Always a good time to read Maya Angelou's Still I Rise

I look to poetry to ease the pain I feel at the ransacking of my country's democratic principles -- and the destruction of our White House. I didn't automatically go to the poets and writers of the 1920s and 1930s, that era of uprisings in the writing world. I didn't go to the 1960s and 1970s, my time as a young man trying to understand why an America I worshipped was murdering people in Southeast Asia in my name. I sometimes send my readers to that past. But I came across Maya Angelou's poem "Still I Rise" on the Poetry Foundation's web site. It speaks to this time, when fascists are in charge of the three branches of our government. I'd say read it and weep, but if you ain't weeping already, I have no words.

But Maya Angelou does:

Still I Rise (excerpt)

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

At sea level, remembering making mile-high muffins

Mile High Muffins

Muffix mix, two eggs, two-thirds cup water and canola oil, mix well and add blueberries from a can. May need to add more water and a dash of flour. Mix again. Spoon into muffin pan and cook at 400 for time stated on package plus four or five more minutes. It’s science, this Wyoming cooking. Takes longer for water to boil for tea. The oxygen is thinner so sea-level cooks may need to sit-a-spell while the muffins bake. It gives the cook time to look out the kitchen window, see the quaking aspens and their gold leaves, the sheen of frost on the browning lawn. Apples hang from the old fruit tree that’s missing a major limb. The fire hedge blazes. The muffins bake. I stand on an ancient sea.

 

Read a presidential book on NO KINGS DAY 2025

My presidential bookcase, No Kings Day

In the Soup: Retired CSU professor John Calderazzo reads in the library

Poetry books arrived this week. The first was “In the Soup,” the second book of poetry by John Calderazzo. John lives in the foothills outside the tiny town of Bellevue, Colorado just north of Fort Collins and Colorado State University. John taught literary nonfiction during his time in the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at CSU. He was one of my faculty mentors and I enlisted his expertise as a literary fellowship juror during my time at the Wyoming Arts Council. He still writes and teaches in that genre but explores poetry in retirement.

John writes of many topics but travel is a big one. He is a world traveler so writes about trips to Peru and other overseas locations. His U.S.-based poems are set on Flattop Mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park, Elk Mountain in Wyoming, and Santa Cruz Island in California.  He dedicates some to friends and colleagues. “Kraken” is dedicated to Richard Jacobi, whom I knew in Casper, Wyo. John hears from Richard and his wife, retired University of Wyoming professor Vicki Lindner, about recent falls which, at a certain age, leads to complications, something this person of a certain age knows only too well. After watching a video of his Peru nephew’s toddler son falling over as he tried to walk, John  writes: “I sense what’s reaching out for him—gravity, the Kraken,/tentacled monster of the deep—already taking/his measure.”

The natural world has always featured heavily in John’s writing. In “Gathering Voltage,” he’s in the mountains again, this time in a summer lightning storm. He and his brother-in-law crouch as a bolt hits nearby and he feels “the fatal breath of the sky.” On another day, he rides his mountain bike in a storm: “Shivering as I fly, I sense a lightning/bolt moving into position, gathering/voltage, checking its GPS, its terrible/book of names.”

The author is not always in the wilderness. Sometimes, “The Retired Professor Reads in the Library.” He’s researching a travel essay and is in the aisle with his books and “old-time reporter’s notebooks.” He moves aside to let a student pass and wonders if the young man just sees “Him again—the old guy.” Thing is, he’s “as happy as I was at 10, freed from class to roam the school library.” I know the feeling, the old guy with his walker, crowding the aisle, as he reads a book pulled from the shelves but not sitting instead at one of the tables reserved for the elderly. If asked, I might tell you that some of the glory in the library is being there in the crowded aisle with my friends, the books.

"The Darker Moods of My Father" took me back to my own youth in the 1960s and '70s. He contemplates his father's "darker moods" and his rants on Vietnam and antiwar protesters and "priests drunk on holy water." Meanwhile, the writer remembers "this thing/that wanted to cannon me into jungle mud/since I'd turned eighteen." The poem ends with a revelation about his parents, about how his mother cautioned her husband about going too far with his his diatribes and the father looks sheepish, "knowing he'd gone too far, back in those days/when it was still possible to go too far." Suddenly we're back in 2025, when every day is a lesson on going too far.

John’s book is published by Middle Creek Publishing and Audio: The Literature of Human Ecology. A fine-looking book, printed in a large and very readable sans-serif type. The publisher is based in Pueblo Mountain Road in Beulah, Colorado, which is located between Pueblo and the mountains. I mention this because there are many fine small publishers tucked into many small places. My old friend Nancy Curtis runs High Plains Press from her ranch near Glendo, Wyoming, just a few miles off I-25 down a rutted dirt road that can turn into gumbo during a heavy rain. Anhinga Press has two co-directors in Tallahassee but founder Rick Campbell supervises from his windswept outpost on the Gulf of Mexico (MEXICO!).

One more thing. Some small presses receive support through their local and state arts agencies or some get National Endowment for the Arts publishing grants. I should say they used to get grants but not anymore from the battered NEA and not anymore in Florida where the Governor is on a scorched-earth campaign against the arts and the liberal arts education.

A sad state of affairs. My career was based on connecting local arts groups and publishers to government funding which they had to match 1-to-1. Most of the time, the government dollar was matched many times over. The U.S. government is now in the hands of a wrecking crew that wants to demolish poetry and prose, arts and education. They want to destroy everything I hold dear.

John Calderazzo writes about everything I want to preserve and protect.

My father, standing in a field in France, Feb. 13, 1945

My father, 21, standing out in a field in France, February 1945. He writes a caption to the photo: “I hadn’t had a haircut in three months. I should have worn a hat.” He lives in a tent, a GI far from his home in Denver covered in Colorado snow. His war will be over in three months but he won’t return home for another year. He stands in a French field that's browned by winter, farm house in the distance. He writes that his hair is too long, that maybe he should have had a haircut before turning over the small camera to a buddy whose shadow lingers in the foreground. He takes my father's photo that will end up 82 years later in his eldest son’s desk drawer in Ormond Beach, Florida. You were right, Dad. You should have worn a hat. That hair of yours is curly, too curly, too youthful for a soldier who spent Christmas in the frozen Ardennes, in The Bulge, on the radio. He relays artillery coordinates, asks HQ where a young man might get a haircut for a future photo of him standing in a French field looking lonely, unshorn, very much alive.

John Fabian Witt’s new book asks if the American Experiment can be saved

Beginning Oct. 16, I will be reading John Fabian Witt’s book “The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America.” I ordered the book after reading his guest essay in Monday’s New York Times, “How to Save the American Experiment.” The graphics caught my eye, a drawing of a big red hand pushing down on a platform and a group of people pushing from below. The Big Red Hand looked like it belonged to a marble statue or a giant, ponderous and huge. During other times, the resisters might be labeled “the people” or “the masses,” The Masses being one of the leftist mags of the 19-teens (later New Masses).

In any case, Witt’s essay grabbed my attention. How do we save the American experiment? I’ve been asking that very question since Trump took office for the second time. I have good days and bad. This essay gave me some hope.

Witt captured me when he talked about how a messy war and a pandemic bred a decade of strife that ended in a failed economy and then to a surprising resurgence.

Yes, the 1920s. A time of race riots and red-baiting and the Insurrection Act. Unions pushed workers to organize and the workers protested and were clubbed by guys that acted a lot like 2025 ICE Storm Troopers.

Hard times followed by harder times followed by a global war that birthed the U.S. as a global power. Until it lost its way.

I am obsessed with the 1920s. I just finished writing a historical novel set in 1919 Colorado. It will soon be published by Michigan’s Ridgeway Press. Its characters come to Colorado to start anew after war and sickness and failed dreams. They come to reinvent themselves. Colorado, Denver in particular, has always been a place for people to find themselves. Find gold, too, whether it be the actual metal or penny stocks or pot farms or the fresh powder of mountain ski slopes. As a native Denverite, I admire the magic but know the shortcomings. Historians such as the late David Halaas and Tom Noel have helped me delve into the past. I was a childhood fan of the Denver Public Library and spent many adult years in the Denver History Museum and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. A wonderful place. I don’t live there any more. Why? I’m, an American. I move on. It’s what we do. I’m now back to Florida. As you know from late-night comedians, Florida has its own problems.

Witt’s message is not so much “move on” but dig in, into those entities that make a difference. He writes about Charles Garland, a millionaire who used his fortune to fund the American Fund for Public Service or the Garland Fund. It was overseen by muckraking writer Upton Sinclair and ACLU founder Roger Baldwin. They funded entities that pushed for civil rights, a living wage, and, in the 1930s, Social Security. Woodrow Wilson’s presidency petered out and led to the totalitarian tendencies of Harding and then to rich-boy Democrat Roosevelt who surprised us all, both hard-right Wyoming ranchers and big-city liberal labor agitators.

America, the Arsenal of Democracy, helped win the war and reaped the fruits of its labor and good fortune to bring prosperity in the 1950s and its most annoying demographic cohort, the Boomers. Say what you will about us but we helped the good times roll and now, well, we face the same political shitstorm as our offspring.

So, I write scathing letters that seem to fall on deaf ears. I support organizations such as the ACLU and the Florida Democrats and Wikipedia which is now under attack by the MAGA crowd. I support the independent WyoFile in Wyoming and the Independent Florida Alligator at UF, my alma mater. They are all under attack and need us. Protests are great but pointless if you don’t act and then vote in 2026 and 2028.

As the actor astronauts in “Galaxy Quest say: “Never give up…and never surrender.”

Fiction writers bring new life to dusty historical figures

Last night I finished reading "The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson" by Jerome Charyn. A beautiful novel, wonderful historical fiction. Charyn has made waves the past couple decades with his unorthodox takes on historical figures: Dickinson, the notorious Orson Welles/Rita Hayworth relationship, famous recluse J.D. Salinger, and Johnny One-Eye in the American Revolution. There are hundreds of other lives worth a second or even third look by someone of Charyn's skills. ,

Historical fiction is my new reason for living past 74. I've written two HF novels, the first will be out later this year from The Ridgeway Press in Michigan. I'm editing the second now. In the process, I've grabbed as many books off the HF shelf as I can muster. I was floored by "James" by Percival Everett, "Booth" by Karen Joy Fowler, "Horse," by Geraldine Brooks, "Gone, the Redeemer" by Scott Gates, and "Clark and Division" by Naomi Hirahara. 

All this innovative HF isn't without its detractors. Some traditionalists say that writers are playing fast and loose with the facts. Some say that facts are facts and that the timelines of history should be respected. They're valid points. Some HF writers are dogged with the facts. And so are some HF readers. Some writers also have hordes of researchers to help their work, as was the case with James Michener as his career progressed. He was so intent on research that he has a library named after him, the James Michener Library at University of Northern Colorado in Greeley. I've devoured Michener's novels most of my life, first "Hawaii," recommended by my mother, and onto "Centennial," the first novel I bought when I moved back to Colorado after college, and on to "Chesapeake" when I lived in Maryland.

But I also love the art of fiction and don't mind it being bent and twisted for a good yarn. I loved the real underground railroad in Colson Whitehead's "The Underground Railroad" and I was totally caught up in Jim's journey in "James" even when the story veered away from Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" which, of course, was also fiction. 

This reminds me of arguments about creative nonfiction during my days as an M.F.A. student. Annie Dillard was taken to task for some inventions in "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek." It led to a prize-winning book so I'm willing to forgive and forget. Others aren't. Remember that CNF stands for "creative" nonfiction.

It may be that I'm too old to care about literary minutiae. Or that I'm too pissed-off about MAGA savageries to mind when a writer invents something lovely to read.

A bit of both

Author Michael Connelly delves into Florida experience for next streaming series

Michael Connelly, best-selling author and UF and Independent Florida Alligator alum is now writing about his days as a reporter in Daytona Beach in the 1980s. He’s also writing about his time covering crime in Fort Lauderdale which includes forays into the South Florida cocaine wars.

I met Connelly in the first part of this century at the Los Angeles Times Book Festival. I came to town for the Wyoming Arts Council to meet with colleagues at WESTAF, our regional arts organization. Now Creative West, it keeps track of the MAGA attacks on the arts funding world through its Action Center. 

I waited in a long line to meet Connelly at the L.A. Bookfest at UCLA and he signed two books because I wore my Gators cap. The Gator connection led him to take a book tour detour to Wyoming a few years later and many fans turned out.

The first Connelly novel I read was "The Poet" (1996) because it was a mystery about poetry (I thought) and it's set among the two Denver newspapers I once worked for. From 1978-82, I was writing in-depth articles about prep football, college hockey, and the Coors Classic cycling race. After that, I was managing editor and columnist for Up the Creek weekly which had its origins covering rec softball leagues and wet T-shirt contests at Glendale singles bars. I still have clips if you’re looking for something to read about the halcyon days of the 80s.  

In The Poet, Jack McEvoy is a crime reporter for The Rocky. When his twin brother Sean, a Denver homicide detective, is murdered. McEvoy pursues the story. He finds  his brother’s murder was staged, and uncovers a pedophile ring which leads to other murders committee by a serial killer known as The Poet because he features Poe in his killings. I was impressed. I read more and now have quite a collection. The book won 1997 awards from the Mystery Writers of America and the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. 

When I moved to Denver in 1978, the RMN and Post were battling for readers. The Post won the fight.  

When I met Connelly in L.A., I asked if he ever made it to Wyoming. His answer, as I suspected, was no. I asked if he might take a 100-mile detour from his next Denver book stop if we could find funding for a presentation, reading, and book signing in Cheyenne, Wyoming’s oft-neglected capital city. He put me in touch with his agent and the YMCA Writers Voice chapter wrote a grant and brought him to town. An SRO crowd came to the Y’s meeting room where an arts exhibit arranged by my wife Chris was on display. A great time was had by all. Barnes & Noble sold a lot of books.

That meeting room is now forever empty. The Cheyenne Family YMCA closed its doors for good yesterday. No more swimming pool. No more creaky weight machines. No more Writers Voice.

I send whatever I can to arts organizations in Wyoming, Florida, and elsewhere. I will report on some of those entities in the coming months. The anti-arts savagery shown by Trump and his minions have taken a big bite out of the creative industry. Not surprising since arts and arts education were prime targets of Project 2025.

I hear from poet and performer M.L. Liebler in Detroit that “all of our programs getting money from the NEA has collapsed.” Medical research funding has also been hit: “All research on cancer has been halted.”

If androids dream of electric sheep, why are there no sheep in my dreams?

I discovered Philip K. Dick and his mind-blowing novels at just the right time. In November 1975 I was a non-trad student at the University of Florida. Non-trad because many in my 1969 high school graduating class had claimed their diplomas and were now looking for work in all the wrong places. Meanwhile, we laggards and slow-learners were on campus with a younger crowd and a passel of Vietnam veterans. And the Krishnas -- can't forget them and the Krishna lunch. 

I spent many of my waking hours at the library where I gobbled up novels I missed reading in high school and copies of Rolling Stone, Esquire, The New Yorker, and any other pub that featured great writers -- Hunter S. Thompson and Joe Eszterhas among them -- and Esquire carried Harry Crews' Grits column and its annual dubious achievement awards. I learned snark from the witty DA awards and writing through Crews in print and in person in his creative writing class. 

A profile of PK Dick arrived in the Nov. 6, 1975 Stone. Great graphics by G.K. Bellows showed the author, book in hand, with an alien invader coming through his window. The header: "The True Stories of Philip K. Dick: Burgling the most brilliant sci-fi mind on Earth -- it is Earth isn't it?" Paul Williams wrote the piece. Was this the same Paul Williams from TV and film? No, it was Paul Williams, founder of Crawdaddy, who RS called "the first rock critic" and who died in 2013. He also loved sci-fi.

So I had to look up the RS piece. I printed it out and the type was too small for these tired eyes. So I enlarged the e-piece and read the whole thing. I remembered most of it from '75. I found as many PK Dick books as I could, in libraries and second-hand bookstores, and wrapped "Ubik" and "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" into the folds of my brain that also held Shakespeare in Elizabethan English, Chaucer in Middle English, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's dreamscapes, all from my UF classes. All in books. 

Williams notes in his final paragraph that some PK Dick movies were being discussed. "Blade Runner" came out in 1982, just a few weeks after PK Dick died. It blew our minds. It wasn't Dick's novel but it was beautiful. There now is a Director's Cut and a Final Cut as well as sequels. And many movies based on other novels. 

What is PK Dick thinking out in the Bardo? You may have to go to Colorado to get an inkling of that. Dick's ashes were interred in a Fort Morgan, Colo., cemetery next to the grave of his twin sister who died at six weeks. She is the basis of the "phantom twin," a recurrent theme of his. Fort Morgan was in the middle of the Dust Bowl in 1928 so I assumed the worst about the sister's fate. Go to Fort Morgan on a winter's day in January. Stand outside in the winter gales and think of the many things that could doom an infant in 1928-29. 

Dick, who lived most of his life in California, including mystical Marin County, is buried on the prairie. Only 112 miles from my one-time home of Cheyenne, Wyo., the setting of Hawthorne Abendsen, the author of "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy," an alternate history of World War II (the Allies win!) in "The Man in the High Castle." Dick had the mountains and prairie in his bones which made the Rocky Mountains the best place for the opposition to the Japanese and German conquerors on the coasts.

Dig up that '75 Stone article and find out about the author's situation in a tumultuous year, 1971. There's a mystery at the story's center: why did someone burgle Philip K. Dick's house in San Rafael, blow up his 1,100-pound asbestos-and-steel safe, home to his precious manuscripts, and flood the floor with water and asbestos? All sorts of wild things were going on in 1970s California. Dick posits possibilities and Williams follows leads to no avail. 

The answer is out there somewhere.

As Pete Seeger sang: "We're waist deep in the Big Muddy, the Big Fool says to push on"

I've spent a lot of time in the 19-teens and 20s lately. A tumultuous time, even if you concentrate on one summer in America as does Bill Bryson in his nonfiction remembrance of 1927. Much of my time has been spent on America's involvement in World War 1 and the decade that followed. The time of my grandparents, you know, those olden days to me or to them, in many ways, golden days. It's shocking to delve deeply into a short span of history and see how much you don't know, how much I didn't know. 

I've written one novel based on my grandmother's diary as a nurse in France 1918-1919. It will be published soon by Ridgeway Press in Detroit. I've written another one set in 1922 in Colorado and other sites in the U.S. That one is in final edits. I read memoirs and fiction and poetry of the era. A few decades ago I read John Dos Passos's U.S.A. Trilogy. I dug out the trilogy from my local library. An amazing series, ahead of its time in its combination of fiction and nonfiction. I read many of the WW1 poets, the very angry ones and others. I read about fascism in its many forms, including its roots in Italy's tragedies in The Great War. 

I read plenty of material and saw many movies of those times. As I worked on my novels, I never thought that the war against fascism would come to America. That was a nightmare scenario best left to writers such as Philip K. Dick. 

But here we are, waist deep in The Big Muddy as sang Pete Seeger. The Big Muddy is 2025 America. Wars come home in so many ways. It also may become relevant as Trump sends his masked goons and National Guard soldiers to Memphis on the Mississippi. The fascist strain in American politics has risen again, much as it did prior to World War 2 with America First. I was shocked to learn how Italian fascist pilots vied with budding fascist Lindbergh to fly the Atlantic. They were welcomed as heroes by our homegrown fascists who sometimes battled protesters, communists and others, as they barnstormed the U.S. There were American fascists in 1927 and they are the progenitors of Trump's fascists (his father was one). 

I looked for feisty poets in the Poetry Foundation's category of "Poems of Protest, Resistance, and Empowerment." Subtitle: "Why poetry is necessary and sought after during crises." Some great ones featured. I saw Maya Angelou's "And Still I Rise" and wondered how rabble-rousing it might be. Angelou was heroic in her resistance but also served as U.S. Poet Laureate and President Bill Clinton's inauguration speaker with "On the Pulse of Morning." These roles require a certain amount of diplomacy, a less-radical approach to topics. I worked in the corporate and government worlds so I know a bit about when to hold still and when to push on with my blog. But maybe I don't care anymore.

"And Still I Rise" is fiery and beautiful when read by Ms. Angelou. I urge you to watch her recite it on YouTube. If the link fails, read it on the Poetry Foundation site.

Emily Dickinson could not stop for death but could for poetry

How did the Dominican sisters think I could understand an Emily Dickinson poem, "I could not stop for death?"

Sister Miriam Catherine: What is this poem about Mr. Shay?

16-year-old Me: Death, sister.

Sr. MC: What about death?

Me: She could not stop for it.

Sr. MC: Anything else?

Me: There's a carriage.

Sr. MC: Are you a dunderhead, Mr. Shay?

Me: Yes, Sister. Please don't smite me.

There was no smiting on that day. 

I am now smitten with Ms. Dickinson's poetry. I did not, would not, could not understand its full meaning then. I was a kid. She began writing as a youngster but her lifetime of creativity was enormous and almost unknown at the time of her death.

I turn my attention to the poet who became "The Belle of Amherst" on stage but was anything but. Since her death in 1886, Dickinson's reputation has been battled over by family, friends, and biographers. Lyndall Gordon tried to make sense of it all in his biography, "Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds." And Jerome Charyn writes of Dickinson in his 2010 W.W. Norton historical novel, "The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson." You guess that this is a different kind of look at a literary legend because the cover shows Dickinson's bloomers illuminated by candlelight under her hoop skirt.

I'm only through Charyn's first section but know this is a different look at an American poet who bored high schoolers and even college English majors. 

I now know that I didn't get it when I was young. Why does knowledge come so late in life? 

It's a dangerous time to be woke to literature. Liberal arts majors are being threatened in the U.S., maybe no more so than in Florida where I came of age as a writer. If I can identify a fellowship of dunderheads, it rests in the Florida governor's office. He aims to gut everything I treasure at the University of Florida: The College of Liberal Arts, English majors, arts programs, "wokeness" in general, and the Independent Florida Alligator. As a movie hero of mine once said, "This will not stand, man."

Back to Emily Dickinson. Charyn notes in his intro that he is obsessed with her poetry and has been for decades. His first sentence in the author's note: "She was the first poet I had ever read, and I was hooked and hypnotized from the start, because in her writing she broke every rule."

I returned to her poetry and I know what I was missing. I read and reread "I could not stop for death." I couldn't get enough. I went to the Emily Dickinson Museum web site. I read about her and more of her poetry. 

I laughed when I read this on the museum's online Q&A (thanks AI): 

"Q: Is Amherst close to Boston? A: No, Amherst is not close to Boston. It is located in the western part of Massachusetts, about a 90-minute drive from Boston, which is a significant distance for a quick trip. The two locations are in different regions of the state, with Amherst being further west in Pioneer Valley."

I laughed because when I lived in Boston 1972-73, my woman friend and I hitched regularly to Storrs, Conn., to see friends. The two of us had logged some 7,000 miles the summer of '72 by thumb, ending up in her hometown of Boston. My pal Tommy and I hitched from Boston to Putney, Vt., passing just minutes from Amherst, on our way to get high with friends among the colorful foliage. I spent my career driving Wyoming and Colorado. Significant distance, indeed.

I wish I had gone. I still could. For now, I will finish Charyn's novel and read more Dickinson. I live in memory and imagination. 

Read more about Dickinson's "Secret Life" in upcoming posts.

 

Bill Bryson’s “One Summer, America 1927,” when “America First” came to call

As I read Bill Bryson’s “One Summer: America 1927,” I realized that our history is comprised of an amazing number of knuckleheads and heroes. And sometimes, they are one and the same.

Charles Lindbergh, for instance. He became a hero overnight when he flew The Spirit of St. Louis over the Atlantic Ocean, the first solo flight by airplane. Many had attempted it. This scrawny bland fellow from Detroit accomplished it. Thousands of Parisians swarmed him when he landed at Le Bourget Airport. Ticker-tape parades in the U.S. followed. Crowds greeted him everywhere. He often took to his airplane to escape into the wild blue yonder.

By the time the U.S. entered World War II, he was disgraced by his embrace of eugenics and Nazism. He participated in the first “America First” campaign and proudly wore an air medal awarded him in Berlin by Herman Goering, one of the architects of the Nazi scourge. He survived to be one of the defendants at the Nuremberg Trials. “Lucky Lindy” tried to redeem himself by training American pilots in the Pacific during the war. But damage had been done. His name was stripped from all those streets and schools and airfields named in his honor.

You can still see The Spirit of St. Louis displayed at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum along the National Mall in D.C. I’ve taken my family there many times. The plane, so flimsy and tiny when compared to modern aircraft. It’s quite possible those other aircraft wouldn’t exist without it.

Bryson has been one of my favorite writers since his 1989 book, “The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America.” Writing humor is no mean feat and he does it with aplomb in so many books. Humor helps you understand contradictions such as Lindbergh, Babe Ruth, and Al Capone. But that’s why I read, to be entertained and educated in the ways of the world. This book did that. I almost quit several times.

My sister Eileen gave me the trade paperback a month ago. She enjoyed it and knew I was working on novels set in the 1920s. I am of an age where reading big books with small type is difficult. I read to page 80 in bright light but put it down. Then I remembered I have a Kindle Reader for such challenges and I borrowed the book from Libby. Ah, a lit screen and large type. Heavenly. I still put it aside for other things until Libby warned me that I had only five days left on my loan. I hunkered down and read the rest, including a bit of the back matter. So much research!

Sitting in front of another lit-up large screen, I wonder about a century from now, 2125, when a book comes out about 2025. The year of Trump and A.I. Who will be the heroes and villains? As someone who’s been resisting Trumpism since 2016, you can probably guess my answer. “One Summer: America 2025.” A nonfiction tale, told with panache by someone. First we have to survive this period of U.S.-bred fascism and racism. First that. Will books survive?

Big Bill Thompson was mayor of Chicago in 1927. Chicago is in the Trump crosshairs as are all cities in blue states. Big Bill knew that to rule the people must be kept clueless so, writes Bryson, “he started a campaign to remove unAmerican books from Chicago libraries.” He even scheduled a bonfire to burn “treasonous books.” One city employee upped the ante:

“The head of the Municipal Reference Library announced that he had independently destroyed all books and pamphlets in his care that struck him as dubious. ‘I now have an America First library,’ he said proudly.”

America First? Will that be the fate of Chicago’s libraries now that Trump’s goon squads are on their way?

Pardon me boy is this the Pennsylvania Station? No, Ormond Station, and the train is a comin'

We live in a place called Ormond Station. It is located in Central Florida on a line where Volusia County and Flagler County meet. Our mailing address is Ormond Beach. Our mail is routinely lost. Perhaps the postal delivery person is looking for a railroad station because Ormond Station's logo is railroad tracks. The roundabout located just outside our Groveside neighborhood's gates bear some fine railroad tracks on the sand-colored-brick structure that surrounds a fountain. We can sometimes hear trains rolling down a Florida East Coast Railroad line. When we are driving beachward down Grenada Avenue (Fla. Hwy. 40) and we hear the lonesome whistle blow, we know that our motoring excursion will be delayed at the railroad crossing. Grenada is one busy avenue. 

Groveside is not beside any orange groves. That's what I think of when I think of Florida groves. It is aside groves of wetland trees and bushes so I guess that counts as a grove. Developers develop hereabouts by clearcutting forests. It is easier to build without trees. The thinking is that this is Florida and greenery grows so fast you can almost watch it burst into maturity. So, build the houses, plant some trees, and in ten years you have groves. 

There used to be orange groves here. When we moved to Florida in the mid-1960s, oranges still grew. You could drive down county roads in the spring and smell orange blossoms. A beautiful sweet smell. There was a roadside store along U.S. 1 close to my new location that sold oranges and anything orange you could dream of. You could buy a bunch of citrus and ship it home to Michigan or even Wyoming. Too many hard frosts killed citrus north of Orlando. You could find groves all the way up to Ocala on the road to Gainesville. In Patrick Smith's wonderful novel "A Land Remembered," the poor schmucks settling post-Civil-War Florida, were growing oranges in the sandy soil. They needed the shade as Mr. Carrier had not yet invented A/C. 

Here at Ormond Station we expect a train any time. In our imaginations. I can see a train line running down Airport Road, from its terminus at Hwy. 40 to its end at U.S. 1. It passes Ormond Airport thus its name. Shuttlecraft not yet designed will fly you to college football match-ups around the state. The trains will also be modern, possibly a solar-powered streetcar or light rail. Other neighborhoods are being planted along the way. There are two schools along the line . I walk my neighborhood to the Groveside marker and pick up the early afternoon train. It takes me to the Ridgewood Line which travels down U.S. 1 to Jackie Robinson Ballpark, home to the Daytona Tortugas. I love a good baseball game on a spring afternoon. My wife Chris, also a baseball fan whose father once took her to Atlanta Braves games, is with me. My children, too, Kevin and Annie. We are spirits together, our little family who settled these parts back in its infancy, when we left the Rocky Mountains behind for a place in the sun, something aside a grove, a rail stop to the future here at Ormond Station.

I came of age during the JFK years. The grief is personal.

How do I tell my grown-ass children about the life and times of JFK? How I was nine when he was elected and 13 when he was assassinated? That I was the oldest son in an Irish-Catholic family in Middle America who idolized the man? That his killing tore a hole in my heart that remains. That all of the stuff that’s come out about Kennedy’s affairs and bad judgement has not dimmed my memories?

I’m a grouchy old man. I am a writer who takes a jaundiced view of most things. I was none of those things during JFK’s presidential run. My parents seemed entranced by the news reports on our black-and-white TV. So handsome, my mother said. So Catholic, my father said. I love Jackie’s hair, Grandma said. All the adults in my life were on board with Kennedy, saint and war hero.

I yearn for those days. How I want them back. As a family, we listened over and over to Vaughn Meader’s “The First Family” records on Dad’s stereo. My father made his first hi-fi as those things were called back in the day. It’s no surprise as he built crystal radio sets as a boy in his basement and served four years as a radioman with the U.S. Signals Corps during the war. He also admired JFK’s war record; Nixon’s paled in comparison. Little did we know, we hadn’t heard the last of Tricky Dick.

Kennedy was central to my coming-of-age years, 9-13. I read “Profiles in Courage.” I knew the PT-109 story by heart, the public one. Our family was on the verge of being cut adrift by the aerospace age, influenced by the Cold War and The Race to the Moon.  At 9, we lived in a new house in a Southwest Denver suburb not far from the Fort Logan Induction Center my father signed on to fight the Nazis in 1942. At 10, I attended the second half of fourth grade near a missile base in Washington State. I went to fifth grade in Moses Lake, sixth grade at College Hill Elementary in Wichita. We moved closer to Wichita’s Air Force base for the first half of St. Francis seventh grade and was there when Kennedy was shot. I was 14 when we returned to Denver and I went to the first half of seventh grade at a public junior high in Denver crowded with Boomer kids. And then we landed in Florida with a mission: send men to the moon because JFK said so. I was in Our Lady of Lourdes Grade School in Daytona Beach. I didn’t know it then, couldn’t even have guessed, that last Sunday I was back at OLL in Daytona attending mass at a spacious new church presided over by a justice warrior priest. I was a white-haired senior, disabled, pushing a walker. Still looking for answers.

And today I contemplate JFK because my daughter wants to know. She reads this blog. Read on, Annie. And keep reading.

Pope Leo XIV: "To be called 'woke' is no insult"

 

Cross-post from Democrats, Republicans & Independents United Against Trumpism.

Alfred Joyce Kilmer on "Trees"

I salute the turkey oak tree in my backyard.

It's a tough little oak. I was looking out the sliding glass door a few weeks ago and saw its leaves detach in a strong wind. Looked like late September in Wyoming but it was late July in Ormond Station, Florida. The flurry of leaves caused me to call the city arborist and she asked if the leaves were brown on the edges. They were. "Needs water," she said. She was correct. I started hosing it down every day and now the leaves have magically returned. 

The tree is a denizen of the soupy landscape that makes up my neighborhood. We're not in the soup but I can see it from here. I live in the dry section of the wetlands. We are right at the periphery of  the Hull Swamp Conservation Area and the Relay Wildlife Management Area. Wildlife we got. A neighbor spotted a black bear in his backyard. A big ol' Eastern Diamondback was squashed by an F-250 near our PO boxes. We've seen turtles and birds galore. 

We are interlopers here. But, back to the trees.

One of my father's favorite poems was "Trees" by Joyce Kilmer. It's beautiful, really, with memorable opening lines: "I think that I shall never see/A poem as lovely as a tree."

Dad knew the poem by heart. It's easily memorized, rhymed couplets in iambic tetrameter which makes for a memorable beat. Four iambs instead of the usual five in pentameter poems. I point this out because it would have been a great choice of poems to memorize during after-school detention at St. Francis Catholic Grade School in Wichita. If we seventh-graders transgressed enough to get detention, the nuns gave us a choice of poems to memorize. Because all 12- and 13-year-olds have places to go and things to do after school, we chose the shortest and easiest of rhymes. No free verse, thank you. No epics such as "Child Harold's Pilgrimage" or "Howl," although I am pretty sure Ginsberg and the Beats were not on the list of approved Catholic verse.

I once had a choice between "Charge of the Light Brigade" and some silly love poem. I chose the war poem and can still recite most of it. "Trees" was never on the list. Odd thing is, anything by Kilmer would have put me closer to war than Tennyson. He also would have brought me nearer to my Catholic roots had I known about the 1917 collection he edited, "Dreams and Images: An Anthology of Catholic Poets.

But "Trees" lives on in collections. Kilmer converted to Catholicism in 1913 and wrote of his spiritual life. He joined up at 30 to fight in the Great War. Died at 31 at the Second Battle of the Marne. He was leading a patrol into No Man's Land and disappeared in a shellhole. When his troops caught up to him, he was quietly looking over the bombed-out landscape. He didn't respond. They shook him, then looked at his face to see dead eyes and a bullet hole in his forehead. Death by sniper. He's buried in the U.S. cemetery in France across from the farmer's field where he was killed.

He's been called "the last of the Romantic Era poets." His poems are predictable and schmaltzy. They rhyme, for goodness sake. Across the blasted tundra, the British war poets -- Sassoon, Owen, Graves -- were leading the charge into the revved-up post-war realism of the 1920s. You might see Kilmer's poem "Rouge Bouquet" in volumes of war poetry. It's about 21 soldiers of New York's Fighting 69th who were killed by a random German shelling. His legacy lives on in the names of schools, neighborhoods, and a national forest in North Carolina. The Philolexian Society at Columbia University sponsors The Annual Alfred Joyce Kilmer Bad Poetry Contest. Lest you think this is just an Ivy League Putdown, it is taken very seriously on campus. Here's a description from the scribes at Wikipedia (I donated to the cause and got a cool [EDIT] T-shirt):

The Alfred Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest has been hosted annually by the Philolexian Society, a literary and debating group at Columbia University, since 1986, drawing crowds of 200–300 students and participants vying for the title of best of the worst. Columbia faculty members serve as judges. The event is usually held in November and is heralded by the appearance of "Bad Poetry in Motion" flyers around campus (satirizing the New York City Subway's "Poetry in Motion" series) featuring some of the best verses of the last 20 years, as well as door-to-door readings in the dorms, usually performed by prospective new members ("phreshlings").

The event is named for "bad" poet (and Philolexian alumnus) Joyce Kilmer. His most famous work, Trees, is read aloud by audience members at the contest's end. In 2012, the Columbia Daily Spectator listed the Kilmer Bad Poetry Contest #1 among its "Best Columbia Arts Traditions".

 As a writer and arts administrator, I commend the Society's efforts to promote poetry and its performance. I can see my father, an army radioman in The Great War Part 2 and accounting graduate of a small Catholic college, standing tall in the auditorium and reciting "Trees" with Ivy League youngsters and aging fans of an almost-forgotten poet. 

"Trees," Joyce Kilmer, those lovely, lovely trees.

Why did Bernice bob her hair?

"Bernice Bobs Her Hair," F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story published in the May 1, 1920, issue of the Saturday Evening Post. It was his first story to receive national attention. (Thanks, Wikipedia, for the image. I  wear your [Edit] T-shirt when I'm editing.)

I lived in 1919 for five years. It was the mid-to-late twenty-teens and, physically, I was in Cheyenne, Wyoming, but my mind was in 1919 Denver. This is the year my grandparents migrated to Colorado. War puts people in motion and the Great War  did that. But other factors were at work. Young people were restless, as we were to see in 1920s literature. We have always been part of a moveable feast in this country. We value the ability to get up and move. No state border guards to show our papers to. No permission needed if we decide to quit our job and move cross-country to take another one. Relationships break and partners seek new pastures, new people to connect with. 

Some move for their health. That was never more true than in the 19-teens when the flu pandemic and tuberculosis caused many to get up and go. In John Green's book "Tuberculosis is Everything," we see the rise of TB sanitoria throughout the western U.S., land of clean air, dry climates, and expansive vistas. Some cities got their starts with TB, places like Pasadena, Calif., and Colorado Springs, Colo. Denver's air, when it wasn't choked by those winter air inversions and coal smoke, was pristine, just the thing for lungers, as TB patients were called and not in a nice way.

So I spent much of my 20-teens in the 19-teens. I suppose part of me will always be there. The novel that arose from the project, "Zeppelins over Denver," is nearing publication. I've written a follow-up since, this one set in 1922. And I am always at work writing stories and blogs. I've surpassed my 10,000 hours of creative practice. I'm a bit tired of practicing and want to get on my way to doing and finishing and enjoying. 

I'm still hooked on the era. My Millennial daughter Annie phoned yesterday. She was deciding on a haircut for a job interview. She talked about getting a bob. 

"Bernice bobbed her hair," I said. 

Annie didn't recognize the literary reference but suspected it. "OK, Dad, who's Bernice?" 

"From the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, " 'Bernice Bobs Her Hair.' " 

"What happens, Dad. A sad ending, right?"

I had to think. "I don't remember. It's been awhile."

"It's not Gatsby-like, is it? Grim and filled with messages about a corrupt society?"

"I'll have to get back to you on that."

So I pulled up "Bernice Bobs Her Hair and Other Stories." I was about to send it to my Kindle when I came across an  audiobook version. I began listening to that, took a break for lunch, and when I returned, I found a "Bernice" graphic novel just released in 2024. The cover illustration intrigued me and I downloaded that. I stayed up late to read. Glad I did. My neighborhood is dark and quiet at midnight, as is my house. Peaceful. My laughs echoed down the hallway and might have reached my slumbering wife but she didn't mention it the next morning.

I did not remember the track of this story. I must have read it in grade school, junior high, high school. Now I do remember another notable story of that era, "Why I Live at the P.O." by Eudora Welty. Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game" was an eye-opener. They all were in the same Catholic Church-approved collection as "A Bottle of Milk for Mother" by Nelson Algren and something by Hemingway probably one of the Nick Adams stories. I linger over those stories now. They are deep, wild, and funny, what I missed out on as a teen.

I loved "Bernice Bobs Her Hair." I had so much fun with the graphic novel adapted and illustrated by John Paizs and published by Graphic Publications. The story was first published in May 1920 in the Saturday Evening Post. Its popularity cased the Post to publish another Bernice Story in November that included a color illustration of Bernice. Fitzgerald was paid real money by the Post and it helped launch his career. In 1920, writers earned a living by writing stories for popular magazines. This has not been true during my time as a writer. 

Go read "Bernice." A pleasant journey during troubled times.

On Aug. 14, you can hear a rewrite of "This Land" on "Woody at Home"

From a July 14 New York Times article by pop music critic Jon Pareles comes some of the "This Land is Your Land" lyrics from the Guthrie estate and Shamus Music. On Aug. 14, they will release songs from home recordings recently recovered from simple recording equipment Woody used at home. Look for "Woody at Home, Vol, 1 & 2." Some  of the draft lyrics for "This Land:"

Wikipedia lists "This Land is Your Land" under "Songs of Socialist Movements." It includes these notes: "Guthrie wrote the song as a critical response to Irving Berlin's God Bless America. The stanza condemning private property is often omitted."

"This Land is Your Land" -- almost all the lyrics

This is from the official Woody Guthrie web site. I wanted the whole thing due to an ignorance in some quarters as to what the song is about. My plan is to give credit to where credit due. I also was curious about the copyright info below: "Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc., & TRO-Ludlow Music, Inc. (BMI)." I will tell you what I found in a separate post.

This Land Is Your Land

Words and Music by Woody Guthrie
Contact Publisher - TRO-Essex Music Group

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters;
This land was made for you and me.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway;
I saw below me that golden valley;
This land was made for you and me.

I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding;
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

---

© Copyright 1956 (renewed), 1958 (renewed), 1970 and 1972 by Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. & TRO-Ludlow Music, Inc. (BMI)

There is a world of difference between a 125,000-word novel and a flash of 50 words

Spending my days and nights with a close reading of the formatted text for my historical novel, "Zeppelins over Denver." Much of my adult life was spent writing and editing so this is just another in a long line of projects. But, the process is different with a 125,000-word novel. If that seems like a lot of words, it is. But they were composed one sentence, one paragraph, one page at a time. I write and revise short stories, which is a slightly different task. A short story may be 5,000 words. In 2025, flash fiction has taken over the litmags and I am pleased that I've publish a few in print mags and online. It's a neat exercise to write a story that's a page long and not pages. Some very talented writers taught me the way. The always-busy Meg Pokrass has shown me and others the way. I recently had a piece rejected by 50-Word-Story that I thought was pretty good for a 50-word-story. I had revised it from a 250-word story but maybe that was the problem. Sometimes a 250-word story just wants what it wants. 

Back to the novel. The story must be compelling and the characters memorable. The writing must be crisp. And very importantly, the text must be error-free. This is the challenge with a 125,000 word novel in this day of self-publishing. Traditional publishers used to employ editors and fact-checkers. They still do, I suppose, but I don't know for sure because I've never been published by one. I did have a st6oory reprinted in a Coffee House Press anthology, "Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking out the Jams." ML Liebler was the editor. I've also had a creative nonfiction piece published in a Norton anthology, "In Short: A Collection of Brief Creative Nonfiction." But my historical novel is not being published by a traditional press. Thus, the work must be done by the writer. That takes time and attention to detail, lots and lots of details. Since my book is historical fiction, this writer must pay attention to period detail in the case of 1919 Colorado. What did people wear and how did they speak? What models of automobiles were on the road? What was it like to fly a biplane? Many questions that I try to answer as best as I can. 

An editor must pay attention to detail. But it is inevitable that mistakes will slip in. One must forgive oneself in the end. Nobody's perfect. We try to be. AI is available. My MSN Word keeps bugging me about the CoPilot AI program. No thanks, I keep saying. Will that ever become a necessity in the publishing world? My daughter uses ChatGPT when writing her college papers. The professor says it is OK as long as it is noted. Good grief. I might have used it when tasked to compare and contrast the Early and Late English Romantic Poets. In fact, I may just go to CoPilot and propose this very topic, see what the bits-and-bytes say. It might be fun. 

Not sure how the late Dr. Alistair Duckworth might respond. 

Oh yes I do: Off with his head!