It can't happen here! Oh yes it can!

Susan Stubson of Casper has been writing Wyoming-based op-ed columns for many years. Most have to do with her family and her husband Tim who once was a state legislator and ran unsuccessfully for a Wyoming's lone U.S. House seat in 2016. Susan is a fine pianist and I've been on hand to hear her perform. She once sat on the board of the Wyoming Arts Council where I worked for 25 years. You could not find a more determined advocate of the arts and arts education. 

Sunday's New York Times op-ed section featured a column by Susan, "What Christian Nationalism Has Done to My State and My Faith is a Sin." It takes guts to write a column like this for the most Liberal of Mainstream Media. She could have written it for my modest blog and a few Wyomingites, liberals mostly, would have read it and nodded their heads. But a NYT op-ed -- that gets attention. This is an era when getting attention from Christian Nationalists is a dangerous proposition.

She opens her column with an anecdote from her husband's 2016 campaign:

I first saw it while working the rope line at a monster-truck rally during the 2016 campaign by my husband, Tim, for Wyoming’s lone congressional seat. As Tim and I and our boys made our way down the line, shaking hands and passing out campaign material, a burly man wearing a “God bless America” T-shirt and a cross around his neck said something like, “He’s got my vote if he keeps those [epithet] out of office,” using a racial slur. What followed was an uncomfortable master class in racism and xenophobia as the man decanted the reasons our country is going down the tubes. God bless America.

Those of us paying attention during the 2016 presidential election had similar experiences, especially if you were active in the Republican Party. But it goes way beyond that. Those "God, Guns, Trump" signs still adorn pick-up bumpers in the Wyoming capital of Cheyenne. We are 180 highway miles from the Stubson's city of Casper. We are rivals and different in many ways but Susan's description of WYO GOP antics was on full display here during the legislative session. I refer you to WyoFile's coverage of the session to get insight on the debacle.

Read Susan's column and despair. The problem of Christian Nationalism is right out there in the open. Trump turned religion and hate into commodities, one being trumpeted by those who ban books and drag shows across the country. It is magnified when you live in a rural state such as Wyoming. Doesn't have to be that way but that's the course Republicans decided to follow. Wyoming Rev. Rodger McDaniel wondered on Facebook recently if Florida wasn't the Berlin of the 1930s. You know the one, the creeping evil theatre-goers experience when they go to "Cabaret." If you know your history, you see how it happened -- one tiny bite at a time. Fascism isn't a special-effects movie monster -- it's your preacher or priest, your neighbor, your cousin. 

“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

This quote has been attributed to Nobel-Prize-winning writer Sinclair Lewis but researchers do not vouch for the exact attribution. But it’s worth repeating in these times. For more of Lewis’s biting critique of life in the U.S., look up some of his other quotes or read “Babbitt,” “Main Street,” or "It Can't Happen Here." For some strange reason, this last one about a dystopian America shot up the bestseller charts after the 2016 election. 

I contemplate generational conflict in the blogosphere

Daughter Annie has been chronicling her graduation experience on her blog. She graduated from Laramie County Community College on May 14 and will head to UW in Laramie in mid-June.  She intends to be an English major. I have done my best to change her mind. "How about something useful, like pre-med or accounting?" or "Have you thought about a career as plumber?" 

Nevertheless, she persisted. She is a chip off the old block, offspring of an English major. I posted about the graduation here. She speaks openly about her long haul and her not always pleasant experiences along the way. I admire her honesty as I tend to skip deep feelings and fall back on humor to lighten life's heartbreaks. A generational difference, I guess. I am a first-wave Boomer and Annie is a second-wave Millennial. We share interests in reading, writing, classic rock, and movies. But we look at life through different lenses.

She knows more about my generation than I do hers. When I look at her generation, I see bright people looking on in disbelief at the chaos we older generations have wrought. I may have looked this same way in 1969 when the best and brightest wanted to kill me and millions of others. Annie has many artistic tattoos and introduces me to new music by changing the dial on my car radio. In reality, she doesn't need my car radio because she has her own car and car radio and myriad tech devices that pull in music, videos, and possibly signals from Tralfamadore. 

See how much fun you can have with generational conflict?

When I first signed on with Blogger in 2001, I admired the fresh voices, honest as the day is long. Not one of the bloggers I followed in those early days would use "honest as the day is long" (air quotes) which is, as you know, "as old as the hills." They were much more creative. In 2006, I gravitated to lefty political blogs which led to my selection as Wyoming's official embedded blogger at the 2008 Democratic Party National Convention in Denver where, at 57, I may have been the oldest practitioner at Blogger HQ outside the Pepsi Center. I received a scholarship to Netroots Nation 2011 in Minneapolis. I traveled in fall of 2011 with fellow nogoodniks to present a panel on progressive blogging at the University of South Dakota. Those were heady days. We were the future. I tied in with regional lefty bloggers and started posting and reposting on Daily Kos. Social media was in its infancy but pretty soon grew into the monster we know today. 

I started a blog for my workplace and a year later was called into the director's office to ask why I started a blog without permission. I said, gee, all the kids were doing it and he agreed that I should stop doing it immediately. At career's end, I was lord of our Wordpress blog and social media manager. My Millennial kids thought this was hilarious and I tended to agree.

So here we are in 2022. Blogs did not birth a thoughtful, more progressive, America. 

I blame myself.

Read part two of Annie's "How I got here: my time at LCCC.

Sunday morning round-up: Legislature weirdness, online publishing, and "The War on Powder River"

Russia invaded Ukraine this week. Putin does not want a democracy on its border. The Ukrainians are fighting back. The U.S. knows what joining the fight would bring. So we work with sanctions and what’s left of our free press. We also send war materiel to help Ukrainians fight the despot’s hordes. Any student of warfare knows a declaration of war would bring disaster. So what do we do?

I hope to have the print edition of my book of stories up on Amazon this week. The e-book is already on the site. Working with Kindle Direct Publishing can be a challenge. A traditional press would do most of this work. Formatting the text, deciding on a book cover, overseeing the printing process, sending out proofs, publicity. It’s all up to me now. Not sure if I’m going to put my second book of stories on KDP. I just want to have books in hand instead of taking up space in the Cloud. This blog is more of a journal than a publishing platform. Wish me luck.

The Wyoming State Legislature is in town. They will do plenty of damage in 20 days. We now experience first-hand what gerrymandering and voter suppression can do. Also Trump. And right-wing social media and TV. The nuts are out in force to suppress mask mandates, UW’s gender studies curriculum, American racism discussions in K-12 classrooms, gender equity, party-switching at election primaries, voting access, and any talk about Medicaid expansion for the state’s working poor. I’m sure more ridiculous proposals will emerge from the muck in the next two weeks. Wyoming voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2016 and 2020. We now live in a Trumpist fiefdom.

I did not expect a nonfiction account of the Johnson County War to be shot through with irreverent humor. But that's what I got when I picked up Helena Huntington Smith's “The War on Powder River: The History of an Insurrection.” The book was published in 1966 as a Bison Books imprint from the University of Nebraska Press. This 1890s event is often referred to as the Johnson County War. It pitted the rich owners of large cattle herds against the little guy who owned a few head or a few hundred. The cattle cabal wanted to keep the open range in WYO. The little guys wanted to keep the maverick cattle that they found, stragglers from massive herds brought to Powder River Country by rich Easterners and Brits with the hope of amassing beef fortunes. Smith did an amazing job at taking a jaundiced view of an 1890s event that many people outside of Wyoming know little about. Smith’s research is impressive although this non-historian cannot vouch for all of the details. She cracks wise when describing the gentry founded ranches in Powder River Country which they enjoy in summer and desert once the first snow flies. Cowboys remain behind to watch the herds. While the winters of 1884-86 were balmy by WYO standards, the winter and spring of 1986-87 was a whopper. Many thousands of cattle froze to death on the overcrowded prairie. When the beef barons returned from the south of France, they left the round-up of strays to cowboys and got pissed off when small landholders rustled a few cattle. They got their payback in 1892, and also their comeuppance. It is easy to see the hubris of 1892 in Wyoming’s present.

Smith was an Easterner who spent some time in WYO. The TA Ranch south of Buffalo has named one of its dude ranch accommodations for Smith. The TA has the last surviving structures from the range war. Smith was a combat correspondent for Crowell-Collier magazines (Collier’s, Victory, Woman’s Home Companion) during World War II. In 1957, American Heritage magazine republished her account of the Battle of the Bulge. She recounts the breakout of Panzer divisions and how rear echelon soldiers, mechanics and engineers, were issued bazookas and ordered to stop Nazi tanks. Some of them were surprisingly successful and earned medals. Smith’s account has all the battlefield dark humor one finds in a good soldier’s memoirs. She brought that same humor to her account of the Johnson County War. I couldn’t find a full bio online but discovered she was a Smith College grad and wrote for magazines and wrote several books. The UW Heritage Center and State Archives probably has some good info on her. She obviously loved a good story.

Jackson Hole Art Blog keeps me posted about arts events in Teton County and beyond

I spent two hours this morning reading Tammy Christel’s Jackson Hole Art Blog and 12 days of posts on Tammy’s Facebook page about the fall arts festival. Wonderful blog post about David Brookover’s photo techniques and the methods he uses to visualize the Tetons and valley wildlife. Great detail about the various papers he uses. I learned so much about silver prints and platinums and photogravures.  

Tammy FB-tracked the busy 12 days in Jackson with the fall arts festival. An arts extravaganza for what may be the most beautiful month in The Hole. Funny to note the clothing choices of artists painting en plein air. At the Quick Draw, artist Jason Borbet, clad in sweat shirt and bright-red mittens, paints the Tetons/Snake River vista made famous by Ansel Adams. Emily Boespflug decked out for a run down the slopes with gloves, three layers of jackets, a red scarf and wool cap. She’s putting the finishing touches on a painting while onlookers in stocking caps observe her progress. Fall in Jackson – winter one day, summer the next.

Tammy kept track of the many events and also logged in some of the accompanying fun things – Sunday Brunch Gallery Walk with gigantic Bloody Marys topped off with onion rings and the many studio open houses, including Laurie Thal’s cool glass-blowing workplace in Wilson. Tammy also logs in some of the prices paid for artwork. For the casual arts buyer, the prices are astounding. Someone paid $1.2 million for Howard Terpning’s “Vanishing Pony Tracks” oil (writes Tammy: “Wowza!”) and $65,000 for Gary Lynn Roberts Quick Draw painting of a winter day at the Wort Hotel in days gone by.

Impressive numbers. But not unusual for a noted arts town such as Jackson. It was ranked the number one small community on the list of The Most Vibrant Arts Communities in America 2020. That’s from the National Center for Arts Research at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

The top five were all in the Mountain West. Along with Jackson (which includes Wilson and Teton Village, Wyo., and Victor and Driggs, Idaho just over Teton Pass) were Steamboat Springs, Colo.; Heber, Utah; Hailey, Idaho; and Glenwood Springs, Colo. All of these places are within a day’s drive from my house. At 677 miles, Hailey would be a bit of a stretch, although Chris and I have logged one-day drives of 995 miles from our son’s place in Tucson. Long-distance driving skills are a necessity in our part of the world. It’s also good to note that three of the arts towns on the list of medium-sized communities are Boulder, Colo. (100 miles), Santa Fe, N.M.. (492 miles) and Bozeman, Mont. (595 miles). Note that Steamboat, Glenwood and Boulder are closer to me than Jackson, a mere 432 miles away, about the same distance as Heber City and Santa Fe.

As you can see, I live in the orbit of some of our country’s artsiest towns. Cheyenne is not in the SMU top ten. That’s OK – our arts scene is growing and we are very close to Denver and other pretty darn good arts town along the Front Range. Fort Collins has a multitude of outdoor music events promoted by the zillion craft brewers in town. I also like to browse the CSU Arts Center in the Old Fort Collins H.S. (Go Lambkins!). During the warmer months, you can find me outside perusing CSU Ag’s beautiful test garden and its large Xeriscape garden. Loveland is sculpture town. Visit and of the city parks to find an array of sculpture, from the representational to the avant-garde. I like the Chapungu African Sculpture Park east of the sprawling Centerra Center at I-25 and Hwy. 34. It features 82 hard-carved stone sculptures in a park with 600 trees of 20 species along with natïve shrubs and grasses. Wild Wonderful Weekend takes place there this weekend with a Saturday evening concert by American Authors who are actually American rockers.

As is true for many Cheyennites, we spend a lot of time at Colorado venues. We also support local arts. You can do both.

The top-five small arts communities mentioned above are all destination resorts for summer and winter sports. The rich have gravitated to these places so they can brag about swapping tall tales with real local cowboys at the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar. They also like the views or viewsheds as realtors call them. It’s easy to be snarky about the scene and the outrageous prices paid for some art. Local writers have had some fun poking fun at the migratory riche, nouveau or otherwise (I’m looking at you Tim Sandlin). 

But I always loved traveling to Jackson for arts events and get there as often as I can. At all other times, I depend on Tammy’s blog and Facebook posts to transport me to its arts happenings.  

Writing and editing, editing and writing, writing and...

Editing and writing. Writing and editing. The two are inseparable. Younger writers, such as myself a half-century ago, write something down and pronounce it finished. I wrote my first novel that way. It got me an agent but it was never published due to the fact it was not a very good novel because it lacked a persnickety editor. If you insist on reading the manuscript, you can find it in the Colorado State University Library Special Collections under "Future Wars." It used to share a bunker with a very fine Vietnam War Literature section. Look for that under "Past but not Forgotten Wars."

I've edited many of my pieces since then. I've had others edit my work, profs and student colleagues in the CSU MFA program and the writing critique group I've belonged to for a dozen years. I wasn't always pleased with the comments. That's one of the things about the process. It's not always pleasant. It's the only way to grow.

For the pasty couple years, I've been writing art reviews for Wyofile's Studio Wyoming Review. It's a joy to go into a museum, gallery or studio and learn about art. You'd think that after 25 years at the Wyoming Arts Council where art was on the menu every day, I'd have enough art to last me during my dotage. But the life of an arts administrator features a lot of administration and very little time to appreciate art. These days, I can take on an assignment and spend plenty of time appreciating art and talking with the artists. A half-hour discussion with an artist can tell you so much more than any artist's statement plastered on a gallery wall. 

My final SWR piece appeared last Friday, a book review: Exploring the roots of Basque poetry from a Wyoming perspective. WyoFile editors are discontinuing SWR on June 30. They plan to devote more time and resources to features on the state's many daunting challenges. Recent examples are Dustin Bleizeffer's two stories:  'Love it or leave: The choices facing Wyoming's youth and Portraits of Wyo youth: Six visions of a future in the state. The brain drain of young people leaving the state has been going on for a long time but it may be about to be an epidemic. The articles left me depressed as I already have a son who sought opportunities in Tucson and my daughter looks outside Wyoming for her career as a photographer. Wyoming is one of the most photogenic places on the planet. But as a wise artist once said, "You can't eat the scenery." 

Fill out this short Facebook poll to give us some ideas about where SWR can go from here.

I came to today's blog with the idea to compare/contrast my latest review, the one I submitted and the edited one. I wondered if my version would be superior to the edited one. In some ways, I am still that sensitive young writer. I put both versions side-by-side on my big screen. I read each line. Damned if the revised version wasn't better. 

Blogs in their purest form are not supposed to be heavily edited. If I understand correctly the Blogosphere's many fungible rules, changes you make after a blog is posted must be noted. That is left entirely in the blogger's hands. We can be trusted with many things. Editing is a sacred trust and I treat it accordingly.

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

Time to take stock of the year that was.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Republican U.S. Senators: Stop messing with mail-in voting

Letter I sent to Wyoming U.S. Senators Barrasso and Enzi:

We are lucky here in Wyoming that we have easy access to voting and competent county clerks to ensure that the rules are followed. I've seen many election days as an election judge. When we switched from paper to electronic voting, all of us received training on the new systems. 

Up until the most recent primary, I always voted in person. The experience was gratifying. When I worked the polls, I had many opportunities to work with old friends and to see my neighbors arrive, enthusiastic to do their civic duty. It always seemed like a holiday, even when I had to take the day off from my state job to be at the precinct.

Now that I am retired and partially disabled, I no longer work the polls and no longer venture out to my polling place which are now called voting centers instead of the old precinct set-up. I voted absentee and so did my wife and daughter. My wife is a type-one diabetic and we both are worried about Covid-19 as are most high-risk seniors. So we requested and received absentee ballots without needing an explanation because that is how Wyoming does it.

We will also vote absentee in the general election. All of the news about the slowdown at the U.S. Postal Service concerns us. Yes, we can always go to the city and county building and our ballots into the secure drop-off box. But this also means that we have to drive down there, find a parking place, put on our masks, and go to the drop-off box. What makes absentee voting by mail so preferable is the obvious ease of the process. Mail delivery is quick here in Cheyenne. I often mail a bill one day and see the debit in my account within days. 

So why is Postmaster DeJoy messing around with a system that works so well? I am suspicious of the timing of the dismantling of the quick-sorting machines and removal of convenient postal boxes. Absentee and mail-in voting depends on a dependable USPS. Mr. DeJoy assures us that the system has not been slowed down and then we see that he was a major donor to Mr. Trump and was then appointed to the postmaster position. As I was always told as a government employee, do not create any conflict of interest or even the appearance of one. 

Mr. DeJoy appears to have a conflict of interest and should be removed. I also urge you to support the House bill that guarantees the efficiency and funding of the USPS. If you don't, we can only assume that you support Mr. Trump's campaign to sabotage the post office and suppress the vote. You do believe in everyone's access to the polls, don't you? Then make sure that the functions of the American voting system, once the model for the world, will not be interfered with. 

We are watching.

Sincerely,

Michael Shay

P.S.: When I write letters like these, I tone it down. I want the senator or most likely his staff members to read it and I can register my complaint. If I wrote a letter saying what I really felt, it would start something like "Dear Sen. Barrasso: You miserable son of a bitch and Moscow Mitch ass-kisser. Stop f*cking around with our right to vote." Something like that. There are many ways I could phrase it. I am a concerned citizen and elder of my tribe so I am supposed to show a little couth, even when blogging. I try to do the same on Facebook because I know that Big Brother FB is watching. So, if Republicans keep up their attacks on voting, I may have to adopt a tougher stance. My missives may not get read but I will feel much better. 

A dry spell comes into the life of every blogger

It's been more than a month since I posted here. I guess I could say that I'm in the midst of a dry spell. That wouldn't be accurate. I've written some blog posts on healthcare and politics that bored me so much I couldn't finish. So, I turned my attention elsewhere. wrote five feature articles for Artscapes Magazine. I started a piece for Studio Wyoming Review on Wyofile. I revamped the last section of my historical novel and almost finished it. I discovered halfway through the last section that the narrative didn't make sense in its present form. Maybe I should have waited until I actually finished because finishing is the goal. But no -- I had to be different. I do have most of a final chapter, my third attempt. I have read about other authors who begin the book and write the final chapter so they know where they're going. Those are the same writers who outline the book before they write. They're called plotters.

Writers like me are called pantsers because we write "by the seat of their pants," making up the story as we go along. I believe I'm in that group due to my early training in daily and weekly newspapers. Sports reporting, especially, makes writers write down what they know because there is 20 minutes to deadline. It's a handy way to learn writing as you always have the score to fall back on. "Cheyenne Central shellacked Cheyenne South Friday night 52-0 to cinch its record at 10-1 and win a trip to the high school boys' football regional playoffs." All the 5Ws are in there. I used fun action verbs -- shellacked and cinch -- that aren't usually seen elsewhere in daily news writing except in election season. That lede gives you a gateway into the rest of the story that you will keep writing until time is up. Often the ending can trail off into noweheresville as you throw in stats or add a lame quote from the winning coach or quarterback. You're finished. On to the next game!

Ledes aren't always easy to come by in feature writing. You're lucky if some attention-grabbing quote or fact can be fished out of your notes. You really have to dig sometimes, depending on the pizazz of the interviewee. In fiction, I usually start with an image. In my novel, I wanted to put my two main characters on a train together. Nothing too exciting about a passenger rail car in 1919 Colorado, although there are train fans out there who might disagree. My characters, however, are so different that they clash in interesting ways that might (you never know) lead to romance somewhere in the middle of the book. It works for me. No telling if it will grab the interest of editors.

I began writing this because writing is something I am invested in. Not so politics and healthcare. I love to read and talk about those topics. Debate them, too, as long as its a two-sided contest. But tackling these topics rally requires some research. The Internet is key to that. I know which sources to turn to for facts and which to turn to for snark. I like both, so sometimes I turn to opinion pieces in newspapers such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Miami Herald. Carl Hiaasen of the Herald is the best columnist in the USA. I also look to conservatives mouthpieces such as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and others. For liberal snark, you can't beat Wonkette. I often wonder where Hunter S. Thompson would have plied his trade on the WWW. The Trump Era was made for him.

In conclusion, let me state that I needed to write and post something that interests me so I can move on to the next things. Finishing the novel. Watching the NFL conference finals. Eating lunch.

See you in the funny papers.

Part X: The Way Mike Worked -- The Passing Parade

I can't remember The Retiree's name. He had worked in my division, Information Services, at Denver's Gates Rubber Company, before I arrived on the scene in 1983. He came by occasionally to visit the other old-timers. At 32, I was part of the younger cohort stepping into their shoes as they gradually marched off into the horizon. My parents' generation, the generation that weathered major cataclysms to give birth to many children and kick-start the post-war economy.

Sometimes The Retiree came for lunch at the corporate cafeteria. One afternoon, I came across him in the lobby. He recognized me, invited me to sit in the comfy chair next to him. We watched as the corporate parade passed. The Retiree gestured to a middle-aged guy he used to work with.

"Wanted to buy a sailboat and circumnavigate the globe," The Retiree said.

The guy worked in my department. "Did he do it?"

"What do you think?"

I thought no, he did not.

We chatted some more. He spotted a woman he knew. She walked over to say hi. "Hi," she said.

They exchanged pleasantries. He asked if she was still making fantastic cakes.

"Not as much. Julie moved back home with her two kids. I do a lot of babysitting." She seemed a bit embarrassed. When she went back to work, The Retiree explained.

"She made the cakes for employee birthdays. You had to get there early -- guys stampeded to the break room. Fights broke out to get that last piece of three-layer devil's food cake." He got a faraway look. "I still dream about it."

"That good?"

"Better. Yeah, she was going to open her own bake shop. But she didn't. One thing or another came up." He shrugged.

I sensed a theme developing.

"You know a lot of people," I said. "And their stories."

"People tell their stories all the time. You just have to listen." He paused. "What you pay attention to makes the difference."

Another guy walked by. We called him The Actor. He just played Sweeney Todd for a local theatre and got to murder a bunch of obnoxious people whose meaty parts were made into pies. He was talented and drank a bit.

"I worked with him for a few years," The Retiree said. "He went out to Hollywood for awhile. He probably told you that."

"Not a word."

"He had a few bit parts. Played a dead guy in a soap opera."

"So I work in the graveyard of broken dreams?"

He laughed. "Beware." With that, he took off, probably to take a nap. I went back to work to ponder my future.

The above conversation is fictional. You can probably tell because the exchange rolls so trippingly off the tongue. As if it were a scene from a play or novel. That's something a fiction writer can do when blogging. If I was trying to write, say, a memoir, I would have to let you know that I was reconstructing the dialogue because there was no way I could remember what was said verbatim more than 30 years ago. What I can do is recall the feeling I had when sitting in the lobby with The Retiree. Holy Shit, if I don't watch out, I could end up like this endless retinue of sad sacks going back to work in the rubber mines. On some days, I was already there.

It would be rare to find a kid that says he or she wants to grow up to write paeans to industrial rubber hoses. Yet, there are a surprising number of us who grow up to sing the praises of hoses or cars or computers or paper products. We want to be something else but, as the saying goes, a job, any job, pays the rent. In 1983, I was approaching 33, was married, and tired of living on a prayer. I wanted to land a job that entailed some writing, and that's when I began looking for jobs with big companies. 

At Gates, I did know The Retiree I quote at the beginning of this piece. I knew many of them. I photographed scores of retirement parties, took a lot of employee anniversary shots.  Lots of grip-and-grin shots of a VP  congratulating a union guy who had spent the last 30 years making radiator hoses in the deepest darkest confines of the ancient factory. The cavernous work rooms were loud and covered in carbon black, the ingredient that blackens your hoses and fan belts. It was everywhere -- on the walls and floor and machinery. It was in and on the machines. It was on the employees and their work clothes. When I ate lunch with my female coworkers, they always grabbed extra napkins so they could wipe the carbon black off of the seats less their dresses get streaked black. I followed their example until I noticed that the union guys watched us. We were literally trying to wipe away their presence. I was a writer supposed to know a metaphor when I saw it.

I eventually saw it.

I left the corporate world for academia in 1988. We sold our house that we bought with money from rubber writing. I could walk to work. Now, when I'm in Denver and I drive down South Broadway, I see that corporate HQ now bears a different company logo. Across the street, the massive factory is gone. After Gates abandoned it and it turned into a magnificent ruin, urban explorers made it their playground. Replacing it are rows of modern condo complexes for the new crop of college graduates eager for the Mile High lifestyle. They can catch the light rail at the hub at the corner, where the Gates garage once fixed employee cars at a reduced rate. The company clinic and grocery store are no longer there. "The song "16 Tons" says "I owe my soul to the company store. That wasn't exactly the case, as it was just convenient to shop at the company store. This wasn't Appalachia during the Great Depression. But it was the ending of a certain type of employment. Chris and I paid nothing for an emergency Cesarean and seven days in the hospital for mother and son. All the prenatal and postpartum appointments were free. A billion-dollar privately-owned company in a booming economy could be generous. Every employee's kid got a free gift at the annual Christmas party and rode the Lakeside rides for free at the summer picnic.

It sounds good. But Gates was already building factories in right-to-work states and overseas. The ranks of the URW were beginning to decline. A new health care plan was in the works and a fully-funded retirement plan was being replaced by a 401(K). I know because my department was tasked with explaining the changes to employees who weren't always appreciative when being lied to. The new century approached. Technology would save us all. The international open market would signal a new golden age. Reagan said so.

The first short story I wrote in my CSU M.F.A. writing workshop was called "Who Needs Fedder?" It concerned a young corporate guy who chronicles the travails of his co-worker Fedder when he quits the corporate softball team. He quickly became a non-person, like Doc Daneeka in Catch-22. The story seemed outlandish to my younger classmates. The older ones thought it said a lot about people they had known in the corporate world or in the military. The story was published in 1990 in Bob Greer's High Plains Literary Review in Denver. I never knew what my former Gates colleagues thought about the story as I lost touch over the years. Now they're all retirees like me, reminiscing about those glory days.

You can read "Who Needs Fedder" in my book of stories, The Weight of a Body. It's out of print, but I'll find the file and link it to this post. I will reread it, just to find out what this writer thought of his corporate career.

Democrats have to ask themselves: When do we get mean?

Wyoming Sen./Dr. John Barrasso is a hyper-partisan ass-kisser.

We see him looming behind Mitch McConnell every time the Senate Majority Leader utters another ridiculous pronouncement. There's Barrasso, nodding and looking somber. Bobble-head Barrasso. This is the same senator that refuses to have public meetings around his state to explain his behavior. The citizenry has conducted congressional town hall meetings around Wyoming. On the stage are chairs with photos of Barrasso, Cheney, Enzi. That's as close as these public servants will come to a face-to-face with the electorate. Some of their peers in other states have been yelled at for their Triumpist policies. Egos have been bruised. Ask Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado. He's used to fielding softball questions from true believers. Instead he got tough questions. Other people yelled at him for his bad behavior. He retreated back to the safety of the D.C. Beltway.

Wyomingites know how to tell shit from Shinola. You have to be older than me to know that Shinola is a shoe polish popularized by GIs in World War II. Shinola was handy and durable, great for those GI shoes and boots. GIs were adept at coining phrases, especially those that targeted inept officers, the guys sending them out to get killed. Not knowing shit from Shinola was dangerous. Funny, too, a fine play on words.

Wyomingites used to be able to tell shit from Shinola. Not any more. Congressional leaders now blow smoke up our asses and we inhale. That expression comes from cockfighting, where humans used to blow smoke up a rooster's ass to goad him into fighting harder. Cockfighting has fallen out of favor but the phrase remains and comes in handy in the political arena. Trump is a master at blowing smoke up people's asses. It incites his conservative base. Angers his opponents.

What is you can tell shit from Shinola? What if you resent having smoke blown up your ass? You have to find other candidates to vote for.

Try Gary Trauner. I canvassed neighborhoods for Gary when he ran for the U.S. House in 2006 and 2008. Trauner came within 1,000 votes of beating Barbara Cubin the last time she ran. Remember that Cubin's husband was ailing and she spent more time outside the Beltway than within. Even Republicans were irritated at her inattention to her job. Trauner hit the hustings and talked to voters. Lots and lots of voters. Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Contrarians. People of many stripes voted for him. They crossed over the line between D and R and voted D.

Those were the days. Now we have an impenetrable wall between D and R. Just look at the 2016 election. Three of our best public servants were defeated by a wave of voters who came to vote for Trump the Savior and pushed all of the R buttons. I speak of Floyd Esquibel, Ken Esquibel, and Mary Throne. The Red Wave elected the bad ones and carried off the good ones. And we Democrats didn't work hard enough to get out the vote. Shame on us all.

Gary Trauner runs in 2018 to unseat Sen./Dr. Barrasso. Trauner drew about 50 people to his "listening session" in Cheyenne. Attendees asked great questions, the candidate had convincing answers.  He said he was going to talk to all people. His philosophy seemed to mirror the Dems' 2016 plan of "when they go low, we go high." One questioner challenged this philosophy, wondering if there isn't a time to "get mean." Republicans, notably out-of-state PACs, serve as unregulated attack dogs for Republican candidates and those candidates can disavow any connection with them. Meanwhile, voters minds are being swayed by right-wing paranoia. You know, the stuff you hear on Fox and talk radio. In 2016, these are the people who showed up at the polls in droves. Dems eagerly anticipated election night victory parties. As a volunteer offering rides to the polls, I picked up and delivered exactly one voter to a polling place. His vote, whatever it was, was overwhelmed by the Red Tide.

Will there be a blue wave in 2018 that lifts all boats? Gary Trauner will be in one of those boats. I will help him row, or paddle, or steer, or sail, or whatever else you do in a boat in this godforsaken windswept desert. But I am just one person.

My advice to you: help us roll with the tide. This should be the ideal year for The Dem Blue Wave. But you have to show up. Take a look at Trauner's web site. He says that this campaign is "all about leadership and integrity." Let's prove him right.

If you'd like to see my blog posts from Trauner's 2006 and 2008 campaigns, go to the search box on my right sidebar and type in Gary Trauner. There are a bunch of them, and not all are masterpieces. I do like this one. But they do give you some perspective on the temper of the times in 2006-2008. Remember 2008? We elected the country's first African-American president. It was only ten years ago but now it seems as if it happened in an alternate reality.

An October column about writing reappears on the Writing Wyoming blog

I guest-posted today on the Writing Wyoming blog. One of the editors, Cheyenne writer Lynn Carlson, asked to re-post a column in October and I had nearly forgotten that until a link popped up today on Facebook. You may have read it a few months ago, but if you missed it, here it is: "We ask the old question: why do writers write?" Thanks, Lynn.

The art of resistance sometimes includes the art of resigning

I am a bit late on this one. Four weeks ago, the remaining members of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities resigned. I recognize some of the names on the committee, notably Jhumpa Lahiri, winner of a 2000 Pulitzer Prize and the 29th annual PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story.

Honorary Chairman of the now-nonexistent committee is Melania Trump. What is her claim to creative fame? Well, the First Lady has her own brand of jewelry offered on QVC. Who designs it? Many creative people work in the fashion industry. You'd think someone who benefits this directly from creativity would take the side of creators. I started some online research with the keywords "Melania Trump fashion." Google came back with almost 4 million results. I quickly grew queasy reading about her "style" -- and looking at photos of her fabulous wardrobe. I looked up "President's Committee on the Arts & Humanities resignation" and found almost 500,000 Google results. That was encouraging -- Melania Trump only outdid the PCAH's action by 8-to-1. Now, this blog  will be added to both searches. In this way, electrons win.

One can get lost in the research. The idea was that this post would be an undercover expose on more Trump rottenness. But I lost heart after about 15 minutes. I need my writing time for my fiction and not the fictional reality of an oligarch and his well-appointed wife. What I can do is feature the PCAH's fine resignation letter and then move on to other things.

This is a repost from a 8/18/17 Jen Hayden post about it on Daily Kos:

In a blistering public letter, the remaining members of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities (PCAH) resigned. ... you can see the original letter below. It’s a work of resistance art: 

Dear Mr. President:

Reproach and censure in the strongest possible terms are necessary following your support of the hate groups and terrorists who killed and injured fellow Americans in Charlottesville. The false equivalences you push cannot stand. The Administrations refusal to quickly and unequivocally condemn the cancer of hatred only further emboldens those who wish America ill. We cannot sit idly by, the way your West Wing advisors have, without speaking out against your words and actions. We are members of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities (PCAH). The Committee was created in 1982 under President Ronald Reagan to advise the White House on cultural issues. We were hopeful that continuing to serve in the PCAH would allow us to focus on the important work the committee does with your federal partners and the private sector to address, initiate, and support key policies and programs in the arts and humanities for all Americans. Effective immediately, please accept our resignation from the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.  

Elevating any group that threatens and discriminates on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, disability, orientation, background, or identity is un-American. We have fought slavery, segregation, and internment. We must learn from our rich and painful history. The unified fabric of America is made by patriotic individuals from backgrounds as vast as the nation is strong. In our service to the American people, we have experienced this first-hand as we traveled and build the Turnaround Arts education program, now in many urban and rural schools across the country from Florida to Wisconsin.  

Speaking truth to power is never easy, Mr. President. But it is our role as commissioners on the PCAH to do so. Art is about inclusion. The Humanities include a vibrant free press. You have attacked both. You released a budget which eliminates arts and culture agencies. You have threatened nuclear war while gutting diplomacy funding. The administration pulled out of the Paris agreement, filed an amicus brief undermining the Civil Rights Action, and attacked our brave trans service members. You have subverted equal protections, and are committed to banning Muslims and refugee women & children from our great country. This does not unify the nation we love. We know the importance of open and free dialogue through our work in the cultural diplomacy realm, most recently with the first-ever US Government arts and cultural delegation to Cuba, a country without the same First Amendment protections we enjoy here. Your words and actions push us all further away from the freedoms we are guaranteed.   

Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions. We took a patriotic oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. 

Supremacy, discrimination, and vitriol are not American values. Your values are not American values. We must be better than this. We are better than this. If this is not clear to you, then we call on you to resign your office, too.   

Thank you.

Just how do we get this alien life force off of our starship?

Sitting in my blogging chair since 2005....

I am not a member of the press. I do not represent the mainstream media in any way.

I am a blogger. A progressive blogger, prog-blogger to those who still use the term. An attendee of Netroots Nation. A sometimes blogger on Daily Kos. An embedded blogger (courtesy of the Dean brothers) to the 2008 Dem convention when we thought we entered a new and glorious era of truth, justice and the American way.

I am a Liberal in almost every way.

When it comes to telling the truth, I am s staunch conservative. Truth must be proven. It must be based on facts.

How do I talk about the post-truth Trump administration? A very good question. Fortunately, I do not have to experience press gatherings in Washington, D.C. How would I discern Trump's very strange press conference this past week? It's easy to call him an idiot, a fool, a madman. None of that seems to put a dent in Trump. He just keeps babbling on, no matter what sort of verbal ammunition you use on him.

Trump seems to be an alien life form who feeds on the fear and confusion of his enemies. Remember that Star Trek episode when a shimmering alien life force pits humans against Klingons? The force stokes the fears of both sides and then feeds off of that fear. The only way to get the alien force off the Enterprise is to declare peace and laugh it off. Go see "The Day of the Dove," season three, episode 11.

Scorn and satire doesn't work with Trump. He feeds off of the name-calling. He doesn't get the satire. You have to have a knowledge base to get it upended by satire and irony. Trump doesn't read books. He makes deals. He's using fear and anger against us. And he doesn't get any of our jokes.

Just how in the heck do we get this alien off of our ship?

No easy answer, especially to those of us who pride ourselves in being decent artistic types who pride ourselves in not ranting and raving at the drop off a hat. Will that be our downfall?

Nothing stopped Hitler except brute force. He cheated and lied and schemed to take over his country and then tried to take over the world. No wonder we can't let go of World War II. It was a titanic struggle. The forces of good triumphed over evil. The forces of good used horribly violent means to do so. We never quite got over the rush. Some say that Trump's U.S. looks like like Nazi Germany with the swastika, imperial Rome with to the togas, and Il Duce without the pouting Mussolini. We have the pouting Trump. America First!

Sabrina Tavernise writes today in the New York Times, Are Liberals Helping Trump? In it, Ms. Tavernise posits that the wise-ass and snarky and condescending attitudes of the liberals are driving away moderate Republicans. Where else do they have to go?

She wants to compare the current strife to the late 60s and early 70s, when every public discourse erupted into a fight about Vietnam, civil rights, or how long you could wear your hair. But her prime example goes all the way back to the Civil War years. That's scary.

Liberals are angry at themselves, too, that we didn't prevent this. We just took for granted that the intelligent liberal candidate would win. We didn't treat seriously those big rallies of Trump's. Yes, some of those people were unhinged but many more were just angry at the state of the nation. They turned out to vote on Nov. 8. I helped Dem voters get to the polling stations, visited many around Cheyenne, and long lines were the rule rather than the exception. They were Trump voters. Even worse, they were people who usually didn't vote but by God were going to vote for Trump this time. They were former Bill Clinton and Barack Obama voters who couldn't stomach a liberal woman lawyer in the White House after watching Fox News blather against Obama for eight years. Fuck you, they said to liberals. And now we're returning the fuck yous.

That's as far as my political punditry goes. The Republicans are going to dismantle everything that I care about: Corporation for Public Broadcasting, NPR, NEA, NEH, ACA, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public transportation, clean air, clean water, public lands -- the list goes on and on. There's nothing to hinder this process but a few judges and possible outrage from the citizenry. But a lot of the citizenry love Trump's attacks on liberals and media. And we only have the satisfaction of our witty social media posts,

We will all be stuck in the coming Dark Ages together. Maybe then we can find common ground.

Will Radio Free Internet survive?

Great to see the return of fellow prog-blogger Jeran Artery of Cheyenne. For years, Jeran served as the public face of Wyoming Equality, the interviewee you often saw on TV news when LGBTQ rights were being debated in Wyoming. A passionate spokesperson for the gay community, he also is my friend. Is he upset about the impending Trump presidency? Go to Out in Wyoming and find out. You also can find a link to his blog on my sidebar.

What will blogging bring in 2017? Those progressives pissed off about the political turn of events will have plenty of blog fodder. Late-night comedians, bloggers, political junkies all have plenty to joke about. None of the really cool music groups want to perform for the Trump inauguration. Ha, ha. None of Trump's appointments to top cabinet posts have the required experience. LOL. Trump daily shows his ignorance on Twitter. Ho ho ho.

As we discovered during the campaign, none of that matters. We live in a post-factual world now in the U.S. Trump lies, Liberals chortle merrily and point this out, and nothing happens. Trump believes all of the stuff he said to those sign-waving supporters at rallies from Dallas to Detroit. He plans to do it all. That's not funny.

But humor is a weapon. So are words. Will Radio Free Internet survive? Hard to say. Part of Trump's success was the viral spread of fake news and lies and half-truths. Can he shut down the prog-bloggers without shutting down the wingnuts? Will we be forced off the web and into an era of samizdat? Keep those printing presses handy!

Vladimir Bukovsky, one-time Soviet dissident and no liberal (he's a senior fellow at the reactionary Cato Institute in D.C.), summarized it as follows (from Wikipedia): "Samizdat: I write it myself, edit it myself, censor it myself, publish it myself, distribute it myself, and spend jail time for it myself."

Self-publishing and self-distribution are all the rage in our DIY society. Perhaps samizdat will catch on in Moscow, Idaho, as it once did in that other Moscow.

"George Running Poles" finds a home in new Wyoming anthology

I've been working on a novel since the spring. I got tired of agents and editors asking me, a short-story writer, if I had a novel. This longer piece grew out of a short story that wanted to go long. So now it is. I won't say what it's about because it's supposed to be bad luck. I will say that it's set in Colorado in 1919-1920. An intriguing era, this post-war period. The Great War altered how people viewed the world. Women got the vote and Prohibition became law which led to lawlessness, even in rural Colorado. The Klan was on the rise, attacking Irish- and Italian-Catholics -- and Hispanics -- when they couldn't find any black people to torment (the alt-Right is nothing new). Americans were spooked by the Russian Revolution (the U.S. had 8,000 troops in Russia in 1918-1920 fighting the Bolsheviks) and blamed commie troublemakers for everything from labor unrest to avant-garde art. That gives me a few subjects to use for conflict in my story. Then there's the usual problems caused by the human heart in conflict with itself.

On the short story front, I heard two weeks ago that my story "George Running Poles" has been accepted for the new book, Blood, Wind, Water, and Stone: An Anthology of Wyoming Writers. It will be published in the fall by Sastrugi Press of Jackson. Lori Howe, a fine poet, is the editor. Look for it at an indie near you. Support your Wyoming writers! Just to whet your appetite, here is the story's opening paragraph:

Two teen boys walk along the asphalt bikeway in Riverton, Wyoming. George Jumping Bull pushes a shopping cart he found abandoned in the winter-brown grass. He’s wearing black sweatpants bunched over white running shoes and a red bandanna tied around his close-cropped hair. Jimmy Jones wears his black Oakland Raiders cap sideways, its bill pointing east. He milks a pint bottle of vodka as he walks. George reaches for it.

Lynn Carlson has asked me to write a short piece for the blog she co-authors/edits with Susan Mark. The blog, Writing Wyoming: Words, wind and everything else Wyoming, features great posts about writing and marketing your work. I've pulled a number of publishing leads off of this blog. Lynn's latest post on Aug. 16 is about the Storycatcher Workshop she attended in Fort Robinson, Nebraska. Go read it. Lynn asked me to write a composite post by Sept. 9 on the subject of reading your work at open mic sessions. I readily agreed, as it took me awhile to read my work in public, period. I was 39 or 40 the first time I read in public as a late-blooming grad student at CSU in Fort Collins. Since then, I have embarrassed myself many times in public, from Denver to Cheyenne to Washington, D.C. What experiences do you have as a writer in a public forum? Let me know so I have something to blog about in September. Here's the topic: "A good noise: in praise of the open mic." Lynn took the title from a John Gorka song:

'Cause if you cannot make yourself a good noise
tell me what you're doing here.

My daughter Annie now lives in Chicago. Her northside neighborhood was once Polish and then Hispanic and now, I'm afraid, is in danger of gentrification. A brewpub has opened next to the wig store and funky murals are replacing graffiti. Hipsters have been sighted. She wants us to come visit so is arranging interesting sites to see and tours to go on. The Chicago Mafia Tour sounds intriguing. I may prefer the Chicago Literary Tour which includes stops at sites occupied by such fine writers as Gwendolyn Brooks, Ernest Hemingway, Lorraine Hansberry and Carl Sandburg, and the office of the woman who first published James Joyce in the U.S. Writers with Chicago roots continue to compose great works. I'm talking about you, Larry Heinemann, Dave Eggers and Walter Mosley.

Paging Dr. Gonzo

I shouldn't be reading Hunter Thompson this week.

I should be reading something hopeful. Last week, during the Republican National Convention, I read "The Soul of an Octopus" by Sy Montgomery. During a four-day stretch in Cleveland that cast doubt on the future of the human race, I felt lifted up by Montgomery's book. Not so much for humanity but for the Octopoda. Humans may not be smart enough to grok octopus intelligence. Octopus may be sending secret signals to each other, laughing at the coming destruction of the human species and rejoicing about the advent of WaterWorld, when octopus will rule and they will ponder humans on display in undersea terrariums. "I wonder what that human will do if we poke it with a stick?" And the human recoils in pain. "Ouch," says one of my descendants, living his life in a plastic bubble, ogled all day by members of the master race.

See what I mean? Off I go in a dark Thompson-like tangent. Can't seem to stay on task. Unlike Dr. Gonzo, I'm as sober as an American can be. My drug of choice is craft beer, made by Millennials in breweries that look like old Nazi ball-bearing factories. They gradually ratchet up the ABV in brews such as Wyoming's own Melvin 2x4 DIPA (9.9%) to render Baby Boomers docile as lambs and to take over the world or at least parts of the Rocky Mountain West.

If you add to my regimen a slew of heart medications and a few for depression and an ICD that beams my every move to Master Control, you can see that I am a fully compromised human being. A liberal automaton. A Hillbot.

Only writing allows me to occasionally come out of my crustacean-like shell.

Hunter Thompson caused me to look at the world differently. I cannot explain it.

I can duplicate Gonzo but it's not the same as Thompson's. He had a brand. I bet he would hate me saying that. Having a brand these days is all the rage. Hunter's was capital G Gonzo. His brand was so strong that he could become a character in the comics and everybody knew who it was. You can try to duplicate one of the author's famous rants but it wouldn't be the same.

But I do want to point out that Thompson had a gift. I can't explain it. You have to read it. And it was best to read it "as it happened" on the pages of Rolling Stone. You had to be there, as the saying goes. Thompson could put you on the scene. Hell's Angels. Vegas. Caribbean shark hunt, Kentucky Derby, Aspen politics. The spectacle -- marked by wretched excess at every turn -- of American life. As the sixties unfolded, so did a new writing style. He was in the middle of it.

You can detect some of Thompson's dark humor in the writing of Matt Taibbi in RS. Bloggers get into the act but snarky isn't gonzo.

On that note, check out some of my columns from the 2008 DNC by going here and here and even here. It was a grand experiment, embedding bloggers with their DNC delegations in Denver. Not certain how many of my fellow bloggers are still at it. I am haphazard at best, spending as much blogging time with personal issues as I do on politics. I covered politics consistently in '08, including time at the DNC, and won a scholarship to Netroots Nation in Minneapolis in 2011. I was a sporadic contributor to Daily Kos. At the same time, I had a full-time writing/editing job and another passion writing short fiction. And a family. To do it correctly, you need to devote time and energy to the pursuit. Might have been my heart attack of 2012/2013, a jolt to the widowmaker so severe that it spanned two calendar years. Changed my brain-paths and priorities.

And I'm still here.

Flashback: Blogging the 2008 DNC

Eight years after...

In August 2008, I spent a week as an embedded blogger at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.  We we all so much older then, I'm younger than that now. I am retired, treating life like a kid who's just discovered summer vacation.

I was one of 55 progressive bloggers embedded with state and territorial delegations. We all received press credentials and a seat with our delegation at the Pepsi Center. Expenses were tight, as my wife worked for a non-profit and I worked for the State of Wyoming. Our daughter was still in high school, so we had the usual teen expenses: cellphone, computer, Internet access, food, fashion, car repairs, bail money. etc. I stayed in my Republican uncle's basement and avoided downtown parking by taking the light rail. We bloggers were selected and sponsored by Howard Dean's Democracy for America organization. I was one of Wyoming's few prog-bloggers at the time, so I was chosen to represent The Equality State at the DNC. I could blog from the bloggers' aerie located above the floor. I could circulate anywhere that Bill O'Reilly could, if I really wanted to.

I blogged with a 2006 laptop and a digital camera. I had a flip phone that took so-so photos. I had ethernet access on the floor but the Pepsi Center had no wireless access due to "security concerns." Not sure what that meant. We now live in an era when smartphones are much smarter than their operators and wireless is available at your neighborhood McDonald's (as is "breakfast all day!").

If I didn't blog from the floor of the convention or the pressroom, I had to find a public computer at the local library or a joint that offered free wireless. Starbuck's was not one of those, BTW. It's hard to believe that we survived such trying times.

So I convened and blogged Aug. 24-28. Leading up to the convention, I did my best to profile all of the state's 18 delegates. Some I interviewed and wrote about at the convention. I wandered downtown on Sunday to cover competing demonstrations. Ron Kovic and Cindy Sheehan spoke on the Capitol steps for the antiwar crowd and the pro-war folks stood across the street from Civic Center Park, glowering at the old hippies and young hipsters. Massed squads of police were there to ensure that tensions did not progress past the glowering stage.

I kick myself for missing the big ani-war march later in the week. Rage Against the Machine performed at the Stockyards Arena and then led a march to the Pepsi Center. According to news reports, tensions flared briefly when the police notified Tom Morello and company that they didn't have a parade permit. Police must have sensed something in the air (not pot -- this was pre-legalization). They decided to escort the peaceniks downtown. Peace and love prevailed. No alleged RATM-inspired riot ensued, as happened in Los Angeles eight years earlier. You can see video of the ruckus on YouTube. It may have fed off some of the anarchist-caused violence during the Battle in Seattle the previous winter. Rage on Stage did not lead to tear gas a rubber bullets in Denver. Interesting to note that the new RATM -- Prophets of Rage -- performed in Cleveland at the RNC. And they headline the Rock Against the TPP concert tonight at Denver's Summit Music Hall. While peace reigned in Cleveland, will it be the same in Philly for the DNC? You might find out more by reading your favorite prog-blogger than the MSM.

I will revisit some of my posts from 2008 in the coming week. Look up August 2008 in the Hummingbirdminds archives (scroll down the right sidebar). It's been instructive to see where I was, both in thoughts and deeds, eight years ago. I've always liked this Flannery O'Connor quote: “I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.”

A competitive state convention is an interesting state convention

All Democratic Party gatherings tend to draw bigger crowds during presidential election years. That is especially true when the race is a hot tamale, as it is this year.

Cheyenne expects a good turn-out for this weekend's Democratic State Convention at Little America. Bernie Sanders won April's Wyoming caucus but ended up with the same number of delegates as Hillary Clinton. And Clinton snagged the super-delegates, giving her an 11-7 edge while finishing with less than 50 percent of the caucus vote. You may have seen this mentioned during Saturday Night Live's opening skit over the weekend. It's also been a topic of conversation online and on CBS and ABC. Some commentators have posited that Wyoming's Democratic Convention may have the same uproar as experienced in Nevada. You may recall that Sanders' supporters disrupted the proceedings at that state's Dem convention.

A bit of dissension is good for the health of the party. A lot off dissension say, the kind the GOP is experiencing this year, may not be so good for the Repubs (pause here for laughter). Some Sanders supporters are new to party politics. These newbies register high on the enthusiasm scale but very low on  knowledge about how things work. You can't really call yourself a Democrat until you get involved in the party and attend years worth of boring meetings just to get your teeth kicked during every election. You also need to get out there and support Dems running for legislative seats, city council, school board, etc. I have yet to run for office but have worked for many worthy candidates, many of whom lost to not-so-worthy Repubs in the general election. Lee Filer lost his House seat in 2014 to right-wing kook Harlan Edmonds -- Lee is back to run again this year. Ken McCauley lost in my district in 2012, and you'd have to look high and low for someone more qualified.  Same goes for Kathleen Petersen in 2014. I've also walked neighborhoods for Mary Throne and Jim Byrd and Ken Esquibel. They won, and continue to do so. Ken is running for the senate this year and has his work cut out for him.

Chris and I will spend our Friday night date night volunteering at Friday night's welcoming reception. Come to think of it, we'll be volunteering Saturday night as well. Yes, we lead boring lives. But it's great to be around people energized by the political system, no matter its flaws.

Come on out tomorrow night and see what's up with Democrats across the state. You may get to meet a Democrat from Niobrara County, where Dems are seldom seen and are in danger of becoming endangered species much like the sage grouse and the jackalope.

Here's the party invitation, filled with exclamation marks to show you how damn enthusiastic we all are:

Laramie County Democrats are thrilled to welcome ALL Wyoming Democrats to the state capital as we host the Friday night welcome reception for our state convention! We are honored to host and we've got an amazing reception planned for your Friday night arrival! Join us at Cheyenne's Historic Depot Museum as we celebrate Wyoming Democratic values! The reception is from 6:30-10 p.m. Your $20 admission includes hors d'oeuvres, your first drink, music, unlimited fun, and so much more! You'll have a chance to meet elected officials, new candidates, national delegate hopefuls, and folks who are excited to turn Wyoming Blue! National Delegate Candidates, this is your opportunity to campaign!  Come, bring your swag, mingle, network, meet Democrats from all over the state. This event is open to the public so please invite your friends! All proceeds benefit Democrats running for office!

To get more info on the Laramie County Dems, go to our Facebook page. Go here for the Laramie County Democrats  Grassroots Coalition, the FUN-draising arm of the county Dems. Also check out the Wyoming Dems web site.

A lesson in guest-posting

Funny things happen when you're asked to write about writing. You learn stuff about your own work.

Lynn Carlson at Writing Wyoming asked that I write a guest post about realistic dialogue. Sure, why not? Piece of cake. I dredged up an old quote from one of my writing profs at Colorado State U. Problem was, I couldn't find the original. I looked and looked.

I decided to use a swatch of dialogue from one of the stories in my as-yet-unpublished collection, "The Department of Noticing Things." Swatches of dialogue are not like swatches of fabric or paint chips. It's tough to lift a conversation that not only can stand on its own but represent the rest of the story. It's doubly hard not to revise it. In fact, writing about dialogue makes it almost mandatory to revise, especially when you quoting writers such as Alice Munro, Ernest Hemingway and Elmore Leonard.

So I spent about 110 percent more time on the piece that I thought. But I earned some revision along the way. Read some cool quotes about dialogue. Read three new stories. Reread Hemingway's "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" for the hundredth time.

Thanks to Lynn for the request. I'll do it again. I urge my readers to read Writing Wyoming. You don't have to be from WY, but it helps.

You can read the guest post at http://www.writingwyoming.com/2016/05/writing-realistic-dialogue.html. I appreciate comments.

Sunday morning round-up: Unforgettable cancer stories, Gonzo Derby Day, and snow, lots and lots of snow

Happy May Day!

While many of you bask in May sunshine, we are buried in snow. A moisture-laden three-day snowstorm covered my lawn and garden. It would look like March 1 but for the daffodils and blades of grass poking out of the white blanket. It's not that winter is too long, but spring is too cold and snowy. But without it we get the wildland fires of August.

Since my Jan. 18 retirement, I write every morning. I write journal entries, short stories, and a novel. I write what matters to me. I haven't been blogging as often as I find myself preoccupied by imaginary stories and memoir. It's not as if there is a lack of blogging topics, especially in this wacky election year. I so miss the gonzo journalism of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. If this isn't a "fear and loathing" year, I don't know what is. As is true with most writers of my generation, Thompson influenced me. I don't/can't write like him, but his style infected all of us.

Fellow blogger Ronny Allan featured my sister Mary's cancer journey last week. Mary works at Big Bend Hospice in Tallahassee and, a few years back, was selected as a bone marrow donor for my brother Dan, struggling with leukemia at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Mary was undergoing pre-op tests when the doctors discovered a spot on her lung which turned out to be a carcinoid tumor. She was successfully operated on. That also ruled her out as a bone marrow donor. My sister Molly was the eventual donor, leaving her nursing job in Italy for several months to come back to the states. How did this family drama turn out? Click here to find out.

On Saturday, May 7, 2-5 p.m., the Laramie County Democrats Grassroots Coalition (LCDGC) holds its annual Derby Day and Wild Hat party/fund-raiser in Cheyenne. Admission is $15 and you can buy one of the Derby horses as well as bet on side races managed by your fellow Democrats. Prizes also given to the wildest hat. The Kentucky Derby is known for swanky attire and wild hats. Swanky attire in Cheyenne usually is rodeo duds. Wild hats are usually not big and floppy as the incessant wind will send them off to Nebraska. Cowboy hats? Well, if you get one that fits right, it should stymie most wind gusts. You can probably "wild up" any cowboy hat, although you may get some weird looks at Frontier Days. For all the details of the event, click here.

BTW, DYKT Hunter Thompson's magazine article on the 1970 Kentucky Derby became the first of his pieces to be labeled gonzo as in "gonzo journalism?" 'Tis true. You can read "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved" in Thompson's 1979 collection, The Great Shark Hunt. Will Cheyenne's Derby Day be decadent and depraved? One must attend to find out.