In Flannery O'Connor's Garden of Life, chickens walk backward

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the intersection of writers and gardening. I mentioned that Flannery O'Connor's Andalusia in Milledgeville, Georgia, had gardens and peacocks. Yesterday, as I looked up writers with Savannah ties, I came across the fact that O'Connor was born and mostly raised in Savannah. Her childhood home is now site of a museum and gardens. Now I have two O'Connor-related gardens to visit next time I'm in Georgia. One of the more interesting facts on the museum's web site, was a snippet about a 6-year-old O'Connor and her trained chicken. She trained a chicken to walk backward. This apparently caught the attention of Pathe News Service and they came to Savannah to see for themselves. They filmed O'Connor and her talented chicken and it ended up in a 1931 newsreel that theater patrons would see before the cartoon and double feature. The writer sarcastically noted later that this was quite an event for her and everything that followed was an "anticlimax." The writer died of lupus at 39. Her anticlimax included some fine writing. She's influenced thousands of us with her spare style featuring "grotesques" (her term) of the South. Plenty of humor too. Not sure if any story or novel featured a backward-walking chicken. Who would believe that? The Misfit?

Sallie Kincaid finds her inner moonshiner in Jeanette Wells' "Hang the Moon"

I participate in the Historical Fiction Book Lovers site on Facebook. I have discovered some real gems set in the 1920s suggested by members of the group. A few clunkers, too. But one I did see was "Hang the Moon" by Jeanette Wells. You may recognize her name from her memoir, "The Glass Castle," in which she recounts her wild family life and her success at transcending it. I recently watched the movie on one of the streaming services. Woody Harrelson is very good as the father with a million dreams that never pan out. It leaves a mark on Wells and her siblings.

The setting of "Hang the Moon" is one reason I chose the book. I'm writing a series of novels set in post-war Colorado, the first in 1919 and the second in 1922. I read books from that era to absorb the atmosphere but also the process of driving a Ford Model T. The moonshine world of the South is fascinating and violent. Prohibition brought new opportunities for those who lived in the hills. But making whiskey was going on before 1920 due to the South's blue laws and other restrictions on getting schnockered. That tradition continued after prohibition was repealed due to the same Bible-Thumpers who proposed it in the first place. Many of the first racers on the NASCAR circuit learned how to drive avoiding revenooers on the twisty roads of the Appalachians. One of my early memories was "Thunder Road" and Robert Mitchum hotrodding down winding roads to get the hooch to market.

Wells has seen rural poverty first-hand and puts that background to good use when she writes about growing up in Prohibition America. It's a gritty historical novel. I ran into a couple of slow stretches in the narrative and thought of quitting but it was a good story so I kept on and glad I did.

In it, a young woman named Sallie Kincaid bucks the odds and becomes the only woman rumrunner in Virginia during Prohibition. Haven't read many books with this story line. It takes the author a long time to get to the rumrunning. Sallie Kincaid likes fast cars. She has a derring-do spirit. I would have liked to see more action during what must have been a harrowing profession. She takes us along the first time the drivers risk capture to take five cars filled with shine to Roanoke. An excellent chase scene. There's also a showdown at a rural hospital between the rumrunners and the thug sheriff brought in to stop it.

It took awhile to get a fully-formed picture of Sallie. Her Aunt Mattie is rough on her but we don't get a good look inside her to see her motivation. Why does Sallie stick around her large small-town family when she has other options including marriage or just moving to a new place to make a fresh start? I'm being grumpy, I know, but the book left me wanting more. Cover art shows a young woman in a dress working under a 1920s-era automobile. But the author doesn't get her under (and into) that car for a couple hundred pages. 

The novel really picks up its tempo when Sallie takes over the family businesses and finds her inner moonshiner. She's almost as ruthless as her daddy but we do see her conscience at work throughout. There are some key revelations as the novel approaches the end. It was a worthy read. I checked it out at the Libby site. I was pleasantly surprised to find it there.

Making, transporting and drinking whiskey were boys' clubs -- no girls allowed. That's what makes Sallie Kincaid so special and so exciting. Her Hatfield/McCoy-style battles with the gritty Bond brothers has a bigger impact when a mere slip of a girl threatens the status quo. She finds new and interesting ways to wage war on the Bonds. A few of them borrow tactics pioneered in the Great War. Tom, her friend who’s been to war, melts down with shell-shock when the gunplay starts.

The Great War changed everything.

Wyoming Democrats call out Republican extremist

The following appeared on the Facebook page for Republican Megan Degenfelder for WY State Superintendent of Public Instruction:

It’s no wonder the Democrats have spent the last week attacking and trying to silence me from speaking at the Western Conservative Summit. I will not be silenced! I remain as committed as ever for fighting for our Wyoming Students and families.

She added a link to her speech which I won’t add here. Suffice to say it’s taken from the right-wing Christian Nationalist playbook.

Here's the reply from the Wyoming Democrats:

Folks:

It looks like we struck a nerve with the Superintendent of Public Education, eh?

Here’s the deal: she’s dead wrong. Our goal has never been to silence her -- given her position and platform, we just think she ought to use her voice to support public education in Wyoming, not spew extremist right-wing rhetoric alongside the founder of a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as a hate group. 

And for the record, we’re going to call out her (and others) for their words and actions as public officials. Holding the other side accountable is one of our most important duties as a political party.

So, if you’re of the opinion that our elected officials shouldn’t get a free pass, I hope you’ll consider joining the cause by becoming an investor in our party. Whether it’s a one-time donation or you choose to be a recurring donor, everything helps and it all goes towards the work of making sure Wyoming isn’t a one-party state.

And, Superintendent Degenfelder, if you happen to read this email, we’ll gladly let up when you decide that supporting public education, educators, students, and families in Wyoming is more important than being the mouthpiece for failed and false rightwing ideology. Deal? 

In Solidarity, Joe M. Barbuto, Chair, Wyoming Democratic Party

WyoFile: "Gutting arts funding is a bad look for Wyoming's future"

Pinedale artist Sue Sommers wrote a fine op-ed in WyoFile today advocating for support of the Wyoming Arts Council. The header says a lot: "Gutting arts funding is a bad look for Wyoming's future."

The subhead sums up Sue's approach to the issue: 

A penchant for creative problem-solving makes artists resilient pillars of our communities, which is why they need state support.

I worked at the Arts Council from 1991-2016. It's made a huge contribution to Wyoming. The Wyoming State Legislature's Joint Travel, Recreation, Wildlife, and Cultural Resources Committee meets June 12-13 in Evanston. The future of the WAC is up for discussion. The me, it's a non-issue. If you want Wyoming to have a future, support arts and culture. I know there is something called "the Wyoming lifestyle." For some, that's wide-open spaces and The Big Sky. For others, it's ranching and cowboying. For some, it's technology and the future. For the narrow-minded, it's a society open only to those who are a rabidly conservative as they are and the rest of you can STFU. We've seen a lot of the latter the past seven years. 

I see a creative Wyoming, home to an amazing array of artists and arts groups. That's the future the Wyoming Arts Council sees for the state. Is it how the Legislature envisions to future? Tell them what you want. I wrote emails to chairs Wendy Schuler (Senate) and Sandy Newsome (House). They're not my reps in the Legislature but they'll play a big part in the meeting's procedures. Your neighbor or a local rancher may be on the committee. Email them today. 

He may be "A Gentleman in Moscow," but he doesn't get out much anymore

In a May 16 post, I was only a few hours into reading Amor Towles "A Gentleman in Moscow." Things seemed especially grim at that juncture so I blogged this:

The Count is charming and it’s great fun to read about him and his situation even though you know it’s going to end terribly. Not as terribly as it did for the Romanovs but still terrible. The ending of Book 1 clued me in on a possible fate for the Count.

It helps to read a novel to the end before commenting. I won't spoil the ending but will say that it was not what I foresaw. Towles has a way of planting clues that may be MacGuffins. Very clever. He's also a great writer with a flair for language that I only see in the best books. When I open a book, I want to go for a ride and Towles takes me on an extraordinary one.

The world is filled with intriguing cities and Moscow proves to be one. But it's not a locale I turn to automatically. "I feel like reading a big Moscow book today, one from the scintillating Soviet era." Most of us know Moscow through one of the long-dead classic Russian writers. Others have been fascinated with its dramatic World War II battles, me included. The real stories behind the battles for Moscow and Stalingrad are gruesome and uplifting. Remember, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were allies then.

Alexander Rostov is an aristocrat. Many of them were sent to the gulag or executed during the regime's early years. Count Rostov is threatened with both until it comes to light that he did a favor once for one of the Soviet bosses now in charge. He is sentenced to a house arrest at the Metropol Hotel, the swankiest inn in Moscow. The Count already lives there in a luxurious suite. The bosses move him out into a cramped room in the attic. If he leaves the hotel, he will be shot. So Count Rostov tries to make the best of it. Beginning fiction writers are often told that a compelling character faces a challenge. The story is in how that character reacts. And that's what we have in this novel. He's no longer a world traveler and man about Moscow. His bank accounts have been frozen. He is persona non grata to those Soviets who know which side their bread is buttered on (it's the Red side).

The long journey through the count's life is worth it. Many surprises await you.

Donuts that are pretty as a picture

Donuts!

Haven’t given them much thought the past couple decades. They once were a regular morning feature, coffee and donuts. You know it was a good day -- or a long meeting was ahead -- when greeted with a box of donuts when you walked into work. Sugar and flour never tasted so good. Therein lies the problem. Carbs and sugar are not on my diabetic wife Chris's menu. Carbs, butter, and cooking oil led to my heart attack in 2013.

But I ate a donut this morning. They were cooked by The Donut Shop in Cheyenne. Most people know it by its pink exterior paint festooned with multicolored donut varieties. Daughter Annie, the artist, was so taken with the place’s color scheme that she created a painting in the place’s image. When it was finished, she framed it and we trundled it over to the Southside shop. There’s a café on one side and a Dollar General across the street. Donuts are in the display cases when it opens at 5 a.m. This means that the owners are up earlier to cook. Chris worked at a donut shop for a brief time. It was one of her three jobs. She was in the shop at 5 a.m. and the cook had already been there for hours. She worked the morning rush and then went home.

The Donut Shop won a 2022 “Best of Cheyenne” award and the framed plaque hangs in the dining room that has a half-dozen tables.  Bonnie the owner says she will hang Annie’s painting for all to see. We ordered a dozen donuts. Bonnie wanted to pay for them but we insisted on paying our own way. Many struggling artists have traded their work for food. Those times could be ahead for Annie. This was not one of those times.

The golden glazed donut I ate was delicious. Nostalgia in a box. Annie and I each took one and brought the rest downtown to the PrideFest committee readying the plaza for the afternoon event. Son Kevin is on the committee and built the stage. He’s also on the security team that’s a must for any Pride Month event this year what with all the right-wing loonies on the loose. Donuts might be a great peace offering in tumultuous times. This might be one of those times.

Donuts!

The craft and dedication of gardening and writing

A Facebook post by musician, Mississippian, and one-time Wyomingite Jason Burge caused me to go on a tour of writers' gardens. Jason showed a little envelope of zinnia seeds from Eudora Welty's garden. His aunt sent them. What a gift. It caused me to seek out Welty's garden. The Eudora Welty House & Garden is located in Jackson, Miss. It's the house where Welty grew up and wrote her stories. I've read her "One Writer's Beginnings" more than once. I read some of her stories in high school but they hardly made a dent in my consciousness. I've read others since and now I know what kind of craft goes into them. I also know the craft and dedication that goes into a garden. It takes time. You may plant something today that you may never see. Others will.

The web site says this:

Conversations with Welty, her photographs, and her mother’s detailed garden journals guide our historic restoration. Welty asked that the garden not be turned into something it wasn’t, explaining it was never a show garden -- merely a work of love, typical of its time.

A work of love. There is a 20-minute audio tour of the garden here. In it, Susan Haltom leads the tour and Welty’s niece Mary Alice Welty White reads author’s excerpts. Interesting to note that Haltom refers to each section as “garden rooms” which I assume is a Southern expression as I’ve never heard it Out West. We hear from Welty’s stories and novels including “A Garden of Green,” “The Robber Bridegroom,” and “The Optimist’s Daughter.” I’ve never read these stories but I will and notice the sections that call out roses and camellias and many other growing things in Welty’s garden. I don’t know how many writers’ homes feature gardens. I recall a fine one on the Thurber House grounds in Columbus. I know Flannery O’Connor’s house in Georgia features a big garden as well as peacocks. There should be a national garden tour of writers’ homes. Is there?   

It can't happen here! Oh yes it can!

Susan Stubson of Casper has been writing Wyoming-based op-ed columns for many years. Most have to do with her family and her husband Tim who once was a state legislator and ran unsuccessfully for a Wyoming's lone U.S. House seat in 2016. Susan is a fine pianist and I've been on hand to hear her perform. She once sat on the board of the Wyoming Arts Council where I worked for 25 years. You could not find a more determined advocate of the arts and arts education. 

Sunday's New York Times op-ed section featured a column by Susan, "What Christian Nationalism Has Done to My State and My Faith is a Sin." It takes guts to write a column like this for the most Liberal of Mainstream Media. She could have written it for my modest blog and a few Wyomingites, liberals mostly, would have read it and nodded their heads. But a NYT op-ed -- that gets attention. This is an era when getting attention from Christian Nationalists is a dangerous proposition.

She opens her column with an anecdote from her husband's 2016 campaign:

I first saw it while working the rope line at a monster-truck rally during the 2016 campaign by my husband, Tim, for Wyoming’s lone congressional seat. As Tim and I and our boys made our way down the line, shaking hands and passing out campaign material, a burly man wearing a “God bless America” T-shirt and a cross around his neck said something like, “He’s got my vote if he keeps those [epithet] out of office,” using a racial slur. What followed was an uncomfortable master class in racism and xenophobia as the man decanted the reasons our country is going down the tubes. God bless America.

Those of us paying attention during the 2016 presidential election had similar experiences, especially if you were active in the Republican Party. But it goes way beyond that. Those "God, Guns, Trump" signs still adorn pick-up bumpers in the Wyoming capital of Cheyenne. We are 180 highway miles from the Stubson's city of Casper. We are rivals and different in many ways but Susan's description of WYO GOP antics was on full display here during the legislative session. I refer you to WyoFile's coverage of the session to get insight on the debacle.

Read Susan's column and despair. The problem of Christian Nationalism is right out there in the open. Trump turned religion and hate into commodities, one being trumpeted by those who ban books and drag shows across the country. It is magnified when you live in a rural state such as Wyoming. Doesn't have to be that way but that's the course Republicans decided to follow. Wyoming Rev. Rodger McDaniel wondered on Facebook recently if Florida wasn't the Berlin of the 1930s. You know the one, the creeping evil theatre-goers experience when they go to "Cabaret." If you know your history, you see how it happened -- one tiny bite at a time. Fascism isn't a special-effects movie monster -- it's your preacher or priest, your neighbor, your cousin. 

“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

This quote has been attributed to Nobel-Prize-winning writer Sinclair Lewis but researchers do not vouch for the exact attribution. But it’s worth repeating in these times. For more of Lewis’s biting critique of life in the U.S., look up some of his other quotes or read “Babbitt,” “Main Street,” or "It Can't Happen Here." For some strange reason, this last one about a dystopian America shot up the bestseller charts after the 2016 election. 

Lynda Rutledge takes us on a magical mystery tour in West with Giraffes

I meant to post this as soon as I finished the book. Here it is.

A runaway teen – Woodrow “Woody” Wilson Nickel -- is fascinated with two shipwrecked African giraffes and signs on with a crusty Old Man to transport them from the East Coast to the San Diego Zoo. The year is 1938. The Depression is still loose upon the land and evil lurks overseas. A road trip with giraffes seems like just the thing.

The book opens with a prologue from the year 2025. A healthcare worker in a VA hospital comes across a deceased patient’s old army footlocker. In it, she finds a porcelain toy giraffe from the San Diego Zoo and a stack of writing tablets. It’s the saga of Woody’s trip. The writer intersperses scenes from the journals with a look at Woody at 105 struggling to write it all down. He writes, talks gibberish, fends off hovering healthcare workers, and imagines a giraffe outside the window. The reader roots for him to get down his story and we know he will as the tale depends on it.

During the journey in a specially-outfitted truck, Woody encounters charlatans, circus freaks, hobos in Hoovervilles, and a budding love interest. His mentor, the Old Man, works overtime to keep the trek on track. There’s a love interest, too, in a young woman Augusta (Red) who pretends to be a Life Magazine photographer and accompanies the giraffe convoy in a stolen Packard.

As I’ve written before, I dig road trips, going on them and reading about them. It was rough travel, suited to the realities of 1938. But I loved reading about it. It did drag in some spots – the always difficult middle section of the novel -- and the journey’s ending seemed a bit anticlimactic. But it’s a trip I’d go on again.

 

A look at the past and possible future in A Gentleman in Moscow and California

I’m reading two books concurrently. One is labeled historical fiction and is Amor Towles’ “A Gentleman in Moscow.” The other is a sci-fi post-Apocalyptic novel “California” by Edan Lepucki. Meanwhile, here I am, living in the present tense.

Towles wrote a historical novel I am very fond of, “The Lincoln Highway.” The title grabbed my attention because I live a mile or maybe two from the route of the original Lincoln Highway. A history marker in downtown Cheyenne speaks at length about it, calling it “The First Transcontinental Highway.” A huge bust of Abraham Lincoln marks the high point on the Laramie Range where the highway crests and then shoots down Telephone Canyon, a long, looping downhill run that is an adventure during a blizzard (if the road’s open) and leads you to Laramie’s fine craft beers and indie restaurants if you make it.

An NPR reviewer in 2021 described the book this way:

The Lincoln Highway is a joyride. Amor Towles' new Great American Road Novel tails four boys — three 18-year-olds who met in a juvenile reformatory, plus a brainy 8-year-old — as they set out from Nebraska in June, 1954, in an old Studebaker in pursuit of a better future. If this book were set today, their constant detours and U-turns would send GPS into paroxysms of navigational recalculations. But hitch onto this delightful tour de force and you'll be pulled straight through to the end, helpless against the inventive exuberance of Towles' storytelling.

So, it’s 1954 in Nebraska and points south and east. Quite a ride. As an admirer of “road novels,” this is a great one. “West with Giraffes” by Lynda Rutledge is too although I’ve already written about it. Must mention here that Kerouac’s “On the Road” features a pivotal scene at Wild West Week in 1948 Cheyenne. What we have in miles and miles of asphalt and concrete are roads. Recently, I was pleased to see that Gen. Pershing, commander of all the armies who married a young woman from Cheyenne (a strategic move – she was the daughter of a U.S. senator), commissioned in 1921 a roadmap of the U.S. showing the Lincoln Highway as a priority number one route and the road from Cheyenne to Denver as priority number two. Take that, Colorado! Pershing hated your guts.

“A Gentleman in Moscow” is a very different story. It is a big novel and I just had to have a hardbound copy from B&N.com. It is 1922 in Moscow, U.S.S.R., and Count Alexander Rostov has been quarantined at Moscow’s famous Metropol Hotel. He’s not sick. But he has the ability to infect the populace with highfalutin attitudes, a crime in the new communist state, where everyone is equal but some, we suspect, are more equal than others. The count is a snob and what we might call a ladykiller. He’s accustomed to women swooning over him and the pickings are quite slim on the corridors of the commie hotel. Still, he finds a way. Government apparatchiks check up on him and his dwellings and they try to train hotel staff to not call the count Count or Your excellency. To no avail.

The Count is charming and it’s great fun to read about him and his situation even though you know it’s going to end terribly. Not as terribly as it did for the Romanovs but still terrible. The ending of Book 1 clued me in on a possible fate for the Count.

Lepucki first got my attention through a recent interview in the Los Angeles Times. While most of it is about her new novel of time travel and family, “Time’s Mouth,” “California” is about family and apocalypse. Very down to earth and that’s the way the author likes it:

“I want there to be sex in my books. I want there to be periods and childbirth and feeling bad. There’s a lot of vomiting,” she says, laughing. “I feel like in a lot of contemporary fiction, the characters are not in their bodies in the way that I think in life we are.”

I read that and agreed that there is not a lot of periods and childbirth and sickness in most books. If described at all, sickness often is described romantically, as in the ravings of a sick Cathy in Wuthering Heights or the pining of a tubercular John Keats ("Bright Star" a fine Jane Campion film about Keats and Fanny Brawne). There is shit in “California” and it stinks. But that’s not the main story. A pregnant woman and her husband try to navigate the confusing and dangerous future world where all things fall apart. I’m only 120 pages into my Kindle version checked out from Libby but the author has my attention.

Is it wise to read historical novel and post-apocalyptic fiction at the same time? God only knows, if there was a God and he/she/it actually knew anything.

Your stories will survive you -- write or record them while you still can

I was thinking about this today as I went through some tests at the local hospital.

I like the idea of a National Service Program for 18-21-year-olds. Not a military draft – that didn’t work so well – but a program that puts youth to work doing good deeds. As a college dropout, I found jobs in hospitals. I was called orderly and not nursing assistant or CAN. I was a guy wearing a white uniform that nurses and patients called on when they needed a strong body to perform various tasks: scoot a patient up in bed or turn a patient so a nurse could get at the malfunctioning part of the body, transport patients to X-rays, take temps and BP and fill water pitchers. 

This was Florida so listening to old folks was also a keen skill. Young folks aren’t so good at listening to old people. Too bad – therein those aging bodies are many great stories. So why not put youngsters to work listening to old people’s stories while they also help them get around. Welcome to the Corps of Willing Listeners! They’d get paid a decent wage to push wheelchairs and hear stories. 

If they want to write some of those stories down and turn them into novels, so much the better. Maybe some of them can be made into memoirs for the family, something to remember grandpa by when you see that old face in a photo but can’t really place him. “That was grandpa: he was wounded at the Battle of the Bulge.” “There’s grandma: she raised 10 kids in a house without running water and an outhouse out back.” “There’s Uncle Jack – he was funny when he had a few drinks.” And so on.

Young people are energetic and smart and impatient. Old people tend to be tired and smart and patient and sometimes impatient because they know they are on the downward slide to the grave. I am 72 and that’s my reality. I love a good story but I can tell when the listener isn’t listening. Today a tech in his 20s took me to X-ray and took pictures of my chest. He saw my High Plains Arboretum vest and we talked gardening while the machines hummed. We talked about the difficulties of raising plants and veggies in our climate. I could tell he's had mixed results and I suggested he drop by the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens and ask some questions of the horticulturalists. 

Writing skills are a key element in storytelling. It's good to be able to tell a story on a blog or written on paper or told in a podcast or any of the myriad other ways we relate info. I have some writing skills so I can tell stories to those people in the future who see my e-photo online and wonder about me. Who is it? Why is he in the photo? What did he do for a living? Was he nice? Did he love someone and did someone love him? How did his kids turn out? I’ll leave behind some stories to inspire or bore to tears but I won’t care, will I? I will be stardust. I hope a few of my stories survive.

Mary Pat Fennessey looks for "Small Mercies" in Dennis Lehane's latest novel

Reading a Dennis Lehane novel is no walk in the park. It is if your park is filled with intrigue, betrayal, revenge, murder, drug overdoses, child abuse, and race riots. You get all of that in his latest novel, “Small Mercies.” It’s a harrowing ride through the Boston South End we read about in “Mystic River,” "Shutter Island," and the Kenzie-Gennaro mystery series (“Gone, Baby, Gone”).

The setting is the very hot end of summer in 1974 Boston. Americans are on edge due to the Saudi oil embargo. Lehane writes that everyone was driving around with at least a half-tank of gas so they didn’t have to spend their time in long gas lines. But there’s a bigger issue in the mostly-white areas of the city: court-ordered busing. Some of the Irish-American kids are going to be bused to a formerly all-black high school in a black neighborhood. Black children will be bused into all-white South End schools. The setting is about as territorial as it gets and a bomb is set to go off.

That bomb is Mary Pat Fennessey. She’s a native of the Southie projects, daughter of an abused household who passes on some of that abuse to her own family. One husband has been killed and the second one is estranged. Her son Noel returned from Vietnam with a habit and he dies from an overdose. Mary Pat only has her 17-year-old daughter Jules. Jules goes out with friends one night and doesn’t come home. A young black man has been murdered and Jules and her friends were somehow involved. Everyone tells Mary Pat to be patient, her daughter will turn up, you know how kids are. But Mary Pat has been pushed too far this time. Irish mobsters try to buy her silence and that tells her one thing: her daughter is dead because she’s witnessed a murder and someone is going to pay. Many someones pay dearly at Mary Pat’s hand.

Lehane does a wonderful job weaving Mary Pat’s vengeance with rowdy anti-busing rallies, the oil embargo, and the poverty and dysfunction of Irish-American Boston. The author takes us on a tour of neighborhoods and the entire city. Even Sen. Ted Kennedy makes an appearance. This is what is happening in Boston in August and September 1974.

The scene seems eerily familiar to a reader in 2023. Lehane makes class resentment very clear through the eyes of his characters. The inner-city white Boston neighborhoods have sent more kids to Vietnam than almost any other place in America. Most young men get drafted because they work menial jobs and do not have college deferments like all those kids across the river in Cambridge. When Mary Pat visits Harvard to seek help from her campus janitor ex-husband, you feel her disdain for the hippies in the city and the privileged white students protesting the war which won’t be declared over for another year.

If all of this sounds familiar, it is. These class resentments have been buildings for decades and politicians and media blowhards on the Right have tapped into it. It’s sad, and the book is sad. It’s a personal story. You feel Mary Pat’s rage in your gut and this reader is both shocked and saddened by her vendetta.

I lived in Boston 1972-73. I missed the fireworks of 1974. If I had been paying attention, I might have felt the city’s aching heart. Dennis Lehane’s gift to us is we get to feel what it was like to live in the Boston of almost 50 years ago. One hell of a story.

I looked at “Small Mercies” as a historical novel. It’s still a rough place in 2023. Real estate web site Upgraded Home talked listed Boston’s 10 most dangerous neighborhoods. South End – Southie -- was number three.

Our advice? If you find yourself in South End, keep an eye out for thieves, don’t get into arguments with people who just came from the local bars, and get a security system for your home.

And then there’s this from a recent issue of Boston Magazine:

In the last few decades, the South End has rapidly gentrified, once again becoming one of the city’s most stylish neighborhoods.

Mary Pat might not recognize the place. Then again, she might.

We say goodbye to our beautiful cat Lacey

Our cat Lacey died yesterday. She was old, 18 or 20, which is ancient for a cat. She was a Holstein variety, mottled black-and-white like the namesake cow. Chris, Annie, and I took her to the vet after she went a week without eating. She was still getting around but losing weight fast. She spent most of her time wrapped up in the cat bed in my  home office. We had watched her snuggle up to the heater vent for awhile and we put an electric blanket at the bottom of her bed. She seemed to like that.

Sometimes it's easy to tell when a pet has reached its end. We've had so many. Annie's Shelter dog Coco had a huge tumor on her head and blood tests revealed cancer. She was still pretty young but we knew she was in for months of pain so we took her for one last walk and opted to say goodbye at Avenues Pet Clinic. We spread her ashes in her favorite pond in the park. Not sure if that was legal but we were crying too hard to care.

Annie found Lacey five years ago at the Loveland, Colo., Animal Shelter. It's a really nice shelter, newer than most in the area. Annie, Chris and I had come to find a kitten to keep Annie company in her new Fort Collins apartment. So many cute kittens. Annie didn't show much interest so we passed by until we got to a large cage with one noisy occupant -- Lacey. A very pretty cat with a very loud voice. She came right up and pressed her face against the cage, begging for a touch. Annie obliged. I read the cat's description: "Dipstick, healthy older cat, declawed, female." As Annie played with the old lady cat with the dumb name, Chris and I found other cute kittens that Annie roundly ignored. We knew which cat Annie was going home with.

As it turned out, Annie left Fort Collins shortly thereafter and moved home to Cheyenne. She brought the cat with her, now called Lacey because that seemed to fit her better and it reminded Annie of the Irish Lace she likes so much. Teddy, our big male cat, was not amused. He's an outdoor cat who prowls the neighborhood and everyone knows him. He's a hunter. Annie adopted him as a kitten along with another kitten she named Bubba. Teddy and Bubba grew up together until Bubba disappeared one night and we never saw him again. We thought it oddly coincidental that a big owl made his home at the top of the neighbor's blue spruce around the same time. Owls are hunters too.

Teddy and Lacey did not get along. Teddy ruled the roost and Lacey was old and cranky. Teddy would whack at her with his big paw and Lacey backed up and hissed like a cobra. With no claws and small stature, she had to be vocal and scary. We also found out quickly that she was deaf. To make up for the silence, she filled the house with vocals. You always knew where she was, and maybe that was her point.

When Annie first took her outside on a nice spring day, she seemed stunned. It was all new to her, this outdoors stuff. She wandered through the yard sniffing at everything. She discovered grasshoppers and it was one prey should could snatch without claws. All that summer, she captured hoppers in her mouth and they bounded around our house for months.

Lacey found a home in my office. I write every morning and she seemed mostly content with sleeping at my feet or in her bed. When I rubbed her head, she looked up at me with those big eyes and seemed a bit surprised that I existed. 

Annie and I looked into her eyes yesterday as the vet administered first the numbing shot and then the kill shot. It was sad to see the light go out of her eyes. Before her spirit flew, she uttered one more meow. 

She had such a beautiful presence in the world. I know I am going to wake up in the middle of the night and hear her. I may hear her over the coming years. I may hear her when the light goes out of my eyes, welcoming me to The Great Beyond, where cats have their voice, their hearing, and their claws, and where I can spend eternity with the pets and people who made this life living. 

Go West, young man -- historical fiction along the open roads of the West

My two most recent reads were “on the road” style of historical fiction novels: “West with Giraffes” by Lynda Rutledge and “Gone, the Redeemer” by Scott Gates. I enjoyed both and probably would not have found them if I wasn’t part of the Historical Fiction Book Lovers group on Facebook. These people like to read and recommend some fantastic books that interest me now as I finish writing my second historical fiction novel.

“Gone, the Redeemer” by Scott Gates is a rollicking good journey across the U.S. of 1900 and its pivotal scene takes place in my home state of Colorado. It’s in the first-person voice of army deserter Thomas Sparkman and the reader gets to decide if he is a reliable narrator or unreliable narrator or falls somewhere in-between. Thomas runs into some amazing characters along the way including a manikin (from the Dutch manneken meaning "small man") named James who is escaping a circus, a giant who is handy with his pistols, and an Apache woman seeking her errant husband.

The bad guys are memorable too, notably the uber-capitalist Junior John. Thomas robs Junior John twice and that is almost two times too many.

Denver readers will recognize the streets of downtown Denver, mentions of infamous conman Soapy Smith, the interiors of the Brown Palace Hotel, and the old stockyards.

The author leaves us hanging in a couple places meaning there are a couple of story lines that don't get wrapped up. Also, there are some abrupt endings to chapters where the author doesn't make the most of the tension of the scene he's set up. I got a bit frustrated reading the novel in Kindle format because it's so annoying to go back to previous chapters. But that's my mistake in not going to the library or buying a hard copy, you lazy cheapskate.

The novel's ending, well, it may be a happy culmination of our protagonist's journey from wartime Cuba to his lover in California. Or it may not --- that's the risk the reader takes when he embarks on a journey with a first-person narrator. But it is a journey worth taking.

"Gone, the Redeemer" is published by Blue Ink Press, a small publisher in North Carolina. Lot of good books come out of these presses and they don’t get the attention they deserve.

Next time: I travel "West with Giraffes."

Cheyenne Botanic Gardens celebrates Earth Day

What better place to celebrate Earth Day at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens on Saturday, April 22, 11 a.m.-3:30 p.m.? Tour the Conservatory, enjoy the spring tulip show, have lunch at the Chicago Dog House food truck and attend a series of classes. Bring in and old computer or other electronics for recycling and Blue Peak will provide you with a free Earth Day plant. Fee for the three "Let's Talk About Water-wise Landscaping" series of classes is $20. Please pre-register. 

High Plains Gardening, 11 a.m.-noon: Horticulturist Isaiah Smith will be presenting the steps you can take to turn your yard into a water wise landscape while increasing the aesthetic appeal. Starting with small steps to a full renovation of your existing landscape you will learn how to garden in the High Plains successfully.

Crevice Gardening, 1-2 p.m.: Isaiah Smith will discuss the history and techniques of crevice gardening. Ready to learn more and plant a mountain in your front yard? There will also be tips to how to construct and plant your very own crevice garden.

Turf-grass Management, 2:30-3:30 p.m.: Do you want to manage your High Plains lawn with less fuss and fewer inputs? Director Scott Aker will give you some tips and tricks that could help you have a nicer lawn while using less water, less fertilizer, and less herbicide to control weeds. 

FMI: 307-637-6458 or botanic.org

I'll be volunteering at the front desk from 2:30-5 p.m. to field your questions and then send you to someone who knows the answers. 

 

Saturday Morning Round-up: Pretty Flowers, a Cornhusker Goes South, and Outrage in Tennessee

It’s mid-April and we’re experiencing our usual schizoid mix of warm days in the 70s interrupted by bursts of snow and cold. Humans are confused but bulb plants (amaryllis, tulips, daffodils, crocus) continue their rise into the sunshine. I have some nice yellow daffodils and purple crocuses emerging in my front yard garden. They are getting extra sunshine this spring because we took down the dying blue spruce on the house’s west side so the shade is gone. I’ll plant annuals in the gardens and maybe grow some cherry tomatoes to add some veggies to the mix. I’ve always wanted tomatoes in my front yard although critters may prove to be a problem. Wish me luck.

I volunteer at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens this afternoon. At the front desk, I am surrounded by blooming things, mostly tulips who have already passed their prime and gloxinias which are beautiful but eerily have no scent. The scent of orange and lemon blossoms drift in from the Orangerie. The Tilted Tulip Gift Shop sells the nicest smelling candles, their scents drifting my way even when they aren’t alight. April is when I see the first visitors with sunburns from walking around the lake or strolling through the gardens. They bear beatific looks and sly grins, as if they can’t believe they have survived another Wyoming winter.

My university newspaper, published five days a week and independent of the University of Florida since 1971, is having a blast goading the new UF president, a toady Republican named Ben Sasse. If the name looks familiar, it’s because Sasse retired from his seat as one of Nebraska’s two U.S. senators to take the job. We know Gov. DeSantis played a role in this since he is working overtime to sabotage both the public school K-12 system and the state’s public universities. The Independent Florida Alligator mocks Sasse for ignoring their reporters’ calls and e-mails. He’s kept a low profile since being heckled at a public gathering when he first appeared with his Cornhusker roots and started telling Floridians what to do with their flagship university. It doesn’t look good for him even with his nose firmly planted in DeSantis’s backside. I worked at the Alligator for two semesters in 1976 as a G.A. reporter, General Assignment because I arrived with no specialty such as sports or local government and I knew a tiny bit about everything because I was an English major, the academic equivalent of G.A. Good luck Alligator – we are cheering you on from Nebraska’s superior western neighbor.

Wyoming GOP legislators are no prize but they take second place to their colleagues in Tennessee. The GOP ran two African-American Democrats out of their seats because they had the temerity to join a demonstration at the state capitol. The demo was aimed at gun violence, the most recent murders happening March 27 when six people, including three kids, were gunned down at a Nashville Christian school. The Tenn. GOP like their national leaders have refused to do anything to limit access to automatic weapons. Instead, they send meaningless “thoughts and prayers” to victims’ families and scamper to Indianapolis for the national NRA convention (“14 Acres of Guns & Gear”). I’ll close this out with a quote from U.S. Army special counsel James Welch when hectored by Sen. Joseph McCarthy at a congressional hearing. From the History Channel web site:

“Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.” It was then McCarthy’s turn to be stunned into silence, as Welch asked, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” 

Saturday Morning Round-up: Raging Florida Man, Thoughts on Historical Fiction, and March Goes out Like a Lion

Saturday Morning Round-up

Florida continues to be a highly entertaining place to be from. The legislature keeps passing ridiculous bills and the Gov signs them. Meanwhile, the Disney Mouse continues to be a force to be reckoned with. How long can a leader of a state known for its tourist attractions keep biting the hand that feeds it? If you’ve ever been detained at the Orlando airport, you’ve seen the families arriving from all over the globe to go to Disney World. Hang around the airport long enough, and you can hear Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Italian, Esperanto. Overseas tourists bring their families and their money and most could not tell you what the “Never Say Gay Bill” has to do with the Magic Kingdom.

Thursday’s temps in Cheyenne were in the 50s with lots of sun and very little wind. Yesterday was all wind. We’re fortunate to not be in any of the country’s tornado hot spots this week. Some of the photos from Iowa, Illinois and Arkansas are frightening. Chris, a big “Twister” fan, said that the videos from yesterday were so ominous that they looked fake. She contends “Twister” twisters look more real. Thanks for smart phones with great cameras, we get close-ups of these powerful storms. Thanks to drones, we get close-up shots of the devastation on the ground. I keep reminding myself that these videos are real. I keep reminding myself that real people died and were injured in these spectacular storms. I keep reminding myself how lucky I am.

What is a historical novel? That’s a subject being kicked around on the Historical Fiction Book Lovers Facebook site. One person said it was any book that “captured the zeitgeist of a time and place.” I liked that. Others say it is either 30 or 50 years after the event being written about. There is some disagreement as to whether old classics written near to the time it happened should be included. I am an old classic so I realize that some of my favorite novels may not be historical fiction. “All Quiet on the Western Front,” for instance, was written by Erich Maria Remarque just a few years after the Great War he fought in. In the 1920s, it was not historical fiction. In the 21^st century, it is. Vietnam War books and those set in the turbulent 60s can be historical fiction or maybe not. Tim O’Brien’s “Going After Cacciato” was published in 1979 barely a decade after his service in Vietnam. It wasn’t historical fiction then but the American War in Southeast Asia was declared over in April 1975 and that’s 48 years ago. Any novels set during that time should be on the HF lists, right? Young people, especially, are reading Larry Heinemann’s “Paco’s Story” and Stephen Wright’s (the writer not the comedian) “Meditations in Green” as great books set in the long-ago time of the 1960s, back when their grandparents were young. I am writing historical fiction novels set in the U.S. after World War I. Two of my grandparents served in that war. It was old news in the 1950s when my Iowa Grandpa told us how he brought his horse to the first mechanized war. It seemed like ancient times to kids listening to their fathers’ WWII and Korean War tales. What are your thoughts on historical fiction?

Take a break from the raging wind and get over to the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. Spring is rough around here but you find tropical gardens and friendly people there. I volunteer at the Gardens and will be at the front desk from 2:30-5 p.m. Come on by and say hi.

The land of historical fiction is a great place to visit

I belong to the Historical Fiction Book Lovers Facebook group. I spend a lot of time there suggesting books on various topics. I'm surprised by the number of novels that I've read that are based on historical events or eras. One person in the group asked about Native American historical novels and I rattled off some titles: "Mean Spirit" by Chickasaw writer Linda Hogan, "Children of the Lightning" by Kathleen O'Neal Gear, and "Ridgeline" by Michael Punke. Hogan's 1990 book is about the infamous Osage murders in Oklahoma in which tribal members were murdered for their oil rights. If it sounds familiar, it's also the subject of the the non-fiction book, "Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI" by David Grann. The book's been transformed into a movie due out in the fall. In it, the newly created FBI plays a role in exposing one of the grisliest conspiracies in U.S. history. While I knew about the Osage murders, I didn't know that the FBI blew the case wide open and that it helped propel it to bigger and stranger and unconstitutional things. But they're the good guys in this story. 

"Children of the Lightning" is an excellent novel by Wyoming writer Gear. The setting is the Central Florida East Coast and the Natives who made it their home in pre-Columbian times. Gear is not Native but she did her homework. I did some of my growing up in this part of Florida in the 1960s and 1970s. As I read the novel, I imagined Florida without the condos, tourist traps, and air conditioning. A slice of paradise but one with panthers and snakes, alligators and sharks. A wonderful read.

I reviewed "Ridgeline" for WyoFile in 2021. It tells the story of the Fetterman Fight (formerly called the Fetterman Massacre) along the Bozeman Trail's route in Wyoming. It's told from the POV of the tribes and cavalry with one particularly poignant view of the event through an officer's wife's secret diary. Punke wrote "The Revenant" in which mountain man Hugh Glass gets mauled by a bear and has to find his way home through the Wyoming wilds. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Glass but it's the imagined bear that steals the main scene. Grisly and scary. In high school, Punke was a history interpreter at Wyoming's Fort Laramie. He's also done his research on Red Cloud's War and has written a terrific novel. 

As I contemplated these books, I thought about books by Sherman Alexie, Debra Magpie Earling, and Joseph Marshall and poetry by Joy Harjo (Muscogee) and Simon Ortiz of the Acoma Pueblo. We're also seeing a revival of Native American series and movies. "Reservation Dogs" is an all-Native production that evokes the present and the past on the rez. Humorous and deadly serious. "Dark Winds" is another series featuring Navajo cops created by Anglo writer Tony Hillerman. In "1883," the bad guys are the killers from the Wyoming Cattlemen's Association and the guy in the white hat is an Indian who doesn't wear a hat. We writers like to see characters who defy stereotypes. We also like to see the times portrayed as what they probably were and not the whitewashed version as seen in old Hollywood westerns. 

I've read a lot of books. I have to mention one I'm reading now. "West with Giraffes" by Lynda Rutledge is a kooky tale of a 17-year-old hobo (Woody Nickel) in 1938 who volunteers to drive two giraffes from the East Coast to the San Diego Zoo. It's told from the POV of Nickel at 100 in a retirement home who writes his memoir and imagines one of the giraffes outside his window. 

I love the imagination writers bring to history. That's what fiction is all about. So many novels I admire were once just novels and now can be described as historical fiction. Every World War II novel including "Catch-22" and "Slaughterhouse-Five." Novels about the Old West, the Great Depression, even the 1960s and Vietnam. What was new is now old and that pretty much describes me too.

Nelson Algren lived the writer's life in the 1930s and J. Edgar Hoover was watching

I write a fan letter to fellow writer Colin Asher:

Dear Colin:

Just finished reading “Never a Lovely So Real.” I loved it. Your intro sections read more like an historical novel than standard biography. It helps that Nelson’s origins and his writing life were so real and unpredictable. Overall, I found out so much more about the writer who conducted my creative writing workshop at University of Florida in 1974. Nelson’s reputation preceded him and he took it with him after the 12-week session. Until I read your book, I was content to remember the grizzled old 63-year-old who wandered into the classroom on a hot September night in Gainesville. Now I know better. I’m glad you found his life worth writing about.

Nelson was my first writing teacher. He was a gruff but entrancing presence in the classroom. I only knew him by reputation. As you write it, that was part fact and part fiction, some of it fed by Nelson. I’d read one of his books and a half-dozen stories. His past was checkered but I knew little about it. He’d been friends with James T. Farrell and Richard Wright and lover to Simone de Bouvier, a feminist writer found on many women’s studies reading lists. Two of his books were made into movies and he spent some crazy time in Hollywood. His political activities earned him a file in J. Edgar’s commie blacklist (886 pages – one heck of a file).

Remembering that time almost 50 years later, Visiting Writer Nelson Algren was an unsettling presence on the sprawling University of Florida campus. His clothing was more Dust Bowl Goodwill than Central Florida Casual. He wore rumpled shirts, loose-fitting slacks, and what looked like the army boots he wore during his time with a medical unit in France during World War II. He sported a grizzled beard and a cap that looked better on Tom Joad. He was old, probably the worst sin you could commit on a campus known for frats, football and consistent listings on Playboy Magazine’s “Top Party Schools.” Schools made the grade by earning an A-plus in three criteria: Sex, nightlife, sports. Creative writing is not mentioned. Keggers under the palms were the order of the day and nobody really wanted to take a walk on the wild side or meet the man with the golden arm who prowled The Windy City’s mean streets.

Me – I wanted to take that walk. Nelson Algren was the real thing. Here he was, stuck in a classroom in one of the campus’s oldest buildings teaching writing to kids from Daytona and Apalachicola. I looked at him as a weathered sage. We were a wave of youth in the U.S.A. who knew very little about what life was like for most Americans. We wrote stories about surfing and soured relationships. The stories in Algren’s “Neon Wilderness” might have been about Martians for all we knew. Grifters and gamblers, whores and junkies. I wanted to know these people because I desperately wanted to be a writer. I just didn’t know how to go about it.

Nelson was generous of his time and expertise. He told great stories. One of our fellow students invited us to her apartment where we smoked dope. Nelson partook, noting that he used to smoke it with Chicago’s jazz musicians and the addicts he met when writing “The Man with the Golden Arm.” He even grew his own brand of weed outside his bungalow near Gary, Indiana.

Another night, my pal Big Mike, piled us into his big black station wagon and took us to the strip club where he was a bouncer. Big Mike was a teetotaling Vietnam vet whose studio apartment was piled high with cases of bottled Pepsi because he could never find enough Pepsi in Coca-Cola country. I had a feeling that Algren had been in rougher places but he was a good sport. After his second drink, he demonstrated how he would put his head between the dancer’s big breasts and make motorboat sounds. It shocked me, the idea of this old writer motorboating a stripper. What he might have been saying is this: “Don’t waste any time, boys. Do motorboats when you can. It all goes by faster than you know.” I wasn’t listening then but now know something about the brief span of a lifetime.

In class, Algren was kind to our stories but made suggestions to make them better. I wrote a story about a homeless guy getting evicted from a tent in a mall parking lot. Algren said it needed some work. He handed out his recommended reading list. I wish I still had it. Hemingway was on it along with books I didn’t know: “A House for Mr. Biswas” by V.S. Naipaul, “The End of the Game and Other Stories” by Julio Cortazar, “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, “The Good Soldier Svejk” by Jaroslav Hasek, and the collected stories of John Collier. On the last night of class, Algren handed me a slip of paper with his agent’s name and address and told me to contact her. I didn’t see him do that with any of the other students and felt pretty special. I never followed up. I had nothing to show an agent except a half-finished story and late-night journal entries.

A year later, my next writing prof was Harry Crews. I figured he probably knew some of the same people Algren did, ne’er-do-wells and junkies and killers. Algren came from the mean streets and Crews from the mean swamps of the Okefenokee. If you’re curious about how mean it was, read his memoir “A Childhood: The Biography of a Place.” This was before Crews got sober and didn’t always make it to class, regaling the locals at Lillian’s Music Store which wasn’t a music store. When he did, he told great stories. One night, he read aloud his favorite story, “How Beautiful with Shoes” by Wilbur Daniel Steele, a wonderful writer whom nobody in class had ever heard of, This from Wikipeda: “Steele has been called ‘America's recognized master of the popular short story’ between World War I and the Great Depression.” Crews wrote an Esquire column called “Grits” and had stories and essays featured in Playboy. One I remember the best was “The Button-down Terror of David Duke,” infamous KKK grand wizard from Louisiana. Crews wrote about an ill-fated backpacking trip along the Appalachian Trail that ended in a Tennessee town that once convicted and hung a circus elephant for stomping a boy to death.

I was lucky to have two great early mentors. At the time, I didn’t understand it but knew it was important to my imagined writing career. After graduation, I worked in Denver as a sportswriter and edited a weekly alternative newspaper. I was a corporate editor until I decided it was killing me. I wrote a novel and snagged myself an agent in Ray Powers of the Marje Fields Agency. He helped me revise the book and shopped it around. I told him I was quitting my job and he advised me to get a numbing day job so I could have plenty of energy left for writing. Instead, a went off to get my M.F.A. at Colorado State University. It helped my writing and helped me get published. It also sent me off with a career as an arts administrator at a state arts council and then the National Endowment for the Arts. It cut into my writing time. I’m retired now and have time to think about paths taken and not taken. I write every day and have a short list of published fiction. I have a fine family and a house. Still, Ray Powers might have been right. I’ll never know.

Thanks again. I look forward to reading your other work.

Sincerely,

Michael Shay, michaelshaywyo@hotmail.com, hummingbirdminds.blogspot.com

P.S.: Ordered a copy of “Nelson Algren’s Own Book of Lonesome Monsters” after reading about it in your book. Couldn’t resist.

I’m no historian but Taylor Sheridan’s “1883” seems bona fide

At the urging of one of my sisters (her first name starts with M), I tuned in to "1883" last night and was up to all hours. My favorite line thus far comes from Sam Elliott, the grizzled veteran of the trails. He hates all of their delays and warns Dutton that it puts the wagon train at South Pass in October. South Pass in October can be nice from a car window in 2023. It can also be the other thing -- a white-out nightmare. Imagine yourself on horseback or in a wagon or on foot, still miles to go until Oregon.

I stayed away from Taylor Sheridan’s “Yellowstone” series because its biggest fans also seemed to be FOX viewers. I didn’t want to watch another  “Dallas of the Tetons” or a color version of “Wagon Train.” I didn’t want to see all the old tropes from a John Ford movie. The early part of his career, until “The Searchers” brought some reality to the genre. I loved the old “Wagon Train” and “Rawhide.” I loved all those TV westerns. I was a kid and looking for heroes. I got ‘em by the wagon-load. They’ve channeled my behavior ever since. My politics are a combination of Rowdy Yates and Sister Norbert. They were both enforcers who rode for the brand. Moral and fair. A bit rough around the edges.

I like “1883” thus far. It is cold-blooded in its portrayal of the migration to the West. Cheyenne at this point was 17 years old. It might have been a bit more civilized than Fort Worth, not nearly as crazy as Deadwood. Fortunately for streaming services, Frederick Jackson Turner would not declare the frontier “gone” for another decade. The Duttons will have settled in Montana or Wyoming or a version of Wyotana filmed in Canada. Wyoming would become a state in 1890 and was fairly civilized until MAGA Republicans took over the state legislature. Now all is lost.

But back to “Yellowstone.” I am watching the entire series to keep me occupied until “The Last of Us” returns with Season Two. It’s an odd coincidence but episodes 7 & 8 of “The Last of Us” take place in the winter wilderness of Wyoming and Colorado. The characters ride horses and hunt for their own meat. There are bandits and cultists and killers everywhere. And don’t forget the fungi zombies although they’ve been scarce the last two episodes. The protagonists are killers, as both Sheriff Jim Courtright (Billy Bob Thornton) and Trail Boss Shea Brennan (Elliott) call themselves in “1883.” Ellie proved to be a very capable killer in TLOU Episode 8 and Joel long ago proved he can eliminate those who threaten him or his young charge.

I am thankful when the depiction of killing is put in able hands. My wife keeps asking if we can watch something civilized such as “The Sound of Music” (she is not a “Yellowstone” fan). I say just wait as I’m standing by for the latest body count. That would be “Yellowjackets,” season 2 coming March 24 on Showtime.