Thumbs up to new public art on National Mall

 

New sculpture on National Mall in D.C. This is the kind of public art
we want to see. 

America's Big Weekend: Tanks roll on D.C. streets, Marines protect L.A. from old hippies carrying signs

Top part of an image posted by an old friend from L.A. I told the friend I wouldn't use his/her/their name due to the fact that it's not a great idea to name names right now. If U.S. Senators can get arrested and  cuffed for asking questions of Fuhrerin K. Noem, than none of us are safe. My name is on this blog and has been floating in Cyberspace for 20 years. I cropped this to remove the bottom part of the poster because it was more inflammatory than necessary, or so says the editor. Something about betrayal, what some of us are feeling as Trump sends Marines to L.A. to shoot protesters. He is holding his grand birthday parade in D.C. tomorrow. Wonder how close it will pass to the Vietnam War Memorial just off Constitution Avenue, or the World War II Memorial at the far end of the Reflecting Pool? Will you be able to see those monuments from the tanks clanking down the pavement? I need to mention the name JOLEA on the image. Anyone know who that is, an artist or maybe an organization's acronym?

Sad days for poets, writers, and historians in Washington, D.C.

A. Friend (not a real name) told me that she and her husband are traveling to Washington, D.C., this week to see the National Museum of African-American History. They want to visit it before the Trump people purge the exhibits and dismantle the building. A. Friend is not a Trump voter, not even a person undergoing what MAGA calls Trump Derangement Syndrome or TDS. She and her husband are just regular folks who visit museums and art galleries and historic sites during their travels. Over the years, she has sent me postcards from sites I never knew existed and I am the richer for it. 

Trump's Nitwits have already purged some of the exhibits from this museum. They have never met a museum they didn't suspect of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion or DIE which is an ironic acronym on its face. MAGA terms it DEI because, well IED was taken (Boom!) and IDE was too close to "Beware the Ides of March" which sounds too Shakespearean which might remind Idiocrats of a college English class they were forced to take in 1997. 

I wish A. Friend and her husband Godspeed and good luck. Make sure to take your REAL ID with you just in case there is an ICE sweep on the National Mall.

More bad news from D.C.: Trump's goons have eliminated the National Endowment for the Arts Literary Program and canned its staff including Director Amy Stolls whom I have worked with. The administration had already rescinded grants to literary magazines and presses whose only crime was admitting to DIE. 

I am going to list them here because I have read some of their books and they might not have existed with the writer's non-profit publisher, often hanging on by a shoestring. Here are the names:   Alice James Books, Aunt Lute Books, BOA Editions, the Center for the Art of Translation, Deep Vellum, Four Way Books, Hub City Writers Project, Open Letter Books, Milkweed Editions, Nightboat Books, Red Hen Press, and Transit Books as well as such literary magazines Electric Literature, McSweeney’s, n+1, the Paris Review, and Zyzzyva.

I have read books from many of these presses. I will mention one. Brian Turner's first book of poetry was published by Alice James Books. Poet, essayist, and professor Turner won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award for his debut collection, Here, Bullet, the first of many awards and honors received for this collection of poems about his experience as a soldier in the Iraq War. His honors since include a Lannan Literary Fellowship and NEA Literature Fellowship in Poetry, and the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship. His second collection, shortlisted for the 2010 T.S. Eliot Prize, is Phantom Noise, also published by Alice James Books on New Gloucester, Maine, a teeming metropolis filled with radical outfits such as the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community, Pineland Farms, and the New Gloucester Fair. And one publisher. 

Brian's bio a pretty standard description of a contemporary American poet. But what's that part about the Iraq War? Oh yeah, Turner is a U.S. Army veteran, and was an infantry team leader for a year in the Iraq War beginning November 2003, with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. In 1999 and 2000 he was with the historic 10th Mountain Division, deployed in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

"Here, Bullet" knocked me out. The title poem will tell you more about war's realities than any non-fiction book. Go to the Alice James web site and buy the book. Better yet, buy all of his books and e-books which include individual poems. 

During my time as literature program specialist at the Wyoming Arts Council, I brought Brian to our fall 2012 writing conference in Casper to read from his work and congratulate the writers he had chosen for the WAC's literary fellowships. Later, he joined two other veteran writers on a panel to discuss the role of soldier/poet in "Active Duty, Active Voices," featured Iraq War veterans and writers Brian Turner and Luis Carlos Montalván. The panel was moderated by Casper College professor and military veteran Patrick Amelotte. Montalvan suffered from severe PTSD and wrote the wonderful memoir "Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him." He brought Tuesday with him to Casper that October weekend. I worked with the state's military coordinator to bring other service dogs and their handlers to the conference to demonstrate what they do. 

I wish I could just end this blog with another Liberal's complaint about our current situation. But I have a sad story to tell. In December 2016, the 43-year-old Montalvan was found dead in an El Paso hotel room. He had left his dog Tuesday with a friend. He killed himself and was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Delivering the eulogy was Democratic Sen. Al Franken. Montalvan had persuaded Franken to sponsor legislation expanding the military dog program which passed a different Congress during different times. 

During his time in Casper, Montalvan said his favorite poem growing up conservative Cuban in South Florida was "Invictus." You know the one. It celebrates bravery. William Ernest Hanley wrote it and it's always been a favorite to memorize because it rhymes and is in iambic tetrameter. Montalvan memorized it. It ends this way: "I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul."

Rest in peace, Captain.

The 2017 Women's March gave us hope in the dark and dismal early days of Trump

I feel almost giddy as this week spells the end of Trump in the White House and a new president installed. A new day for Washington, D.C., and America. A new year. Promise is in the air.

On the night of Nov. 3, 2016, all hell broke loose. Hillary Clinton led the results, at least in the beginning. And then came Florida and Pennsylvania and it was all bad news from there. Chris and I left the Democrats' celebration party early. She went to bed. I watched the West Coast returns even though my heart was broken.

I joined a group of millions across the globe in the 2017 Inauguration Day women's marches. We held one in Cheyenne attended by locals aided by protestors from around the state, western Nebraska and northern Colorado. The crowd was estimated by the Cheyenne Police Department as 1,200 but it may have been more as the police are usually conservative in their crowd estimates. It was a big crowd in our Capitol City with a population less than 70,000. Did this old bleeding heart good. Read my recap of the event here. 

We only had a tiny idea of what the next four years would bring. Nature's way of causing us further trauma. It culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol by by raging Trumpists. Many have been arrested for their attack on the seat of this country's duly-elected legislature. They stormed democracy when they stormed the building. Those filmed images will stay with me forever.

Come on Jan. 20, 2021!

What comes next after the Jan. 6 coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol?

We witnessed a coup attempt Wednesday at the U.S. Capitol Building.

Trump and his goons incited other goons to storm the Capitol and disrupt the approval of electoral college votes. They ended up trashing the place and killing a policeman. The mayhem delayed the counting of the votes until 3 in the morning on Jan. 7.

My daughter watched some of that day's CNN reports with me. She asked questions and I had no answers. 

She left for school and my mind wandered. I had attended two Vietnam War protests in D.C., in 1970 and 1971. D.C. Police were everywhere. At the May Day 1971 protests, promoted as "Days of Rage," President Nixon called in the National Guard and 82nd Airborne. Helicopters filled the air. Buses were lined up in a cordon around the White House. Federal drug enforcement undercover cops tried to blend in with the crowd, ready to bust pot smokers but there were too many of us so they just studied the freaks and took detailed notes.

These were the preparations for a bunch of longhairs. We were angry but unarmed. Would some have rushed the White House or Capitol and trashed those places? Maybe. They were angry about Vietnam. But were we prepared to interfere with a lawful election? Hell no. Many young men were angry when Nixon was elected in 1968 and 1972. We knew that it meant more Vietnam and a continuation, possibly forever, of the military draft. Most of us were there for peaceful protest.

Some Days of Rage protesters disrupted traffic and blocked the employee entrance to the U.S. Justice Department and engaged in various other acts of civil disobedience.

The police and military were more than ready for them. May 3 ended up being the biggest arrest cache ever in D.C. The jails overflowed and officials had to corral the longhairs at RFK Stadium (football season was long over). 

Where were these duly-appointed guardians of our democratic republic on Jan. 6, 2021? Nowhere to be seen. Until later in the day, after the worst was over.

This was an inside job and just the beginning of an old-fashioned coup. Are we ready for the next attack that may come on Jan. 17 or possibly Inauguration Day? 

We better be.

As the hymn says, gonna lay down my sword and shield

A viral plague kills thousands and forces millions to hunker down at home and practice social distancing when out in public.

Black Americans killed on the streets by rampaging police.

Millions of Americans lose jobs due to record unemployment.

The President of the United States hides in the White House guarded by armed troops and a fortified fence.

Riots in the streets.

Armed secret police of unknown origin face down peaceful protesters in the nation's capital.

This could be a blurb for a best-seller or an action-packed new movie.

Instead, they are news headlines.

That was the week that was. The U.S. is in deep do-do. Trump can't be blamed for it all. But he can be blamed for making it much, much worse. He is totally unfit for the highest position in the land. Where other leaders unite, Trump divides.

What makes it worse is that Trump is a lifelong racist and a narcissist. He can't look weak even when he is. He has all the traits of a schoolyard bully.

What does a person like this due when threatened? We've seen it. Brute force. He is the commander-in-chief and thus he commands unlimited power, or so he believes. He wanted to unleash troops on protesters. It's been done in the past but you have to go back the Vietnam War protests to see it in action. It happened but not to the extent we feared. Heads were beaten, rubber bullets fired, tear gas employed, arrests made. But the protesters didn't give up and critics of both political parties and a phalanx of retired U.S. generals condemned Trump's tactics. Protests have calmed down. The rioters have not been identified but you know they were radicals intent on watching the country burn. White supremacists. Anarchists. Black radicals.

The protesters cause is just. Peace prevailed. Many police sided with the protesters. A Tennessee National Guard unit laid down their shields after protesters sang the anthem of nonviolent protest.

I'm gonna lay down my sword and shield
Down by the riverside.

And study war no more...

I have a part to play in this. Not sure yet what it is. But it's clear we need to change the way government employees treat minorities. Not just police. Everyone up and down the chain of command including police and the President. I was a government employee for 25 years. Now retired, I wonder what I could have done better. As many have said, racism is a systemic problem. I am not a racist. But as a white guy, I worked for a system that perpetuated certain racist policies. It was built that way. I may have thought about that briefly during my public service. But how did I transform it to serve everyone's needs?

I was slightly woke but really blind and now I see.

What did I do in the arts that made a difference? And what can I do now?

Stay tuned...

The Fourth of July bash at the National Mall will feature lots and lots of Trump and big tanks -- don't forget the tanks!

In February, when Trump announced plans for his grandiose Fourth of July celebration, conservative commentator Bill Kristol responded on Twitter: 

"The last president to try to hijack July 4th was Richard Nixon, who staged Honor America Day on July 4, 1970. It was widely ridiculed. Nixon later left office in disgrace."

What's past is prologue. Trump's "Salute to America Day" on the National Mall will feature Trump (of course), VIP seating, a Soviet-style military parade with lots of hardware (tanks included), and fireworks.

There were lots of fireworks at the July 4, 1970, event, not all of it in the sky. American Nazis attended to protest Vietnam War protesters and the Yippies staging a smoke-in at the Washington Monument. Police tried to maintain a DMZ between the protesters and Silent Majority picnickers. Then that failed, park police fired tear gas at the rowdy hippies and gas clouds drifted over the multitudes. This led, as one reporter wrote, to a "mad stampede of weeping hippies and Middle Americans away from the fumes." At the same time, the U.S. Navy Band played the Star Spangled Banner from the Lincoln Memorial stage.

I was in that mad stampede. I picnicked with my buddy Pat's family. When the fumes reached us, Pat and I scrambled to lead his grandmother and younger sisters to safety. Pat and I had been tear-gassed several times that spring during campus protests of the Kent State killings. It was no fun for young people but could be dangerous for the elderly. We made it out of the gas cloud and, when the hubbub died down, we returned to our picnic. Later, we listened to Honor America Day jokes from Bob Hope and Jeannie C. Riley's version of Merle Haggard's "The Fightin' Side of Me." Then, despite the chaos or maybe because of it, we admired the bitchin' fireworks display. 

Back at Pat's family's house, Pat and I and his brother smoked a joint and remarked on the day's strange happenings. Looking back, I can see that it was a fine snapshot of those confusing times. The next day, I hitched back to Norfolk Naval Base which my buddy Paul, one of my companions on an eight-week midshipmen summer cruise on the John F. Kennedy. On Monday, I called my girlfriend in Florida to say good-bye and she broke up with me because she was tried of saying good-bye to me all of the time. .Here I was, not yet officially in the Navy, and I got a Dear John phone call. I spent the next six weeks sailing the Atlantic and sampling the aircraft carrier's many jobs. And moping, I did a lot of moping. I remember how nonsensical it all seemed. I was 19 and confusion comes with the territory.

So here it is, 49 years later, and I am still confused. Trump is president. He's staging a Nuremberg Rally an our National Mall. As it was with Nixon in 1970, there seems no end to Trump. But Nixon did come to a bad end, as even conservative stalwarts now admit. But the confusion at the National Mall on July 4, 1970, only cemented Nixon's hold on the voters. Hippies interrupting Bob Hope was just too much to bear. America needed a strongman to stem the rising tide of anarchy. So, he cruised to victory in the 1972 election. I was depressed -- I voted for the man from South Dakota, an honorable man, a warrior who wanted to stop the war.

The big question for 2019: when will we see the end of Trump? Think about that as he rants on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Independence Day.

Part XIV: The Way Mike Worked -- How the Contract with America bit the NEA on the ass

The story resumes...

It's been a few weeks, but today I get back to my series "The Way Mike Worked," based on the Smithsonian-sponsored exhibit "The Way We Worked," featured in the Cheyenne library this fall. I've been busy with my novel and some free-lance writing assignments. These later chapters of my saga also take some research, as they deal with my time as an arts bureaucrat at the Wyoming Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. I lived the first four decades of my life clueless about the world of arts administration. For the ensuing 27 years, I lived and worked in that world. I'm still active as a volunteer. My hope is that we all will get a chance to promote the arts in our communities. Taking an active role in creativity may save us all. It may not, but we will have a much better time along the way.

On that day in D.C., I witnessed history.

On Tuesday, September 27, 1994, Rep. Newt Gingrich assembled 300 Republican candidates for a photo op in front of the U.S. Capitol. The occasion was the signing of the Contract with America, a document designed by Newt that featured 10 bills that Republicans hoped to pass once the 1994 Mid-term Red Wave led to a Republican majority.

I was just starting my second year in D.C. and still a new hand at inside-the-beltway politics. Did I have a gut feeling that Gingrich's contract would change my life? Not really. Curiosity moved me. That, and a request from my National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) boss that it would be good to keep an eye on Gingrich and his pals as we closed in on the November mid-term election.

That day, I skipped my usual Metro Station stop that led to a two-block walk to NEA offices in the Old Post Office, now a Trump Hotel. I rode all the way to Union Station to take in the event. Republicans had been promoting the gathering for weeks and I was curious. I also had a feeling that it would affect my stint at the NEA. Newt had waged war on Democratic Party policies since his election to Congress in 1979. He had been active in the culture wars, a vanguard in the Religious Right's fight against the NEA, NEH, sacrilegious art, naked art, hip-hop -- any creative strain within 1990s America that threatened The Word in the Bible and U.S. supremacy in the secular world. Not exactly the opening salvo in the struggle but one that would steer politics right into the Trump era.

In late September, D.C.'s oppressive summer bubble of heat and humidity was just beginning to release its grip. But that day at the Capitol, a Republican fever dream was being born in Newt's image.

On this day, Newt launched a war against Democratic Party policies. Total war, akin to Sherman's March through Georgia, which Newt wrote about in one of his novels that I never read. A continuation of Nixon's Southern Strategy, which convinced Southern whites that Republicans were on God's side and Democrats had forged an evil alliance with ethnic minorities, feminists, gays, and college-educated pacifists. It wasn't just that Dem policies were misguided and needed correcting. It was that the Dems were the enemy and needed to be crushed. It was like a Newt Gingrich alternative history. Except it was real and, like the Civil War, had lasting consequences.

Newt wasn't content with writing alternative histories. He actually wanted to make history. Whatever the subject, Newt wrote a book. He's written 18 non-fiction titles. He's authored or co-authored at least a dozen fiction titles. You have to hand it to him. Hatching an idea, writing, revising, finishing, publishing and promoting -- the writer's life is not for the meek. Newt had a platform, still does if you look at the plethora of new titles. It is clear he had a vision and he could write. This one-two punch proved dangerous for the liberal agenda. It was a gift to conservatives waging the culture wars.

As Newt bragged at that 1994 event:“Today, on these steps, we offer this contract as a first step towards renewing American civilization."

What did you do in the culture wars, daddy?

I am a veteran of the culture wars. I don't have any medals and I don't brag about my service. I'm a survivor, which is something to be proud of. For 25 years, I worked to nurture the arts on the local, state, regional and national level. It was fun and heart-breaking. I'm here to tell the story.

What, exactly, are the culture wars? The most significant battle on the national front was waged over explicit photographs of nude gay men and a photo of a crucifix soaked (allegedly) in a container filled with an artist's urine. The NEA helped fund a grant that funded the Robert Mapplethorpe photo exhibit at DC.'s Corcoran Gallery. The crucifix art, "Piss Christ", won the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art "Awards for Artists," also funded by the NEA. Hysterical press coverage followed and evangelical yokels such as Sen. Jesse Helms and  Moral Majority's Jerry Falwell stirred up their followers with tales of blasphemy and obscenity and misuse of taxpayer dollars because, as you know, the national arts budget is so bloated that it puts the defense budget to shame.  

Pause for laughter.

Meanwhile, the NEA found itself in the middle of a lawsuit when it yanked fellowships of four artists for their ostensibly offensive art. All of these offending artists were linked with Satan and all of the Coastal Elites. Pres. Clinton, an evangelical from Arkansas raised by a single mother, was somehow one of those elites. The Republicans aimed to sabotage every one of his programs. This wasn't the first time a combative Congress took on the opposition's sitting president. But it led to all the battles yet to come. 

When confronted with an African-American Democrat as president (a guy who made good the hard way), Republican leaders vowed that none of his programs would become the law of the land. What they failed to obliterate then, they now put in the ruinous hands of the current benighted resident of the Oval Office. The battle will now be joined by the new Democratic majority in the House. Let's hope that the Democrats' tendency for appeasement has been replaced by a need to kick ass and take names. There are some encouraging signs, such as Rep. Pelosi taking Trump to the woodshed this week over the government shutdown.

Let's get back to Newt. His goal was to destroy the NEA and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Museum and Library Services Office (MLS), all part of the same funding bill. That was not as easy as it sounded. Newt, in fact, ran into what other conservatives have discovered over the years, that Republicans support the arts and many have children who are schooled in the arts and grow up to become artists, arts consumers, even arts patrons. They have museums and performing arts centers named after them. They weren't so sure that depriving their city's symphony/art museum/ballet of tax dollars was the proper thing to do. They appealed to their moderate Republican Congresspeople (there were moderate Republicans back then) to teach the Democrats a lesson but don't go overboard for goodness sake.

Newt was faced with a problem. How to satisfy the newly-elected rural-state rabble-rousers and their urban and suburban counterparts who had all of the money. Cuts came, as did compromises. The Right liked the fact that the 1996 federal budget cut funding for the arts almost in half and eliminated troublesome fellowships in visual and performing arts. Newt could declare victory and his colleagues could brag about their success out in the hinterlands. And get re-elected in '96.

It led to my early departure from the NEA and a return to my job in Wyoming. It also had other results that were less well-known. The survival of the literary fellowships. That's a story in itself and worth another post. But first, I have to go back 20-some years and do some research. I like research, although sometimes its tentacles grab me and won't let go..

Next chapter: Newt Gingrich, the writer's friend?

Part XIII: The Way Mike Worked -- On the road to D.C.

My eight-year-old son Kevin and I were on our third day of cross-country travel from Cheyenne, Wyo., to Washington, D.C.

I had promised Kevin three things to coax him into traveling with me in the U-Haul. No. 1, each night on the road we would stay at a motel with a pool. No. 2, we would eat every meal at McDonald's. No. 3, we would take his dog, Precious, with us.

He asked if he could drive but I said no, even though I could have used some relief behind the wheel. But I did stick to the other three promises and on this, the third day, I had a bad case of heartburn to match my driver fatigue.

We were passing through the sliver of West Virginia between Ohio and Pennsylvania when I spied a rest area and stopped. It was Labor Day weekend and one of the service clubs staffed a coffee stop. I hit the restrooms and then the coffee stand staffed by a pair of middle-aged guys. As he poured my coffee, one of the guys asked where I was headed.

"Washington, D.C.," I said. "I start a job there Monday."

He nodded, handed me the Styrofoam cup. The coffee was as hot as the afternoon. "You aren't one of those Clinton fellas, are you?"

"Afraid so." I smiled. They didn't. I heard the Deliverance banjo playing in the background. I thanked them for the coffee and retreated to look for my son. Clinton fella? I guess that I was, although far down on the list, way below the political appointees and the thousands of full-time D.C. bureaucrats and the hangers-on that accompany any new administration.  The National Endowment for the Arts was borrowing me from the State of Wyoming because, as a writer from a flyover state such as West Virginia, my higher-ups thought that I would lend a new perspective to the work of the government arts agency. I had signed up for two years with a possible two-year extension. I was part of a pool of Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) employees that made their way to D.C. every couple years. There was a surge now as V.P. Al Gore was tasked with trimming the federal work force.

Kevin and I spent one more night on the road. We could have made it to Rockville, Md., by nightfall but our new house wasn't available until the next day.  The motel had a nice pool and we could see the golden arches from our room. This Clinton fella was pretty tired and tomorrow was moving-in day. Chris and our infant daughter Annie were flying in from Denver in the afternoon. Soon we would all be together in a new house in a new town. Chris was going to stay home with Annie while Kevin went to the third grade. We would try to survive on one mid-level bureaucrat's salary in one of the most expensive suburbs on the East Coast. North Bethesda -- that's what city leaders wanted to rename our section of Rockville. The new name would probably bring higher rents and higher prices all-around. Bragging rights, too, I guess.

But that was all ahead of us in this new adventure.

The biggest surprise of Trump's presidency? Melania tends Michelle's garden

I strolled around the Clay Paper Scissors Gallery last week admiring the "In The Garden" exhibit. It's all about growing things, one of my favorite subjects. It is spring, after all, but the snow falling outside my window annoys me. April showers bring May and June flowers, so let it snow. I will get around to gardening eventually. The anticipation of planting is almost as good as the real thing. I am a spring and summer guy. The warmth is part of it. But I have come to believe that i revel in this act of creation that begins with warming days.

Is there a gardening gene? My father was a grower. He spent his last years tending the gardens at St. Brendan the Navigator Catholic Church in Ormond Beach, Fla., the church where Chris and I were married 36 years ago. His father grew on a farm and tended an impressive garden at his house in Denver's Park Hill. His specialties were roses and tomatoes. If he could have produced a tomato shaped like a rose, he would have been a happy man.

I thought of creation this morning when Venezuelan-born chef  Lorena Garcia was asked what person, living or dead, she would like to share a meal with. Michelle Obama was her answer, a woman who inspired her. I think of Michelle's White House Kitchen Garden. It was meant to be a creative place where Michelle educated children about healthy lifestyles. Veggies and herbs harvested from the garden went to the White House kitchen and local food banks. Grow your own food, eat your own food. The First Lady was a proponent of children's health. She wanted schools to stop serving junk in their cafeterias. She encouraged schools and communities to plant gardens. She wrote a book.

Most of us thought that our junk-food-eating president would rip out Michelle's garden when he took office. We wondered what might go in its place. An oil rig? Golf course? A McDonald's? Surprisingly, the garden remains. First Lady Melania Trump still oversees tending of the garden. School kids come in to help with the harvest. Surprised the hell out of me. It did not surprise me that Melania wore a $1,380 Balmain plaid shirt at a garden harvest last September. I guess you could say she also is growing the market for high-end gardening attire.

But I continue to hope that America's garden will not be destroyed during Trump's presidency. He has, however, done his best to roll back environmental regulations, cannibalize public education, and slash government programs that assist millions. He needs some gardening advice, although I doubt that he will listen.

When you plant a garden, you create new life from the ground up. When you paint a painting, you introduce the world to a new vision, your vision. Creative writing, song composition,  sculpture. All creative enterprises. It takes a long time to become adept in your chosen area. There is little monetary payoff along the way and maybe never. But still you create because that is what you are called upon to do.

In a time when every blessed thing is commodified, I find hope in Melania's garden. Seeds are sprouting today at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Perhaps they will take root someday in the Oval Office, the entire West Wing, all over D.C.

This kind of creation keeps hope alive.

And get over to Clay Paper Scissors at 1513 Carey Avenue in downtown Cheyenne and view garden-themed artwork by artists Win Ratz, Lynn Newman, Wendy Bredehoft and many others. There is some neat mixed-media work by Gillette's Heidi Larsen and some unique felted flowers by Cheyenne's Melanie Shovelski. If you're in the market for a garden furniture, check out Gary Havener's native pine and willow benches. For more of Bredehoft's cut-paper-and-wood "Botanics," see her show at Cheyenne Botanic Gardens gallery.

Another generation betrayed by those who should know better

This Saturday, thousands of young people will stage the March for Our Lives anti-gun violence rally in Washington, D.C. Expecting huge crowds, officials have changed the opening day of the annual Cherry Blossom Festival to Sunday, March 25. This also marks the beginning of tourist season for D.C. Spring is gorgeous. The cherry blossoms that surround the tidal basin are spectacular. But this year, the weekend's focus will be on ways that we can stop the slaughter of our children in their schools.

I can only guess at the pain that the Marjory Stoneman Douglas students from Parkland, Fla., feel as they watch their elders dither over gun control. These are the results you get from us – hypocrisy and betrayal. The students’ adversaries are monumental. Its structure will have to be dismantled brick by brick.

I imagine what would have happened if a gunman had entered my Florida school 50 years ago and murdered 17 of my classmates and teachers.

The year, 1968. The school, Father Lopez Catholic High School in Daytona Beach. We 17-year-old juniors have Valentine’s Day on our minds. I hoped I had bought just the right thing for my girlfriend. My girlfriend might have been contemplating the very same thing. Basketball season was winding down and it looked like my Green Wave team was going to win the conference. We had all given up something for Lent. Chocolate. French fries. Cussing. Fear of eternal damnation kept us chaste so there was no reason to give up sex, although we joked about it. Spring break was on the horizon, as was summer, and we were thinking about summer jobs and days on the beach.

We had an open campus. Anyone could walk in and did. Moms delivered forgotten lunches and homework. Visitors dropped by at any time. We would have been sitting ducks for a killer.

It never happened at my school and never has. If 17 of my classmates had been killed, I would have known them all – we had fewer than 400 students in four grades. One of the dead or wounded could have been me. I like to think that I would have been a hero no matter what. I have nothing to base that on because I had never faced a shot fired in anger – and I still haven’t. We would all be devastated. We would be looking for solace and answers.

What would adults have told us? Don’t worry. This is an aberration. The gunman was crazy. It will never happen again.

And we would have believed them.

That was our first mistake. It wouldn’t be our last.

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., would be gunned down in Memphis. Our school’s mostly-black neighborhood would not be safe. Riots would erupt on Second Avenue which, during those segregated times, was where the black population lived.  

On June 6, Robert Kennedy would be murdered by an assassin. I idolized the Kennedys. RFK and JFK were imperfect human beings. But I was a teen looking for some heroes.  

Florida native Charles Whitman murdered 16 people, most of them from a perch at the University of Texas tower, in July 1966. Not the first mass murder but the fact that it was a former Marine sniper made news. And he was a very angry white man.

On Valentine’s Day 1968, the Tet Offensive was just winding down in Vietnam. Surely this meant the end of a failed experiment, one that was claiming the lives of my peers and many Vietnamese. The war dragged on for another seven years. Our elders, “the best and the brightest,” insisted it was the right thing to do.

None of the adults gave us the real facts about sex. Parents and nuns and priests decided that fear was enough of a deterrent. They were mostly correct, although at least one of our female classmates missed part of the senior year with an unplanned pregnancy. You would not be surprised that pregnant teens found the same censure at public schools. It just wasn’t done. The boys were never blamed.

We knew betrayal, we didn’t yet have a name for it. Members of our generation possessed a simmering rage. That was a problem, because the Summer of Love and the Age of Aquarius had dawned. Peace, love, and understanding. If that was true, how come people were filled with anger? Blacks vs. Whites. Cops vs. pot smokers. Rednecks vs. hippies. Viet Cong vs. the U.S.A. Irish Catholics vs. Protestants. Jews vs. Arabs and almost everyone else.

Flash forward to the present. Seventeen killed and a dozen wounded at a Florida high school. The only ones making sense are 16- and 17-year-old classmates of the dead at Douglas High School. Adults in positions of power are dangerous fools. They spout nonsense that get their children killed.

Betrayed. It’s déjà vu all over again.

It may have its roots in the betrayal that ignited our generation. That was never resolved, or forgotten, just buried as the years passed. We weren’t the first. It’s possible that adults of every generation betray their children. Over time, we lose touch with our values and our kids pay the price. You can say that every generation needs to experience hardships to find out the true nature of the world. Center for Disease Control figures come up with 1.55 million deaths from firearms in the U.S. from 1968-2016. This includes the span of many generations. Wouldn’t a smart, caring community have come up with some solutions by now?

Good people do bad things. Bad people do bad things. That’s an old story. But why do we make it easier for anyone to buy an AR-15, walk into a school, and shoot down 17 people? Haven’t we learned our lessons by now? Columbine, Aurora, Sandy Hook, Orlando, Las Vegas. The list goes on and on. If we don’t do something about it, we betray our children. If we do something about it, we betray only the NRA and our thick-headed politicians.

The choice should be clear. More betrayal, the generational rite of passage? Or do we do something new and different and constructive?

Which will it be?

Here are some tips to avoid those typo gremlins

Nobody in the Trump administration asked me for help, but I am offering it anyway.

First of all, a bit of history about typographical errors. They have been with us since the advent of the printing press. And spelling errors, well, they have been with us since humankind began sketching out a language on mud tablets or papyrus or cave walls, whatever was handy.

Humans are fallible. When  you combine that with high visibility, it's an invitation for trouble. I know this from almost 40 years as a writer and editor.

#45's first poster featured either a spelling error or a typo. SCSOE Betsy DeVos's office misspelled African-American activist's W.E.B. Dubois's name on a press release for Black History Month and compounded the problem by apologizing with the wrong form of apology.

We know that these people have the advantage of higher education. In other words, they're not uneducated. Gross negligence is another problem. Impulsivity, maybe, as we know that POTUS is impulsive on Twitter at 5 a.m.

I offer some tips on avoiding these little gremlins in your written documents, whether they appear only on social media or on thousands of posters, one of which will end up in the National Archives. The term "gremlins" is a good description for these little devils. It comes from British pilots in the 1920s, who needed something (rather than somone) to blame for the failings of their rickety aircraft. It really caught on during WWII, when pilots in the Battle of Britain referred to gremlins as the thing that gummed up the throttle, caused fuel leaks and generally ran amok over the whole works. Gremlins persist, which may be the cause of constant dysfunction at the Trump White House.

 One more thing. Do not treat Spell Check as the last word on your document. Apology, apologies and apologize(s) are all correct. Too and to are both words. Their use depends on context. Can you say context?

Some recent examples:

1. Michael Flynn, former National Security Advisor, wasn't too careful when he talked to two (or maybe two-and-twenty) Russian sources about U.S. national secrets.

You can see how to, too and two are used. Two-and-twenty is antiquated, best relegated to nursery rhyme and blogs. Besides, it could have been two million for all we will ever know.

2. Betsy DeVos offered no apology for giving money to all of the Republicans who voted for her nomination as Secretary of Education. She does apologize that it wasn't more, but that will be taken care of shortly.

Apology is a noun and is used here correctly. Apologize is a verb and it is also used correctly here. One of these days, all of these hacks will apologize to the American people but we won't hold our breath.

3. White House spokesman Stephen Miller msaid out loud that we shouldn't dare question POTUS's decision, whether it by on national security or Ivanka's clothing line. We can only conclude that he speaks with great precision, but obviously is batshit crazy.

That's all for today, language nerds. Your humble narrator signs off until I am needed again, which will be soon.

"Sailor off the Bremen" shows that punching Nazis is nothing new

It's only a movie -- or is it? Indiana Jones punches a Nazi in "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

USA Today offered its summary of the past weekend: "Analysis: One weekend, two Americas. Are we falling apart?" It examines this past weekend in the U.S., in which Trump was inaugurated as president and concerned citizens protested millions-strong around the the U.S. and the world.  

The article leaves us with chilling words from pollster Frank Luntz:

"We've never had as many people who don't trust the media, don't trust the politicians, don't trust economics, don't trust business," Republican political consultant Frank Luntz said on CBS' Face the Nation. "I think we're going to remember this weekend for a long time to come as not the end, not the campaign being over, but this is the beginning of the most tempestuous ... awful conflict between left and right, between men and women, between young and old." 

He warned, "I think we are breaking apart."  

Luntz works for Republicans. As a pollster, he interviewed scores of potential voters leading up to the election. I watched many of those segments on CBS This Morning, back when I was watching TV news. They were illuminating and scary. Give credit to Luntz for showing us the inklings of the cataclysm that was to come. 

What's next?

Punching Nazis. U.S. Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer was punched in the face Saturday during D.C. inauguration activities. It was filmed, and the vid went viral. The #punchingnazis hashtag became a sensation.  Facebookers posted old cartoon panels of Superman punching Nazis during WWII. Hitler memes were big. 

Liberals had a big laugh. Conservatives were silent. Nobody wants to be on the side of the Nazis, even though we thought that this abbreviation for German's National Socialist Party had been consigned to the dustbin of history. Now we call these people alt-right or purveyors of white pride or white identity or white nationalists. They shouted "Hail Trump" at their post-election rally. 

So why not punch Nazis? Because Trump will use public violence as an excuse to clamp down on public protest. One of the reasons we peacefully gathered out in the streets this weekend is that we fear that very thing. Vice President Pence has already stated that it is time to curtail protests. We knew this was coming. 

Punching Nazis is nothing knew. One of Irwin Shaw's best short stories is ":Sailor Off the Bremen." In it, Nazi sailors off the ship Bremen attack anti-fascist demonstrators on the New York docks. One demonstrator is so injured that some of his compatriots decide to punch Nazis.

Shaw has always been one of my favorite short story writers. He lived during the golden age of short story writing and publishing. Yes, short story writers got paid to write in the 1930s. Shaw was featured in some of the best mags of the era. He wrote for radio. He went off to war and kept writing. Many of his novels became best-sellers. One was made into a Brando movie, The Young Lions. Two were made into blockbuster TV miniseries, Rich Man, Poor Man and Beggerman, Thief. Shaw lived in Paris. For the most part, he is not studied in M.F.A. writing programs due to his potboiler novels. A shame, really. Many of us could learn storytelling skills from this master.

"Sailor off the Bremen" serves up a pre-war cast of Nazis, communists and tough guys. Nobody really comes off as a hero. A young communist activist gets beat up at a protest against the Nazi-flag-flying Bremen. He loses his eye. His football-playing brother avenges the crime by beating a Nazi almost to death on the streets of New York. Nothing gets solved. The war will begin in September. The beatings and killings will commence on a global scale.

A white nationalist gets punched in the face in D.C. We cheer. White nationalists in Whitefish, Mont., target the Jews in their community. How do we respond to that? Peaceful protest may be the answer. Until it's not.

Lawrence Block included "Sailor off the Bremen" in the 2008 anthology he edited for Akashic Books, Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics. It's a good thing. Shaw's stories are hard to find these days. 

I leave you with a quote by James Fallows from the latest issue of Atlantic Magazine Online. Fallows recently spoke at a conference in Cheyenne. In the Atlantic article, he mentioned Laramie as one of the many places where local citizens are transforming their communities. At the same time, they hold a jaundiced view of national politics.

Fallows wrote this:

And now we have Donald Trump. We have small-town inland America—the culture I think of myself as being from—being credited or blamed for making a man like this the 45th in a sequence that includes Washington, Lincoln, and FDR. I view Trump’s election as the most grievous blow that the American idea has suffered in my lifetime. The Kennedy and King assassinations and the 9/11 attacks were crimes and tragedies. The wars in Vietnam and Iraq were disastrous mistakes. But the country recovered. For a democratic process to elevate a man expressing total disregard for democratic norms and institutions is worse. The American republic is based on rules but has always depended for its survival on norms—standards of behavior, conduct toward fellow citizens and especially critics and opponents that is decent beyond what the letter of the law dictates. Trump disdains them all. The American leaders I revere are sure enough of themselves to be modest, strong enough to entertain self-doubt. When I think of Republican Party civic virtues, I think of Eisenhower. But voters, or enough of them, have chosen Trump.

How many of our fellow citizens do we have to punch to make this right? If you punch, are you prepared to be punched back? Or worse?

Reading "In Country" in the aftermath of another set of wars

It only took me 31 years to get around to reading "In Country" by Bobbie Ann Mason.

Published in 1985, the book explores post-Vietnam War America, specifically the South of rural Kentucky. The struggles of local veterans are seen through the eyes of 18-year-old  Sam (Samantha) Hughes, whose father Dwayne was killed in the war before she was born. Sam lives with her Viet vet uncle, Emmett, and might go to school at the University of Kentucky or she might get a job and marry her boyfriend, Lonnie. She's rooted in a specific place but rootless, too, as are most 18-year-olds. She keeps asking questions about the war but nobody, especially the vets who meet with Emmett every morning for coffee, want to give her any answers.

In one passage, Sam ponders a photo of her "soldier boy" daddy who was about her age when he died:

She stared at the picture, squinting her eyes, as if she expected it to come to life. But Dwayne had died with his secrets. Emmett was walking around with his. Anyone who survived Vietnam seemed to regard it as something personal and embarrassing. Granddad had said they were embarrassed that they were still alive. "I guess  you're not embarrassed," she said to the picture.

In the mid-1980s, the war years were fresh memories. Mason's epigraph is from Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A.," possibly one of the most misunderstood rock songs in American history.

I'm ten years burning down the road
Nowhere to run ain't got nowhere to run

Springsteen's lyrics are sprinkled throughout the book, as are songs by the Beatles, Stones, Creedence -- all the oldies from the era. The soundtrack of the Vietnam War, as one author recently called those tunes. Pop culture references abound, as do mentions of Americana: Wal-Mart, strip malls, muscle cars, Budweiser, and so on. Writing teachers sometimes tell their charges to be sparing with contemporary references, as it might date their work. Bobbie Ann Mason uses these references in order to date her work from the mid-80s, when veterans and non-veterans alike were trying to make sense of a lost crusade that nearly ripped this country apart.   This style was sometimes referred to as K-Mart Realism. This style was at its zenith when I attended grad school 1988-1991. It was shorthand for all of those white folks who once populated rural Kentucky and wide-open-spaces Wyoming. Whether draftees or volunteers, these men went to "a foreign land to kill the yellow man." They returned hoping to marry their high school sweethearts and get a job in the mines or in the factories that powered the 1970s economy. Many disappointments awaited them. Their girlfriends and high school pals had moved on. They didn't want to hear about Vietnam. Neither did older vets, the Greatest Generation, fathers of the whiners and complainers who came back from Vietnam. "Get over it," So they only talked about it with other veterans oif they just dropped out, as did Emmett, who doesn't work and spends his time watching M*A*S*H and recycling cast-off goods, much as the VC used to re-purpose all of the material the GIs threw away.

By 1985, this economy had begun to disappear,  Mines and textile mills and factories were shuttered or moved overseas for cheaper labor. To Mexico, Indonesia and, ironically, a newly energized Vietnam. Reaganomics worked to destroy unions, the foundation of blue-collar America. Vietnam veterans tended to blame liberal elites for this reversal of fortune. They were the spoiled hippie college kids who caused us to lose the war. Their love for the spotted owl and pristine wilderness killed the logging and mining industries. Their political correctness have us everything from women's lib to gay rights to Barack Obama in 2008 to -- yes -- The Donald in 2016.

Mason's characters are wonderful. The book begins with Sam, Mamaw and Emmett driving from Kentucky to Washington, D.C., in a beat-up VW bug Sam just bought from Vietnam vet Tom. We then are transported back to Hopewell in the months leading up to the trip. The book ends at The Wall, no surprise since its presence looms large throughout the book, even though it's off-stage most of the time. This a a fitting remembrance to the Vietnam War. Remember that the memorial was referred to by one opponent as a "black gash of shame." It now is almost a sacred site for Vietnam vets, home to motorcycle rallies for wounded vets and pilgrimages by vets and their families, such as the Hughes clan of Kentucky.

I'm not spoiling "In Country" to tell my readers than it ends at The Wall. The reflective surface of The Wall often leads to eerie juxtapositions, as when Sam looks at her father's name and realizes that it's her name too and she can see his face in hers. Or in veteran writer Yusef Komunyakaa's 1988 poem "Facing It:"

I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap’s white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.

Revisiting one of the red-letter days in pot protest history

I found this bit of history on the web site for the NYC Cannabis Parade: Founding Chapter of the Global Marijuana March. Why wasn't I notified about this Global Marijuana March? Been going on for awhile, it seems, ever since marijuana started showing up a Dead concerts and Yippie rallies in the 1960s. In 1970, the action moved to D.C.:

What brought them to Washington, D.C. on July 4, 1970 was an event called “Honor America Day,” with comedian and military favorite Bob Hope and the Rev. Billy Graham as co-hosts to be held outdoors on the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial and Reflecting Pool. It was too good an opportunity to pass up, and so thousands of Yippies and Hippies gathered at the Washington Monument, smoking copious amounts of marijuana, and then marched on the stage, with Yippie! and Viet Cong/NLF/NVA flags flying. When cops blocked them in the aisles, they waded through the Reflecting Pool, some people stripping down for a skinny-dip. Tear gas grenades flew through the air, affecting protesters and “pro-Americans” both. The event degenerated into chaos as arrests were made, fistfights broke out and gas wafted through the night.

This ROTC midshipman was at "Honor America Day" with his college friend, Pat, and his family, including his grandmother. We were curious about the smoke-in going on at the monument. We and our dorm buddies had a few of our own smoke-ins since gravitating to each other freshman year at the University of South Carolina. We'd travelled to the Kent State protest in D.C. that spring. And for the Fourth, I'd hitched to D.C. with my ROTC pal Paul. We wore our uniforms, thinking that it was more likely for us short-haired, clean-cut fellows to get rides from Norfolk Naval Base to D.C. with "Honor America Day" people than it would be from hippies or yippies.

We were right. Paul got off in Alexandria to see his girlfriend and I went to the Maryland burbs, where Pat picked me up. Pat was the second son in a large Catholic family. His older brother was Mike, of course. Sister Maureen, Kathleen, etc. Pat's dad was a fed and his mom stayed home with the younger kids. Pat and Mike were both attended military schools and, in college, wanted nothing more to do with uniforms and saluting and Vietnam. Especially Vietnam.

So we all went off to "Honor America Day" and the fireworks, which I was told were "bitchin'." But the fireworks happened much earlier than expected when the D.C. cops let loose with a barrage of tear gas to stem the hippie tide. We had to flee, Pat and I hauling his grandma down monument hill to the parking lot. No word on whether Billy Graham got gassed along with a lot of grandmas and kids and midshipmen. Now, all these years later, it's intriguing to note than I attended one of the red-letter days in pot protest history. Now recreational pot is legal 10 miles away in Colorado. If I lit up in a public park in Cheyenne, I might get arrested. If I lit up in public in Colorado, I might get fined. But probably not tear-gassed. To avoid the trouble, I could just go down to the nearest marijuana market and purchase an infused brownie.

Happy Fourth, wherever you are.

Makes sense that Wyoming has two escalators and two U.S. senators

Nate Cohn at The New Republic doesn't think that Wyoming deserves two U.S. Senators.

And not just because Liz Cheney is running for one of them.

It's our low population numbers. It's been pointed out before, but Wyoming (pop. 576,000) has fewer people than many urban counties. Cohn trots out the numbers:

—There are at least 100 counties with more people than Wyoming. [I've lived in three of them: City and County of Denver and Arapahoe in Colorado and Montgomery County in Maryland.] 

—Rhode Island’s largest county has more people than Wyoming. 

—Fairfax County (VA) has twice as many people as Wyoming. There are more Romney voters in Fairfax County than voters in Wyoming, the second reddest state. 

—There are almost as many Romney voters in wildly Democratic Brooklyn as there are in Wyoming.   

—The student body of the University of Wyoming (13,992) would be the state’s seventh largest town.

And so on.

That's the real problem with Liz Cheney's decision -- now everybody in creation knows that there is such a place as Wyoming and that we have two U.S. senators, just like those big states. Mike Enzi is one of them (for now). Dr. John Barrasso is the other. Our little joke about Barrasso is that the most dangerous place in the world in that patch of real estate between Barrasso and a news camera. I saw him yesterday evening on our local Channel 5. He's in town to ride a horse in today's opening Cheyenne Frontier Days parade. WYO politicos have to know how to ride a horse. In D.C., they wear dark suits  and ride in limos as do others of their ilk. In WYO, they wear Wranglers and boots and a cowboy hat. Writes Nate Cohn:

Wyoming is a place with two escalators; it probably shouldn’t get two senators.

Again with the escalators. It's quaint, isn't it, to live in a state that has fewer escalators than your average station on the D.C. Metro? Have you ever taken a ride on the Dupont Circle escalators? Wyomingites have been known to quaver in fear when confronted with a ride from the sun-drenched city streets into the murky depths of the subway. Even our coal mines don't have murky depths. We don't have traffic either. Cohn notes that he's visited Wyoming and drove through our biggest city in two minutes. He must have been speeding; it takes me at least 5.27 minutes to drive I-80 through Cheyenne, starting at the Wal-Mart Distribution Center and exiting at Campstool Road, site of the Lowe's Distribution Center. We love our distribution centers.   

Just goes to show that people in other places are fascinated and repelled by Wyoming. We should use our entrepreneurial skills to showcase some of the odd things about the state, things that would interest our urban cousins. The "Wacky Wyoming Tour" would showcase our two escalators in Casper along with the place near Jackson in which gravity causes objects to roll uphill. We could show tourists the Casper elementary school classroom where Liz Cheney had her first Neo-Con revelation.

Other suggestions for stops on the Wacky Wyoming Tour?

For everything (even 9/11) there is a season

As always, the arts were front and center during this morning’s televised tenth anniversary of trying to make sense of 9/11.

Performances by choirs and singer/songwriters and classical musicians punctuated the reading of the names at the Twin Towers memorial. Each of the politicians who spoke referenced a poem or a Biblical verse, which is another type of poetry. You might even say that the reading of the names is a very long epic poem. The readers themselves ended their recitations by remembering their loved one who died on 9/11. A short personal haiku amidst the epic poem.

Former NYC Mayor Rudy Guiliani read the verse from Ecclesiastes that was put to song (“Turn, Turn, Turn”) by anti-war and environmental activist Pete Seeger in 1959 and made famous among non-Bible readers in 1965 by rock-era legends The Byrds.

Ecclesiates 3 1-8

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

This only seems to emphasize the fact that, while poems and music and Biblical verses bring some comfort and understanding to tragedy, they don't seem to make grief any easier to bear. Sometimes they bring up issues that still desperately need to be faced.

After Giuliani’s speech, Paul Simon sang "The Sound of Silence" accompanied only by his guitar. Simon began composing the song after the Kennedy assassination. It became one of the standards of Simon & Garfunkel performances and nearly every young person alive in the sixties knew the words. This morning, Simon’s words and guitar chords echoed eerily off of the big buildings still under construction. His words argue that “silence like a cancer grows” and many prophetic warnings are gobbled up by the sounds of silence. Sounds a little bit like what we’ve seen the past 10 years in the U.S. The silence, however, is really the sounds of millions of screaming voices blaring out of the Tower of Babel worlds of the Internet and Cable TV.

The famous hymn “Amazing Grace” was performed by flautist Emi Ferguson. “Amazing Grace” was co-written by repentant slave ship sailor John Newton and renowned British poet William Cowper. It’s now performed often on bagpipes, notably at the funerals of fire fighters and soldiers. I heard many pipe band renditions of this standard over the weekend at the Scottish Irish Highland Festival in Estes Park.

It’s no namby-pamby verse. The author is crying out in anguish, thanking God’s “amazing grace” for saving “a wretch like me.” This takes humility. This takes courage. Something that we saw plenty of in those who gave their lives for others on 9/11/01.

Netroots Nation 2011: Waiting for Russ

Wisconsin's Russ Feingold

As we waited for Howard Dean and Russ Feingold, Pamela and I talked about Catholicism.

She grew up Catholic in Pittsburgh. She now lives and works in Arlington, Va.

I grew up Catholic in suburban Denver and rural Washington state and Wichita, Kan., and Daytona Beach, Fla. I now live and work in Cheyenne, Wyo.

Different backgrounds. Same era. And we share a common dilemma about Catholicism: do we stay or do we go?

She stayed. I went -- sort of. I called myself a Cultural Catholic, a term I've heard bandied about lately. She refers to herself as an Aesthetic and Cultural Catholic. She likes the ritual and tempo of the mass, the youthful memories of her incense-filled churches in the Irish and Slovak neighborhoods of Pittsburgh. She also stays actively Catholic because, when she travels, she can feel at home in churches around the globe.

All great reasons. I said that I don't go to any of the three Catholic churches in Cheyenne because they are too conservative. I grew tired of haranguing from the pulpit about abortion and Liberals, both equally evil in the eyes of narrow-minded 21st-century priests and deacons.

Pamela avoids going to mass in Arlington's Catholic churches for the same reason. She likes the D.C. churches, only a Metro ride away. I miss that about D.C.

She and I both wondered what happened to Democratic parishes and priests. She grew up surrounded by working people who were Democrats. The priests all seemed to be Democrats and only the bishops were mildly Republican so as to curry favor with politicians (churches pay no taxes and like it that way) and the well-to-do Catholic businessmen who might be Repubs.

I never knew whether my priests and fellow parishioners were D or R. And I liked it that way.

Another great thing about growing up Irish Catholic -- lively conversations with people who have red hair and Irish last names.

Pamela isn't a blogger. She volunteers and contributes to campaigns and causes. She heard about the conference and thought it sounded interesting. But she works for the government and doesn't think it's prudent to blast her opinions into the blogosphere. I've heard others say the same thing. Perfectly understandable, especially in this crazy era.

The lights went up on stage. Howard and Russ were on their way.

D.C. gathering asks "Arts or Sciences?"

At an April 8 gathering in D.C., "Arts or Sciences?" was the topic. We need both, of course

Peter Cunningham, Assistant Secretary for Communications and Outreach at the U.S. Department of Education, had a few things to say:

Some people would also have you believe that we have to choose between the arts and other subjects—but that’s a false choice. We need them both...

--snip--

We care about poetry and we care about the stars and—believe it or not—there’s a literary magazine devoted to poetry about stars. It’s called Astropoetica, and you can find it on the internet.

We live in a great country. Let's keep it that way.

Couldn't agree more, Mr. Cunningham. And we can't have a great country without science and poetry and the arts and research. These are all areas that House Republicans are targeting in their budget cuts. Medicare and Medicaid, too. And so many other things that are crucial to life in the 21st century.

Read more at Arts or Sciences?

Photo (from NEA blog): Nébuleuse Nord America, Luc Viatour © GFDL, www.lucnix.be

Who is Bradley Manning?

Nancy Sindelar of Laramie's Veterans for Peace was at the action in D.C. and Quantico this weekend and asked me to post some of her photos of protests against the treatment of military whistle-blower Bradley Manning:

Bradley Manning protest photos

Who is Bradley Manning?

Go to http://www.bradleymanning.org. I was reading some of the posts from yesterday's protests. Here's a sample:

Things have taken a nasty turn at Quantico. As protesters silently moved to march to the Iwo Jima Memorial to lay a wreath to remember the dead, Marine MPs refused to allow all but press and six veterans to proceed on to the Memorial. Prince William County police on the site joined the Marines in attempting to delay the protesters from proceeding, according to live tweeting by Jane Hamsher. In response, protesters laid and sat down on the ground, refusing to move. Police then began arresting protesters one by one and are loading them on to two nearby police buses for booking. Daniel Ellsberg is among those being arrested.

One of the protesters there, Helen Gerhardt, tweets that protesters are being peaceful in response to police pulling them up by both arms and putting them behind the line.

Rootwork updates that some protesters have stuck “Free Bradley Manning” stickers on police riot shields.

Read more: http://www.bradleymanning.org/16510/march-20th-events-update/#ixzz1HEpeOuo9