The story of the dead sculptor's homecoming in Sand City, Kansas

Great article in the Nov. 12 edition of Flatwater Free Press: How a 101-year-old linked to Willa Cather altered a small town's future. Talks about Antonette "Toni" Willa Skupa Turner, a resident of Bladen, Nebraska, just down the road from Red Cloud. Toni Turner died at 101 in August. She was the granddaughter of Anna Pavelka, the real-life inspiration for Willa Cather's "My Antonia." Turner spent her life talking up Pavelka and Cather, a dynamo who helped turn Red Cloud into one of the most vibrant locations dedicated to any American author. More than 10,000 Cather fans journey to Red Cloud annually. Turner was the local literary celebrity everyone from Cather scholars to rabid readers wanted to meet. Cather based so many of her books and stories on Red Cloud and its people. Cavelka, a Czech immigrant, and Cather, intelligent girl of the town doctor, were from different worlds but forged a friendship that gave birth to a famous novel. 

My interest in Cather goes back to high school when I read "The Sculptor's Funeral" for American literature class. It was on of the classics in the typical 1960s lit anthology with all of the usual suspects: Hawthorne, Twain, Dickinson, Hemingway, Faulkner. Nary a writer of color in the batch. But Cather's story spoke to me. I couldn't pin a name to it. A famous sculptor's body is transported back to his Kansas small town on Sand City. Turns out the sculptor was a weird kid who got the hell out as soon as he could. He died young from TB and his final arrival causes much talk among the populace, most of it negative. Jim Laird, Harvey Merrick's childhood friend who is drunk, hears their snarky comments and confronts them:

Harvey Merrick wouldn't have given one sunset over your marshes for all you've got put together, and you know it.

Laird leaves in a huff. The final paragraph wraps things up:

The thing in him that Harvey Merrick had loved must have gone underground with Harvey Merrick's coffin; for it never spoke again, and Jim got the cold he died of driving across the Colorado mountains to defend one of Phelps's sons, who had got into trouble out there by cutting government timber.

It's a sad story. Lots of sadness in Cather's work and moments of triumph. She draws distinctive characters and it's hard not to be moved. When I read the story at 16, I knew something significant had happened but didn't exactly know what. Artists are different -- everybody knows that! -- and Merrick's differences made him an oddball in Sand City. Jim was an educated guy, a good guy who died helping out one of the town's worthless sons.

Why are all of these stories so damn sad? Cather's sculptor, Hemingway's soldier home from the war or the old man and his fish,  Algren's young punk who just wants a bottle of milk for mother, Dorothy Parker's big blonde. I thought I knew what sadness was but did not. I do now. I write sad stories because life is sad. The story is in the telling of the sadness lightened up with wit.

Cather changed her identity when she went off to the University of Nebraska. She dressed in men's clothes and went by Willie. She excelled in writing and journalism and worked her way out of Nebraska. But she escaped the sculptor's fate. She is celebrated in the town that inspired so much of her work. Not everyone is a fan. Her struggles with sexual identity make some Nebraskans nervous, even some of those in Red Cloud who reap economic benefits from the writer's legacy. 

I've read the novels but I keep returning to her stories especially the one about the dead sculptor coming home to a hometown that never knew him.  

Meadowlarks, cabbage burgers, and Pine Bluffs experiences a nuke boom (the good kind)

So this is Nebraska

So this is Nebraska. A Sunday

afternoon; July. Driving along

with your hand out squeezing the air,

a meadowlark waiting on every post.

Third stanza of a poem by Ted Kooser of Nebraska, one-time U.S. Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress. To hear him read the poem, prefaced with a short description of why he wrote it, go to  Poetry Foundation. To read in full, go to So this is Nebraska

I heard Kooser read this poem aloud along with other work at a Wyoming Writers, Inc., conference a few years ago. He's a short and unassuming man. You can't say the same adjectives for his poetry. His work tells stories of life in the Great Plains, Nebraska mainly. The poems are simple in construction but you can find worlds in "a meadowlark waiting on every post."

I traveled from Cheyenne to Nebraska last week, my first visit since before Covid-19 struck. It was a short visit. Family visitors who had never been to Nebraska wanted to see it, step foot in a foreign place. I told them Nebraska stories, how Chris and I got trapped in Kimball during a spring blizzard when lightning veined the sky and I skidded through mushy snow a foot deep on I-80 before snagging the last hotel room barely 60 miles from home. I gathered my family one spring break day and met friends from Lincoln in Red Cloud, Nebraska, home of Willa Cather. An odd choice for spring break if you're not an admirer of Cather and her work. But our friends got into the spirit of the day. The kids played in the playground while we toured Cather's old home undergoing restoration (I snagged a 100-year-old board) and poked around the library which checks out books, videos, and cake pans. Chris and I walked the quiet autumn streets of Lincoln, campus lights twinkling in the distance. I remarked that it took a victory by the visiting CU Buffaloes over the Mighty Cornhuskers to bring the silence of a graveyard to the capital city. 

We drove through Pine Bluffs and past the border into Nebraska. "Looks a lot like Wyoming," Eileen said.

We pull off at Bushnell. I glide to a stop on the paved road which probably morphs into a gravel road. Next to the sign for Bushnell (No Services!), with farm equipment clattering down the road, prairie grass waving in the hot wind, I read them Kooser's poem. Looking back, I should have dialed up the poet reading his work. His voice matches the scenery.

I hear traffic zipping down the interstate. Thousands pass this way every day bound for somewhere else. Those who do get off at this interchange take bio breaks and tend to a crying child. No need to seek succor in Bushnell (No Services). Winter winds or weather might cause high-profile vehicles to pull over. But a truck stop is just seven miles away across the border so why stop here? I can easily conjure a winter day near Bushnell because I have experienced them near Torrington and Muddy Gap and Sinclair and Meeteetse. 

But today it is summer and it's beautiful.

We get back in the car and stop for lunch at Sadie's. A big weekend ahead for the town with Texas Trail Days. A parade, rodeo, concerts and a mud volleyball tourney. I order a cabbage burger because I never see that on any restaurant menus. Only time I've eaten one was at Germans-from-Russia events that feature the Dutch Hop Polka. 

We tour the Texas Trail Museum and find out that we just missed the brief stop of UP's rebuilt Big Boy steam locomotive as it began its cross-country travels. We tour the gigantic Virgin Mary statue at the east end of town, and then the archaeological dig site on the way back to Cheyenne.

A school teacher tending the info booth at the rest area tells us that there isn't a single apartment or house to rent or buy in Pine Bluffs. The town expects an influx of workers set to begin the first phase of the renovation of the area's nuke missile sites. This is part of a multi-year $3 billion project to bring our "nuclear deterrent" up to 21st century requirements. Nobody ever talks about the "peace dividend" anymore. That's so late-20th century. Not sure what the nukes can do to help the Afghans about to regress into the 5th century. The Taliban, it seems, are not impressed with our nuclear might lurking in burrows on the prairie.

Behind a shelterbelt of cedars, 

top-deep in hollyhocks, pollen and bees,

a pickup kicks its fender off

and settles back to read the clouds.

Savage Vedauwoo chipmunks, and other travel stories

Don’t get around much anymore. Not since March 2020 anyway. Guests arrive August 2021 and it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee and the buffalo chips.

My sisters Mary and Eileen and brother-in-law Brian ventured from Florida to Wyoming to visit their brother (me, he, him) and family (she, she) and take a look around the High Plains.

Wyoming and Florida are different places. For one thing, we are a big square state and Florida is shaped liked a human appendage. Wyoming high and dry; Florida low and wet. Blizzards generally don’t hit Florida. Hurricanes usually skip Wyoming.

Both places have lots to see and you have to get out and see them. In Wyoming, you get in the car, check the gas gauge, and drive to the mountains. In Florida, you get in the car, check your insurance, and drive to Orlando. If you survive that, you drive to the beach. I grew up in Daytona Beach in the 1960s and ‘70s. You could drive to the beach and on the beach. NASCAR races were once held on the beach’s hand-packed sand. Unique place. Beach-driving hours are now limited.

I drove my 2021 visitors first to Vedauwoo. We picnicked under pines and watched climbers negotiate the 1.4-billion-year-old chunks of granite. I remembered my young son and daughter clambering up the rocks and Chris and me down below, worrying but also impressed. Vedauwoo is usually one of the faves cited by visiting friends and family. What’s not to like? Gorgeous scenery, cool winds scented by pines, sunny skies. Add some snow to the Laramie Range and you get all this plus cross-country skiing or snowshoeing.

Chris and Annie hiked south. Eileen, Mary, and Brian decided to hike Turtle Rock Trail. I told them it was a fairly easy 3-mile trail. I forgot to mention that we were at 8,200 feet. This is approximately 8,150 feet higher that their homes in Florida. I also forgot to mention to drink plenty of water. I know, what kind of host am I? Altitude and hydration are always the first things you mention when travelers arrive from The World. I remember my first camping trip in Colorado after living at sea level for 14 years. Base camp for the Long’s Peak Trail in RMNP. Spent the first night with a raging headache. Nothing worked on it: Coors, Tylenol, wishful thinking. I just waited it out.

Everyone but me went hiking. I am partially disabled and use a walker so hiking is no longer my thing. I sat at the picnic table. Munched grapes, and read a book. At one point, chipmunks got brave enough to visit the table. Earlier, my patient daughter Annie fed a grape to a chipmunk. Apparently, they thought I also was a purveyor of grapes. At least one did. He skittered across my book several times. The next trip, he stopped, sniffed my thumb, and bit me. I yelped and he scampered into the underbrush. No blood, the bite not hard enough to break the skin. I moved away from chipmunk habitat and found a shady, secluded spot to continue reading.

The hikers all made it back. The Florida people were a bit winded and thirsty.

“That was a long three miles,” Brian said.

“Mountain miles are longer than sea-level miles.” I explained that mountain trails take twists and turns, they go up and they go down. Three miles can seem like six or even sixteen.

“So mountain miles seem longer than sea-level miles,” Brian surmised.

“I don’t get your point,” I said. “A chipmunk bit me.”  

Florida and Wyoming may never understand each other. Sign of the times.

On the next post, we journey east to Nebraska, where it was 98 freaking degrees, and west to the Snowies where it snowed.

Reading Kooser during a short trip to Nebraska

My two sisters and brother-in-law from Florida had never been to Nebraska. To remedy this, I drove I-80 into Neb ("It looks a lot like Wyoming") and pulled off at the first exit. Next to the sign for Bushnell (No Services!), with farm equipment clattering down the road, prairie grass waving in the hot wind, I read them Ted Kooser. Seemed like the right thing to do. We then drove back to WYO and ate cabbage burgers at Sadie's Cafe in Pine Bluffs. A fine day.

Read Kooser's "So This is Nebraska"

Summer of the Purple Pod Pole Beans and White Dwarf Cucumbers

Gardening vs. Farming.

Hobby vs. Growing Crops to Feed the Family and the Nation

I'm a hobbyist gardener. I am not growing a garden because my life depends on it. I am gardening because I enjoy growing things. I've been a gardener for many years in varied climate zones, from Wyoming to Florida. Unless you have a greenhouse or a Botanic Gardens Conservatory and Propagation Center, it's impossible to grow a Wyoming winter garden. Florida even names towns Winter Garden. When I lived in Central Florida, I had orange trees in my backyard and a garden in the ground, mostly growing root crops. The oranges were bitter because they were not grafted for sweetness. We used them to play fetch with our two big dogs. Root crops like potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots and beets went with our winter meals. I grew a few tomato plants and it was a constant battle with the bugs and rot and rust. Plenty of moisture, though, a factor when you're gardening at 6,220 feet. Cheyenne gets some rain but it's fickle. I see black clouds gather in the west, thunder shakes the rafters, the storm produces three drops of rain, and moves on the Nebraska. You're welcome, Huskers! Or black clouds gather in the west, thunder shakes the rafters, and ice balls rocket from the sky, shredding plant leaves and wrecking roof shingles and cars. 

It's the latter that made me put together a container garden for the summer of 2020. That, and lack of a gardener's mobility. The past few summers, I've gotten my gardening fix from propagating plants at the Botanic Gardens. And then coronavirus swept the world and forced the city to close the Gardens and send home all of its high-risk volunteers 65 and over. It didn't help that I'm a heart patient which makes the virus double deadly for me. 

I ordered seeds from the Laramie County Public Library Seed Bank. They were delivered by the United States Postal Service, one of the public services necessary for a functioning democracy (much like the library and the fire department). I planted them in pots in mid-May and was on my way. I planted in all of the containers I have accumulated over the years, some used by my Aunt Patricia who gardened in the challenging clime of Estes Park, elevation 7,523 feet. 

There were a few scary moments in May when night temps dipped below 40. Common wisdom here is that you wait until Memorial Day weekend to plant your seedlings. I had mine in pots so I could keep the young plants inside at night although I left out the seeded pots. The ground should be warm for germinating and mine remained warm enough to launch plants when the time came. 

You also have to account for strong cold winds. One year I put out seedlings on Memorial Day and the following week came a wind cold enough to freeze tomato leaves. So I had to start again. Hail is terrible, too. One summer I came home from work just in time to fetch my pots to the porch before the hailstorm came. I tried to put a tarp over the ground plants but got pelted by a few big stones and retreated. Golf ball size, mainly, with some bigger ones. The ground was covered when the storm moved east. My poor plants. I thought about farmers out on the open prairie who lost entire crops of soybeans and corn and probably their home gardens too. My loss was insignificant although it stung at the time.

Why bother? It's gratifying to grow things. This year, it helps keep away the Covid-19 blues. The food is great, especially the Gold Nugget cherry tomatoes I grew from seed. I've already picked enough for a half-dozen salads and pasta dishes with more to come. "Early and prolific," read the library seed packet. I grew Purple Pod pole beans in three containers. One is in a big pot with two Dwarf White cucumber plants and a flower mix that Chris got from the YMCA. The beans are an eerie purple and green and grow to absurd lengths if you're not vigilant. I took apart one of the pods to make sure no mutant life forms existed inside. I've eaten the beans in salads and stir fry and I swear that, late at night, garbled voices come from my innards.

I have pots with herbs and flowers, too. Can't barbecue without rosemary and basil and oregano. The lime and Thai basil plants that I bought at Lowe's have been prolific. The two rosemary plants not so much. I think I may have used the wrong potting soil or it's just not a great year for rosemary which comes from the Latin ros marinus which means "dew of the sea.". A few summers ago when I had only a herb garden, I plucked rosemary branches every third night and put them on the grill just for the scent. The next time I grilled, the 6-inch rosemary plant looked untouched. 

During Covid, newscasts have talked about the return of the Victory Garden. Mine could be one but I am not winning any wars over hunger. Lots of people are new to gardening. 

We've also been seeing a renaissance of farmer's markets. I haven't been this year due to the virus. I love our Saturday farmer's market. I go for the smells of roasting hatch chilis late in the summer and the Colorado peaches early in the season. I buy homegrown veggies from small farms in Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska. I buy homemade olive oil and salsa, honey and peanut butter. 

In Wyoming, we have the Food Freedom Act where people can sell to us right from their homes with no government intervention. Meat producers have to use a licensed kill facility but can package and sell from the back of their pickup. I've had grilled grass-fed steaks and they're yummy with Colorado corn and mutant purple beans from my garden. 

Did you say something?. 

Poe Ballantine puts Chadron on the map, and some are not too happy about it

I don't often attend a literary event that has its own security detail.

Face it -- it's not often that writers get death threats. There was that Iranian fatwa against Salman Rushdie, a threat that forced him into hiding for a decade. It had expired by the time I heard him talk in Laramie a few years ago.

A well-armed deputy sheriff was on hand at the Literary Connection on Saturday at LCCC in Cheyenne. I asked him if there had been a threat. He replied that the college was only interested in being prepared for all eventualities.

At the podium were author Poe Ballantine of Chadron, Nebraska, and filmmaker Dave Jannetta of Philadelphia. They spoke in turn about a the mysterious case of a Chadron State College professor, a neighbor to Ballantine. His body was found out on the prairie. It was bound and horribly burned. Local law enforcement ruled it a suicide. Ballantine originally agreed. After investigating the case, he eventually decided that it was a murder. He wrote a book about his six-year saga of discovery, and Janetta is working on a documentary about it.

The book is "Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere." I began reading my signed copy yesterday evening and can't stop. Not only is Ballantine a fine writer. But wind-whipped Chadron and its residents are interesting characters on par with Savannah and the people portrayed in John Berendt's best-seller "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." Who knew Chadron (pop. 5,844 -- a bit smaller than Torrington, WY, a two-hour drive across the border) could be so damn interesting?

Leave it to a writer.

And then there's the murder. In 2006, CSC math professor Steven Haataja disappeared. More than three months later, the man was found burned to death and tied to a tree in the hills behind the campus. Police were stumped. They finally ruled it a suicide. Ballantine, a novelist and essayist, was not particularly interested in writing a true crime book. But, during his short time in Chadron, he got to know most of the people involved -- so he jumped right in.

The first part of "Love and Terror" is devoted to Ballantine's itinerant life. The writer had spent his adulthood knocking about the country, working odd jobs and trying to establish a writing career. He'd been pretty good at the first two. The third? Not so much.

Until recently. With five books to his credit with the upstart Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts in Portland, Ballantine's career is on the move. Although he and his family are staying put in Chadron, despite the death threats.

Haataja's family wants the dead to stay buried (see Ballantine's posts on the Hawthorne Books blog and read the comments). The police want the case off of their to-do list. The town fathers and mothers don't think that murders are the proper promotional schemes for tourism (although they may be wrong about that). Its motto invites to come to town and "Learn The History. Explore The Bounty. Firsthand." And the college? It may have a harder time drawing math professors to campus.

I'm not sure why I'm blogging instead of reading Ballantine's fine book. So I'm going to remedy that right now.

One more thing: Jannetta played us two clips from the film on Saturday. He's raised $33,000 on Kickstarter to do post-production work. He hopes to get it into some film festivals. Let's hope there's a screening in Chadron. The town's kooky population deserves to see itself up on the big screen. Find out more at "Love and Terror the Movie."

Essayist Poe Ballantine explores "the imperatives of virgins in volcanoes and the ghosts who watch over us"

Laramie County Community College writing professor Leif Swanson invites us to a presentation by Nebraska writer Poe Ballantine on Monday, April 9, 7-9 p.m., at Recover Wyoming, 512 E. Lincolnway, Cheyenne. It's free and open to the public with refreshments provided. Poe will be at LCCC"s Conferences and Institutes Building on Tuesday, April 10, for a writing workshop at 2 p.m. and a reading at 7 p.m. These events also are free and open to the public.

Here's some background info:

Share in the insights of Poe Ballantine, his writing life and the experiences he draws from decades of tramping about the country, taking odd jobs, living on $400 a month and failing spectacularly. Poe has been called “The Voice of the People” and “The King of the Personal Essay.” You are invited to view into his writing life, how he got here, how he sustains, the imperative of virgins in volcanoes and the ghosts who watch over us, matters of process, magic, mechanics, flambéing with banana liqueur and whatever else you want to know.

Julene Bair in New York Times: Biggest threat to Ogallala Aquifer is corn farming, not XL pipeline

Julene Bair

Essayist Julene Bair moved away from southeast Wyoming a few years back. We still miss you, Julene!

Her words resonate, no matter where she plants herself. She grew up a farmer’s daughter in Kansas. She’s spent most of her writing life exploring that legacy, most notably in “One Degree West: Confessions of a Plainsdaughter,” which won the Willa Award from Women Writing the West. She’s won creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wyoming Arts Council.

Julene, now living in Longmont, Colo., penned an essay for yesterday’s New York Times. The topic is a timely one – the Keystone XL pipeline. Opponents contended that any leak from the pipeline would permanently contaminate the land and water in the sensitive Nebraska Sand Hills. The Ogallala Aquifer rests beneath the sand hills and 174,000 square miles of crop and range land from South Dakota to Texas. Problem is, chemicals used for corn growing have already polluted the aquifer. In the essay, “Running Dry on the Great Plains,” Julene makes a plea for a saner dry-land farming policy:

Why haven’t viable environmental groups formed to protect the Ogallala? Because corn contributes so much to the economy that its reign is seldom questioned. Federal subsidy payments to corn growers and the federal mandate to produce ethanol underwrite the waste and pollution.

These subsidies should end. When the farm bill comes up for reauthorization next year, Congress should instead pay farmers to reduce their dependence on irrigation and chemicals. The eastern Nebraska climate is moist enough to grow corn without irrigation. That is how the University of Nebraska football team came to be the Cornhuskers. And the more arid High Plains to the west are known as the nation’s breadbasket because wheat, a drought-tolerant crop, thrives there.

Read the rest at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/opinion/polluting-the-ogallala-aquifer.html

Julene’s bog: www.julenebair.com or find her work on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Julene-Bair-Author-Essays-Memoirs/309113472445879

City boy says: Let food freedom ring!

Today, I'm thinking about food.

No surprise. Yesterday was our annual eating extravaganza. I enjoyed Thanksgiving -- always do -- although I didn't do much beside cook two pies and take them to our friends' house where the rest of the goodies resided.

I didn't ask any annoying foodie questions, such as "were these sweet potatoes raised within 100 miles of Cheyenne?" That's the problem with foodies -- always asking annoying questions while we're trying to eat.

I ate some root crops: sweet potatoes, potatoes and onions. I ate wheat: dinner rolls, gravy and stuffing. I ate nuts: pecan topping on the mashed sweet potatoes. I ate turkey, of course, and cranberries. Green beans from the usual casserole. I ate apples and pumpkin in the pies. Olives.

Most of this could have been grown or raised in the general vicinity. Wyoming is known more for cattle and sheep than for its turkey ranching. But you could do it on a small scale. If not, maybe it's time to switch our local Thanksgivings to beef or lamb or elk or goose. You can get those locally. Alas, turkey is traditional and usually comes from big turkey farms located far away.

According to an article by Keith Goetzman in Utne Reader, more than 50 percent of Thanksgiving turkeys come from the Willmar Poultry Farm in Willmar, Minn. The Humane Society recently screened a video filmed secretly at the plant. Not a pretty picture. If you have the stomach for it, you can see it at http://www.utne.com/Politics/Where-Turkeys-Come-From.aspx.

Goetzman also recounts how meat-eaters and vegetarians square off across the Turkey Day table. He ends his piece by making a case for squash lasagna as a holiday main course.

Sounds good. My 17-year-old daughter, the vegetarian, would like it. So would I. But, alas, my daughter also likes the traditions of the day which include the succulent odors of cooking turkey. Good smells make good memories. And let's face it -- vegetarians have plenty of choices on the traditional table. Turkey and gravy are the only items that they can't eat. Dressing isn't stuffed into the bird any more and, if you don't add giblets to it, it's O.K. for vegetarians.

I strive to eat locally produced foods. My garden provides some during the warm season. It probably could provide more, according to the University of Wyoming Extension Service. And not by expanding my acreage. I could get additional growing time by taking advantage of my yard's microclimates. I also could invest in a small high tunnel or a small greenhouse. These people know their biz. They even have a magazine called Barnyards & Backyards which features farm/ranch/garden tips and interesting articles. You can subscribe by going to http://www.barnyardsandbackyards.com/.

A couple more food-related items. For one, I think it's time to invest in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). We now have a half-dozen farms within 100 miles which offer CSAs. I've been putting off joining because I thought I could grow all of my own but that isn't possible. I was checking out the web page for Meadow Maid Foods in Yoder, which is in Goshen County. The Ridenour family grows natural veggies and raises grass-fed beef. I've bought veggies and beef at the farmer's market and all of it was great. Meadow Maid has also leaped on the agri-tourism bandwagon, with tours of the property and workshops. Some places, such as Grant Farms in Wellington, Colo., bring their CSA customers in to help plant and weed and harvest. Agri-tourism could join the ranks of ranches offering hands-on experiences in trail drives and branding. This trend could eventually be huge in rural Wyoming.

And then there's Wyoming Food Freedom. In its proposed legislation, terms such as agri-tourism and farmers' markets come up often. WFF proposes to do away with onerous state and federal regulations that prevents "informed consumers" buying directly from "trusted producers." I support this. In fact, I find it a place where libertarians and liberals can meet without yelling and screaming. WFF realizes that Big Ag products are making us sick. I want to buy more products from local farmers and ranchers. I want to spend less time at the grocery store. I'm not sure about this whole raw milk thing. That seems to be a big issue -- buying unpasteurized milk directly from small dairies. Some of the rhetoric around this issue harkens back to "poisoning of our precious bodily fluids" days. But there may be some truth in what the raw-milkers say.

Our family bought raw goat's milk from a local producer for years. It was great, but I don't drink much milk so, when our milk-consuming son moved away, we stopped getting it. But there are many who swear by the stuff. We also know that pathogens can breed in milk if it's not handled correctly.

Meanwhile, I'm going to support Rep. Sue Wallis and WFF. On its web site, WFF contends that freeing up food commerce can add a billion dollars worth of stimulation to the state's ag economy. It would really beef up rural areas hit hard in the past few decades. It also might regenerate family farms, which are disappearing fast.

At yesterday's dinner, a man my age -- a local pharmacist -- spoke about the small family farm he grew up in in Scotts Bluff County, Nebraska, which is just across the border from Goshen County, Wyoming. The family ran the farm until it grew too expensive. His parents both got jobs in town. They sold some of the land to the railroad. They leased out the rest. Pretty soon they weren't farming any more. He said that he loves the way he grew up but that it's almost impossible to do so now.

It should be possible. So says this city boy.

Torrington conference gives boost to locally-based ag economies

Sheridan's Sam Western writes for The Economist, WyoFile and an assortment of other publications on issues important to Wyoming and the high and dry West. His latest piece for WyoFile is about agriculture. Sam's not an aggie, and neither am I, but we both know that corporate large-scale ag has proven destructive to the High Plains. Not only on the landscape but on the human culture.

The "localvore" movement may have a partial solution. A recent ag summit was held in Torrington. The local Table Mountain Winery participated, as did Meadow Maid Farms out of Yoder which offers an increasingly popular CSA program.

But Sam's article tells it better in today's Wyofile story:

"Wyoming agriculture is beginning to plant new seeds, and poor counties, known for monoculture, lead the way," reports WyoFile correspondent Sam Western. Sam found himself very pleasantly surprised in late summer when a conference in Torrington featured delicious meals from local producers. He went on to examine what the local food movement, and what new ventures in agriculture might mean to the traditionally agricultural, and poor, counties in southeast Wyoming. As a small supplement to the economic changes that recent oil industry interest in the Niobrara formation may bring, that is.

The problem in modern agriculture, declared Torrington conference speaker Joel Salatin, "is creating holistic, complementary systems to create salaries for the next generation. The average age of the American farmer is 60 years old. Farmers hit retirement age and then give it to the kids. That’s too late. The time to pick up that youthful enthusiasm is when they are 16-18 years old. We need to build enough income into farms to hire ourselves and our children and next generation."

Some of these topics will be discussed at a state-sponsored conference on AgriFuture, starting tomorrow, Oct. 13, in Evanston. And meanwhile the legislature may be weighing in on issues regarding sales of home-made food from local products: a bill to exempt such sales from safety regulation got a committee endorsement in Buffalo earlier this month, despite serious objections from food safety experts.

Remembering a spring break trip to Willa Cather's Red Cloud, Nebraska

Intro: Eight years ago in March 2002, my wife Chris (shown above at left) and I bundled up our two kids and set out for a spring break trip to Nebraska. First stop: pick up our friends in Lincoln. Second stop: drive to Red Cloud for a literary sojourn. Spending an early spring day in a dusty prairie town may not be every family's idea of a good time. It's mine. Welcome to a Bookie's Spring Break. 

Chris wants a Cather board. 

She can choose from two big piles of generations-old boards ripped from Willa Cather's family home in Red Cloud, Nebraska. She picks gingerly through the pile on the winter-brown lawn, careful of the many jagged nails that once fastened the two-story front porch to the historic house which rises in front of us. The rest of us watch her progress. Two boys toss trashed boards into a big dumpster. A carpenter, who may be the father of the boys, saws two-by-eights for new porch decking. 

The house's current owner, a petite 40-something woman standing on the street next to her SUV, tells Chris that she could take all the boards if she wants them. 

"Should have brought my truck," I say, kidding around. Unlike many of my fellow Wyomingites, I do not own a truck. A Yuppie minivan is my conveyance of choice. Still, a good number of historic Cather boards could go into my van's cargo space. 

"I just want one," says Chris, surveying the pile as she might a stack of apples at the megamart. She is my wife of 20 years. While she grew up in a home devoid of books, she now is a voracious reader. Yet, she never has read any of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author's books. She only cares about Cather because I do. The same goes for our friends Kate and Stephen, who accompany us to Red Cloud on this spring break day in 2002 for a dose of literary tourism. A few blocks away, our kids play in the town playground, not really interested in strolling around this old burg looking at old houses. We keep in touch via walkie-talkies. 

"Everybody still alive over there?" I say into the tiny speaker. 

"No," replies my teen son Kevin, a writer but not (yet) a literary tourist.

"We won't hurry then," I say. I hear kids screaming in the background. They are either ecstatic with happiness. Or being torn to pieces by a wolf pack from one of Cather's pioneer stories. Maybe a herd of cattle stampedes through this town of a thousand souls. Or the kids have stepped into a nest of prairie rattlers, the kind Cather's grandmother used to kill with a silver-tipped cane. Or the kids might be spooked by the ghosts of Cather and Antonia or Neighbor Rozicky flitting around the town square. 

It is all about imagination. But if anybody is going to see a ghost today it's me. I have read My Antonia, many of Cather's stories, and seen the TV version of O Pioneers. My favorite story is The Sculptor's Funeral. It not only brings to life the chilled winter landscape of a town much like Red Cloud (but set across the border in Kansas). It also is a spooky reminder of the fate of the artist who grows up an oddball in a small town and will never be totally accepted for his/her quirky ways and intelligence. Paradoxically, this artist may deeply love the town and its people. 

This must have been Cather's fate. It's hard to know from the official literature of the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and Education Foundation. The pamphlet for the walking tour carries many references to the generosity of Cather and her family. The author donated two stained-glass windows and a walnut altar rail to the Grace Episcopal Church. Willa's father Charles and uncle-in-law helped build the town library, which opened in 1918, the same year as the end of WWI and the publication of My Antonia. Charles Cather's real estate office is the third stop on the tour. It is located on the west side of the town's main drag and across the street from the bank building that now houses the Cather archives and is owned by the Nebraska State Historical Society. We are in familiar "historic tour" mode here. 

But the brochure also refers to some quirkier traits of the young Cather. While her father "made farm loans, wrote abstracts, and sold insurance" from his downtown office, the young author "had her laboratory for dissecting cats and dogs." The office must have been a curious mix of loan paperwork and cat gut pickled in formaldehyde. During high school, Willa worked at Dr. Cook's City Pharmacy, north on Webster Street on the next block. She took her pay "in books, a magic lantern, and the rose wallpaper for her home at Third and Cedar." According to the pamphlet, she installed the wallpaper herself and it's still on the walls in her room in this house. She learned about French novels from her family's Jewish neighbors, the Weiners, who spoke both German and French. 

She loved the downtown opera house, now under renovation, which helped spark a lifetime interest in opera. According to the brochure, "one can still read the name of Willa's brother, Douglas, and others scrawled on the stage walls." 

What it doesn't talk about is the young Cather's first job delivering mail to county farms. That she was a tomboy who, like the "hired girl" Antonia, was proud of her muscles and liked to show them off. That she sliced open dead animals, hoping to learn how to be a veterinarian. That she showed up for freshman year at University of Nebraska dressed as her twin brother. That she probably was gay. 

As a writer with urban sensibilities, I try to be kind to small towns. I want to avoid stereotypes: rural people are slack-jawed yokels, born-again zealots, Timothy McVeighs waiting to explode. There are others who try to dredge up the bucolic nature of Middle American small towns: Such a quaint little town with the most gorgeous antique shops! I picked up a great little butter churn for a song! And they had the cutest little restaurant! 

Where I might give small-town residents the benefit of the doubt, Cather did not. Her novels and stories honestly show the vagaries of life in the small towns of the American prairie. The themes are universal: murder, rape, love, betrayal, and bigotry, to name some biggies. This is probably why her work still resonates 55 years after her death. Antonia is abused by a pillar of society. In death, the sculptor comes home to rest only to face the taunts of the townspeople. She’s pretty tough on city people too. Snooty artists get their comeuppance in Flavia and Her Artists. Opera snobs are skewered in The Song of the Lark. Wonder what she would have thought of us 21st century literary tourists? 

 The Tour

On this gorgeous spring day, we opt not to pay the five dollars that the Cather Society charges for the guided tour. This means we can’t actually get into most of the buildings in the Cather Historic District. We can't see the rose wallpaper in Willa's old bedroom. The churches and the archives are closed to us. We can't see the Willa Cather Animal Dissecting Room or go backstage at the opera house. We can pick up historic boards from the lawn of Cather's Retreat Bed & Breakfast. We can tour the courthouse, site of the World War I trial of German immigrants in One of Ours, the book that won the author the Pulitzer in 1923. 

We can also tour the library that the Cathers' endowed. We're lucky that it is afternoon, since the Auld Public Library on Webster Street is only open from 2-5 p.m. It is a neat old brick building and appropriately small for a small-town library. It loans books, videos, and cake pans. According to the librarian, the cake-pan idea came out of a need for a central place that provided residents with pans for special occasions. Star-shaped pans for Fourth of July cakes; heart-shaped ones for Valentine's day; huge pans for big events; and tiny ones for modest events. The library gets the occasional donated pan. Sometimes they get a bumper crop of pans with the passing of one of the town's leading bakers, an old woman who still took seriously the eating traditions of her German or Bohemian or Scandinavian roots. 

This is Catherland, after all, whose rich ethnic heritage was celebrated in the author's many books. In turn, Nebraska celebrates her with what may be the largest historic district dedicated to an American writer. There are 17 stops on the Red Cloud historic tour. The 10-mile-long Willa Cather Roadway leads you into town. Overall, the Willa Cather Thematic District includes 190 sites in Webster County, including a 610-acre tract of native grassland owned by the Nature Conservancy and dedicated to Cather's memory. 

All this might seem boring to those whose vacations center on DisneyWorld and Six Flags Over Anytown USA. Readers of all stripes, though, would have to admit that its a darn fine thing to have a town dedicated to a writer. We don't have many of them. And when we do, there may be some controversy involved. 

As we walk around Red Cloud, our friend Kate brings up her old stomping grounds of Salinas, California. Now home to the massive National Steinbeck Center, some Salinas old-timers are still smarting over their treatment in Grapes of Wrath and Tortilla Flats. Some people in Salinas still hate his guts, Kate says, noting that they are a little less likely to dislike Steinbeck if they own a restaurant or motel or one of the many small businesses that benefit from the library and its events, especially some of the big events happening in 2002, the centennial of the author's birth. Over the hills in Monterey, some people still consider Steinbeck a nogoodnik and commie sympathizer, an anti-business and pro-union rabble-rouser who wrote the acerbic Cannery Row and the passionate East of Eden. That tradition sometimes lines their wallets. 

It's tough to say if Cather's presence has the same effect on Red Cloud. Steinbeck and Cather are contemporaries. Both wrote of their hometowns and both won major literary prizes: Cather the Pulitzer, Steinbeck the Nobel. Both sometimes are disparagingly called regional writers and their work is sometimes seen as too sentimental and not obtuse enough for the deconstructionists who hold sway on campus these days. Strangely, their staying power in academia is due to factors other than their writing. Cather had lesbian affairs but never wrote openly about homosexuality. She is read as often in Women's Studies or LGBTQ tracks as she is in English Departments. Oddly enough, while Steinbeck's lack of literary finesse gets short shrift in English departments, his leftist politics get him lots of attention in disciplines such as American Studies, Political Science, and Labor Studies departments at some urban eastern universities. 

This first week of April 2002, the Center for Great Plains Studies and the Cather Project at University of Nebraska in Lincoln is hosting "Great Passions and Great Aspirations: A Willa Cather Symposium on Literature and Opera." Conferees can sit in windowless rooms and hear about Cather and opera, Cather and WWI, and other subjects. They can attend a performance of The Bohemian Girl at the Kimball Recital Hall in the evening. Cather saw this popular 19th century opera in 1888 in the Red Cloud Opera House. The conference wraps up with a bus tour to Red Cloud and surroundings. This should put a little economic development into Red Cloud which, like most small towns on the Great Plains, is in dire need of it. Those that don't get it are likely to dry up and blow away. 

We do our best to help. I buy hard-to-find Cather audiobooks at the Cather gift shop downtown. I also buy postcards and some cool notecards. I want to send a card and a memento to my ailing father in Florida, who let me freely browse his library once I learned to read. On our way out of town, we drop by Sugar & Spice for ice cream cones plus a massive cheeseburger for my growing son. I would love to browse the used-book store on the main drag but it is closed because the owner winters in Arizona. 

We also have our Willa Cather Memorial Board. Or Chris does. She finds just the right one. It's a very old one-by-four, rough on one side, gray paint peeling on the other. It has a lone nail jutting from one end. She and her board pose for several photos along our tour. We have fun with the board, calling it "The Willa" or just-plain "Plank," just as that kid does in the cartoon show Ed, Edd, and Eddie. 

I ask Chris what she will do with the board when we get home to Cheyenne. 

She shrugs. "I just wanted it," she says with a smile. 

She has her memento. I have mine. As we leave Red Cloud in mid-afternoon, I turn on The Troll Garden and fast forward to The Sculptor's Funeral. I can’t hear very well, because the girls are a bit raucous in the back seat. But at least I catch the opening as we head back north to the interstate:

"A group of the townspeople stood on the station siding of a little Kansas town, awaiting the coming of the night train, which was already twenty minutes overdue."

This is why I have come: the author's words, the magic they make when they are knitted together with precision and anger and compassion.

Health reform bill boosts Medicare payments in frontier states

An article by Robert Pear in Sunday's New York Times explored items "buried" in the new health care bill. One of those hidden items may bring significant money to Wyoming and adjacent states:

Another item in the package would increase Medicare payments to hospitals and doctors in any state where at least 50 percent of the counties are “frontier counties,” defined as those having a population density less than six people per square mile.

And which are the lucky states? The bill gives no clue. But the Congressional Budget Office has determined that Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming meet the criteria.

In the 2000 census, Alaska boasted 1.1 person per square mile while Wyoming was the second-most frontier of frontier states, with 5.1 people per square mile. During the Bush-era energy boom, more people moved into the state than out, making Wyoming the 49th state in population density, with 5.4 per square mile. Alaska now has 1.2.

Since more than 50 percent of our counties have less than 6 ppsm, we qualify. While Utah has a whopping 32.2 ppsm (2007 census estimates), most of its southern and eastern counties are very rural, bringing down the big numbers for Salt Lake City. Same goes for the rest of those big Northern Rockies and High Plains states. The big numbers in Missoula and Billings and Bozeman are leavened by counties in Eastern Montana, where antelope and tumbleweeds are more prevalent that people.

In Wyoming, my county of Laramie has 30 people per square mile, which dwarfs the 1 ppsm in Niobrara County and 2 ppsm in Hot Springs and Weston counties. Because humans are packed like sardines in Laramie County, we rub up against other humans in new and interesting ways, causing us to either bolster our humaneness or flee to less-populated counties. Because of this, Laramie County is registering more Democrats (and winning more legislative seats) while northern and western counties continue their one-party status.

Speaking of Republicans... our good senators and lone rep should be happy with this frontier state designation in the health care bill they all oppose.

Barrasso/Enzi/Lummis all have taken the Repub party line (NO!) on health care legislation. They have advocated for higher Medicare payments. Lummis, in fact, spoke to a gathering of health care professionals at the hospital in Casper during last summer's "yell and scream at town meetings" craze. Most of the docs were upset about low Medicare reimbursement rates. Lummis also was upset. Now she will be happy and congenial, right? And what about Dr. Barrasso? Will he too be happy and congenial and vote for the final bill? Not bloody likely.

Hummingbirdminds also wonders about Sen. Enzi. He was one of the vaunted Gang of Six who steered the Senate Finance Committee's health care bill. He was joined by Committee Chair Max Baucus of Montana and Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota. While the Dems are voting for the bill, Enzi is not. Does that mean he does not want doctors and hospitals in his frontier state to receive larger medicare reimbursements? You can ask him via e-mail at http://enzi.senate.gov/public/

Frontier State Gang of Six members are getting what they wanted. So is Sen. Nelson of Nebraska. From the NYT article:

Nebraska, with help from Mr. Nelson, won a particularly generous arrangement under which the federal government would indefinitely pay the full cost of covering certain low-income people added to the Medicaid rolls under the bill.

Republicans derided this provision as the “Cornhusker kickback.” And they said it was typical of the favors Democrats had given to Mr. Nelson and a handful of other senators.

“You’ve got to compliment Ben Nelson for playing ‘The Price is Right,’ ” said Senator Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina. “He negotiated a Medicaid agreement for Nebraska that puts the federal government on the hook forever. Not for six years, not for 10 years. This isn’t the Louisiana Purchase; this is the Nebraska windfall.”

I love how Repubs object to these sorts of specific earmarks buried in legislation. Defense bills are larded with funding for military bases and specific projects backed by Repubs. They even vote for the occasional Bridge to Nowhere.

Meanwhile, we can only marvel at the "Cornhusker Kickback." Sen. Nelson is a player. As a Democrat, he was in the game. While Sen. Enzi may have worked some frontier state items into the bill, our Repub senators are mainly left on the sidelines to stew and fume.

Perhaps some of that Nebraska Windfall will blow over the borders into Wyoming. But I forget that the prevailing winds blow from the West. From all those rural Republican Wyoming counties in the West.

Locavore and localart and even localit

I did my Christmas shopping in Chugwater.

Actually, Chugwater came to Cheyenne in the form of Sage Hill Fiber Arts and Baker Farms On-Farm Bakery. They were just two of the vendors at the Winter Farmers Market at the Historic Depot in downtown Cheyenne.

My first purchase was a loaf of homemade rye bread from Baker Farms. The farm grows winter red wheat up on the bluffs east of Chugwater, about 40 miles north of Cheyenne on I-25. Some of their crop is organic, which goes into their breads and pastries. I tried a sample of their Granola pie, which is a flat granola bar the siez of a monster cookie. Very tasty. Then I tasted their onion bread. Finally settled on a big round loaf of the rye.

The couple that owns Baker Farms (sorry -- didn't get their first names) said that the wheat crop got hammered with hail over the summer. But they did harvest some, and made some bread which I took home and had a few slices until my daughter and her friends came home and ate their way through the groceries like a locust swarm. They were gone almost as quickly as they had arrived.

The bread was good while it lasted. And I have a standing invitation to go up to Chugwater and take a ride on one of the two Baker Farms' combines which, the couple said, "are really old." Who can pass up a ride on an historic combine? They could tell I was a city boy. They don't have a web site yet, but you can e-mail them for more info at dwbaker@vcn.com.

I bought a Christmas present for a loved one who shall remain nameless at the Sage Hill Fiber Arts booth. Carol Eckhardt, shepherd and spinner and fiction writer (two of her books were for sale next to the fiber arts), and her daughter run the company. Carol weaves beautiful scarves and hats and shawls from the wool of her own sheep. Most of her items are natural colors instead of dyes, the whites and tans and browns and blacks courtesy of sheep like Ebony. Carol wove Ebony's wool into a multiple-patterned bed jacket. I knew that my wife Chris would love this particular item as she sat up and read in bed or watched "The Office" on a frigid night in which she reminded me that she required such an item to get her through the winter.

However, the item was a bit pricey for my budget. Although I could see it on a future shopping list.

Therein lies the difficulty with "buying locally." We are used to paying bargain basement prices at retailers. Often we are buying goods made far from home. China or the Dominican Republic, for instance. These goods are cheaply made and they travel long distances before they're stocked on the Wal-Mart shelves. Prices dictate longevity. Your scarf made by cut-rate labor in China may survive one winter. But probably not.

I don't have enough time or energy or knowledge to talk here about the politics of shopping. But when you buy locally, you support your neighbors. When you buy at Wal-Mart, you support Wal-Mart.

But it is difficult for most of us to afford $100 scarves and $75 baskets. Our money goes elsewhere: mortgage payments, utility bills, car payments, food for the little ones and, yes, shopping for necessities at big-box stores. Our society is now structured around low prices. Since all our other costs are going up, we have less to spend for sturdy, handmade items.

I spent several hours prowling the indoor market. Linda Behrens of Cheyenne makes beautiful baskets from willows. As we spoke, she was weaving Christmas ornaments. Her baskets are remarkable. She has to work with the willow when it's green so it's malleable. This is especially important because she leaves the bark on. E-mail Linda at anubisbehrens@yahoo.com.

I have to keep in mind that the artists and artisans in this building today spend many hours on each artifact. There were many craft fairs going on around Cheyenne on this December Saturday. The YMCA hosted one, as did Alta Vista and Miller Schools, among many others. It shows the importance of handmade arts and foods.

Meadow Maid Foods in Yoder, owned by Mike and Cindy Ridenhour, offers grass-fed beef, homemade jerky, vegetables and flowers, and vegetable CSA shares. Other farms in the vicinity that offer CSA shares are Wolf Moon Farms in Ft. Collins, Colo., and Grant Farms in Wellington, Colo. Sara Burlingame, one-time owner of Sara's Breads, now is the Cheyenne contact for Wolf Moon Farms CSA drop-offs. You can get more info about signing up for the 2010 growing season by e-mailing Karen at wolfmoonfarms@gmail.com.

WindHarvest Farms in located in Morrill, Nebraska, about 11 miles east of Torrington and about 90 miles from Cheyenne. Diane and Jeff Edwards run the farm. Jeff is also works in the agricultural extension office for Goshen County, Wyo. Not only does he advise Wyoming farmers and harvest his own organic veggies. He's also received a grant to run workshops on building high tunnels for year-round growing in high wide and lonesome Wyoming.

Jeff says that these workshops will take place over the next couple years. He'll build a high tunnel on someone's property, providing hands-on experience for those who sign up. That means getting your hands dirty putting up the 16-feet-by-32-feet structures. Some are already up and providing shelter to tomatoes and berries around southeastern Wyoming and western Nebraska. Jee says that interest in high tunnels is booming.

I could have spent my entire Christmas budget at the market. I gathered info and will save up for later. I did drop by the Rock, Paper Scissors Gallery down the street from the Depot. The gallery offers working space for local artists and exhibits work of artists from the region. Potter Paulette Rasmussen was minding the store. I persued the works on exhibit, and pledged to come back. I bought Chris a hippo etching by Abby Paytoe Gbayee at the gallery when it opened during the summer. More to come...

Two upcoming arts & justice events in Denver

These listings come from the "Open Letter," the weekly newsletter of Denver's Capitol Heights Presbyterian/10:30 Catholic Community and edited by Monte Clark. The 10:30 CC was my family's church when we lived in Denver. My son was baptized there. An incredible group of people (many of them community organizers) pray on both sides of the pew. The newsletter features two great arts-oriented events coming up in September:

“CATHOLIC LITERARY IMAGINATION: WHAT WOULD JESUS VIEW?” LECTURER AND AUTHOR – HOPKINS POETRY CONFERENCE on Thursday, September 17, 7 p.m. at St. John Francis Regis Chapel. Featuring Dr. Ron Hansen. Dr. Hansen was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and educated at Creighton University, the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop, and at Stanford University, where he held a Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship. He has received fellowships from the Michigan Society of Fellows, the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the Lyndhurst Foundation, and was presented with an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Professor Hansen has taught fiction and screenwriting at such institutions as Stanford, Michigan, Cornell, Iowa, Arizona, and is now the Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Santa Clara University in California. His novels include "Mariette In Ecstasy" and "The Assassination of Jesse James by that Coward Robert Ford."

PLEASE COME OUT AND SUPPORT THE ROMERO THEATER TROUPE as we work to return Labor Day to the people. We will perform Voices From the Worker's Struggle, a series of scenes from American Labor History, past and present, including several traditional labor folk songs. Our show begins on Labor Day, September 7, at 6 p.m. at the Lincoln Park Amphitheater, 11th and Osage, next to the swimming pool. Seating is limited, so it's first-come, first-served. This will be the final public presentation in Denver of what has been a two-year journey of bringing the history of the Workers' Struggle to the community through Organic Theater. This is a free show. The People's Labor Day begins at Lincoln Park at 2 p.m. with free food open to the community. The afternoon's events include poetry, music, and children's games. All are welcome. The United Food and Commercial Workers and Jobs With Justice are co-sponsoring this exciting event. For more information, check out the website at http://www.romerotroupe.org/

Firedoglake's Mike Stark confronts Birthers

This is too funny. Notice that Republican Mike Coffman from Colorado and Jeff Fortenberry from Nebraska are among the yahoos who won't give straight answers to Mike's simple question. Didn't see Rep. Cynthia Lummis from Wyoming amongst the pursued. Maybe next time. In her favor, she did vote for today's House Resolution that recognized the 50th anniversary of Hawaii's entry as a state in these United States, making the current president, who was born after statehood, a U.S. citizen. But reality-based people already knew that.

Nebraska and Wyoming share a trait: lack of children's mental health care services

The daily newspaper was invented for this.

On Feb. 1, the Omaha World-Herald published a long article, "Safe Haven kids finally got right help." The article, by staff writers Matthew Hansen and Karyn Spencer, was based on interviews and research into 10,000 pages of documents released to the paper by the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. It takes time and patience it took to read that many pages of bureaucratese. It takes skill to translate that into an article that is heart-breaking. Read it at http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=2798&u_sid=10552927, and then read Judith Warner's column in the New York Times that alerted me to the OWH piece. Go to http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/is-there-no-place-on-earth/?emc=eta1

I've written several posts about the weird happenings surrounding Nebraska's "Safe Haven" law. Parents, at their wit's end with kids (mostly teens) who had mental health and behavior problems, abandoned them to Nebraska's authorities. One mother drove her child to Nebraska all the way from Georgia.

Nebraska is Wyoming's neighbor to the east. Both states reflect the fact that there is a severe shortage of mental health care practitioners and facilities in the nation's rural areas. Here's a paragraph from Warner's column:

In 1990, the Council on Graduate Medical Education estimated that by 2000, the United States would need 30,000 child psychiatrists; there are now 7,000. Many rural areas have no child psychiatrists or psychologists at all. Often, pediatricians end up providing mental health care, but they aren’t trained for it and often aren’t reimbursed for it by health insurance. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry is currently working with the American Academy of Pediatrics to try to formalize ways to collaborate on caring for children with mental health needs, but models for such joint care are scarce. And doctors have no financial incentives to talk to one another on the phone.

Many rural areas have no child psychiatrists or psychologists at all. Wyoming, with its 97,000 square miles of mostly "rural," doesn't have a single child psychiatrist. Psychologists? Yes, in the state's cities of Cheyenne and Casper, maybe a few others. There are licensed therapists who can provide counseling and possibly point harried parents in the right direction. There are non-profits such as UPLIFT and its outreach specialists who can do the same thing. (Note: I'm an UPLIFT board member). But when you are a parent faced with a mentally ill child, you need lots of guidance and professional help. Your child will likely need medication -- you need an M.D. for that.

Why do I care about this? My daughter just spent 2008 in a residential treatment facility. My wife and I are involved in our communities and know our way around mental health care and twelve-step programs. We have health insurance, but knew it wouldn't come close to covering the costs.

When it comes to long-term care for your own child, we often felt the way this mother described it to the OWH reporters:

Theresa Thomason, an Omaha native who lives in Oklahoma, said she had been struggling to get her adopted foster child into a residential program for his psychiatric problems.

She called an elected official and said she was taking her son to Nebraska unless someone helped her. A barrage of phone calls, e-mails and faxes followed. Her son was admitted within days.

"Why on God's green earth does it take all that to get help?" she asked.

Good question, Theresa.

More about some of the possible answers in future posts.

Abandoned children a mental health issue

We’ve been hearing a lot about Nebraska’s safe haven law. Thirty-four children -- mostly teens -- have been abandoned in the state since mid-September, shortly after the new law went into effect.

Today, I read another piece about the situation in Karen Ball’s sobering Time Magazine story, "The Abandoned Children of Nebraska." There are some parts of the story worth repeating.

....dealing with the underlying causes of abandonment is much harder, child welfare experts say. "These parents had to be totally overwhelmed to do something like this," says Rev. Steven Boes, president of Boys Town — the original safe haven of Father Flanagan fame, which happens to be headquartered in Omaha. Once upon a time, Depression-battered parents would buy bus fare for their children and hand them a sign, "Take Me to Boys Town." Their counterparts today "are parents who have tried to navigate the system for years and this is their last resort; these are parents who ran out of patience too darn fast and gave up too early, and everything in between," says Father Boes.

Boes says one root of the abandonment problem is that there is simply not enough help for parents in crisis. In Nebraska, for instance, there are only six child psychiatrists in the entire state, he says. "It's a national problem... insurance often won't pay after six visits — so if the kid's not fixed, you're out of luck. States have a jumble of services. It's a puzzle with missing pieces."

Only six child psychiatrists in Nebraska? In a state with 445,000 residents under 18 (2006 census), that’s one child psychiatrist per 74,000 kids. That’s a lot of 50-minute appointments.

Wyoming, Nebraska’s squarish neighbor to the West, doesn’t fare much better. At last count, Wyoming had two child psychiatrists. That’s one psychiatrist per 60,770 kids. How many of these youngsters will need mental health care in the course of a year?

The National Alliance on Mental Illness web site cites that fewer than one-third of adults and one-half of children with diagnosable mental disorders get treatment in any given year (stats from HHS Mental Health: Report from the Surgeon General). Suicide is the third leading cause of death of those 10-24 years old (suicide ranks number one among that age group in Wyoming). 90 percent of those who commit suicide have a diagnosable mental disorder. More than 50 percent of kids with a mental disorder at 14 and older drop out of school.
Both of my kids have a diagnosable mental disorder. They used to see a child psychiatrist in Cheyenne, back when we had one. My son moved to Arizona. Not because AZ has more shrinks, but because he went off to college. My daughter has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and relies for assistance on our family physician and a psychiatrist who specializes in adult mental health and a great therapist.

Resources are available, but you have to seek them out. I'll address those in future posts. Meanwhile, those of us in the 177,000 square miles that comprise Wyo-Neb will have to resort to the Depression-era strategy quoted above. Take your child to the airport (very few buses anymore). Pin a sign to the tyke’s shirt that reads: "Take me to a child psychiatrist in Colorado or Kansas – anywhere but here!" Or, you can follow the example of some frantic parents, and abandon your troubled child at any Nebraska hospital.