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.

In "Untamed," the most ferocious animal in our national parks is not the bear

I finished watching "Untamed" last night. It's a limited series on Netflix starring Eric Bana, Sam Neil, Lily Santiago, and Rosemarie DeWitt, and a great supporting cast. It's set in Yosemite National Park. Shots of El Capitan and other familiar landmarks are blended into the narrative filmed in British Columbia. We again see a series set in the wild landscapes of the U.S. and filmed elsewhere, usually Canada, Trump's imaginary 51st state. The landscapes are gorgeous to look at and made me miss Wyoming and Colorado. The peaks. the trails winding through forests, the sparkling waters of the creeks. Even the ranger unis made me ache for the West. Rangers were our friends, men and women who welcomed us to the parks,  delivered campfire chats, and kept things orderly. 

I give high marks to "Untamed," its grim storyline and fine acting. It involved me for some five hours. Child abduction. drug-dealing, missing Native American women, murder, and treachery play roles. That is sometimes offset by sheer grandeur. But one  thought I came away with was: is this what we've become? We live harsh lives and are harsh with each other. Was it always this way or is it all grim now?

One more thing. Humans can be more savage than predatory animals. That was brought out in the first episode by fearsome roar of a grizzly at a cabin door. Lions and tigers and bears! But humans remain the deadliest animal. First scene. Climbers scaling El Capitan. It is a long way down, a dangerous business this rock climbing. Just as the top climber bangs a spike into the rocks, he looks up and sees a body falling toward him. The body snags the rope and pulls down the climbers but they don't fall. We see a close-up of the body. It is a young woman, clothes ripped, dead eyes stare up. We know the mystery. Did she jump or was she pushed? 

It's worth watching. Some scenes stay with me. One takes place in the morgue where the dead woman's (Lucy Cook) body is being stored while park investigators try to discover her identity. National Park Service Investigative Branch Ranger Kyle Turner (Bana) and his new assistant, former L.A. cop Naya Vasquez,  try to solve it. There follows lots of creepiness but the scene that lingers is in the morgue. Turner finds a cellphone hidden in the dead woman's backpack. It needs a photo I.D. to open. He takes it to the morgue and requests a picture of the corpse's face. No dice. The eyes have to be open. The morgue tech puts drops in the eyes to make them open unnaturally. Phone still won't open. The morgue tech says hydrogen peroxide has been known to bring life back to dead skin, warm it so it registers for the camera. He brushes it on the cheeks. Bama takes another photo and it works, the phone is unlocked and we're on the way to a resolution or so we think. I was left with the image of Lucy Cook, dead, again staring up, asking "why did you forsake me?"

The New York Times' Mike Hale reviewed the show. The reviewer's main takeaway was the show's bad timing. So who has time to pursue killers when DOGE cuts leave nobody to clean the bathrooms or break up Yellowstone bear jams? Good point. 

An accompanying NYT story tells of the few remaining park employees being tasked by the Trump regime with removing comments that "disparage America" from monuments, trail signs, and printed material. Our sins against black slaves and native peoples are being purged from the public records. If this sounds Orwellian to you, you've read Orwell and you're dead-on. The Know Nothings have won. The South has risen again. And we're all up Shit's Creek, somewhere out in the American wilderness.

Post #3,999

"In My Room:" Brian Wilson spent most of his time looking out his bedroom window

Rob Tannenbaum wrote June 12 in the New York Times:

In songs like “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” “California Girls” and “Good Vibrations,” Wilson did as much as anyone to depict Los Angeles and California as a land of bikinis and warm, honey-colored sunsets. The songs he wrote about the West Coast, he said in “I Am Brian Wilson: A Memoir,” were “more about the idea of going in the ocean than they were about actually going in the ocean.” Wilson didn’t like waves, but realized how they could serve as a metaphor for life.

Wilson tried surfing once and his board conked him on the head. He liked looking out windows at other people surfing and driving hot rods. Tannenbaum went on:

The songs, he added, tell stories about teenagers. 'We base them on activities of healthy California kids who like to surf, hot rod, and engage in other outdoor fun.' He saw these activities the same way he saw the ocean — through a window.

This caught my attention because it says a lot of what writers do: watching activities through their window of imagination and not actually taking part in that activity. As Wilson wrote ("In My Room") he spent a lot of time in his room imagining what was happening outside.

I grew up surfing in Daytona Beach, Florida. I surfed for five years, 13-18-years-old. I gave it up the summer of 1969. My surfboard, a Greg Noll Bug, was stolen out of my family's garage. It was the last board I owned and the only short board. I also sold my beat-up old car that summer as freshmen weren't allowed to have cars on campus. Our house burned down, destroying the kitchen, my school clothes, and my father's Barracuda, 'Cuda as the cool kids called it. My eight brothers and sisters and my parents survived and we moved to cramped motel rooms. The End Times were coming, or so it seemed. I began to have dark thoughts, imagined a black ball rotating in my chest. My girlfriend was pretty and nice but she was going off to the state school and I was going to another state's school 400 miles away. I was slated to be a NROTC midshipman and I had no idea why except the Navy agreed to pay my way if I agreed to get ship-shape and squared-away which I failed at miserably.

Depression came to call. I returned home to my beach town, lied in bed, listening to surf sounds drifting up from the beach and rolling through my jalousie windows.

Brian Wilson suffered with crippling depression. I know how that feels. Wilson laid in bed and looked through windows and saw different lives. His head was populated with beaches and endless streets to race cars and meet girls. His head and heart were also populated with monsters and he didn't really write about them. He looked out windows and saw himself. 

When he was 20, Canadian Steven Page wrote the song "Brian Wilson" which was later recorded by his band, Barenaked Ladies. When he heard it, Wilson wrote his own version. But lyrics in the original go like this:

So I’m lyin’ here 

Just starin’ at the ceiling tiles

And I’m thinkin’ about

What to think about

Just listenin’ and relistenin’

To smiley smile

And I’m wonderin’ if this is

Some kind of creative drought because

I’m lyin’ in bed

Just like Brian Wilson did

Well I’m

I’m lyin’ in bed, just like Brian Wilson did, oh

So,

If everybody had an ocean

Across the USA

Everybody'd be surfin'

In Cal-if-or-ni-a

Or lyin' in bed, just like Brian Wilson did.

 R.I.P. Brian.

"Writers Who Play" features words & music & fun March 28 in L.A.

This comes from traveling troubadour and poet Ken Waldman:

In Los Angeles the end of this month, my NOMAD co-editor, Rachel White, and I will be getting our new NOMAD literary journal out in the world, and I'm producing a Friday, March 28, show at the fabulous 1642 Bar at https://www.facebook.com/1642beerandwine/ .

Here's the poster:

The event is being held off-campus you might say from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference at Los Angeles Convention Center this week. Consider it a break from AWP sessions and the magnificent bookfair where you can buy books and have books thrust upon you. Also a good time to schmooze with editors and publishers. I haven't attended AWP in a number of years but it always was fun and where I recruited writers to come to Wyoming. And always brought an extra bag to haul books home.

Naomi Hirahara weaves a murder mystery into a 1940s historical novel and it's swell

Just when I think I’ve read every World War Two-era novel….

“Clark and Division” by Naomi Hirahara brings us into the life of Aki Ito. She’s a spirited young woman, smart and attractive and a bit self-conscious living in her talented older sister’s shadow. She yearns for just the right job and boyfriend, likes to hang around with friends, and knows how to dance the Lindy Hop.

So, she’s just like any other Southern California teen. But you add in the setting conjured by Hirahara and things get serious. Aki is Nisei, born in the U.S. of Japan-born parents. In 1942, her entire family is shipped to Manzanar internment camp, leaving behind their home and property and all-American dreams. Aki spends two years at Manzanar and, at 20, lucks out when selected for the government resettlement program which allows Nisei to move to middle America away from the coasts and start new lives. Aki chooses Chicago because that’s where her sister Rose has resettled. Before Aki and her parents can get off the train, her sister is dead, ostensibly by suicide. She allegedly jumped head-on into an El train and is killed instantly. Nobody knows why. Aki is crushed.

A great set-up for a mystery. Aki is still in shock when she discovers the secret behind Rose’s death and realizes she seems to be the only one interested in figuring out what really happened. She plods along at first but then discovers the strength to take the risks that will solve the case. Along the way, we meet the Nisei of the Clark and Division neighborhood. She has to hide her quest from her very traditional Issei parents. Along the way, we learn about Japanese-American lives, the foods they eat, their jobs, their dreams and fears. The most charming thing about this book are life’s daily details. Hirahara writes the Japanese terms for food, clothes, and many other things. I felt the crushing heat of a Chicago summer. I know how people got around in the city. Some especially good details about riding the El or Elevated Train. I got to see the workings of the famous Newberry Library. I know, the details of a library aren’t exactly high drama. But maybe they are. All this makes the book so down-to-earth and thrilling.

The ending is heartbreaking but also guides Aki into the future. And into the just-published sequel, “Evergreen.” In it, Aki has become a nurse’s aide and returns to southern California where she and other Japanese-Americans have to start from scratch – again. There’s also a murder, of course. While the book is listed under mystery, I’m sure it’s filled with the cultural and location detail that also makes for great historical fiction. Hirahara now has a series on her hands which she’s done before with her earlier books: Mas Arai and Leila Santiago. "Evergreen" is now the second book in the Japantown Series. I’ve ordered a copy. You should too.

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

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

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

An NPR reviewer in 2021 described the book this way:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next time: I travel "West with Giraffes."

Joan Didion and "Slouching Towards Bethlehem"

I was a bit shocked to find out that the Saturday Evening Post was still alive and celebrating its 200th anniversary. I know the Post from my youth, when it arrived in the mail with a new Norman Rockwell cover. My grandparents has copies of the Post and Life and Reader's Digest all over their houses. Required reading, and encouraging in an all-American sort of way. In 2021, for $15 a year, you can get six issues of the print magazine, a digital subscription and access to the online archive. I'd love to dig into the online archives -- that alone is worth the price. I will recognize many of the covers from the 1950s and 1960s. Display ads tout cigarettes, appliances, and shiny big cars made in Detroit.

I won't always recognize the articles. That was clear to me when Joan Didion's piece "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" appeared on Facebook with the news of Joan Didion's passing. It was a variety of journalism known as the long feature. She was among the coterie of American writers known for "new journalism" which blended reporting with fiction techniques. Some of you may know it as creative nonfiction or, in the case of Hunter S. Thompson, gonzo journalism. 

"Slouching Towards Bethlehem" was published during Didion's prime in June 1967 and republished by the Post in 2017. Didion dropped into the Haight-Ashbury scene on the cusp of the Summer of Love. The famous Human Be-in had been held in January at Golden Gate Park with lots of acid, hip speakers, and bands such as Jefferson Airplane and the Dead. Word about this Hippie Utopia spread and by summer, school was out and thousands of young people crowded into the city. Media, too, even Saturday Evening Post.

Didion, of course, was no TV talking head who dropped in to marvel and possibly be shocked at the ribald behavior. She was an incisive reporter who dug into the culture and found it wanting. She sets her tone with a quote from W.B. Yeats's poem "The Second Coming." Yeats' poem is much-admired for its stark symbols. It is also much abused. It employs Biblical Revelations-style symbols to warn humankind of what becomes of society's upheavals. He specifically addressed the Irish "Rising" of 1916 and its after-effects, which included a revolution and a civil war that involved much bloodshed. 

Didion's "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" records what she sees. Reading it now, I thank my Lucy in the Ski with Diamonds that I didn't bug out and go to the Haight. Sure, there was drugs, sex, and rock-n-roll, but also addiction, STDs, and poverty. Lots of teen runaways looking for adventure and a place to call home. I was 16, the age of some of the girls in Didion's piece. If I had read "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" in the summer of '67, it would have seemed as if it was happening in another world, which it was. My summer was spent in Daytona Beach. I surfed as much as I could. I worked evenings at the Village Inn Pancake House and KFC outlet. But I also had to help Mom with my eight brothers and sisters. My father was working at GE in Cincinnati. We thought we were going to follow him and move there as soon as we sold our house. My Father Lopez High School classmates even gave me and two of my peers a going-away party. They moved. I did not. We couldn't sell our house in a down market so Dad decided to accept a job at NASA in Daytona and forget about Cincinnati. Such good news. 

But what about the hippies and The Summer of Love? I thought the music was cool but was much more interested in the Motown sound. It was beach music, music to dance to at sock hops. I was keen on dating tourist girls from Kentucky and Georgia down in Daytona on family vacations, just itching to break away from Ma and Pa and meet some of the local hunks, or so we thought. The Catholic Church had ruled that underage sex was taboo and Catholic School girls were the first to take the edict seriously. But we boys didn't know anything either. That mutual ignorance was not a good thing. 

In Didion's essay, a five-year-old girl is high on acid. An older guy is turning a teen girl into addict and sex slave. Everyone is high. I've been on both sides of LSD, the experiencing and the observing. Have you ever been the only non-high person in a room full of acid heads? The experiencing can be fun. The observing, not so much. You might get the idea that this is cool and join them. Didion observed the scene and with a keen and sober eye described it to the world. She wasn't judgmental. She was known to have a good sense of chaos and what she saw was the "rough beast" that lurked within the frivolity. 

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, 

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 

The ceremony of innocence is drowned; 

The best lack all conviction, while the worst 

Are full of passionate intensity.

Conservative institutions, such as the Catholic Church, along with cultural critics of the Right, blame the '60s for this blood-dimmed tide. There's a kernel of truth in that. 

I watched "Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold" last night on Netflix. A fine 2017 documentary by her nephew, director Griffin Dunne. I went to bed pondering what it takes to be a writer. Didion knew early on that's what she wanted to do. After college, she moved to NYC, worked for Vogue Magazine, met her future husband, also a writer, and spent her life illuminating the universal through the personal. She left a template that many writers have followed, some better than others.  

Some blog posts just don't grow into fully-formed stories -- and that's OK

Time to take stock of the year that was.

I wrote 67 posts this year. Published posts, that is. I wrote 10 or more that I didn't post. They just never jelled or I lost interest. The drafts linger on my site but will be banished with the new year.

When family members were quarantined and not working in the spring, we started hauling boxes filled with books up from the basement. I was tasked with separating the keepers from the ones to go to the library store or, when that closed due to Covid, downtown's Phoenix Books. Probably sent six or seven boxes out the door, just a fraction on those remaining. In one box, I saw a tattered copy of "Hells Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga" by Hunter Thompson. This was before "strange and terrible" morphed into "fear and loathing." I really liked it when I read it in the early '70s during my Gonzo period. I didn't want to emulate Thompson's life but I did want to write like him.

I began to read "Hell's Angels" and got hooked. Read it all the way through in a couple of days. I tried to frame an essay about it but could not. Thompson's style I still liked. But I didn't like the sexism and racism. The Angels were noted for gang rapes and Thompson was cavalier about it. We liked the Angels for their outlaw image, at least we did in our youth. Their attraction has waned over the decades. I don't really find anything constructive about them. In my blog, written before the election, I wanted  to paint members as diehard Trump fans but failed. It's a gross generalization to label motorcycle thugs as Trumpists. It's also a mistake to think that all bikers are gang members. Your local attorney is as likely to ride a Harley as your local mechanic. My neighbor is an IT guy and he rides and works on his very expensive Harley. My late brother Dan rode a Harley and he was an air traffic controller. 

The Angels still exist but haven't been the same since Altamont and neither have the Stones. I gave up and put "Hell's Angels" in the discard box.

My conclusion: Thompson documented a lot of what happened in 1960s and '70s America. But, really, how much fear & loathing can a nation bear?

My next subject that didn't jell was about the Boy Scouts of America and its magazine, "Boy's Life." I was a proud Scouter in Colorado, Washington, Kansas and Florida. The Scouts seemed to be something I could count on to be pretty much the same whether we were snow-camping in the Rockies or avoiding water moccasins in the Florida swamps. I read Boy's Life from cover to cover. It was all boys back then, stories about knots and campfires and lifesaving. There was always a feature profiling heroic Scouts. I liked the cartoon about Pedro the Donkey. 

Girls are now part of Scouts and it's about time. As you probably know, the BSA has been roiled by the same sex abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic Church. Girls can now be Scouts and for some reason the mag is still called "Boy's Life." I guess an ancient organization such as the Scouts can move only so fast. They have that in common with the church. My youth involved Scouting, the church and basketball. I abandoned one of those when, in the ninth grade, I discovered girls. I do believe I would have welcomed girls into my Scout troop but it was the 1960s which was a lot like the 1950s in Central Florida. 

I just lost interest as I wrote about Scouts, much as I lost interest in becoming an Eagle Scout when I got my first kiss. Reading a current issue of the magazine did not revive my interest although I was oddly pleased that Pedro the Donkey had made it into the 21st century. 

This is what happens with writers. Not everything we begin has an ending. I have a two-drawer filing cabinet filled with rough drafts and beginnings. Stored on this PC and OneDrive are many finished pieces and many fragments. What seems like a good idea at the time never grows into a finished product that can be published. And not everything is published in any form, whether as a book or a story in a journal or a post on Blogger. That's not easy to understand when you start out but it becomes clear if you stick with it. I have, for some reason. Writing is important to me and no matter how many setbacks come my way, I stick with it.

Welcome to the Poetry Hotel

Write short, said all the experts. Be concise. 

I first heard this advice as a student reporter for my university paper. Give me 500 words. Give me 750. Later, when I covered high school sports for a big city daily, I sometimes had to rush back to the office and knock out a piece in 15 minutes or file by phone or via the Jurassic fax machines of the 1970s. Keep it short. And for God's sake, get the score right. 

Naturally, I went on to write a novel and a passel of short stories which weren't very short. It was nice to have all those words to work with. A well-crafted short story can still be a challenge. You have to limit the number of characters and set the story in a few scenes. Still, a 5,000-word story gives you some room to breathe.

I've reached 106,000 words in 424 pages on the historical novel I'm writing now. I am not finished with the draft. Not sure what the final count will be before I query publishers. Much revising to do.

My latest published works are much shorter. They're prose poems featured in YU News Poetry Hotel, Paul Fericano prop. Five pieces. The longest is "Flying Nurse," which comes in at 340 words. The shortest is "Welcome to Zan Xlemente, Zalifornia" with 182 words. Each tells a story and might be labelled flash fiction if they were on another site. I don't see how it makes much difference if people read and enjoy them. Maybe not enjoy so much as make you think about worlds not your own. Read them at https://www.yunews.com/mike-shay-poetry-hotel.

A writer uses different techniques with each form. A novel requires expansion while a short-short involves winnowing. If a traditional short story is a slice of life, a short-short is a slice of a slice. Some of mine start life as a short piece and stays that way as I've said what I wanted to say. "Zan Xlemente" is an example. Some, however, start life as longer pieces that I take the scalpel to. "The Future of Surfing in Wyoming" started  as a multi-part story, "The History of Surfing in Wyoming." In it, I imagined the surf scene 1,000 years from now if global warming does its worst. I added rewritten versions of surf songs and turned it into a performance piece I presented at readings in Casper and Sheridan. It wasn't easy to transform a 4,000-word piece into one with a mere 252 words. Check it out on the Poetry Hotel site and see what you think. I'm in Room 66.

Flashback: How the LSD revolution almost came to Wyoming

Always on the lookout for mentions of Wyoming on the Internet. This one is a chapter in Wyoming counterculture history.

An Oct. 31 Westword story by Chris Walker was headed "Acid Trip: Denver's secret LSD labs fueled the psychedelic revolution."

It  tells the story of Tim Scully, LSD-maker in the 1960s. Scully spent time in a federal penitentiary for making and distributing LSD. He and his pals had two labs in Denver. They were discovered, but in a fluke, Scully didn't  serve time for his Mile High City transgressions. He later got busted in California and served hard time.

In November of 1967, Scully and his childhood friend and drug partner Don Douglas scouted the West for places safer than Berkeley, a counterculture hotbed in the sixties.

From the Westword article:

He convinced Douglas to join him on an interstate scouting trip. They managed to evade the feds and travel to Seattle, where they bought a used station wagon that they used to drive east through Washington into Idaho and Wyoming. The pair had envisioned setting up a lab in an extremely rural, isolated location, but they realized that wouldn’t work for two reasons. 

“In Wyoming, we learned that cowboys don’t like hippies. We stuck out like sore thumbs,” says Scully.  

The other reason? To run certain processes in the lab, they’d need plentiful supplies of dry ice — which were only available in big cities. So Douglas and Scully turned south, setting their sights on Denver.

The article doesn't mention just where in Wyoming cowboys hated hippies and there was a shortage of dry ice. Any guesses? Could be almost anywhere, I suppose. It must haven't occurred to the duo that two longhairs settling in any small town was sure to cause reactions from the populace, since nothing that happens in a small community goes unnoticed and gossiped about.

Small town resident #1: What do you suppose those two longhairs are doing in that house over on Elm Street?
Small town resident #2: Making some bitchin' batches of pure Orange Sunshine, most likely.
Small town resident #1: That's a relief. Thought they might be plotting the overthrow of the U.S. government.
Small town resident #2: That's the job of the John Birch Society. They meet over at the Grange Hall.

Hitchhikers cruising through Wyoming in the late 60s and early 70s heard stories of cowboys picking up a hitchhiker and taking him into Cheyenne for a mandatory haircut. I heard the story in 1972 when hitching rides in Wyoming. I also have heard the tale since moving to Cheyenne in 1991. It could be one of those Hitchhikers' Myths, kind of like Urban Myths but passed along by hitchers of yore. I heard many similar stories during my years on the road. Grisly murders in New Mexico. "Easy Rider"- style shootings in Georgia. Rapes and near-rapes everywhere.

I only experienced a few scary episodes, most in Nevada for some odd reason. Rural Nevada can be a lot like Wyoming, only hotter. .Rednecks are rednecks, I guess, but I got rides from some in my longhair days.

What a long, strange trip it's been....

A final note on LSD. Microdosing LSD is a hot topic. This from Business Insider:

LSD microdosing has emerged as Silicon Valley's favorite illegal drug habit, with engineers, programmers, writers, and artists sharing their stories of the practice in numerous blogs and outlets, including the New York Times. Many people say it improves their concentration or creativity; others say they use it to help treat symptoms of mental illnesses like depression and anxiety. 

And this:

Paul Austin, 27, bills himself as a professional microdosing coach. After personally experimenting with the regimen — which involves taking tiny, "sub-perceptual" doses of LSD or another psychedelic for up to 7 months — Austin said he was inspired to share what he learned with the world. He now offers 30-minute Skype microdosing "consulting" sessions for $127 through his website, The Third Wave

As a writer with depression, I may have to explore this further. Just as an academic exercise, of course.

Avid baseball fan (and political organizer) Christine Pelosi to speak at Dems' dinner

Political organizer Christine Pelosi will be the special guest for the 2015 Nellie Tayloe Ross Gala put on by the Wyoming Democratic Party on Feb. 7 at the Holiday Inn in Cheyenne. Get your tix here.

I read Christine Pelosi's bio on Huffington Post, where she's a columnist. I absorbed all of the stuff about her famous mom, political organizing, the books she's written, and so on. But then I got to the important stuff: "An avid baseball fan, she lives within walking distance of her beloved World Champion San Francisco Giants."

OK, so I'm a Rockies fan and it may be decades before the Rox knock off the Giants for National League West dominance. But still -- walking distance of an MLB ballpark? Color me jealous. 

Here's the rest of the bio:

Attorney, author, and activist Christine Pelosi has a lifetime of grassroots organizing and public policy experience. She conducts leadership boot camps based on her books Campaign Boot Camp: Basic Training for Future Leaders (2007) and Campaign Boot Camp 2.0 (2012). Both books emerged from her years of grassroots activism and service with the AFSCME P.E.O.P.L.E. Congressional Candidates Boot Camp, which worked with approximately 120 challengers from 2006 to 2012, 33 of whom were elected to Congress. Her trainings with candidates, volunteers, and NGO leaders span over thirty American states and three foreign countries. She appears regularly on national television and radio. Her blog postings at the Huffington Post focus on current events as well as the role of social media networks, technology in politics and the unique leadership challenges for women candidates. Her next book, Women on the Run, will be released in 2014.

Christine holds a JD from the University of California Hastings College of the Law and a BSFS from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. She has served as a prosecutor in San Francisco, a special counsel in the Clinton-Gore administration, and a chief of staff on Capitol Hill. A former executive director of the CA Democratic Party, Christine chairs the CA Democratic Party Women's Caucus, led the CA Democratic Party Platform Committee for thirteen years, has been elected five times to the Democratic National Committee, where she cofounded the DNC Veterans and Military Families Council and serves as a vice chair, and serves on the Stakeholder Board of the Young Democrats of America. 

An avid baseball fan, she lives within walking distance of her beloved World Champion San Francisco Giants and serves on the Giants Community Fund board of directors. She is married to Emmy-nominated filmmaker Peter Kaufman; their daughter Isabella was born in 2009. An advocate for working moms, Christine traveled with her infant daughter to 21 states and 3 foreign countries performing campaign boot camps to advance Democrats and democracy.

Gun totin' in schools, El Rancho Avalancho and red state energy bound for blue state

Some things that irked and/or entertained me this past week:

The state legislature is in session. Opening day included the Gov's State of the State speech, a "legalize pot" march by Wyoming NORML and performances in the House chambers by WY Poet Laureate Echo Roy Klaproth and the UW Collegiate Chorale. The week was filled with debates over Medicaid expansion, gun-totin' in schools, minimum wage increases, early childhood education, more guns, Common Core, increases to hunting and fishing licenses, a decrease in coal taxes and, of course, more gun-totin'. Most bills were killed early so the Housers and Senators can get on to the issue at hand, the budget. Only three weeks left to do so. The big surprise is that Sen. Chris Rothfuss (D-Laramie) fashioned a bipartisan bill on Medicaid expansion that still is in the mix. Way to go, Sen. R! This is a miracle in this Obamacare-bashing state.

From the library shelves: "This Land was Made for You and Me (But Mostly Me)" by Bruce McCall and David Letterman. Yes, that's the same David Letterman as seen on late-night TV. And illustrator Bruce McCall was one of the Scots-Irish geniuses behind the rise of National Lampoon, the others being Michael O'Donoghue and P.J. O'Rourke. Letterman is a millionaire with a Rocky Mountain getaway in Montana. I'm not sure about McCall's portfolio, but it's intriguing that Dave and Bruce would turn their comedic sights on the super-rich and their favorite playgrounds in the West, places like Jackson Hole. This from the book's intro:

It all began a decade and a half ago or so in the far American West, in Montana and Wyoming and those other states that appropriated and misspelled the Native American words for "Big Empty Space" and "Much Bigger Empty Space"; there, a few daring pioneers from the pharaonically wealthy top crust embarked on a spree, powered by lust, inspired by a vision only they could see.

Because it takes more than money, privilege and cronies in high places to ransack nature's bounty for the private pleasure of a privileged few, in what poets might call acts of sublime idiocy (as if anyone would ask poets their opinion!), in other words, obliterating what always was, and making out of it what never existed before, then flanking it with armed guards and electric fences and Rottweilers.

The writer/illustrator duo go on to explore "the only Montana hunting lodge with its own indoor airport,"  El Rancho Avalancho in Idaho -- the world's first skiable mansion, and "the biggest goddamn bison in Wyoming." During the legislature's first week, it was good to once again laugh at the humor of wretched excess.

Speaking of wretched excess.... A Los Angeles Times story excerpted in my local paper today is about the largest wind ranch in creation, coming soon to Carbon County. Big enough to fit all of L.A. inside of it, the 500-sqare-mile ranch -- owned by gazillionaire Philip Anschutz -- will be home to 1,000 wind turbines and the starting point for a transmission line to carry all the energy to California. Cali needs clean energy and Wyoming breaks wind incessantly -- a match made in heaven. The irony in all of this is that the the most blue of blue states, with more enviros per square mile than anywhere else on earth, will be getting its energy from the most red of red states, a place that keeps its energy rates the lowest in the nation by burning coal, the dirtiest energy-creating substance there is.

California has until 2020 to ensure that one-third of its energy comes from renewable resources. Meanwhile, its cities are clouded in a haze that travels from pollution generated by coal-burning plants in China. Some of that coal comes from Wyoming's Powder River Basin. Wyoming currently is working with officials in Washington to build new ports to ship more coal to China.

The world is indeed an odd place.

Gregory Hinton's "Waiting for a Chinook" explores small-town newspapers of the West

"Six Against the Blaze," 1960. Photo by G.C. "Kip" Hinton

Talked to my colleague Gregory Hinton in L.A. last week. He'll be in Laramie in July for the debut of his play, Waiting for a Chinook: A New Play About Old Newspapers.  It runs July 9-13 at the Fine Arts Studio Theatre at the University of Wyoming. Tickets are $7-$10 and available at the UW Fine Arts Box Office. Here's a short description of the play:

Waiting for a Chinook follows Vince, a disillusioned city reporter, who returns to his boyhood Western town to search for place and meaning in the writings of his late father, Cliff, a Wyoming country editor.

Greg's father, G.C. "Kip" Hinton, was the editor of small town papers, including the legendary Cody Enterprise, established by Buffalo Bill and once owned and edited by the indomitable Caroline Lockhart. Editors such as Greg's father knew every part of the business -- reporting, photography, advertising, layout, typesetting, distribution -- because they had to. Most of these papers were one-person operations, or employed just a few people. Greg's father started his career at 15 as a printer's devil and moved up from there.

Greg lives in the big city these days but he was born on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana and grew up in Wyoming and Colorado. He has a fondness for small-town western life that, frankly, I don't share. I like the West all right -- I've lived here most of my life -- but I prefer cities as do most contemporary Westerners. Wyoming has two cities, as defined by a metropolitan statistical area: Cheyenne (pop. 61,000-plus) and Casper (pop. 57,000-plus). If you're feeling generous, you might throw in the state's micropolitan statistical areas: Sheridan, Gillette, Riverton, Evanston, Laramie, Jackson and Rock Springs.

When Greg began his research, he discovered that community newspapers have been able to weather the storm that has closed their big-city rivals. You know the story. Technology and the 2008 economic downturn closed a slew of newspapers and caused others to move entirely online, with mixed results. At least one daily -- the Chicago Tribune -- fired all of their photographers and told their reporters to use smart phones for photos to accompany their stories. Now they will all get the chance to experience life as a small-town reporter.

Another problem -- bloggers like me think they know everything and readers listen to us even when they should be turning to real news reports. I was trained as a journalist and I've worked as a newspaper reporter and editor. But Hummingbirdminds ain't no newspaper and doesn't pretend to be.

I try to be accurate. But actual newspapers have to report what happens at the city council meeting and at the Friday night high school football game. It has to spell correctly the head of the local Rotary and the garden club. It has to support itself with ads from Joe's Garage and Jean's Bake Shop. Sometimes editors write columns blasting a county commissioner. They know that soon they will run into that commissioner at the bank or on the street corner. It's a small town, after all. 

Back in the 1950s and 60s, Cody was smaller than it is now. Greg's father was called away from family events to report on car crashes and storms and fires. He shot a famous photo (see attached) of a tanker explosion. Not only was he covering the fire, he was putting out the fire as a member of the volunteer fire department. When the fire exploded, he was almost enveloped by the flames. As one of his fellow fire fighters recounted years later, he thought that Kip Hinton was a goner.

But he wasn't. He lived to report on other fires and natural disaster, rodeos and ball games, boring meetings galore.

Take some time and go over to UW July 9-13 to see Waiting for a Chinook. You'll get some insight into what makes these small-town editors tick, why they do the job they do. You will also experience the creative talent bred in the West's small towns. Some of our most talented writers, artists and musicians may be "Big City" now, but the influences of rural childhoods are still in their blood.

To read the UW press release about Waiting for a Chinook, go here. 

Henry Rollins rides the spoken-word choo choo into Cheyenne on Sept. 20

Spoken word artist and musician and Cable TV personality Henry Rollins in Cheyenne?

You've got to be kidding.
NOT!

He will be at the Cheyenne Depot Museum on Thursday, Sept. 20, 7 p.m.

For more info and tix, go to http://www.facebook.com/events/343239682432805/

Call for entries: Peace Song Contest

My K.C. pal and old college roomie (Go Gators!) Bob Page sent me this call for entries from his old friend, musician Karen Dunning:

Karen Dunning sponsors $500 Peace Song Contest.

Contestants from around the world are invited!  

Submit up to three original songs about peace in mp3 format to:  Karen@karendunning.com

The winner receives $500.  TRI Studios is donating audio and video recording for the winner at TRI studios in San Rafael, CA (the studio of Bob Weir of Grateful Dead fame).

Thank you for contributing to world peace!

Details:

Submissions close September 21, 2012 -- World Peace Day.

Artists may submit up to 3 songs in mp3 format up to 20mg/song

Songs must be original music and lyrics.

Songs must be original to the artist submitting the song.

Each song must include a short vision statement from the artist/s.

Please submit each song to karen@karendunning.com and put your song title and Peace Song Contest in the subject line

Artists retain rights to their songs, and grant Karen Dunning rights to play the submitted songs for promotional uses to raise awareness for peace.

Artists are responsible for their own travel and lodging expenses.

Out West at the Autry explores "Same Sex Dynamics" among 19-century Mormons on June 16

My friend, Gregory Hinton, grew up in Cody and spent some quality time there last year on a research fellowship at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. He shared some of his research on these pages. Go to http://hummingbirdminds.blogspot.com/2012/01/gregory-hinton-at-bbhc-in-cody-out-west.html.

Greg, who's creator and producer of "Out West at the Autry" in L.A., always has some unique offerings about LGBT life in the West, especially the rural West. Here's his latest venture:

Dear Friends of Out West:

Please join us at the Autry in Griffith Park this coming Saturday, June 16, 2 p.m., in conversation with scholar D Michael Quinn and USC Associate Professor William Handley discussing Quinn's "19th Century Same Sex Dynamics Among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example," winner of the Herbert Feis Award from the American Historical Association and named one of the best religion books of the year by Publisher's Weekly.

This ranks among our finest programs - twenty-five and counting - in partnership with museums, libraries and universities in ten states. 

I am so grateful to the Autry National Center, Tom Gregory, HBO, David Bohnett Foundation, Gill Foundation and the Gay & Lesbian Rodeo Heritage Foundation for their continuing support. 

I am especially proud to announce that the CIty Council of Los Angeles has formally recognized Out West as an "Angel in the City of Angels!" 

Gregory Hinton, Creator and Producer, Out West at the Autry at
gregoryhinton@earthlink.net

We be ugly in Wyoming

From TV reviewer Mary McNamara's LA Times review of the "Longmire" pilot:

Where Longmire strides, Vic bounces, and though Sackhoff doesn't have quite enough to do in the pilot, the chemistry between the two will no doubt be the river running through the show. While anything can happen over time in a TV series, their relationship appears remarkably, and mercifully, free of sexual or even romantic tension, despite their being the two best-looking people in the county and probably the state. (No offense meant, citizens of Wyoming.)

"Longmire" on A&E is based on the novels of Craig Johnson of Ucross, Wyoming, pop. 25, in Sheridan County, home to several ruggedly attractive people.

Demographic shifts spell doom for GOP, but not in Wyoming

Why are these aging white guys laughing?

This comes from Reader Supported News:

Pew Research Center Director Andrew Kohut had this to say following the release of a survey last Wednesday that showed support for the GOP tanking among college-educated, young and non-white voters:

"The Republicans really are the party of white people, and especially older white people," Kohut told reporters as the poll was released. "They've done nothing in this campaign to make themselves be more favorably viewed" among other parts of the electorate.

Republican strategists such as Karl Rove keep arguing that the Republican Party needs to find ways to reach out to other demographic groups, particularly Latinos.

The example of what could happen if the party does not do so is California, where the GOP became alienated from Latinos just as their voting percentage began to rise rapidly. Over the last five election cycles, California has moved from being a swing state to being one of the most solidly Democratic states in the country.

Republicans don't face that sort of dire situation nationwide, in part because the nation's demographics differ from California's. Whites without a college degree form a much larger percentage of the voting population nationwide, and that group has become a bastion for the Republicans. But as the country becomes less white and more college-educated, the picture is changing. And the numbers in the Pew survey provide some bad omens for the GOP. 

Latinos, for example, view the Republican Party unfavorably by a 2-1 margin (30% favorable, 60% unfavorable). By contrast, Latinos view the Democrats favorably, 56%-31%. The picture among Americans under 30 is almost as negative, with 34% viewing the GOP favorably, while 53% have an unfavorable view. Their view of Democrats is almost the exact opposite, 54% have a positive view, and 35% negative. 

Among those with a college degree or more, only 31% said they had a favorable view of the Republicans, while 66% were unfavorable. That group, which was a key to Barack Obama's victory in 2008, views Democrats favorably by 55%-42%. 

No chance any time soon that Wyoming will waver from its Republican voting patterns. The state is 91 percent white and is aging rapidly. Until serious cohort replacement takes place, it's the Democrats who are doomed in The Equality State.

Wyoming Sen. Al Simpson talks about new biography and his longtime support of LGBT rights at "Out West at the Autry" in L.A.

Wyoming U.S. Sen. Al Simpson of Cody will be featured at "Out West at the Autry" Feb. 27 at the Autry in Griffith Park in Los Angeles. Some of you may not know this, but Sen. Al is a longtime proponent of LGBT rights. While Wyoming Republican politicians traditional defend individual rights, they don't always declare their support of everyone's rights. But Big Al does this on a regular basis and talks about it in the new authorized biography by Donald Hardy, "Shooting from the Lip: The Life of Senator Al Simpson." In a Feb. 7 post on the Autry blog, writer Gregory Hinton, who grew up in Cody and just finished a research fellowship at the BBHC, muses on how he found common ground with Sen. Al on the issue of being gay in Wyoming. Read the Autry blog post here. Biographer Hardy also appears at the event. Hinton will act as host for Sen. Al's Feb. 27 presentation.