Democratic Party head Bill Luckett leaving Wyoming

Bill Luckett worked his ass off the Democrats in Wyoming. We'll miss him. He's going to Oregon where his wife recently got a job. I don't know much about Oregon. The blue staters in the West (Portland, Eugene, Bend, Corvallis, etc.) outnumber the red-staters in the rural eastern part of the state. This may be a treat for Bill after being hammered for three years by Wyoming Repubs.

Portland also has one of the best bookstores in creation in Powell's City of Books. Deschutes Brewery's Black Butte Porter may be the best porter in creation, even though "Portlandia" pokes fun at it. And Ken Kesey was from Oregon. Never Give A Inch, Ken!

Good luck, Bill.

A few parting quotes (from WY Public Radio)

"Working for the Democratic Party working in one of the most heavily Republican states in the country, you're an underdog," he said. "But at the same time, there are reasonable people everywhere you look. And if everybody comes into this with the spirit of working together, you can get things done. You can get progressive things accomplished in this state. You've just got to be optimistic."

Luckett says one of the perks of his job is a guaranteed ticket to the Democratic National Convention, which is "pretty hard to come by." But, he adds, "Everything else is pretty hard work."

Go with God, Bill. But not with Gop.

And have a Black Butte pint on me, Bud.

Oregon tests "solar highways"

So Oregon, which has about half of the average annual sunlight as Wyoming, is turning one stretch of interstate into a "solar highway." You might wonder why Wyoming can't do something that Oregon can. For one thing, Wyoming produces most of its and the nation's energy the old-fashioned way, by burning coal. The coal and oil and gas lobbies would never stand for it. Second, Wyoming is running out of highway funds, so it is concentrating its road efforts more on patching the holes than on rebuilding infrastructure or trying new things. Third, Oregon's a blue state with progressive environmental policies and Wyoming isn't. Maybe Colorado, another sun-drenched Rocky Mountain state, will pick up on this idea.

From Grist:

Okay, we know YOU ride your bike everywhere. But the country’s 4 million miles of roads, and 50,000 miles of interstate highway, probably aren’t going anywhere any time soon. Isn’t there anything productive we can do with this giant car playground? Well, we can cover it with solar photovoltaic panels, so it’s at least providing some energy.

Oregon's already testing the idea, installing panel arrays along highway shoulders. Others want to embed the solar panels directly into the road surface, and have already received funding to test the idea. California wants to try it along parts of Route 101. 

 If you think about it, roads are a perfect place to put solar: They're already public land, they've already been cleared and graded, they're adjacent to infrastructure like towns and power lines, and they're super accessible for repair and upgrades. Also, they’re already sitting out in the sun all day. 

Impulsive 1840s pioneers longed "to see what the next elevation hides from view"

I’m reading Will Bagley’s first volume of a projected three-part series about the West’s overland trails. It's entitled “So Rugged and Mountainous: Blazing the Trails to Oregon and California, 1812-1848.” It's published by the excellent University of Oklahoma Press.

It sat on the new non-fiction shelf at the library. When I saw it, I said, “We need another book on the Western migration?” I opened the book as was glad to see that Bagley acknowledged his predecessors, noting that “some of America’s best writers have told this tale.” We know the names: John Unruh, Francis Parkman, Mark Twain, Washington Irving, A.B. Guthrie, Fawn Brodie, Vardis Fisher, Wallace Stegner, Alvin M. Josephy. And so on.

I’ve read a number of the fictional accounts of the trails, notably A.B. Guthrie’s “The Way West.” As is true for most Americans, I learned my “Way West” history from movies, such as the huge 1962 Cinerama epic, “How the West Was Won.” Many, many movies have been based on the subject, including my favorite, “Blazing Saddles.” And yes, I know this is a lampoon of classic western films and bears no resemblance to the West’s true story. Except for the farting-around-the-campfire scene. So very real.

I’ve read only snippets of non-fiction accounts. That’s now changing.

I was hooked from the first sentence of Will Bagley’s preface: “All peoples have a myth, and as Americans we love our legends but often loathe our history.” A good line to keep in mind during times of revisionist history-making. South Carolinians recently celebrated the sesquicentennial of the Civil War secession in Charleston with a formal ball. Slavery wasn’t mentioned. But all the white folks at the ball looked marvelous.

Conservatives love their mythic West. We saw this most recently in the Wyoming Legislature’s enshrining a new “Code of the West” based on mythic cowboy lore. We Liberals also have our myths. Beginning in the 1960s, we fell all over ourselves romanticizing “the noble savage” and turning it into an icon of popular culture. Native Americans are admirable in many ways. But they are humans, too, and share the same failings as their Anglo brothers and sisters.

Bagley’s dogged research led him to the conclusion that the true story is more exciting than any myth we might conjure. I agree. What makes regular people pull up stakes, pile their goods in a wagon and trek 1,500 1,800 miles from Independence, Mo., to Oregon's Willamette Valley? I’d often wondered. I’m not the first to speculate that it was wanderlust or even ADHD (see my short-short fiction piece, “How the West was Won”). But the definitive answer doesn’t seem to exist. Bagley scrolls through the reasons and makes a great case that it was many things. Some were looking for land and other new opportunities. Others were fleeing the wretched, malarial climate of the Mississippi River Valley. Others were just moving on.

He sums it up this way:

Men often went West to escape debt, the law or family responsibilities. Yet what sets apart the pioneers of the 1840s was that they were generally very ordinary people who undertook an extraordinary task. Many of them were impatient and curious. “Emigrants are generally too impatient, and over-drive their teams, and cattle,” William Ide noted. “They often neglect the concerns of the present, in consequence of great anticipations of the future – they long to see what the next elevation hides from their view.”

Impulsivity and hyperactivity and curiosity. Traits held by so many Westerners.

I can’t wait to get back to Bagley’s book. It’s a long journey, but I have just the right sort of doggedness to see it through.

The late William Stafford meditates (poetically) on peace in "Every War Has Two Losers"

This new documentary is about William Stafford, one of America's -- and the West's -- best poets. He was a conscientious objector during World War II and spent 1942-46 in a C.O. detention camp. The film has been screened at several film festivals and will be making the USA rounds through the fall. No screenings on the schedule for MT, WY, UT or CO, although there are ones for SD. You can order the DVD at http://www.everywar.com/ and it includes a doc on Stafford and his friend Robert Bly. I was reading on Facebook that Every War Has Two Losers will be shown at the Wine Country Film Festival in California's Napa Valley, along with a new documentary on poet Gary Snyder. I'm going to have to look for that one, too. Can't have too many films on this country's great poets

So many good stories so close to home

I entered the creative writing program at Colorado State University just a few weeks after Raymond Carver died Aug. 2, 1988, in Port Angeles, Wash.

As a late-blooming M.F.A. student, I knew very little about Carver. Other writers spoke of him in hushed tones. I wanted to be be able to utter similar hushed literary tones. So I read "Cathedral." Such a story! I read everything of Carver's I could get my hands on. "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please." "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" "So Much Water So Close to Home." I was fortunate that Gordon Lish had discovered Carver and guided him through the publication of several collections.

One day I came across a different version of "So Much Water So Close to Home." I brought this up in one of my classes. The only answer I got was that Carver rewrote his stories because, like many writers, he wasn't pleased with the published version. I could forgive that -- and moved on. Carver's powerful minimalist stories played a part in my switchover from budding novelist to short story writer.

Twenty-some years later, I read the March 13 The New Republic article Mr. Coffee And Mr. Fixit by Christopher Benley.

It raises a big problem concerning Carver. Lish shortened most of the stories, eliminating Carver's wordier story-telling style. Religious references were curtailed as were hints of a happy ending.

These edits may have illuminated Carver's themes of honor/dishonor and conflicted human relationships. But maybe not. At the heart of every Carver story is the mysterious element that makes me feel that I have been punched in the gut -- and punched hard. Hundreds of us writers influenced by Carver's straightforward style tried to recreate the story's feel. We failed. We didn't live Carver's life and our aesthetic and instincts were all wrong. Stories were technically sound but heartless. We had to find other ways to tell our stories.

Were students at writing programs all over the country betrayed by Gordon Lish and Raymond Carver? Were we pushed in the wrong direction by Carverite writing profs?

Possibly. It is a strong-willed young writer who knows his/her style and is willing to defend it in the face of withering workshop critiques.

According to TNR article, the Library of America's Carver collection features conflicting versions of "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love' (Carver's story was called "Beginners" and was a longer and much different story the the Lish-edited version). I look forward to reading them and again trying to discover what made him tick. I'm interested in seeing if they have the same sort of gut-punch impact they had on first readings.

Meanwhile, I write like Mike. With just a touch of Carver.

A very short story set in the Old West to wrap up ADHD Awareness Week

"The pursuit of the big sky and the attitude of 'Don't fence me in' may be one of the reasons why Idaho leads the nation in per capita prescriptions of Ritalin for school-age children."
--From "Answers to Distraction" by Edwin M. Hallowell, M.D./John J. Ratey, M.D.

How the West Was Won

Idaho lies just over those mountains. Soon it will become a territory, and someday a state where potatoes will share the soil with concrete burrows of nuclear missiles. Ritalin will serve as handmaiden to its many children.

Our wagons stir the land, cause dust devils to rise. Black serpent cyclones rip the ridgelines. Native nomads, bison, tumbleweeds cross the purple prairie. Movement is religion. We are not destined for one place, but many; many mansions, as The Book says, many wagons filled with children, the amputated pasts of émigré nations.

My father farmed the same rock-chunked patch of County Roscommon land as his father before him, as his father before him, and all the fathers to back before the bastard Cromwell. Miserable sons of the sod. My father cursed the sick soil, dug the withered potatoes until only stone mingled with stone. The Great Hunger set us free and filled the coffin ships. Now our wagons prowl the prairies past forts and pox-plagued Indians, past Independence Rock, that granite lump like the devil's own hunched back, past grasslands that have no more sense than to act as carpets to the long horizon, to Idaho, and on to Oregon and the sea.

Our plan all along was Oregon, my brothers and I, but we grew distracted with the shades of Mormon children who whirl above our campfires. They can't get warm enough, can't move fast enough to escape last October's blizzard; it swallowed the Willie's Handcart party, froze 100 Latter Day Saints in mid-stride. Mormon youth are always on the move! One day, you will see them on bicycles from Beijing to Boise and Ritalin will be popular in Salt Lake City, Vernal, Provo. The Great Cities of Utah will vie with The Great Cities of Idaho and all the big-sky states for the coveted title of Ritalin Capital of the Nation.

At night, as the campfire dances in the constant wind, I stand within the circle of wagons and watch the stars wheel overhead. The comets are out there, weaving mists through the constellations; a shooting star streaks the firmament. In the hyperactive future, the lights of airplanes will always be visible, no matter how deep you push into the territory. Movement will still be religion, but my great-great-grandchildren in Pocatello will swallow a pill to give them pause and to muffle the nerve-twitching urge to move, that itch to be somewhere, anywhere but here.

Michael Shay, April 21, 2005
Originally published 2005 in High Plains Register

Fiction becomes film becomes reality

Brad Cain of the Associated Press reports that part of the Oregon State Hospital in Salem will be spared the wrecking ball and serve as a museum to commemorate the 1975 film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," based on the book by Oregonian Ken Kesey.

I don't remember (maybe you do) whether was book was set in the Oregon State Hospital. It's at least implied.

Demolition crews are going to spare one section of the hospital, the marble hydrotherapy device that Chief Bromden throws through the window, Bromden's broom (which earned him the nickname "Chief Broom") and a bathtub used by Danny DeVito in the film. It will eventually become the Museum of Mental Health. Meanwhile, the new Oregon State Hospital will be built next door.

Writes Cain:

The movie based on Ken Kesey's 1962 novel was fictional, but it has become closely associated over the years with real-life problems at Oregon's crumbling, overcrowded psychiatric facility.... Hospital superintendent Roy Orr said mental health advocates are divided on whether "Cuckoo's Nest" helped promote the cause of the mentally ill or was an overly sensationalized depiction of brutality in state mental institutions. But he supports devoting part of the museum to the movie."I guess I just view it as a part of our past; and now it's time to move on," he said.

Care in mental hospitals has come a long way since the lobotomies and forced incarcerations of the 1960s. But mental health care in general has a long way to go.

But I'm all in favor of any museum that raises the issue. It can also become a site on "The Literary Tour of the West," which should include other key sites in the region's (and Wyoming's) fictional history: a Rock Springs motel commemorating Richard Ford's story of the same name; Brokeback Mountain, located somewhere (possibly everywhere) in Wyoming; The Virginian Hotel in Medicine Bow, which does exist; the site of the castle wherein lives Philip K. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle;" and C.J. Box's town of Saddlestring. Others?

In the West, crowds gather for Obama

Everyone in Wyoming turned out to see Sen. Barack Obama today...

Just kidding. This photo shows the crowd along the banks of the Willamette River in Portland, Ore., on Sunday. Somewhere between 75,000 and 80,000 people turned out for the rally in advance of the May 20 primary. Sen. Obama was in Montana today, campaigning for the state's June 3 primary. He also was adopted into the Crow Nation.