Healing salves of meds and stories

From Elephant Journal:

In many shamanic societies, if you came to a shaman or medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions: 

When did you stop dancing?
When did you stop singing?
When did you stop being enchanted by stories?
When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence? 

Where we have stopped dancing, singing, being enchanted by stories, or finding comfort in silence is where we have experience the loss of soul. 

Dancing, singing, storytelling, and silence are the four universal healing salves.

I have always depended on the kindness of Prozac, Remeron and its related SSRIs. I also believe in the healing salves of art and stories and solitude. Exercise, too, especially swimming. Walking too -- I write as I walk.

Hanna hit with satirical blast

It could have been Any Town, U.S.A., but it was Hanna, Wyo.

A satirical post on National Report carried news that the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") was requiring government-assisted citizens in Hanna to be implanted with an ID chip.

Tea Partiers went wild. "We warned you!" Satire-lovers had a good laugh. And nobody will get sued -- probably.

Sandra Davidson, a communications law professor at the University of Missouri School Of Journalism, said it’s doubtful any legal action will come of the story, even if some take it seriously.

“If it can’t be taken as literally true, it can’t be defamatory,” she said. “In this country, we have a broad First Amendment right to satire,” Davidson said.

Read more about it at the Billings Gazette. 

Why We Write

Why I write, and why I continue to blog. Flannery O'Connor wrote scores of letters during her short life. She might have been a blogger, especially as she stayed close to home during the illness that killed her at 39 in 1964. Thanks to The Bloomsbury Review for posting this on Facebook.

High Plains politics getting more interesting all the time

If you're bored with regional politics, you're not paying attention.

In Wyoming, State Superintendent Cindy Hill has been stripped of her powers by fellow Republicans in the Legislature. She's now suing the state and plans to run against our sitting Gov, Matt Mead. Many Tea Party types have come to Hill's aide, pledging their support in 2014 in the form of votes and crazy letters to the editor. This week I saw Cindy Hill riding in an old-timey carriage in the Cheyenne Frontier Days parade. She smiled and waved from the carriage. Hardly anyone smiled and waved back.

Liz Cheney, daughter of Dick, has announced a run for Mike Enzi's seat in the U.S. Senate. Sen. Enzi is a soft-spoken, well-read man who votes with his party 99 percent of the time. If you've seen Liz Cheney on Fox, you know that she swallowed the same bitter pill as her old man. In fact, she is a bitter pill. Maybe that could be her slogan: "Liz Cheney: A Bitter Pill Who Hates Obama More Than Mike Enzi Does." In an op-ed in this morning's Wyoming Tribune-Eagle (and on Wyofile July 23), Kerry Drake interviewed former legislator and fellow blogger Rodger McDaniel about Ms. Cheney's run for the Senate. Rodger ventured that she could spend up to $4 million in the primary race. Enzi, in the other hand, has never spent more than $3.50 to defeat any challengers. I jest. He did spend in the low six figures last time out, but he better get on the 2014 money-raising stick PDQ, as Liz is rich and is spoiling for bear.

North Colorado -- like North Carolina or North Dakota. Some say that has a nice ring to it. A handful of denizens of north and east Colorado want to form a 51st state, North Colorado. They are fed up with all the liberals from Denver making all the rules. Bans against high-capacity magazines and automatic weapons. Anti-fracking laws. Pro civil unions for all. Pot legalization. The state is going to heck in a handbasket and secession is in the air. While reefer heads in Boulder experience flashbacks to 1969, good ol' boys in Sedgwick County are riding on the way-back machine to 1861. According to the AP, more than four dozen people showed up to a secession meeting in Fort Lupton this week. More than four dozen? That doesn't seem like many, unless you know that the population of some of those plains counties is five dozen.

I have a modest proposal for the secessionists. Join Wyoming. We're a no-nonsense state on issues such as guns, same-sex marriage and pot. A big yes on the first and a resounding no on the last two. Fracking? Hell, you can frack in your own backyard and the feds and the staties will leave you alone. We don't have any state income tax either, which means you can keep all that fracking loot to buy guns and high-capacity magazines. We have plenty of wide open spaces for shooting practice. People just think those are firecrackers from our thriving fireworks industry. Another thing -- our Legislature hates Obamacare. In fact, if you join Wyoming you can buy any darn health care plan you can afford, as thus far the state has refused to go for Medicaid expansion or any of that socialized medicine nonsense.

One suggestion, though. I know that the Weld County commissioners were the ones who put you up to the idea of North Colorado. But if I were you, I'd ditch Weld County. It's home to the city of Greeley which is filled with Democrats. It has a university, too, and you know that they're the breeding ground of radical liberal educators who keep brainwashing our rural kids in the ways of Howard Zinn and beatnik poets. I was in Greeley last week and saw a merry band of hipsters walking down the sidewalk toward the local brewpub. You know what they say -- cities breed hipsters and Democrats, not the other way around. See if it's possible to excise Greeley from its county, That way, when you join Wyoming, you're not bringing thousands of registered Democrats with you.

You may have to give up the name "North Colorado." Still, Wyoming has a nice ring to it, don't you think? One of your counties is already named Cheyenne. You may not know this, but "Wyoming" means "freedom." Not literally, but you know (a wink and a nod) what I mean when I say "freedom" surrounded by quotes. Freedom!

And South Dakota still has only two senators?

I've been on the Wyoming escalator beat for almost a week now, so I wonder how I missed this story in the Saturday Sioux Falls Argus-Leader:

Unlike remote Wyoming, it’s [South Dakota] got at least six sets of escalators — or five, if one doesn’t count the stairless moving ramp that takes pedestrians between floors at the Sioux Falls Regional Airport.

S.D. has scads of people-moving elevators, too. And 309 grain elevators.

Read the rest here.

Makes sense that Wyoming has two escalators and two U.S. senators

Nate Cohn at The New Republic doesn't think that Wyoming deserves two U.S. Senators.

And not just because Liz Cheney is running for one of them.

It's our low population numbers. It's been pointed out before, but Wyoming (pop. 576,000) has fewer people than many urban counties. Cohn trots out the numbers:

—There are at least 100 counties with more people than Wyoming. [I've lived in three of them: City and County of Denver and Arapahoe in Colorado and Montgomery County in Maryland.] 

—Rhode Island’s largest county has more people than Wyoming. 

—Fairfax County (VA) has twice as many people as Wyoming. There are more Romney voters in Fairfax County than voters in Wyoming, the second reddest state. 

—There are almost as many Romney voters in wildly Democratic Brooklyn as there are in Wyoming.   

—The student body of the University of Wyoming (13,992) would be the state’s seventh largest town.

And so on.

That's the real problem with Liz Cheney's decision -- now everybody in creation knows that there is such a place as Wyoming and that we have two U.S. senators, just like those big states. Mike Enzi is one of them (for now). Dr. John Barrasso is the other. Our little joke about Barrasso is that the most dangerous place in the world in that patch of real estate between Barrasso and a news camera. I saw him yesterday evening on our local Channel 5. He's in town to ride a horse in today's opening Cheyenne Frontier Days parade. WYO politicos have to know how to ride a horse. In D.C., they wear dark suits  and ride in limos as do others of their ilk. In WYO, they wear Wranglers and boots and a cowboy hat. Writes Nate Cohn:

Wyoming is a place with two escalators; it probably shouldn’t get two senators.

Again with the escalators. It's quaint, isn't it, to live in a state that has fewer escalators than your average station on the D.C. Metro? Have you ever taken a ride on the Dupont Circle escalators? Wyomingites have been known to quaver in fear when confronted with a ride from the sun-drenched city streets into the murky depths of the subway. Even our coal mines don't have murky depths. We don't have traffic either. Cohn notes that he's visited Wyoming and drove through our biggest city in two minutes. He must have been speeding; it takes me at least 5.27 minutes to drive I-80 through Cheyenne, starting at the Wal-Mart Distribution Center and exiting at Campstool Road, site of the Lowe's Distribution Center. We love our distribution centers.   

Just goes to show that people in other places are fascinated and repelled by Wyoming. We should use our entrepreneurial skills to showcase some of the odd things about the state, things that would interest our urban cousins. The "Wacky Wyoming Tour" would showcase our two escalators in Casper along with the place near Jackson in which gravity causes objects to roll uphill. We could show tourists the Casper elementary school classroom where Liz Cheney had her first Neo-Con revelation.

Other suggestions for stops on the Wacky Wyoming Tour?

Liz Cheney candidacy exposes Wyoming's aircraft carrier and escalator gaps

Liz Cheney, offspring of Dick and Lynne, declared her candidacy yesterday for U.S. Senate. She will be challenging Sen. Mike Enzi, who once had the temerity to work with a Democrat, the late Ted Kennedy.

Mother Jones carried a story today, "Ten Important Facts about Liz Cheney." Number 1: She just moved to Wyoming last year. Number 2: She's the daughter of Darth Vader Dick Cheney. And so on.

At the end of the piece, MoJo had this to say about Wyoming:

Wyoming, a state with two working escalators, has two senators in Washington due to the infallibility of the Founding Fathers. The official state dinosaur is the triceratops. In February of 2012, legislators in Cheyenne briefly considered building an aircraft carrier to prepare for a societal collapse.

Wyoming may have only one escalator. But since when does the escalator count determine a state's status? Wyoming long ago got rid of its escalators in favor of stairs in order to give its citizens better cardio workouts so that they would be in tip-top shape to bushwack through the wilderness to shoot wolves. And how many wolves does MoJo have? That's right -- none. That's exactly the number of official dinosaurs it has -- zero. Wyoming not only has an official state dinosaur, but it also has a state insect, a state fossil, a state grass, and a state code, The Code of the West, the best rootin' tootin' code you can have. The first precept of the code is "Dance with the one that brung ya." The second precept is "Don't take any wooden nickels." The thirds precept is "Never play cards with a guy named Doc." The fourth is "Take off that stupid cowboy hat when you're in my house, you moron. Didn't your mama teach you any manners?" And so on. This code is recited before every session of the legislature, which makes about as much sense as the legislature itself. How many official codes do you have, MoJo?

And how many aircraft carriers do you have? None? I thought so. We don't have one either. We would have, if it wasn't for those lily-livered Liberals that control the Wyoming State Legislature. Some of our knowledgable conservatives thought it would be prudent to prepare for the day when the United States went to hell in a handcart and we would have to fend for ourselves. The best solution they could think of was an aircraft carrier. I know, it may seem strange to have an aircraft carrier in a dry, landlocked state. But that's just what we wanted to enemy to think. Remember this precept of Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" -- "Anyone who excels in defeating his enemies triumphs before his enemy's threats become real." Our legislators were only planning for the day that Idaho or Montana gets an aircraft carrier or possibly an entire fleet. Colorado will never be a threat because its Liberal leaders are unilaterally disarming and soon all the available conscripts will be soundly stoned. But if we ever get that neighboring 51st state, the one that will be made up of a dozen rural Colorado counties and led by Tea Party types, that will be a state to look out for. That will be a state that may beat us to the punch, aircraft carrier-wise. That may be a state that will out-loony us.

One more word about escalators. The Atlantic Online carried a piece today about our state's escalator gap. It turns out there are two escalators in WYO, both in Casper. That number could be four if you count the up and down escalators as separate conveyances.

Nothing like a Fox Network wingnut/East Coast carpetbagger declaring a run for the Senate in the loneliest state in the union to focus the media's evil eye of Sauron on Wyoming.

Yarn bombing yields explosion of flowers in downtown Cheyenne

Yarn bombing is a wonderful trend. Also called yarn storming or graffiti knitting, its practitioners create colorful displays of knitted or crocheted yarn or fiber to dress up impersonal public spaces. I there ever was an impersonal public space, the fence at The Hole in downtown Cheyenne has to be one. Thank you, graffiti knitters, for adding a dash of color to an eyesore -- and drawing attention to it in the process. Find out more about the art of yarn bombing here.

Coco's now playing in that big pond in the sky

Coco and Annie

Our dog Coco passed today. We had her put to sleep, as the old saying goes. Put out of her misery.

We humans get to make that decision about our pets. Our family has had to make it too many times. A choice between peace and what we perceive as more suffering. Coco was too good a dog to allow her to keep hemorrhaging or suffer seizures as the cancer ate through her brain and into the skull.

She was only 7. Our previous dog, Precious, lived to 14 and, our cat, Diamond, 12. That seems about right for a dog and pretty darn good for a tom cat who spent most of his time outside. We just lost a black-and-white tom, Bubba. One night he didn't come home. He left behind his brother Teddy, who now seems a bit rudderless. 

Today was Coco's fourth trip to the vet for her persistent malady. First it seemed like a dental problem and then an immune system disorder and finally, today, we discovered the grim truth. As the vet explained the shadowy mass in her brain and the missing bone mass, we knew what decision to make. We postponed the end, taking Coco for a walk along the greenway adjacent to Avenues Pet Clinic.

While my wife Chris stayed in the office to put Coco's paperwork in order, our daughter Annie and I walked the dog to a local pond. Coco went right in, scattering the ducks, and then ignoring them. She lifted her paw, smacked it down on the water and tried to gulp the geyser that erupted into the dry Wyoming afternoon. She wasn't really a water dog. She never went farther than leg-deep. We once took her swimming in the Flaming Gorge Reservoir. The clear water was cool on that cloudless August day. We all got as wet as we could, but Coco halted before her torso touched the surface."This is as far as I go, silly humans."

Coco liked one other form of water. I put the nozzle on the garden hose and turned it on full blast. I let the water jet onto the lawn, and Coco leapt and bit it. She attacked that water, occasionally hacking as a wave of Rocky Mountain runoff clogged her throat. She did this as long as I held the hose. It could have been hours -- she always outlasted me.

Coco despised baths, and she suffered through brushing her thick brindle coat. She liked humans well enough, and she grew up with cats. But she wasn't overly fond of other dogs. She carried on a long-running feud with Tommy the Golden Retriever next door. They shared a fence. Coco would perk up when she heard Tommy moving about. She raced to the stockade fence where she and Tommy faced off separated by an inch of weathered wood. Most contests were declared a draw. As far as I know, she and Tommy never actually had a physical clash. Nobody seems to know what got them started.

Coco was a stray that was caught up in one of the Laramie County Humane Society dragnets. When Annie and I met her, she shared an enclosure with a bigger dog. When Annie approached, Coco moved to the gate, growled at her kennel mate and then jumped up, inviting Annie to pet her. She did. The sign on the kennel said half pit bull, half Labrador. She didn't look like either.

I urged Annie to move along, as had had lots of pups to consider. She wanted a little pup, while Coco's age was listed as six months. We visited all the dogs. While I was busy petting a little German Shepherd mix, Annie disappeared. I found her back at Coco's cage. She wanted to take the pup for a walk at the adjacent dog park. I could tell that she and Coco were a good match. Annie was 13 and she and Coco ran around for an hour. "I want this one," Annie said finally.
 _
Now she's 20 and Coco's no longer with us. After we all arrived home from the vet's, Annie composed a slide show of Coco photos. Coco gamboling through the snow. Coco in a pond. Coco on Annie's lap. Brief moments in our lives.

Annie will finish up at the community college soon and will be off to some university and then will be busy with other things. Coco's memory will fade. She will own other dogs and cats. Her kids may insist, as she did with us, as did her brother before her.

As for me, I may be done with dogs. I have said farewell to too many of them. But one day, I will miss the miss the cold nose pushed into my face too early in the morning. I may miss the feel of a dog's sloping head in my aging palm. I may even miss a bark erupting for no discernible reason. There's nothing for this but to get another dog, as painful as it seems right now.

Farewell, Coco. Enjoy that big pond in the sky. And don't go in too deep.

Cheyenne Sunday gardening review

Silvery Fir Tree tomatoes on the vine. I've had particularly good luck with this variety.  The Ailsa Craigs are looking good too.

A bunch of greens

My tomato patch with petunias

Packman broccoli with petunias and columbines

One plays it cautiously this time of year. Gardening on the high plains comes with myriad dangers. Hail can fall when cumulonimbus clouds blow in from the Laramie Range. Weather reports yesterday carried warnings of hail and we have the same today. Two years ago my tomatoes were decimated by one of these monsoon season storms. I've harvested lots of greens and some Major variety broccoli already. The waiting game continues. Meanwhile, I enjoy the greening of my backyard.

WYO Shakespeare Festival Company explores "the quality of mercy" Saturday in Cheyenne

Shylock, Portia, Antonio and the crew from the Wyoming Shakespeare Festival Company come to Cheyenne Saturday for a production of "The Merchant of Venice." Curtain rises outdoors at 5 p.m. in the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. It's free -- bring friends, a picnic, folding chair and an umbrella.

The WSFC works out of Lander and tours the state each summer with a different offering of The Bard. Friday evening, the troupe faced severe thunderstorm warnings in Torrington. But nature's elements don't faze the WSFC. Last July, the players were soaked to the bone as they weathered Cheyenne's only serious thunderstorm in the summer of '12. "King Lear" never looked so good or so wet.

The players are led by Diane Springford, who received a Governor's Arts Award for her efforts. The players are volunteers who devote many hours to rehearsals and travel. Have you ever been involved in local theatre? I have, and am continually amazed by the devotion of actors, directors, costumers, back stage crew, set builders, ticket takers, etc. It takes a village to put on a show. The reward? Putting on a great show. It feeds the ego and challenges you in ways you never anticipated. As in any artistic pursuit, there are good performances and bad ones. You get this sinking feeling when you blow a line or miss a cue. A good performance brings applause and euphoria. 

Shylock is a controversial figure among Shakespeare's characters. This intro was on the title page of the first quarto:  

The most excellent History of the Merchant of Venice. With the extreme cruelty of Shylock the Jew towards the Merchant....

Shylock, the Jewish money lender, is seen through the eyes of a playwright in 1596 Christian England. In the play, set in Venice, Shylock can only be redeemed by converting to Christianity. At the time, the Inquisition was still in effect in Italy and most of Catholic Europe.  

I see the play through the eyes of a 2013 American, one who knows about pogroms and the Holocaust. Today's audiences have to push beyond ourselves to experience the lives of these historic characters and to marvel at Shakespeare's language. As Portia says:

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes...

Mercy.

See you in the gardens this evening. 

The Equality State votes no on equality -- again

Kerry Drake wrote a fine piece this week about Living Blue in Wyoming, a Facebook page that had a blast poking fun at Wyoming Know Nothings. I liked this page awhile back, but you can go and do that now. We need as many blue voices as we can get. Humor, too. Nice example today on LBIW of a meme lambasting Sen. Enzi (see below) for his no vote on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill that would ban workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Three Republicans, including Utah's Orrin Hatch, voted with Dems on this equality bill. The Beehive State voted yes but The Equality State voted no? Embarrassing move for this usually moderate Republican.

The Cardiac Chronicles: No moon walks after "Happy Juice"

They shot me up with some of that Michael Jackson happy juice. You know, propofol, the anaesthetic that Michael allegedly took for 60 nights straight for insomnia until it, combined with some other stuff prescribed by his doc, killed him. The drug's nickname is "Milk of Amnesia" for its milky color and its major side effect.

Earlier, I was on some other happy juice for my ICD surgery. But I was awake. It's odd to be lucid while a coterie of docs and nurses and technicians hover over you. It's a bit like a bad dream, although the happy juice makes it not so bad.

As announced earlier on these pages, I had surgery on Monday, part of my continuing recovery from a Christmas 2012 heart attack. The docs implanted an ICD, an implantable cardioverter defibrillator. This is part defibrillator, part pacemaker. It will correct arrhythmias and shock me back to reality should I be threatened with sudden cardiac death. Patients such as me who have heart muscle damage that leads to a reduced ejection fraction have a 5-8 percent chance of experiencing sudden cardiac death. I don't like those odds. They are much higher than the chance of getting hit by lightning during a lifetime (1/6250) or the odds of injury from mowing the lawn (3,623 to 1). It's even worse that getting killed in a car wreck (77-1).

Sudden Cardiac Death (SCD) Sucks. I'm having T-shirts made.

So I agreed to have the procedure.

One complaint, though. Last time I had a CRMC Cath Lab procedure, Led Zep was on the stereo. This time, I had to settle for Journey. Not sure if this was a tribute to Journey's upcoming concert (with Styx) on July 19 as part of Cheyenne Frontier Days. I took it as a bad sign.

But all was copacetic. Betsy was my nurse-guide. She stuck to me like the glue the docs used to seal my incision. She explained the proceedings to me. First came the preparations and then my chest was swabbed with orange goop and then, when that was dry, they draped me with sterile drapes. Finally, a tent was constructed over me. I was a bit claustrophobic until Betsy rolled back the tent walls and I could see her smiling face again. I couldn't actually see her face as she wore a mask. The nurses plopped something heavy dangerously close to my crotch.

"Ooomph," I said.

"Don't move," they said. "You'll contaminate the sterile field."

A disembodied voice informed me that I was getting some happy juice through my IV. After that, I only remember a few things, as happy juice is an amnesiac. Someone was kneading my chest like a baker kneading dough. It started to hurt but I'm not sure if I asked why they were baking bread and not not installing my gadget. When that was over, a big head appeared over me. Someone said "anesthesiologist" and "happy juice." Next thing I knew, I was rolling back to my room. I found out later that that last hit of juice was the propofol, which only put me out for five minutes or so while they tested my new gadget. Nurse-guide Betsy reported to my wife Chris that I was not happy with being test-shocked. My legs went flying up, she said, and I had a stern look on my face.

Wouldn't you?

After surgery, I slept for awhile and woke up feeling giddy. Happy juice can produce euphoria, which may have been Michael Jackson's desired side-effect. I had lot of visitors who said I looked good. I felt good.

The next day, the walls came crashing down. I slept 12 hours and didn't feel so chipper when I awoke Wednesday morning. Hangover Part I.

Oh, about that bread-kneading thing. Nurse Rita explained later that the surgeon had to insert his/her fingers through the incision and "knead" a pocket for the ICD.

So I wasn't imagining things.

I found a couple of videos of the procedure in YouTube. First one comes from Halifax Health in Daytona Beach, Florida. I was an orderly at this hospital as I worked my way through community college in the 1970s. My mom also died there in 1986, but that's another story. Go here.

A more recent operation comes from December 2011 out of Holland (that's a guess, as I didn't recognize the language). English speakers may have a hard time with the audio, but the video is very detailed. Go here.

Saturday side-trip to Ethiopia

I don't often recommend restaurants. That may be because I don't often go to restaurants. I eat at home most of the time. I cook, which helps keep down expenses. Lately I've been making killer salads from my garden's greens and herbs. Soon we will have broccoli and beans and peas and tomatoes and peppers and all the rest. One must be patient to garden in this high-altitude climate.

Four of us travelled I-25 Street to Nyala Ethiopian Cuisine Saturday evening. I-25 is the longest connector street in the Cheyenne-Fort Collins Metroplex. It carries a flurry of sojourners seeking jobs, education, good food and craft beer. When foodies in Cheyenne eat out, they go to the Morris House Bistro in downtown Cheyenne or any number of places in Fort Collins. We have other places to eat in Cheyenne, but most are chains with predictable fare.

Nyala is located in a nondescript shopette just off South College Avenue, one of the busiest streets in Colorado. It shares a building with an Indian restaurant. If we could teleport this building to Cheyenne, our fair city would double its number of international restaurants with homemade offerings (that doesn't include the ubiquitous Tex-Mex and Americanized Chinese restaurants).

Until teleportation arrives, we have to transport ourselves via Ford to Fort Collins.

The nyala is an Ethiopian ibex. A photo of one hangs in the restaurant entryway. The walls are festooned with fabric hangings representing aspects of Ethiopian culture, such as the coffee ceremony and half-size versions of musical instruments such as the krar, which is cousin to the sitar and guitar. 

We chose traditional seating over the regular American-style tables. We sat in cushioned, bench-like seats, the four of us arrayed around a low-slung circular table. Our food came on a large platter. We used Injera bread for utensils. "No forks" John told us. Annie thought he was kidding, until the food arrived but no forks. We scooped up the lentils and gomen and lamb wot and beef tibs with swipes of our Injera.

Food brings people together. It also provides a glimpse into other cultures. We spoke at length with proprietor and chef Etage Asrat. She moved to Fort Collins in 1991. After taking time out to raise her three daughters and finish her education, she opened her restaurant in 2004. Her daughters now are global citizens like their mom. These days, she's an American (and a Coloradan) with roots and family in Addis Ababa. She will visit her home country this winter. Her family back home helps prepare ingredients for Nyala's cuisine. They are mostly traditional and classic Ethiopian dishes Asrat grew up with.

John is an old Ethiopian hand. He served two tours with the Peace Corps in Ethiopia, first in Jima and then in Addis Ababa. "Tours" is usually a military term, but people seem to forget that JFK created the Peace Corps as a civilian counterpart to the Green Berets, which he also authorized. Congressman Richard Nixon, JFK's opponent in the 1960 presidential elections, criticized the program as a "cult of escapism" and "a haven for draft dodgers."

Chris's father, Jack Schweiger, was a U.S. Army supply officer who was tasked with getting goods into the country and to the troops. He often worked with civilian authorities and their supply needs. After all, His Imperial Majesty Halie Selassie, had an understanding with the U.S. He was happy to supply the U.S. with an outpost on the Horn of Africa to blunt the Soviet influence in nearby states. Jack did two tours in Ethiopia (1967-70). He then sent the family back to the states as he was sent to another U.S, client-state, Vietnam. Both Ethiopia and Vietnam would be out of the U.S. orbit by 1975. And Haile Salassie would be dead.

So it goes.

Nyala is part restaurant and part museum. It's worth a visit. It's much closer than Addis Ababa.

Back by popular demand: "Cotton Patch Gospel"

A troupe of local musicians and actors resurrected the "Cotton Patch Gospel" last fall for a series of SRO performances at the Vineyard Church downtown. The book was written by Tom Key and Russell Treyz, with music and lyrics by Harry Chapin. Read my post about the play's origins here. 

The "Gospel" returns July 12-13 and 19-20, 7 p.m., at Cheyenne First Baptist Church, 1800 E. Pershing Blvd. Admission is $10 for adults and $5 for children. You can buy tix at the door. All proceeds benefit Convoy of Hope Christian Outreach.

The cast features "The Cotton Swabs" made up of Kevin Guille, Brad Eddy, Randy Oestman, Jerry Gallegos, Kevin Uhrich and Bob Fontaine.

FMI: 307-638-8700

Leader of Fremont County Dems and Rep. Tim Stubson to spar over Vacation Theft Act

This bit of news comes from the Fremont County Democrats:

Monday at 8 AMish, Fremont County Democratic Party Chair, Bruce Palmer, will be on radio KVOW AM 1450 talking with John Vincent about the Enrolled Act 37, the Vacation Theft Act. Also scheduled to appear is the bill's sponsor, Representative Tim Stubson.

It should be interesting hearing Rep. Stubson explain why taking a workers earned, accrued vacation is actually positive for the worker.

Don't think we can get KVOW in Southeast Wyo. Try this Internet link.

For some background from a Dem POV, read Pete Gosar's "An Unprovoked Attack on Wyoming Workers" in today's Star-Trib. 

Cardiac Chronicles, continued

I get my implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) on Monday. It's an ingenious little gadget, weighing only 70 grams and 12.9 mm thick. Your average chicken egg weighs 70 grams. The belt holding up my pants is about 12.9 mm thick.

The docs will cut a slit just beneath my left collarbone, slip some leads through the vein to my heart, connect the leads to the gadget, jump-start the ICD (they told me to bring my jumper cables), sew me up and send me away, a new man. Partially new, anyway.

The ICD will correct dangerous arrhythmias and prevent sudden cardiac death. I'm at risk for these because my heart muscles sustained some damage when I had my Christmas holiday heart attack. Sudden cardiac death is what people mean when they say "He dropped dead from a heart attack. Boom -- just like that!"  

Boom -- just like that.

Not me, thanks. Not now.

Got a lot of living left to do.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the West

As of July 1, hitchhiking is legal in Wyoming.

And just in time for the summer travel season.

This new law came out of a need for skiers and kayakers and backpackers to hitch rides back to the place they've left their vehicles. This is especially true in Teton County where people are recreating all over the place. Skiers often park their Subarus at the top of Teton Pass and, when they reach the bottom, hitch a ride back to the pass.They then drive down to Jackson and spend good money shoring up the Wyoming economy.

Rep. Keith Gingery of Teton County was behind the bill. He told the Casper Star-Tribune:

“That was a fun bill because so many people do it and now it’s legal,” he said. “A kayaker is just trying to get back to their kayak.”

Not sure exactly what Rep. Gingery means by this. If a kayaker is trying to get back to his kayak, that means he got to the end of the run without it. Now he's in trouble, and no amount of ticket-free hitchhiking is going to find his kayak for him.

My hitchhiking days were in the 1970s. I did a fair amount of hitchhiking as a backpacker, although a usually planned a long loop into the wilderness and then back along the trail to my car.  It was easier that way.

Most of my hitching was to get from Point A to Point B. I hitchhiked to work. I hitched rides to college classes. I hitched to the beach and to the mountains. I hitched rides from Daytona Beach, Fla., to Storrs, Conn. I hitched from Houston to Denver. I hitched from San Francisco to Boston. I hitched all over the West in the glory days of the hitchhiker, the late '60s into the 1970s.

It was a young person's pursuit. It was a necessity, as often I didn't have my own car. It was also an adventure.

This takes us back to Colorado. In the summer of 1972, everyone seemed bound for the Centennial State. The mountains beckoned. The Rainbow Gathering was on in Granby. It was the home of Coors which, for some mysterious reason, had attained mythic status on the coasts. It wasn't unusual for a friend to make a pot run from Florida to Boulder just to snag a couple cases of Coors. Even more puzzling is the fact that there was always some pretty amazing marijuana on hand in Florida. And cold beer.

I was on the road that summer along with about a million of my closest friends. This was before I started keeping a journal so I have only my imperfect memory to remember it. I don't have any slides but, if I did, I could bore the heck out of you with a series of scenes.

Instead, I'll do it with words...

--To be continued--

1972 Colorado: A flashback without the nostalgia

A few days ago, I mourned the loss of poet and poetry promoter Kurt Brown. His latest book was a look back at Aspen in its heyday, “Lost Sheep: Aspen’s Counterculture in the 1970s” (Conundrum Press, 2012).

All of us who lived here -- or travelled through -- in the late 1960s or early 1970s have vivid memories of Aspen and other Rocky Mountain hotspots such as Jackson, Boulder, Missoula and fabled Taos. Denver acted as a kind of way-station for coastal travellers, much as it did for miners after placer gold was discovered at the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte. Much as it did for Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg and other Beats as they made their mad motorized dashes between New York and San Francisco and back again.

In the 1970s, it seemed as it everyone knew someone with a rundown apartment or house in Denver's Capitol Hill. Those were heady pre-gentrification days, when you could live ten to a house and still have room left for hitchhikers from Florida. And a steady supply of pot, although other illicit drugs, some with nasty side-effects, were seeping into the mix. By legalizing pot, Colorado now is closing the circle on its Wild West Reefer Roots. Not a bad name for a roots band, eh?

The year 1972 was a heady one for Colorado. An iconoclastic Dem legislator, Dick Lamm, was pushing a bill to defund the 1976 Winter Olympics. It passed, causing apoplectic fits among the gasbags at the International Olympic Committee. Avant garde artist Christo was building the "Valley Curtain" in a canyon near Rifle, which caused fits among conservative gasbags on the Western Slope. Hunter S. Thompson was running for sheriff of Pitkin County on a platform to legalize marijuana.

Excitement was building for the first Rainbow Gathering in Granby. Here's how it's described on the Woodstock Museum's web site:

The Woodstock Festival of '69 inspired the 1st Rainbow Gathering, attracting tens of thousands to celebrate their connection to the earth and to each other. This historic, hippie gathering of 1972 was prophecied by Hopi, Sioux, Muskokee-Cree and other American Indian tribes. And they were there! Rainbow Gatherings continue today, all over the world. Always free!

The prophecy says that the great-great grandchildren of the white conqueror would grow their hair long and rebel against society, travel east and west, gather in the mountains under the symbol of the White Buffalo. They would dance, sing and chant in many tongues. Their symbol would be the dove. They would be Brothers and sisters to the Hopi, people of peace. They would come and go, yet be a sign to the Indian that the spirit is returning.

I'm always a bit dubious when hippies and New Agers declare an affinity with Native American spirituality. The Indians I know feel the same way. Just another aspect of their culture being ripped off.

But the Rainbow Family Gathering was a big deal. You have to remember that Colorado was not some sort of hippie paradise. The Front Range was made up of working cities and towns. Denver's growth had been fueled by an influx of World War II veterans who lived in suburbia and made a living in aerospace, real estate and assorted industries. Some of those veterans' children were growing up and hanging out in Capitol Hill and Boulder. The parents were pissed. At the same time, some of those Boomer kids were content to attend CU or DU or CSU, join a frat or sorority, and start looking for their own place in the society of suburbia. As is the case with most generations, we are not all cut from the same swatch of tie-dyed cloth.

Thousands worked at Colorado Ironworks in Pueblo. The same could be said for the big Samsonite and Gates Rubber Company plants in Denver. Colorado Springs was solidly a military town, seeds being planted for the born-again conservative insurgency yet to arrive from the coasts. Fort Collins was an Aggie town, living up to the whitewashed "A" emblazoned on the mountain above town. Greeley was a beef-packing town, with its sprawling Monfort plant and acres of corrals holding cattle destined for slaughter.

Boulder was a long way from becoming The People's Republic of Boulder. Businesses on The Hill posted signs prohibiting junkies from their premises. While all longhairs may have looked like junkies to some business owners, the town was experiencing an upsurge in heroin abuse and abuse of dumb-ass drugs like Quaaludes and speed. Acid trippers added another element. Most people dropped acid at concerts or at home or up in Gold Hill while communing with nature. But a number of burnt-out cases roamed Boulder and Aspen, as recounted in Kurt's book. They were byproducts of a counterculture that took prisoners in the form of druggies who never made it to the other side. I knew a few myself.

I wasn't one. I hitchhiked through the West that summer with my Boston girlfriend, Sharon. She wanted to be a nurse. I wanted to be a writer. Now free of any military commitment, I was out to see the world, or at least the USA. It was as crazy and free and fun and dangerous as The Beats said.

--To be continued--

Sending a thanks to Scott Myers, who writes the Go Into the Story blog for The Black List web site. His column about Kurt Brown included a link to my remembrance of Kurt. If you're a budding screenwriter, or even one that's in flower and has a backlog of scripts, TBL is the resource for you.

Have fun at the Celtic Festival, but don't barf on my boots

My people are in town for a party.

My people are the Celts, descendants of a loose band of European tribes who eventually settled Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Some of them made their way to the Western Wildlands of America where they built the railroads, mined coal, opened bars and played the bagpipes at funerals.

The party is the Cheyenne Celtic Musical Arts Festival, held this last weekend in June at the Historic Depot downtown. It features concerts, vendors, a gathering of clans, a parade, Irish step-dancers and a fiddle contest. Beer and food, too. There are Scottish-Americans in kilts walking around with flasks disguised as cell phones and pens. A clever lot, those Scots. We Irish-Americans just walk around openly with a pint of Guinness or a black-and-tan, preferably one in each hand.

"The drink" has not been kind to the Irish. I drink, but the drink has never laid claim to my soul as it has to so many of my brethren and sistren. Without it we wouldn't be the Irish, I suppose, but with it.... It may lead to good stories and music, but it's laid waste to a lot of us.

Enough with the teetotaling talk. It's a downer at festival time.

One of the key elements of any Celtic fest is the Scottish-Irish-Welsh heritage. There are whole counties in Appalachia populated by Scots-Irish. They gave us bluegrass, folk and country music traditions, and a feisty attitude. Unions, too, as the Scots-Irish miners rose up against their Scots-Irish millionaire overlords. We've always been good at pummelling our own kind.

Last night, after the torch-lit march of the clans (my wife Chris was in there with the Cumming clan), there was much talk about the 2014 vote on Scottish independence. Some are for it, some against it. "The Staggers" blog at The New Statesman says that if the vote on the "devolution settlement" were held today, Scotland would remain in the U.K. First of all, doesn't "the staggers" refer to a state of staggering drunkenness? Secondly, I though that the devolution issue was settled once and for all in the 1970s with Mark Mothersbaugh and Devo.

In the so-called British Isles, history binds and history divides.

And gets increasing confusing to us colonials.

All of the Celtic or Scots-Irish festivals I've attended have been fun. There's even a Celtic band in Cheyenne called Gobs O'Phun. That's what it should be about, after all.

So, get out to the plaza this evening to enjoy Molly's Revenge and Ceili Rain, which lit up the stage last night. Enjoy a draught or two of Guinness. But I warn you, if you throw up on my boots, I'll apply my shillelagh to your noggin. That tradition is Irish and Western.