Poem of the world war, this one

This poem grabbed my attention because it captures the moment, as good poetry does.
It was posted on Facebook by friend and one-time writing professor
John Calderazzo in Colorado. Thanks, John.

Death and Tennyson on a conservative podcast

I somehow found myself watching an hour-long podcast with two conservatives. Yes, I know I should have been shocked, appalled even, but it was a conservation between a gray-haired Hoover Institution host and a bearded guy in a ballcap who looked fresh from a Nebraska farm, and was.

The host was Peter Robinson on Uncommon Knowledge. The guest was Ben Saase, Harvard and Yale grad, former Nebraska congressman, and short-time president of my university, UF in Gainesville. They obviously knew one another to judge by their opening friendly banter. My first question: How do they know each other?

Old colleagues, it turns out, friends, maybe. “Ben Sasse on Mortaliity, Meaning, and the Future of America.” Subjects that affect all of us, conservatives and liberals alike. I found out quickly that Sasse was recently diagnosed with Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer that has spread to other organs and his spine. He says that he is doped up on morphine and winces in pain on camera. But he’s starting a new podcast, “Not Dead Yet.” And he isn’t. He even recites some poetry to close out the hour.

Two intelligent people talking about big issues. I like that. I miss it. Reminds me of watching William F. Buckley’s “Firing Line” with my Dad. I now live frantic over the latest outrage. I stopped that for an hour. It was more than an hour. I interrupted the dialogue to go on the nightly walk with my wife and son. They walk, I drive my Golden scooter. It’s brisk outside, brisk for Florida, a cold wind from the north. We loop the neighborhood, trade greetings with neighbors, and we return, my wife to bed, my son to a rewatch of “Batman Forever,” and me for a snack and a return to the podcast.

Sasse is pretty fly for a white guy from Arlington, Nebraska. He jokes, testifies, gets clinical a few times but remains interesting throughout. His short tenure at UF was marked by controversy. Not sure if I can sum it up. I will leave it to the irascible Independent Florida Alligator to do that (full disclosure: I read the Alligator, support it, and spent two semesters there as a reporter in 1976).

The Alligator announced Sasse’s diagnosis on Dec. 23. That’s a usual calm time in the campus (off-campus in the Alligator’s case) newsroom, with student home for Christmas break. Sasse had this quote during the press conference: “Cancer is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.” If Sasse sounds more academic than legislative, he closes out the interview with a poem from Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Ring out, Wild Bells.” Tennyson is a particularly good poet to choose for memorization due to his rhyme schemes and repetitions. An example:

Cannon to right of them,/Cannon to left of them,/Cannon behind them/Volleyed and thundered;/Stormed at with shot and shell,/While horse and hero fell.

“Charge of the Light Brigade.” I had to memorize it during seventh grade after-school detention. The nuns punished us in 1963 with poems but I discovered it was a way to store away lines from the masters to blog about in 2026. Bless you sisters.

Tennyson wrote “Wild Bells” in a tribute to a friend who died at 22. It ends with these two stanzas as Sasse recites:

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
   Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
   Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

 

Ring in the valiant man and free,
   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
   Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Sasse is a Christian. He talks about it in ways we used to hear more often. Light on judgements, heavy on redemption. But it was his comments on academia that spoke to me. At UF, he brought in colleagues to establish the Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education. Campus ground-breaking for its building was held last month. Sasse has been teaching courses there and was scheduled to teach in the spring (don’t see him on the current course list).

I am suspicious of conservatives taking over universities and screwing around with them. We saw what happened when Gov. DeSantis set out to de-woke New College in Sarasota. DeSantis liked Sasse and was instrumental in his hiring. The search for a replacement at UF has gone on forever. One great candidate was rejected already due to his alleged interest in diversity programs at Penn State. Nobody with Gov D’s mindset has yet been found. Whether that’s because word has spread among potential candidates that they will be stepping into a minefield or whether the search committee is inept. Or a combination of those.

But, watching the Hoover podcast with Sasse, I agreed with some of the things the man said. He is disturbed by students deserting majors in humanities for more “practical” majors, majors that will lead to jobs. Sasse is akin to his liberal colleagues when he bemoans that and his arguments for the humanities is nearly the same. The humanities teach us to be good citizens. Sasse’s course title for this semester was “American Life.” A civics class? Perhaps. Here’s his quote from the podcast:

“We haven’t done basic civics for a really long time.”

Educators have been complaining about that for a long time.

Why don’t kids want to major in history or English? Not practical. But also, those classes have been “niche-efied,’ narrowed down to appeal to small slices of the humanities that narrow the focus of the major. I know from my three years in a state university MFA program that those niches and biases exist and it isn’t healthy for the system as a whole.

Our children and grandchildren are looking at the shifting swirling job market and want to know how to deal with that chaos and the one that’s coming. We don’t know what the jobs will be in 10 or 20 years. We don’t know if there will be jobs. Elon Musk says everyone will be rich so don’t worry about it. OK, Elon, go play with your rocket ships. To make sure we have a good grounding on the world, and to ensure we can keep a functioning democracy, we need better future prospects that Elon provides.

To get back to humanities. Learning the classics isn’t a right-wing plot. It’s something that will ensure our future. If we’re going to get Middle Americans to buy into college educations, we have to make some changes. Here’s Sasse:

“There’s no reason the taxpayers of the state of Texas or the state of Nebraska or Florida should subsidize somebody to teach in a discipline that isn’t wrestling with the big questions and isn’t preparing people for work.”

The humanities do that. It makes us wrestle with big questions and prepares us for work. Some of those questions and careers we don’t know yet. But the humanities will give us the tools to grapple with them.

Dear UF: No donations for you until Gov D is gone

Feb. 17. 2026

TO:             University of Florida Annual Giving Program

FROM:       Michael T. Shay

RE:             Gator Nation Stand Up and Holler Giving Day

I am a proud Florida Gator, class of ’76. I have donated to UF when the budget will allow. I’m retired now and the budget allows but I am not donating and there is one reason for that: Interference in UF by Gov. Ron DeSantis and the GOP-run Florida State Legislature.

It is alarming to see the search for a UF president go on and on as we await DeSantis’s choice to rule the state’s flagship university, my alma mater. These right-wing politicos take their order from the Trump wing of the GOP and it has led to disaster on the national and international scenes.

So today, on the eve of Giving Day, looking at Mr. 2-Bits’ tie pinned to the bulletin board above my PC, I decline to donate until DeSantis and his MAGA goons are gone. Instead, I donated $25 to the Independent Florida Alligator. Their reporters are on the case and I will continue to follow the Alligator with interest and with whatever support I can send their way.

I leave you with this:

Two-bits, four-bits, six-bits, a dollar

All for an independent UF stand up and holler!

The crowd cheers.

Editor's Note: Read the Alligator's latest story on the unending UF presidential search.

Surfing, A Paddle-Out Remembrance

My sister Maureen asked me to dig through my photo albums for pictures of my brother, Tommy, who died on Christmas Day. She and her tech-savvy son Sean are putting together a video presentation for a reception following a Paddle-Out on Saturday, April 4, at Hartford Avenue approach in Daytona Beach. We're looking for a good time in the a.m., when the tide is low and we can park on the beach (very few parking spaces on the approach). Surfers of all ages are invited. You don’t have to claim membership in the Hartford Heavies. No membership existed. No member ID cards. No dues. No boring meetings dictated by Roberts Rules of Order.  Only requirement was to rise early after a night of questionable activities. Grab your board and get to the beach to ride waves fresh to Daytona from the vast ocean. Never been ridden before. Yours.

Any photos of Hartford Ave Days you’d like to share? Let me know in the comments.

This one posted on Facebook by Ken Osteen, still surfing: 

Coach Osteen: "Sadly we lost another member of our

Undefeated Seabreeze Jr Surf Team of 1975-76, Tommy Shay.

Heck of a surfer and grew up to be a good man. RIP Tommy"

(second from right).

In this very fictional story, my wife asks me about that sultry woman's voice in my office

My historical novel, "Zeppelins Over Denver," will be out soon from The Ridgeway Press. I recently proofed all 395 typeset pages and now need new glasses or possibly new eyes if they are available. I spent most of my working life editing my own work and that of others. Not everyone appreciates editing, as you may discover if your boss asks you to "take a look" at his article for the corporate web site. The editor's goal is to make every written piece shine like a diamond or at least like a good knock-off over at the pawn shop. Readable, it has to be. Comprehensible. Maybe even dazzling. 

Writers rarely read their published books because they have read them over and over again. You would think it gets old. It does. In the new world of self-published books, an editor should be worth its weight in gold but now we have computers and A.I. One thing that helped me through 128,373 words was a new gadget on Microsoft Word. It is the "Read Aloud" prompt. The writer blocks text and then this mellifluous female voice reads your text. OK, it's slightly artificial. I noted some grievous mispronunciations, but they are surprisingly few. What I wasn't prepared for was the artificial voice emphasizing chosen words. One of them is this: What? I caught a lilt in her voice. I was charmed. I decided to give her a name, Rita Read Aloud. She has personality. 

However, I was tempted to change Rita's voice into a male one because most of my fictional characters are male (but not all). I decided to ask Gary Google if this was wise. Responses were surprising. The male voices sound mechanical, robot-like. One respondent warned that if I switched off the female voice to male, I would never get Rita back. The finality of divorce. Suitably forewarned, I kept Rita and am happy I did. Somewhere around Chapter 27, I started talking back to her and we are now in a long-term relationship which has led to a world of domestic problems.

Wife: Who was that you were talking to in your office?

Me: That was just me.

Wife: Sounded like a female voice.

Me: Robot. Just a robot. On MS Word. A very bland robot voice.

Wife: I thought I heard her say WHAT? like she really meant it, as if she was responding meaningfully in some way, as if....

Me: I shut the office door slowly, you know, like that last scene in The Godfather when Michael Corleone shuts himself off from the love of his life. Just like that.

From the Desk of the Lapsed Catholic: The Church Speaks Out, Loudly

I was raised Catholic and spent my formative years at mass and in catechism when not attending Catholic School. I'm a recipient of most of the church's sacraments, although never taken Holy Orders or gone all the way to extremes, Extreme Unction that is, now known as the Sacrament of Anointing the Sick.  Yet, I am a Lapsed Catholic in current parlance. That means I don't go to mass religiously and partake in the eucharist (communion). I vote for Democrats (was once told by a Catholic deacon that I would go to hell if I voted for John Kerry, a Catholic and altar boy). I abhor certain church policies on women's rights and gender equality. The abuse of young people by priests is horrible. I trained to be an altar boy but never finished because our family kept moving so Dad could build missile silos in preparation for Armageddon. 

I spent four years at a Catholic High School in Florida kicking Southern Baptist asses on the basketball court and received Mister Catholic graduation honors from the Knights of Columbus of Daytona Beach of which my father and future father-in-law wore those funny hats with the fringe on top. I made fun of this Mr. Catholic award for many years as I was a snarky know-it-all Liberal which I remain, in most ways. But now, at last, I can wear it with pride as the church speaks out on the anti-human fascist policies of Trump and his henchmen and henchwomen.

The ICE killings in Minneapolis have sickened me. They are lawless thugs doing the bidding of the Thug in Chief, Donald Trump. I have been trying to keep out of politics on these pages out of deference for others. But no longer. Just joined the millions who have listened to Bruce Springsteen's anthem, "Streets of Minneapolis." Go listen. It may make you cry. It may curdle your blood. It may make you think. We just can't let this outrage continue.

I've written my legislators, for all the good it will do. But I keep at it. When I lived in Wyoming during the first Trump presidency, I helped organize protests in the state capitol. I am in Florida now and if any state needs a clean sweep of its ruling junta it's Florida. Gov. DeSantis is as much a thug as Trump. Our congressional rep in Florida District 6, Randy Fine, has gloried in the murders of protesters on the streets of Minneapolis. He's disgusting. 

From Occupy Democrats on Facebook (I was involved with Occupy in olden times):

Pope Leo's hometown cardinal shreds the Trump administration for lying about the murder of Alex Pretti, says that their smear campaign "flies in the face of what our eyes told us."

The Catholic Church is waging all-out holy war against MAGA...

"You have long been an advocate for immigrants' rights. What is your reaction to what we have seen from federal agents and the Department of Homeland Security in just the last few days alone?" Stephanie Ruhle asked Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago during his appearance on MS NOW.

"It's clear that we need to return to the understanding of what human dignity is about. People have to be treated in humane way," said Cupich. "Name-calling, referring to people as vermin or animals, garbage, really puts us in a very difficult position in this country because it's based on an understanding that each and every human being had dignity."

Cupich appeared to be referring directly to Trump's horrific rhetoric. The president has called Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a Somali immigrant and Muslim woman, "garbage" and attacked "radical left thugs that live like vermin."

"And so we're going down a path in many ways a far distance from who we should be and claim to be as a nation in the world," Cupich added.

Ruhle than asked the cardinal what it "does to a nation" when "people in positions of authority" including the president use such "dehumanizing" rhetoric.

"Well I can tell you what it has done in the past..." said Cupich. "You know today we mark Holocaust Remembrance Day and it's important to recall the terrible tragedy that happened to the many people who were killed simply because of their faith and their traditions."

"The Holocaust didn’t begin when they opened concentration camps. It began with words,” he continued. "And I think that we have to keep that in mind and learn from history that words do matter. And so it is important to call people out."

"The Holy Father Pope Leo said something really very instructive for us in these days. He said that the real crisis we're facing is one of relativism, where we reduce the truth to an opinion, or alternative facts," said the cardinal, referencing Kellyanne Conway's infamous MAGA slogan from the first Trump presidency.

"And I think that we need to lean into that insight as well because we saw actually what happened and yet there's a narrative out there that's trying to be marketed to the American people that flies in the face of what our eyes told us," he added.

Feeling helpless? I get some direction from an unexpected Substack source

Didn't know anything about Jackie Summers until I read his "Field Notes for Cracking an Empire" on a Facebook repost. Common-sense tips from an African-American activist, chef and "serial entrepreneur." His field notes gave me hope that my daily activities for social justice can lead to something. Go to https://jackiesummers1.substack.com/p/field-notes-for-a-cracking-an-empire

The revolution will not be televised, but Skywalkers will

The strangest part of “Skywalkers: A Love Story” on Netflix is that it is more love story than a how-to on 21^st-century Internet attention-getting. It’s both, really, but love story trumps likes and NFTs.

Ivan and Nikola are two people in search of likes in the cyber universe. To do that, they climb to the tops of the world’s tallest buildings, perform for the camera and drones, and post it all online. “Rooftopping,” it’s usually called. But now “Skywalking”  is in the film co-directed by Jeff Zimbalist and Maria Boukhonina.

Skywalkers Ivan Beerkus and Angela Nikolau make money through NFTs (but don’t ask me how). It’s illegal what they do, trespassing at least and could be a danger to their own lives and those of rescuers and pedestrians below. My thought was this: don’t these two have anything better to do? I mean, what good do they do for humanity? If I sound like an old geezer that’s because I am. These rooftoppers were damaged during childhood, neglected and maybe worse. But come on – stunting on top of tall buildings is the best you can do?

My attitude horrified my family. “It’s a love story – pay attention!” That was my daughter. “It’s incredible what they do,” asserted my son who used to free-climb the ancient granite rock formations of Vedauwoo in Wyoming. “My God,” my wife said something like this: “You sacrificed your Favorite Son pedigree to be the writer you dreamed of being.” She was the most upset and it chastened me because I truly was not thinking clearly.

It was a love story. It began as a spree but then the duo became concerned for the other’s welfare. Ivan didn’t want Nikola to fall from a great height and die. Nikola seemed shocked by this and after a lot of turmoil   including a break-up, she reconsidered, discovered she didn’t want him to fall from a great height and die.

Many of their skywalker friends had already died. Death became real and it was no longer a lark. It was deadly serious. That’s what makes their conquest of the world’s tallest building in Dubai so glorious. They did it, discovered each other along the way.

Roll the credits. There they are performing in the Dubai sky and a batch of songs roll with the credits. One song catches my attention. It sounds like a hymn and I don’t get it because The Good Lord is named in the lyrics and and I hadn’t seen any gimme that old-time religion in this documentary. The music was beautiful. I scanned the credits for the music and discovered “Stand on The Word” by The Joubert Singers. I went to YouTube and listened many times.

It’s a rousing hymn, as gospel as can be. Looking for the lyrics, I came across a link to “David Byrne’s Desert Discs,” a list of songs from his BBC Radio Program he would take to a desert island if he ever got the “Cast Away” treatment and didn’t have Wilson to talk to. “Stand on The Word” by The Joubert Singers (studio recording) was on the list with “I Wanna Be Your Dog” by The Stooges and “The Revolution Will Not be Televised” by Gil-Scott Heron. That’s some list, Mr. Byrne.

The “Skywalkers” will be televised. And now it’s all over but the critiquing. They are all over the Internet. Some have the same issues with it that I do. From Wikipedia:

"Nell Minow, writing for RogerEbert.com, rated the film 2 out of 4 stars, describing the protagonists as "two careless adrenaline junkies taking ridiculous risks to get likes on social media" and criticizing them for being 'completely self-centered.' "

Co-director Zimbalist said this:

“There’s a danger to romance,” Zimbalist told Netflix’s Queue. “It crushes us. It breaks our hearts. It breaks our hopes. Here, that danger is material. If the love falls apart, if the trust falls apart, it’s life or death. That felt like such a potent way of taking this amorphous sense that we all have in our romance and externalizing it and making it tangible.”

I get it. Well, I got it, with help from my family.

But back to “Stand On The Word” and God’s role in the soundtrack.

Curiosity took me to Google and it sent me to the Red Bull Music Academy. Musicians probably know this source but dorky 75-year-old bloggers do not.

Aaron Gonsher wrote on RBMA on May 20, 2016: “The Tangled History of the Joubert Singers’ “Stand On The Word.” He tracks its known history:

"In 1982, Phyliss McKoy Joubert was working as the Minister of Music at the First Baptist Church in Crown Heights, New York, when she gathered a group of musicians to record the gospel album 'Somebody Prayed For This.' 'Stand On The Word,' the album’s opener and the first song Joubert had ever written, was performed by a group of sweet-voiced children that she christened the Celestial Choir, and it stood out as a tinny yet remarkably addictive assertion of God’s omnipotence."

Decades of mixes and remixes followed. One was allegedly done by the legendary DJ Larry Levan of the Paradise Garage in NYC. He featured it as a late-night disco tune.

That’s how he works

That’s how

The good Lord, he works

Gonsher sums up the song’s origins this way:

“Stand On The Word” remains a worship song regardless of whose fingerprints are smudged on a remix….The chorus rising in one voice, splitting into call-and-response, and its exhilarating piano lines can’t be seen as anything but gospel music….It doesn’t matter who received the revelation first – only that it was eventually transmitted. And if so, that’s all there is to it: That’s how the good lord works.

Yep. As the song says. As the singer sings. Skywalkin’ all the way.

Sunday morning round-up: Big & Strange, WY and FL

A round-up is a task performed by cowboys when they bring in the cattle.

I am not a cowboy. But I spent 30 years in The Cowboy State of Wyoming so sometimes feel like one.

Yesterday, a big galoot from Laramie, Wyoming – Frank Crum, 6-foot-7, 315-pound OL for the Denver Broncos -- caught a touchdown pass from Bo Nix as the Broncos beat the Bills. Crum grew up in Laramie, played football at Laramie High School, and played six years for the UW Cowboys. His father and grandfather all played for UW. Way to go, big fella.

Later, in overtime, Bo Nix powered the Broncos to the OT win. He broke his ankle along the way and now is out for the rest of the playoffs.

Meanwhile, UW’s Josh Allen, everyone’s favorite in Laramie where UW retired his uniform number in tribute, sat and watched his Super Bowl dreams evaporate.

A big, strange day for Wyoming. Wyoming excels in Big & Strange.

I miss it. Now living in Florida which has its own Big & Strange.

Earlier in the day, Chris and I cheered on the Florida Gators as they beat Vanderbilt 98-94 in NCAA men’s basketball. The Gators (UF my alma mater) are a hard-driving bunch with players from all over, some appearing mysteriously out of The Portal. There’s this small guard Xiavian Lee who portalized from Princeton to make amazing shots and there’s Rueben Chinyelu who steamrolls his way to the bucket. I was happy to see the win and glad there was no OT to interfere with the Broncos/Bills game. I know of no Wyoming connection for the Gators but looking for one.

Just finished reading (for the second time) “Never a Lovely So Real,” a biography of Nelson Algren by Colin Asher. I love the book for its unflinching portrait of Algren powered by Asher’s love of the subject. Algren was my first writing mentor, a strange old man dressed in rumpled clothes and a beat-up cap who taught writing to UF undergrads in 1974. I was a non-trad student, a university newbie at 23 who had been out doing something interesting. Nelson taught writing in many places (including the MFA bastion at Iowa) and was openly scornful of learning writing in the academy. He came from those mean streets of Chicago and learned his trade on the road. He wrote about the travails of regular folks. He must have looked around that stifling classroom and said what do these people know of the ways of the world? Go out and do something interesting and then write about it. I did. Was still learning. Algren told great stories and my Vietnam vet buddy Mike and I took Nelson to a strip club on Gainesville’s outskirts and had a swell time. We smoked pop with him although he said it didn’t do much for him as he had smoked it many times with jazz cats in 1930s Chicago. Nelson liked one of my stories and gave me his agent’s contact info which I never followed up on. He also gave us all a list of recommended reading and I worked my way through it, parked deep in the stacks of the UF library. Asher has a new book coming out which sounds cool. It’s titled “The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music” and will be released by W.W. Norton on June 30. Check out his cool web site at colinasher.com for more info.

I get up every day cursing Trump and his fascist minions. Cursing is one thing. Doing something about it is another. I am a lifetime voter and Democrat who has been active in party politics. It ain’t always pretty but you gotta get your hands dirty if you want to make something. Algren was blacklisted for 30 years for being a Commie. His pal in the WPA Writers Project, Richard Wright, was forced out of the U.S. for his activism. I write regularly to the dimwits who want to turn Florida into a Maga Playground. Write. Demonstrate. Vote, please vote. There’s a good chance that Trump and his goons will find excuses to close the polls in November. Do not let him do that. It’s up to you.

Because Lorca was a poet, his country hushed him

 

Posted Jan. 9 on Facebook by the poet. Ninety long years ago,
Lorca was murdered by fascists. His spirit lives on.

A (belated) Christmas memory, Colorado and Capote

"The closest thing to heaven on this planet anywhere

Is a quiet Christmas morning in the Colorado snow."

That's the refrain in "Colorado Christmas" by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, a song written by Steve Goodman. I listened to it numerous times during the Christmas season and call it up other times. It's pure nostalgia, a musician in a L.A. hotel dreaming about "Telluride and Boulder Down below." No mention of Denver, my hometown, or Aurora, where I did some of my growing up, or Fort Collins, where I attended grad school. Telluride is a wonder, deep in the Rockies, well known for skiing and summer music festivals. Something beautiful about sitting on a grassy field under the stars listening to music. Boulder, of course, is known coast-to-coast for its counterculture vibe, beatniks and hippies, Naropa Institute, the CU cafeteria named for a Colorado cannibal, "South Park," and the Flatirons jutting up to the west like, well, flatirons. John Fante grew up in Boulder. You can get heated up about your favorite cause and then cool off at the Dalton Trumbo Fountain Court on the CU campus.

So, is NGDB from Colorado? They are in the Colorado Music Hall of Fame and many in its roster of performers live in Colorado. Long-time member Jimmy Ibbotson had a recording studio in Woody Creek outside Aspen, also known as the lair of the late Hunter S. Thompson.

I first heard "Colorado Christmas" in Aspen. Christine and I were up in Starwood, heading to our friend Steve's father's house, when we got stuck in a snowbank. We drove an AMC/Renault compact, not even front-wheel drive. Driving up the night before, we got lost and stopped at an intersection where a big 4WD was parked. Obviously lost, we waved, the window rolled down, and John Denver poked out his head. Yes, he said, this is the right road to Starwood. We thanked him and didn't even ask him for a song. We maneuvered up the scary road to the summit. Two hours later we drove down. The next morning, we drove back up and got stuck. As we did the usual rock-and-roll motion to free the car, "Colorado Christmas" came on the radio. I thought it was the most beautiful song I ever heard even though at that very moment we were stuck on a quiet Christmas morning in the Colorado snow. "The closest thing to heaven on this planet anywhere..." What could we do? We laughed, and kept on rollin'.

We live in Florida now.

Speaking of Christmas memories --

"A Christmas Memory" was a 1966 Emmy-winning televised story by Truman Capote. A remake appeared later but it lacked what made the earlier one stand out, narrator Capote. So special to hear his voice recall a rural Alabama childhood memory. A young Capote (Buddy in the story) is deserted by his parents and stays with his grown-up second cousin Sook whose goal for the season is to make 30 fruitcakes for friends and neighbors. She is dirt-poor in the midst of the Great Depression and she and Buddy scrape together what they have saved during the year and set out on their quest. First stop: salvage "windfall pecans" from Farmer Callahan's grove. They buy makings at the general store and a bottle of bootleg whiskey from Ha Ha Jones Fish Fry and Dancing Cafe. They make the cakes and distribute them just in time for Christmas. The cakes are sweet and imply a bit of a buzz. The sweetest part is the young Capote and his grown-up voice, this tiny story that came from the writer who gave us true stories of Kansas murderers, Manhattan society dames, and tortured souls who haunt Tiffany's. Capote was a tortured soul but how he could write. 

Listen to Linda: Don't ignore those symptoms

This is a reprint of a Wyoming Tribune-Eagle column by old friend and work colleague Linda Coatney of Cheyenne, Wyo. It speaks of a subject important to us all, especially those of a certain age. Reprinted as a public service, whether you're in the windswept wilds of Wyoming or the soggy swamplands of Central Florida. 

We remember our brother Tommy

Tommy Shay and his dog Duke

In Memoriam: Tommy Shay 

Thomas Gerard Shay (“Tommy”), age 65, passed away peacefully after a short illness on Christmas Day, 2025, with family at his side.  He was an organ donor and willed his body to medical research. He was born in Denver on Jan. 28, 1960, and grew up in Wichita, KS, Moses Lake, WA, and Daytona Beach, and was a long-time resident of Palm Bay where he worked as a machinist for 30 years at Winchester Interconnect, Melbourne. He is survived by brothers Michael Shay (Christine) and Timothy Shay (Jen) both of Ormond Beach, four sisters Molly Shay Shakar of Decatur, GA, Eileen Shay Casey (Brian) of Winter Park, FL, Maureen Shay Martinez (Ralph) Ormond Beach. and Mary Shay Powell (Neill), Tallahassee, and his significant other, Tani Hopkins, Decatur, GA. His brothers Daniel Shay (Nancy) of Ormond Beach and Patrick Shay (Jean) of Palm Bay preceded him in death, as did his parents, Anna Hett Shay and Thomas Reed Shay. His family meant everything to him and he will be mourned by his nephews and nieces: Kevin, Annie, Meghan, Connor, Ryan, Bryce, Thomas, Michael, Katie, Maggie, Erin, Katie, Olivia, Finn, Mayzee, Sean, Maddie, Olivia, Morgan and his many great-nieces and nephews. Tommy grew up surfing in Daytona Beach and was a founding member of the “Hartford Heavies.” The family dog, Shannon, was his constant companion while he surfed.  As an adult, he spent Sundays surfcasting with friends on Melbourne Beach. He lent a helping hand to family, friends, and neighbors who looked forward to ripe avocados and limes from Tommy’s backyard orchard. He camped with his dogs Ophie and his hound Duke who passed away in 2023. He was proud of his stamp and coin collections. Tommy was a metal detector hunter and tossed foreign coins on the beach for other hunters to find. “He looked out for everyone,” said his surf-fishing buddy.  Tommy loved dogs and requested donations be made to Riley’s Rescue of Brevard County, 215 Krefeld Rd. NW, Palm Bay, FL 32907 or FL Aid to Animals/Palm Bay, 3585 Bayside Lake Blvd. SE, Palm Bay, FL 32909. Tommy was a spiritual person but at his request, no service will be held. His family has tentatively scheduled a Paddle Out on April 4, 2026 at the Hartford Avenue approach in Daytona Beach; details to be determined.

The family welcomes comments and remembrances. 

https://www.news-journalonline.com/obituaries/psar1368055

When surfers die

Dedicated to my brother, Tommy Shay, 65, who died Christmas Day in Orlando from cancer complications.

Paddle out, man. Dig deep, feel the tide’s pull as you stroke against it. Surf is bitchin’ today. A storm heads through, leaves behind a five-foot swell that breaks clean in the offshore wind. You paddle with the swell, ocean feathers around you and something magnificent jumps in your chest as you glide with the wave. This moment will last forever. You kick free and head back to the breakers to find a circle of surfers in a becalmed sea. One holds an urn of ashes. In it are beach sunrises, great waves, friendships. The ashes drift with the sea. One last time, you paddle out to meet the sun.

Paddle Out for Tommy tentatively scheduled at Hartford Av approach in Daytona for April 4, with warmer seas and fair winds. 

On the beach – just us kids

I’m the only surfer in this high school annual photo. Me, in front, my board, an Oceanside 9-foot-6 Nose Rider, orange, easy to spot after wipeout (no leashes then). I lead John, Tim, Richard, Elizabeth balanced on top, trusting four high school boys not to drop her in the Daytona dunes. Bob (also an “S”) shoots the photo. Just a group of Esses on the winter beach. We are featured in the annual’s “S” page, headshots predictable, all in Catholic School uniform, hijinks saved for the beach pic. We tried to be the Beach Boys, us guys, hoisting surfer girl who wasn’t a surfer but smart, nice, defying gravity. She’s now in the Colorado mountains, I hear. Tim owns a bookstore in Philadelphia, not sure about John, I was Richard’s best man at his wedding, before I abandoned beaches for the Rocky Mountains. Richard is out in the Florida bush. Bob died during Covid. We were friends, roommates in a broken-down house in Gainesville. Bob the arborist, trimmed trees, grew homegrown. We were 17 or 18 on this day, 1968, class of ’69. The world boiled around us. We were on the beach. Just us kids.

In praise of Large Print books: "Seeing is Believing"

Wichita, 1962. I read Tom Swift and Hardy Boys books in bed with my Boy Scout flashlight. It was after the parents’ call for “lights out” and a brighter light might have awakened my brother who would want to talk about trains. He spent many hours with his model trains, vowing that one day he would pilot locomotives across the prairie. Instead, he learned the air traffic controller trade in the USAF and spent his career assisting pilots through the crowded skies.

I am about to turn 75 and I need more than a Boy Scout flashlight to read at night or any other time. Kindle, you might say, with its lit screen and adjustable type. Done and done. I love my Kindle. I’ve read some smashing books on it. Big ones, too. In 2022, I read “The Dark Forest” by Cixun Liu, the second book in the “Three-Body Problem” series. A long one at 528 pages. It was a slog sometimes, but the highs outnumbered the lows. Made me watch the first part of the Netflix series and make sense of it. Part Two coming up! 

I always miss holding an actual book. Something magical about sliding a book from a library shelf and opening it to that first page. The feel of it, the smell, the look. Lately I’ve been exploring the Large Print section at the Ormond Beach Public Library. It features lobby racks of new LP books in a section dedicated to donors. In the stacks, the library features aisle after aisle of LP books and CD books for the audible (and Audible) oriented. LP can stand for large print and also LP as in Long-Playing records. LP, record, or album – all terms we used for our 1970s purchases from Peaches. We played those Zeppelin disks long and often and appreciated their albums of songs which live in our bones. We annoyed our children by singing them badly and loudly on car trips. For them, LP might mean Loud Pops.

During my many decades at libraries, I paid little attention to the Large Print sections. They’ve grown as Americans age, especially our large cohort of Baby Boomers. Us. Me.

In the Ormond Beach Public Library’s “Miscellaneous Large Print” section, I saw a red trade paperback that outshone the others and plucked it out. It was “These Precious Days,” a collection of essays by Ann Patchett. I recently read (on Kindle) my first Patchett novel, “The Dutch House” and loved it. Beautiful writing, compelling characters, and a story I wasn’t sure about sometimes. But by the end, I was impressed with the tale of the Conroy family and their creaky old house outside Philadelphia. The writer made me pay attention to the characters as the story unwound and that takes skill. I will read more.

I just did. I checked out Patchett’s essays and read them. With an essay collection, the reader can pick and choose.  “A Talk to the Association of Graduate School Deans in the Humanities” was not my first choice. A bit dry, perhaps, nothing like “The Paris Tattoo” or “Eudora Welty: An Introduction,” Welty one of my favorite writers.

When I got to it, her talk to the humanities deans grabbed me. She wrote about her days as a grad student at the Iowa Writers Workshop. It was around the same time I went to the grad school MFA program at Colorado State University in the last half of the 1980s. There was a generational difference (she 22, me 37) and a gender one. But our experiences were similar in several ways. She had some great teachers and mentors but also some not-so-good ones. She scrambled to make ends meet and so did I. Her fellow students could be annoying but you put a bunch of creatives in cramped quarters and you get conflict. She sums it up: “My MFA showed me the importance of community.” That was my reason to do it and I did find community.

Patchett’s essays are marvelous, as marvelous as her novels (see my comments on “The Dutch House”). I was impressed by the cover art, a painting of the author’s dog Sparky by artist Sooki Raphael. The title essay is about Patchett’s friendship with the artist. It’s long, as essays go (88 pages), but it’s the heart of the book. Feel free to cry.

I was pleased to see that Patchett’s essay collection was issued by Harper Large Print, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Harper Large Print had a farewell message for me and other LP readers:

“Light and easy to read, Harper Large Print paperbacks are for the book lovers who want to see what they are reading without strain. For a full listing of titles and new releases to come, please visit our website: www.hc.com.”

This final thought in all caps: “SEEING IS BELIEVING!”

The Affordability Crisis Meets the Bitter Sweet Symphony

I was a Florida resident for just 18 days before I was rushed to the ER with septicemia. I am the family cook and grocery shopper. I barely had a chance to do either before my system shut down and I spent four weeks at AdventHealth Daytona. I did shop once at Publix in Ormond-by-the-Sea but mainly, during the turmoil of moving cross-country, we had a lot of food delivered. My wife fended for herself during my hospitalization with the help of family and friends. I awoke from a medically-induced coma after five days and was put on a restrictive diet due to the after-effects of sepsis and my chronic cardiac condition. My orders to the hospital cafeteria hotline were filled with “you can’t have that” and “no.” 

The food I did get was tasteless mainly because it was without taste and the meds I was taking robbed me of my taste buds. I know this because once I could order a hamburger, I did. “Your brother and I had them for lunch and they were tasty.” I tried it. Tasted like cardboard. I hadn’t eaten any cardboard in a long time but that was what the food tasted like had I sampled cardboard in the past. Only once did I cheat. My sister-in-law brought me dumplings from the favorite bistro and I got a shot of salt and Asian spices. Yum. But I was caught cheating and nurses read me the riot act.

I started dreaming about Publix. You know that TV ad where a beautiful young woman flies across the store on a grocery cart triggering the lights in the frozen food section while “Bitter Sweet Symphony” by The Verve swells? (you can see the long version on YouTube). I didn’t have that dream. My subconscious put me in my bed which was transformed into a car and I drove to every Publix in town which are legion. I told that dream to the morning’s first wave of med staff and they thought it was funny. A nurse looked up my diet. “I’d dream about Publix too if I had to eat hospital cardboard.” She didn’t say that part about cardboard but she appreciated my dreams.

After my October 4 release, I received daily in-home care for more than a month. Nurses tracked my ingoing and outgoing. PT helped me exercise. I ate simple meals , shopping done by my wife Chris. She can shop and cook. As for shopping, where I enter the store door, I hear a symphony playing. But Chris is assaulted by the sights and sounds I so enjoy. She has a solid case of ADHD and she limits herself to a few items and is out ASAP. Her cooking skills are limited due to nobody, not her mother or sister or teachers, had the patience to teach a left-handed hyper-kid how to put a meal together. I was the oldest of nine and often cooked for my siblings. I cooked when I was a college student and served food at various fast-food joints. Now I cook for my family. Chris, bless her, likes to clean. We’ve been married now for 43 years.

This brings me to the issue of affordability. Three weeks ago, I shopped at Publix with my adult son who is living with us. He has ADHD but it is a different strain from his mother’s. He is an amazing shopper. He can look at my handwritten grocery list, disappear into the aisles, and return with our heavier and bulkier items such as toilet paper, multi-packs of Kleenex, Diet Coke twelve-packs, kitty litter, laundry detergent. I will be puttering around the store in my e-scooter with a few BOGO items, a rotisserie chicken, a packet of deli chicken slices. “What else?” Kevin says.

This leads to a quandary. I don’t mind spending two hours in a grocery store. Kevin thinks a half-hour is way too long. This leads to a question: Should I have Chris drop me off and return when summoned later in the day? Or should I snag Kevin and go team-shopping?

Publix is like Disney World to me, a carnival of foodstuffs. I’m in those TV ads. At least I was until last month when the shopping bill went over five hundred dollars. That’s 10 days of food for three, sometimes four (daughter Annie drops in for an occasional meal). I have never spent that much on one grocery trip. There were many times in my life when I clipped coupons to afford the basics at Albertson's or Safeway for a family of four. I joined shoppers who clicked on their coupons and had the store computer ring up the savings. I would get to the receipt’s final line and boast, “I saved 75 dollars." "I saved 101 dollars.”

I save money at Publix with the BOGO items. Sometimes I get BOGO items just to get BOGO items which will add to the savings line.

Ormond Beach old-timers offer advice. Shop at Wal-Mart. Yes, I know, but it’s Wal-Mart and the Walton family supports Trump and right-wing kooks and yes, I know that one of the sisters has opened an incredible art museum. My sister Mo is a CostCo fan. She talks up the place all the time even though her three children have flown the nest and she shops for just two. She is the only person I know with a CostCo puzzle. She brought it to me in the hospital. It has a million pieces and I barely completed the CostCo hot-dog stand before I gave up. Mo and her husband Ralph took me for an initial foray into CostCo Daytona. The front-of-store display was a massive 100-inch television for an incredible price. I later saw a young man pushing one in a cart across the parking lot. I was entranced by the bakery section. They make their own bagels! Multi-packs of cookies still warm from the oven! Pies the size of 1955 Buick hubcaps (remember them?)! I signed up right away and got a 20 dollar discount on the joining fee. I could go out there right now and pay one dollar and 50 cents for a gourmet hot dog with all the fixins and a soda.

We conducted our Thanksgiving shopping at Wal-Mart. Yes, Wal-Mart. I brought Kevin with me as a defense mechanism to thwart the pre-holiday crowds and the sheer size of the place. It wasn’t glorious. I saw no pretty young women soaring on winged carts sailing through the frozen food aisle to “Bittersweet Symphony’s” opening violins. I did see a pair of youngsters shouting “Marco” while their mom yelled at them and then came the distant response of “Polo!” I asked Kevin if that was “a thing” and he replied “Sure.” We bought Great Value products (breakfast bars, pasta, ice cream) and spent a tad over four hundred dollars and I was tempted to remove enough items to go into 300-something but did not. The checker had already yelled “This register is closed” at the poor people behind me. I kept out my receipt as we made it out as that is demanded at Wal-Mart, checking the receipt against the items in your cart. Can’t be too careful during this “fake affordability” crisis.

Cue “Bitter Sweet Symphony,” the Publix ad not the original video which is kind of creepy. The song’s opening lines: “ ‘Cause it’s a bitter sweet symphony, this life/Trying to make ends meet/You’re a slave to money, then you die.”

Lately I’ve been having dreams, Train Dreams w/update

For decades, I kept a copy of “Fiskadoro” by Denis Johnson. I liked the idea of the book more than the book itself. It was an early post-apocalyptic novel set in the Florida where I grew up, the Keys, way south of my youth in Daytona Beach, but still, Florida. With my brother Dan, I was writing a post-apocalyptic novel set in the Central Florida I knew. It was the 1980s and we wanted in on the post-apocalyptic scenario that Reagan’s anti-Soviet MX Missile plan engendered. Dan, Air Force veteran and air traffic controller, was a Reagan man and I was not. There was energy in that – and we were brothers. I miss him still. Today is his birthday.

But back to Johnson. I read “Train Dreams” a decade ago when I still lived and worked in Wyoming. It’s a novella and I read it in two days. It touched me. I didn’t think it would. I did my best to read “Fiskadoro” but failed to finish -- I just couldn't get inside. Is this the same writer? My heart ached by “Train Dreams” end, much as it did last night when the credits rolled for “Train Dreams” on Netflix. It’s set mostly in Idaho, my old neighbor, and in the tall-timber forests I grew to love in my 40 years in the Rockies. Most of that time, the timber industry and environmentalists waged war. I wasn’t in the fight, but my location in the cities of the Colorado/Wyoming Front Range made me suspect.

I put that aside as I watched Robert and other loggers in early-20^th-century Idaho and Washington cut 500-year-old trees. Robert worked for his wife and daughter. He traveled to jobs by train, the most efficient form of transportation then. This was a love story featuring Robert and Gladys and little Katie. The couple planned and built the cabin themselves and did all the work. Tragedy came and some resolution followed. The ending is breathtaking yet somber.

It's a beautiful work, Johnson’s novel and the Netflix film directed by Cliff Bentley. The credits roll to a song called “Train Dreams” by Nick Cave. He was the right person for the job. I have it on my playlist now: 

Lately I’ve been having dreams, crazy dreams I can’t explain; A woman standing in a field of flowers, a screaming locomotive train; Crazy dreams that go on for hours and I can’t begin to tell you how that feels.

Robert doesn’t have the words.

I keep searching for them.

UPDATE: The Dec. 1 New York Times carried a review of a new biography about the late Denis Johnson. The book, "Flagrant, Self-Destructive Gestures," is by Ted Geltner. He assembled it through interviews with family and friends and fragments of notes left behind by Johnson. The writer spent his last years living in a cabin in north Idaho. If you live in the West, you can picture the cabin and know what it feels like as December snow swirls outside.

Death by Lightning: To be gone, gone and forgotten

On the morning after I watched the conclusion of “Death by Lightning" on Netflix.

One of the final scenes really got to me. It’s First Lady Lucretia “Crete” Garfield (Betty Gilpin) confronting the assassin Charles Guiteau (Matthew McFayden) in prison before he is hanged. She is angry and distraught about her husband’s death at the hands of this addle-brained miscreant, the likes of which we’ve seen too many times. Crete (President Garfield’s endearing name for her) tells Guiteau that she has halted the publishing of his tell-all book. “You will be forgotten!” She also knows that history will forget her husband, that he will be some sort of trivia question about the shortest-serving president. Nobody will remember what a fine man he was.

But this viewer now knows. President Garfield, streets will be named for you. Millard Fillmore too. In the 1980s I lived in the Cherry Creek block north of the funky-but-soon-to-be-ritzy Cherry Creek North Shopping District. Chris and I walked from our rental on Fillmore Street to the old Tattered Cover Bookstore when it actually had tattered covers for sale – cheap! – and the Cherry Cricket for football and beer and burgers.

Millard Fillmore. Yet another forgotten one. From Wikipedia:

Millard Fillmore was the 13^th president of the United States, serving from 1850 to 1853. He was the last president to be a member of the Whig Party while in the White House and the last to be neither a Democrat or a Republican. A former member of the House of Representatives, Fillmore was elected vice president in 1848 and succeeded to the presidency when Zachary Taylor died in 1850. Fillmore was instrumental in passing the Compromise Act of 1850 which led to a brief truce in the battle over the expansion of slavery.

"Brief truce” indeed.

He also later ran for president as a member of the Know Nothing Party.

Fillmore is now mostly a Jeopardy question: Who was the one-term 13^th president? Here’s a hint: There is a comic strip about a duck named for him.

Not surprisingly, there is also a comic strip named “Garfield” that features a misbehaving cat. Baby Boomers’ kids had Garfield stuffed animals.

You can look it up.

In Denver, Fillmore is situated between Detroit and Milwaukee streets. We rented a typical Denver bungalow brick house with a porch and a swastika on the chimney. I walked to the branch library and found that this swastika stood for auspiciousness and good luck until the 1930s when the Nazis hijacked it.  

A writing colleague lived in our basement and another writer friend and his girlfriend lived in the big corner house on the next block. Fillmore was a friend to writers if only for a short time.

Now, Garfield. It was named in the 1880s. The street runs north and south and dead-ends on the north at the old City Park Golf Course and on the south at City Park. After Fillmore, Chris and I lived in a walk-up apartment on Cook Street that was so close to the Denver Zoo that we could hear peacocks screeching at all hours. Garfield was a few blocks east as you walked to Colorado Boulevard.

The unforgettable thing that happened to us on Cook Street was the Christmas blizzard of December 1982 that buried us in three feet of snow for a week. The infamous event in the neighborhood was the assassination of radio talk-show host Alan Berg in June 1984, by The Order Neo-Nazi gang. He was at 14^th and Adams, another street named for a president, actually two of them. They were not assassinated. They are not forgotten.

I have a library of presidential books willed to me by my father. No Garfield or Fillmore volumes in the collection. I have an original copy of Mark Twain’s hardcover bio of Ulysses S. Grant, known as one of the best memoirs in presidential history. I also have a trade paperback of it. Several other Grant bios.

We bought our first house in 1985 on South Grant Street in Platt Park in Denver. The next street over was Sherman. We all know the origins of those names. Street names you won’t find anywhere in the South. Our bungalow-style house was built in 1909 and needed work. Our son Kevin was born there. Neighbors were nice. We let them rent our two-car garage for their woodworking business which is how we got our living room furniture that we no longer have. I walked to work at Gates Rubber Company. I came home, got on my running clothes, and jogged to Wash Park where every Yuppie jogged after work. 

My mother grew up in the Wash Park neighborhood. Wash, of course, is short for Washington, our first president. In the 1920s, the resurgent KKK once burned crosses in this Irish-Catholic neighborhood. Public school kids used to harass my mom and sister when they walked home from St. Francis. Mom said that was the first time she was called a redneck. Their father, my grandfather, was an Irish immigrant whose neck had been burned many times. The streetcar ran nearby. Some of the original houses have been “scraped off” and now are monstrous million-dollar-plus townhomes.

I looked to see if there were any streets named for Garfield in my Florida county. Garfield Avenue runs through Deland, not far from Stetson University and the historic downtown. There is a house like ours for sale on S. Garfield.

Every day and everywhere, we live with ghosts.