Alfred Joyce Kilmer on "Trees"

I salute the turkey oak tree in my backyard.

It's a tough little oak. I was looking out the sliding glass door a few weeks ago and saw its leaves detach in a strong wind. Looked like late September in Wyoming but it was late July in Ormond Station, Florida. The flurry of leaves caused me to call the city arborist and she asked if the leaves were brown on the edges. They were. "Needs water," she said. She was correct. I started hosing it down every day and now the leaves have magically returned. 

The tree is a denizen of the soupy landscape that makes up my neighborhood. We're not in the soup but I can see it from here. I live in the dry section of the wetlands. We are right at the periphery of  the Hull Swamp Conservation Area and the Relay Wildlife Management Area. Wildlife we got. A neighbor spotted a black bear in his backyard. A big ol' Eastern Diamondback was squashed by an F-250 near our PO boxes. We've seen turtles and birds galore. 

We are interlopers here. But, back to the trees.

One of my father's favorite poems was "Trees" by Joyce Kilmer. It's beautiful, really, with memorable opening lines: "I think that I shall never see/A poem as lovely as a tree."

Dad knew the poem by heart. It's easily memorized, rhymed couplets in iambic tetrameter which makes for a memorable beat. Four iambs instead of the usual five in pentameter poems. I point this out because it would have been a great choice of poems to memorize during after-school detention at St. Francis Catholic Grade School in Wichita. If we seventh-graders transgressed enough to get detention, the nuns gave us a choice of poems to memorize. Because all 12- and 13-year-olds have places to go and things to do after school, we chose the shortest and easiest of rhymes. No free verse, thank you. No epics such as "Child Harold's Pilgrimage" or "Howl," although I am pretty sure Ginsberg and the Beats were not on the list of approved Catholic verse.

I once had a choice between "Charge of the Light Brigade" and some silly love poem. I chose the war poem and can still recite most of it. "Trees" was never on the list. Odd thing is, anything by Kilmer would have out me closer to war than Tennyson. He also would have brought me nearer to my Catholic roots had I known about the 1917 collection he edited, "Dreams and Images: An Anthology of Catholic Poets.

But "Trees" lives on in collections. Kilmer converted to Catholicism in 1913 and wrote of his spiritual life. He joined up at 30 to fight in the Great War. Died at 31 at the Second Battle of the Marne. He was leading a patrol into No Man's Land and disappeared in a shellhole. When his troops caught up to him, he was quietly looking over the bombed-out landscape. He didn't respond. They shook him, then looked at his face to see dead eyes and a bullet hole in his forehead. Death by sniper. He's buried in the U.S. cemetery in France across from the farmer's field where he was killed.

He's been called "the last of the Romantic Era poets." His poems are predictable and schmaltzy. They rhyme, for goodness sake. Across the blasted tundra, the British war poets -- Sassoon, Owen, Graves -- were leading the charge into the revved-up post-war realism of the 1920s. You might see Kilmer's poem "Rouge Bouquet" in volumes of war poetry. It's about 21 soldiers of New York's Fighting 69th who were killed by a random German shelling. His legacy lives on in the names of schools, neighborhoods, and a national forest in North Carolina. The Philolexian Society at Columbia University sponsors The Annual Alfred Joyce Kilmer Bad Poetry Contest. Lest you think this is just an Ivy League Putdown, it is taken very seriously on campus. Here's a description from the scribes at Wikipedia (I donated to the cause and got a cool [EDIT] T-shirt):

The Alfred Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest has been hosted annually by the Philolexian Society, a literary and debating group at Columbia University, since 1986, drawing crowds of 200–300 students and participants vying for the title of best of the worst. Columbia faculty members serve as judges. The event is usually held in November and is heralded by the appearance of "Bad Poetry in Motion" flyers around campus (satirizing the New York City Subway's "Poetry in Motion" series) featuring some of the best verses of the last 20 years, as well as door-to-door readings in the dorms, usually performed by prospective new members ("phreshlings").

The event is named for "bad" poet (and Philolexian alumnus) Joyce Kilmer. His most famous work, Trees, is read aloud by audience members at the contest's end. In 2012, the Columbia Daily Spectator listed the Kilmer Bad Poetry Contest #1 among its "Best Columbia Arts Traditions".

 As a writer and arts administrator, I commend the Society's efforts to promote poetry and its performance. I can see my father, an army radioman in The Great War Part 2 and accounting graduate of a small Catholic college, standing tall in the auditorium and reciting "Trees" with Ivy League youngsters and aging fans of an almost-forgotten poet. 

"Trees," Joyce Kilmer, those lovely, lovely trees.

"This Land is Your Land" -- almost all the lyrics

This is from the official Woody Guthrie web site. I wanted the whole thing due to an ignorance in some quarters as to what the song is about. My plan is to give credit to where credit due. I also was curious about the copyright info below: "Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc., & TRO-Ludlow Music, Inc. (BMI)." I will tell you what I found in a separate post.

This Land Is Your Land

Words and Music by Woody Guthrie
Contact Publisher - TRO-Essex Music Group

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters;
This land was made for you and me.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway;
I saw below me that golden valley;
This land was made for you and me.

I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding;
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

---

© Copyright 1956 (renewed), 1958 (renewed), 1970 and 1972 by Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. & TRO-Ludlow Music, Inc. (BMI)

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

Rob Tannenbaum wrote June 12 in the New York Times:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I’m lyin’ here 

Just starin’ at the ceiling tiles

And I’m thinkin’ about

What to think about

Just listenin’ and relistenin’

To smiley smile

And I’m wonderin’ if this is

Some kind of creative drought because

I’m lyin’ in bed

Just like Brian Wilson did

Well I’m

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

So,

If everybody had an ocean

Across the USA

Everybody'd be surfin'

In Cal-if-or-ni-a

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

 R.I.P. Brian.

We take a Word Back: What to make of make?

In my 5/21 post, I brought up a term: word back. Used in a sentence: "I want my word back." Words in my English language have been stolen by corrupt people with no clue about the word's origins and what it really means. This is a travesty in my book, and I have a really big book on my side: The Oxford English Dictionary or, as we English majors call it, the O.E.D. Many of our public libraries used to have the book splayed open on a stand. Oddball students such as myself could peruse at their leisure, or make a beeline to it during a heated argument over the origin of a word or phrase. Yes, heated arguments about words. How I miss those. And the main reason I went dateless most of my college career.

Today's word is "make." And yes, it's the first word in the acronym MAGA. Those are the four words I will tackle during the next couple weeks. They are real words, not just initials on a red ballcap. 

What are we to make of make? Let the O.E.D. be our guide.

I hate to begin with a downer but, to save time, I must. Make can be a noun. In fact, it is a variant for maggot. Here's an example from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” circa 1604: “Your worme is your onely Emperour for dyet, we fat all creatures els to fat vs, and wee fat our selues for maggots.”

In more modern terms, we have this line by Mae West in 1930's "Constant Sinner:" "The double-crossin' heel! The garbage-can maggot!"

You don't see "make" in there. But, it is a variant which means it's rarely used except by historical fiction writers and time travelers. But the reference comes alive in 2025 because critics poke fun at MAGA followers by calling them MAGATS or MAGHATS or just MAGGOTS. We don't use the term as it's below our station to do so even though it's hilarious. 

Make is usually used as a verb that means to produce. Let's let Merriam-Webster have a crack at this: Make (transitive verb): to bring into being by forming, shaping, or altering material; to lay out and construct, to compose or write.

Back to the O.E.D.: The earliest known use of the word is in the Old English Period pre-1150. It has Germanic roots. It's use in Old English includes references in literature, music, and religion. 

Does the O.E.D. have anything to say about sexual references in popular culture? I didn’t look. But I have some examples. Let's make out (kiss, etc.). “Making Whoopee” (song about kissing etc.), "I want to Make It With You," a popular 1970s song by Bread which is really about sex as in "Love the One You're With" or so says Stephen Stills. Let's make a baby is a line used by married couples in rom-coms. "Wanna make sex?" is not a common term although it has been used in dingy bars at closing time.

"To make" is a very positive act. A maker is one who makes. A Makerspace is a place dedicated to making things usually artwork. My artist daughter visits a local Makerspace. Many public libraries have makerspaces in their children's/teens sections. Many of these libraries are under attack by Trump & Company and local right-wing kooks. Many makerspaces are funded by government grants which are being eliminated by the GOP-controlled Congress.

Makers, themselves, are under attack for being too woke and not appreciating all the MAGA Goodness spread like fairy dust by Donnie and Elon. Arts workers jobs are being eliminated along with budgets for state and local arts agencies as well as the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. To tell an artist he or she can't make any more is absurd. That's like telling us not to breathe. But it will hurt all of us, this pilfering of money for the arts and humanities. 

Merriam-Webster lists these antonyms (opposites): Dismantle, destroy, eradicate, abolish, take apart, etc., etc.

To Make. Think about it.

Discovering obscure maladies just one of many reasons to read John Dufresne’s “My Darling Boy”

Reading contemporary fiction has many rewards.

First, you get a whopping good story.

Second, when the writer knows their stuff, you feel it in your bones. This writer can write!

Third, you never know when you might run across a mysterious malady that might be one that you could have, really, personally. Alerted, you check it out.

Since Dufresne obviously delights in the odd, let’s talk about Dupuytren’s Contracture. In “My Darling Boy,” protagonist Olney Kartheizer mentions this malady of the hands as he contemplates a character in a story he might write for an imaginary family.

I thought, “I might have that.” As Johns Hopkins describes it on its web site:

Dupuytren contracture (also called Dupuytren disease) is an abnormal thickening of the skin in the palm of your hand at the base of your fingers. This thickened area may develop into a hard lump or thick band. Over time, it can cause one or more fingers to curl (contract) or pull sideways or in toward your palm. The ring and little fingers are most commonly affected.

Hopkins includes a video and photos. The contracture makes it hard to cut steak, hold hands with a loved one, and write a thank-you note. People over 50 from a Northern European background (it’s sometimes referred to as “Viking’s hand”) are the most susceptible. I viewed the video and thought, “I definitely have that.” So I’m calling my primary care physician to refer me to a hand doctor.

Dufresne is a writer who does his research so it’s hard to imagine he just pulled this out of thin air. There’s a reason to mention an infirmity that makes it hard to write or type with all fingers. It’s hard to write, period.

After many novels, story collections, and writers’ self-help books later, Dufresne has his craft well in hand.  

“My Darling Boy” is funny as hell and it will break the heart of any parent. It broke mine.

Olney’s mission is to rescue his son Cully from an opioid addiction. He might want to swim the Atlantic Ocean or fly to the moon instead. If you have experience with addicted children or any addicted loved ones, the first message you get at an Alanon meeting is “you have to let them fail.” That comes from AA too. At some point, there is nothing you can do that won’t take you down too. Tough love, I guess.

Olney won’t listen. He may be made of sterner stuff (offspring of Vikings?) but he isn’t. He loves Cully. Olney’s job at the Anastasia (Fla.) Daily Sun has been downsized from staff writer to book reviewer to copy editor to obit writer and then out the door. He is divorced and Kat, his wife, is remarried and in another town. He is the Elwood P. Dowd of Anastasia, stopping to talk with strangers and befriend them if possible. They become his cohorts in the search for Olney that takes him through the underbelly of Florida. And if you don’t think Florida has an underbelly, you ain’t looking out the window as you crisscross the state. Seedy motels, junkies on street corners, abandoned mini-malls with weed-choked lots. Oh, and street corner kiosks for time-shares. All there if you look. I always looked for underbelly when I traveled across Wyoming. I found plenty (no time-share kiosks in Rawlins though).

Dufresne has so much fun noticing. Maybe that’s why his work is included in the “Miami Noir” anthology (1 & 2) edited by Miami resident Les Standiford, a Ph.D. grad in creative writing from UU and once a seasonal park ranger in the Beehive State. Dufresne can be noir but he has so much fun with word play. The proprietor of a rundown motel uses malapropisms which wordsmith Olney shows mercy and only occasionally corrects.

The names of his small towns are wonderful. Melancholy is where his ex-wife lives and is the scene of much of the novel’s second half. At book’s end, Olney and his pal Dewey are off to find Cully. They come to a crossroads along one of those pine-straddled secondary roads. One way takes them to Gracious and the other to Whynot. come to a crossroads for Gracious and Whynot. Guess which one he takes?

Dufresne’s not Southern-born but he got here as quick as he could. He teaches creative writing at Miami’s Florida International University. He keeps company with Florida’s riotous writers. He shares the pages in “Naked Came the Manatee” with “Florida’s finest writers,” so says the New York Times Book Review. In it with Dufresne are Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard, Edna Buchanan, Dave Barry, and Carolina Hospital.

I read Dufresne stories before I tackled this novel. Dufresne’s name often comes up with other Southern Gothic fiction writers such as Lewis Nordan who grew up in Itta Bena, Miss. I once worked with Nordan and, after hearing him speak to a group of writers, realized I had to read all his books. He blends the tragic with the hilarious which doesn’t seem possible until you read “Wolf Whistle,” a novel of the notorious Emmett Till murder. Read it and see.

But first, Dufresne’s “My Darling Boy.”

This aging M.F.A.-trained writer vs. Copilot's A.I. mind

This is my version of a prose poem that I dashed off late last night. Maybe it's not a prose poem. A ramble, maybe, or just a burst of words that flew out of my head. I've been doing that a lot lately. Words bursting from my mind with very little rewrite. It's fun, really, just to let the words flow. Freewriting is what I used to call it when teaching college composition. I would tell my students just freewrite for 10 minutes and then let's see if anyone wants to read their pieces. Don't think about it -- just write! Do as I do. And I would write for 10 minutes about any darn thing I wanted. Things like this:

So what do you think of Florida my old friends ask. I think what is it they want me to say that I find it the most magnificent spit of land in the U.S. of A.? They are friends so I can't lie. I find it confusing after 46 years elsewhere many elsewheres. Warmer than my recent home Wyoming but confusing. Old landmarks no longer exist or they exist in puzzling forms. The beach seems less magnificent maybe because it’s so managed. The 60s and 70s we drove the wide low-tide beach any time day or night. We drove high tide too with all the attendant risks. Mostly we were pushing Yankees out of the soft sand and sometimes they paid us because they were so grateful that their 1968 Buick LeSabre did not get gobbled by the salty-sea. We surf as the sun peeks over the flat line of the horizon. A tortoise surfaces beyond the breakwater and we hope it’s not a shark. The waves are surfable but just barely and it’s OK because there always is tomorrow and tomorrow after that. My old rental west of the interstate is now a development and the beat-up two-lane road is now named for a gated community called Tymber Creek and yeah that Tymber with a Y and all the timber cut down for new houses says thank you alphabet. On Hartford Ave my father is not out by the street, dressed in shorts and flapping button-down, with beer in hand, yelling at the surfers to slow down. I go to a funeral for a high school friend last week and the widower a guy who was my classmate and teammate and relies on a wheelchair post-stroke looks up and says, “You look just like your old man.” And I take it in stride because I do that’s a fact and I’ve heard that the old friend is incapacitated and it is not true not true at all. We share quips about our conveyances, him his fancy wheelchair and me my fancy spine-assisting e-scooter. We are a fine pair of ballplayers 1969 and we make scholarship choices and it works out for him and he returns hometown and I’m cast off into the cold and I don’t regret it now but I did hundreds of times. Our links to past lives are pulled until they almost don’t exist. I tell my new friends: Yes, this place is too crowded and this is a voice from the Capital City of the nation’s least-populated state. It’s a place where newcomers my students from Torrington and Hanna and Meeteetse say THE CROWDS!!! THE TRAFFIC!!! and we city-born ones say it will grow on you boys and girls it will grow. So what do you think of the new Florida my green-eyed senior citizen? I open the bedroom window, hear the waves breaking at night. The waves. 

MS Copilot rewrite: 

My old friends ask what I think of Florida now. After 46 years elsewhere, I'm confused. It's warmer than Wyoming but different. Old landmarks have changed or vanished, and the beach feels less magnificent because it's so managed. In the past, we drove on the wide low-tide beach anytime, even at high tide with risks. We helped Yankees stuck in the sand, sometimes for a fee. We surfed as the sun rose, hoping to spot tortoises, not sharks.  

My old rental is now a development, and the two-lane road is named after a gated community called Tymber Creek. Hartford Ave has changed too; my father no longer yells at surfers. Last week, I attended a funeral for a high school friend. The widower, a former classmate now in a wheelchair, remarked that I look like my father. We joked about our conveyances, reminiscing about our scholarship decisions from 1969.  

Living here in Florida, I tell my new friends it’s crowded, especially compared to Wyoming. But I hear the waves breaking at night, and that remains unchanged. 

MS Copilot is not wrong but it's bland is it not? It just doesn’t get some things. Surprisingly, it does get other things. I thought about breaking up my big block of type into separate paragraphs. Copilot detected the change and did exactly that. AI scares me a bit. There are times, usually late at night when I am writing things down, when I wonder why I write at all. Really, why?

Git along little dogies -- and watch out for that six-foot gator behind the palm tree

When I moved from Florida to Denver in 1978, I wandered down to the local bookstore and bought “Centennial” by James Michener. It was published in ’74, two years before the Centennial State’s centennial. That tie-in helped boost the book into the bestseller lists. Michener had a history at UNC. He taught there from 1936-40 when it was called the Colorado State College of Education. He donated all of his papers and research material to UNC and it became the Michener Special Collection. The library was named for Michener in 1972.

When I moved to Wyoming in 1991, I picked up John McPhee’s “Rising from the Plains.” In it, McPhee, with the help of legendary Wyoming geologist David Love, Tracked the amazing millennia of land masses rising from and falling into the plains. On one of my first work trips around the state, I listened to the audiobook and found myself on site at the Red Desert and the Snowy Range and the big caldera that is Jackson Hole. Never looked at them the same again.

I’m writing this because I now have returned to Florida from Wyoming which, as I remind people who seem a bit confused by its whereabouts, I say it’s the big (almost) square state just north of another square state, Colorado, where both pot and membership in the Democratic Party are legal.

But I digress. When I arrived in Florida in August just before back-to-back hurricanes, I vowed to read a book by a Florida writer about an era of the state I knew nothing about. So, naturally, I chose a book about Florida cowboys and their cattle drives. Head ‘em up and move ‘em out – and watch out for the snakes and the gators and malaria-carrying skeeters.

“A Land Remembered” from Pineapple Press of Palm Beach is an excellent novel by Patrick D. Smith. It tells the story of three generations of the MacIvey clan from 1858-1968. In the early years, they face starvation, gator attacks, ambushes by Confederate deserters, and all kinds of wild weather. They round up stray cattle with bullwhips and the crack of the whips give them the name “Crackers.” They assembled herds, drove them to the west Florida port of Punta Rassa near Punta Gorda, and faced all sorts of adventures along the way. They eventually moved from cattle to citrus to land developers, each with their successes and pitfalls. They lost friends and family to raging bulls and rustlers. But all of that land that the family bought in what’s now Dade County became very valuable once air conditioning entered the picture.

It's a fantastic tale, the book worthy of the kudos heaped on it. I couldn’t avoid making comparisons to books and movies of cattle drives in the West, especially Wyoming and Colorado. I worked for 30 years in Cheyenne and learned a lot about the history of the cattle biz in the West. Cheyenne Frontier Days is in its second century and that history is featured in the CFD Old West Museum, the Wyoming State Museum, and many works of art around the city.

“A Land Remembered” is a great novel and opened my eyes to Florida history I knew little about. The MacIveys make their home on the Kissimmee River near the town that’s mostly known as the neighbor to DisneyWorld, SeaWorld, and all those other amusements of Central Florida. Kissimmee hosts an annual rodeo and an excellent museum, the Osceola County Welcome Center and History Museum at 4155 W. Vine St. There you can view dioramas of some of the scrawny cattle rounded up from swamps and scrubland, the outfits worn by Florida cowboys (no Ray-Bans but they could have used them), and info on the various predators that threatened cow and cowboy. The Seminoles also played a part in the trade and Smith does a great job describing their culture in his novel.

I think my next move will be to the Ormond Beach Public Library and see if I can find a Florida-based book targeted by Moms for Liberty. There should be scores to choose from. I’ve been here for two months and don’t yet have a library card or whatever they use for library access these days. I do have access to Libby on my Kindle but Libby is not the same thing as spending hours scanning the new books section. I have found so many treasures there.

On that stretch of sand near J.D. Salinger's favorite Daytona Beach hotel

June 1966. My boss asked me why I was drilling a hole so close to the frothing ocean. High tide coming, boy. Looking for bananafish, I said, and turned the auger in the soft wet sand, digging a hole for the tourist's umbrella. What you talkin' about boy? Sir it's a perfect day for bananafish in Daytona. He grabbed the auger and told me to pick up my five dollars for a day's work and get off his damn beach. Now, he said. I dove head-first into the fresh hole. Blue-green water gave way to a murky yellow soup where dead bananafish floated. They ate too many bananas, swelled, and couldn't escape into sunlight. It was summer 1948. Salinger's Seymour tried to explain it to the kids on the beach at Daytona but they just thought him crazy, which he was, I suppose. So this is what you saw in the war, Sergeant Salinger? Bananafish floating, mutilated bananafish everywhere. That dreadful allied mistake off the English coast, bloody Normandy hedgerows, the bitter Bulge, the stink of the liberated extermination camp. Dead bananafish drove you into the asylum in Germany and you never came out, not really. You shipped out to another bigger asylum, the U.S.A., wrote about it, and we never understood. Your stories spread the alarm. We never understood. We kept looking for that one yellow bananafish who made it out into the blue-green waters. We are looking still.

Sources: Sergeant Salinger, Jerome Charyn; A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger.

There's a deer in the works and I'm not sure what to make of it

There’s a deer in the works.

Not like Kurt Vonnegut’s errant deer in his Welcome to the Monkey House story. This deer just breezed by my living room window and traipsed across my front yard before disappearing through the hedge and into my neighbor’s vegetable garden. When I looked to see if it took time out to munch on Swiss Chard, I saw nothing.

How odd to see a deer in my neighborhood on a Sunday morning. Any day, for that matter. I instantly though of Vonnegut’s story, Deer in the Works. It impressed me when I first read it and gained a lot more meaning when I joined a billion-dollar corporation as a publications editor in the 1980s. I had grown tired of the freelance writing game and was looking for something more permanent, something that would help me buy a house and start a family. I found it at the Gates Rubber Company’s Denver works.

A younger Vonnegut found his job at the General Electric works in Schenectady, N.Y. Vonnegut’s character, David Potter, lasts only one day at the works. I went five years and Vonnegut worked from 1947 to 1951 at GE. A young father, he quit the job after selling several short stories to the now defunct Collier’s Magazine. Knox Burger, the magazine’s fiction editor, took Vonnegut under his wing but was surprised when Kurt quit his day job and moved the family to Cape Cod so he could write. Burger later said, “I never said he should give up his day job and devote himself to fiction. I don’t trust the freelancer’s life, it’s tough.”

Vonnegut had some tough years. He persevered. He hit it big in 1969 with Slaughterhouse-Five, possibly the best war novel ever written. It’s really considered a darkly comic antiwar novel. He met Hollywood producer Harrison Starr at a party who asked if Kurt was writing an antiwar novel. He said he was and Starr replied, “Why don’t you write an anti-glacier novel?” Not sure about Vonnegut’s response. But Starr’s questions seems very Vonnegut.

Vonnegut studied biochemistry while a student at Cornell. He was kicked out of Army ROTC for poor grades and a satirical article he wrote in the college paper. He lost his deferment, dropped out of college, and enlisted in 1943 before he could be drafted. He ended up as a scout with the 106^th Infantry Division which was overwhelmed by Nazis at the Battle of the Bulge. The division lost 500 troops and 6,000 captured. Vonnegut ended up a POW in a slaughterhouse in Dresden. Then came the firebombing. Twenty-four years later, Vonnegut was able to write about it.

I read it as a high school senior in 1969. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was reading but knew it was wonderful. I was also reading Catch-22. None of that stopped me from accepting a Navy ROTC scholarship. ROTC kicked me out in January 1971 due to bad grades and bad attitude. I was able to scrape up enough dough to last another semester and then I was done. My 1-A classification came in the mail at my parents’ house where I would have been living in the basement if we had one. I worked a day job at a hospital taking care of old people. I surfed on my days off and waited to get drafted but that didn’t happen.

This morning, the deer disappeared into my neighborhood. Not sure what happened to it. It seems unreal now, maybe a figment of my overactive imagination. All morning, all I could think about was Deer in the Works and every Vonnegut story and book I read which was most of them. The Vonnegut section fills up considerable space in my memory bank. The wayward deer is in there somewhere.  

The writer's walk

I am a sitter

One who sits

I sit all the time now

My broken back.

Was a time when you

Couldn't get me to stay still 

Could not get me to sit through

A well-intentioned speech or

Even a movie with a message. 

I walked to school and store

I walked just to walk. 

Each step caused a storm of words

That later I made into stories.

Now I walk with a walker called a

Rollator because it rolls with each step.

I stand straight. My back hurts

I proceed slowly and it's not the same as 

When I could walk unfettered Long's Peak  

Lightning Pass Colorado River headwaters  

Appalachian Trail Florida Trail 

Tomoka River Harper's Ferry

Down every street in D.C. and Denver

I cannot walk the writer's walk

So I sit.

Joan Didion and "Slouching Towards Bethlehem"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, 

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 

The ceremony of innocence is drowned; 

The best lack all conviction, while the worst 

Are full of passionate intensity.

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

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

Mrs. P has a problem and needs some help

The opener for one of the stories in my collection, The Weight of a Body, now available as an e-book on Amazon. The story was inspired by a real incident, one that I've taken great care to turn into fiction. Poetry wiz and literary lion M.L. Liebler liked it enough to include it in the anthology, Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams, published by Coffee House Press. It features poetry, fiction, and nonfiction by and about America's working class. Contributors include Philip Levine, Diane di Prima, Willa Cather, Jack White, Quincy Troupe, Li-Young Lee and a host of others. Find a copy at your favorite bookstore. Read on...

The Problem with Mrs. P 

First problem: nobody was home to help. Not her two daughters, off to school. Not her husband Robbie, who hadn’t been home for weeks, probably right this minute at that whore Gloria’s house.

Second problem: she was seven months pregnant and bleeding like crazy. She pressed a cream-colored towel against her crotch; it bloomed with a red chrysanthemum of her own blood. She stood in the bathroom doorway, eyes sparking, knees shaking.

Third problem: her damn husband had the car. Not that she was in any shape to make the seven-mile drive into Cheyenne, a few more if you factored in the hospital which was downtown.

Fourth problem: the telephone was dead, thanks to Robbie not paying the bills like he was supposed to. She had her own cell phone with a few minutes still left on it. But it was downstairs on the kitchen table. Just the thought of negotiating the stairs brought a throbbing to her abdomen.

Fifth problem, or maybe it was the first: she and her baby boy might be dying.

To be continued...

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.  

Sunday morning round-up: Flowers bloom, visitors swarm the Botanic Gardens, and a cop named Trampas gets busted for meth

A Sunday morning round-up.

I haven't written one of these in a long time. It's possible I lost interest during the plague year. The only things I seemed to have gained during that time was 20 pounds. 

But it's summer and much is happening. Outdoor events such as concerts and art festivals. Great weather prompts people to flock to the parks. I volunteered at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens front desk yesterday. Two weddings going on -- one inside and one outside in the Peace Garden. Large family groups trooped into the Conservatory. We don't ask people where they're from but talked to a lot of locals and Coloradans. Cars in the parking lot from Virginia, Illinois, and California. The gift shop rang up sales, including one for a fine Tara Pappas print. Her show will be in the second floor gallery through the summer.

BTW, the Botanic Gardens annual appeal aims to raise $75,000 to "renovate and enhance the beloved Women's Civic League Peace Garden for safety, accessibility, improved maintenance, and beauty." The Peace Garden is looking a bit beat up. If you donate a certain amount, you get a plaque by the reflecting pool. I look at the names etched in the remembrances scattered around the gardens. I don't recognize most of them but time passes and all that remains of a formerly vital gardening fan is a marker underneath a Prairie Fire Crabapple tree that once was a sapling and now is a human-sized tree with bright pinkish-red blooms. 

The seedlings in my garden look around and ask: so winter is over? And I reply yes, for now. My tomato plants are six inches tall and growing fast now that the sun's heat has returned. I grew my cherry tomatoes from seed last year and got a good yield, as they say in the farming biz. You never know. Results depend on so many factors.

It's usually not a good thing to see Wyoming in New York Times headlines. This morning was no exception. Here's the header: "How a Police Chief in Wyoming's Ranchlands Lost Her War on Drugs." The accompanying photo shows dismissed Guernsey police chief Terri VanDam and officer Misty Clevenger. Both women wear jeans and cowboy hats, the prairie stretching out behind them. You can't really get any more Wyoming than this. The story by Ali Watkins detailed Guernsey's Struggle with illicit drugs and how VanDam's and Clevenger's investigations got sidetracked by the Old Boys' Network. The women were replaced by male police. It didn't take long for one of the new hires, Trampas Glover, to be arrested for smoking meth in his garage while his children were present. Trampas, oddly enough, is the name of the bad guy in Owen Wister's "The Virginian." Best known for calling the title character a "son of a bitch." The Virginian places his pistol on the gambling table and replies, "When you call me that, smile." Thus starts the feud that ends in a climactic showdown.

So a Wyoming story, told remotely, becomes an even Wyominger story with a cop named Trampas busted for smoking meth in his Guernsey garage. 

Trampas: You son of a bitch!

The Virginian (putting gun on table): When you call me that, smile.

Trampas (reaching for meth pipe): Give me a few minutes.

Don't know if Trampas is still a law officer in Guernsey. But he probably is.

One more thing: I'm reading a fine book by Laramie's Ann McCutchan, "The Life She Wished to Live: A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings." Rawlings, of course, wrote "The Yearling" and other books set in north-central Florida. I went to school nearby in Gainesville. An English major, I had very little interest in Rawlings. Now I do, thanks to Ann's book. 

The subject may be roaches but, if you look closely, you see so much more

My latest piece for Wyofile's Studio Wyoming Review has the header "The subject is roaches," a review of Laramie artist Shelby Shadwell's exhibit at Blue Door Arts in Cheyenne. Pretty good header for an arts review as cockroaches and bugs in general don't come up that often. For good reason -- nobody likes a roach, at least the kind in the animal world (none of the other kind in WYO, at least not legally). I have never seen a roach of any type in WYO. Bugs prefer the hot sweltering climes of the South.

I grew up in the South and have seen hundreds of cockroaches. You turn on the kitchen light at 2 a.m. for a snack, and you hear them skittering back to their hideouts -- you might even catch a quick glimpse of one. You can wake up on a sunny Florida morning and see one staring at you across the pillow. You might be driving along and see one riding shotgun in your rusty 1972 Ford Torino. It's not merely bad housekeeping, although I have been guilty of that. Roaches will inherit the earth. It's not too much to imagine that roaches and their pals in the insect world will be running the show in the year 5020. Of course, we may be living in Kevin Kostner's Waterworld by then. But if I know my roaches, they will find ways to backstroke their way into your giant catamaran or floating fortress or wherever our soggy future relatives live.

Shadwell's show is a small one in a relatively small gallery. The art is big. Blue Door Arts proprietor Terry Kreuzer cracked me up when I asked her how she got a rising star such as Shadwell to show in her gallery in Cheyenne's most famous downtown building that would be deserted if it weren't for the enterprising artists on the ground floor.

"I asked him," she said.

Later, I was puzzled by the fact that the artist has shown rarely in Wyoming. He's been at The Nic in Casper and at the Jackson Art Center. Never in Cheyenne, according to his artist resume. Ironic since I note in my SWR piece that he has received two visual arts fellowships from the Wyoming Arts Council headquartered right here in Capital City. It just shows there are few exhibit spaces for contemporary artists in Cheyenne and Wyoming. You might say that is fitting in a state where artists are more interested in quaking aspen and the Grand Tetons than in abstractions and gigantic roaches. Au contraire, I say. I worked at the Wyoming Arts Council for 25 years and came to know plenty of artists who walk on the wild side in their work. For artists, it makes it tough to survive in an already tough place if there are no places to show your work,

It's not all about artists and galleries. It's never been more important to express yourself. That goes for everybody. Members of the ruling junta, Trump and his cronies, have no aesthetics. Art is just a commodity to them, like a yacht or a 50-room garish Shangri-la on the beach (any roaches at Mar-A-Lago?). It's no accident that Trump wants to review all government architecture, make sure it is "classical" instead of some crazy-quilt modern architecture that doesn't imitate the Parthenon. Trump and his GOP pals are working to defund the arts, humanities, and museums. The creative world is what threatens their destructive impulses. No accident that artists have worked to transform Trump's No Brown People border wall into something artistic. The odds are stacked against them as they are up against the monoliths of power and money. But you gotta try.

Their daily assault on our democracy is also an assault on our senses. It's important to create to counter that. It doesn't have to be a direct blast at No-Nothingness. The creative act itself is a blow against negativity.

Go make something. And vote. Get involved. Participate in your community. Be kind. And get out and view some art. It might inspire you to do all of these other life-affirming acts.

Here's to all the decent people

What makes me most angry about Donald Trump as president of the U.S.A.?

All of the kind and decent people who live in my country. They deserve better. We deserve better.

I remember Dr. Kobayashi of Denver who made house calls and rescued me from extreme pain when I was 8 years old. Dr. K served his country, the one that locked him an internment camp at war's outbreak, and became a doctor in a city that wouldn't lease a space to him and his Nisei partners outside of The Red Line.

The group of young LDS members who picked up my girlfriend and I from the side of the highway along the Bonneville Salt Flats in 1972. The two drunk gamblers who gave us a ride in their Cadillac from Elko had been busted by the cops and we were left to fend for ourselves. The teens took us to SLC, bought us dinner, and did some mild proselytizing but I didn't mind.

My mother and father who voted Republican who now rest side-by-side in a Florida cemetery. They would have been shocked by Trump's behavior and by the curse words I use to describe him most of the time (sorry, Mom).

My friends I surfed with at Hartford Approach in Daytona Beach during my high school years. They weren't all angels but would lend a hand when you wiped out and your board surfed alone to shore. This was the 1960s, the big board days before leashes.

My Never Trumper sister who drove 650 miles round trip this weekend to help my Always Trumper brother celebrate his 60th birthday.

The retired African-American preacher who I mentored at a tutoring class run by a nun. He was learning how to read after decades pretending to read scripture from a Bible which he memorized as a youngster in church. He came to the class after his little granddaughter called him out when he couldn't read her a bedtime story.

My college calculus professor who tutored me for hours in a lost cause.

The Latino marine who saw me, recovering from surgery, struggling with a full grocery cart and loaded them in my car and assisted me to my seat. He's a fellow YMCA member who, for reasons known only to himself, always salutes me in the gym. I should have been saluting him this whole time.

The nuns at Mercy Hospital who got me to the nunnery so I could watch my favorite Saturday morning shows ("Mighty Mouse," "Sky King," "Fury"). No TVs in hospital wards in the 1950s.

There are scores of others. Small kindnesses and huge ones. You have your own stories -- feel free to share them here. I urge you, in their names and millions like them, to get to the polls on election day and vote out the narcissistic blowhard who occupies the White House. All of his acolytes, too.

Welcome to the Poetry Hotel

Write short, said all the experts. Be concise. 

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

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

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

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

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

Boomers and Millennials live in different worlds when it comes to books

A university professor complained on Facebook that her upper division literature students don't know the name Gerard Manley Hopkins. Never heard of him, never read any of his work.

These youngsters have also never read Gwendolyn Brooks. They don't know Gwendolyn, they also don't know the greatest spoken word poem of all time.

The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We
Left School. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

Ms. Brooks recited that poem in a room in the CSU student union one night in 1990. It's hard to find more meaning in 24 simple words. Kind of like the poet herself -- so much talent in a tiny frame. Nobel Prize winner.

Some English majors have never heard of her. Take heart, youngsters. It took me awhile to discover our Ms. Brooks. I had to read up on her as I planned her trip from Chicago to Fort Collins. I'd never encountered her work in any of my undergrad or grad courses. I discovered her by meeting her when I was 39, a late-blooming M.F.A. student.

Better late than never. Probably won't see that over-used phrase in any good poem. And what if you did? At least you'd be reading. That seems to be the problem. Kids are reading but only certain things. Sci-fi and fantasy. Harry Potter. Superheroes. Graphic novels. Zines. Manga. Etc.

Lest I be another Baby Boomer ranting about Millennials, let me say this: "I'm not." I am glad that Millennials continue to read. Some of their reading is online and on smart phones but it's still reading.

Millennials complain about Baby Boomers, those aging humans that are parents and grandparents to new generations. Millennials are tired of Boomers asking for computer advice. Much like the techs in BBC's "The IT Crowd," many are basement dwellers surrounded by high-tech gizmos, When we call them for help, they advise us, "Have you tried turning it off and then back on?" Even worse, sometimes we call them from land lines which youngsters regard as quaint items from another century, which they are.

Other things that annoy Millennials are our tendency to accumulate things, especially old china sets and fine silver. Chris and I have three sets of china gifted to us by various relatives. Chris has art and figurines from Japan, Ethiopia, and German, parents where there army family was based. Should Antiques Roadshow ever come to Wyoming, Chris is ready to haul her treasures to the stage and rake in some cash. Our kids hope she does as they do not want to deal with them when we pass into the other realm. I am told that businesses have cropped up aimed expressly at disposing of all the collectibles Boomers leave behind. 

Books are my treasures. Many of them are in boxes in the basement. My basement-dwelling daughter occasionally brings me a box to go through, saying she will be happy to take the castoffs to the library bookstore. I open the box and cull the castoffs. Unfortunately, I often find an old favorite
or one signed by a writer friend. I insist on going through these thoroughly lest some classic should slip through my fingers. Annie comes along hours later and is flummoxed that I have added just a few volumes to the library pile while  the box remains nearly full. Often I am in my easy chair, reading a book I enjoyed decades ago. She feigns anger, vowing to wait until I die to get rid of all the books. Who cares, I say, I will be in the great library in the sky. All the universe's books will be at my fingertips. I will be able to read them in any language, including Tralfamadorian. That would be heaven.

Hell would be TrumpWorld with no books. We already live in that hell.