DNC in Denver 2028?

A DNC exploratory committee visited Denver last week to see if it's the best place for the 2028 Democratic National Convention. Other possible 2028 locations include Boston, Philadelphia, and Atlanta. 

I covered the 2008 Dem convention in Denver as an embedded blogger with the Wyoming delegation. Why not return to those glory days, when Barack Obama was the nominee and all set to move into the presidency (twice) while the GOP plotted to never let anything like that ever happen again. And look what they did. Just take a look around and see what they did to guarantee themselves a Democrat-free future, a democracy-free future. Use search bar to find my DNC Denver 2008 posts.

This was then...

Denver August 2008

Wrong shipping date confuses book buyers and me too

I was flummoxed (yes, flummoxed) to see my historical novel "Zeppelins Over Denver" listed for pre-order on Amazon.com with a shipping date of Nov. 19. On the product page, a May 5, 2026, pub date is listed and that is correct. At the same time, I was holding a copy of "Zeppelins" in my hands, wondering why an entity such as Amazon, which can speed a supply of Dude Wipes to me overnight, wants readers to wait until almost Thanksgiving for my first novel. I have alerted the site's problem-solvers and hope for a quick solution. I mean, the book is worth waiting for, might even make a great holiday gift, but I may be an old man before that comes around. Pause for fact check: I am an old man now, typing this with the same four fingers I used on typewriters and keyboards since the 1970s when I was putting my first words to paper. Yes, paper. So, if you are anxious to read a novel set in 1919 featuring characters out of The Great War in Europe, leave a comment and I will sell you a copy and mail it the old-fashioned way. 

Travel now with Patrick as he contemplates a new life in the West

The opening paragraphs of my new novel, Zeppelins Over Denver:

Patrick Michael Hott pulled his cap down on his forehead and slumped into the seat on the east side of the southbound train. It was the last day of July 1919. He shifted in the seat, trying to bend his lanky frame into the limited space. He looked out the window. Cows grazed on brown swatches of grass that stretched all the way to the flat horizon. He passed green wavy ranks of ripening corn. There was a man laboring out in his field. An old farmhouse. More cows.

He looked in the other direction, past his seatmate and to the opposite side of the train. That was the west and the Rocky Mountains. Heads and hats blocked that view out of the passenger car windows. So many big people. So many hats. Floppy women’s hats adorned with feathers. Towering cowboy hats worn by towering cowboys. Straw boaters worn by rangy young dudes. Beat-up hats worn to protect farmers from the mile-high sun. Every blessed American wore a big hat that obscured his view of the mountains. They were all on his train.

Why couldn’t they wear sensible headwear such as the soft cap he bought in Chicago on the Fourth of July? He had joined his brother’s family to picnic on Lake Michigan for the first Fourth that America celebrated after The Great War. Not even a month ago. He bought the cap from a street vendor. He liked it immediately and spent too much of his hard-earned pay for it. He liked that he could pull it down over his big ears when the winter winds blew off the lake. The bill kept the sun off his face, which would come in handy now that he was on his way to Arizona. It also gave him a dapper air, or so he believed.

To be continued

Order Zeppelins Over Denver by Michael T. Shay now from your favorite bookstore. Just yesterday, friends ordered copies from Parnassus Books in Nashville, co-owned by the magnificent Ann Patchett,  and Mitchell Kaplan's Books & Books in Miami. Mitchell was co-founder of the amazing Miami Book Fair that began in 1984. These bookstores are key parts of the literary world that keep hope alive even when dark forces try to destroy us. 

May 4, 1970, Four Dead in Ohio, thousands in Vietnam and Cambodia, it never stops

Kent State Massacre, May 4, 1970; me (in uniform w/DEWAT rifle) marching at U of SC Navy ROTC drill, May 7, 1970; me (in civies) marching against the war on streets of D.C., May 9, 1970. Four dead in Ohio, two shot dead at Jackson State U, May 15; thousands in Vietnam, more in Cambodia, dozens of school children blown up by U.S. in Iran. It never ends.

Riding along on Peter Richardson's Brand New Beat: The Wild Rise of Rolling Stone Magazine

I read the new book by Peter Richardson, "Brand New Beat: The Wild Rise of Rolling Stone Magazine." It's published by the University of California Press. Early reviews say the book does a credible job tracing the influence of Rolling Stone with its "new journalism" or, as Hunter S. Thompson fans and critics called it, "gonzo journalism." Thompson influenced many of us but in different ways. He was criticized for his unorthodox style of reporting the 1972 U.S. presidential campaign. The establishment press had its way of covering campaigns and Thompson had his own glorious approach.

Others viewed it differently. Said novelist Nelson Algren in a 1979 review of "The Great Shark Hunt" in the Chicago Tribune: "Now that the dust of the '60s has settled, his [Thompson's] hallucinated vision strikes one as having been. after all, the sanest." 

The book's original 1973 cover has
a secret to reveal.

Thompson and Algren are both long gone. Both of these rowdy writers documented brutal eras: Thompson the 1960s and '70s; Algren the Great Depression through the 1970s. We may never see their like again. We need them now. Wouldn't it be thrilling to see Dr. Gonzo clash with Trump's oily apparatchiks?

Thompson's writing in RS influenced my writing but not my lifestyle. Both would have considered me a square. That said, I read everything Hunter S. Thompson wrote. I read every feature in Rolling Stone of the '70s and it shaped my attitude and my writing.  Once I unlocked the secret of reading at five, I absorbed everything: cereal boxes, billboards, all the books the librarians let me check out. The three important books in my life: "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller,  "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey, and "Slaughterhouse-Five," by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. I was so wild about "Catch-22" that I forced it upon my Catholic high school friends and we were as impressed it as they were surfing and girls. It was funny. It had something to tell us. Heller was a messenger and, in 1968, we really had to listen. One of the book's suggested titles was "Snowden's Secret." Heller teases the secret throughout the book; its revelation toward the end is almost too much for Yossarian to bear. 

Every book I read told a secret. I loved the act of reading but was blissfully unaware that I also was unlocking life's secrets. 

Richardson spills plenty of Rolling Stone's secrets along the way. The magazine's biggest secret is that is existed at all. It spilled the secrets of my generation, the good (music coverage), the bad (Manson), the ugly (Altamont). It was fun. It was cool to be in the circle of readers. It shaped me into a different person than the one expected by me as a young man and those around me. 

The last five years of the 1970s were, according to the author, the magazine's golden era. The '70s were a golden era for many of us Boomers, locked into our 20s and early 30s. The mag helped us through those years, helped us get a handle on being young in America. Mischief was afoot. Cults were big. Rock grew into a giant industry. Right-wingers plotted their takeover of America which fizzled with Nixon but they wouldn't let that happen under Reagan and the cons who followed. Jann Wenner moved the Stone to New York where da big money was an it gradually grew into something much larger but also smaller. I read it only occasionally now. I like the political coverage and introduction to new music styles and new bands. 

The thing I love about Rolling Stone is that it taught me to write. It was a writer's workshop if you were paying attention. Hunter Thompson and Joe Eszterhas. I also was learning how to write like a traditional journalist while learning about "new journalism." I was too much of a straight arrow to be gonzo but the techniques are in me and enter into my fiction. Woodward and Bernstein caused a rise in J-School students while Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Tim O'Brien, Joni Mitchell, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Harry Crews, and Toni Morrison taught us to by-God write like we meant every damn word. This is a short list of my writing heroes/heroines, one befitting a blogger who keeps on truckin'.

Richardson's book was published by University of California Press. It is a university press, a key player in the publishing universe. As you might expect, documentation is required. Richardson provides it in spades. A "Random Notes" section brings readers up to date on the key players. That is followed by Acknowledgements, Notes (lots and lots of notes), and Index. Use the book as a handy guide to a decade, 1967-76, that could be called "the shadow 60s" for its many USA-rockin' events. 

"Zeppelins Over Denver" now available to pre-order

On April 24, I guesstimated that "Zeppelins Over Denver" would be out by summer. You have to be careful with these things as publishing tends to take time and you don't want to get readers' hopes up unnecessarily. 

"Zeppelins" is now on pre-order (May 5 official pub date) at your favorite bookstore or even from your least favorite big-box outlet that places book bins somewhere among twelve-packs of underwear and rows of gleaming BBQ grills. 

My goal is to get the book into local stores and those in my old stomping grounds of Wyoming and Colorado. It's a bit tricky because the book is set in Colorado, specifically Denver, in 1919. I'm now officially a Florida resident, a return to my roots and the comfort of family. My Colorado roots go back to 1919 when all of my grandparents decided Denver was the place to be. 

My grandmother Florence decided to extend her tenure as an army nurse in France to the new army hospital in someplace called Aurora. There she met and married my grandfather Raymond, a cavalry officer from Iowa who left the war with lung problems so they shipped him to the hospital that eventually became Fitzsimons Army Hospital. Cavalry officer met nurse and there you go. 

My Irish immigrant grandfather Martin left sweltering Chicago after having a lung surgically removed due to empyema. The surgeon urged him to recuperate in a drier clime, Arizona, for instance, or maybe Denver. He chose Denver. Grandmother Agnes, the first postmistress of a tiny town near Cincinnati, jumped into a Model T with her sister and two gal-pals and drove the rugged road to Colorado. She and her sister decided to stay while the others returned to the banks of the Ohio. Martin and Agnes met at the Hibernian Club and one thing led to another and here I am.

That's just background. The setting is important to me as I was born in Denver, did some of my growing up there, returned after college to work, left Denver to go to grad school up I-25 at CSU, and then moved north to Cheyenne to work for the Wyoming Arts Council for 25 years. Retirement party with great homemade pie on a Friday in January 2016. On Monday morning, I sat and started writing this book.

Co-worker at retirement party: Hey Mike, whatcha gonna do after retirement? You can't just sit around, you know. 

Me: I'm gonna sit around and write a novel. A historical novel.

Co-worker: That's nice. Give me another slice of that pie.

Ten years later, I'm in Florida and I have a book. Easy as pie.

Stay tuned here for more updates. 

"Zeppelins Over Denver" due out by summer

Just finished reviewing the galley proofs of my first novel. My first published novel. I’ve been writing for a long time, since I was in my 20s. I actually started earlier, as a kid writing letters that were rarely answered. My first readers were disinterested friends and family members. Maybe that’s where I learned how to hold an audience. Most of my early writing had an audience of one. I discovered journaling and keep up that written practice with this blog. I registered with the original Blogger from Pyra Press in 2001 and posted my first weblog in November 2005. I began blogging regularly in January 2006.

But back to the novel. The title is “Zeppelins Over Denver” and it will be out in May from The Ridgeway Press of Michigan in Detroit. Publisher and friend M.L. Liebler helped me get the ball rolling and I am forever grateful. Small presses rule! Big presses are great too but they have spent a lot of time ignoring me. C’est la vie! I was learning how to write all of this time, from the early 1970s until now. I’m still learning. Always will be.

“Zeppelins” is a historical novel set in 1919 Denver. Its origins lie on the yellowing pages of my paternal grandmother’s diary from her time as a U.S. Army nurse in France, 1918-19. She kept one diary in her lifetime and it was lost for decades, existing only as a rumor that faded with each passing year. It was rediscovered in my sister Molly’s basement in Tallahassee. She’s a nurse like our mother and my father’s mother. Eileen, another sister who also was a nurse, took the diary and transcribed it. She asked me for editorial assistance. As writer and editor, I gladly provided it. I whipped it into shape, working more as a conservator than a fiction writer. I corrected spelling and punctuation. I changed no contents, censored nothing. It was lovely just the way it was.

Eileen asked me to put together a little book for the family. Along the way, I researched the service of army nurses in the Great War and the Great War itself. I thought I knew at least some of the history. I had read war novels such as “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “The Good Soldier Schweik,” “Soldier of the Great War,” and “Winter Soldier.”  I had read “The Guns of August” by Barbara Tuchman and Paul Fussell’s excellent “The Great War and Modern Memory.” I’ve read the poetry: Wilfred Owen, Siegried Sassoon, and Robert Graves. I have read some of the celebratory war poetry, too. Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees" was my father’s favorite poem. I wondered if Dad had contemplated the shattered trees in the Bulge battlefield in the Ardennes in 1944. Kilmer’s reputation lives on at Columbia University’s annual Alfred Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest. The Columbia Daily Spectator once ranked the contest as number one among the “Best Columbia Arts Traditions.”

The more I read, the more I realized how little I knew. I dug deeper. In the end, I decided to absorb everything I knew and let it come out in what I see as a historical novel colored by the darkly humorous war novels of Joseph Heller, Juroslav Hasek, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. And there you have it. Ten years of work poured into almost 400 pages. I hope you enjoy it. If you are inspired by the characters, some of them will return in the sequel, “Patrick of the Mountains.” The draft manuscript is complete and it will be published once the edits and revisions are complete. I have roughed out a plot for a third novel but we will see where that goes.

The NOMAD LitMag launches "Breakthroughs" issue tonight in Salt Lake City

Two of my stories are in the new issue. There's a 
sampler tonight at the Sweet Library in SLC. Not
really in my neighborhood anymore but check it
out, you readers around The Great Salt Lake. Some of
us far-flung writers will be part of a Zoom reading
coming in May.

The choice is clear for us Rogue Catholics

Fallen-away Catholics like me have a choice to make.

Catholic or not? Am I on the side of the outspoken Roman Catholic Pope Leo XIV or am I not? And, if I am, should I not be allied with the Catholic Church and what it stands for, even though I oppose its policies on abortion, women’s rights, gay rights, and its awful record of child abuse. I have long criticized the Catholic Church’s alliance with the Religious Right, which I’ve always called a pact with the devil.

But Pope Leo of Chicago is socking it to Donald Trump, the creepiest human to ever be elected U.S. president.  We know the agenda of the Religious Right as we’ve seen the movement in action all our adult lives. The underlying precept of the RR is hatred of Catholics. We worship false gods: saints, martyrs, The Holy Ghost, and the pope. We used to worship in a foreign tongue, Latin, and we think that a cracker and a bit of wine are the body and blood of Christ. We are demon Papists!

Meanwhile, the Christonationalists of the RR bows down to images of Trump and Christ together, best buds, not the holy trinity but the holy duo. We laugh. They nod and say amen. Let me tell you this, brothers and sisters. If you don’t know hypocrisy when you see it, you weren’t raised as an Irish-Catholic. I saw hypocrisy. What I really mean is irony. What I mean is that Trump, Vance, Hegseth, and irony of ironies, a Kennedy, are all humorless monsters. They are Nazis without the spiffy uniforms. Trump wouldn’t know humor if it bit him in the ass. He demolishes the White House. He plans to build the Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile without any triomphe to his name. Have you seen the artist renderings of this monstrosity? Looks like he summoned Herr Speer from Hell.

I have to find a leader of stature who is not a nincompoop. I choose Pope Leo. Play ball! But please not the White Sox variety. Did you see how they surrendered to the Rays on Thursday? A 55-pitch ninth inning? Pope Leo, after you’ve vanquished Trump, the Sox need your blessings.

For another look at this topic, go to Matt Lewis's Substack article 

Tribute to my brother Tommy, Daytona Paddle Out

On Saturday, April 4, our family held a Paddle Out for my brother Tommy. As the eldest of nine brothers and sisters, and a writer, I was selected to be the speaker. I will let myself do the talking. In case you're wondering, I need assistance to move around this earth. A spinal injury demands it. Cruising the beach with a walker would not have been my idea of a good time back in my surfing heyday in the 1960s and '70s. But the alternative is not my idea of a Good time in 2026. Life is for living. Surf's up, Tommy! P.S.: Watching on YouTube carries various risks in this era of unfettered blathering. I am a practitioner of this art. Viewer beware! 

Get Out Now!

Remembrance: Paddle Out for Tommy Shay, Daytona Beach

Family members and friends paddle out and scatter ashes for Tommy Shay at Hartford Avenue approach in Daytona Beach. April 4, 2026. Photo by Robert Hougham.

Reminder: Paddle Out for my brother Tommy Shay set for April 4

A reminder for my brother Tommy Shay's Paddle Out this Saturday, April 4:

Join us at the Hartford Approach in Daytona Beach at 1:00 PM as we come together to celebrate Tommy’s life.

Bring your board, share some stories, and help us send him off the way he would’ve loved — surrounded by friends, family, and the ocean.

If you can, wear Tommy’s favorite color red in his honor.

Open house to follow at the Martinez home.

We’d love to see everyone down by the sea.

Way back when: My son Kevin with Uncle Tommy
on Daytona Beach.

Ormond Beach No Kings Day Rally brings out the crowds and the creativity

Great crowd of concerned citizens at this morning's No Kings Day Rally at the Grenada Bridge in Ormond Beach, Florida. Many, like me, veterans of previous protests, others just concerned veterans. I parked my scooter next to Vietnam combat vet in a walker who doesn't support whatever this war is we are raging in Iran and vicinity. He grew up in Ormond and knew some of my b-ball teammates from Father Lopez High School (Go Green Wave!). Met a woman my age who, late at night, assembled her big sign held up by a mop handle. She moved recently from Long Island. "Left my blue state to come here." People with their dogs and kids and grandkids. They felt the need to be here on this sunny Saturday. I felt privileged to be in their company. A few photos below by Kevin Shay.

 

That's me with the cool compression socks. The man
behind me, a Navy vet (didn't get his name), lent me his wife's sign.

Some Stetson Law School (and UF) alumni want nothing to do with lawless AG Pam Bondi

Spectrum News in Tampa featured this header the other day:

Stetson Law School Alumni say no to school donations after Bondi congressional hearing fallout.

The move comes after a congressional hearing where [Pam] Bondi came under fire about the handling of the Epstein files. Some 500 Stetson Law School alumni said they’re disappointed in her conduct during that hearing.

Yes, Attorney General of the United States of America Bondi supposedly learned about attorney generaling in the general vicinity of Tampa/St. Pete.

Bondi is a graduate to Stetson Law School in Gulfport and University of Florida in Gainesville. No news yet whether UF alumni don't want their donations going to the school that spawned Bondi. I did write to UF in February saying I wouldn't donate to the school as long as long as Gov. Ron DeSantis keeps screwing around with our school. 

Will any of this make any difference? Well, 500 SLS alumni signed the pledge that went to Stetson. They are upset that the outlaw Attorney General could hang out a Stetson shingle. I don't blame them. I am angry that Bondi attended UF where she supposedly learned something about ethics. You can laugh if you want. I don't think Ethics 101 is required but maybe it's a graduate  course, maybe even one you might find at an accredited law school.

Our governor went to Harvard which is no excuse. He's MAGA through and through. A political opportunist in a crimson and black robe. Or is it a white robe and a hood? 

Welcome to Moses Lake! We lived here once upon a time

Postcard, probably early 1960s, of downtown Moses Lake, Wash.
Elmer's, my father's favorite Chinese/American restaurant, is shown on the left. 

I was going through some of my parents' old postcards that were sent to me by my sister Molly. She was making a clean sweep of her house in Tallahassee for a move to Decatur, Ga. She asked if I wanted these. Heck yes, I said. You never know what you might be missing when a family member sends you old family stuff. There be treasures within.

Let me explain. Two days ago, Chris and I were having lunch in Ormond Beach with my sister Eileen and her husband Brian from Winter Park, the Florida one not the Colorado one. They are planning a trip to Washington State to visit an old friend of Brian's, a rancher outside Moses Lake. I attended half of fourth grade and all of fifth grade at an elementary school I can't remember the name of and we lived on a street whose name I can't remember. Eileen was a toddler so her memories are limited. Mine are sharp, surprisingly so, considering I can't remember the school or street. I do remember my brother and I played little league baseball on the Moses Lake Lakers and I pitched the longest inning in small-time baseball history the summer of 1962. I was the team's last resort, a frustrated righty first baseman normally relegated to the outfield. That evening, we ran out of pitchers so they drafted me and regretted it. My brother Dan was very supportive. 

I also remember one of the books I read in the fourth grade: When Worlds Collide and After Worlds Collide, by Edwin Balmer and Phillip Wylie. I like my sci-fi. It was a warm-up for all the Tom Swift books. I read those in Wichita and a sci-fi collection my father got from Book Of The Month Club. 

Eileen and Brian wanted some details about our time in Moses Lake. I told them about the baseball and the books and our neighbors, the Hattori family, and how Dan and I walked downtown to the movie theater to watch westerns for a pittance. We saw Dan Blocker, Hoss from Bonanza, in the Moses Lake Roundup parade. I remembered rescuing Eileen from drowning at one of the local lakes, Soap Lake or the Potholes Reservoir. We visited the Grand Coulee Dam where my brother Pat was in a photo showing him leaning over the railing and looking down at the massive dam wall, One of my parents took the photo, and then probably yelled at Pat to get off the damn railing. Kids! 

I remember some things and not others. Eileen and Brian seemed impressed with my memory banks, for the most part, but disappointed I didn't remember the street we lived on for 18 months. In those days, your street address was usually drilled into you in case we got lost walking downtown or maybe we had to call the fire department some night. 

My dad's favorite restaurant was Elmer's Chinese-American. I think Elmer was Chinese-American -- that's what Dad told us. We had Japanese-American neighbors and their presence is common on the West Coast, even the dry dusty places like Moses Lake. World War Two was still fresh in the minds of vets like my dad and probably most of the guys he worked with making a home for nuclear missiles in Russki-proof launch silos. 

Moses Lake now has an arts center where an artist friend of mine in Spokane recently had a show. Population here is 27,000 but 104,000 in the county. Not unusual in the West to have people spread out all over the county. I found that out when I worked in Wyoming and Colorado. 

I wish Eileen and Brian Godspeed and hope they find out the dad-blasted name of the street we lived on for only a short while. B-52s used to fly over our house. Maybe that's a clue.

Country Joe: Forget the F. Gimme a N-U-R-S-E!

Thank the nurse that’s nursing you

For saving your life.

For saving your life.

For saving your life.

That’s the end of “Thank the Nurse,” a song by Country Joe McDonald.

Yes, that Country Joe. “Give me an F.” That’s him. He was a hit at the original Woodstock, which, apparently, millions attended, and of the film that followed, which millions saw. Joe supported nurses but especially those who served in war zones, especially Vietnam. He was considered an expert on Florence Nightingale whom he also sang about.

He died on March 7 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 84.

He was reaching retirement age when he toured Wyoming in June 2002 with poet and Musician M.L. Liebler of Detroit. They met in 1997 when M.L. was teaching poetry to Vietnam vets through the Detroit Y Writer’s Voice Project. The two were touring the country promoting their CD "Crossing Borders" that combines music and poetry. They performed in a Cheyenne park and dropped in on the “Smokin’ Poets” reading at Zen’s Bistro in Cheyenne.

"This place has a nice vibe to it,” Joe told a reporter from the Cheyenne paper. “The people who come here are intelligent, sophisticated and not yuppie."

At a later reception, Joe was OK with revisiting Woodstock but really lit up when talking about nurses. He knew a lot and I told him about my grandmother, an army nurse in France during World War 1. At that time, I was only thinking about writing about her experiences. And now I have done it.

Listen to “Thank the Nurse” on Spotify or over at YouTube. I’d provide links but links don’t last. But Joe’s F-I-S-H Cheer lives on. So does this:

When the orderly is sleeping

and the physician can’t be found

no need for apprehension

the nurse is making rounds.

Thank the nurse that’s nursing you

The one that nursed you through

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 Sasse, 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.