. "How interesting. The troopers killed at the Little Bighorn are picking flowers." I thought it might be some metaphor to what was to come two years later in another valley.

I hadn't yet read the book so I didn't know that it was a recreation of an historical scene. The soldiers are some of the 1,000-some that made up Custer's Black Hills Expedition. More than 100 wagons hauled supplies from Fort Abraham Lincoln near present-day Bismarck, N.D., down through northeast Wyoming and into the Black Hills. They encountered a flowered valley along the way. After weeks of barreling through the treeless plains of N.D., they were entranced by the wildflowers and stopped to pick them, make bouquets, and fashion wreaths for their mounts. 

I've lived in Wyoming 30 years and never heard this wonderful story. History is so filled with oddities. We see the echoes of those events down through our times. Custer was charged with exploring the area that hadn't yet been properly mapped by white folks. As an aside, Pres. Grant's staff mentioned that if he finds any gold, be sure to let The Great White Father know before telling anyone else.

Custer found gold among the wildflowers and all hell broke loose. A gold rush commenced and lands sacred to Lakota and other Plains tribes were invaded by rough men with demonic gleams in their eyes. Treaties had insured that the Black Hills wound remain in Indian hands. The Plains War erupted in earnest. It led to the pillaging of the Black Hills and the enmity of the tribes. Some 200 of the flower gatherers followed Custer into an ambush at what Native Americans call the Battle of Greasy Grass. 

It eventually led to the killing and atrocities that culminated at Wounded Knee. And the beat goes on.

The painting deserved a poem. So I wrote one, a prose poem. It was be a prose poem or it may be flash fiction. There doesn't seem to be a clear dividing line and maybe that's a good thing. 

Custer Botanicals

Custer’s Troops in Floral Valley, July 1874. It’s beautiful this painting by David Paulley. Oil on canvas, 24 by 16 inches. Mounted troopers on the Black Hill Expedition pick wildflowers under an azure sky of a Dakota Territory summer. A bearded trooper on a black horse clutches a bouquet of Goldenrod, Blackeyed Susan, blue flax. He looks behind him, over his bedroll, sees his young love back home run to him through Floral Valley. She wears a yellow dress, looks just as she did when her lover left for the West’s Indian Wars. She wants to send him away with a final kiss. She smiles, tears streak her skin. The sun dodges behind a cloud and when it reappears two years on, his love’s shining face is replaced by the paint-streaked dusk of a Lakota Sioux warrior. He wields a stone war club and runs to the fight. A revolver replaces the flowers in the soldier’s hand. The warrior charges. The soldier fires. The warrior falls, face pressed into the field of mashed flowers. The soldier looks up and more Lakota and Cheyenne and Arapaho charge him. They scream. Why are they screaming? Seemed like only moments ago he picked flowers in a valley, surrounded by fellow flower-mad troopers. In the distance, wagons rolled north, loaded with guns and butter, trinkets and liquor to becalm the natives. “It was a strange sight,” Custer reported to Congress in 1875, “my men with beautiful bouquets in their hands, while the head-gear of the horses was decorated with wreaths of flowers fit to crown the queen of May.” In Montana, 2021, Custer’s soldiers lie beneath the prairie, reach out for the roots of tickseed and yarrow, sunflower and beardtongue. Tell us your flower secrets. Tell us what it feels like among the bees and butterflies and sweet summer rain. Let us hold you again, wreathe our horses with you, inhale the blossoms of Floral Valley on this slow march to Valhalla.

Jackson Hole Art Blog keeps me posted about arts events in Teton County and beyond

I spent two hours this morning reading Tammy Christel’s Jackson Hole Art Blog and 12 days of posts on Tammy’s Facebook page about the fall arts festival. Wonderful blog post about David Brookover’s photo techniques and the methods he uses to visualize the Tetons and valley wildlife. Great detail about the various papers he uses. I learned so much about silver prints and platinums and photogravures.  

Tammy FB-tracked the busy 12 days in Jackson with the fall arts festival. An arts extravaganza for what may be the most beautiful month in The Hole. Funny to note the clothing choices of artists painting en plein air. At the Quick Draw, artist Jason Borbet, clad in sweat shirt and bright-red mittens, paints the Tetons/Snake River vista made famous by Ansel Adams. Emily Boespflug decked out for a run down the slopes with gloves, three layers of jackets, a red scarf and wool cap. She’s putting the finishing touches on a painting while onlookers in stocking caps observe her progress. Fall in Jackson – winter one day, summer the next.

Tammy kept track of the many events and also logged in some of the accompanying fun things – Sunday Brunch Gallery Walk with gigantic Bloody Marys topped off with onion rings and the many studio open houses, including Laurie Thal’s cool glass-blowing workplace in Wilson. Tammy also logs in some of the prices paid for artwork. For the casual arts buyer, the prices are astounding. Someone paid $1.2 million for Howard Terpning’s “Vanishing Pony Tracks” oil (writes Tammy: “Wowza!”) and $65,000 for Gary Lynn Roberts Quick Draw painting of a winter day at the Wort Hotel in days gone by.

Impressive numbers. But not unusual for a noted arts town such as Jackson. It was ranked the number one small community on the list of The Most Vibrant Arts Communities in America 2020. That’s from the National Center for Arts Research at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

The top five were all in the Mountain West. Along with Jackson (which includes Wilson and Teton Village, Wyo., and Victor and Driggs, Idaho just over Teton Pass) were Steamboat Springs, Colo.; Heber, Utah; Hailey, Idaho; and Glenwood Springs, Colo. All of these places are within a day’s drive from my house. At 677 miles, Hailey would be a bit of a stretch, although Chris and I have logged one-day drives of 995 miles from our son’s place in Tucson. Long-distance driving skills are a necessity in our part of the world. It’s also good to note that three of the arts towns on the list of medium-sized communities are Boulder, Colo. (100 miles), Santa Fe, N.M.. (492 miles) and Bozeman, Mont. (595 miles). Note that Steamboat, Glenwood and Boulder are closer to me than Jackson, a mere 432 miles away, about the same distance as Heber City and Santa Fe.

As you can see, I live in the orbit of some of our country’s artsiest towns. Cheyenne is not in the SMU top ten. That’s OK – our arts scene is growing and we are very close to Denver and other pretty darn good arts town along the Front Range. Fort Collins has a multitude of outdoor music events promoted by the zillion craft brewers in town. I also like to browse the CSU Arts Center in the Old Fort Collins H.S. (Go Lambkins!). During the warmer months, you can find me outside perusing CSU Ag’s beautiful test garden and its large Xeriscape garden. Loveland is sculpture town. Visit and of the city parks to find an array of sculpture, from the representational to the avant-garde. I like the Chapungu African Sculpture Park east of the sprawling Centerra Center at I-25 and Hwy. 34. It features 82 hard-carved stone sculptures in a park with 600 trees of 20 species along with natïve shrubs and grasses. Wild Wonderful Weekend takes place there this weekend with a Saturday evening concert by American Authors who are actually American rockers.

As is true for many Cheyennites, we spend a lot of time at Colorado venues. We also support local arts. You can do both.

The top-five small arts communities mentioned above are all destination resorts for summer and winter sports. The rich have gravitated to these places so they can brag about swapping tall tales with real local cowboys at the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar. They also like the views or viewsheds as realtors call them. It’s easy to be snarky about the scene and the outrageous prices paid for some art. Local writers have had some fun poking fun at the migratory riche, nouveau or otherwise (I’m looking at you Tim Sandlin). 

But I always loved traveling to Jackson for arts events and get there as often as I can. At all other times, I depend on Tammy’s blog and Facebook posts to transport me to its arts happenings.  

A prelude to fall this weekend at Cheyenne Botanic Gardens Harvest Festival

I'm volunteering Saturday afternoon at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens front desk. The place will be hopping with the annual Heirlooms and Blooms Harvest Market from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (noon to 4 on Sunday). This is the Gardens' first big event since the advent of Covid. Supposed to be a nice day. The farmers' market and the Shawn Dubie Memorial Rodeo happens Saturday at Frontier Park so it should be a lively day in the neighborhood. Drop by the front desk between noon and 3 and say hi. 

From the CBG press release:

CHEYENNE – Don’t wait for the chill of the holiday season to start shopping for your loved ones or yourself! 

Join the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, 710 S. Lions Park Dr., for an expanded indoor/outdoor harvest market at the most bountiful and beautiful time of year at the Gardens! This two-day event, on Saturday, Sept. 11, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday, Sept. 12 from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m., will have a variety of regionally made gifts from artists and craftsmen selling everything from home decor, woodworking, art and jewelry, dog treats, baked goods, apparel, and so much more! 

Make it an outing for the whole family and enjoy some delicious food from our food vendors, and activities for the kids! Admission is free, so come and enjoy the lush surroundings of the Gardens as you get ahead of your Fall decorating and Holiday shopping! 

Additional free parking is available across the street in Frontier Days Lot C. 

FMI: Aaron Summers, 307-637-6458.

P.S. Cheyenne writer Barb Gorges will be on hand from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday and noon-4 p.m. Sunday to sign her books, "Cheyenne Garden Gossip" and "Cheyenne Birds by the Month."

Latest WyoFile review features biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings by Ann McCutchan

Check out my latest book review on WyoFile: "In new biography, Laramie writer McCutchan examines a different frontier."

Ann McCutchan's new book is The Life She Wished to Live: A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Author of The Yearling. Ann told me about the upcoming book when we met for coffee when she was contemplating a move back to Laramie. I was fascinated by the story behind Ann's choice in bio subjects and her return to the state. She grew up on Florida's Atlantic coast not far from where I came of age. We both had similar nostalgic memories of life on and near the beach. We both landed in Wyoming as adults and shared a bit of surprise that this is where we spent so much of our lives. No beaches within miles, unless you count Garth Brooks' "The Beaches of Cheyenne."

WyoFile's articles can now be heard via audio from Ad Auris. They've been doing this for awhile but just noticed it when the site published my latest review. I listened to it and it's quite good. Tune in at the above link.

Boring old college lecturer responds to "The Chair"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That summer day in Wyoming, that was some wonderful day

One of my favorite loop tours for visitors is Cheyenne to Saratoga via the Snow Range. And then back again. For me, this 300-mile round-trip is no big deal. During summer, the obstacles on this route are construction, poky RVers, and hailstorms. During winter, you have to add in "slick in spots" hazards along I-80s Elk Mountain route. 

My wife Chris and sister Eileen joined me in my car. Brother-in-law Brian, daughter Annie and sister Mary rode in the rental. We first drove to Laramie. Annie wanted to show off her future campus. We parked in the War Memorial Stadium lot. Our visitors were impressed with the "breaking through" monumental sculpture and the big motto writ on across the stadium wall: "The world needs more cowboys." I really didn't want to get into some of the blowback the phrase caused. What about cowgirls?  Will this turn off Native American and other minority students? And what cowboys, exactly, are you speaking of? Cowboy Joe? John Wayne? The drovers in "Lonesome Dove?" The thousands of UW grads who couldn't find jobs in their home state and fled to non-cowboy states such as Illinois and Florida? Who? What?

We toured the big welcome center named for a rich donor. This is how it is on college campuses and I have no problems with it. Inside, I saw names of patrons who also support the arts and that made me happy as UW has great arts facilities and faculty. 

I noticed the library in the fireplace room and settled in to read through some of the old UW annuals. I was taken with the 1954 volume. Its first eight pages were photos of campus and Wyoming scenes that looked like blueline prints of 3D film. There is a pocket in the book's inside front cover that once held 3D glasses. How fun is that? 3D movies had hit the market in the early 1950s and they were all the rage when UW students assembled the annual in 1954. "It Came from Outer Space" (1953) and "Creature from the Black Lagoon" (1954). I was also surprised by some of the other 3D titles listed on IMBD, "Kiss Me Kate" and "Hondo" among them. I don't have a real good feeling about Richard Burton/Elizabeth Taylor and The Duke coming at me in three dimensions. "They called him Hondo -- hot-blooded as the Plains that bred him. silent as gunsmoke, a stranger to all but the surly dog at his side." OK by me, but the dog better not die.

We ate lunch under the trees and toured the UW Art Museum, one of my favorite places. Some exhibits were closing down to make room for the fall crop of artists. But the ones still up were fascinating. I really got a kick out of  David Bradley's 2001 panoramic and satiric painting of the Santa Fe Indian Market (going on now). I was entranced by Collin Parson's "Light Ellipse" at the entrance to the galleries. The 12-feet-high ellipse is made of PVC panel and backlit by LED lights and changes colors as you watch. Parson's exhibit is one of the museum's fall highlights which includes visits and talks by the Denver artist. "Blind" by Holly Roberts was part of the museum's horse exhibit. This was one of the more experimental works in "The West on Horseback" exhibit that included paintings by Hans Klieber and black-and-white ranch photos by Elsa Spear Byron.  

After a quick tour of downtown we headed for the mountains along Route 130 through Centennial. The high prairie seemed very green for the first week in August. It's usually lightly-browned as beach sand, sometimes as brown as the Wyoming Brown you see all across the UW campus. A summer squall cut into our sightseeing. Also, there was that brown cloud that has found its way here from Oregon and California. The rain let up when we reached Lake Marie so we released our visitors into the wild, now with that fresh post-rainstorm scent. Lake Marie probably one of the most photographed site in Wyoming outside our national parks and the country's first national monument. Sometimes you can catch it as still and mirror-lake and, if the light is just right, you can shoot a fit-for-framing reflection of the surrounding mountains. Laramie's Doc Thissen once showed me such a photo, one of his.

On the way downhill we passed Brush Creek Ranch and I thought about C.J. Box's novel "The Disappeared" in which some nefarious goings-on happen at a guest ranch eerily similar to Brush Creek. Other fictional nogoodniks are haunting the Wolf Hotel in downtown Saratoga, a place where Game Warden/Sleuth Joe Pickett bellies up to the bar on a frigid winter evening and sips a Black Tooth Saddle Bronc Ale. Eileen, Brian, and Mary toured the Wolf and the rest of the town. 

"So who lives here?" I've asked myself that question many times, usually when passing places such as Hanna and  Jeffrey City. I know writers from Hanna and people in Jeffrey City who kept its arts council alive even when the town was dying. These towns also house coal-miners, wind-farm workers, retirees and meth heads. Just like any place in the Rocky Mountain West. As I drive back to Cheyenne, I look out on the landscape and marvel that anyone can make a living in this place. It inspires -- I think of Linda Lillegraven's wonderful landscape paintings -- and it also causes people to lose their minds, as happens in real life and in Annie Proulx's short stories (Proulx spent many years in WYO and once lived in Centennial). 

The setting sun ignites the clouds over the Laramie Range as we drive the last miles to home. It occurs to me that nobody in our two-car caravan sees Wyoming as I do. We all see and experience life differently. Some of us translate it (or try to) in the work we do. For others, it is memories and stories, a photograph that they unearth decades later and remember that August day in Wyoming spent with family. 

That was some day. 

Meadowlarks, cabbage burgers, and Pine Bluffs experiences a nuke boom (the good kind)

So this is Nebraska

So this is Nebraska. A Sunday

afternoon; July. Driving along

with your hand out squeezing the air,

a meadowlark waiting on every post.

Third stanza of a poem by Ted Kooser of Nebraska, one-time U.S. Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress. To hear him read the poem, prefaced with a short description of why he wrote it, go to  Poetry Foundation. To read in full, go to So this is Nebraska

I heard Kooser read this poem aloud along with other work at a Wyoming Writers, Inc., conference a few years ago. He's a short and unassuming man. You can't say the same adjectives for his poetry. His work tells stories of life in the Great Plains, Nebraska mainly. The poems are simple in construction but you can find worlds in "a meadowlark waiting on every post."

I traveled from Cheyenne to Nebraska last week, my first visit since before Covid-19 struck. It was a short visit. Family visitors who had never been to Nebraska wanted to see it, step foot in a foreign place. I told them Nebraska stories, how Chris and I got trapped in Kimball during a spring blizzard when lightning veined the sky and I skidded through mushy snow a foot deep on I-80 before snagging the last hotel room barely 60 miles from home. I gathered my family one spring break day and met friends from Lincoln in Red Cloud, Nebraska, home of Willa Cather. An odd choice for spring break if you're not an admirer of Cather and her work. But our friends got into the spirit of the day. The kids played in the playground while we toured Cather's old home undergoing restoration (I snagged a 100-year-old board) and poked around the library which checks out books, videos, and cake pans. Chris and I walked the quiet autumn streets of Lincoln, campus lights twinkling in the distance. I remarked that it took a victory by the visiting CU Buffaloes over the Mighty Cornhuskers to bring the silence of a graveyard to the capital city. 

We drove through Pine Bluffs and past the border into Nebraska. "Looks a lot like Wyoming," Eileen said.

We pull off at Bushnell. I glide to a stop on the paved road which probably morphs into a gravel road. Next to the sign for Bushnell (No Services!), with farm equipment clattering down the road, prairie grass waving in the hot wind, I read them Kooser's poem. Looking back, I should have dialed up the poet reading his work. His voice matches the scenery.

I hear traffic zipping down the interstate. Thousands pass this way every day bound for somewhere else. Those who do get off at this interchange take bio breaks and tend to a crying child. No need to seek succor in Bushnell (No Services). Winter winds or weather might cause high-profile vehicles to pull over. But a truck stop is just seven miles away across the border so why stop here? I can easily conjure a winter day near Bushnell because I have experienced them near Torrington and Muddy Gap and Sinclair and Meeteetse. 

But today it is summer and it's beautiful.

We get back in the car and stop for lunch at Sadie's. A big weekend ahead for the town with Texas Trail Days. A parade, rodeo, concerts and a mud volleyball tourney. I order a cabbage burger because I never see that on any restaurant menus. Only time I've eaten one was at Germans-from-Russia events that feature the Dutch Hop Polka. 

We tour the Texas Trail Museum and find out that we just missed the brief stop of UP's rebuilt Big Boy steam locomotive as it began its cross-country travels. We tour the gigantic Virgin Mary statue at the east end of town, and then the archaeological dig site on the way back to Cheyenne.

A school teacher tending the info booth at the rest area tells us that there isn't a single apartment or house to rent or buy in Pine Bluffs. The town expects an influx of workers set to begin the first phase of the renovation of the area's nuke missile sites. This is part of a multi-year $3 billion project to bring our "nuclear deterrent" up to 21st century requirements. Nobody ever talks about the "peace dividend" anymore. That's so late-20th century. Not sure what the nukes can do to help the Afghans about to regress into the 5th century. The Taliban, it seems, are not impressed with our nuclear might lurking in burrows on the prairie.

Behind a shelterbelt of cedars, 

top-deep in hollyhocks, pollen and bees,

a pickup kicks its fender off

and settles back to read the clouds.

Savage Vedauwoo chipmunks, and other travel stories

Don’t get around much anymore. Not since March 2020 anyway. Guests arrive August 2021 and it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee and the buffalo chips.

My sisters Mary and Eileen and brother-in-law Brian ventured from Florida to Wyoming to visit their brother (me, he, him) and family (she, she) and take a look around the High Plains.

Wyoming and Florida are different places. For one thing, we are a big square state and Florida is shaped liked a human appendage. Wyoming high and dry; Florida low and wet. Blizzards generally don’t hit Florida. Hurricanes usually skip Wyoming.

Both places have lots to see and you have to get out and see them. In Wyoming, you get in the car, check the gas gauge, and drive to the mountains. In Florida, you get in the car, check your insurance, and drive to Orlando. If you survive that, you drive to the beach. I grew up in Daytona Beach in the 1960s and ‘70s. You could drive to the beach and on the beach. NASCAR races were once held on the beach’s hand-packed sand. Unique place. Beach-driving hours are now limited.

I drove my 2021 visitors first to Vedauwoo. We picnicked under pines and watched climbers negotiate the 1.4-billion-year-old chunks of granite. I remembered my young son and daughter clambering up the rocks and Chris and me down below, worrying but also impressed. Vedauwoo is usually one of the faves cited by visiting friends and family. What’s not to like? Gorgeous scenery, cool winds scented by pines, sunny skies. Add some snow to the Laramie Range and you get all this plus cross-country skiing or snowshoeing.

Chris and Annie hiked south. Eileen, Mary, and Brian decided to hike Turtle Rock Trail. I told them it was a fairly easy 3-mile trail. I forgot to mention that we were at 8,200 feet. This is approximately 8,150 feet higher that their homes in Florida. I also forgot to mention to drink plenty of water. I know, what kind of host am I? Altitude and hydration are always the first things you mention when travelers arrive from The World. I remember my first camping trip in Colorado after living at sea level for 14 years. Base camp for the Long’s Peak Trail in RMNP. Spent the first night with a raging headache. Nothing worked on it: Coors, Tylenol, wishful thinking. I just waited it out.

Everyone but me went hiking. I am partially disabled and use a walker so hiking is no longer my thing. I sat at the picnic table. Munched grapes, and read a book. At one point, chipmunks got brave enough to visit the table. Earlier, my patient daughter Annie fed a grape to a chipmunk. Apparently, they thought I also was a purveyor of grapes. At least one did. He skittered across my book several times. The next trip, he stopped, sniffed my thumb, and bit me. I yelped and he scampered into the underbrush. No blood, the bite not hard enough to break the skin. I moved away from chipmunk habitat and found a shady, secluded spot to continue reading.

The hikers all made it back. The Florida people were a bit winded and thirsty.

“That was a long three miles,” Brian said.

“Mountain miles are longer than sea-level miles.” I explained that mountain trails take twists and turns, they go up and they go down. Three miles can seem like six or even sixteen.

“So mountain miles seem longer than sea-level miles,” Brian surmised.

“I don’t get your point,” I said. “A chipmunk bit me.”  

Florida and Wyoming may never understand each other. Sign of the times.

On the next post, we journey east to Nebraska, where it was 98 freaking degrees, and west to the Snowies where it snowed.

History and storytelling in historical fiction

One of the great things about historical fiction is the discovery of familiar names whom I know little or nothing about. This, of course, makes me want to know more.

Dorothea Lange is known for the most famous photo of Depression America. You know the one – the portrait of the poor mother and child taken in a California work camp. The subject wears the gloom of the Depression in her eyes and her slumped shoulders. Something heroic about her, too, something almost mother-and-child Biblical. 

Lange took the photo in 1936 after gathering a lifetime of expertise and a lifetime of hurt, some of that at the hands of her husband, Maynard Dixon. I had heard Dixon’s name mentioned in arts circles and had seen some of his paintings at the Center of the West in Cody and the Denver Art Museum. I know nothing of the man.

Curiosity caused me to pick up the historical novel “The Bohemians” by Jasmin Darznik. It opens in 1918 San Francisco and I am curious about the era in American history because I am writing about it. I picked up the book from the seven-day shelf knowing I could not read it in seven days because I was guiding Florida family members around Wyoming for that week. Then I saw it was dedicated to California poet Rebecca Foust. I knew that if a fine poet such as Rebecca was attached to this book that it was a good one. So who cares about a late fee?

I’m only about two-thirds through the novel but know that Dixon plays a major role in Lange’s life and vice versa. I looked up Dixon to see some of his paintings and recognized several and his famous style. I looked up Lange to reacquaint myself with the famous photo. I didn’t want to read too much since I want to maintain the suspense that Darznik develops. Now I can continue…

How true is historical fiction? I fall back on this phrase: “This book (movie) is based on real events (real people) but is a work of fiction.” The fiction writer reserves the right to merge with their character’s protoplasm to bring them to life. It’s the writer’s view based on what may be years of research. The reader gets to decide if it’s a good and believable story.

“The Bohemians” seems believable. I’ll let you know my final thoughts when I finish.

I will tell you that “The Ridgeline” by Michael Punke is a true and believable story of the events in Wyoming during Red Cloud’s War in 1866. It focused on the characters involved in the Fetterman Fight. We see the Oglala side through Crazy Horse, Red Cloud, and some young warriors. We see the cavalry side from journal entries by a young bride who has accompanied her brash husband to Wyoming. Other “invader” voices include Lt. Crummond, the doomed Capt. Fetterman, the acerbic and aging Jim Bridger, several young soldiers, a camp follower, and an occasional snide look at policy-makers in D.C.

It’s a ripping yarn as I say in a review soon to be published on another online Wyocentric site. It’s cool that it was written by a Wyoming native but not necessary to the story. It’s a good read. Reminded me that the Fetterman Fight site (usually labeled “the Fetterman Massacre”) is preserved by the State of Wyoming as is the Wagon Box Fight and Fort Phil Kearny. Museums in Johnson and Sheridan counties have exhibits about the Indian wars. It’s often told from the conqueror’s POV. But remember: “Custer’s Last Stand” or the “Custer Massacre” used to be the terms for the famous national historic site in southern Montana. It was renamed Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and was the first NPS entity to hire a Native American superintendent. To the Lakota or Sioux Nation, June 25 is Victory Day in the 1876 Battle of Greasy Grass.

Reading “The Ridgeline” helped me see the Fetterman Fight as a military encounter and a battle between opposing cultures. It’s the most notable event in a long line of battles between U.S. horse soldiers and the native horse soldiers of the Northern Plains. As a kid in the 1950s in the Rocky Mountain West, I was steeped in the glory of Custer’s Last Stand. As an adult, I now get to see the encounter from the POV of all sides. I am a curious adult. Not sure what schoolkids are learning about the Plains Wars. Let’s hope that a bit of reality creeps into schools now being assaulted by right-wing zealots who believe in a whitewashed version of history.

Read my review of Anna North’s alternative historical novel “Outlawed” centered around the Sundance Kid and the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang of Wyoming.

Reading Kooser during a short trip to Nebraska

My two sisters and brother-in-law from Florida had never been to Nebraska. To remedy this, I drove I-80 into Neb ("It looks a lot like Wyoming") and pulled off at the first exit. Next to the sign for Bushnell (No Services!), with farm equipment clattering down the road, prairie grass waving in the hot wind, I read them Ted Kooser. Seemed like the right thing to do. We then drove back to WYO and ate cabbage burgers at Sadie's Cafe in Pine Bluffs. A fine day.

Read Kooser's "So This is Nebraska"

Sunday morning round-up, Wild West edition

Cheyenne Frontier Days is underway. I live maybe a half-mile from Frontier Park, home of the rodeo and night concerts. On most nights, I can sit on my front porch and hear the concerts. Not so Friday night when Garth Brooks was on stage. I could hear a rumble way off in the distance but that's it. My wife and I saw Garth when he performed at the 100th anniversary of CFD. He's got that rock star in him, which sends him zooming all over the stage. One highlight of the performance is when Chris LeDoux joined him on stage. Chris was a country-singer who also rode the rodeo circuit. That gave him an edge on the CFD experience. Cancer took him in 2005. CFD celebrates him this year with a program and posters with original artwork of the LeDoux sculpture they unveiled this year. He means a lot to Wyoming. He bought his first guitar in Cheyenne as a kid whose father was stationed at Warren AFB. He later won at CFD and performed here. He bought a ranch near Kaycee in Powder River Country. Kaycee dedicated a pocket park to LeDoux after his untimely death. It's right off I-25. I used to stop there and sit by myself amongst the prairie flowers. Why? Peaceful. A great place to meditate. After awhile you don't even hear the trucks hauling goods from Denver to Sheridan. The birds, yes, and maybe a guitar note or two. 

I volunteered as greeter at the Botanic Gardens front desk yesterday. I volunteer Thursday and Saturday afternoons. Up until yesterday, the summer crowds have been heavy. Tourists are back on the road after the Covid hiatus and they are drawn to our fine gardens which includes the Conservatory, Children's Village, and nine acres of outdoor gardens. CFD claims most of the attention during the last week of July. The afternoon rodeo and the night concerts are packed. The Indian Village, the vendor fair, and Old Trail Town claim the rest. Yesterday I was on the lookout for visitors in western gear and only one family of six fit that description. Must you wear western gear to CFD? Not mandatory but expected. Kind of like Wyoming's face mask directive -- never mandatory but expected (kind-of). I don't go anywhere without my mask. The Botanic Gardens brought back its big plexiglass sneeze barrier for the duration. We volunteers, mostly seniors, urged the staff to take precautions in what could be a super-spreader event. The Conservatory also kept its distance protocol, although nobody pays it much attention. Covid cases are up in the county, most of the ruthless Delta Variant. But we can't let an invisible bug get in the way of the county's biggest revenue generator. I enjoy the excitement. But I was fully vaccinated back in February. I know that most CFD attendees are on the conservative side. They believe the virus is a hoax and part of a vast liberal conspiracy that includes election-rigging, defunding the police, putting an abortion mill and a taco truck on every corner, force-feeding the 1619 Project to innocent schoolkids, and removing statues of heroic traitors and Indian-killers from our public squares.

Early in the Covid shutdown, I kept track of the stats on these pages. I gave it up as I lost hope that it would never end or I was an optimistic fool believing it would run its course either tomorrow or the next day or certainly the day after that. I was wrong on both counts. Get the latest stats from the Wyoming Department of Health.     

Carbon County Museum lights up local history

Dino the Sinclair dinosaur and an unnamed mule deer in front of the Carbon County Museum in Rawlins. Photo by Annie Shay.

Daughter Annie and I traveled to Rawlins a few Fridays ago to cover a story on the Carbon County Museum. Annie's a photographer and this is the first story we worked together. I've watched her start her own photography business. She's assembled some good photo equipment. I've watched her edit her work on PhotoShop, a world of mystery to me. Photography has been a hobby and part of my job several times, including my time at the Wyoming Arts Council. My skills have always been rudimentary. Over the years, I've found that I can interview the subject or take photos but not both. I need to query the subject, watch their body language, and study the face. 

So it was a bonus for me to work with a photographer. We also traveled and had lunch together. How cool is that? It's fun to talk and negotiate the snowless Snow Chi Minh Trail over Elk Mountain, there and back again. Always a good stop at that rest area, although not so pleasant in January when frigid 80 mph winds freeze your hands and buffet you about. Annie shot photos of the mountain, free of snow in late June which I found odd but in keeping with climate change. 

But, summer. It's short but glorious.

Annie and I cruised to Anong's for lunch and then found the museum at 9th and Walnut. It's in an old LDS church and it looks church-like but for the museum's sign and the big green dinosaur staring off to the north and the mule deer lying in the shade. 

Annie: Is that real?

Me: Dinosaurs are extinct.

Annie: No, the deer.

Deer (looking at us): It's a damn sight cooler here in the shade. Think I want to be out on the parched prairie and its 95-degree heat and coyotes and rattlers and the sudden urge to dart into speeding traffic? I'd be inside if I could figure out a way to open the doors (raises hoofs) See?

Annie and Me: Oh

After our deer encounter and, equipped with opposable thumbs, we go inside. Dr. Steven Dinero sits behind the old bank teller's cage. He's the ED and serves some shifts as the official greeter and gift shop cashier. 

You have to read "From outlaw skulls to rail stories, Rawlins Museum animates history" on WyoFile's Studio Wyoming Review. Take a look at the accompanying photos and click on the captions so you can see Annie's credit line, her first-ever. She's proud of it and so am I. 

A note about museums: I've lived in Wyoming for 30 years but I'd never been to this museum. I've been to the Frontier Prison and the real prison south of town. I've toured the old train depot and stopped for food and bio breaks dozen of times. Weather stopped me one February day and I chose to go the northern route back to Cheyenne so I didn't miss Chris's birthday. I wonder how many other of the state's 100-plus museums have I passed by. Dozens, I suspect. Take an hour break on your summer sojourn and visit a museum. 

Author Anna North takes a new look at the Hole in the Wall Gang

A few months ago, I stumbled across an intriguing new Anna North novel courtesy of the hive mind of Kindle. Not sure if it picked up my online interests in Wyoming or in spec-fict novels or it planted a bug in my celebral cortex to monitor my every thought. But it showed up in Kindle's rec list. 

My reading tastes are catholic (small c) although occasionally Catholic (cap C). My Kindle Library lists titles as disparate as Michael Lewis's non-fiction and scarifying account of the pandemic ("The Premonition") to George Sands' odd novel of 1840s rural France, "La Petite Fadette" (see my March 13 post. Amazon doesn't get all the credit. I read physical books too. Just finished Ann McCutchan's intriguing biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and am deep into C.J. Box's Joe Pickett novel of intrigue in Carbon County, "The Disappeared." Both books by Wyoming writers. 

I was so impressed with "Outlawed" that I wrote a review and sent it off to my editor at Studio Wyoming Review, Camellia El-Antably. She liked it and fired it off to WyoFile where it landed today. Here's the opening with a link to the rest:

Imagine, if you will, that Wyoming’s infamous Hole in the Wall Gang in the late 1890s was composed of young women escaping a post-pandemic totalitarian society. 

That’s the scenario constructed by Anna North in her new revisionist historical novel, “Outlawed.” These “outlaws” were driven from their communities because they couldn't bear children.

North’s imagined society compels women to be fruitful and multiply (in the manner of “The Handmaid’s Tale”). Babies are crucial because, in the 1830s, a pandemic killed nine out of every 10 people. 

Not reproducing in 1894 is a crime, but sometimes nature intervenes in the form of infertility, disease or bad luck. The barren ones are banished or shunted off to convents. Sometimes, infertility coincides with a rash of infant deaths. Those young women get blamed and, when rumors reach a fever pitch, they are hanged as witches. 

So it’s off to Hole in the Wall. If you can arrange it.

Read the rest at Studio Wyoming Review on WyoFile.

Revisiting Lonesome Dove

I've been watching movies that paint a different portrait of the American West than I was taught in school. 

"Lonesome Dove" on Prime Video tells the tale of two aging Texas Rangers that drive some cattle to Montana. Cattle drives were mighty popular when I was a kid. "Rawhide" featured a young Clint Eastwood as cattle drover Rowdy Yates. "Red River" was a pretty good John Wayne movie about a cattle drive. I did my early growing up in Colorado where the stockyards employed many and the annual Stock Show was basically a promo for Eat More Beef.

I did not see "Lonesome Dove" when it was first aired in 1989. I didn't need another western as I'd seen them all. I was mistaken. "Lonesome Dove" is an eye-opener. Accurate about the violence that was the American West. The drovers die in terrible ways: death by water moccasins, death by hanging, death by Indians (of course), death by stupidity. Fine acting by Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, and Diane Lane. 

It was based on Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel of the same name. The late Texas author was known for vivid portrayals of the hard life faced by cowboys, Indians, women, and lawmen. I haven't read any of his books which I chalk up to ignorance. Most mainstream novels of the West are formulaic. That suited me fine when I was eight. I grew up and needed to know the real story.

Last night I watched "The Revenant" on commercial TV. The ads were annoying but I stuck with it. Brutal in its honesty of what it must have been like in the fur-trading days of the 1800s. Hugh Glass is leading a trapping expedition and is attacked by a grizzly. The almost-dead Glass is abandoned by his colleagues who want to flee an Arickaree war party. Glass doesn't die. He wants revenge and he eventually gets it as he struggles to get back to "civilization," which is not very civilized, where male Indians get hanged and females get raped. The setting is Wyoming and Montana and the scenery is beautiful. Bad things can happen in beautiful places.

Realistic westerns appeared before "Lonesome Dove," mostly in feature films. "The Wild Bunch," "The Outlaw Josey Wales," "Little Big Man," and "The Horse Soldiers," among others. Many came out of the ferment of the 1960s and '70s and may have been meant to reflect the nightly horror show from Vietnam. The Air Cav cowboys flew in on choppers and the setting was jungle instead of wide-open spaces. But we got the picture.

HBO brought us westerns that were more like gangster films, "Deadwood" and "Hell on Wheels" to name two. Deadwood's founding year of 1876 featured at least one murder a day. There would be hell to pay if Deadwood in 2020 had 365 murders. Deadwood's godfather was diabolical dance hall proprietor Al Swearengen. He liked to feed the pigs.

"Hell on Wheels" portrayed life in end-of-track towns along the UP line in the 1860s. People were shot regularly and there was evil afoot in the many bars and brothels that were the main features of these towns (Cheyenne was one). The "Hell on Wheels" burg of Benton 11 miles east of Rawlins consisted of 25 saloons, five dance halls and a place called "The Big Tent" where fornication went on in one part of the tent and, in the other, physicians treated diseases spawned on the premises. Benton's heyday was in the summer of '68 and is now officially a ghost town. 

Am I shocked that humans behaved like humans in the days of my great great grandparents? No, that's history. We all need to know that human misdeeds were not always chronicled in our fourth grade history books. In fact, the texts were whitewashed to tell a sanitized version of history. We need to know the details so we don't repeat them. We will, of course because that's what people do. The hope is that in the future we will be more like the space voyagers of "Star Trek" and its Prime Directive than the bastards who slaughtered Natives at Sand Creek and Wounded Knee. Vietnam, too, and Iraq. Maybe we will learn. Maybe not. At least we will have somethings to guide us other than tired myths.

Many fine history-based books and poems have been written. We'll discuss those in a future post.