Nukes in the news -- again

Not enough people have seen "Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."

It's satire, sure, with a concept that a loony nuke base commander could trigger a nuclear war. General Jack D. Ripper is obsessed with Commies poisoning "our precious bodily fluids." His executive officer, a British captain, comes close to derailing the general's plans but, as we all know, close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and mega-kiloton atomic warheads.

"We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day."

Dr. Strangelove's closing lines, sung by Vera Lynn as the Russians' Doomsday Machine causes bombs to go off all over the world.

That's all, folks!

The movie's over. We laugh. Shake our heads. Punch the remote to "Bridgerton."

The premise seemed ridiculous to moviegoers in 1964. It seems ridiculous again. But not quite so. There is an unhinged megalomaniac in Russia threatening to use nukes if the West doesn't stop arming Ukraine. 

"Dr. Strangelove" got its start with a novel, "Red Alert," by Peter George. It's a thriller. I read it as a teen, that and "Fail-Safe," co-written by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. Also, Nevil Shute's "On the Beach." I read about nuclear Armageddon. It seemed so far-fetched. At the same time, I was reading the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift series. They sparked my imagination, turning me into a lifelong fan of fiction. Tom Swift's dirigible/biplane hybrid ("Tom Swift and His Airship, or, The Stirring Cruise of the Red Cloud") seemed as real to me as nuke bombers and missiles that could incinerate the planet. I was lost in a fantastic world that I never really grew out of.

At the same time, my father worked on installing Atlas missiles in hardened silos from Washington state to Kansas (Wyoming too). He was a contract specialist, an accountant with Martin Co. (Martin-Marietta). He was charged with making sure that the missiles and their underground homes were built correctly and within budget. We moved around with Dad and his work. I never really thought about how his job might lead to a cataclysm. But he did. He recommended that I watch Strangelove and read World War III novels. He didn't talk much about his work but I know he wanted me to be a reader and an informed citizen. 

Our family got a lot out of the Cold War. It never was a hot war, as some predicted, but it shaped me. 

So now, when Putin mouths off about nukes, I hear General Jack D. Ripper. I should take the guy more seriously as I live in the crosshairs of Nuclear Alley here in southeast Wyoming. If MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) arrives, I will have precious little time to worry about it. I never really stopped worrying nor did I learn to love the bomb. 

I revel in its absurdity.

"We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day."

Vera Lynn's singing takes us back to World War II. When Vera sang, British soldiers listened. They were in the fight of their lives around the globe. At home too, as Hitler waged a saturation bombing of a civilian population. Putin now saturates Ukraine with rockets and terror tactics. 

My father, a World War II G.I., liked Vera Lynn. Later, when I had a chance to think about it, I wondered if he minded that Vera Lynn's song had been used for a fiery conflagration that ended the world. He was especially fond of "The White Cliffs of Dover" which he must have heard many times in England as he trained for the Normandy invasion.

This:

There'll be bluebirds over/the White Cliffs of Dover/tomorrow,/just you wait and see

And this:

There'll be love and laughter/and peace there after,/tomorrow,/when the world is free

There may be a song like this for Ukraine. There should be.  

420 Day in Wyoming feels a lot like Wednesday

Happy 420 Day. 

Stoners in Boulder, Colo., used to treat this day as a smoke-filled holiday, known for one of the biggest 420 fests in the U.S. Legalization arrived via the voters in 2012. There now are hundreds of  marijuana dispensaries in the first state to start selling legal recreational weed. 

Wyoming, on the other hand, well, Wyoming is Wyoming. It will be the last state to approve it. Meanwhile, liquor rules the land. Prohibition (1920-1933) was a joke in this state while the temperance types in Colorado got an early start by prohibiting booze in 1916. Ah, Colorado, our sober southern neighbor.

Bootleggers abounded in WYO border towns for thirsty Coloradoans, Utahans, Nebraskans, Dakotans, Montanans, and Idahoans. Moonshine was an export commodity long before fireworks and fresh-faced UW grads. You can visit museums around the state that feature well-preserved stills from the 1930s. Museum volunteers lecture school groups on the bad old days when everyone was stewed to the gills with illicit hooch. Look how far we’ve come! Wyoming has a huge alcohol abuse problem. It also had the second-highest number of teen drug arrests in 2016, topped only by neighbor South Dakota and a bit more than neighbor Nebraska. Here’s a recent headline from the Cowboy State Daily: “Fentanyl Deaths in Wyoming Increasing; Federal, State Officials Worried.” 

My drugs of choice these days tend to be heavy on the Zs: Prozac, Zyrtec, Mirtazapine, Zestril. This is what happens when you have depression, get carted away with a heart attack, and sneeze your head off from May through October. These meds are prescribed liberally by physicians and pharmacists. Drug company reps hand out free samples. They need to be used with care as they carry a list of side effects (some alarming) listed on the three-page printout you get with each prescription. Oxycontin and Fentanyl carry similar warnings which nobody reads.

I’m pleased that the medical establishment gives us info so we can make decisions about what to take and what to jettison. No such lists were issued with the recreation drugs of the 60s and 70s. Our parents knew nothing nor did any adult we depended on for advice which we readily ignored. I was thinking about this the other day. KUWR’s Wyoming Sounds’ Throwback Thursday featured Grady Kirkpatrick playing songs on the forbidden list issued by an Illinois state law enforcement agency in 1971. The songs allegedly encouraged the use of illegal drugs. They included PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON (Peter, Paul, and Mary), HI-DE-HO (Blood, Sweat, and Tears) AND LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS (Beatles). 

The list was probably inspired by Nixon’s War on Drugs. "Puff" was targeted due to the fact that marijuana cigarettes needed to be puffed in 1971 (no edibles or ganja-infused beer). Too many puffs and you saw magic dragons. Lucy was obviously an abbreviation for LSD which, if you had the good stuff, you would definitely see magic dragons, sea nymphs, and Jesus. I have it on good authority that some frat boys saw our savior after imbibing too much Purple Jesus punch, a once-popular grain alcohol/Hawaiian Punch mixture.

I don’t get why “Hi-De-Ho” is on the banned list. Some lyrics:

Hi de ho

Hi de hi

Gonna get me a piece of the sky

Gonna get me some of that old sweet roll

Singing hi de hi de hi de hi de hooooo.

I looked up the song, originally sung by Dusty Springfield. I don’t see the drug references. Sure, some druggies may be reaching for a piece of sky. And stoners might satisfy a craving with sweet rolls such as the frisbee-sized concoctions served at Johnson’s Corner truck stop in Colorado. But it’s a stretch.

Hi-De-Ho was a phrase used liberally by Cab Calloway. He may have smoked weed as musicians seemed to like their drugs in the Roaring 20s and the Pretty Exciting but Impoverished 30s. The police noted that hip musicians tended to be African-American and their music was enjoyed mostly by jitterbugging minorities. Go to YouTube and watch jitterbugging clips. You could be stoned making those moves but I have my doubts. The fast-paced dance featured jittery music and lots of throwing around partners’ bodies. One false move and your date could end up a bleeding and broken thing on the bandstand.

The dances I remember from high school were not complicated but needed a bit of sobriety to carry off. The dances I remember from 1970s rock concerts were as groovy and free-flowing as a 20-minute Grateful Dead jam.

Hi-De-Ho.

Outer Range, set in Wyoming, asks the question: "What is that weird hole doing in my pasture?"

I saw Josh Brolin on Stephen Colbert this past week. He was promoting his new Amazon Prime series “Outer Range.” He said it was part contemporary western and part supernatural thriller. I am all for new takes on old themes, especially if they focus on the West. Streaming services have brought us “Yellowstone,” “1883,” and “Longmire.” Wyoming and vicinity are the setting for a lot of them. They are not filmed in the state (New Mexico and Alberta get the honors) but were created by Wyomingites C.J. Box and Craig Johnson, among others. “Outer Range” is set in fictional Amelia County, Wyoming, making it county number 25 after Johnson’s county 24, fictional Absaroka County. “Longmire” fans convene every summer in the very real town of Buffalo in Johnson County. I just read some interesting and not entirely complimentary stuff about the area in Helena Huntington Smith's 1966 book “The War on Powder River: The History of an Insurrection.”

In “Outer Range,” an evil cattle baron named Wayne Tillerson, most likely a descendant of one of the bad guys in the Johnson County War, is trying to steal prime land from a neighboring cattle baron (Royal “Roy” Abbott) who is burdened with debts, a dysfunctional family, and a bottomless hole the size of a barn in one of his pastures. The hole makes ethereal noises and, if you should fall in it, you will receive visions of the past and future before the hole spits you back out. An American bison, two arrows jutting from his hide, stands by the hole and snorts.

This is not your granddaddy’s ranch.

The most interesting part of the first two episodes is a showdown between Wayne and Royal. In the olden days, a couple shots of red-eye, six-guns and a dusty street would be involved. In 2022, Dwayne is a bed-ridden invalid who wears his cowboy hat in bed. His drink of choice is Clamato juice. Royal confronts him over the land grab. Here’s their exchange:

Wayne: Roy, you’re on my land (sips Clamato juice on ice)

Royal: Let’s be honest here Wayne, no one’s stealing anything but you.

Wayne: This is Wyoming, Roy. It’s only ever been stoled since the day it got its name (knocks back the rest of the Clamato).

Roy leaves, noting that the lawyers will have to figure this out.

I had to rewind several times to get down this exchange. Wayne’s lines may be the best since Owen Wister's Virginian told Trampas, “When you call me that, smile.”

I am a fan of western movies. I gravitate to quirky westerns such as “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” “High Noon,” "True Grit," and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.” I like the classics too. That includes anything by John Ford. Just watched the original “Stagecoach” on Netflix. During the pandemic, I finally watched “Lonesome Dove” and loved it.

I will watch the rest of “Outer Range.” The big hole on the prairie intrigues me. I like Josh Brolin and his gruff portrayals (remember “No Country for Old Men?”). There’s some weird details in the script (Clamato?) and I like weird details. Must be the Irish in me.

"Death Cleaning" is as pleasant as it sounds

The April 9 New York Times op-ed section featured a piece with this heading: " 'Death Cleaning': A Reckoning With Clutter, Grief and Memories." There were letters from more than 500 responses from the paper's request for personal stories about getting rid of a lifetime of possessions or those of a relative.

Responses were interesting and heartbreaking. Chris and I, both retired, have decided to clean out the clutter of our own lives as we contemplate a move to a retirement community. Her approach is "everything must go" and mine is "almost everything." This reveals the difference in our backgrounds. She is adopted, an army brat with one sister (also adopted) who had to help her mother purge much stuff for many moves. I am the oldest of nine. During our childhood, we moved quite a few times and, in adulthood, we've moved more that Chris's sister and her Navy lifer husband. We've done some purging over the years. Yet, now, we still have an entire household of stuff. We've lived here for 16 years. I look around my writing room and see photos of my kids at various stages and family photos of relatives. Books and papers are piled on every surface. And this is the tip of the iceberg. I have bookshelves filled with books and boxes upon boxes of books in the basement. 

When Chris retired a year ago, she embarked on a cleaning binge monumental in scale. Everything must go! And much did. A local nonprofit removed most of the furniture from the basement. We donated three sets of china to Goodwill, sparing boxes of teacups and saucers that went to the local botanic gardens for its Mother's Day teas. We remodeled our upstairs bathroom and redid the kitchen floor. Chris called the junkman who came and removed old lawnmowers and tools from the storage shed, even had them remove an old storage shed that was home to items dating back to the previous owner. She ripped up all of the carpets and exposed our very nice wood floors. 

Since I am partially disabled, I was tasked with sorting through books. How I sorted. Our daughter hauled a dozen boxes out the door to the library sales room where she volunteers. Still, many books remain. 

I also have two large plastic bins with dozens of journals dating back to 1972. I was going to donate them to my kids, both dedicated readers who like to write, and hope they would find some lasting value in them. I lasted one day reading through my life, gave up, and put the bins back in the closet. It's quite sobering to contemplate a life. Most entries are mundane, even boring. Some are embarrassing. I decided that the journals have to go but not yet, as I have more reminiscing to do. How long will I procrastinate? Until I am unable? Not exactly what I had in mind for my kids. And not what they had in mind either. 

I did not have to sort through my parents' goods. I lived far away at the time and my siblings took care of it. My mother died at 59 of ovarian cancer and my grieving father called in my four sisters to go through her things and they did it cordially. I inherited a third of my accountant father's library and all of his clothes as we were the same size. I still wear his Aran Islands sweater. My father bought it in Ireland and rarely has occasion to wear it in Central Florida. I live in Wyoming so the sweater is my friend most times of the year. I wear his sport coats and they will undoubtably go to Goodwill when the time comes. 

The books and the journals -- those are the sticking points in our Death Cleaning saga.

Botanist Trevor Bloom doesn't like what he sees in Wyoming's early wildflower blooms

This April 6 WyoFile post brings us more good news about global warming:

Wyoming botanist Trevor Bloom spotted his first springtime blooms of the year on March 28. Bloom, while tracing the footsteps of famed ecologist Frank Craighead at Blacktail Butte in Grand Teton National Park, saw the orogenia linearifolia, or snowdrop, wildflower. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wildflower, besides a dandelion, flowering in March,” Bloom said. The snowdrop bloom was nearly a month earlier than Craighead had recorded in the 1970s. “It means we’re probably going to have a very early spring this year. It probably means that we’re going to have very low water levels, and we’re probably going to have an increased risk of wildfire this year.”

So, early spring, lack of snow, low water levels, and more fires. Ah, summer in the Rockies, 2022.

Seems as if we are ahead of schedule as far as bulb plants. Some of mine already are flowering. The Cheyenne Botanic Gardens show some early blooms in its “Hero Garden” of native plants. Not sure what effects the wild winds have had. Most plants seem to be deciding if it’s safe to raise their heads or if we will have our usual spring of snow and wind and cold punctuated by 60-degree calm and sunny days.

My home gardening will be limited this year. During The Covid Year, I commandeered the kitchen table to sprout my seeds. When June arrived, the containers on the porch were filled, absorbing the sun and hiding from hail. It felt normal, as if a plague wasn’t decimating the globe. We all had our survival; tactics. Some gardened, some baked sourdough loaves, others watched endless video loops on YouTube and TikTok. I gardened and read and wrote. Also, Netflix and Hulu.

I will buy some seedlings and plant seeds. I need to grow something. Call it a celebration of summer’s arrival. It may bring drought and fire. But I’m going to grow flowers and cherry tomatoes beneath my rooftop solar array. The pensive William Wordsworth, wanderer of England’s Lake Country, loved to conjure daffodils when resting on his couch.

They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Remembering The Great 1972 Rainbow Family Scare in Colorado

The Colorado Sun reposted this piece by Jason Blevins in the Outsider newsletter:

The Rainbow Gathering of the Tribes plans to return to Colorado this summer to celebrate its 50th anniversary. The weeks-long confab that draws tens of thousands of hippie campers to public lands announced this week that the national gathering of possibly 30,000 would be returning to Colorado. 

The group’s national bacchanal was last in Colorado in 2006, with about 10,000 people camping on Forest Service land in north Routt County outside Steamboat Springs. Before that, they were 19,000-strong outside Paonia in 1992. The first national gathering was near Granby in 1972. 

My girlfriend Sharon and I hitched through Colorado during the summer of ’72. We weren’t card-carrying members of the Rainbow Family but your average observer couldn’t tell. My hair was long, my jeans scruffy. Sharon wore braids, a halter top, and jeans that were definitely not scruffy.

We wondered why we got flipped off as we stood with our thumbs out on the side of the road. We were both just good-natured college dropouts on a spree. Why don’t people like us?

You dirty hippies!

I took a shower yesterday.

Me too.

Can’t please some people.

When we arrived in Denver, we found out about the Rainbow Family Gathering of Tribes soon to descend on Colorado. The citizenry was up in arms about hordes of longhairs in scruffy jeans invading their mountains. The interlopers allegedly were going to smoke lots of illegal weed the quality of which would pale in comparison with the mind-blowing cannabis now grown all over Colorado and sold legally at your corner dispensary. Colorado newspapers raised the alarm that Rainbow Family members were going to trip on LSD, now the favorite micro-dosing drug of the techie who built your VR headset. The citizenry feared that Rainbowites on magic mushrooms might swarm their city, recruiting Colorado young people to psilocybin. Thing is, in the last CO election cycle, psilocybin was decriminalized by your grandmother’s pickleball group in Longmont.

My, my.

Colorado was a different place in 1972. My Uncle Bill sold insurance and Aunt Mary played bridge with her pals every week. They voted for Republicans and cursed hippies. Thing is, when Sharon and I turned up on their front porch in Denver, they took us in, fed us, and housed us -- in separate rooms, of course. We hung out with my cousins. Uncle Bill wouldn’t let them go full-hippie but they smoked pot with us anyway. Went with the cousins to Elitch’s Amusement Park, the old one in West Denver. We played miniature golf and drank a lot of 3.2 Coors. Went to a Red Rocks concert. Their friends didn’t care that we were dirty hippies as we were all young together, having fun. On the Fourth of July, we traveled up to Estes Park to watch fireworks from a friend’s lofty cabin.

Sharon and I eventually hit the road for points west. Many adventures along the way. Saw the sights. Swam in the Pacific Ocean. Went to some concerts. Met a lot of cool people. Visited a high school pal at Berkeley. At summer’s end, we hitched to Boston where we lived and worked for awhile. The relationship ended and I headed back to Florida, worked and went back to school.

Never really got close that summer to Strawberry Lake near Granby where the Rainbow Family was rocking out. They were doing their thing. Now their kids and grandkids are coming back to Colorado to rile the populace. I’m old enough now to curse the damn hippies but I know better. Besides, I live in Wyoming, the live-and-let-live-state. The Rainbow Family has gathered three times in Wyoming. Not sure about any casualties. It’s 2022 but all the good drugs are still illegal in The Equality State. While here, you will have to buy your weed from some shady guy on the street corner. Bring your own is the best bet. WYO is flanked by pot-friendly states Colorado and Montana.

According to the Marijuana Policy Project:

Wyoming is one of just a few states that continues to criminalize adults and patients for possessing and using cannabis.

My guess is that the Rainbow Family will choose any one of the weed-friendly states for future get-togethers. Besides the two already mentioned: California, Washington, Oregon, New Mexico, Arizona. Millions of acres of forestland await you. Be careful with fires, though, as it doesn’t take much to start a conflagration. Edibles are a better choice.

Happy trails.

Russia will need another Tolstoy to write about Putin's war on Ukraine

Odd in 2022 to be rooting for an underdog European country against a maniacal dictator bent on war.

Seems like 1939. Not that I experienced it first-hand -- I didn’t arrive on this planet for another 11 years. In that span, World War II began and ended and other wars erupted. One maniacal dictator was defeated and another one rose. We can’t get rid of these guys. Face it, almost all are guys. In America’s zeal to blunt Stalin, Khrushchev, etc., we waged war in Vietnam and sponsored dozens of proxy wars in Latin America. We jumped into Korea. My father, a World War II veteran who only returned to the States in 1946, faced a call-up for Korea just when he was celebrating the birth of his first child, me. He wasn’t called up but wondered in a letter: “I thought they gave us 20 years between wars?”

They do, as it turned out. His father fought in The War To End All Wars (TWTEAW) and 23 years later, Dad enlisted in the U.S. Army. In the early 1960s, the U.S. waged war in Vietnam with “advisors” and, just a few years later, draftees were being flown to Ton Son Nhut. I wasn’t one of them, thankfully, but many were, reluctantly going overseas to fight yet another war. Twenty years later, we were in Southwest Asia to fight Saddam and back again 10 years later to fight Saddam and Osama and the Taliban. We were in Afghanistan 20 years.

War never ends. Each generation gets it taste and a generation later elects warmakers that send their sons and daughters off to be killed in a foreign land.

So it goes.

After living through that history, I find it ironic that I cheer on the Ukrainians. In my head, I watch the coverage and say in my head, “Kill the Russians.” I don’t say it out loud but the sentiment is there, floating around the ether. Putin is the bad guy here and we try to stop him with economic sanctions and solidarity with NATO countries. It may work. But what happens if Putin uses chemical weapons or nukes? We have to respond. Kill the Russians! I say it although I know that it's young conscripts and civilians doing the dying while Putin plays Risk in his bunker. 

Inside of me is the part that read Chekhov and Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. I remember Tolstoy’s writing about his horrific experiences as a Russian officer in the Caucasus campaign ("Hadji Murat") and Crimean War ("Sevastopol Sketches"). In the Caucasus, Chechens waged a guerrilla war against Russian troops. They responded by torching the forests so the enemy had no place to hide and decimating villages that lent aid to the guerrillas (sound familiar?). Says one of Tolstoy's Chechen fighters returning to his burnt-out village:

“Nobody spoke about hatred towards the Russians. What they all felt, from the youngest to the oldest, was stronger than hatred. It was not hatred, but an unwillingness even to acknowledge these Russian dogs as people.”

The Crimean War spawned Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” that I once had to memorize in detention at Catholic School. It also brought ministrations of Florence Nightingale to our attention. It was as bloody as the one in Chechnya and Tolstoy described his vanity and that of his fellow officers this way:

“A thousand human self-images managed to be offended, a thousand managed to be awfully pleased, to puff themselves up, and a thousand – to find their rest within the arms of death.”

Maybe there’s a Tolstoy among the troops assaulting Mariupol or closing in on Kyiv. Someone who goes off to war in high spirits but comes home in tatters.

The day after St. Patrick's Day 2022

I don't have a hangover, that's the main thing. Many prior St. Patrick's Day holidays involved drinking and then hangovers. Some stray guilt feelings. Calling in sick to work.

But not this time. I attended a family-style party last night. Wife stayed home with a sick daughter. We recited Irish poems. Remembered trips to Ireland -- friendly people but kissing the Blarney Stone is a rather disgusting ritual. Devoured Irish Stew and a delicious Guinness chocolate cake built to look like a pint on an Irish pub bar. I drank one Irish Ale made in Kansas City. Stayed away from the Writers' Tears Irish whiskey as I have enough of my own. We sang along to "Zombie" by the Cranberries and remembered Dolores O'Riordan who died too young.

Calm as these things go. Someone asked if they celebrated St. Patrick's Day in Ireland. Apparently, it's a religious holiday there. They ratchet up the festivities for American tourists. The Irish seem bemused by American spectacle. I've never been to Ireland so haven't had the chance to embarrass myself in person. But apparently the American idea of drinking green beer and singing fake Irish songs is not appreciated. U.S. tourist money is. 

I've blogged before about my mixed views on the holiday. Read those here and here and here. My grandfather from Roscommon Martin Hett (no, not O'Hett or McHett) never returned to the old sod. As a teen, I was pontificating about the legendary cruelty of the Brits to the Irish and my grandfather interrupted. "The English treated me better that the Irish ever did." That shocked me due to the fact that I was 16 and knew everything there was to know about the world. Grandpa went on to explain that his evil stepmother kicked him out of the house at 12. He made his way to England and worked in the coalfields until he saved enough money to sail to the U.S. at a 15-year-old. He worked hard in America and ended up in Denver where my mother was born and later, me. He liked being an American more than he liked being Irish. 

What, exactly, is an Irish-American? There is no easy explanation. We come in all shapes and sizes and all political persuasions including Trumpian which is disgusting -- recall how many wackos with Irish surnames served Herr Trump -- Flynn, Bannon, McCarthy, etc. Most of us mark St. Patrick's Day in some fashion. Corned beef and cabbage is a family favorite not always enjoyed by everyone in the family. My mother didn't like it probably because she ate a lot of it growing up. When she had food, which wasn't always the case during the Great Depression. One Christmas, she woke up to an orange in her stocking. That was the only present. I'm not sure if this is true because the Irish embellish almost everything.

I like to think that my proclivity for storytelling was passed on to me by my Irish ancestors. None of my immediate family are writers. Readers, yes. Writers, no. No aunts and uncles or cousins are writers. I am probably the only English major they know. We are known for our cutting humor, which seems to be an Irish trait. And my siblings and I all look Irish and our DNA attests to it. My red hair and freckles earned me lots of ridicule and a few fights. "Red on the head/like the dick on my dog." That's one taunt I remember. Red, Freckle Face, Rusty. They're all good. Shows some creativity. I don't think I sustained any permanent damage growing up white and freckled in America. 

As we read poetry at last night's party, I noticed it was rather light-hearted. I wanted to read something by Eavaan Boland ("The Lost Land") or Yeats ("The Second Coming") but never got the chance. Good Irish writing seems to balance the horrible and the humorous. Roddy Doyle is a great example. So is Flann O'Brien, whose satiric novel "The Poor Mouth" is one of my favorites. Flannery O'Connor too, who combined Irish-American wit with Southern Gothic grotesque to create her unique style.

Go read an Irish writer today. You will probably be glad you did, although it's hard to say.  

"The Weight of a Body" collection now available in print version

The print version of my book is now available to order on Amazon. "The Weight of a Body: A Collection of Short Stories" features 12 stories set (in no particular order) Wyoming, Colorado, and Florida. The collection was originally published by Denver's now-defunct Ghost Road Press and I decided earlier in the year to republish it as an e-book and now a print version. Here's the cover:

The act of republishing on KDP Amazon entails formatting, design, and editing. I formatted my MS Word files on Draft2Digital (D2D). I then brought that over to KDP to transform it into an e-book. It took me awhile to read an e-book on my Kindle and even longer to make one. My guide through the process was writer and critique group colleague Liz Roadifer. Read her books here. 

Here's a teaser from the opening story, "Roadkill:"

The shapes grew out of the smoke and fog -- three pronghorn antelope, running hard. Matthew Kincannon mashed the car's brakes and swung the wheel hard left. He missed the first two, collided with the third on its white-tufted rump which rose like a balloon before its rear legs smacked the windshield, its hooves scraping the glass like sharpened fists.

This won't be my only project on KDP. Stay tuned for news about my second collection later this year. Most of those stories are set in Wyoming and Colorado. 

Sunday morning round-up: Legislature weirdness, online publishing, and "The War on Powder River"

Russia invaded Ukraine this week. Putin does not want a democracy on its border. The Ukrainians are fighting back. The U.S. knows what joining the fight would bring. So we work with sanctions and what’s left of our free press. We also send war materiel to help Ukrainians fight the despot’s hordes. Any student of warfare knows a declaration of war would bring disaster. So what do we do?

I hope to have the print edition of my book of stories up on Amazon this week. The e-book is already on the site. Working with Kindle Direct Publishing can be a challenge. A traditional press would do most of this work. Formatting the text, deciding on a book cover, overseeing the printing process, sending out proofs, publicity. It’s all up to me now. Not sure if I’m going to put my second book of stories on KDP. I just want to have books in hand instead of taking up space in the Cloud. This blog is more of a journal than a publishing platform. Wish me luck.

The Wyoming State Legislature is in town. They will do plenty of damage in 20 days. We now experience first-hand what gerrymandering and voter suppression can do. Also Trump. And right-wing social media and TV. The nuts are out in force to suppress mask mandates, UW’s gender studies curriculum, American racism discussions in K-12 classrooms, gender equity, party-switching at election primaries, voting access, and any talk about Medicaid expansion for the state’s working poor. I’m sure more ridiculous proposals will emerge from the muck in the next two weeks. Wyoming voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2016 and 2020. We now live in a Trumpist fiefdom.

I did not expect a nonfiction account of the Johnson County War to be shot through with irreverent humor. But that's what I got when I picked up Helena Huntington Smith's “The War on Powder River: The History of an Insurrection.” The book was published in 1966 as a Bison Books imprint from the University of Nebraska Press. This 1890s event is often referred to as the Johnson County War. It pitted the rich owners of large cattle herds against the little guy who owned a few head or a few hundred. The cattle cabal wanted to keep the open range in WYO. The little guys wanted to keep the maverick cattle that they found, stragglers from massive herds brought to Powder River Country by rich Easterners and Brits with the hope of amassing beef fortunes. Smith did an amazing job at taking a jaundiced view of an 1890s event that many people outside of Wyoming know little about. Smith’s research is impressive although this non-historian cannot vouch for all of the details. She cracks wise when describing the gentry founded ranches in Powder River Country which they enjoy in summer and desert once the first snow flies. Cowboys remain behind to watch the herds. While the winters of 1884-86 were balmy by WYO standards, the winter and spring of 1986-87 was a whopper. Many thousands of cattle froze to death on the overcrowded prairie. When the beef barons returned from the south of France, they left the round-up of strays to cowboys and got pissed off when small landholders rustled a few cattle. They got their payback in 1892, and also their comeuppance. It is easy to see the hubris of 1892 in Wyoming’s present.

Smith was an Easterner who spent some time in WYO. The TA Ranch south of Buffalo has named one of its dude ranch accommodations for Smith. The TA has the last surviving structures from the range war. Smith was a combat correspondent for Crowell-Collier magazines (Collier’s, Victory, Woman’s Home Companion) during World War II. In 1957, American Heritage magazine republished her account of the Battle of the Bulge. She recounts the breakout of Panzer divisions and how rear echelon soldiers, mechanics and engineers, were issued bazookas and ordered to stop Nazi tanks. Some of them were surprisingly successful and earned medals. Smith’s account has all the battlefield dark humor one finds in a good soldier’s memoirs. She brought that same humor to her account of the Johnson County War. I couldn’t find a full bio online but discovered she was a Smith College grad and wrote for magazines and wrote several books. The UW Heritage Center and State Archives probably has some good info on her. She obviously loved a good story.

Farewell P.J. O'Rourke: The best humor illuminates hard truths

Satirist P.J. O'Rourke passed away this week. His humor writing, especially during the National Lampoon era, influenced my writing. National Lampoon gave us Baby Boomers something to read that was as cantankerous as we were. O'Rourke was at the center of the mag for most of the seventies. Then he set off to be a freelancer and author, referring to himself as a "Republican Lounge Lizard." I was entranced by his 1988 essay collection, "Holidays in Hell." I laughed out loud at his misadventures in war-torn Beirut and in Managua during the Contra War. His takedown of the Sandalista Liberals giving aid to the Sandinistas was hilarious and heartbreaking. 

The year of the book's publication, I spent Super Bowl Week in Nicaragua delivering supplies to Habitat for Humanity projects. My Liberal self was accompanied by a group of Habitat volunteers from Denver and my Republican brother Dan from Florida. The most fun Dan had that week was setting off with a couple other gringos in a gypsy cab to find a place to watch Super Bowl. He saw about five minutes of the Super Bowl (Denver was wiped out by Washington) but got wildly drunk. I stayed back at the motel and watched (sober) most of the game on a tiny TV. 

The oddest moment happened when my brother get hauled out of a so-called informational meeting with Sandinista cultural ministers. I thought we had lost our one GOPer to the gulag but he returned 15 minutes later and said he'd been asked a bunch of questions such as whom had he voted for in the most recent U.S. presidential election. Reagan was the answer, probably the wrong answer, but Dan survived the trip.

He might not be so lucky now. The current government, headed by former revolutionary Daniel Ortega, specifically targets those people who openly criticize Daniel Ortega. In September, the U.S. State Department placed Nicaragua on its highest Level 4 alert with this warning: 

Do not travel to Nicaragua due to COVID-19. Reconsider travel to Nicaragua due to limited healthcare availability and arbitrary enforcement of laws. Exercise increased caution in Nicaragua due to crime.

On the other hand, the waves are bitchin'. 

O'Rourke pointed out the ridiculousness of the human condition. You could hear him at his best on NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me." I sometimes bristled at his comments on Bill Maher but I think the iconoclastic host was delighted with the humorist because he kept bringing P.J. back. He had the Irish in him, the likes of Jonathan Swift and Flann O'Brien. He also had the English in him, some George Orwell from his "Homage to Catalonia" days. Orwell had his own holidays in hell during the Ethiopian War and Spanish Civil War. Later, he was at his satiric best in "Animal Farm." 

My writing has been influenced by O'Rourke, Woody Allen (his books), and Alan Coren. Monty Python, too. But the biggest influences were New Yorker humorists S.J. Perelman, Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, and Ring Lardner. These city slickers knew how to turn a phrase. This suburban kid, whose only NYC experience was "just passing through," loved this work. I see it also in Grace Paley's stories. Humor transcends the telling of jokes to enter into some hard truths. And then we laugh.

Satire is not for the timid. You are often misunderstood and not understood at all by the Blunt Skulls. 

Nevertheless, he (O'Rourke) persisted.

Wyoming Tribune-Eagle reports on racist behavior in Cheyenne

It was a cringe-worthy headline above the fold in Saturday's Wyoming Tribune-Eagle: 

Air Force base leaders speak out against COMMUNITY RACISM

Yes, that last part was all caps and for good reason. Cheyenne's Warren AFB is home of the 90th Missile Wing and scores of nukes. Like most military bases, it’s self-contained to a certain extent but its airmen and airwomen and civilian employees interact with the community. 

Those interactions, lately, have been nasty. Missile Wing Commander Col. Catherine Barrington called for a meeting with community leaders after Black Air Force families reported racist incidents.

USAF dependents attend K-12 schools located around the county. Many are African-American because, well, it's the United States Air Force and not the Wyoming Air Force. As such, it is made up of young men and women from all over the U.S. and the world. Many have experienced multiple overseas deployments to far-flung bases and war zones. Some have been called racist epithets and discriminated against because of their color in Cheyenne, the place I call home.

The worst local offender reported in the article seems to be McCormick Junior High. This doesn’t surprise me as our daughter was terribly bullied when she attended McCormick. Its students tend to be white and from the mostly prosperous north side of the city where I still live. This doesn’t prevent them from being bullies and racists. 

[Col.] Barrington explained that multiple students have been bullied and called racial slurs at McCormick Junior High. A ninth-grade girl got off the bus the first day of the school year and was immediately called the N-word more than one time.

The girl opted to attend Cheyenne Virtual School rather than to be in this nest of vipers. Others were bullied and called racial slurs which led to fights where black students were suspended and fined. 

One wonders where these 13-year-olds might have learned such behavior. Look to the racist behavior of parents, those people you see at Trump rallies and ranting about Critical Race Theory and face masks at school board meetings. There are consequences for such loathsome behavior.

It's not only school children. One uniformed Black airman bought a gun at a local shop. When he returned in civvies to get the gun serviced, the proprietor said she didn’t have time to serve him.

“Other airmen have also experienced this,” said Warren's Command Chief Master Sergeant Nicholas Taylor. “And when they went in to buy ammunition, they would not sell ammunition to airmen of color at all. So they had to ask their Caucasian counterparts to go in and buy ammunition on behalf of them.”

Let’s be clear – in Cheyenne, we live at the intersection of Guns & Ammo. We have a couple dozen stores and pawn shops where you can buy shootin' irons. We have at least two outdoor firing ranges and one indoors. On Sundays, you can hear the Warren security detachment’s firearm drills. I would venture that everyone in my neighborhood owns at least one firearm. It’s not unusual to see gun stickers on front doors that read “This home protected by Smith & Wesson;” similar four-wheel-oriented stickers adorn pickups. Lest you think only conservatives own guns, you obviously don’t know any Wyoming Democrats. The Second Amendment is religion here, even among heathen Liberals.

So, when you hear that a Black airman cannot buy bullets in a Cheyenne shop when his latest deployment may have placed him armed with a fully-loaded taxpayer-funded weapon in a war zone, you have to say WTF or something similar.

James Peebles also spoke at the public meeting. He’s the director of the Sankofa African Heritage Awareness, Inc., in Cheyenne. His organization conducts seminars about systemic racism, the history of slavery, and the civil rights struggles. All things we desperately need to know about if racist behavior is to stop. Timely subjects during Black History Month.

Peebles described watching the social dynamic in Cheyenne change, with Black families leaving after experiencing racism. There also has been pandemic-driven anti-Asian rhetoric in the past five years.

After a recent ugly incident, Peebles added that “the last year was the first time he even questioned his safety here after living in Cheyenne for 12 years.”

Thanks to reporter Jasmine Hall for covering this meeting and a big thanks to the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle for featuring it so prominently. We need our newspapers to show us when our neighbors behave badly.

A salute to those books that taught me humor, satire, and the absurdity of being human

All this book-banning makes me think of all of those books I read that might meet disapproval now from the GOP Know Nothings. 

When I was in the fourth grade, my father told me I could read any book in his library. I tackled the war books, first, Guadalcanal Diary by Richard Tregaskis, Brave Men by Ernie Pyle and Up Front by Bill Mauldin, which included his Willie and Joe cartoons. He had some boys' adventure books from his childhood, Treasure Island and Ivanhoe. But I was more interested in the WWII books, as my father had been a radioman with an infantry unit in France, Belgium, and Germany. They seemed like boys' adventures to me. I read all of the Life magazines that my grandparents had saved for my dad while he was overseas. I watched war movies with my dad, as did my younger brother. We played war with our friends. 

None of my teachers ever assigned books on 20th century wars. They reached into the heroic past. The Revolutionary War had spawned books such as Johnny Tremayne and tales of Paul Revere and George Washington. The Civil War was acceptable reading as we all grew up knowing that the Yankees were the good guys and the Rebs the bad guys. This was way before we moved to the South and heard the term War of Northern Aggression. So many of the books I read as an English major and later were by writers of the American South. Their Southern Gothic tales owed their existence to the region's tortured history which included the Civil War, whatever you want to call it.

Now in my 70s, I look back on my reading as nostalgic. I also know more about the workings of the world. War can be heroic. It's also nasty, brutish, and final. Soldiers carry their experiences into old age, if they make it that far. There are brilliant antiwar books told from the warrior's POV. And books by observers, such as Red Badge of Courage and Dispatches, Michael Herr's wild book about life among the grunts in Vietnam (Herr got writing credits for Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket). 

Just about every book I ever read could be fodder for the book banners. My non-authorized reading at my Catholic high school included three oft-banned novels that influenced me more than anything I read in class: Catch-22, Slaughterhouse-Five, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. They are now considered classics and are read in some high school classrooms when Know Nothings are not disappearing books like Dunbar. They were telling me a truth that I barely knew at 18, that the world is a strange and terrifying place. 

Humor, satire, and sci-fi are great vehicles for getting at the truth. I passed Catch-22 along to my Class of '69 pals and we laughed at the absurdities. The dead man in Yossarian's tent. Major Major Major's name. Orr's pastime of ditching his bomber into the ocean to practice for his escape from war. Hilarious. We only felt a small tremor of the earthquake beneath. We could have watched the absurdity of televised military reports from Vietnam. Body count, Vietnamization, destroy the village in order to save it. It was all right there in front of us but we didn't know. 

Reading good books gave us a bit of a head start on adulthood. Still, you have to live it to really know. You can be an absurdist and still be an engaged human. You can love satire but also fall in love. Humor makes the ride fun even when it's challenging. 

I'd have none of that without the reading.

Meditation after another trip to the dermatologist

Angel Kisses

The sun’s first ray taps the crown of my head. I’m the tallest creature on the ocean, me, a young man bobbing just outside of the breaking waves. Light from 93 million miles away cascades over my torso, lights up the many colors of my surfboard, paints my body with freckles that will only become visible when winter comes. Soon all the surfers will be illuminated, their multi-colored boards, the stripes on their baggies. The sun will crawl over the beach and the early-bird walkers and houses perched on the dunes and the town and Florida entire. It will unleash the heat, fire up the humidity of a July morning.  Decades later, a Wyoming dermatologist talks about his family’s Colorado ski vacation as he scoops skin from this young surfer turned old man. Cancer may have been there all of this time, a remnant of the sun’s touch during hundreds of mornings in the semi-tropical sun. My crown, my nose, my ears have all been biopsied, scraped and sown. Nothing awful, nothing like melanoma that killed my brother. I wonder if the dermatologist slaps on sunscreen before he negotiates Steamboat runs named High Noon, One O’clock, Two O’clock for the prime meridian times that January sun reaches the west-facing mountains. If sunscreen had been a thing in 1967, I would have used it. Maybe. I know one thing – I would never trade one second of those mornings for blemish-free skin. Every scar a dance with sun and ocean, every freckle the kiss from the heavens. “Freckles are angel kisses,” my mom told me when I believed in angels. I now know the science behind melanin and derma, ephelides and solar lentigines. But during my seventieth year on the planet, angel kisses seem exactly right. Just perfect.

The universe of the heart is a strange and lonely place in "Bewilderment"

In Richard Powers' novel "Bewilderment," Theo Byrne’s nine-year-old son Robin may have ADHD or Asberger’s or is somewhere on the autism “spectrum.” He is suspended when he clocks a kid at school. He always says the wrong thing. Therapists try to convince Theo to put Robin on medication such as Ritalin or Concerta. Theo, an astrobiologist searching for the universe’s exoplanets, refuses to do so. He’s a single parent, his environmentalist wife Alyssa killed in a car wreck when she swerved to avoid a possum.

Father spends many hours hiking and camping with his son. Together, they travel to imaginary planets that Theo only knows through the signatures of critical elements picked up from thousands of light years away. Those are wonderful chapters, journeying to quirky planets that come right out of the scientific imagination. Their names include Stasis, Isola, and Tedia which, not surprisingly, reflect their namesakes of isolation, loneliness, and tedium. One planet doesn’t spin on its axis due to the pull of competing suns. The planet’s few living things can only exist in a narrow band of twilight because they would die from heat on one side or freeze to death on the other.

Theo the astrophysicist discusses various terms regarding the existence of life on other planets. The Fermi Paradox asks the question once asked by Enrico Fermi: Where are the aliens? Drake Equation measures the probability of exoplanets that support life long enough for intelligent beings to emerge. In the novel, Theo proposes other possibilities. No sentient lifeforms anywhere. Civilizations so far away that we would never meet them. Some posit the idea that there is intelligent life in the universe but those beings want nothing to do with us. So they are silent.

All of this returns to Theo’s struggle to understand his son and deal with the death of his wife. A colleague opens a research project that might have answer. It involves a kind of neurofeedback, the AI linking of a person with electronic energy created by others. Neurodivergent Robin becomes part of the study, linking up with some feedback loops his mother made when alive. He gradually gets a better grasp on his behavior and exceeds the researchers’ goals. But disappointment awaits -- and a surprise ending. Think “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes. “Charly,” the movie based on the book, really got to me when I saw it in 1968.

Powers is a powerful writer and “Bewilderment” resonated with me for several reasons. This tale got real early on. My wife and I put our son with ADHD on Ritalin when he was five in 1990. I resisted. I couldn’t imagine my little dynamo on drugs. But he needed help. His working parents needed help. Directors of preschools and kindergarten teachers pushed us to go the medication route. Three decades later, I can still feel the pain. I had to stop reading Powers’ novel at some points because the author does such a great job of describing the pain of the bewildered parent.

“Bewilderment” also asks this question: Are we as alone in the universe as we are on Earth? The book says yes but also provides the reader with transcendent moments.

Still, loneliness may be as endemic to the universe as hydrogen and helium. We may never see intelligent lifeforms. If they exist, they are far away and the distances too great. We are early in the exploration stage. I will be stardust by the time humans leave our solar system for another.

Powers creates a world where the reader feels the weight of the universe and the weight of people’s attempts to know ourselves and our loved ones. I finished the book, sat back in my recliner, said “we are all alone,” and then grabbed a beer. I have family and friends, a wife and two grown children. They will miss me when I am gone. But the earth will keep spinning, a sunrise will be followed by a sunset. One generation will be replaced by another and another and another.

Today I am going to pretend that I am not alone. I will reach out to those important to me. What else can I do?

Saturday Morning Round-up: Snow arrives -- finally -- and "Stay Close" keeps you guessing

Saturday Morning Round-up:

I’ve been interviewing the recipients of the 2021 Governor’s Arts Awards. These are the awards given annually by the Wyoming Arts Council for "substantial contributions made in Wyoming that exemplify a long-term commitment to the arts," Recipients include intriguing artists and very interesting people running arts organizations. Sometimes the person running the arts org is an artist, That artist continues to make art while promoting the arts in their community. It’s a time-consuming task, one that pays very little. But real people keep doing it. Read the articles in the next issue of WAC Artscapes. 

Just finished watching the eight-episode Netflix series “Stay Close” from the novel by Harlan Coben. Kept my attention through all the twists and turns. Surprise ending. The murderer is a character I didn’t suspect. The series is set in an English town surrounded by lots of water which figures into the plot in ways major and minor. Coben’s novel, as are most of his works (including scripts for the "Fargo" series) is set in the U.S. It’s a funny thing to watch a murder thriller transplanted to England. It’s almost as if we don’t expect people to die gruesome deaths in the land of Downton Abbey, stiff upper lips, and way too much tea-drinking. It’s also the home of Jack the Ripper, Sweeney Todd and inventive ways to torture and kill those who have ruffled the king’s feathers. Its staid demeanor helps make throat-slitting and gang-style executions stand out. Some inventive killing goes on in “Stay Close.” Keeps you guessing. Watch it.

Jan. 6 marked the anniversary of the 2021 Capitol Insurrection. While the Democrats in Congress, the president, and TV hosts made a big deal out of it, Republicans were nowhere to be seen except on Fox and some loony right-wing outlets. For those of us in the reality-based world, the attack on the Capitol was an attack on democracy. Repubs don’t see it that way. A few do. Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney does. Her pops too. They were the only GOPers that attended the Congressional prayer service on Thursday. I know, Dick Cheney to war criminal standing up for what’s right? It was rich in irony seeing his masked face. But Rep. Cheney is one of two Republicans serving on the Jan. 6 Commission. She’s also blasted Wyoming GOP leadership as deluded radicals leading the party down a dangerous path. I’m no fan of the Cheneys. But when people do the right thing, you have to thank them.

We’re finally getting some snow. November was almost snowless but we started catching up with the season on Christmas Eve and the ground is covered as I write this. Ski areas that delayed opening are now chest-deep in the stuff. I am closer to most Colorado ski areas than I am to Wyoming's Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. But JHMR reports some incredible snow amounts on its blog this morning:

As of January 8, since New Year's Day, we have received 63"! We received 42" in the last 48 hours. As of this morning, we received 24" in 24 hours. Total snowfall is now 240" on the year.

Damn. Most Colorado ski areas have received half of that. For the record, Cheyenne at 6,200 feet elevation receives about 60 inches of snow in an average year. Last year was one of extremes when we received half our total in one March blizzard. If we received 240 inches of snow, we would be digging tunnels to our cars and those tunnels would be pointless because the city would be waiting for the sun to come out for the its primary snow removal tactic. And waiting.

Get out there and vote while it's still permitted

A new year brings new challenges, such as how are we going to save our republic from the Trump Cult and The Big Lie? Voting is a good start. Getting involved in the process is another. I contemplate a return to serving as an election judge. Judges are trained, paid, and eat pretty well on election day as retired volunteers fortify workers with brownies, cookies, and assorted goodies. A pleasant way to spend a day.

BUT... service at a polling place may take on bigger risks in 2022. Trumpers continue to promote The Big Lie, that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and Biden is not the real president. Reality-based Americans know this is BS but the lie continues. And state legislatures in red and contested states are working overtime to rig the election process. In Wyoming, voters must show a valid ID to vote. No big deal for most of us. I just went out to the county office at I-25 and College to renew my license and to get a new and awful photo of myself to take the place of the old awful photo. The clerk was nice enough to let me reject the first photo in favor of a second photo which made me look like an aging mobster which I am not. 

The ID, for better or worse, will let me vote. Newcomers may have a problem coming up with the proper documentation and may sit out the election. Voter intimidation is the Republicans' main tactic as they have no real platform of their own. Their main voter suppression targets are urban populations which include lots of liberal young people and voters of color. I live in the state's primary urban center and I am in neither of those categories. I am white, over-65, and cranky -- the penultimate Republican voter. But I'm a registered Democrat and plan to vote that way until my time expires.

Republicans regularly complain that dead Democrats vote but it has never been proven. I will be cremated thus my unearthly body will have no appendages to vote with. So there. 

A smaller voting pool works in favor of Republicans. Fewer people vote. That leads to right-wing loonies elected especially to our state legislature. We can expect a slate of bills this next session that will address such crucial topics as finding new ways to keep voters away from the polls, banning books from school libraries, prohibiting transgender women from competing in high school sports, ensuring that toddlers have the right to keep and bear arms, guaranteeing the sanctity of life unless you are an actual living person, shutting down any talk of Medicaid Expansion, quashing state employee pay and benefits, and making sure that coal will remain king until the whole world (except Wyoming) is underwater. Quite an agenda.

So Happy New Year. And get out and vote while it is still permitted. 

An email from President Joe Biden

Received a nice letter from President Joe Biden. It really was an e-mail in letter format with the White House logo as a header and Joe Biden's signature below. It was a fine letter, earnest and believable as is Pres. Biden. A stark contrast to the previous resident of the White House. He was neither. Then again, I never wrote to him. I thought it would be a pointless exercise and the response, if I got one, would also be a pointless exercise. I wish that T's four years in office had been a pointless exercise but it was a daily exercise in greed and cruelty, one not so easy to erase.

I can't find my email to Pres. Biden. I probably thanked him for signing the infrastructure bill. I would like to thank him for signing the Build Back Better Bill but I may never get that chance, thanks to one retro scaredy-cat DINO in West Virginia. I may have thanked the prez for his stalwart response to Covid-19. I really would like to thank him for zeroing out all student debt but that may not happen either. I do thank him for the payment moratorium until May 1. It is a lot more constructive that requesting another forbearance from NelNet or Unipac or one of the many student loan service companies that have ripped us off for decades. A forbearance allowed them to keep adding interest to a burgeoning principal which made the debt even larger but made millions for Nelnet, etc.

Here's the text of the president's email:

Dear Mr. Shay,

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me.  Hearing from passionate individuals like you inspires me every day, and I welcome the opportunity to respond to your letter.

Our country faces many challenges, and the road we will travel together will be one of the most difficult in our history.  Despite these tough times, I have never been more optimistic for the future of America.  I believe we are better positioned than any country in the world to lead in the 21st century not just by the example of our power but by the power of our example.

While we may not always agree on how to solve every issue, I pledge to be a President for all Americans.  I am confident that we can work together to find common ground to make America a more just, prosperous, and secure Nation. 

As we move forward to address the complex issues of our time, I encourage you to remain an active participant in helping write the next great chapter of the American story.  We need your courage and dedication at this critical time, and we must meet this moment together as the United States of America.  If we do that, I believe that our best days still lie ahead.

Good stuff. I plan to keep in touch, "to remain an active participant in helping to write the next great chapter of the American story." You should do that too. 

Joan Didion and "Slouching Towards Bethlehem"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, 

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 

The ceremony of innocence is drowned; 

The best lack all conviction, while the worst 

Are full of passionate intensity.

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

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

Mrs. P has a problem and needs some help

The opener for one of the stories in my collection, The Weight of a Body, now available as an e-book on Amazon. The story was inspired by a real incident, one that I've taken great care to turn into fiction. Poetry wiz and literary lion M.L. Liebler liked it enough to include it in the anthology, Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams, published by Coffee House Press. It features poetry, fiction, and nonfiction by and about America's working class. Contributors include Philip Levine, Diane di Prima, Willa Cather, Jack White, Quincy Troupe, Li-Young Lee and a host of others. Find a copy at your favorite bookstore. Read on...

The Problem with Mrs. P 

First problem: nobody was home to help. Not her two daughters, off to school. Not her husband Robbie, who hadn’t been home for weeks, probably right this minute at that whore Gloria’s house.

Second problem: she was seven months pregnant and bleeding like crazy. She pressed a cream-colored towel against her crotch; it bloomed with a red chrysanthemum of her own blood. She stood in the bathroom doorway, eyes sparking, knees shaking.

Third problem: her damn husband had the car. Not that she was in any shape to make the seven-mile drive into Cheyenne, a few more if you factored in the hospital which was downtown.

Fourth problem: the telephone was dead, thanks to Robbie not paying the bills like he was supposed to. She had her own cell phone with a few minutes still left on it. But it was downstairs on the kitchen table. Just the thought of negotiating the stairs brought a throbbing to her abdomen.

Fifth problem, or maybe it was the first: she and her baby boy might be dying.

To be continued...

In "Ridgeline," a Wyoming tale of Hubris vs. Nemesis

Casting about on the new book releases during the summer, I came across "Ridgeline," a new novel by Michael Punke. He's the author of "The Revenant," an historical novel about Hugh Glass, a bear attack in the wilderness, and Glass's long journey to get revenge to those in his hunting party who left him behind. Leonardo DiCaprio played Glass in the movie which did for grizzly bear attacks what Jaws did for swimming with sharks. Seemed like a realistic depiction of what was the western wilderness in the 1840s. 

In "Ridgeline," Punke tackles what's now called the Fetterman Fight at the foot of Wyoming's Bighorns. On Dec. 21, 1866, a contingent of warriors from Plains tribes, led by Crazy Horse and Red Cloud, lured a U.S. Cavalry contingent from their new fort and ambushed them. Indians died but so did Fetterman and his 81 troopers. Next Tuesday will mark the 155th anniversary of that day. The author depicts the battle so realistically that it's easy to feel the heat of battle on that first day of winter so long ago. Anyone who has visited Fort Phil Kearny, the Wagon Box Fight site, and any of these contested lands in what is now Johnson and Sheridan counties. At the end, I was able to revel in the Indians' victory while still feeling empathy for the soldiers. They were guilty of that classic trait of hubris. They considered the Indians ignorant savages and learned otherwise. Funny how history keeps repeating itself. 

I reviewed the book for WyoFile and you can read it at https://wyofile.com/punkes-new-novel-shines-light-on-fetterman-fight/. Punke is a Wyoming native who grew up in Torrington and served as a living history interpreter at Fort Laramie National Historic Site. He's a UW grad and served as a U.S. trade representative overseas before returning to the West and now lives in Missoula. 

Here's the review's opener:

A good historical novel should be a ripping yarn, one that keeps us turning pages long after bedtime. The writer makes this world so interesting that we want to dash off to the library or the Internet to find out more. The novel’s historical facts should also be solid. Nothing like sloppy research to ruin a good read.

It’s a lot to ask. And into this mix comes the red-hot topic of the year: Which history should we teach our kids? Conservatives wax apoplectic about the New York Times “1619 Project” and its stated goal to tell the real story about slavery. Many prefer the history we learned in fourth grade during simpler times, that America is the greatest nation on earth, by jiminy.

Enter Michael Punke’s new novel, “Ridgeline,” published by Henry Holt and Co. It’s a story about what is known as Red Cloud’s War, which began in 1866 along the Bozeman Trail in Wyoming’s Powder River Country. 

Humans -- can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em!

In the film "The Day the Earth Stood Still," versions one and two, an intergalactic diplomat comes to earth, tells humans they are a clear and present danger to the universe and must be destroyed. That gets put on hold once the space envoy experiences the kindness of its people. But it's only a temporary hold. As Michael Rennie (Klaatu) tells humankind at the end of the 1951 film: "Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer". Then he and his big-ass robot Gort fly off in their saucer. A similar warning is repeated by Keanu Reeves in the 2008 remake.

But in English author Matt Haig's 2013 novel, "The Humans," earthlings get still another chance. Hotshot Cambridge physicist Andrew Martin unlocks the secret of prime numbers, a discovery that will kick humanity's future into overdrive. The Vonnadorians find out about it and send an hitman from a galaxy far, far away to kill the scientist. Earthlings can't be trusted with big secrets, only small ones, such as nuclear fission and the formula for Kentucky Fried Chicken. If the prime number mystery gets solved and humankind experiences the Great Leap Forward, the universe is doomed. The Vonnadorians are an advanced peaceful race and kill only when necessary, much like Gort does when threatened by the U.S. Army. The alien replaces the scientist in his body. Also, he must eliminate anyone who knew anything about the discovery. That includes Martin's colleagues, beautiful wife, and troubled son.

At first, Martin thinks of the humans as hideous with grotesque features and habits. The more time he spends with them, the more he finds to appreciate: their dog Newton, Emily Dickinson's poetry, songs by David Bowie and the Beach Boys, love, and wine. Through his eyes, the reader gets a chance to see the world anew. It's funny at first -- must humans wear clothes? -- but grows more serious as Martin the Alien abandons his quest and goes over to the other side. There's a hefty Godfather-style price to pay and I won't spoil it by spooling it out in detail.

It's a wonderful novel. I was ready for something humorous and hopeful after reading a series of serious books. Make no mistake -- this is as serious as it gets. Who are we and why do we do what we do? 

Klaatu barada nikto! 

Klaatu issues these orders to Gort. As a kid, I thought it meant "If anything happens to me, kill the human scum." It really meant "if anything happens to me, come and retrieve me and I will decide what to do next." Gort does his duty and Klaatu is freed to issue his warming to Earth. Then they fly off.

Martin the Alien receives telepathic orders from Vonnadoria. He does eliminate the scientist's collaborator. It's just a simple matter of putting his hand on him to make his heart stop. In his left hand are "the gifts," those powers that allow him to travel and communicate vast distances, speak with animals, and accomplish his mission. He briefly contemplates killing the annoying teen son, Gulliver, but saves his life instead. He befriends the dog and takes a liking to Mrs. Martin. Then all hell breaks loose.

Haig caused this reader to look anew at my humanity. Strange creatures we are. Loveable and awful. But it's all we got. For now.

"The Weight of a Body" can be measured in stories

Opening of the first story in my collection, "The Weight of the Body," now available as an Amazon e-book. 

Roadkill

The shapes grew out of the smoke and fog -- three pronghorn antelope, running hard. Matthew Kincannon mashed the car’s brakes and swung the wheel hard left. He missed the first two, collided with the third on its white-tufted rump which rose like a balloon before its rear legs smacked the windshield, its hooves scraping the glass like sharpened fists.

Kincannon wrestled the car to a stop on the wrong side of the state highway. He had a vision of a huge logging truck red-balling down the road, smashing him like he’d smashed the antelope. Tapping the gas, he swerved back into the north-bound lane, and eased his car to a stop on the road’s shoulder.

Read more...