Almost as much fun discovering new novels as it is reading them

My sisters sent my wife Chris some Barnes & Noble gift cards to ease her path through chemotherapy. I went right to B&N Online and ordered three novels. Chris requested "Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald," a NYT bestseller by Theresa Anne Fowler. It sounds fascinating. The book apparently was the inspiration for the streaming series "Z: The Beginning of Everything." I watched it and was a bit disappointed and I can't really say why. I can read the novel (the book is always better!) when Chris finishes.

The story of the Fitzgeralds is high drama by which I mean terribly sad. I wrote a prose poem, "Rockets Over Fitzgerald," after watching Fourth of July fireworks from St. Mary's Churchyard in Rockville, Maryland. It was published in Poetry Hotel. 

I remembered another author with the last name Fowler as I was browsing. Connie May Fowler is a Florida native who writes beautifully, about people and about Florida, about everything really. After meeting Connie at Literary Connection in Cheyenne, I read her excellent novel, "The Problem with Murmur Lee." I ordered for Chris "How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly." I lost track of time as I read its opening section at the B&N site. It takes me back to summer solstice days in central Florida when the temp is 92 degrees at 7 a.m. and rising. 

The best batch of stories I've read in a long time is "Florida" by Lauren Groff. My favorite may be "Dogs Go Wolf" published in the New Yorker and available on audio at online when you go to the August 21, 2017, issue (I listened for free for some unknown reason). The story is about two little girls who get stranded on on an island and the creative ways they find to survive. Groff's style is captivating. What a story. I look forward to talking to Chris about it, see what she thinks of it. 

Micro-essay: Denver

Denver

When you’re gone you’re gone. That first house you bought on South Grant Street, some kids you don’t know slide down the driveway on skateboards. A stranger sits at your desk in the Broadway brick building, never heard of you, the building is a different business now, has nothing to do with the fan-belts and radiator hoses they make in the spooky factory across the street that’s now a condo complex. That dive bar where you got shitfaced after college hockey games is a fashion boutique next to a pot shop. Those softball diamonds all over town, you can watch twilight games in July with players your kids’ ages or maybe your grandkids’ ages. On one of those diamonds, you played in January’s annual Sno-ball tourney and froze your ass off. Your favorite bookstore moved across town. You and your girlfriend walked down Fillmore to the old place, it smelled of books and not coffee and the two of you found books and a quiet place to read for hours. Fourth of July at your aunt’s and uncle’s house you and your cousins almost burnt down the wooden fence with Wyoming fireworks. A procession of strangers have lived there and they keep on moving out and moving in and you don’t recognize any of them when you drive by. Camping near Grand Lake, we skip rocks in the shallow creek that grows into the mighty Colorado as it tumbles down the Rockies. Concerts at Red Rocks, you can see where you sat in the middle seats, surrounded by those with their own memories, the Eagles and The Dead, full moon coming over the mountains, lights of Denver down below. You’re not there. Days and weeks, months and years. Memories orbit like planets, find you where you are now. At the old Stapleton airport named after the KKK mayor of the 1920s, you drove to down Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard to get there. You linger outside the boundary fence, stand on the car hood to almost touch the arriving planes, hear the blast and feel the whoosh of the engines. It was 1978 on that July afternoon you first flew into Stapleton for a new job. On that day, you didn’t know it yet, but you were already gone.

Is it possible to write contemporary epistolary fiction in a world without letter-writing?

I took a chance on reading one of the Amazon Original Stories on Kindle. It was "Evidence of the Affair" by Taylor Jenkins Reid. One of the site's many offerings, I took a chance on it because it was an epistolary story, told entirely in letters. This is a dangerous genre because, number one, letters can be incredibly boring. Number two, it can be very formulaic and limits POV. Number 3, nobody writes letters any more.

That final reason makes it an historical short story because it takes place in 1976-1978. This was back before email and the Internet. People sat down, wrote a letter on paper, put it in an envelope, addressed and stamped in, drove to the post office to mailed it. You then had to wait several days or weeks or even months before a reply came. You sometimes got an instantaneous reply if, maybe you were ending a relationship. A quicker reply might come via long distance phone call and someone (maybe you) might be a few drinks into the night when you took that call and got an earful from a wounded former partner. Let me give you an example. I got a late night call, summer 1973, from my girlfriend in Boston. She broke up with me, saying there was no future in our relationship because she was going to nursing school in Connecticut and I was working at a lumber yard in Florida barely making ends meet and it looked from afar that I had no future. I was upset after saying farewell and wrote a long sappy letter that included an entire Kahlil Gibran poem. Gibran's work is very accommodating for almost any occasion. I did not get a reply.

The epistolary novel has a fine history. In 1740, Samuel Richardson wrote the first epistolary novel I studied in English class, "Pamela." It was immediately parodied by Henry Fielding's "Shamela" in 1741 and later by Monty Python. The most well-known contemporary epistolary novel is "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky and "The Guernsey Potato Peel Pie and Literary Society" based on letters and telegrams to and from the female protagonist. I liked this book and the TV limited series wasn't bad. 

Reid is known for her romances and this story is one. At first, it doesn't seem so as the two main correspondents in "Evidence of the Affair" find out their spouses are cheating on them. The letters fly back and forth. They unearth letters from the cheaters in briefcases and recipe books. The drama builds and I won't ruin it for you but the ending is more dynamic than I expected and very sweet. 

What is this thing Amazon Original Stories on Kindle? Look them up on Amazon, the keeper of all things (most recent purchase: belts for my vacuum cleaner). You can sign up for Kindle Unlimited and read some for free. I do that, I have to admit, although I paid $1.99 for Reid's story. Sometimes you pay for the print edition and get the Audible audiobook version for free (or vice versa). 

I came across a new collection entitled "Warmer" which is described this way:

"Warmer," a collection of seven visions of a conceivable tomorrow by today’s most thought-provoking authors. Alarming, inventive, intimate, and frightening, each story can be read, or listened to, in a single breathtaking sitting. 

Stories include three by writers whose work I admire: Jane Smiley, Lauren Groff, and Jess Walter. The four others must be pretty good to be in such company. You can read and listen to all seven stories for free. I can anyway. These free stories are designed to get you to buy the authors' books. Sign up for Kindle Unlimited and you get the stories free along with free shipping for vacuum cleaner belts.  

PS: I have republished a story collection on Amazon, "The Weight of a Body." You have to pay for it although it's also a free offering on KU.

Jane Campbell explores the "persecution of remembering" in her Cat Brushing story collection

The cover of Jane Campbell's story collection, "Cat Brushing," shows a ringed hand sweeping across the fur of what must be a very large cat or maybe the gorgeous gray locks of one of the author's elderly women characters. It could be both as you will discover reading her 13 wonderful stories in the POV of women in their 70s and beyond. This is her first book, published in her 80th year, as it says on the book jacket. I'm nine years younger than her which puts us, approximately, in the same age cohort.  

These tales are quite personal, erotic in spots. Am I surprised that women of a certain age have erotic thoughts and sometimes more than thoughts? No, but as a person in this age group, I am impressed by the directness of the stories. It challenges the idea that women of a certain age must be handled carefully lest they fall and break a hip or leave a pot burning on the stove. It's the "I've fallen and I can't get up" woman sprawled on the kitchen floor who would be lost without her handy Medic-Alert bracelet and her male rescuers. Old and helpless.

Fuck that.

In "The Question," the narrator gulps down a dose of morphine and describes the rush that results. I figured she was a goner, in the last stages of cancer, but she's actually a feisty woman who chased after her cat on a winter night and fell on her porch's icy steps. The idea that she likes the buzz of the morphine helps us get to know this woman in a rehab center who has no intention of staying abed. Tests surprisingly reveal she has no broken bones and only sustained a few bumps and bruises. When released, she asks her male nurse if she can have a to-go portion of the opioid. He genially refuses but as we read the interaction between patient and nurse, we find that she knew him in the past and knows his dark secret. 

The writer has a sure touch in turning tales on their head. In "Kiskadee," a woman lies by a pool in Bermuda and hears the melodious song of the Kiskadee, a predatory tropical bird with a big beak designed for killing. Interspersed are memories of her "special relationship" with her father. She recalls years of touching and cuddling, sleeping together, syrupy words from the father. Story's end has a horrible twist which I won't spoil here.

Most of these women recount loves gained and loves lost. The memories are clear and immediate, no brain fog here.

I reread Campbell's second story, "The Scratch."  Nell wonders how she scratched herself, a cut that bled profusely. 

What drawers had she opened carelessly, perhaps knives rearranged, had she handled scissors?

She forgets about phone calls with her grown children. She forgets things even though she writes everything in her diary.

But it's not the forgetting that concerns her most. 

The old barriers behind which she could once shelter... they all tumble down as the years pass. Just as running upstairs becomes a lost art and skipping down becomes impossible, so the capacity to forget is lost. There is a persecution of remembering. Remembering so much. Those midnight hours, dark nights of the soul, where remorse bites hard and the past presses against you.

Nell, in her 70s, forgets how to forget. 

I too, in my 70s, have forgotten how to forget. Memories become crisp and clear, even those I want to forget. This hit me so hard. Since retirement, I've been wondering why old memories come flooding back to me. As an old person, aren't I suppose to forget things instead of them rushing back to me with incredible force? It's not like I'm bored, lazing about in a tepid pool of nostalgia. 

Still, the memories flow. 

As you climb toward retirement, friends and family urge you to be busy when work ceases and you have all the time in the world. People get bored, get sick, get careless. But that's not it at all. Memories can overwhelm your present if you are not busy making more memories. They don't tell you about the "persecution of remembering." We have to leave that up to Campbell and her fictional characters. 

I roll into the polls, switch my registration, and eagerly await the results

The Wyoming primary elections have come and gone. Rep. Liz Cheney lost to Harriet Hageman who likely will be the next lone House member from the state. She is a Trumper and we can only expect her support of his every move including a bid for the 2024 presidency. If Trump does not run, Hageman will do anything she can to promote the GOP agenda which mainly consists of demonizing Democrats and what she and her ilk refer to as the Democrat Party. They apparently see nothing democratic about liberal policies that promote free and fair elections, a livable wage, women’s right to choose, free medical care for all and other dangerous practices. GOPers love to chide us about calling our country a democracy when it is really a “constitutional republic.” It’s chilling to note that the GOP wants nothing to do with democracy as a term or as a practice.

I rollated my way to the polls on Tuesday at the Lions Park Community House. Not sure if "rollated" has made it into the dictionary but I find it’s a great term to describe how I wheel myself around on my rollator. It’s basically a walker that rolls. Mine is a red Drive Nitro Aluminum Rollator. You can find it on Amazon. Several companies now make them as more Boomers need assistance getting around without the annoying clanking that goes with traditional walker walking. In my early rollating days, I used a traditional walker footed with tennis balls which act as kind of a silencer for the walking impaired. It allows grandparents to sneak up on their grandchildren before they have a chance to run away.

I was the only one using a rollator during my 30 minutes at the polls. A gentleman in a wheelchair came in behind me and I saw him assisted by an election worker to one of the accessible voting machines. Nobody asked me if I needed assistance which, in a way, was a compliment on my perambulating skills.

There was no waiting to register. My ID was checked at the door. I went over to a friendly face and she asked me all the appropriate questions. This person is a Republican and we have served together on several non-profit boards and never once got into a fight. We have broken bread together and never feared poisoning. I told her I was switching parties from Democratic to Republican. She did the appropriate things on her computer screen, printed me out a ballot and handed it over, directing me to the bank of machines against the far wall. While I waited for a spot to open, another poll worker came to me and said I had forgotten to fill out the paperwork for switching parties. My old colleague had forgotten this step probably because this was her first time working the polls. This poll worker guided me to the Group W Bench where I was told to fill out and sign the paper on line 11. 

“It goes all the way up to 11?” I quipped. She stared. “Excuse me?” I replied "Nevermind" and went about my task. No other miscreants joined me on the Group W Bench and I was a bit lonely.

I finally got to vote. A slick process. I voted in every category because I had done some homework and knew who the loonies were. I remembered back in the oughts when I served as a poll worker for the first time. This was back in the precinct voting days, the first year for electronic voting machines. Some of my colleagues had been suspicious of this switch from paper to electrons. I had my doubts too. But the county clerk’s training crew led us through the process and it seemed bona fide to me. I’ve also served as a poll watcher for my political party. My task was tracking the registered Dem voters on a printout of county residents and keeping an eagle eye on the proceedings. There was a Republican next to me doing the same thing although he quit halfway through the day after realizing that eight of every ten voters were Republicans and the Grand Old Party was certain to retain its hegemony.

On the way out, I put my ballot into the ballot-gathering machine. This was the last step in the process, put in place after much quibbling over ballot security, voting by dead people, ballot harvesting, and other imaginary voting malfeasance. The machine swallowed my ballot, a poll worker gave me a sticker, and I left. There were some news crews out on the street questioning voters. One young man was from ABC. He interviewed the person in front of me and behind me. He probably took one look at me and thought there was no way he wanted to interview a grouchy, semi-disabled old dude rant about various topics close to the heart of right-wing conspiracy theorists. I would have fooled him.

You can view the polling results on the county clerk’s and secretary of state’s web sites. They were expected but troubling just the same. I will switch my registration before the next election. I may be living elsewhere when the general takes place in November. We rollatrists are always looking for greener pastures. Make that blue or at least purple pastures.

FMI: See WyoFile's round-up of the primary results 

Flash fiction, zeppelin style

The Loneliness of Zeppelin Denver

Zeppelin Denver was my name. Christened LZ-17 in August 1915 and only later did I get a proper name. One of many airships created in the early years of the twentieth century at the great zeppelin works in Friedrichshafen. My origin story showed promise. Finding a chum did not seem like a problem. There were so many new ships. Then came the war. We sailed off to Britain with as many bombs as we could carry. Hurled them from the gondola like Zeus's lightning bolts. Friends and potential partners were blown from the sky. LZ-24’s crew was killed but the ship stayed alive and and it motored off into a North Sea cloudbank. Engines stopped when the fuel ran out but it kept going, lifted by the winds, until it ended up in the Arctic, we suppose. Never found. He was my brother and best friend. Later, I was part of postwar reparations. The United States came to Germany's big rummage sale (all things must go!) and claimed me, naming me for an American city nobody in Germany or even the U.S. had ever heard of. I was off to America. Zep friends were built but it was not the same. My German accent got in the way. American zeps avoided me and then, in 1937, the Graf Zeppelin Hindenburg exploded and that’s all she wrote. Self-immolation was suspected, one of the first blows against Hitler, or so they say. I would not be surprised if GrafZepHin staged the farewell as he always was theatrical. It left me alone and heartsick sailing through the sky cleared of everything but clouds and aeroplanes. Many aeroplanes. They were the future and I was not. I sailed on. They kept me around through the next war, mostly as a curiosity. Spent a few years filming football stadiums from on high. But that was it. Dismantled me from the outside in. Skin peeled. Skeleton removed. Bled of helium. The heart was the last to go.

Fiction welcomes us into strange new worlds

Lisa See's latest novel, The Island of Sea Women, could have been set on a distant world. On a little known volcanic island , women have been harvesting their food from the sea for generations. They are called haenyeo. They go into the ocean year-round but only when the shaman says so. These women practice rituals for the sea goddess. They float out to likely spots, breathe deeply, and dive to the sea bed for edible sea creatures. They eat some of the catch but keep most for family and to sell at the market. Many have been lost to wicked currents or injury. They persevere through genocide and famine and family feuds.

Otherworldy, right? Reminds me of the Fremen of  Arrakis harvesting spice and fighting off sand worms. 

But the island of sea women is a volcanic island named Jeju south of the Korean mainland. The women are real and have been diving for generations. See bases her excellent novel on these women.

“Every woman who enters the sea carries a coffin on her back. In this world, the undersea world, we tow the burdens of a hard life."

The story opens with the main character, Young-sook. We experience the culture through her life, from a child during Japan's World War II Korean occupation to 2008 as to old lady who still dives.  Her life is a series of challenges within her haenyeo clan, her family, other islanders, and invaders from Japan (World War II) and the U.S. (Korean War). See's story time travels, jumping from a present-day setting with Young-sook as a clan elder all the way back to her turbulent youth. Jeju now is a tourist hot spot with the usual assortment of clueless visitors. One of them is the granddaughter of her childhood friend Mi-Ja. Now the fully Americanized granddaughter butts into Young-sook's life and wants the real story about the conflict that shattered a friendship and sent Mi-ja off to America. The island people are survivors. Young-sook may be the most stubborn member of her clan. She resents the young woman but ends up opening up her life to her. And to us. 

Think about your image of 21st century Koreans. BTS, BlackPink and K-Pop. The bustling modern city of Seoul. The new Korean cinema, films such as Train to Busan and the Squid Game series, and comedies like Kim's Convenience about a Canadian-Korean family's convenience store. The Korean-made Korean War film Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War, may be an even more in-your-face war film than Saving Private Ryan. There is also the hermit authoritarian kingdom of North Korea which, to many Koreans, seems like another world. And is. Witness some wonderful novels about the North. My favorite thus far is The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson. It's illuminating how Americans are seen through the eyes of others. Those who know their history would not be surprised. 

The imaginary world helps us see the world in all its glory and horror. 

There's a deer in the works and I'm not sure what to make of it

There’s a deer in the works.

Not like Kurt Vonnegut’s errant deer in his Welcome to the Monkey House story. This deer just breezed by my living room window and traipsed across my front yard before disappearing through the hedge and into my neighbor’s vegetable garden. When I looked to see if it took time out to munch on Swiss Chard, I saw nothing.

How odd to see a deer in my neighborhood on a Sunday morning. Any day, for that matter. I instantly though of Vonnegut’s story, Deer in the Works. It impressed me when I first read it and gained a lot more meaning when I joined a billion-dollar corporation as a publications editor in the 1980s. I had grown tired of the freelance writing game and was looking for something more permanent, something that would help me buy a house and start a family. I found it at the Gates Rubber Company’s Denver works.

A younger Vonnegut found his job at the General Electric works in Schenectady, N.Y. Vonnegut’s character, David Potter, lasts only one day at the works. I went five years and Vonnegut worked from 1947 to 1951 at GE. A young father, he quit the job after selling several short stories to the now defunct Collier’s Magazine. Knox Burger, the magazine’s fiction editor, took Vonnegut under his wing but was surprised when Kurt quit his day job and moved the family to Cape Cod so he could write. Burger later said, “I never said he should give up his day job and devote himself to fiction. I don’t trust the freelancer’s life, it’s tough.”

Vonnegut had some tough years. He persevered. He hit it big in 1969 with Slaughterhouse-Five, possibly the best war novel ever written. It’s really considered a darkly comic antiwar novel. He met Hollywood producer Harrison Starr at a party who asked if Kurt was writing an antiwar novel. He said he was and Starr replied, “Why don’t you write an anti-glacier novel?” Not sure about Vonnegut’s response. But Starr’s questions seems very Vonnegut.

Vonnegut studied biochemistry while a student at Cornell. He was kicked out of Army ROTC for poor grades and a satirical article he wrote in the college paper. He lost his deferment, dropped out of college, and enlisted in 1943 before he could be drafted. He ended up as a scout with the 106^th Infantry Division which was overwhelmed by Nazis at the Battle of the Bulge. The division lost 500 troops and 6,000 captured. Vonnegut ended up a POW in a slaughterhouse in Dresden. Then came the firebombing. Twenty-four years later, Vonnegut was able to write about it.

I read it as a high school senior in 1969. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was reading but knew it was wonderful. I was also reading Catch-22. None of that stopped me from accepting a Navy ROTC scholarship. ROTC kicked me out in January 1971 due to bad grades and bad attitude. I was able to scrape up enough dough to last another semester and then I was done. My 1-A classification came in the mail at my parents’ house where I would have been living in the basement if we had one. I worked a day job at a hospital taking care of old people. I surfed on my days off and waited to get drafted but that didn’t happen.

This morning, the deer disappeared into my neighborhood. Not sure what happened to it. It seems unreal now, maybe a figment of my overactive imagination. All morning, all I could think about was Deer in the Works and every Vonnegut story and book I read which was most of them. The Vonnegut section fills up considerable space in my memory bank. The wayward deer is in there somewhere.  

Following the congressional hearings, what will become of Trump?

I've never read a book's first chapter and skipped to the last one. You miss all of the delectable middle parts, the intrigue and humor and character development. The slog, too. That middle can go on forever. That's part of it, though. We get to know the people and the setting. Just how many teatimes can we sit through in a Jane Austen novel? I laughed when when the normally easygoing Ted Lasso tries tea for the first time as a soccer coach in England. "Ugh -- brown water" he said as he moves away the tea cup as if it were radioactive. "Coffee?"

There a lot of brown water in any story's middle parts. 

I watched the live-action opening chapter of the Jan. 6 Committee hearings on June 9 and last night watched the closing chapter. The committee, co-chaired by Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, still is deliberating and continues to take testimony. But the public viewing part of the show is over. We know the story now. We await the denouement. Who will be punished and in what way? Will anyone in power pay the price for treason? The rioters, themselves, yes -- some have already been convicted of seditious conspiracy, civil disorder, destruction of public property, etc. They are guilty of the crimes and will pay fines and serve a bit of time in jail.

But what about the main POI, Donald Trump? Will he escape blame for the chaos he spawned? I keep thinking of the creepy paterfamilias Noah Cross  in "Chinatown." We don't know this until the end, but he raped his daughter Evelyn when she was 15 and her daughter is his too. In the final scene set in Chinatown, the police accidentally shoot and kill Evelyn as she tries to escape to Mexico with her daughter. She is the only witness to Cross's crime and now is dead. The cops restrain Detective Jakes Gittes and Cross takes off with his daughter. There's a chilling foreshadowing early when Gittes and Cross meet. Here's the scene:

Noah Cross: You may think you know what you're dealing with, but, believe me, you don't.

Gittes grins

Noah Cross: Why is that funny?

Jakes Gittes: That's what the District Attorney used to tell me in Chinatown.

In the congressional hearing room, the panel seems to know what they are dealing with. They have seen Trump in action since 2016 and know the dangers. What we all suspect is that Trump will be the one who slithers away from any punishment. Co-chair Cheney wrapped up the night with a magnificent speech, which you should watch if you haven't already. She is staking out a claim for the presidency, possibly in 2024. Cheney was flanked by Virginia Rep. Elaine Luria, a Naval Academy grad who retired after 20 years as a commander, and Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a USAF veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. They take their oaths seriously and acted upon them every second during the hearings. One of the few GOP congresspeople who have publicly loathed Donald Trump -- and received death threats for doing it -- Kinzinger had this to say on CNN:

"I truly believe within my heart in five years, maybe not five but definitely 10, you're not going to be able to find a single person that admits to supporting or voting for Donald Trump in this country," the GOP congressman said. "Because they're going to be embarrassed, because their kids are going to say, 'You actually supported Donald Trump? Are you kidding me?'"

Refreshing to hear. History will judge. Our children and grandchildren will judge. Will a 2022 judge convict him of any crimes? Not bloody likely. It would be nice to think that Trump is now on his way to the dustbin of history. But we still have to deal with him in 2022. And worse, we have to deal with the millions of Trumpists who have drunk the Kool-Aid. And there are so many of them in red-state Wyoming, many running for elected office. On Aug. 16, I will switch my party affiliation from Dem to Rep to cast a vote for Cheney. Not much but it's something. 

In 1908, the cow capital of Florida was the first town to ban flying machines -- and not a moment too soon

Kissimmee, Florida, now Disney World’s closest neighbor, was the first to enact an ordinance banning flying machines. It was 1908 and nobody in the town of 2,000 had seen a flying machine, but rumors spread fast. These things were dangerous. At any time, one could drop from the sky and land on someone piloting a driving machine down the city’s dirt streets. The town council’s ordnance forbade any "airships, aeroplanes, balloons, heliocopters and ornithopters" from flying through the city’s airspace up to 25 miles from the ground. Embedded in the new law was a proviso to buy “an aeroplane of approved type” to catch aerial scofflaws. That didn’t prevent a terrible tragedy. An aeroplane struck and killed a local cow on its first take-off in 1911. The pilot was there to promote a flying school intended to train aeronauts to fly anywhere but over Kissimmee, the cow capital of Florida.

Magical-realism arrives when a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel comes in the mail

I love getting books in the mail. I love getting any sort of personal mail. Most of what I get are come-ons for credit cards and new windows. Also annoying pseudo-personal letters from people who want to buy my house for cash. Those letters have slowed down of late. The economy is a fickle thing. 

But books -- I love those. My friend Bob in Independence, Mo., sent me a hardcover copy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "In Evil Hour." Bob is an old college roommate and over the years we've shared our love for Garcia Marquez, notably his masterpiece "One Hundred Years of Solitude." I reread it every few years to once again fall in love with the language and the story. Style, too, as "Solitude" is the poster child for magical-realism which gets talked about a lot but is tough to duplicate in novel-writing. 

The MasterClass web site describes it this way:

Within a work of magical realism, the world is still grounded in the real world, but fantastical elements are considered normal in this world. Like fairy tales, magical realism novels and short stories blur the line between fantasy and reality.

Magical-realist writer Aimee Bender describes it this way in the March issue of The Writer:

One definite characteristic of this genre, says Bender, is that a magical element is interwoven with ordinary realism. “The magic is proportional – that is, it fits with the world; it doesn’t distort but adds layers and imagery to deepen what is already happening.”

She goes on to say that the master Garcia Marquez often said he only describes the world as he sees it. Realism, in other words. Latin-American writers Jorge Luis Borges and Isabel Allende often pop up as examples. So does Salman Rushdie with roots in India, Haruki Murakami of Japan, and our own Toni Morrison. Many others, I am sure. Which brings me to this: shouldn't magic and mysticism exist in every fiction writer's toolkit? We are creative writers, after all. It would be a shame to not use all of the talents endowed upon us by our creator, whoever he, she, it or they may be. It's almost like forbidding the creator not to use the color blue when creating the universe. 

When researching Garcia Marquez for a blog post a dozen years ago, I came across some interesting info on the creation of "Solitude." He was tired of journalism in 1961 and traveled to Cuba and Mexico. His new passion was the cinema and he allegedly penned sections of "Solitude" as movies or scenes in movies. "Solitude" was first published in 1967 and the first American edition came out in 1970 translated by Gregory Rabassa. The author won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981. Castro and Garcia Marquez met in Cuba in the late 1970s and the writer solicited editorial advice from Castro for his later books. Fidel read a lot and was pretty good with the details.

"In Evil Hour" was first published in 1962 and is sort of a preclude to "Solitude." The author was just getting warmed up. 

No "Solitude" moves have been made or are in the works, a stipulation by the author while he was alive. His son is filming a series based on the book that was slated to be released in 2020 but delayed by Covid. I could see it as a multi-part series on Netflix or Hulu. I saw an unauthorized stage play performed outdoors in Denver's Cheesman Park but don't remember the year. I sensed some confusion in the audience. Two hours on stage is not enough time for the great work.

The writer's walk

I am a sitter

One who sits

I sit all the time now

My broken back.

Was a time when you

Couldn't get me to stay still 

Could not get me to sit through

A well-intentioned speech or

Even a movie with a message. 

I walked to school and store

I walked just to walk. 

Each step caused a storm of words

That later I made into stories.

Now I walk with a walker called a

Rollator because it rolls with each step.

I stand straight. My back hurts

I proceed slowly and it's not the same as 

When I could walk unfettered Long's Peak  

Lightning Pass Colorado River headwaters  

Appalachian Trail Florida Trail 

Tomoka River Harper's Ferry

Down every street in D.C. and Denver

I cannot walk the writer's walk

So I sit.

Saturday Round-up: SCOTUS nonsense, funeral of a friend, and delving into crime-adjacent novels

The Supreme Court announced its rollback of abortion right yesterday. Now that Christian Nationalists have a majority on the court, this regressive move will be followed by others in birth control, LGBTQ rights, civil rights, voting rights, etc. This court wants to wipe away all of the progressive measures enacted since the 1960s. They can probably do it, too, as SCOTUS is the law of the land. But there are ways that states can toss a wrench into the right-wing steam roller. Not my state, solidly red, but other states in the region, Colorado and New Mexico to name two. Some major companies have announced that they will subsidize travel for employees and other wishing to escape their State of Gilead to get abortions. Other entities are doing the same thing. This is a feminist issue but also one of human rights and states' rights. SCOTUS seems perfectly willing to throw back gun rights to the states. Yesterday's action signals the same approach to states. Thing is, we will have half the states where abortion is limited or forbidden. Then we will have the more progressive states, or at least states that believe in a woman's right to choose. Where this will lead is anybody's guess. Nowhere good. 

I watched a funeral of a friend today on YouTube. The funeral was at Prince of Peace Catholic Church in Ormond Beach, Fla. I watched from Cheyenne, Wyo. The funeral mass was for David Rogers, an old high school friend. I saw some gray heads in the congregation so some of my classmates might have attended. David's widow and kids attended, as did his sister Dorie whom I knew from high school. She delivered a eulogy, mostly about family and David's passion of fishing. David and I shared a house out in the woods 50 years ago. David spent his time fishing in the Tomoka and Little Tomoka rivers. I spent my time hiking around the property, some 40 acres of woods and swamps. Spiders as big as my hand. Rattlesnakes and water moccasins and coral snakes. Possum and armadillos. Lots of birds. A beautiful spot that holds many memories. Rest in peace, David.

Our daughter Annie moved to Laramie and started school at UW. She rents an apartment on the edge of campus. Chris and I have been there several times, first to help her move in and then take her to lunch. College campuses in summertime are green, beautiful places, more park than academic setting. I always liked summer sessions. The classes were of short duration and laid back, for the most part. Afterwards, a great time to settle under a tree in the quad and read. Because we have distinct seasons here, with cold-ass winters, the summer afternoons at UW are particularly sweet.

Just finished reading "Good Girl, Bad Girl" by Australian writer Michael Robotham. I saw a reference to him in an interview with another Aussie writer, Geraldine Brooks. She called his books "crime-adjacent" and I was taken by that phrase and had to look up Robotham's books. Crime-adjacent features characters that aren't necessarily cops or private investigators. "Good Girl, Bad Girl" main character is Cyrus Haven, a forensic psychologist in Nottingham, England, who is trying to help the police solve a crime while he also tries to help Evie Cormac, a teen girl adjust after years of abuse. Fascinating. Cyrus has his own twisted past which gives him insight other psychologists don't have. Chapters alternate between Cyrus and Evie with the nickname "Angel Face." I liked the back and forth between characters once I read the first few chapters. Other CA books listed on Goodreads include John D. MacDonald's "The Lonely Silver Rain" which features Travis McGee who, as he puts it, does favors for friends. It usually involves tussles with bad guys. Bail bondswoman Stephanie Plum probably fits into this category. So do many of Elmore Leonard's books. I've read many CA books but didn't know it had a label. Until now.

"For All Mankind" shows what the U.S, space program could have been

As I move on to the second season of “For All Mankind” on Apple-Plus, I keep asking the same question:

What happened to us?

By us, I mean U.S. as in US of A. The show posits a vigorous space program motivated mainly by the Soviets beating us to the moon in 1969. One member of the Soviet crew is a woman cosmonaut. Down on earth, Americans with hangdog looks are watching this on TV. They can’t believe the Reds beat us to the moon. Didn’t President Kennedy promise us that we would land a man on the moon by the end of the decade? We did, in fact, land a man on the moon on July 20, 1969, well ahead of the Russkis who never managed it.

The genius of this show is showing how the U.S. took the Soviet challenge, recruited women astronauts (Nixon’s idea) and landed one on the moon to claim a spot on the rock. The astronaut was a chain-smoking blonde, Jerrie Cobb, who was one of the first choices back when NASA tried to match the Mercury 7 men with a female contingent. The Cobb in the series (Molly) goes to space while the real Cobb, an accomplished aviator who passed all the NASA tests, did not. Season 1 Episode 4 is dedicated to her.

That’s the cool thing about the series, imagining what could have been. It resembles the “Hollywood” series on Netflix which imagined a post-war Tinseltown that appreciated its gay actors and didn’t demonize them. Also, in the dystopian TV world, the U.S. lost World War II and was divided up between Nazi Germany and Japan. Or you can see an America which is now the Gilead in “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Also, zombies. Zombies everywhere.

I ask again: what happened to us? What happened to the U.S. space program? My father worked for the space program from 1964-69 in Daytona Beach. We kids watched all of the launches. We were happy when July 20, 1969, came around and showed the U.S. what we were made of. Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. Ran into trouble with the balky shuttle, losing two crews and our sense of adventure. Vietnam kicked our ass as did all the turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s.

We get to see what could have been on “For All Mankind.” I am only on the second episode of the second season so I do not yet know what ultimately happens. But I do know what has not happened during my lifetime. And that’s very sad. 

Saturday morning round-up: Insurrections, a Plant Pandemonium, and Waterloo Bridge

Saturday morning round-up

Watched the first hearing Thursday night of the Jan. 6 Insurrection Committee. Compelling television. I'm not being facetious when I say that its production values were excellent. That's the way it is in visual media and politics. I cringed watching the previously unseen video footage. I was saddened by the testimony of Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards. It occurred to me that one must possess a certain amount of empathy to be affected by the life-threatening injuries suffered by Edwards. You see her being crushed beneath the bicycle rack that served as the first line of defense. Such rank cruelty was visible throughout. American vs. American. It turned my stomach. Will it change minds? I don't think so. Hearts and minds were locked into place when Trump swaggered into the White House in 2017 during the usual peaceful handover of power. We didn't know how much would change during the next four years.  

Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming served as co-chair of the committee. She was only one of two Republicans seated on the committee. The rest of them are in thrall to Trump. Cheney was excellent. Made me proud to be from Wyoming. I e-mailed congratulations to her office after the broadcast. This Democrat objects to almost all of Cheney's actions in the House. She supported too many Trump policies. But she deserves credit for taking a stand for the Republic.

Today is Plant Pandemonium at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. Hundreds of flowers will be planted in the beds in front of the Conservatory. Flowers were always meant for these spaces but we ran out of summer during the first year we opened so the director decided to sod the space and we would get to it later. Then Covid happened. Supply chain issues exist in the horticulture world too. We plant thousands of seeds each winter, some as small as the period on my keyboard. Their seedlings are spoken for. We have nine acres of grounds as well as the Paul Smith Children's Village and planters in the park and around town. Thanks for staff and volunteers out planting today. Drink plenty of fluids. Wear sunscreen. Laugh a lot.

Finished reading an intriguing book by Aminatta Forna, "Happiness: A Novel." I was attracted by the title and the author's bio. I want to voyage to different worlds when I read. The novel is set in London and features a psychiatrist from Ghana who's an expert in PTSD and an American divorcee who works as an urban biologist. They are going to meet up -- the author teases you so bravo to her as I kept reading to see what happened. There are gruesome stretches. Innocents are tortured and killed in the world's killing fields. Animals are injured and killed by brutal, unthinking humans. But we meet a wonderful cast of characters, cab drivers and cooks and hotel doormen, many of them African immigrants, whom the main characters befriend. You know those Africans and Asians and Latinos you observe on your business trips to big cities? They all have a story. Forna makes sure to tell them and see the rich biospheres of a city, a place where humans and foxes and coyotes try to exist side-by-side. I was impressed by many scenes that take place on and around the Waterloo Bridge. Books and films have used the bridge for a backdrop. One of them, "Waterloo Bridge" is a wartime drama (flashback to World War I) in which two mismatched people attempt to match up. Drama and heartbreak ensue. This can happen in novels too. 

Read it. 

Ballad for an old friend

Can you call someone a friend if you haven’t seen him in 40 years?

On Monday, I heard the news of the death of my old friend David. He suffered a stroke and was being transferred to rehab in Daytona Beach when his body gave out. The news came to me on a Facebook post from Dave’s sister in L.A. I was shocked. He is not one of the first to die in my high school class – Class of ’69. We’ve all hit 70 now and the inevitable cohort replacement grinds on every day.

The last photo I saw of David showed him holding an AK-47 which he was using for target practice out in the Florida woods. He had a gun hobby. He also was a dedicated fisherman. He once ran a popular bait shop in Daytona. He could talk your ear off about fishing and often did. We went to high school together and were roommates once on a little acreage we called The Farm. It was anything but a farm. It was an old house on Hull Road in rural Ormond Beach. The road was named after the family who built the house, one of the area’s first human residents besides Native Americans and the occasional Spanish explorer looking for the Fountain of Youth or cities of gold. Our high school, Father Lopez, was named for the priest who accompanied Pedro Menendez de Aviles when he landed in St. Augustine in 1565 to kill French Huguenots. Ponce de Leon had claimed Florida for Spain in 1513 during his fruitless search for youth, something, I guess, many Floridians search for.

Our little house had three bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen, a massive fireplace, and an outdoor shower. Our girlfriends hated that shower even though we assured them that nobody could see them as our property was surrounded by forest. Didn’t seem to make a difference. They would take baths in our big iron tub or wait until they returned to their respective civilized indoor showers. Picky, picky.

The property was owned by a group of physicians who had bought it for an investment. This place will someday be filled with houses, they contended, and we laughed about it when we got stoned on the weed stashed on the farm by a friend who swore us to secrecy. Years later, as time marched on, the land was bought by a developer and now is a thriving neighborhood called Tymber Creek. That’s timber with a y as in “some tymber was sacrificed to build these spacious homes.”

I have fond memories of a man who meant so much to me long ago. In 1971-72, David and I were college dropouts. The military draft passed us by. I worked days as a hospital orderly and David worked evenings as a cook at a pizza joint. He brought home the leftover pizza that became our breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We could exist on pizza because we were 21 and always on the move.   

Our futures had already started. I wandered the property with our dogs, always alert for rattlers and coral snakes. At twilight, we stopped at an open field and watched the bullbats. As they dive for insects, they make a strange whooshing sound. I’d come back to the house to write, always writing. David was out casting for bass or snook on the Little Tomoka River, looking for something out there on the Florida waters. I hope he found it.  

Anything was possible then.

During the 1970s, I went back to school and then returned to the area many times as I looked for work and finally decided to light out for the western territories. That’s where I am today. Still writing.

David, may the fish be plentiful and feisty in the Beyond.

I contemplate generational conflict in the blogosphere

Daughter Annie has been chronicling her graduation experience on her blog. She graduated from Laramie County Community College on May 14 and will head to UW in Laramie in mid-June.  She intends to be an English major. I have done my best to change her mind. "How about something useful, like pre-med or accounting?" or "Have you thought about a career as plumber?" 

Nevertheless, she persisted. She is a chip off the old block, offspring of an English major. I posted about the graduation here. She speaks openly about her long haul and her not always pleasant experiences along the way. I admire her honesty as I tend to skip deep feelings and fall back on humor to lighten life's heartbreaks. A generational difference, I guess. I am a first-wave Boomer and Annie is a second-wave Millennial. We share interests in reading, writing, classic rock, and movies. But we look at life through different lenses.

She knows more about my generation than I do hers. When I look at her generation, I see bright people looking on in disbelief at the chaos we older generations have wrought. I may have looked this same way in 1969 when the best and brightest wanted to kill me and millions of others. Annie has many artistic tattoos and introduces me to new music by changing the dial on my car radio. In reality, she doesn't need my car radio because she has her own car and car radio and myriad tech devices that pull in music, videos, and possibly signals from Tralfamadore. 

See how much fun you can have with generational conflict?

When I first signed on with Blogger in 2001, I admired the fresh voices, honest as the day is long. Not one of the bloggers I followed in those early days would use "honest as the day is long" (air quotes) which is, as you know, "as old as the hills." They were much more creative. In 2006, I gravitated to lefty political blogs which led to my selection as Wyoming's official embedded blogger at the 2008 Democratic Party National Convention in Denver where, at 57, I may have been the oldest practitioner at Blogger HQ outside the Pepsi Center. I received a scholarship to Netroots Nation 2011 in Minneapolis. I traveled in fall of 2011 with fellow nogoodniks to present a panel on progressive blogging at the University of South Dakota. Those were heady days. We were the future. I tied in with regional lefty bloggers and started posting and reposting on Daily Kos. Social media was in its infancy but pretty soon grew into the monster we know today. 

I started a blog for my workplace and a year later was called into the director's office to ask why I started a blog without permission. I said, gee, all the kids were doing it and he agreed that I should stop doing it immediately. At career's end, I was lord of our Wordpress blog and social media manager. My Millennial kids thought this was hilarious and I tended to agree.

So here we are in 2022. Blogs did not birth a thoughtful, more progressive, America. 

I blame myself.

Read part two of Annie's "How I got here: my time at LCCC.

Poets give voice to the voiceless gunned down in their schools

 

Reposted from a friend's Facebook page. Introduced me to a U.S. poet with Front Range connections whose work I didn't know. It brilliantly says what I am finding so hard to put into words. Thanks to Matt Hohner who has an MFA from Naropa University in Boulder. A friendly nod to Sam Hamill who published so much wonderful work at Copper Canyon Press during his time on the planet. He also initiated Poets Against the War to protest the 2003 Iraq War. 

It's true what they say about Nome: The first winter is hard on relationships

It's not often that you get to read a novel set in Alaska by an writer who almost died in an Alaska plane crash but now tours the U.S. performing his music and reading his poetry and prose. One more thing -- the novel was published in India. Even in our interconnected world, working with a publisher on the other side of the world comes with its own set of challenges.  

"Now Entering Alaska Time" by Ken Waldman recounts the adventures (and misadventures) of a poet and fiddler named Zan. Raised in The Lower 48, Zan travels to Alaska and immerses himself in the folk music scene. He totes his fiddle wherever he goes. He eventually decides to get his graduate degree in creative writing and then embarks on a Nome teaching job where he teaches online classes to students around the state, from the Arctic Circle to softer climes in small towns near Juneau.

The book sometimes reads like a travelogue, so much so that I had to keep a map of Alaska close at hand. As is the case with most U.S. writers schooled in the West, place is crucial. You could say the same thing about writers from the South or the Midwest. But for writers in the West (Alaska included), sometimes we're more concerned with the spaces between than the places themselves. You can assume that those spaces represent the gaping chasms people experience in their relationships. 

That's the thing about Waldman's novel. His characters come together and tear asunder with stunning frequency. About as often as the next plane to Nome. That's how humans get around in Alaska, mainly by plane. Each of these locales (Nome, Juneau, Anchorage, Fairbanks) have distinctive personalities, illuminating to someone like me who's never been to Alaska. But as a writer in Wyoming, I am familiar with the wide open spaces. As literature coordinator for 25 years with the Wyoming Arts Council, I brought in writers from all over to judge our fellowship competitions. More than one of them asked me if writers had to write about the state's landscapes, you know, the mountains, the high desert, cottonwoods, the incessant wind. No, I would say, but all of those are facts of life here, ones you can't ignore. Landscape is a character.

Waldman prose doesn't have to remind the reader that it is cold and dreary during Nome winters. When Zan lands at the Nome airport to start his job, he remembers "the story of the young woman who had originally beat him for the position, flown here, and then turned right around." Later, when he wanders into downtown's Anchor Bar, he chats over drinks with jaded city manager Press Atwater. He warns Zan that Nome's first winter is hard on relationships. Months later, when he and Melinda see Press at his usual perch at the bar, he says: "Say, you two are still talking and it's been, what, two or three months already." He laughs. What else could he do? 

The novel's second half focuses on the relationship between Zan and Melinda. What a wild ride it is. Waldman does a fine job delineating their personalities and the stresses that sabotage relationships. The author paints a more complete portrait of Zan because, well, the novel is based on his own Alaska experience. We sometimes wonder about Melinda's motives, especially as she strays later in the relationship. I won't go any deeper than that because it's a powder keg of a relationship and I don't want to spoil anything. 

Waldman and I met several decades ago at what was then called the AWP Conference. We've worked together several times since. He's on the road most of the time now that Covid is winding down (we hope). The book tells me the roots of the author's itinerant lifestyle. He's still roaming the wide open spaces. It's in his blood. 

"Now Entering Alaska Time" will be available for $18 USD at cyberwit.net after June 1. Waldman has launched a book tour with Alaska dates in Skagway, Haines, Juneau, Talkeetna, Anchorage, Fairbanks, Homer, and Denali Park. After that, he's in Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Texas. He performed at the first outdoor Anchorage Folk Festival this past weekend and returns June 5 for a folk festival fundraiser. 

Happy graduation, Annie. You did it!

Annie Shay, happy graduate (LCCC photo)

Daughter Annie graduates from Laramie County Community College on Saturday.

We are so proud of her. It has been a long haul. She struggled with learning disabilities in elementary school. She was diagnosed with epilepsy when she was eight. During teen years, she struggled in school, the learning part and the socialization part. She began to depend on drugs and alcohol to get her through each day. She was bipolar and we sought help but nobody seemed to understand it. She spent months in treatment centers in Wyoming and Colorado. She was able to complete some of her school work but fell too far behind to graduate. She earned her G.E.D. and started school at LCCC. It was too soon. She decided to major in music and spent many hours rehearsing and singing with the school's choirs. She has a beautiful voice but is not so confident around colleagues and audiences. 

She dropped out and soon was off again to treatment centers, this time in California and Illinois and Utah and finally back to Colorado. The years passed. She was diagnosed with bipolar and personality disorder. Meds didn't seem to be the solution but she kept at it, finally underwent ECT at a hospital in Boulder. She improved and returned to Cheyenne to live with Chris and I and go back to school. 

Nevertheless, she persisted. 

That's one thing she always wanted -- an education. Through it all, she spoke of that often. She enrolled again at LCCC. She depended on the Help Center for guidance. She struggled at first. Nevertheless, she persisted. She passed her classes and discovered that she liked school, maybe for the first time. That's one thing that people don't always understand about community colleges. They allow all kinds of learners to get a second chance. May be you aren't ready at 18. Maybe you get married young and find out 20 years later that you want an education. Maybe you're a military veteran looking for new directions. 

I was a university dropout, a scholarship student at a big university who lost his way. I worked and traveled. Four years after graduating high school, I enrolled in the local community college and started in the fall of 1973. My classmates had already graduated from four-year universities and were negotiating adulthood. I felt a bit lost. But the classes I took were wonderful. Contemporary American Literature. Public Speaking. Art History. The teachers were terrific and somehow I was interested in each subject. At night, I worked as an orderly in the Substance Abuse Unit at the county hospital. The nurses locked me in with the alcoholics who had been scooped out of the gutters or arrested for raising a ruckus. This is where they came instead of jail. Many had been to jail. We played cards and smoked. They told tall tales, most of which were true, I suspect. I learned a lot. On quiet nights, I studied. On wild nights, we orderlies wrestled rowdy drunks. That was some year. By May, I had enough credits to graduate and returned to a four-year university where I graduated in two years. 

We all have our stories. Annie now has hers. She is very excited about graduating. So very excited. In mid-June, she moves to Laramie to start summer classes at UW.  She will be thirty-something by the time she graduates. She worries about that, wondering if she will fit in with younger students, make friends in the larger context of a university, be able to excel in upper division classes. Chris and I worry. Annie is an introvert with ongoing psychological issues. She likes her time alone but sometimes too much time alone is bad for her mental health. 

Nevertheless, she persisted. 

Happy graduation, Annie. Enjoy it all!

P.S.: Annie posted a blog today from her POV. Read "How I got here -- graduating from college class of 2022" at WyoGal.