How the Great TB Sanatorium Craze came to the Rocky Mountain West

Part 2 of my review of John Green's "Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection." Read Part 1 here.

There was a rush in the early part of the 20^th century to isolate humans with TB, an incredibly virulent bacterium. Call it the TB Sanatorium Craze. Colorado jumped on the bandwagon early. So did New Mexico, Arizona, and California.

While I am a Colorado native, I spent 33 years living and working north of the border in Wyoming. The Wyoming State Legislature approved a TB hospital in Basin and it opened in 1927 . This probably was due to the Legislature’s tendency to parcel out important government functions: Cheyenne gets the capitol, Laramie gets the university, Basin gets the patients of a worldwide plague. It was only fair. As the years progressed, TB patients sought out famous hot springs in Saratoga and Thermopolis. The steam, heat, and sunlight were viewed as crucial TB treatments.

The Wyoming Legislature discussed a TB sanatorium as far back as 1909. During that same time, the National Tuberculosis Association sponsored a well-attended “Tuberculosis Exhibit” in Cheyenne and Laramie. The NTA traces its roots to 1904 when concerned citizens formed the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis. This was their advice during the Wyoming tour, as outlined in the 1910 edition of The Journal of the Outdoor Life from the University of Michigan:

“The cure consists of plenty of good, simple food, constant fresh air during the night as well as during the day, constant rest in the fresh air until there is no fever , and then carefully and gradually increased short walks, proper care and washing of your body, and proper clothing  and, finally, a determination to get well and to be cheerful in spite of everything, and only to look on the bright side of things, however hard your circumstances may be.”

Sanatoria offered all of these things with the predictable results: The Wyoming State Archives in Cheyenne shows that in 1910-1912, when most counties in Wyoming had between one and 20 cases of TB per year. Albany, Park, and Carbon counties were on the low end with one to three cases per year (Converse County had zero!) and Sheridan, Sweetwater, and Laramie counties were on the high side with Laramie County showing 18 cases in 1911.

At the beginning of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl in September 1930, patient census at the Basin Sanatorium in September 1930 showed 15 women and 37 men. When effective TB treatments such as streptomycin emerged in the 1940s, the heady days of sanatoria came to a close. Old Archives photos show the building in Basin where patients struggled to breathe. Sad, isn’t it, that some settlers came West for breathing room but died for lack of breath?

Why is Green’s book important to us in the 21^st century? The U.S. has a 99-percent TB cure rate and about 10,000 patients yearly although that’s going up. Green takes pains to tell the story of Americans with TB and the tough time they had before modern meds. The Rocky Mountain West, especially, was home to a number of sanatoria for TB patients. The Wyoming State Archives has documents tracing the origins of the lone state TB sanitorium in Basin.

Construction began in Basin in 1926 and the Sanitarium was opened in May of 1927. By 1969 all references to tuberculosis were removed at the Wyoming Sanatorium due to the significant decrease in the incidence of tuberculosis in the state. It was replaced by the Wyoming Retirement Center which provides nursing care to residents with mental health, dementia and other medical needs.

Colorado boasted plenty of facilities. Green writes that some cities in the West were founded by TB. Colorado Springs is one of them. National Jewish Hospital in Denver had a treatment center for consumptives. It’s still known as one of the best pulmonary hospitals in the country. Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora opened in 1918 at the tail end of World War One and its specialty was treating men with TB and those whose lungs were damaged by gas attacks.

The U.S. Army sent my unhorsed cavalry officer grandfather to Fitzsimons as he struggled with a bad case of pneumonia aggravated by chemical weapons used in the war. My grandmother, an army nurse and veteran of a M.A.S.H-style unit in France, treated him there. They married in 1922. Their eldest was my U.S. Army Signals Corps veteran father who in 1950 married a U.S. Navy-trained nurse and here I am.

Lung ailments have figured heavily in my family. My brothers, sisters, and I struggled with asthma in our youth. I almost died after a bad reaction to horses at a Weld County ranch. This pretty much demolished my dreams of replacing The Lone Ranger.  

Movie westerns have featured tubercular characters. In “Tombstone,” Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday gambles, drinks, shoots people, coughs and sweats, not necessarily in that order. A gambler calls him a “dirty lunger” and pays the price. Gunfighter Johnny Ringo calls him a “lunger” and also pays the price. The message is clear. ”I’m your huckleberry,” Doc says, before or after shooting someone. Not bad for a lunger or consumptive patient. Doc succumbed to consumption in 1887 in Glenwood Springs, Colo. He went there in 1886 when told that the hot springs had curative powers. He apparently was misinformed. Visit his grave at the Doc Holliday Grave and Hiking Trail. Flatlanders beware: it’s located more than a mile high and it’s all uphill. Healthy lungs required.

One of our U.S. presidents, sought out the West’s fresh air and healthy lifestyle in North Dakota. Theodore Roosevelt thrived, returned to politics, declared Wyoming’s Yellowstone a national park and Devils Tower a national monument, and the rest is history and myth-making.

North Dakota’s San Haven Sanatorium in the Turtle Mountains treated TB patients from 1909 until the 1940s. As final plans were made for a 1911 opening, Superintendent of Public Health Dr. J.L. Grassick referred to TB as “The Great White Plague” because physicians marked TB-infected lungs with white arrows and healthy ones with black arrows. and assessed the illness as more a lifestyle choice than a microscopic rod-shaped bacillus with plans of its own.

“Wherever man builds his habitation, depresses his vitality by overwork or by debilitating excesses, lowers his powers of life by using insufficient or improper food, surrounds himself with the expectoration of his fellows and deprives himself of the blessings of God’s free air, there you will find it.”

Sanatoriums such as San Haven offered a higher altitude than the surrounding prairie, plenty of God’s free air, proper food, and all the available treatments. One of the more gruesome ones was puncturing and deflating one sick lung to nurture the other. During its time, more than 50 percent of the patients died.

And then came bacteria-battling antibiotics. San Haven closed. The abandoned building is billed on N.D. tourism sites as a good place for ghost-hunting. No mention of how the ghosts of The Great White Plague feel about this.

To John Green’s credit, the book includes blasts at the healthcare industry (especially – surprise! -- major drugmakers) and global policymakers. He does this surprisingly quickly in 208 pages (hardcover) and 256 in paperback. I read it on my Kindle. He requires more pages to describe faulty stars and why those turtles go all the way down, but fiction is one thing and non-fiction is another.

The story that holds “Everything is Tuberculosis” together is one 13-year-old’s journey. Green is a fine storyteller and the one he tells about Henry keeps the reader hanging on to the end.

Postscript: A big thank you to my son Kevin, a writer and tech guy in Cheyenne, for hands-on research at the Wyoming State Archives. As always, the Archives staff went out of their way to help a researcher.

John Green tells us why "Everything is Tuberculosis"

Did you ever wake up with a nagging cough and wonder “Is this the day I get tuberculosis?” Not bloody likely if you live in England or Germany or Denmark or any other place with an advanced healthcare system (even the U.S., despite its flaws).

If you live in Africa’s Sierra Leone, it might be another story.

That’s the one author John Green tells in his new book, “Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection.” You may know Green from his coming-of-age novels “The Fault is in Our Stars” and “Turtles All the Way Down.” These books for young readers have been made into movie versions you can see in the streaming world.

TB has not been one of Green’s main themes – until now. It grew out of a visit to West Africa with a health organization. There he discovered that poor countries struggle with the affordability and availability of TB medications. Just one of the reasons that 1.25 million people still die annually from the world’s most infectious disease.

Historically, TB patients were described as victims of consumption or labeled “consumptives.” It may sound like a less scary term than Mycobacterium tuberculosis, phthisis, pulmonalis, or the great white plague. But consumption is a quick description of what TB does to the body: it consumes it. When it advances unchecked, it dissolves your lungs, renders you breathless, and then you die.

Readers of classic literature recall poets with consumption such as John Keats and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Keats is sentimentalized because he wrote his gorgeous poems while being consumed by ravenous but slow-growing TB bacilli. Its slow pace makes it a particular tough disease to treat. It also, alas, gives writers lots of time to chronicle it.

This was captured in Jane Campion’s film “Bright Star” about the infirm Keats and the true love he found during his dying days. This sentimentalization, according to Green, painted male Romantic-era poets as heroic sufferers and stricken white women as pale and beautiful as marble statues. American poet John Ciardi may have said it best in “A Trenta-Sei of the Pleasure We Take in the Early Death of Keats” from his collection "Echoes: Poems Left Behind:"

The species-truth of the matter is we are glad (of what?)/to have a death to munch on. Truth to tell (which truth is what?)/we are also glad to pretend it makes us sad./When it comes to dying, Keats did it so well (how well?)/we thrill to the performance…

The romance of TB faded as it kept killing people in new and ingenious ways, and that many of those victims were not poets but the guy next door and millions in poor countries. Its discovery by Dr. Robert Koch in 1882 as a microscopic bacillus, a highly contagious one, suddenly made TB a dirty word.

Green meets Henry Reider is a poor black youngster in Sierra Leone with Multiple Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB). He has several strikes against him, as he’s poor and he’s black and he lives in an African country without the medical resources required for long-term treatment. When Green first meets him, the boy is so small and thin that he looks like he’s eight and not thirteen.

Green points out that lack of health care spending is rampant in Africa. If Sierra Leone spent the same percentage of its budget on TB treatment as we do in the U.S., that would be 48 U.S. dollars per patient per year. That is less than what one round of TB prescriptions would cost. These medications are expensive and need to be taken for months if not years. Green writes that the country has its own medical schools, hospitals and doctors. But the drugmakers in the West reap big profits and their attorneys work hard to extend patents. Millions with no insurance are SOL.

Read the second part of my review of "Everything is Tuberculosis" next week.

Boomer Scouts took an oath and we intend to keep it

Here is what I have pledged and held close to my heart all my life:

The Scout Oath: "On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight."

The Scout Law: "A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent."

Retro, right? My Millennial daughter tells me that retro is in (am I using that term right?) and that housewifery is in and the phrase "women can have it all" is so old and so Boomerish. The cool kids are now Republicans and the squares are Democrats. My wife and I are quite Boomerish. 

My daughter may be right. The bloviating from Trump's America makes me feel quite squarish. 

Still, I keep hearing that oath run through my head. And this one, too, the one I uttered when I was sworn in as a U.S. Navy midshipman:

"I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God."

I was a lousy midshipman and never became an actual shipman. Still, I took an oath and obey it. I am attuned these days to those who took the oath and now ignore it. You know, enemies, foreign and domestic. But mostly domestic. 

No Kings in the USA!

 

The message to the Florida Legislature is clear: Don't mess with our state parks!

I feel nostalgic today. Not sure why although it may be that I have many years to be nostalgic about. To begin, I was reading the Sunday paper after freeing it from its two protective envelopes but first I had to shake off the water from my neighbor's pre-dawn sprinklers (the lawn looks great!). The meaty part of the Daytona News Journal, Sunday edition, is its Outlook section or op-ed. It includes some meaty opinion columns such as Bill Cotterell's exploration of next year's governor's race ("We're in for a fun race" wrote the headline writer with just a smidge of sarcasm) and Ingrid Jacques' "Trump's tariffs might bring back jobs at a price" and that price may be -- in my opinion -- America's democracy. That anyone might believe that the witless White House resident actually has a policy of any kind, well, I guess that's how we got to this dystopian hell in the first place.

My attention was focused in Florida state parks, trails and historic sites. Rick Christie's column featured letters from state park fans. Six weeks ago, Florida opinion journalists of the USA Today network asked residents to send in written and visual memories of state parks in an effort to save our 800,000 wonderful acres of pristine land from greedheads fronted by the State Legislature. Many writers have warned us about the paving instinct of developers. We can go back to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' writing about Cross Creek and Paynes Prairie among other places. She was friends of some of Florida's early women environmentalists. From Florida Memory at the Florida State Archives: 

In Florida, Marjorie Harris Carr, May Mann Jennings, Jeanne Bellamy, Marjory Stoneman Douglas and Mary Grizzle are just a few of the women who worked to protect Florida's environment.

When I was growing up in Daytona, John D. MacDonald raged in "Condominium" about unbridled development. From afar, I read Miami Herald columns by Carl Hiaasen. I don't know most of Florida's recent environmental history as I was working to save and improve Wyoming state parks through  the arts. But those who never left and those who moved here for the Florida that is rapidly disappearing, you were on the front lines to save this heritage. 

I am a retiree returning to Volusia County. My prime growing-up years (13-27) were spent here in Florida's prime growing-up years (1964-1978). My eight brothers and sisters had their globe-trotting years. My brothers Pat and Dan were in the USAF and my sister Molly spent several years tending to new mothers at a base in Italy. My sister Mary tried out New Hampshire and my sister Eileen joined me in Colorado for awhile. Sister Maureen has lived in Mexico City and Lyon, France. Brothers Tom and Tim tried California. They all returned to Florida. I did not. Their roots were deep. Their memories are of sand dunes and unspoiled beaches, heading to Juniper Springs and Ichnetucknee, fishing for snook. camping in the woods. Mine too. 

So I wrote a letter supporting Florida parks and the legislators trying to protect them with House Bill 209 and SB 80. Mine is not featured in today's Outlook. But you can read it here. I reminisced about my days at Tomoka State Park and the Loop Trail. And the beaches where I surfed and hung out with my friends. Florida is a state park and a historic site for its rich heritage. Some of the latter is being scrubbed from school history books as I write because it involves genocide and slavery which apparently never happened although the park has a nice statue of Chief Tomokie of the Timucuan People based on a legend. There is a Timucuan Heritage Trail at Alexander Springs in Ocala National Forest. For some reason, it is "temporarily closed." I give you one guess as to the reason. 

I love this country!

I learned a lot from reading today's letters. Dana Hunsley of Panacea, a former park ranger and park safety officer at St. Joseph Peninsula State Park, reminded readers that the the Florinda Dep0artment of Environmental Protection (DEP) is better know as the "Department of Environmental Prostitution" for its tendency to favor greed over environmental preservation. Military veteran Tom Wonsiewicz of North Naples celebrated Thanksgiving with his family at Delmore Wiggins Pass State Park. He writes this: "The joyful noise, in many languages, of people enjoying life and each other in beautiful, natural settings is unforgettable." Frank Cover of Cape Coral credits a 2014 visit by boat to Cayo Costa State Park got him hooked on wildlife photography.

The message is loud and clear: Don't f*ck with our state parks. Make sure your legislators hear your pleas. Earth Day is April 22. That's a good day to fire off a letter or e-mail. 

Anti-Trump protests? Better term: We gather together to save our democracy w/u

Update 4/10/25: "Hands Off" was the official term for the April 5 protests. Sorry I forgot to mention it. Perfect label for a response to Trump & Company's hostile takeover of the USA.

I didn't attend any of our local "anti-Trump protests" as the header read in this morning's Daytona Beach News-Journal. I couldn't bring myself to gather the support materials I would need for an extended stretch in the Florida out-of-doors. I need to slather sunscreen over every exposed inch of my body to avoid the return of skin cancer. Yes, it takes years for a burn to turn into cancer and I may not be around for that future dermatologist visit but I always try to think of my long game. I'll need a hat and a jug of water. A clever sign, which I hadn't yet made although many ideas are floating around the Net. 

I also must transport my e-scooter on the rack attached to my SUV. I have to make sure it's charged so I don't get stranded on the way back to the vehicle parked at a handicapped space if I can find one. Once on site, I have to make sure there is an accessible restroom nearby and that I can get to it. My wife usually helps with transportation but she was out with old friends on Saturday.

So I didn't make it. But millions did. I loved the photos that appeared on social media. I was able to view old Wyoming friends at sites in Cheyenne, Laramie, Rock Springs, Casper, and other places. Joe Barbuto and his brave compatriots in Rock Springs endured lots of nastiness. The city was once a Democratic stronghold, back when union miners were Dems. It takes an inner fire to get out on the streets in very red Wyoming. There were opposition rallies although not well-attended since Trump needs no more help destroying our fine country. Some name calling, screams and shouts. But most responses from passing motorists were horn honks in agreement. 

I saw a video Sunday of an armed MAGA man getting out of his truck and threatening protesters with an automatic weapon. Not in Wyoming, though. Not wise in the Still-Wild-West to go around threatening citizenry when so many are armed. And these protesters were mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore as a movie character once shouted from the rooftops. Despite what you may hear in the MAGA blogosphere, the rallies were peaceful, police wisely keeping their distance lest they be branded as Gestapo wannabes. 

So Mike didn't go. Boo hoo. Millions did and that's what matters. As a long-time Facebook scribe kept reminding us, none of this matters if we don't get out and vote. It would be tempting to ask rally attendees if they voted in the recent special Florida election that sent a GOPer that not even GOP stalwarts like to a seat in Congress. Volusia County's turnout for Democrat Josh Weil was impressive. Still, the majority of registered Dems stayed home. Chris and I voted by mail. The GOP seems worried that there will be a record turnout in midterm elections. They are busily crafting legislation to keep us from voting. 

I have participated in many protests and rallies. I was an onlooker as a confused young man at Vietnam protests in D.C. and South Carolina. Later, I participated in a big way. I was so proud to help plan the Wyoming Women's March in Cheyenne, Wyoming, on Inauguration weekend 2017. Some labeled it Wyoming Women and Allies March. I was part of the security detail and served the hungry at the post-rally potluck with my heart-friendly low-sodium chili. The Laramie County Democrats fed 1,200. We plugged in so many crock-pots that we shorted out the electrical system at the Historic Cheyenne Train Depot. Lukewarm chili still can keep a person warm on a chilly January day. 

Seems like ancient history now. We thought those days were behind us.

Thanks to all those who participated this past weekend. I will be there next time.

For my blogs on the 2017 rallies in Wyoming:

https://hummingbirdminds.blogspot.com/2017/01/wyoming-womens-march-and-potluck-draws.html

https://hummingbirdminds.blogspot.com/2018/01/i-wonder-if-ive-learned-anything-after.html

H.L. Mencken predicted it, Hunter S. Thompson would have nailed it

Baltimore's H.L. Mencken may have been the most quotable of newspaper reporters. Some comments are crass and insensitive. Others dug deep into the heart of darkness. Here's one:

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

You may know Mencken by his Broadway/Hollywood persona -- E.K. Hornbeck, the cranky cynical reporter in "Inherit the Wind." Here he is blasting attorney Henry Drummond (a.k.a. Clarence Darrow) who is representing the defendant in the Scopes Monkey Trial. Hornbeck is the devil sitting on Drummond's world-weary shoulders. Here's how Hornbeck sees it:

Looks like you're going out in a blaze of glory counselor. You were pretty impressive for a while there today, Henry. "Your Honor, after a while you'll be setting man against man, creed against creed" etc, etc, ad nauseam unquote. AHH, Henry! why don't you wake up? Darwin was Wrong! Man's still an ape. His creed still a totem pole. When he first achieved the upright position he took a look at the stars... thought they were something to eat. When he couldn't reach them, he thought they were groceries belonging to a bigger creature... that's how Jehovah was born.

I would love to hear Mencken on Trump & Co. And Hunter S. Thompson, the Sage of Woody Creek, Colo., where are you when we need you?

I guess it's just us. Just little ol' us.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Nostalgia

Artwork courtesy Dean Petersen

My friend Dean Petersen in Wyoming is a talented writer and filmmaker. He once joined us at Jeana's Dining Room Table Writers' Group in Cheyenne, Wyoming. He has many stories to tell, as he showed in his novel The Burqa Cave. We critiqued each other's work with other members and sipped tea and gnoshed on baked goods. It was helpful and civilized and almost all of our members, past and present, have multiple published books. 

Dean always has a new project, his latest is an intriguing podcast, "That Doesn't Happen Every Day." He has profiled sand sculptors, Laramie's lone ska band, WYO nukes, and this hitchhiker. I imagine myself as the guy with my thumb out in the illustration, although it's been awhile since I hit the road in the 1970s. Dean is from the generation younger than mine (Gen-X?) and he notes in the episode that in school and at home they were lectured often about not getting into cars with strangers. 

Boomers received the same warnings but thousands of us ignored them as we hit the road to see America and Canada and the rest of the Americas and Europe too. My sister-in-law hitched around Europe with a woman friend in the '70s. My brother Dan hitched around Florida and the East Coast before he got a haircut and joined the USAF. My wife Chris ignored all warnings as a teen and hitched A1A from her house way north in Ormond Beach to party with friends in Ormond and Daytona. 

It was a great way to get around especially if you had no car or motorcycle. Go to Dean's podcast and check it out.

"Writers Who Play" features words & music & fun March 28 in L.A.

This comes from traveling troubadour and poet Ken Waldman:

In Los Angeles the end of this month, my NOMAD co-editor, Rachel White, and I will be getting our new NOMAD literary journal out in the world, and I'm producing a Friday, March 28, show at the fabulous 1642 Bar at https://www.facebook.com/1642beerandwine/ .

Here's the poster:

The event is being held off-campus you might say from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference at Los Angeles Convention Center this week. Consider it a break from AWP sessions and the magnificent bookfair where you can buy books and have books thrust upon you. Also a good time to schmooze with editors and publishers. I haven't attended AWP in a number of years but it always was fun and where I recruited writers to come to Wyoming. And always brought an extra bag to haul books home.

WyoFile: Crowd jeers Hageman at Laramie Town Hall. She calls them hysterical

WyoFile is one of my favorite publications. Based in Wyoming, it covers this vast state, reporting on events big and small. 

When I lived in Wyoming, I wrote arts and book reviews for WyoFile. Their political coverage has been particularly good. Their reporters covered the most recent legislative session, providing insight into the GOP Crackpots called the Freedom Caucus who now run the place. 

WyoFile's Maggie Mullen wrote March 20 of Rep. Harriet Hageman's town hall meeting in Laramie. Credit goes to Hageman for hosting town halls when the national GOP has told their reps to cancel them lest they be confronted with angry constituents and questions they refuse to answer. 

More than 500 people turned out for the Laramie event in the auditorium of the historic Laramie Plains Civic Center. It originally had been scheduled for a more cloistered space. Read the WyoFile article. Americans from all over are mad as hell and are not going to take it anymore. I love the header: https://wyofile.com/crowd-jeers-hageman-at-tense-laramie-town-hall-she-calls-them-hysterical/

Hageman is a confirmed MAGA cultist and defeated the outlaw Liz Cheney for the state's lone House seat. I switched parties and voted for Liz in the primaries but you can't do that anymore and now I'm in Florida trying to figure out its voting laws. She had the weight and the money of Trump on her side. 

Voters in Wyoming once elected Democrats as Governor (I worked for two of them) and common-sense yet irascible senators such as the late Alan Simpson. They are off the rails now. They were joined by 77 million or so ("I got almost 80 million votes," Trump recently bragged) who voted in Trump and Musk and some Vance guy. I know, I can't believe it either, but the horrid results are becoming more evident every day.

WyoFile is a publication we really need now. It's crucial if you live in Wyoming; entertaining and educational if you live elsewhere. Donate at wyofile.com

Get out there and vote on April 1 in the District 6 special election w/update

Update from an old friend and reader of blogs: 

"There is a peaceful rally on Saturday, 3/22, at the west side of the Granada Bridge to support Josh Weil and the progressive anti-Trump agenda. It is from 2:30-5:30.... If you or any of your friends can come it would be great. We need a big turnout."

You heard it here. FYI, the Grenada Bridge is in Ormond Beach, possibly the most traveled thoroughfare in Volusia County. I saw a large gathering for Harris and Walz there during the November vote. They were happy and peaceful. My wife honked the heck out of our SUV in support. They have been unhappy ever since, as have I. See you at the bridge Saturday.

Chris and I voted by mail Tuesday. It felt great. This is a special election set for April 1 and I voted for Josh Weil, a Democrats in Florida District 6. I believe that Chris voted for Weil but I wasn't looking over her shoulder as she filled out the mail-in ballot. I was schooled that who my spouse or friend or neighbor voted for was none of my business. 

Me: Who did you vote for?

Someone else: None of your beeswax!

But here I am, telling my readers who I voted for. 

Weil's opponent is MAGA GOPer Randall Fine. Weil has been kicking Fine's butt on TV ads, labeling him the nogoodnik that he is. Nogoodnik now. Nogoodnik if he gets to D.C. He will join the mindless House GOP horde dismantling our democracy (OK brother -- Democratic Republic) on the orders of Trump and his favorite fascist, Elon Musk. Donny and Elon want to take away your Social Security payments to line their own already-stuffed pockets. More golf balls for Donny, more Swasticars and exploding spaceships for Elon. 

They must be stopped. So get out there and vote, District 6 registered voters. The life you save may be your own. Here's a quote from Weil in the Daytona Beach News-Journal:

"We cannot take our foot off the gas," Weil said. "We have to continue knocking on doors and continue dominating the airwaves, holding more and bigger events and getting people out."

This election is being held to replace our former GOP Rep, Michael Waltz, who resigned Jan. 20 to become T's national security advisor. When Waltz was in Congress, he was a big supporter of Ukraine but now he's towing the T line to sell out Ukraine to Putin. We need a better Rep than this or Fine. Wins in this district and District 1 can negate the GOP majority in the House. We need checks and balances more than ever.

Early voting starts Saturday.

FMI: volusiaelections.gov 

Irish poet Eavan Boland: "Memory itself has become an emigrant"

The title poem of Eavan Boland's collection "The Lost Land" always moves me. It begins as a confessional with "I have two daughters" but ends with one of the big topics in Irish and Irish-American writing: diaspora. You know the story: the Potato Famine, the rapacious of the English landlords, the sailing away. The Irish, always sailing away and landing on a foreign shore. The last lines always get to me. I send you to the Poetry Foundation web site to read the whole thing and other work by Boland. Go there now. Read an Irish writer today. Happy St. Patrick's Day. 

Hey Wyoming Democrats--donate to Josh Weil and change the balance in the U.S. House

Josh Weil is a Democrat running for one of Florida's vacant U.S. House seats in District 6. He will replace a Trump cultist. Ads bill him as a bad-ass teacher and concerned citizen which are what we need to stop the Republicans. We've donated to his campaign and we see the results in full-page newspaper ads and TV spots blasting his weirdo opponent. These two House seats can put a dent in the GOP/Trump/Musk/Project 2025 majority. FMI: https://joshweil.us/ or go to ActBlue. Go Josh!

One of the cool things is that I get to vote for a Democrat for a change. I voted for Dems in Wyoming but it rarely made a difference except for governor (twice) and a few state legislative elections until MAGA crazies came out of the woodwork. Wyoming Democrats can make a dent in an off-year election in another state by donating. 

Daytona Bike Week has passed but we all have motorcycle memories

Daytona Bike Week goes for ten days each March. It’s an extravaganza for motorcycle buffs from all over North America and even all over the world. It’s a loud week, Harleys in full roar beginning in late morning t about noon and lasting well past midnight. 

You get the full treatment along Main Street in Daytona and out by the speedway where the races, concerts, and big-time vendors are. Chris and I ended up surrounded by bikers on Thursday when we went to lunch after a medical appointment and wandered by a famous tattoo business on U.S. 1 that hosts beer and autograph sessions with Playboy models, strippers, and assorted women in skimpy outfits despite the un-Florida chill. If you go further north on U.S. 1, you pass biker bars aplenty.

For us Ormond-by-the-Sea dwellers, we hear bikes all day and night. We’re located between Hwy. A1A which promoters now call the Jimmy Buffett Memorial Highway and John Anderson Drive which locals call the street where the rich people live. The bikers ride A1A along the coast to Ormond, Flagler, and St. Augustine. They can find nice beaches if they want to dismount but more likely will end up at one of the many saloons and tourist attractions that line the way. Bikers also use that route to go to the Highbridge Exit which will take them to the Tomoka Loop, a favorite winding tree-lined route. John Anderson also takes you to Tomoka along a winding tree-lined route by riverside houses you can't afford.

BTW, you do have to have some cash and credit worthiness to buy a new motorcycle. They start at about $25,000 and goes up to $40,000. You also need a good pickup and a trailer to haul the bikes that once zoomed freely on I-95 in the 1970s and now old bones and joints need a little assistance to get to the hoopla. There’s still lodging and food and such to buy. And don’t forget your two- or three- wheeled vehicle's maintenance costs. 

Guys like my old Wyoming neighbor worked on his own Harley. He had the technical skill, tools. and big garage to do the work. One night he blasted down the street before he rolled to his driveway. Then came a knock on our door. My neighbor needed my help. I walked with him to behold the downed bike. He seemed embarrassed that his Harley was this helpless thing lying powerless on his driveway. Drunk and high, he needed my aging muscles to get the machine upright. I helped of course, the neighborly thing to do.

I have plenty of friends with motorcycles and many that used to have motorcycles. When attending Daytona Beach Community College in 1973, I shared a house in Holly Hill with a roommate who fled the north country to Florida. He helped me rebuild the engine in my 1950 Ford truck. He was a biker without a motorcycle which he had to leave behind for a reason he wouldn't talk about. He did talk motorcycle. He dressed biker too. Probably dreamed it. He moved to Orlando and the last I heard, he was riding again. 

My brother Dan rode a Harley until leukemia took him away. An air traffic controller, he ran an Internet biker-oriented side business, Daytona Gear. He loved his motorcycle. When he and our friend Blake trailered their bikes to Sturgis, Dan invited me up to ride bitch on his bike and I did. Our daughter Annie has a treasured Biketoberfest photo with her and her Uncle Dan on his Harley. She even bought me a Biketoberfest T-shirt which I wore proudly around Wyoming and I often was asked how I liked Biketoberfest and said, “Just fine, I liked it just fine.” I had Sturgis T-shirts too.

In the 1960s and '70s, I rode dirt bikes through the Florida woods and on the beaches. They belonged to friends, little Hondas and Yamahas and Husqvarnas. I covered motocross races as a correspondent for the Denver Post. A girlfriend once dumped me for her old boyfriend, a motocross racer. I responded by mailing her a verse about love and longing that I pulled from Kahlil Gibran. Didn’t make me feel any better but I hoped she read it and thought about me for a little while.

I guess we’re all motorcycle people in America. Daytona has a special claim on big motorcycles so I guess I can claim a little slice of that. Still, I like the quiet.

I wasn't able to say this when I lived in Wyoming, but Liz Cheney now speaks for me

I'm a life-long Democrat who has voted against Liz Cheney and for her. And, yes, I was a Wyoming resident at the time. I voted against her when she successfully ran for Wyoming's lone House seat. She was considered an outsider (resident of Virginia), despite her name. And her name -- Cheney -- was an issue. She is daughter of Wyoming warmonger Dick and Uber-patriot Lynne who writes books glorifying America and neglecting its faults. Lynne once chaired the National Endowment for the Humanities and then worked with GOP colleagues to try and dismantle it (which Trump & Co. are doing now). When serving on the Equality State Book Festival planning committee, I voted against Lynne Cheney as keynote speaker for our first event. That led to me and my colleague L (you know who you are) being labeled "liberal twits" by the Casper College librarian. Liberal Twit is my handle on the site formerly called Twitter.

But Liz speaks out about Trump, especially his idiocy when he and Vance and the Trump Corps of Bullies ambushed Ukraine President Zelenskyy. Here's what Liz posted on Facebook (reposted by wonderful novelist Connie May Fowler):

All I can say is "Right on, Liz." I know, a term from long ago when we used to say "Right On" only for cool rebels. Now Ms. Cheney is the kind of rebel we need. I know that the Cheney name carries with it a heavy weight. But one also has to acknowledge that Dick Cheney has influence in GOP politics and the energy biz. Wyoming buildings at UW and in his hometown of Casper carry his name. The Natrona County High School football field carries his name (the field but not the stadium). Dick and Lynne are both NCHS grads. The energy sector powers Wyoming. Cheney was chair of Halliburton, for goodness sake. I traveled throughout the state for my job and if I didn't see a Halliburton truck on the road, I might think I was somewhere else.

Republicans in Wyoming have a rich tradition of mainstream conservatism. They have recently abandoned that for what's called the "Freedom Caucus" in the State Legislature, a body of right-wing wackos who spend more time banning books and pronouns than they do caring for Wyoming's people. I am scared for the state because I lived, worked, and retired there before moving to Florida. Florida, of course, has its own crew of wackos led by its blustering governor. I'll find time for them in later posts. 

Meanwhile, I have to ask: where are the Democrats? Why aren't our former presidents and legislators speaking out? This is no time for timidity, no time to contemplate your legacies. There will be no legacy if Trump is not stopped. 

Dear Florida Legislators: Don't monkey around with our state parks

The Sunday Outlook section in the March 2 News-Journal included an editorial by the USA Today Network-Florida Opinion Group. Header: "Support legislation to restrict future development in Florida's parks." An excerpt: "Floridians don't want to see their state parks spoiled by excessive clearing, paving, and building." There was an outcry last year when someone in state government leaked a plan "to put hotels, golf courses, pickleball courts and other development in nine targeted state parks." That plan disappeared but now there's a bill threatening state parks in the Florida Legislature. So USA Today staff requested letters, op-eds, and photos "to remind lawmakers that they should vote to protect some of our most prized assets."

They asked. I responded with this op-ed:

Save Florida State Parks

The road known now as The Loop was uncrowded when our family first visited Tomoka State Park in September 1964. Two adults, eight kids, and a dog crowded into a Ford Falcon station wagon and made the drive along a tree-shrouded road to the park. We grew up in Colorado where you drive to a park through wide-open vistas until you get to your mountain destination where the trees were. This was a different kind of experience, almost magical. It was jungle full of snakes, alligators and armadillos.

We were kids on that first visit 61 years ago, We romped around the park. Mom warned us about snakes and we didn’t hear anything she said because we were busy playing. We went down to the Tomoka River and looked for rocks to skip along the shore but found none. But we saw turtles and imagined giant gators around the bend in the river. We knew there were creatures called sea cows under the tannin-infused river water.

What a place. “The Legend of Chief Tomokie” statue was still in fine form in ’64. Built by noted sculptor Fred Dana Marsh in 1957, the legend was based on one invented by the daughter of the founder of The Halifax Journal. I thought it was amazing, impressed that Florida had Indians too, most of them long-dead from the civilizing effects of white explorers and settlers. Over time, my brothers and I camped with our father in Tomoka and we ventured out there with our Boy Scout troop that met in Ormond’s First Methodist Church. We eventually saw many snakes and gators. Florida wildlife was amazing. The following summer, when my brother Dan and I went to our first Scout summer camp at La-No-Che near Paisley, we were told to watch out for water moccasins dropping into our canoes from the Spanish Moss-draped cypress trees. To a teen, what could be cooler than that?

Over the years, I’ve camped in Juniper Springs, O’Leno, and Sebastian Inlet state parks. I’ve floated the iconic Ichetucknee, canoed the Withlacoochee (Crooked River), and cruised the Wakulla. We spent our honeymoon on a scuba trip to John Pennekamp Coral Reef. It all fed my love of nature. When I graduated from UF and returned West for a job, my wife and I spent all of our spare time in Colorado and Wyoming state and national parks. We shared these experiences with our children; they are stored in memories and photo albums.

My wife and I returned to Ormond Beach in August. One of our first trips was to Tomoka State Park. Retired and disabled from a bad fall, I get around on an electric scooter. Much of Tomoka was accessible to me. I rode my scooter down the road to the dilapidated Tomokie statue but then got stuck in the sand. Two young mountain bikers pushed me out. They were there to ride the trails. We retreated to The Outpost near the boat launch area and drank lemonade. We listened to the birds and watched boats navigate the river. We enjoyed the day and vowed to return. We will continue doing so as long as it remains a state park and doesn’t morph into some raucous Disney-style resort.

Our daughter moved to Ormond Beach in January. A Wyoming native, she’s already explored Tomoka, viewed the manatees at Blue Spring State Park, and taken a scenic cruise on the St. Johns.

I send an appeal to the Florida Legislature. Do not despoil our great state parks with golf courses, pickleball courts, and tourist lodges. We have enough of those elsewhere. Leave us the Great Outdoors, our sacred spaces.

"All the President's Men" meant one thing in the 1970s and an absurdly different one in 2025

I watched "All the President's Men" on TCM Monday night, and not for the first time. A fantastic political thriller in which the good guys win.

In 2025 Trumplandia, "All the President's Men" seems, well, how do I say this? Quaint? Outdated? Just more Boomer nostalgia?

Yet, the GOP's 1970s illegal activities against the Democrats were both real and disgusting. 

But when compared with Trump's 2025 crimes against America, well, the old depredation looks mild.

Nixon and pals took great pains to cover up their misdeeds. All the lying tied them in knots of denial. They couldn't keep it quiet because real journalists from real newspapers and networks kept doing their jobs. And elected Democrats AND especially Republicans remembered their oaths of office.

The difference with Trump and his MAGA minions? They tell us their misdeeds and do them openly. Trump and Musk brag about them. Their backers spent millions outlining their plans in Project 2025. It was all there for us to read. Journalists were not around to awaken the slumbering multitudes. The New York Times could not do it alone. The Washington Post was a lost cause. Metropolitan dailies had been run into the ground by hedge fund babies. And the GOP was not in thrall to "Fearless Leader."

I was a young man of 21 when the Watergate break-in happened. That November was the first time I voted in national elections at a little church on Boston's Beacon Hill. I voted for McGovern as did many in Massachusetts that day. 

Fat lot of good it did us. Draft-age men were turning out to vote for The Peace Candidate in the hopes that this rural Dem from the West would stop feeding us into the Vietnam meat-grinder. It was odd that this heroic World War 2 veteran would be the peacenik on the ticket but that was the case. Nixon served but he wasn't piloting a B-24 bomber dodging flak and Messerschmitts over Germany. In ATPM, the 1972 elections play out in the background on TV screens.  During that campaign, Nixon worked behind the scenes to manipulate the Paris Peace Talks. His skullduggery extended the war.

But Nixon and his henchmen came tumbling down, thanks to media and the actions of Democrats and Republicans in Congress. This didn't cause us to run for Congress but it did cause many of us to go into journalism. Up-and-coming Woodwards and Bernsteins were everywhere. 

I was an English major during my years at UF but I did take a journalism course and worked for UF Information Services and The Independent Florida Alligator student paper. We knew that the truth could bring down warmongers and slimy political operatives

But America is a big place and soon we learned that the whims of the populace are unpredictable. And here we are now. Old, disabled, and stunned. That describes me. 

But Americans are waking up and speaking out. We donated to Josh Weil, the Democrat running for the House in Florida District 6, a post held previously by a Trump flunky. We donated to the Democratic Party's campaign to stymie Trump's Project 2025 rampage. 

I will not shop on Amazon on Feb. 28 because of Bezos's collaboration with Trump (damn I've spent a lot of money on Amazon). Other businesses are being boycotted for the day. Money is what MAGA understands so hit 'em where it hurts.

The Irish keep defining dark comedy in books and movies

Blame my errant imagination.

As I read "Glorious Exploits," a new novel by Irish writer Ferdia Lennon, I kept hearing Roddy Doyle. Not that Lennon is copying Doyle's distinctive Irish patter, but the way the two main characters spoke and approached life conjured Doyle's Barrytown Trilogy, specifically "The Commitments." Jimmy Rabbitte's mission is to bring the soul music of Sam Cooke, Wilson Pickett, and Otis Redding to 1990 working-class Dublin. The mission is doomed from the start but boy is it a fun ride. 

In "Glorious Exploits," unemployed potters Lampo and Gelon want to stage a Euripides play in 412 BCE in  Seracuse, Sicily (Syracuse now. in both Sicily and N.Y.). They decide to enlist a cast of starving Athenian warriors whose invasion has been defeated and the captured, starving, warriors imprisoned in a dismal rock quarry. Why starving Athenian players? Because the duo's favorite poet is Euripides of Athens and these Athenians are the only ones in Seracuse and they just happen to know The Master's latest work that includes Medea and The Trojan Women. Their quest is doomed, of course. But boyo, it's a fun ride, no bollix.

Irish writers tingle my Irish genes. I have never been to my grandfather's country nor to his rural county of Roscommon. But I've read their best writers and they live in me. Doyle, Yeats, Maeve Binchy, Flann O'Brien, James Joyce all tell wonderful stories grounded in Irish wit and lore. The Irish story is riven with heartache. The latest Irish-set movie, "The Banshees of Inisherin," focuses on a long male friendship that breaks up for unfathomable reasons and leads to tragedy in 1923. There are laugh-out-loud moments, a dose of charm, memorable Celtic music, and then the ending when doom shows up. Meanwhile, the Irish Civil War, where neighbor kills neighbor, wages across the newly-formed country. These two friends' relationship is doomed. But the telling is marvelous. 

It's the voice, nurtured over the centuries. Lennon has found it. In an interview, he says that he wanted to make sure that the book did not have that Merchant Ivory voice of serious dramas of the Classical Age. He succeeded. Lampo and Gelon are  Sicilian-Irishmen on a lark, spending most of their time chatting over flasks of suspect wine at Dismas's place. Must hand it to Lennon. Many sickening things going on in Seracuse. Wine is the only answer. But the author describes in detail the wine they drink and you will thank Dionysus for the local Tiki Bar (we have several here in Ormond Beach). It's illuminating to hear lines of Euripides from the lips of emaciated Athenians, all wearing leg shackles, dressed in ill-fitting costumes and gowns. There is a performance and I won't tell you how it ends once the curtainless stage is cleared. And there is a surprise ending which is very sweet.

I have to admit that the book's cover grabbed me. It's a traditional bust of the historian and philosopher Herodotus with googly eyes. 

Lennon was the subject of a Q&A interview in the Aug. 31, 2024, Observer. I include an excerpt here because it speaks to Ireland’s rich literary tradition and info about how contemporary Irish writers are supported by their Arts Council. I worked with writers for 25 years at the Wyoming Arts Council and for two years assisted with creative writing fellowships at the National Endowment for the Arts in D.C. It’s instructional in a time when the NEA, the NEH, and the Institute of Museums and Library Services are under the gun by Trump, Musk, and their techie minions who wouldn’t know James Joyce unless you wacked them on the head with a hardcover edition of “Ulysses.”

The Guardian's book critic wrote a review of "Glorious Exploits." Header: "Uproarious am-dram in ancient Sicily." I had to look up am-dram and it's British slang for amateur drama, those plays put on by your local community theatre.

From the Guardian:

Q: How do you explain the current wave of successful Irish novelists? 

A: I remember that when I was a student, James Joyce’s house was five minutes up the road: just seeing that plaque, there’s something nice about having that literary history celebrated around you. On a practical level, the structures in Ireland make it easier for writers. An Arts Council grant helped me write this book. I wasn’t in any way established, but you could submit a work in progress to a panel of your peers and if you’re lucky, you might get money that will give you a couple of months that could be the break. I feel part of the burgeoning moment in Irish literature has to do with the financial crash. A whole generation was devastated, in Ireland maybe more than most. There were no jobs, so you felt freer to do what you wanted, even if it made no money; I started writing in Granada [in Spain] while unemployed.

The Nomad anthology wanders from the western wilds to my fog-wrapped Florida mailbox

The first anthology of The Nomad literary magazine landed in my mailbox yesterday. Unassuming cover with lots of goodies inside. Last summer Ken Waldman, one of the Nomad founders, asked me to send in two pieces of my work, one that I was proud of and had been published and another that I liked and hadn't been published. He tasked me with writing a short essay on my choices. So I sent editor Rachel White one story that had been published several times, "The Problem with Mrs. P," and one I just finished in June, "That Time We Got Married at a Tent Revival." The first story is set in Wyoming and the second in Florida and South Carolina.

I spent 46 years in Wyoming and Colorado, did a lot of my growing up in East Coast Florida and spent my first two years of a not-very-successful university stint in South Carolina. I've also written speculative fiction that takes place off-world and in an Earth future that I imagined. I have returned to Florida which has its own otherworldly aspects. 

I am in such good company with this anthology. My long-time friend Ken Waldman has two poems, one set in the Alaska he calls home and a villanelle set in New Orleans. New Mexico's Lisa D. Chavez includes a poem which turns the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale on its head and a nonce sonnet, the meaning I had to look up. Detroit's M.L. Liebler weighs in with "Flag" which dissects yet "another dark chapter in American history" (the one happening now) and "Decoration Day" about Vietnam.

Wyoming friends still talk about 2002-2003 poetry and music performances featuring M.L. and Country Joe McDonald. Buffalo, Wyoming's David Romtvedt explores "another past life" and a childhood dream in his selections. I was undone by the images in Amy Gerstler's poem "Siren" which opens the anthology. Paul Fericano made me laugh with "Still Life with Mormons in My Living Room." Amy and Paul are from L.A. Paul published some of my prose poems on his Yossarian Universal News Service site (yunews.com). New Zealand's Michael McClane got my attention with the long title and World War 2 theme in "On the Disembarkation of Sergeant Nathan E. Cook in Auckland, 13 June 1942."

That's just the beginning. Lots of great selections. You can get a copy of the book by subscribing to The Nomad. It's $25 for one year and $40 for two. You can also donate to this "non-for-profit labor of love by two writers." New submission guidelines are up for 2025. See the web site for the Bountiful, Utah, mailing address.

Remembering Paul Fussell’s great book on the Not-So-Great European War of 1914-1918

I subscribe to the New York Times Online. Because I now live in East Coast Florida, I could also have the print copy delivered. But I already get the Daytona Beach News-Journal delivered before dawn (usually) in a plastic bag at the end of my garage. I fetch it in my e-scooter, braving whatever elements might exist including niceness, wind, humidity, and – occasionally – rain. I pick up the paper with my handy grabber and roll back to the house. I read local news, the sports page, some national coverage. I read obits, especially on Sunday when there are pages of them.

But the NYT has the writers and global coverage that I need, now especially, as we try to survive assaults on reality by Trump, Musk, and their GOP bullies. Also, arts reviews, especially of new and some old books. A few months ago, I read about John Dufresne’s new novel, “My Darling Boy.”  It sounded so good and personally relevant that I bought the e-book on Kindle (and wrote my own review here). I read a Style-section article last June by Alyson Krueger about Miranda July and her “rethinking of marriage and family life.” It also took me to a review of her book. I bought and read it and indeed it is a more-than-spicy take on monogamy. I didn’t post a review on my blog but I did come across a finished piece in my blog files which I was too skittish to post.

This morning I read a Feb. 13 “Critic’s Notebook” piece by Dwight Garner about the 50^th anniversary of Paul Fussell’s “The Great War and Modern Memory.” I read the book 40-some years ago and discovered the dirty truth about The Great War of 1914-1918. Fussell explored the war I the trenches through the eyes of Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, two combatant-writers who wrote the truth about their war. Garner writes that it changed his view about how nonfiction should be written. It allowed me to find those voices that I barely knew. In high school, the only poem of the era I remember is “Rouge Bouquet” by Joyce Kilmer, poet best known for “Trees.” Kilmer died in combat and is remembered for his formal rhymes and is considered as one of the last poets of the Romantic era. He was swept away by the honesty and rage in works by Sassoon and Owen and other poets of the so-called Lost Generation.

Garner urges readers to return to Fussell’s book to find the real story of this war that is no longer a living memory but lives on in the work of so many powerful writers. My grandfather was a cavalry officer in France and my grandmother a nurse with Maryland 42^nd Field Hospital. The dismounted cavalry officer spent a limited time in the trenches and my grandmother repaired the wounds of tr5ench warfare. Neither recalled for us war’s horror. Neither did my World War 2 vet father, who saw action in France, Belgium, and Germany. They left that up to their children and grandchildren in wars-to-come. Those wars have given us great literature and have very little to do with stopping the slaughter.

For me, I have written two novels about the aftermath of the Great War in the U.S., mainly Colorado. I am publishing them myself. I know nothing of war except what I read and see in movies and what I conjure in my imagination. Draftees of Vietnam have done their best to tell it like it is. We read about the senseless slaughter of what Robert Stone called “a mistake 10,000 miles long.” Maybe we learn and maybe we don’t. But books such as Fussell’s can give us glimpses into humankind’s dirtiest business.

What does fog sound like in a place known for noise?

February in a place known for its noise. Race cars that roar to grandstands of screaming fans. The pounding noise of motorcycles on every city street. Crowds of collegians arrive in March, their music and noise rise from beachside hotels, their cars parade A1A. On this morning wrapped in fog, I rolled outside, watched and listened. Birds sang and I didn’t know what kind of birds but it didn’t matter. The tap-tap-tap of a woodpecker. What does a bird hear? Fog doesn’t caution the noise nor does it enhance it. It just is. A carpenter saws and pounds nails next door. I live between two north-south main roads and cars hiss on wet pavement. An SUV’s headlights glow as it drives down my street which connects the two main roads. A train blares on the Ormond mainland a mile away, a train that stops traffic daily on the main east-west road that’s a hurricane evacuation route. Neighbors pass, quietly walking their dogs. They say nothing but wave. One sound I can’t hear – the sounds of surf slapping the beach. That came through my bedroom window last night but the day’s fog stole it away. A plane flies and it’s hidden by the fog and I wonder what fog looks like through the windshield of a small plane. In ten years, will I hear any of this? Will it be lodged in my memory, that foggy February morning when I skipped the TV news and cellphone screens and just listened? Will it be a molecule among my ashes swirling in the Atlantic? Where will these moments live?

Discovering obscure maladies just one of many reasons to read John Dufresne’s “My Darling Boy”

Reading contemporary fiction has many rewards.

First, you get a whopping good story.

Second, when the writer knows their stuff, you feel it in your bones. This writer can write!

Third, you never know when you might run across a mysterious malady that might be one that you could have, really, personally. Alerted, you check it out.

Since Dufresne obviously delights in the odd, let’s talk about Dupuytren’s Contracture. In “My Darling Boy,” protagonist Olney Kartheizer mentions this malady of the hands as he contemplates a character in a story he might write for an imaginary family.

I thought, “I might have that.” As Johns Hopkins describes it on its web site:

Dupuytren contracture (also called Dupuytren disease) is an abnormal thickening of the skin in the palm of your hand at the base of your fingers. This thickened area may develop into a hard lump or thick band. Over time, it can cause one or more fingers to curl (contract) or pull sideways or in toward your palm. The ring and little fingers are most commonly affected.

Hopkins includes a video and photos. The contracture makes it hard to cut steak, hold hands with a loved one, and write a thank-you note. People over 50 from a Northern European background (it’s sometimes referred to as “Viking’s hand”) are the most susceptible. I viewed the video and thought, “I definitely have that.” So I’m calling my primary care physician to refer me to a hand doctor.

Dufresne is a writer who does his research so it’s hard to imagine he just pulled this out of thin air. There’s a reason to mention an infirmity that makes it hard to write or type with all fingers. It’s hard to write, period.

After many novels, story collections, and writers’ self-help books later, Dufresne has his craft well in hand.  

“My Darling Boy” is funny as hell and it will break the heart of any parent. It broke mine.

Olney’s mission is to rescue his son Cully from an opioid addiction. He might want to swim the Atlantic Ocean or fly to the moon instead. If you have experience with addicted children or any addicted loved ones, the first message you get at an Alanon meeting is “you have to let them fail.” That comes from AA too. At some point, there is nothing you can do that won’t take you down too. Tough love, I guess.

Olney won’t listen. He may be made of sterner stuff (offspring of Vikings?) but he isn’t. He loves Cully. Olney’s job at the Anastasia (Fla.) Daily Sun has been downsized from staff writer to book reviewer to copy editor to obit writer and then out the door. He is divorced and Kat, his wife, is remarried and in another town. He is the Elwood P. Dowd of Anastasia, stopping to talk with strangers and befriend them if possible. They become his cohorts in the search for Olney that takes him through the underbelly of Florida. And if you don’t think Florida has an underbelly, you ain’t looking out the window as you crisscross the state. Seedy motels, junkies on street corners, abandoned mini-malls with weed-choked lots. Oh, and street corner kiosks for time-shares. All there if you look. I always looked for underbelly when I traveled across Wyoming. I found plenty (no time-share kiosks in Rawlins though).

Dufresne has so much fun noticing. Maybe that’s why his work is included in the “Miami Noir” anthology (1 & 2) edited by Miami resident Les Standiford, a Ph.D. grad in creative writing from UU and once a seasonal park ranger in the Beehive State. Dufresne can be noir but he has so much fun with word play. The proprietor of a rundown motel uses malapropisms which wordsmith Olney shows mercy and only occasionally corrects.

The names of his small towns are wonderful. Melancholy is where his ex-wife lives and is the scene of much of the novel’s second half. At book’s end, Olney and his pal Dewey are off to find Cully. They come to a crossroads along one of those pine-straddled secondary roads. One way takes them to Gracious and the other to Whynot. come to a crossroads for Gracious and Whynot. Guess which one he takes?

Dufresne’s not Southern-born but he got here as quick as he could. He teaches creative writing at Miami’s Florida International University. He keeps company with Florida’s riotous writers. He shares the pages in “Naked Came the Manatee” with “Florida’s finest writers,” so says the New York Times Book Review. In it with Dufresne are Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard, Edna Buchanan, Dave Barry, and Carolina Hospital.

I read Dufresne stories before I tackled this novel. Dufresne’s name often comes up with other Southern Gothic fiction writers such as Lewis Nordan who grew up in Itta Bena, Miss. I once worked with Nordan and, after hearing him speak to a group of writers, realized I had to read all his books. He blends the tragic with the hilarious which doesn’t seem possible until you read “Wolf Whistle,” a novel of the notorious Emmett Till murder. Read it and see.

But first, Dufresne’s “My Darling Boy.”