Wyoming Democrats call out Republican extremist

The following appeared on the Facebook page for Republican Megan Degenfelder for WY State Superintendent of Public Instruction:

It’s no wonder the Democrats have spent the last week attacking and trying to silence me from speaking at the Western Conservative Summit. I will not be silenced! I remain as committed as ever for fighting for our Wyoming Students and families.

She added a link to her speech which I won’t add here. Suffice to say it’s taken from the right-wing Christian Nationalist playbook.

Here's the reply from the Wyoming Democrats:

Folks:

It looks like we struck a nerve with the Superintendent of Public Education, eh?

Here’s the deal: she’s dead wrong. Our goal has never been to silence her -- given her position and platform, we just think she ought to use her voice to support public education in Wyoming, not spew extremist right-wing rhetoric alongside the founder of a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as a hate group. 

And for the record, we’re going to call out her (and others) for their words and actions as public officials. Holding the other side accountable is one of our most important duties as a political party.

So, if you’re of the opinion that our elected officials shouldn’t get a free pass, I hope you’ll consider joining the cause by becoming an investor in our party. Whether it’s a one-time donation or you choose to be a recurring donor, everything helps and it all goes towards the work of making sure Wyoming isn’t a one-party state.

And, Superintendent Degenfelder, if you happen to read this email, we’ll gladly let up when you decide that supporting public education, educators, students, and families in Wyoming is more important than being the mouthpiece for failed and false rightwing ideology. Deal? 

In Solidarity, Joe M. Barbuto, Chair, Wyoming Democratic Party

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.

Happy graduation, Annie. You did it!

Annie Shay, happy graduate (LCCC photo)

Daughter Annie graduates from Laramie County Community College on Saturday.

We are so proud of her. It has been a long haul. She struggled with learning disabilities in elementary school. She was diagnosed with epilepsy when she was eight. During teen years, she struggled in school, the learning part and the socialization part. She began to depend on drugs and alcohol to get her through each day. She was bipolar and we sought help but nobody seemed to understand it. She spent months in treatment centers in Wyoming and Colorado. She was able to complete some of her school work but fell too far behind to graduate. She earned her G.E.D. and started school at LCCC. It was too soon. She decided to major in music and spent many hours rehearsing and singing with the school's choirs. She has a beautiful voice but is not so confident around colleagues and audiences. 

She dropped out and soon was off again to treatment centers, this time in California and Illinois and Utah and finally back to Colorado. The years passed. She was diagnosed with bipolar and personality disorder. Meds didn't seem to be the solution but she kept at it, finally underwent ECT at a hospital in Boulder. She improved and returned to Cheyenne to live with Chris and I and go back to school. 

Nevertheless, she persisted. 

That's one thing she always wanted -- an education. Through it all, she spoke of that often. She enrolled again at LCCC. She depended on the Help Center for guidance. She struggled at first. Nevertheless, she persisted. She passed her classes and discovered that she liked school, maybe for the first time. That's one thing that people don't always understand about community colleges. They allow all kinds of learners to get a second chance. May be you aren't ready at 18. Maybe you get married young and find out 20 years later that you want an education. Maybe you're a military veteran looking for new directions. 

I was a university dropout, a scholarship student at a big university who lost his way. I worked and traveled. Four years after graduating high school, I enrolled in the local community college and started in the fall of 1973. My classmates had already graduated from four-year universities and were negotiating adulthood. I felt a bit lost. But the classes I took were wonderful. Contemporary American Literature. Public Speaking. Art History. The teachers were terrific and somehow I was interested in each subject. At night, I worked as an orderly in the Substance Abuse Unit at the county hospital. The nurses locked me in with the alcoholics who had been scooped out of the gutters or arrested for raising a ruckus. This is where they came instead of jail. Many had been to jail. We played cards and smoked. They told tall tales, most of which were true, I suspect. I learned a lot. On quiet nights, I studied. On wild nights, we orderlies wrestled rowdy drunks. That was some year. By May, I had enough credits to graduate and returned to a four-year university where I graduated in two years. 

We all have our stories. Annie now has hers. She is very excited about graduating. So very excited. In mid-June, she moves to Laramie to start summer classes at UW.  She will be thirty-something by the time she graduates. She worries about that, wondering if she will fit in with younger students, make friends in the larger context of a university, be able to excel in upper division classes. Chris and I worry. Annie is an introvert with ongoing psychological issues. She likes her time alone but sometimes too much time alone is bad for her mental health. 

Nevertheless, she persisted. 

Happy graduation, Annie. Enjoy it all!

P.S.: Annie posted a blog today from her POV. Read "How I got here -- graduating from college class of 2022" at WyoGal. 

Wyoming Tribune-Eagle reports on racist behavior in Cheyenne

It was a cringe-worthy headline above the fold in Saturday's Wyoming Tribune-Eagle: 

Air Force base leaders speak out against COMMUNITY RACISM

Yes, that last part was all caps and for good reason. Cheyenne's Warren AFB is home of the 90th Missile Wing and scores of nukes. Like most military bases, it’s self-contained to a certain extent but its airmen and airwomen and civilian employees interact with the community. 

Those interactions, lately, have been nasty. Missile Wing Commander Col. Catherine Barrington called for a meeting with community leaders after Black Air Force families reported racist incidents.

USAF dependents attend K-12 schools located around the county. Many are African-American because, well, it's the United States Air Force and not the Wyoming Air Force. As such, it is made up of young men and women from all over the U.S. and the world. Many have experienced multiple overseas deployments to far-flung bases and war zones. Some have been called racist epithets and discriminated against because of their color in Cheyenne, the place I call home.

The worst local offender reported in the article seems to be McCormick Junior High. This doesn’t surprise me as our daughter was terribly bullied when she attended McCormick. Its students tend to be white and from the mostly prosperous north side of the city where I still live. This doesn’t prevent them from being bullies and racists. 

[Col.] Barrington explained that multiple students have been bullied and called racial slurs at McCormick Junior High. A ninth-grade girl got off the bus the first day of the school year and was immediately called the N-word more than one time.

The girl opted to attend Cheyenne Virtual School rather than to be in this nest of vipers. Others were bullied and called racial slurs which led to fights where black students were suspended and fined. 

One wonders where these 13-year-olds might have learned such behavior. Look to the racist behavior of parents, those people you see at Trump rallies and ranting about Critical Race Theory and face masks at school board meetings. There are consequences for such loathsome behavior.

It's not only school children. One uniformed Black airman bought a gun at a local shop. When he returned in civvies to get the gun serviced, the proprietor said she didn’t have time to serve him.

“Other airmen have also experienced this,” said Warren's Command Chief Master Sergeant Nicholas Taylor. “And when they went in to buy ammunition, they would not sell ammunition to airmen of color at all. So they had to ask their Caucasian counterparts to go in and buy ammunition on behalf of them.”

Let’s be clear – in Cheyenne, we live at the intersection of Guns & Ammo. We have a couple dozen stores and pawn shops where you can buy shootin' irons. We have at least two outdoor firing ranges and one indoors. On Sundays, you can hear the Warren security detachment’s firearm drills. I would venture that everyone in my neighborhood owns at least one firearm. It’s not unusual to see gun stickers on front doors that read “This home protected by Smith & Wesson;” similar four-wheel-oriented stickers adorn pickups. Lest you think only conservatives own guns, you obviously don’t know any Wyoming Democrats. The Second Amendment is religion here, even among heathen Liberals.

So, when you hear that a Black airman cannot buy bullets in a Cheyenne shop when his latest deployment may have placed him armed with a fully-loaded taxpayer-funded weapon in a war zone, you have to say WTF or something similar.

James Peebles also spoke at the public meeting. He’s the director of the Sankofa African Heritage Awareness, Inc., in Cheyenne. His organization conducts seminars about systemic racism, the history of slavery, and the civil rights struggles. All things we desperately need to know about if racist behavior is to stop. Timely subjects during Black History Month.

Peebles described watching the social dynamic in Cheyenne change, with Black families leaving after experiencing racism. There also has been pandemic-driven anti-Asian rhetoric in the past five years.

After a recent ugly incident, Peebles added that “the last year was the first time he even questioned his safety here after living in Cheyenne for 12 years.”

Thanks to reporter Jasmine Hall for covering this meeting and a big thanks to the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle for featuring it so prominently. We need our newspapers to show us when our neighbors behave badly.

Repost: WyoGal Songs of the West addresses college education programs behind bars

This post comes from my daughter Annie's blog. She's a liberal arts major at Laramie County Community College with a strong interest in journalism and communications. In this post, she tackles a subject that I haven't addressed, how degree programs for prison inmates cuts recidivism. She's watching the Ken Burns Netflix series, "College Behind Bars" and was impressed by the program that Bard College conducts for people behind bars. Give it a read and see what you think. Go to WyoGal-Songs of the West: College Incarcerated: How college in Prison helps prevent recidivism 

SANKOFA African Heritage Awareness presents Oct. 12 conference on timely topic of racism w/update

This Cheyenne conference addresses the very timely topic of racism in the U.S. 

From a press release:

Nate Breen, LCSD1 board member, to Speak at Sankofa Conference

Laramie County School District No. 1 and Wyoming State Board of Education Trustee Nate Breen will address the eighth International Africa MAAFA Remembrance Day Conference, "Wake up America and Speak!"

It begins at 9 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 12, at Laramie County Community College, 1400 East College Drive.

Breen will discuss “Civic Education and Educating to Respect Differences.”  The conference panel includes Dr. Mohamed Sahil: “(Un)Welcome to America, Historical Immigration Practices.” Dr. James Peebles will address  “The Great American Dilemma, Racial Discrimination versus Racist Ideas.”

The conference is free.

For more information, contact Jill Zarend 307-635-7094 or jillmerry@aol.com or visit www.SankofaAfricaWorld.org    

Sponsored in part by: LCCC Department of Student Engagement & Diversity; Think WY-WHC

Update 9/23/19:

The Sankofa planning committee is happy to announce the addition of three notable scholars, who have given indication to contribute to the historical MAAFA Remembrance Day on October 12: Delvin B. Oldman, Northern Arapaho Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, Wind River Reservation, Riverton, WY; Dr. Justin Conroy, Ogalalla Lakota, Principal of McCormick Junior High School, Cheyenne. Both participants will serve as stand-ins to receive from Reverend Tim Solon, The Article of Contrition to Native Americans. 

 Also joining us, Dr. Frederick Douglas Dixon, Assistant Professor of African American Studies, University of Wyoming, acknowledging the Mis-Education of the Negro, a historical writing by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, Father of Black History Month.

When young people say "I don't feel safe here," you know you have a problem

"I don't feel safe here."

This isn't a Baltimorian, besieged in his (Trump's words) "disgusting rat and rodent infested mess" of an apartment building, one possibly owned by his slumlord son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

They aren't the words of a Salvadoran mother, fleeing with her children to an unknown and possibly worse future in The Land of the Free.

Not a Syrian fleeing his country's mess, one caused, in part, by the USA's ham-handed policies in the region.

The quote above comes from a well-educated, young Caucasian gay man who lives in Cheyenne, Wyo. I spoke to him at a recent party. I don't use his name because I do not have his permission and I'm not sure he'd give it to me if I asked. He's soon to be married and then, he and his Air Force husband, will relocate to Larimer County, Colo. That's the Colorado county that neighbors Laramie County, where he lives now and where I live too. The man and his fiance don't venture outside much, not even during our glorious summers, because they feel threatened by their neighbors. I didn't ask him if his neighbors had threatened or done violence to him. I know what he means. The couple's very presence is an affront to their conservative neighbors. And conservatives these days feel free to let their hatreds run wild. Trump and his henchmen loosed the dogs of hate. Now they unleash their venom at Trump rallies ("Send her back!") and daily in cities and towns across America.

In the Obama days, it seemed as if the U.S. was making strides in tolerating "the other." They were those who looked differently than the average white person, those who practiced a religion other than White Evangelical Protestantism (or no religion at all), and LGBTQ Americans. We should have known that just the act of electing an African-American president couldn't dampen hatreds brewing for hundreds of years. The signs were all around us. Trump's Birtherism. Rise in hate crimes. Tea Party rallies. The tilt to the Right by many state legislatures, especially our own. Even the Republican-dominated Congress's efforts to stymie Obama at every turn had racism at its roots.

With Trump, America's worst instincts have been turned loose.

Wyoming's population ages. Politicians wonder why young people, raised in the "western Way of life," nurtured in Wyoming churches and schools, and beneficiaries of full-ride UW Hathaway scholarships, kick it all over for life in crowded cities. Cities on the Rocky Mountain West have benefited from this great migration from Wheatland, Wyo., and Sterling, Colo. Denver, Salt Lake City, Boise, Albuquerque. That's where the jobs are. That's where young people congregate. They may be afraid of losing their job or their house, but they aren't scared of their neighbors who are a rainbow of ethnicities and lifestyles. They live in peace. Learn tolerance at work. They pack up their family and return to Cheyenne during CFD. Amongst the parades and night shows, they hear Rep. Liz Cheney rant about how Native Americans are ruining our "Western way of life." WTF? They read letters to the editor praising Trump's non-racism and cursing liberals. Republican legislators convene at summer meetings and speak about their latest efforts to curb open voting, immigration, LGBT rights, reproductive freedom, etc. Then they ask: "How can we keep our young people in the state."

Stop being assholes. That would be a start. Then, dear legislator, you can go about the task of funding education, alternative energy, community development, arts and culture and all those amenities that make life worth living.

Then, maybe, young people will stay in Wyoming, maybe even move back home from their $500,000 bungalow in Denver's Wash Park or their $2,000-a-month studio apartment near downtown. They won't be afraid. They will be invested in the present and future of their home towns. They will say, "I feel safe here."

Part VI: The Way Mike Worked -- How I Almost Became a Nurse

The five-year-old boy from New Hampshire didn't talk much. He held up his right hand as the nurse dressed his wounds and I stood by to assist. The tiny hand was imprinted with concentric circles and looked as if someone had given the boy a special tattoo, although he was much too young. The reality was much worse. An adult, his mother, had punished the boy by pressing his hand into a hot electric stove burner. Third-degree or "full thickness" burns. The top layer of skin (epidermis) is destroyed as is the bottom layer -- the dermis. So are the nerve endings. Because the epidermis and hair follicles are gone, new skin cannot grow. The burn must be treated and then skin grafts are applied. This boy was a long way from skin grafting.

He would be in the burn unit for awhile, which is OK because everything was paid for. This was a Shriners Burns Institute (now Shriners Hospital for Children's--Boston), supported by millions raised by the guys with funny hats who drive funny cars in your local Fourth of July parade. I lived with my girlfriend Sharon in a walk-up one-bedroom on the poor side of Beacon Hill. It was winter and very cold. I wished I was on a Florida beach where I had been this time last year. I was cold yet fascinated by the work I did and observed as a nursing assistant/orderly at the hospital.

One morning, as I was getting off of work, the head nurse asked to see me. She asked me if I was interested in becoming a nurse. The hospital would pay for my education. I was stunned by the offer. I was torn, too. Just recently this dropout and former marine biology major had decided to go back to school and major in English and become a notable writer or at least one who got his stuff published. What to do? A secure future in the medical field? Insecure future with the other thing? I chose the other thing.

But not before I discussed it with Sharon. She was pondering the same thing, going back to school to major in nursing. Maybe we could go to the same school, University of Connecticut in Storrs, the place where she'd started college three years earlier -- she also was a dropout. Most of the people we knew were dropouts who went on to do interesting things with their lives. The Shriners staff wanted me to go to school in Boston. What to do?

As I pondered, I walked to my graveyard shift at the hospital and Sharon rode the MTA to her graveyard shift job at Deaconess Hospital in the burbs. She looked good in white. She looked good in anything. She told me stories of "rubbers," the guys who rubbed against women on the subway. One day she waited for her train when a young guy emerged half-naked from the shrubbery and began to masturbate in front of her. Those stories made me want to punch somebody, anybody. It made me want to ride with her every morning and every evening, to protect her. She was good at what she did and knew it. I was good at what I did but didn't know it. The die had already been cast. I just didn't know it.

Two years earlier, I had screwed up my chance of a military career. I know now that it was an act of sabotage. My mentors had lined up to promote my brilliant career. I failed them, on purpose. I didn't want to tell them no. Inside, I said no-no-no. Had I also failed myself? I guess, at 22, I didn't know. Here was another opportunity. It looked mighty good to a young man with no prospects.

When the night was slow, I gathered in a break room with the other nursing assistants. We stayed awake by drinking tea and eating chocolate. Some of the others were already in nursing school and spent the time starting IVs on each other. It kind of creeped me out but who was I to judge? I ran blood samples over to the Mass General lab through a spooky underground tunnel. I'm sure that it was well-used during the day. But at night? There was a camera and squawk box at each end. I pushed a button at the Mass General end and someone would eventually come on the line and asked my identity. I was admitted into the hospital basement. I skipped riding up the freight elevator because it smelled like formaldehyde. "That's where they bring up the dead animals, you know, for the med students to practice on. Human corpses, too. The morgue's down in the basement" The graveyard shift guy in the lab liked to pull my chain. At least I think he was pulling my chain.

Some of our young charges died at night. Burns can be horrific. House fires. Electrocutions. Accidents. Burns do terrible things to a body. Third degree burns with lung damage were bad. Very, very bad. Sometimes children are trapped in fires. Old people, too. Not only are their skins less dense, but their lungs are especially vulnerable. Kids' lungs are still developing. Oldsters' lungs are sensitive to everything.

I bugged out of Boston in March. Sharon and I pledged our love and promised to keep in touch. I hitched up to Connecticut a month later to see her and we drove out to the Cape. She came down to Florida in May and we drove to the Keys and camped. By the end of the summer, we were no longer a couple. I went back to school at the local community college. Sharon went to UConn. I sometimes wonder if she became a nurse or something else. What long and winding road did she take? 

Drama nerds and debaters seize the day after Florida school shooting

It seems that arts education can be a wonderful asset in standing up to bullies.

That was on display last week at the CNN town hall meeting on gun violence. Young people from Margory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., schooled Sen. Marco Rubio and an NRA flack on just about everything. No surprise that the students had honed their skills by participating in the school's drama club and speech and debate programs.

Memorizing lines and defending your views in front of a crowd can give you the confidence to take on a U.S. senator and the NRA. I encourage these students to continue the fight. Their #NeverAgain movement is sponsoring March for Our Lives march on Washington on March 24. Allied marches will be help around the world. Some are being planned for Wyoming. I will keep you posted on these pages. Several high-rolling liberals have donated to the cause. The rest of us can donate by going to https://www.gofundme.com/8psm8-march-for-our-lives . As of noon Sunday, the campaign has raised $2.5 million of the $2.8 million goal.

Further reading on the topic:

Emily Witt wrote this Feb. 19 New Yorker piece on how three drama club nerds sparked the #NeverAgain movement: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-the-survivors-of-parkland-began-the-never-again-movement

New Yorker article on Feb. 23 about high school protester Cameron Kasky and his "Spring Awakening" at https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-spring-awakening-of-the-stoneman-douglas-theatre-kids

The high school's drama club wrote and performed an original song for the CNN-sponsored town hall session Feb. 21. Get more here: http://womenyoushouldknow.net/marjory-stoneman-douglas-powerful-shine-song/

Here are some of the song's lyrics:

But you're not gonna knock us down
We'll get back up again

No more Mr. Nice Guy

Our young people feel betrayed.

Youngsters are getting murdered at a sickening rate. After the Florida high school attack, survivors are angry. They are speaking out, staging sit-ins and planning protest marches. 

Their elders have abandoned them. As one of those elders, I am ashamed of my country. And I see myself as one of the good guys. I've worked for decades to derail the nefarious plans of crackpot right-wingers. I have allies in the fight. Fellow travelers, in the terminology of the Red Scare 1950s. In a small place such as Wyoming, we tend to know one another. Right now, we have our eyes on a state legislature dominated by wingnuts. I would say wingnuts from the hinterlands, but some of the worst ones are from the state's most populated county -- Laramie. My county. 

Sad to say, being a good guy is not enough. 

The children can teach us. Today, 100 teens from Parkland, Fla., got on a bus and took their pleas to their legislators in Tallahassee. We send them our thoughts and prayers. Scratch that. Thoughts and prayers have already been tried. I send my anger with them. They will confront a building filled with earnest faces.  Good guys -- mostly guys. They are involved in their churches, love their wives and children, are kind to animals, and care for the state of the nation.

Sad to say, being a good guy is no excuse.

To paraphrase Jesus: "You will know them by their actions." Matthew 7:20: "...by their fruits you shall recognize them." These legislators, many of them from rural America, are good Christians and read the Bible. Perhaps they neglected this section of Matthew. To use another phrase, "actions speak louder than words." What are their actions? They rail against immigrants. They demonize their LGBTQ neighbors. They cut food and medical benefits for those who need it most. They hatch plans to stop blacks and Hispanics from voting. They cut funds to education. They give carte blanche to gun dealers. 

You know them by their actions. So why do you keep voting for them? I ask these questions of Wyomingites, too. Florida may be in the news but we are seeing some ridiculous behavior in our own reps. In Wyoming, we are looking at a bill to allow conceal and carry in churches. Really? Have these people no sense of right and wrong? Didn't they get their butts paddled if they lied and cheated and bore false witness against their neighbors? Didn't they get Atticus Finch or Andy of Mayberry-style lectures when they broke the rules? They show no evidence of this. Apparently, you can't trust the words of good guys.

Our children and grandchildren now show us the way. I am not going to rain on their parade. Tread carefully, I could say. Be patient. After all, the world won't change with one fit of outrage, one speech, one march. But they will have to discover these hard facts as they work for change. 

As many aging activists will tell you, the struggle for black civil rights took hundreds of years. Women's Movement veterans can tell you the same thing. The struggle for gay rights didn't begin with Stonewall. Environmentalists have been publicly advocating for change since the first Earth Day in 1970.  But those battles have been going on a lot longer as people discovered that their fate is tied to that of the planet. 

This is beginning to sound like a graduation speech. I apologize. Aging good guys see themselves as founts of wisdom even though they may be just tired and afraid. I advise you -- wear sunscreen and don't take any wooden nickels.  

And don't let the good guys get in your way. 

Love is love is love is love -- but not at Florida's Father Lopez Catholic High School

Below is an e-mail I sent to Father Lopez Catholic High School President Pat LaMorte in Daytona Beach, Florida. It's in response to Mary Kate Curry's "resignation under duress" at the school when it became public that she was engaged to a woman. To read more about this, go to the New Ways Ministry web site at https://www.newwaysministry.org/2017/10/23/catholic-school-teacher-fired-gender-engagement/. Thanks to fellow Lopez alum John Bartelloni (Class of '70) for alerting me about this.

My letter:

Dear Pres. LaMorte:

My Father Lopez High School education taught me that the Catholic Church should be alleviating pain and suffering in the world, not adding to it.

I just read about Mary Kate Curry's "resignation under duress" as a theology teacher and the school's decision to forbid her from coaching (even volunteering to coach) the FLHS girls' basketball team. 

Curry's letter was heartbreaking. She obviously loved her jobs as teacher and coach. To take those away from her is the worst kind of cruelty. 

And the reason? She publicly outed herself as a member of the LGBT community, someone who loves someone of her own gender. She couldn't live a lie any more and you punished her for it. Shame on you, the school and the diocese. Shame.

I attended Father Lopez from 1965-69. I was president of the National Honor Society and lettered in basketball, part of the team that went to the state tournament in 1969. I am proud of being a Lopez alum. 

Make us all proud. Alleviate the pain you caused in this young woman's life by reinstating her as a teacher and coach. 

Some 50 years from now, a 2018 Lopez grad will look upon his or her time in the classroom or on the court with Ms. Curry and say, as I do today, that I learned how to be a honorable human being at Father Lopez. 

Do the right thing.

Sincerely,

Michael Shay

Cheyenne, Wyoming

March for Science Wyoming steps off in Laramie on Earth Day 2017

Official logo of the March for Science Wyoming, set for Laramie on April 22. T-shirts are for sale with this design. All of the proceeds go to March for Science Wyoming. Go to  https://www.bonfire.com/mfs-wyoming/

March for Science 2017, Wyoming version, will be held on Saturday, April 22, in Laramie. This is one of the 300-plus satellite sites to the main march in Washington, D.C. Cheyenne residents will be bused in, returning the favor by Laramie folks who carpooled and rode the bus to Cheyenne on Jan. 21 for the Women's March.

April 22 is Earth Day, a good day to cut air pollution by pooling our resources. Also a great day for a march in Laramie, which is home to the state's only four-year university and a vibrant batch of science-oriented academics and researchers. An artistic bunch, too. The head of the UW Creative Writing Program is Jeff Lockwood, a writer and noted entomologist. J Shogren is a Nobel Prize-winning environmental economist and professor who leads the "pulp Americana" band J Shogren Shanghai'd.

Students come from all over the world, studying water hydrology, geology, computer science and many other majors. UW international students have additional worries under Trump's most recent batch of anti-immigrant policies. One wonders what effects these travel bans will have on international athletes. In a January 2017 article, Fox Sports reported this:

According to a study done by Rukkus Blog on 2016-2017 rosters, 11 percent of college basketball players are born outside of the United States. The total number of foreign-born prospects on college rosters is up 40 percent in the last 10 years.

Wonder if those well-heeled athletic supporters will lobby their man Trump to keep the overseas pipelines open. They will, if Gonzaga and Kentucky and Duke start losing. Face it, Trump responds to muscle, especially when it comes from rich white guys. We gotta have our March Madness!

Meanwhile, we march for scientists and researchers and women and immigrants and writers and artists and all the other targets of Trump and his authoritarian policies.

Here are some tips to avoid those typo gremlins

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some recent examples:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Old photo recalls 1970s-era campus hijinks

This photo by renowned photog and my college housemate Bob Page shows ritualistic behavior in collegians circa 1975. In the mid-70s, it was all the rage to put hats on dogs. The dogs thought the hats made them look smart so began to apply in droves to major American universities such as University of Florida. Soon, canines pushed not-so-bright humans (example at left in photo) out of popular classes in the English department, such as "Romantic Poets: Proto-Hippies Blake and Coleridge" or "No Man is an Island: John Donne Goes to Vietnam." Problems developed later when scores of Canis familiaris went wild during graduation's cap-tossing ceremony, mistaking the flying caps for frisbees. Chaos ensued, leading directly to Donald Trump.

What I learned in graduate school, part one

It seems as if I've read hundreds of critiques about M.F.A. writing programs over the years. They usually fall into two camps.
No. 1: I spent three years and tens of thousands of dollars on an M.F.A. program and all I got was this lousy diploma.
No. 2: Grad school was worth it -- I learned more than I thought I would.

Alas, I've read more of the former than the latter. They usually are written by young people who have joined the system without much life experience which, of course, is what it means to be young. Does this 65-year-old retiree remember how it was to be 19 or 21 and flummoxed by a university system -- any university system? I was an overachiever, a scholarship student, who crashed and burned after two years at a major American university. The fault was my own, although I spent many years blaming the university and the government and my parents and the phases of the moon. I am an ex-newspaper reporter and satirist who loves it when people take on any system. Doesn't mean the writer is correct in his/her critique. It's fun to be pissed off in print and get attention. 

I'm going to say some nice things about my M.F.A. program. Stop here if you prefer to read the negative over the positive. You may learn something but no guarantee, just as there is no guarantee that an M.F.A. program will make you a stellar writer and a denizen of the Literary World. 

Before I begin, let me thank writer Marian Palaia who wrote a recent essay, "The Real World vs. the M.F.A." for Literary Hub at http://lithub.com/the-real-world-vs-the-mfa/. If fact, you can skip this blog and go read Palaia's piece, as it covers most of the same ground that I do. She's close to my age (pushing 60) and earned her M.F.A. as an older student, older even than I was at 41. Such a wonderful essay that I'm ordering her novel and reading it. The least I can do for a fellow writer.

I liked these lines from her essay:

I do not advise waiting as long as I did to get an MFA, if you are sure that what you want to do is to write. What I do advise is gaining some awareness of the world, and of the people in it who are not like you, before you go into a program.

At 37, I had met a lot of people not like me. Gang-bangers, corporate CEOs, jocks, cabbies, political activists, druggies, yuppies, loonies, etc. I had held tons of jobs, some temporary gigs as hospital orderly and warehouse worker, to full-time jobs as corporate editor and newspaper reporter. When I began to look around for creative writing programs, I had one goal in mind: become a better writer. I had written articles on teen-age swimming phenoms to automotive fan belts. I'd written a novel, which earned me an agent but not a publisher.  My agent advised me to quit my job, go down to my basement and write full-time. I knew that hunkering down in my basement with my typewriter was a bad idea. I could see myself typing, the clatter of the keys clanging off of the basement walls. But I could also see myself wandering the basement rooms, haunted look on my face. Not good for an introvert depressive to be alone all day in his basement. Visions of Emily Dickinson, tormented in her attic. Ernest Hemingway and shotgun at his writing desk in remote Idaho.

I also wanted to meet interesting people. I guess you can do that anywhere. But writers, even in academia, should be interesting, right?

Thee first interesting person I met was writer and faculty member John Clark Pratt. My wife, son and I were in Fort Collins looking for a rental. I decided to drop into the CSU English Department. Dr. Pratt (I could call him John but he'll always be Dr. Pratt to me) was the lone M.F.A. faculty member hanging out in the Eddy Building on a July afternoon. He welcomed me, told me a bit about the program, which only began the year before. Only later did I learn that Dr. Pratt was the author of "The Laotian Fragments," a pilot in Vietnam, and one of the country's experts on the literature of the Vietnam War. He helped establish the CSU library's special collection on Vietnam. In the late 1980s, it featured unpublished manuscripts by veterans, published works by some well-known writers and an assortment of notes and research and ephemera. You can visit it still. Might even be online now.

When school began in late August, I met the rest of the faculty and my fellow students. For the most part, the faculty was closer in age to me than the students, but I had expected that. John Calderazzo was the creative non-fiction guru, A world traveler, he wrote mostly on environmental issues and wrote an excellent book on volcanoes. He'd been a free-lance writer for years, writing articles for corporate, real estate and automotive mags to make extra cash. We free-lanced a real estate piece together, since I also was on the lookout for extra cash.

David Milofsky was a novelist and short-story writer. He'd just left a position with Denver University to take the job at CSU, and commuted from Denver. Milofsky had been an investigative reporter in Milwaukee and still had that hard-bitten city reporter attitude. He was my adviser as I liked his fiction and he liked the fact that I was a bit older than the other students and not so naive and wide-eyed. Poet Bill Tremblay was from Jack Keroauc's hometown and played football before turning to poetry. He was more coach than academic. Mentor to many poets and the faculty member that you knew would turn up for every student reading. I worked for him as student editor of the campus literary magazine, the Colorado Review.

Mary Crow was the other poetry prof. She may have been the most academic of the bunch. She traveled widely, was bilingual and made sure that students got a taste of writers from all over the world through the visiting writers program. Receptions were always held at her house, potlucks where us budding writers got a chance to gnosh and chat with writers such as Paul Monette, Linda Hogan, Tomaz Salamun, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Mary talked me into being the M.F.A. student rep to the university's Fine Arts Program, which led to my career in arts administration -- more about that later. Leslee Becker was a fine short story writer and quirky human. She mentored us short story writers and also LGBT students in the English department.

One of my four semester-long workshops was with short story writer Steve Schwartz. I learned a lot in the workshop, but possibly the best info I got from Steve was about the Colorado Council on the Arts' Arts Education program. I applied, was accepted, and next thing I know, I'm signed up to spent a month in Peetz on the prairie as a paid visiting writer. The goal was to mentor high school students for half the day and write the other half. I never made it to Peetz as a writer/teacher, The students never knew what they missed, and neither did I. My job in Wyoming would place me in charge of a visiting writers program called Tumblewords, brainchild of the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF), then located in Santa Fe, now in Denver.

Most of these writers who also were teachers are now retired, as I am. A new crew took over, which is the way of things. I learned so much from them, and I was able to work with them in new and interesting ways when I found my calling.

In my next installment, I'll talk about all the good stuff I learned during my three years in the M.F.A. program. Stay tuned...

Republican debate -- better than watching reality TV

I watched the entire Repub debate tonight with some Dem friends. My brain has turned to mush. As far as wordplay goes, kudos go to Mike Huckabee. The topic was foreign policy. He recalled Ronald Reagan's words: "Trust but Verify." Obama, said Huckabee, says "Trust but Vilify," referring to Pres. Obama's comments today equating Republicans with the Iranian mullahs. Clever, especially for a guy who always puts The Word ahead of words.

What else stood out? 

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio owed $100,000 in student loans four years ago. I guess he was trying to say that he's just a regular guy whose parents came over from Cuba and he had to take out beaucoup student loans to get the law degree that helped him win a Senate seat that pays a couple hundred thousand Gs annually plus all of the Koch Brothers money he can rake in with both hands. Rubio and I share an alma mater in the University of Florida. On the one hand, I'm happy to hear that at least one Republican candidate speaks openly of his college credentials -- he also has a law degree from University of Miami. On the other hand -- if Rubio gets elected, UF is bound to name something after him. Hope it's not the English Dept. 

Speaking of Florida, did Jeb! really leave Florida better off than he found it? He said that his nickname was "Veto Corleone." Is that true? I'm asking you, Florida Dems. And I'm wondering if Jeb! is really Southern shorthand for J.E.B. Stuart, the hero of the Confederacy. Memories run deep in the South.

Continued on Aug. 9...

Donald Trump said that the big problem we have in the U.S. is being politically correct. For the Repubs, political correctness mean a whole host of things they detest: Powerful women, LGBTQ rights and same-sex marriage, higher education, etc. For example, when Donald Trump wants to slam women and such as Fox's Megyn Kelly and says something about her menstrual cycles and people *(even Repubs) get upset, he accuses them of being "politically correct." It follows that being politically incorrect is the norm, which allows anyone to criticize uppity women. The same rules go for people of color, a term which, in itself, is politically correct, as it avoids those terms that many would love to use, including the "N" word, and various racist epithets for African-Americans, Latinos/Latinas, Arab-Americans and others. Republicans are most adept at criticizing campus liberals (eggheads, elitists) who continue to advocate for a liberal arts education for everyone. Republican Gov. Scott of Florida has famously (or infamously, depending on your POV) calling liberal arts majors a waste of time. Union-buster Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin brags about not having a college degree, a trait obvious to all of us with half-a-brain such as this liberal arts major.

I must return to Mike Huckabee for just a moment, As is the case with most preachers, Huckabee has a way with words. In regards to abortion, Huckabee said that "The Supreme Court is not the Supreme Being" and advocates for protection of fetuses by invoking the 5th and 14 amendments, the Tea Party's favorite amendments besides the 2nd. 

Dr. Ben Carson also had some good lines. I was surprised to learn that Carson once directed pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University Medical Center. Seems as if he could do less harm by being president. Carson wants to get rid of the IRS and institute a new taxation system based on tithing, which he called "God's fair system." He called Hillary Clinton "the epitome of the secular progressive movement." He also likes to throw around "politically correct." 

Gov. Kasich of Ohio proved to be the evening's beacon of sanity. He said that he and his fellow Republicans should do everything they can to counter the Democrats' continual harping on these supposed Republican traits: The party of and for the rich; the party that suppresses women and minorities; the party of the past. 

Good luck with that.

We'll let Sen. Marco Rubio have the last quote. Referring to himself and the other fine specimens on stage, he said: "God has blessed the Republican Party with all of these candidates. The Democrats can't even find one."

Say Amen.

Sing hallelujah.

Furnace Repair 101 for English majors

When my 33-year-old furnace coughed, sputtered and died. I called an English major.

Just kidding. Our household already includes one English major -- me. Everything I know about furnaces can be put into this capital O with plenty of room left over for use in one of my short stories.

When faced with the decline and fall of our furnace, I called an expert. The machine expired on a Friday night -- of course -- but Marv's Plumbing and Heating was willing to send a crew out to take a look, with no sky-high weekend charges. The crew inspected the furnace. They pronounced a few possible problems. I stood by, nodding knowingly, icicles hanging from my mustache. They concluded that they didn't know enough about my ancient furnace to diagnose the problem accurately. They said their top-notch HVAC (that's heating, ventilation and air conditioning for you laypeople) expert could come out on Monday and take a look. I said that would be OK.

When they left, I dialed up another heating company. I asked the man on the phone if he fixed old Lennox furnaces. He chuckled and then said it would cost me $120 for him to come out and take a look on a weekend. I thanked him, hung up and waited until Monday. My wife and I huddled around the space heater as prehistoric humans once huddled around the fire. We could have repaired to a motel for the weekend. Alas, I am an English major, salary-wise, and my wife works for a non-profit org, so repairing to a motel until my furnace was repaired was beyond our means. You will notice that I employ the old-fashioned, Middle English use of "repair" (from Anglo-French repairer) to add some language playfulness to the situation. I also can diagram any of the sentences I use in this blog.

I cannot, however, diagram or repair a furnace.

Chris the HVAC guy came over on Monday. I expected a guy my age, a battle-hardened, gray-haired veteran of the furnace wars. What I got was a furnace expert from the Millennial generation. He carried all the right equipment and diagnosed the problem quickly. Along the way, he said he had graduated from a heating and air conditioning school in California. While there, he met a young lass from Cheyenne who spirited him away to Wyoming. They live in an old house with a 60-year-old furnace which he could fix, and did regularly. He said that he would get back to me with an estimate. He did. The cost was astronomical. I called around, got estimates for a new heating unit.

Randy at Mr. B's replaced my furnace a week later. Unseasonably warm weather made life without heat bearable. I came home while Randy worked in the basement. We struck up a conversation. His roots go back to Tennessee, the Civil War and beyond. We swapped family history stories. His grandfather, a B-17 pilot during World War II, was shot down and spent 18 months as a prisoner of war. His grandfather kept a journal on the backs of wrappers of the soup cans that came in Red Cross packages. Those makeshift journals survived the war and were typed up. Randy had a photocopy and gave it to me. I read it. Amazing what people can do under duress.

Also amazing are the stories people tell. You have to listen, though. I advised Randy that there were many inexpensive ways to print his grandfather's journal as a book or booklet. Thanks to technology, the jots and scribbles of our forebears can be put into forms that will last for generations. My sister Eileen is doing that with our grandmother's World War I diaries and my father's World War II letters. I told Randy to get in touch with me and I could give him some publishing guidance. That's one of my specialties at my day job.

Randy provided a tutorial on my new Daikin furnace. He gave me a booklet with instructions and detailed diagrams. The diagrams look the same to me right side up or upside down. Randy knows the meanings of manometer and total external duct static pressure. I am grateful.

My new furnace hums along.

And here I am, writing.

New generation of book censors play the same old tune

Fiction must be very dangerous.

Why else would parents and school officials be trying to censor Huckleberry Finn, The Scarlet Letter, and A Farewell to Arms?

Parents of students at Highland Park High School in Texas must sign permission slips for their little darlings to read the above classics. I read all of them in Catholic school. Nobody ever asked my parents if it was OK to read such horrible stuff. Nuns and priests assigned them so they must have been just fine, right?

I could see Sister Miriam Catherine laughing with glee if my mother would have said, “Huckleberry Finn is a dangerous book.” And the good sister didn’t laugh easily. My mother would never had said that. She was too busy raising a passel of kids and working as a nurse. My father? When I was in the fourth grade, he invited me to read any book in his expansive library, courtesy of the Book-of-the-Month Club. Keep in mind that he was a conservative Catholic parent, an accountant by trade who read voraciously. Not read Huckleberry Finn? Don’t be absurd. He would have never said “don’t be absurd.” It’s something a character in a novel might say, an English classic such as “Wuthering Heights” (read it in grade school) or maybe one of the fake royalty riding the raft down the Mississippi with Huck Finn and Jim.

My parents and my four grandparents all were readers. Until my father went to college on the G.I. Bill, none had advanced farther than high school. They all would have considered it strange and un-American to tell us what not to read.

Soon at Highland Park, more books will be added to the list:

They are The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Dracula by Bram Stoker, The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, and The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shipler.

I regret that I have only read two of the books on this list. Now I have added them to my reading list.

Meanwhile, in Arizona, rapidly trying to outpace Texas on the batshit-crazy list, teacher Dave Peterson is under fire for teaching “pornographic” literature to their children. The pornography includes classics, such as “Hills like White Elephants” by Hemingway and “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor, as well as gems of contemporary fiction by Junot Diaz, Amy Hempel, Tobias Wolff, Ron Carlson and Alice Walker. I’ve read the entire reading list which has been thoughtfully posted on Facebook. It tickles me that Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” is on the list, a tale about political correctness gone bonkers (did any of the critics actually read these pieces?). It’s a fine reading list, one that I printed out for my own edification. Peterson also included an introduction to his list which serves as both encouragement and a warning. This is obviously a responsible mentor to our children, which is more than I can say about his right-wing critics.

There is a petition on Facebook supporting Peterson. Go sign it, read his list and then go out and read all of the selections. My fellow fiction writers are counting on you.

Remember what Kurt Vonnegut wrote in a letter to the chairman of the Drake (N.C.) school board who had burned some of the author's books:

“If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in any favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible that they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hard-working men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that. And we all know, too, that those words really don’t damage children much. They didn’t damage us when we were young. If was evil deeds and lying that hurt us.” 

Wyoming Education Association withdraws Balow endorsement

The Casper Star-Tribune reported this last night:

A political group representing Wyoming teachers announced Monday it has withdrawn support for GOP schools chief candidate Jillian Balow based on attacks she made against Democratic opponent Mike Ceballos in a campaign fundraising letter sent last month.  

On late Sunday afternoon, the Wyoming Education Association's Political Action Committee for Education, decided to pull its support of Balow, said Kathy Vetter, who is both president of the 6,000-member WEA and chairwoman of the PAC. The group is composed of WEA members who voluntarily donate to the PAC and make decisions on which candidates to support. 

The PAC had previously endorsed both candidates for superintendent of public instruction, Vetter said.

You can read Balow's fund-raising letter on the CST site. Its content won't be surprising to anyone familiar with Republican tactics in Wyoming. She links her Democratic opponent, Mike Ceballos, with unions and those liberals in Washington, D.C., such as Pres. Obama and education chief Arne Duncan  who "hand-picked" Ceballos to "federalize" education in Wyoming. Balow also asked for campaign contributions, which is what candidates do, but writes that she will need the money to blunt attacks by her liberal opponent. I've been campaigning for Ceballos and haven't seen any attack ads -- or attack letters -- from his team.  

As for his ties with all those wicked liberals inside the Beltway:

Ceballos has said the only people he knows in Washington are Wyoming’s all-Republican congressional delegation.

No surprise that our Repub trio in D.C. have all endorsed Balow and, by inference, her tactics. They've all used the "blame Obama for everything" approach in their own campaigns. They're reliably anti-union. This union member wonders why all of these inside the Beltway conservatives always take the side of corporate interests over those of working people such as teachers and state employees.

Campaigning for Mike in Cheyenne

Walked neighborhoods for Mike Ceballos this afternoon. Mike is the Democratic Party candidate for superintendent of public instruction. A fine candidate, as I told anyone who was home and not off at the UW homecoming game in Laramie. People tend to be friendly in Cheyenne, even when you're coming to their door and possibly disrupting the arc of an Indian Summer Saturday afternoon. I kept thinking: Why am I not in my backyard, sitting in an easy chair under the shade of my big elm, reading a good book, golden leaves falling around my shoulders? But here I was, knocking on doors, talking to people, and strolling down quiet streets.

The Ceballos campaign will be busy from now until election day. Some TV ads, and some GOTV events are planned. His Republican opponent has been running attack ads on TV and radio. She must be getting desperate.

Check out Mike's web site for more info.

And remember to vote on Nov. 4. You can vote early, too.