Pardon me boy is this the Pennsylvania Station? No, Ormond Station, and the train is a comin'

We live in a place called Ormond Station. It is located in Central Florida on a line where Volusia County and Flagler County meet. Our mailing address is Ormond Beach. Our mail is routinely lost. Perhaps the postal delivery person is looking for a railroad station because Ormond Station's logo is railroad tracks. The roundabout located just outside our Groveside neighborhood's gates bear some fine railroad tracks on the sand-colored-brick structure that surrounds a fountain. We can sometimes hear trains rolling down a Florida East Coast Railroad line. When we are driving beachward down Grenada Avenue (Fla. Hwy. 40) and we hear the lonesome whistle blow, we know that our motoring excursion will be delayed at the railroad crossing. Grenada is one busy avenue. 

Groveside is not beside any orange groves. That's what I think of when I think of Florida groves. It is aside groves of wetland trees and bushes so I guess that counts as a grove. Developers develop hereabouts by clearcutting forests. It is easier to build without trees. The thinking is that this is Florida and greenery grows so fast you can almost watch it burst into maturity. So, build the houses, plant some trees, and in ten years you have groves. 

There used to be orange groves here. When we moved to Florida in the mid-1960s, oranges still grew. You could drive down county roads in the spring and smell orange blossoms. A beautiful sweet smell. There was a roadside store along U.S. 1 close to my new location that sold oranges and anything orange you could dream of. You could buy a bunch of citrus and ship it home to Michigan or even Wyoming. Too many hard frosts killed citrus north of Orlando. You could find groves all the way up to Ocala on the road to Gainesville. In Patrick Smith's wonderful novel "A Land Remembered," the poor schmucks settling post-Civil-War Florida, were growing oranges in the sandy soil. They needed the shade as Mr. Carrier had not yet invented A/C. 

Here at Ormond Station we expect a train any time. In our imaginations. I can see a train line running down Airport Road, from its terminus at Hwy. 40 to its end at U.S. 1. It passes Ormond Airport thus its name. Shuttlecraft not yet designed will fly you to college football match-ups around the state. The trains will also be modern, possibly a solar-powered streetcar or light rail. Other neighborhoods are being planted along the way. There are two schools along the line . I walk my neighborhood to the Groveside marker and pick up the early afternoon train. It takes me to the Ridgewood Line which travels down U.S. 1 to Jackie Robinson Ballpark, home to the Daytona Tortugas. I love a good baseball game on a spring afternoon. My wife Chris, also a baseball fan whose father once took her to Atlanta Braves games, is with me. My children, too, Kevin and Annie. We are spirits together, our little family who settled these parts back in its infancy, when we left the Rocky Mountains behind for a place in the sun, something aside a grove, a rail stop to the future here at Ormond Station.

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?

The accountants who got us to the moon, July 1969 -- Part 4

Fate had other ideas. We couldn’t sell our house in a down market as hundreds of other Apollo pioneers were trying to do. My father reported that he hated Cincinnati. He took a job with NASA which still needed space accountants and returned to Daytona just in time for the new school year. School chums asked me to return their going-away present but my dog had chewed up the nice Frisbee they gifted me. I made the varsity in my junior year and started dating a girl who drove a Canary-yellow GTO but she liked driving my rusted little car so we switched up often.

Over the next two years, I attended my first rock concerts in Jacksonville and in December 1968, my buddy Rick and I took our military draft physicals downtown and his lifer Chief dad arranged for us to spend the night aboard his ship. In March of ‘69, our b-ball team went to the state tournament in the Jacksonville Coliseum where we lost in the semis. Thus ended my basketball career.

In July 1969, as I pondered an uncertain future, our family huddled around the TV watching Neil Armstrong on the moon. The day before, my girlfriend and I were making out on the beach in my little car. The rain came down as the news came on: “The Eagle has landed.”

Two weeks later, when the Apollo astronauts were back in the U.S., our house burned down. No casualties except... 

As the day faded into history, my mother went to work as a nurse and my father got a job crunching numbers with the State of Florida and commuted to the Jacksonville office. Dad still didn’t know how to swim but the rest of us did. We were water people, for now.

Bio: Michael Shay did some of his growing up in Florida but now lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming, with his wife and two grown children. He graduated from Daytona’s Father Lopez High School in 1969, Daytona Beach Community College in 1974 and University of Florida in 1976. He applied for reporter jobs at every newspaper in Florida but none would hire him so, like Huck Finn, he lit out for the territories. He gets to Florida as often as he can to visit family and friends. His story collection, “The Weight of a Body,” is available on Amazon. His novel, “Zeppelins over Denver,” is due out later this year.

WyoFile: "Gutting arts funding is a bad look for Wyoming's future"

Pinedale artist Sue Sommers wrote a fine op-ed in WyoFile today advocating for support of the Wyoming Arts Council. The header says a lot: "Gutting arts funding is a bad look for Wyoming's future."

The subhead sums up Sue's approach to the issue: 

A penchant for creative problem-solving makes artists resilient pillars of our communities, which is why they need state support.

I worked at the Arts Council from 1991-2016. It's made a huge contribution to Wyoming. The Wyoming State Legislature's Joint Travel, Recreation, Wildlife, and Cultural Resources Committee meets June 12-13 in Evanston. The future of the WAC is up for discussion. The me, it's a non-issue. If you want Wyoming to have a future, support arts and culture. I know there is something called "the Wyoming lifestyle." For some, that's wide-open spaces and The Big Sky. For others, it's ranching and cowboying. For some, it's technology and the future. For the narrow-minded, it's a society open only to those who are a rabidly conservative as they are and the rest of you can STFU. We've seen a lot of the latter the past seven years. 

I see a creative Wyoming, home to an amazing array of artists and arts groups. That's the future the Wyoming Arts Council sees for the state. Is it how the Legislature envisions to future? Tell them what you want. I wrote emails to chairs Wendy Schuler (Senate) and Sandy Newsome (House). They're not my reps in the Legislature but they'll play a big part in the meeting's procedures. Your neighbor or a local rancher may be on the committee. Email them today. 

The universe of the heart is a strange and lonely place in "Bewilderment"

In Richard Powers' novel "Bewilderment," Theo Byrne’s nine-year-old son Robin may have ADHD or Asberger’s or is somewhere on the autism “spectrum.” He is suspended when he clocks a kid at school. He always says the wrong thing. Therapists try to convince Theo to put Robin on medication such as Ritalin or Concerta. Theo, an astrobiologist searching for the universe’s exoplanets, refuses to do so. He’s a single parent, his environmentalist wife Alyssa killed in a car wreck when she swerved to avoid a possum.

Father spends many hours hiking and camping with his son. Together, they travel to imaginary planets that Theo only knows through the signatures of critical elements picked up from thousands of light years away. Those are wonderful chapters, journeying to quirky planets that come right out of the scientific imagination. Their names include Stasis, Isola, and Tedia which, not surprisingly, reflect their namesakes of isolation, loneliness, and tedium. One planet doesn’t spin on its axis due to the pull of competing suns. The planet’s few living things can only exist in a narrow band of twilight because they would die from heat on one side or freeze to death on the other.

Theo the astrophysicist discusses various terms regarding the existence of life on other planets. The Fermi Paradox asks the question once asked by Enrico Fermi: Where are the aliens? Drake Equation measures the probability of exoplanets that support life long enough for intelligent beings to emerge. In the novel, Theo proposes other possibilities. No sentient lifeforms anywhere. Civilizations so far away that we would never meet them. Some posit the idea that there is intelligent life in the universe but those beings want nothing to do with us. So they are silent.

All of this returns to Theo’s struggle to understand his son and deal with the death of his wife. A colleague opens a research project that might have answer. It involves a kind of neurofeedback, the AI linking of a person with electronic energy created by others. Neurodivergent Robin becomes part of the study, linking up with some feedback loops his mother made when alive. He gradually gets a better grasp on his behavior and exceeds the researchers’ goals. But disappointment awaits -- and a surprise ending. Think “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes. “Charly,” the movie based on the book, really got to me when I saw it in 1968.

Powers is a powerful writer and “Bewilderment” resonated with me for several reasons. This tale got real early on. My wife and I put our son with ADHD on Ritalin when he was five in 1990. I resisted. I couldn’t imagine my little dynamo on drugs. But he needed help. His working parents needed help. Directors of preschools and kindergarten teachers pushed us to go the medication route. Three decades later, I can still feel the pain. I had to stop reading Powers’ novel at some points because the author does such a great job of describing the pain of the bewildered parent.

“Bewilderment” also asks this question: Are we as alone in the universe as we are on Earth? The book says yes but also provides the reader with transcendent moments.

Still, loneliness may be as endemic to the universe as hydrogen and helium. We may never see intelligent lifeforms. If they exist, they are far away and the distances too great. We are early in the exploration stage. I will be stardust by the time humans leave our solar system for another.

Powers creates a world where the reader feels the weight of the universe and the weight of people’s attempts to know ourselves and our loved ones. I finished the book, sat back in my recliner, said “we are all alone,” and then grabbed a beer. I have family and friends, a wife and two grown children. They will miss me when I am gone. But the earth will keep spinning, a sunrise will be followed by a sunset. One generation will be replaced by another and another and another.

Today I am going to pretend that I am not alone. I will reach out to those important to me. What else can I do?

An email from President Joe Biden

Received a nice letter from President Joe Biden. It really was an e-mail in letter format with the White House logo as a header and Joe Biden's signature below. It was a fine letter, earnest and believable as is Pres. Biden. A stark contrast to the previous resident of the White House. He was neither. Then again, I never wrote to him. I thought it would be a pointless exercise and the response, if I got one, would also be a pointless exercise. I wish that T's four years in office had been a pointless exercise but it was a daily exercise in greed and cruelty, one not so easy to erase.

I can't find my email to Pres. Biden. I probably thanked him for signing the infrastructure bill. I would like to thank him for signing the Build Back Better Bill but I may never get that chance, thanks to one retro scaredy-cat DINO in West Virginia. I may have thanked the prez for his stalwart response to Covid-19. I really would like to thank him for zeroing out all student debt but that may not happen either. I do thank him for the payment moratorium until May 1. It is a lot more constructive that requesting another forbearance from NelNet or Unipac or one of the many student loan service companies that have ripped us off for decades. A forbearance allowed them to keep adding interest to a burgeoning principal which made the debt even larger but made millions for Nelnet, etc.

Here's the text of the president's email:

Dear Mr. Shay,

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me.  Hearing from passionate individuals like you inspires me every day, and I welcome the opportunity to respond to your letter.

Our country faces many challenges, and the road we will travel together will be one of the most difficult in our history.  Despite these tough times, I have never been more optimistic for the future of America.  I believe we are better positioned than any country in the world to lead in the 21st century not just by the example of our power but by the power of our example.

While we may not always agree on how to solve every issue, I pledge to be a President for all Americans.  I am confident that we can work together to find common ground to make America a more just, prosperous, and secure Nation. 

As we move forward to address the complex issues of our time, I encourage you to remain an active participant in helping write the next great chapter of the American story.  We need your courage and dedication at this critical time, and we must meet this moment together as the United States of America.  If we do that, I believe that our best days still lie ahead.

Good stuff. I plan to keep in touch, "to remain an active participant in helping to write the next great chapter of the American story." You should do that too. 

Humans -- can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em!

In the film "The Day the Earth Stood Still," versions one and two, an intergalactic diplomat comes to earth, tells humans they are a clear and present danger to the universe and must be destroyed. That gets put on hold once the space envoy experiences the kindness of its people. But it's only a temporary hold. As Michael Rennie (Klaatu) tells humankind at the end of the 1951 film: "Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer". Then he and his big-ass robot Gort fly off in their saucer. A similar warning is repeated by Keanu Reeves in the 2008 remake.

But in English author Matt Haig's 2013 novel, "The Humans," earthlings get still another chance. Hotshot Cambridge physicist Andrew Martin unlocks the secret of prime numbers, a discovery that will kick humanity's future into overdrive. The Vonnadorians find out about it and send an hitman from a galaxy far, far away to kill the scientist. Earthlings can't be trusted with big secrets, only small ones, such as nuclear fission and the formula for Kentucky Fried Chicken. If the prime number mystery gets solved and humankind experiences the Great Leap Forward, the universe is doomed. The Vonnadorians are an advanced peaceful race and kill only when necessary, much like Gort does when threatened by the U.S. Army. The alien replaces the scientist in his body. Also, he must eliminate anyone who knew anything about the discovery. That includes Martin's colleagues, beautiful wife, and troubled son.

At first, Martin thinks of the humans as hideous with grotesque features and habits. The more time he spends with them, the more he finds to appreciate: their dog Newton, Emily Dickinson's poetry, songs by David Bowie and the Beach Boys, love, and wine. Through his eyes, the reader gets a chance to see the world anew. It's funny at first -- must humans wear clothes? -- but grows more serious as Martin the Alien abandons his quest and goes over to the other side. There's a hefty Godfather-style price to pay and I won't spoil it by spooling it out in detail.

It's a wonderful novel. I was ready for something humorous and hopeful after reading a series of serious books. Make no mistake -- this is as serious as it gets. Who are we and why do we do what we do? 

Klaatu barada nikto! 

Klaatu issues these orders to Gort. As a kid, I thought it meant "If anything happens to me, kill the human scum." It really meant "if anything happens to me, come and retrieve me and I will decide what to do next." Gort does his duty and Klaatu is freed to issue his warming to Earth. Then they fly off.

Martin the Alien receives telepathic orders from Vonnadoria. He does eliminate the scientist's collaborator. It's just a simple matter of putting his hand on him to make his heart stop. In his left hand are "the gifts," those powers that allow him to travel and communicate vast distances, speak with animals, and accomplish his mission. He briefly contemplates killing the annoying teen son, Gulliver, but saves his life instead. He befriends the dog and takes a liking to Mrs. Martin. Then all hell breaks loose.

Haig caused this reader to look anew at my humanity. Strange creatures we are. Loveable and awful. But it's all we got. For now.

Where does one get Micro Kale and Wasabi Arugula in the midst of ski season?

We move our lives indoors as frost and snow shuts down another outdoor growing season in Cheyenne. Yesterday, I plucked all of my tomatoes and brought them inside to finish ripening. I found some purple pod beans lurking in the foliage. I snipped off my basil, oregano, and rosemary and stored them in the freezer. I'll use them in sauces throughout the winter. 

This is usually a somber day for me. Winter is coming! October through March is when I spend more time thinking about gardening than actually gardening. What grew well this year and what am I going to tackle in 2022? Thing is, much growing has moved inside. Locals have built small backyard greenhouses. Some of us take advantage of big south-facing windows to continue the process during the dreary months, just as our rooftop solar panels reach out to the sun dipping into the southern latitudes.

Just read an Inc. Magazine article about vertical farming operations around the U.S. Former industrial sites in New Jersey and Pennsylvania have been transformed into hydroponic farms. Vertical Harvest in Jackson grows greens and tomatoes year-round in its three-story farm built on a strip of land adjacent to the city parking garage. Teton County visionaries found this unused bit of land, a rarity in Jackson, and then planned, funded, and built VH. Now, according to the Inc. article, it's going nationwide with facilities planned for Westbrook, Maine, and North Philadelphia, Penn. VH's mission from its early days was to employ people with developmental disabilities, which they are doing, a mission VH promotes on its packaged produce: "Sustainably produced by community members with different abilities." 

This fascinates me. I am a gardener and cook. My daughter has "different abilities." I volunteer at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. Botany is not my trade -- writing is -- but I've always been interested in growing things. I'm moderately tech-savvy but am intrigued with ways that tech can change ways we grow our food. Computers, efficient L.E.D. lights, and robotics are feeding what Inc. calls "the future of the $5 trillion agriculture industry." Outdoor gardening has its thrills but also drawbacks in hail, pests, and diseases. So-called urban farming impacts all of this. It also addresses climate change variables: hurricanes, deluges, drought, massive wildfires. In southeast Wyoming, we look forward to this week's snow because the summer and early fall have been so dry. Meanwhile, Northern Italy last week was swamped with almost 30 inches of rain in a 12-hour storm. 

The Inc. article wraps with mention of a book by botanist Stefano Mancuso, "The Revolutionary Genius of Plants." Mancuso posits that not only have humans been nurturing plants for some 10,000 years, but "plants have brought us along on their evolutionary journey, employing us as a means of transportation." Now we bring them inside, away from most of their pests and plagues, and refine them along the way. A photo in the article shows Irving Fain, Bowery Farms founder, behind a crop of wasabi arugula. Some diners already consider arugula pungent, but a wasabi mix? Holy moly. Some crops are brand new and some are being resurrected from the dustbin of history. 

Tech and business brainiacs are in the mix with Micro Kale and Beet Greens. Lots of start-up dough is going into these projects. "Geeks and quants" are involved, says Inc., and I think I know a geek when I see one but a quant? That's what the Internet is for. According to Investopedia, it comes from "quantitative (quant) trading" which "involves the use of algorithms and programs to identify and capitalize on available trading opportunities." Quants do this. They read pubs such as Poets and Quants which, as far as I can tell, has more to do with the latter than the former. Bowery's Fain might be a quant as he says this: "The question for me is, can tech generate scalable opportunities and an exponential increase in outcomes." 

It's a good question. There's another way to put it:

Salad on table/Where to find arugula/That inflames the tongue

Just asking for a poet friend.

What will the future think of us?

Wyoming has seen a huge Covid-19 upsurge in recent weeks. Wyo shows up regularly in the New York Times pandemic tracker. It shows those states with surges, represented by a tiny arrow pointing up. We're right up there with both of the Dakotas, Alaska and Iowa.

WyoFile's week 33 summary Friday said this: 

The White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator visited Wyoming this week as the state cemented its status as one of the nation's hotspots for Covid-19 spread. 

As a press conference, Dr. Deborah Birx, wearing a mask, seated next to Gov. Mark Gordon, also wearing a mask, "emphasized the importance of mask use, widespread testing and limited gatherings" to beat the virus. As of Friday, Gov. Gordon had yet to issue a mandatory mask directive. 

On Friday, the Wyoming Department of Health reported 431 new lab-confirmed cases, a new single-day record. Nineteen deaths were reported last week, more deaths than in any week since the pandemic began. 

The Laramie County Health Department has mandated that everyone wear a mask starting Monday. If the past 33 weeks of plague shows us anything, many Wyomingites will ignore the mask mandate. Enforcement is being left up to businesses and individuals. At our hospital, you can't enter with a mask and getting your temp taken. Not sure how small businesses will treat the order. I don't go out without a mask. But I'm a Democrat and I believe in science.

I write this with the idea that someone in the future will read this and wonder about the Americans of 2020. As I researched a novel set in 1919, I read a lot of personal stories and small-town-newspaper articles about the 1918 flu pandemic. Some wore masks; others refused. Many died. Young people were vulnerable. In fact, they often died when older family members survived. It was brutal. I can look back from 2020 and wonder why everyone didn't wear a damn mask. I ask that today. I also ask: will anyone read 21st-century blogs 100 years from now?

A President Joe Biden can't halt the pandemic overnight. But he does have a plan. He will have to bring Americans together on a common goal. We beat the Great Depression, licked the Nazis and went to the moon. With real leadership, we can overcome Covid-19.

This is another problem that has to be remedied. We've learned the hard way that millions of Americans love a bully. They love Trump because he hates the same people he does: liberals, atheists, African-Americans, Hispanic immigrants, urban dwellers, and college professors, just to name a few. They want to marginalize, possibly even eliminate, us. Many are evangelicals who spend a lot of time talking about the Bible although they've paid little attention to lessons in the New Testament. They are a hateful bunch who revel in Trump's cruelty. 

What will they do on election day? Trump has given them carte blanche to disrupt the electoral process. It's naive to think they would not answer Trump's dog whistles. They could also be a factor if Trump loses. They are angry and well-armed. Their esteemed leader has been deposed and someone must pay!

Post-apocalyptic novels, movies and TV shows have been on the rise for some time. They have dealt with plagues, asteroids, environmental catastrophes, space aliens, and outside interference from foreign enemies, mainly commies. Nuclear war used to be a big thing. I can't think if many that deal with a Narcissist as president who tries to remake America in his image and who gets plenty of help from collaborators in the G.O.P. Was it beyond imagining?

I once wrote an post-Apocalyptic novel about a future war in Florida. The Cubans invaded, battles ensued and (spoiler alert!) the good guys won. It was a mess of a novel and a copy gathers dust in my bottom desk drawer, the place where all unpublished first novels belong. As it turns out, I only had to wait a few decades to find out that The End could proceed in the light of day right before our eyes. 

It may not come to that. We'll talk after election day.  

After hunkering down, what comes next?

Excellent article in The Atlantic about how the pandemic will change the nation's retail businesses and our cities. I've always loved these long-form articles and remember reading each print issue of The Atlantic from front to back. I now pick and choose on the mag's reader-friendly web site. There is a limit of the number of freebies you get each month. Annual online subscriptions are $49.99. Crucial to support those pubs that allow us to think bigger than we do on Twitter.

So what will COVID-19 do to retail such as restaurants? It's the end of so many of those quirky city joints that serve Ethiopian or Moroccan or Salvadoran. Many are not going to make it through the crisis as they have limited cash reserves and won't be able to survive to the normal with fewer customers spread further apart. Same goes for bars and brewpubs. The raucous atmosphere is what we crave along with our IPA. Quaint bistros, places that serve organic chocolates and exotic teas, they'll be gone too. Those city rents are killers and you have to sell a lot of notions to make ends meet. Millennials won't find a shopless Adams-Morgan in D.C. or Denver's LoDo very appealing and they will leave all those cool lofts and walk-up apartments for cheaper pastures in smaller cities and even the burbs. Chains will take over downtowns and we will be bored to tears with the same ol' same ol'.

It's not just Millennials. Raise your hand if you know retired Boomers who have downsized their suburban digs for lively downtown lofts or small condos? I'm raising both hands. One only has to leave Cheyenne and drive to Colorado's Front Range to see what that looks like (wear your masks!). When I was a grad student in Fort Collins in the 1980s, nightlife was lively in Old Town FoCo but nobody lived there. Lots of new buildings have brought hundreds downtown, young and old. Loveland has a revived downtown. Greeley, too. Denver is Denver and Boulder is Boulder. Problem is, you need big money to live in these downtowns. Some have set aside affordable housing with the unaffordable. A few years ago when our daughter lived in Denver, we spent the New Year's weekend at the downtown convention center hotel. We were waiting for our car and chatted with one of the valet guys. He pointed over to the old Denver Dry Goods Building on California and said he lived there. He told us they set aside a number of affordable units with the pricey ones, although he had to get on a waiting list and wait for two years. The kooky Northern Hotel in Old Town FoCo was renovated and now houses low-income seniors. Chris and I don't qualify but it seemed like a cool place to live.

Affordability is an issue. Those of us who worked for Wyoming wages usually fall into a netherworld. We've paid down on our Cheyenne houses but really can't sell and move to a $300,000 Colorado condo. Strangely enough, new condos in Cheyenne also are unaffordable and there are no new nifty retirement developments as options. Retired friends who've moved to Colorado (and there are many) either moved to Front Range cities before the housing boom or bought in smaller mountain communities that aren't Aspen or Vail. All of them are liberals looking for a friendlier political climate.

Back to The Atlantic article. Winter is coming! Maybe not winter -- let's call it autumn, after the leaves fall and before big snows. Big changes are in the works and many lives will be upended. We love cities but will have to experience them as visitors. Some of those urban amenities will no longer exist but enough will survive to offer us plays and concerts and good food. Not sure how DCPA performances of The Book of Mormon and Hamilton and Hadestown will look. We won't be jammed together feeling the rush of excitement that comes with it.

COVID-19 has changed almost everything. More surprises to come...

To see today's COVID-19 briefing from WyoFile, go here.

Cheyenne girds its loins for first boom since Hell on Wheels

I am surrounded by nuclear missiles. They lurk in their hidey-holes on the rolling prairie of Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado. I give little thought to them on most days. I sometimes drive past F.E. Warren AFB's main gate and see the three Cold War missiles that greet passers-by. Convoys of missileers pass me on the highway on their way to their `24-hour shifts underground. A recent CBS 60 Minutes piece spoke of the antiquated launch equipment at Warren. This gave me pause, as "antiquated equipment" is not a term you want to associate with our nuke strike force. It's bad enough when films of the 1960s scared us with untoward nuke launches. Col. Jack D. Ripper went a little funny in the head and plunged us into a celluloid Armageddon. While the fail-proof fail safe system showed its flaws, our bomber crews carried out their mission. And the Russkis Doomsday Machine went off without a hitch.

So, when 60 Minutes showed that our local launch equipment is falling apart, that our airmen and airwomen are using computers from the Stone Age to take care of Space Age missiles, the Pentagon sprang into action.

It's a good thing that the U.S. Government is funneling taxpayer dollars ($90 billion) to Boeing and Northrup-Grumman to modern our nuclear capabilities. Cheyenne is agog that at least $5 billion of that will be spent locally. Boeing, one of the contractors, will hold a meeting April 11 for businesses "to learn about program support and Boeing supplier needs." N-G cannot be far behind with its own round of meetings..

I scrolled through the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent web site -- GBSD Bound. In flowing language, the writers describe the past, present and future of this program. The Chamber eloquently supports all this. The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades. Really good shades, as the flash of a thermonuclear fireball can melt the eyeballs.

It is good news for Cheyenne. Our capital city has experienced incremental growth the past five years. Many here say that this is the spillover effect from Colorado's boom. Cheyenne is the northern terminus to the Front Range. As such, it benefits when billions are being invested into infrastructure and businesses in Fort Collins, Denver, and Colorado Springs. That same boom has caused Coloradans to question their devotion to a Denver filled with overpriced housing, crazy traffic, and herds of shaggy hipsters roaming the territory as bison once did prior to 1859. "This isn't the Colorado I knew" is a common refrain among family and friends in the Centennial State. They ponder moves to the wide-open spaces of Wyoming and Montana and Idaho if only someone would buy their two-bedroom house for $500,000 and some visionary start-up would pay them bundles of cryptocurrency to telecommute from Laramie. The cryptocurrency/blockchain thing is no joke. Our legislature has passed a dozen bills in support of this as-yet unproven e-currency but is scared shitless with the thought of brown or transgender people moving into their neighborhood. And damn that federal gubment (except when it brings $5 billion to town).

Despite my peacenik roots, I am fond of missiles and rockets. My father fed his large family by planting ICBM sites through the West. He worked as a contract specialist with the Martin Company, later Martin-Marietta. He didn't so much build the sites as find reliable people to do so. He later did the same job in Florida for the space program, helping get Neil Armstrong to the moon in 1969, the year I graduated from high school. I saw Apollo 11 blast off. I canoodled with my girlfriend on the beach as we listened to the crackly car radio announce that "The Eagle Has Landed." My brother Dan and I spent our childhood building missile models and memorized all the names of the U.S. arsenal. I read all the Tom Swift books, in which rocketry played a key part. I watched Sputnik arc across the night sky. We were looking up, all of us. We did it together, maybe the last time that Americans were together on any one thing.

As we revamp our nukes, we are faced with new problems. The main one is in the White House, Donald Trump, buddy of the old Soviet spy who runs Russia. We have the North Koreans and Iranians. Saudi shenanigans. Dirty bombs from terrorists. Clean bombs from China. "Paranoia strikes deep/Into your life it will creep/It starts when you're always afraid/You step out of line, the man come and take you away."

We've come a long way from the so-called peace dividend we expected with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. Remember that?

Cheyenne hasn't been a boom town since the Iron Horse rolled into town and Hell on Wheels was born. Its incredible growth back then earned it the nickname of "Magic City of the Plains."

Let's hope we're ready for this boom.

Part I: The Way Mike Worked

The Laramie County Public Library kicks off the fall with the Smithsonian exhibit, "The Way We Worked." Sponsored here by Wyoming Humanities, the exhibit "engages viewers with a history of work." It opens Sept. 22 and runs through Nov. 13. Grand opening is a "Hands-on History Expo" on Sept. 28 where you can "dial a rotary phone, draw water with a hand pump, enjoy old-fashioned refreshments (make your own ice cream!) and much more." You can see antique tractors, a wheat-washing machine and an old-fashioned library card catalog. 

This is what libraries are for -- education and fun. Reading itself is a joy. Those facts alone are a bulwark against the Trumpists' war on truth, learning, creativity, and the free press. So come out to the library this fall and see what it was really like when your grandparents were kids. Dial a rotary phone. Man, I want to do that as it's been awhile. Wonder what memories that will provoke? And the library asks us for our memories, stories about what kind of work our forebears did, what we do (or did) for a living, what we want to do when we grow up. 

Some grow up knowing what they want to do with their lives. They are the lucky ones or the cursed ones, depending on how it all works out. Should I follow a predictable path, or take the road less traveled? Nothing more quickly provokes an eye roll from a high school grad than the question, "So what are your plans?" You can really punk your elders with wise-ass replies. I don't have any plans. I'm going to surf/snowboard until someone comes along and offers me a job. What's a plan?

I remember my elders asking similar questions at my 1969 high school graduation. What you going to do, Mike? I replied that I was attending the University of South Carolina in Columbia on a Navy ROTC scholarship and major in marine biology. I would serve my term as a naval officer, hopefully in places close to good surf spots. I then would become a marine biologist with a job close to good surfing spots. Oh yeah, I was going to get married, too, to my high school steady although maybe I wouldn't say that out loud because we hadn't discussed it yet. I was going to play serious basketball pick-up games as long as I could.

I really had no basis for any of this. Except the surfing part -- that I really loved. I loved the ocean, too, as a place that produced waves for me to ride. Did I spend my free time studying the ocean currents and plant/animal life? Did I dream of seagoing adventures on famous oceanography vessels? 

Where was my passion?

I read. I loved books. Some of my favorite novels were set on the ocean, those about Captain Horatio Hornblower, for instance. I devoured the novels written by Alistair MacLean, specifically "HMS Ulysses" and "Ice Station Zebra." I read books about World War II, my father's war. I read historical fiction and sci-fi and mysteries. I was an omnivore, reading-wise. I read the cool books, ones that people talked about such as "Catch-22," "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,"  "Slaughterhouse Five." I wondered about the authors, how they got their start, how they sat down at a desk and typed all day. I never met a living author. I knew they existed but none of them came to my hometown, as far as I knew. None of them ever visited my small Catholic high school.

I had a clear picture of the ocean and the ships that sailed upon her. I had no clear idea of the world of writing. Thing is, I was much more attracted to the latter than the former. But how do you tell your Depression-era and WWII parents that you want to do something as ethereal as writing for a living? My father was an accountant with a well-stocked library. My mother was a nurse who read all of the time. My parents birthed nine children, and I was the eldest and the one who was supposed to be an example to them all. We did not grow up poor but budgets were always tight. My father bought breakfast cereal and macaroni-and-cheese by the case at the precursor of Sam's Club. My mother cooked fifties dishes, such as tuna casserole, that I never want to see again. My father changed jobs a lot and my mother worked, a rarity at the time. 

So I had to plan my own trajectory. And how did that work out? 

Stay tuned for details in my next installment of "The Way Mike Worked" series. Coming soon!

The stuff that dreams are made of

What do you dream of, Laramie County?

That's the question asked in the lead editorial in the Nov. 19 Wyoming Tribune-Eagle.

Good question. Dreams should be big. Write the Great American Novel. Cure cancer. Become president (please, someone, anyone but T).

What is my vision for Cheyenne?

Develop downtown into a destination that reflects the soul of Cheyenne. This place is called The Magic City of the Plains because it is located in what used to be known as the middle of nowhere. Ask any twenty-something and they will say it still is the middle of nowhere. They will wave at you as they depart for Fort Collins or Boulder or Denver.

I am not advocating for some fake Wild West town such as the frontier village out at CFD Park. Cheyenne was founded in 1867 when the West was wild. It experienced its heyday in the 1880s, when Cheyenne was a beacon of civilization among the frozen wastes.

We are 150 years old now and it's time to act like a grown-up. Let's create a downtown that reflects the needs and tastes of 2017 and beyond. Breweries and coffee shops are great -- both beverages make the world go around. We also need reasons to shop downtown. People will then want to live downtown, sacrificing their suburban spread for a two-bedroom condo above a busy art gallery or bistro. To make that leap, people need a solid infrastructure within a walkable distance. They need reasons not to have their Nissan Sentra parked within feet of their front door.

Shelter. Food. Culture. What comes first? Downtown boasts galleries and shops but we need more. We need a grocery store. A wide range of activities to attend. We need more venues for those activities.

I know that Cheyennites are tried of comparisons with Colorado cities. But some examples are worth noting. Old Town Fort Collins was not always the community's busiest hub. When I lived there in the late 1980s, it was just showing signs of life -- Foothills Mall was the happening place. A few years back, developers tore down the semi-deserted mall and created a pseudo-Old Town in its place. The same sort of transformation is happening at our mall. The newest tenants occupy outward-facing stores to give it that downtown look. Now that Sears is gone, the mall has a lot of space to fill. Let's hope the owners thing creatively.

The Denver Center for the Performing Arts (DCPA) was not an instance success when it opened. Its main promoter, Donald Sewall, was called names and tumbleweeds blew through the deserted DCPA plaza. Same with the 16th Street Mall. On a typical Saturday night, the mall was almost deserted because there were no reasons to wander downtown. In 1979, when I worked the night shift at The Denver Post at 15 and California, there were only a handful of dining experiences, most of them bars that also served greasy-spoon fare (Sportsman's, Duffy's), one lone Burger King and the Mercy Farm Pie Shop. A myriad of places that served locally-sourced ingredients in small portions at high prices was a thing of the future. Beer selections were Bud and Coors.

What happened? A population boom fueled by legal pot and a rootless generation looking for The Next Best Place. Jobs, too. Professional sports teams and the arts jockeyed for position. Downtown won with its many venues. The DCPA was deserted no more. When Chris and I go to touring productions there, I always run into people from Cheyenne. They would avoid Denver traffic if only The Book of Mormon played closer to home, say, at the Cheyenne Civic Center. We just don't have the facilities or the numbers here. We need more seats. More butts in the seats.

Big dreams come with a population increase. No way around it. Cheyenne is already the largest city in the state. Laramie County will be the first to reach a population of 100,000 some time in the next decade. We already are home to one in six Wyomingites.

It's not as if there isn't hope in Wyoming downtowns. You can see successful examples of thriving Main Streets in Laramie, Lander, Sheridan (its new WYO Performing Arts and Education Center is a gem), and Casper. You don't need a total eclipse to have people wandering downtown Casper. Its David Street Station, reminiscent of Cheyenne Depot Plaza, has sparked a downtown renaissance in what's called the Old Yellowstone District. Breweries, bistros, a performing arts center. Outdoor summer concerts on the plaza. What did Casper do that Cheyenne didn't?

I have no solutions. Lots and lots of ideas, but those are a dime a dozen. What we need is imagination and investment, two things sorely lacking in this burg.  The Dinneen family and the City of Cheyenne collaborated on the transformation of the former Dinneen auto dealership. It'snow home to businesses and one of the best restaurants in town -- the Rib & Chop House. It's a small chain, but it has invested heavily in Cheyenne, also spawning a brewpub to full the empty retail space in the historic Depot. My one-time colleague at the Wyoming Arts Council, Camellia el-Antably, and her partner, Mark Vinich, rehabbed an old building downtown and now it's home to Clay Paper Scissors Gallery and its fine arts shows. The arts play a crucial role in any dream of future prosperity. Arts Cheyenne gives us an organization and an events calendar to rally around.

Just a couple of examples. If I had the money to invest, I would put it into downtown ventures or the nascent West Edge Project. It's going to happen. The only questions is WHEN?

Car-centric or people-friendly?

I have traveled to Fort Collins a lot lately, mostly to visit our daughter Annie. She lives a block from the university. She can walk or ride her bike almost anywhere. This summer she took the shuttle bus to concerts at the Mishawaka up the Poudre Canyon. The city has great bus service, including the north-south MAX line. Uber and Lyft are Ubiquitous. Uberiquitous!

FOOTNOTE: Writers might find this interesting. I first learned ubiquitous from a title of a Philip K. Dick strange novel, "Ubik." This illustrates the instructional side of sci-fi.

Our daughter had a car but it met the fate of so many vehicles in a college town after dark -- driving after partying. It now rests in a Denver junkyard, a totalled 10-year-old car with what seemed like so many more miles to go. Alas.

So as I visit and help her with errands, I notice that Fort Collins is much less a car town than when I lived here from 1988-91. That's no surprise to its residents. It is a surprise to someone from Cheyenne, a decidedly car-centric city in a very car-and-truck-centric state. Rapid transit is still exotic in the Capital City. We do have taxis and Uber and car-pooling. We have a superb greenway, although street bike paths are still a work-in-progress. You see pedestrians downtown during the day, most of whom are state employees looking for a double caramel macchiato to get them through the long afternoon. The crowds thin out at night as there just aren't that many businesses worth visiting. We have three craft breweries, all three worth a visit. And there are bars. A few coffee shops. Some restaurants.

If you look for pedestrians along the Dell Range shopping district, you won't find many. You will find a mall and lots of chain restaurants. But people don't walk on Dell Range. It's a place for cars.

One thing I notice about Fort Collins 30 years after my grad school days -- it's a car environment gradually morphing into something else. It's funny, too, since most of the older residential streets were built along Utah's Mormon model -- wide enough to easily turn around an ox cart. Ox carts are rare these days. Most of what you see are young people on bikes and skateboards. Pedestrians of all stripes. All the major streets are lined with bike paths. Some through streets have been mined with those annoyingly huge speed bumps, the kind you see in neighborhoods that include city council reps with kids. Not a bad idea -- you still see plenty of cars in FoCo, many of them going too fast. Many in this one-time cowtown still drive pick-ups, whether they use it for ranch work or just want to look like they do. The CSU Rams used to be the Aggies, which accounts for the big white A on the hill above town. Still a lot of ag and geology and veterinary students here, which differentiates it from its rival university in Boulder. The CU Buffs probably still refer to the CSU bunch as "the Aggies," especially in the lead-up to the annual Rocky Mountain Showdown on the gridiron.

Fort Collins actively discourages cars. It's every wingnut's nightmare. Walkable downtown and neighborhoods. Limited parking. Wide sidewalks. Very rare to see a coal roller. I heard an announcement on FM 105.5 that talked about a city program that closes streets on a rotating basis so people can eat and drink and listen to live music. What's the world coming to?

Not sure what the next few years will bring. Driverless cars. A light rail. A Hyperloop connection is in the works, if Colorado's entry into the project is picked as the one to be actually built. Who knows what that portends for Fort Collins, even Cheyenne.

Meanwhile, my goal in Fort Collins is to slow down and  beware of cyclists. It could be someone's millennial, maybe even mine.

This train is bound for glory -- maybe

Chris and I helped our city celebrate its 150th birthday this week.

One hundred and fifty years ago this summer, Col. Gen. Grenville Dodge staked out the city of Cheyenne on the windswept southeast Wyoming prairie. It featured Crow Creek and its consistent water supply lined with a few hardy trees. More importantly, it was right along the path that Union Pacific had chosen for its transcontinental railroad. The plains tribes already used the gangplank of the Laramie Range to cross the mountains. They followed the herds and the weather.  The railroad was just trying to link up with the Central Pacific on its way east from the West Coast.

Just as it did for native peoples, the Rocky Mountains presented one of the biggest challenges to the railroad. Terrain and weather presented problems. Cheyenne was founded in July and winter comes early. Cheyenne became a base to build the highest elevation section of the railroad, and base camp to build bridges to cross canyons. It spent more time as a Hell on Wheels site that any other railroad town.

Cheyenne still is a railroad town. It is the state capital. The intersection of two interstate highways. One of these -- I-80 -- follows the rails except when it comes to Elk Mountain, the most-closed section of interstate in the U.S. every winter. All of us who have done time driving I-80 curse the Elk Mountain stretch. Beautiful and scenic in July. Cringeworthy in January.

Cheyenne has lots of celebrate. It shouldn't be here, as the weather isn't the most temperate. Its tomato growers are a persistent bunch, always coming up with creative ways to plant and ripen our fruit in an 90-day growing season, even 100 or 110 during good years. We have to watch out for late frosts, early frosts, freezing winds in June that kill the flowers, July hail that rips the plants to shreds. Still, Cheyenne is home to a huge Master Gardeners program and, soon, the most impressive botanic gardens conservatory for a city of its size in the U.S.

Thus summer marks a milestone for Cheyenne. What will it look like in 150 years? I won't be around, but someone will be growing tomatoes in my neighborhood. It may be an android tending an indoor hydroponic set-up. But maybe not. Humans like to grow things. That's how we survived all of these years.

I can envision a dystopian version of our future. Since we are high and dry, many coastal Americans will flock here, possibly sparking a refugee crisis that alarms the U.N. Trump may start a nuclear war. That will wipe Cheyenne off the map as we are host to the largest assemblage of nuclear missiles in creation. Cheyenne may end up being a slave labor pool for oligarchs. Diseases may wipe out all humans, clearing the way for a generation of giant bugs such as those seen in "Starship Troopers," filmed back in Wyoming's heyday at Hell's Half Acre. Wyoming has a long relationship with the devil and his minions. Devils Tower, of course, and the original white man's name for Yellowstone, Colter's Hell.

Dystopian versions for the world are big right now. Perhaps that will continue. I tend to think that the future is a mix of Utopia/Dystopia. Just like the present. You can have a great party for your hometown even while a lunatic sits in the driver's seat. We don't know where this train is headed, or if we'll arrive safely. But darn it, we can party hearty along the way.

Happy birthday, Cheyenne!

UPDATE 8/13: When reading the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle's "Cheyenne at 150," I discovered that I had demoted Gen. Grenville Dodge to colonel. I corrected that mistake. Along the way, I researched Dodge and found him a fascinating character. I also wondered why there is no Dodge Street in Cheyenne. Many other people important to the city's founding have namesake streets. Why no Dodge?

Our new overlords in the West will offer scads of jobs but little hope

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth lately about the state's brain drain.

No, we're not talking about the sinking IQ levels of WY GOP legislators. We're talking about the exodus of smart young people. The recent high school graduates. The grads of our community colleges and lone four-year state university. Some will establish lives in Wyoming. Most will depart for jobs and adventures in other states. other countries. Parents urge our young ones to fly from the nest. It's done with more than a little sadness accompanied by a dash of hope. People seek out jobs in metro areas, and Wyoming is sadly lacking in those. I read an article in The Denver Post that said local unemployment numbers were closing in on zero. Zero? Colorado's unemployment rate of 2.3 percent in April was the lowest in the nation for the second straight month.

In case your geography isn't up to snuff, Colorado borders Wyoming. The Colorado border is 13.9 highway miles from my front door. I can be in Old Town Fort Collins in 45 minutes, about the length of an average rush-hour commute in Denver. When my daughter Annie was living in Aurora, a Denver suburb, I could get to her house in less than two hours. My trips were made during retiree hours, between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays. I sometimes was trapped in evening traffic, which was no fun. Friday evening is the worst. Beware if it snows or hails. Denver traffic jams is how I discovered The Colorado Sound on 105.5 FM. Wonderful indie music with an emphasis on Colorado bands and no commercials.

There's a trade-off, see? Can't have low unemployment without high population. And you can't have low unemployment if your economy is heavily dependent on fossil fuel extraction. Good jobs abound when those industries prosper. Wyoming loses jobs and population when that sector goes south.

What about those jobs that used to be called "white collar?" We have them, mainly in government. Of course, our enlightened GOP legislators have responded to the downturn in the usual way -- cutting state government. Trump and his minions are doing the same on the federal level. Fewer jobs are the result. Americans looks elsewhere for work. We have no real tech sector, although there are some bright spots. Tourism continues to be hot, especially during this Total Eclipse year. But those sites and resources that cater to travelers are being hit by cutbacks. Entrepreneurs do their best to start small businesses and local bistros. But again, they are faced with declining population in the state that's already the sparsest populated in the U.S.

But there is one bright spot, according to Jim Dobson's June 10 article in Forbes, "The Shocking Doomsday Maps of the World and the Billionaire Escape Plans." Billionaires are buying up chunks of land in the Intermountain West. They are using the land as an escape from the coming apocalypse. Lest you think this land is mostly in resort areas such as Jackson and Aspen, think again. The buyers want farm land and acres for cattle grazing and accessible coal mines so they can be self-sufficient when the shit hits the fan (as shown in the article's accompanying maps). Who will do the work on these enclaves? You and me, the less affluent residents of the West. We will be like the serfs of old, farming the fields from dawn to dusk for the feudal lord. The menfolk and kidfolk will scrape coal from Powder River Basin mines and transport it by mule cart to the coal-burning private power plants which no longer have to worry about pollution controls. Our womenfolk will make and serve meals to the lord in his fortified castle. All of it will be guarded by a private security force trained in Iraq and Afghanistan and any other wars we can conjure up with in the next several hundred years.

So, there is hope for our sons and daughters and grandchildren. Jobs galore created by our new feudal overlords.

No hope but lots of jobs.

Science geek in White House signs 21st Century Cures Act

Did you know that we had a "science geek" in the White House? For now, anyway. He points us toward the future even while the incoming administration tries to drag us back into the dark ages.

When you have dealt with a family member's mental illness as long as we have -- 10 years -- you take your good news where you find it. On Tuesday, Pres. Obama signed the 21st Century Cures Act which has improving mental health care as one of its key components. In the White House video, Obama explains some of his reasoning behind signing the bill. Letters from constituents helped alert him to the pain that families were going through as they try to get help for family members as they struggle with opioid addiction, cancer and mental health issues. A Republican grandmother pleaded for help with finding the right kind of care for her mentally ill grand-daughter. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the mental health piece was a bipartisan effort. Let's see that spirit of cooperation continue when it comes to health care, Medicare, Social Security, and the environment, which has a major impact on our health.

More info: https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/12/12/3-letters-explain-why-president-obama-signing-cures-act

Denver tries to solve its traffic problems in Trump's alternate universe

Despite what you hear via mainstream media, Denver is a mess. Traffic is backed up everywhere and it's getting worse all of the time, By 2030, motorists can expect to be tied up in traffic 30 percent of the time compared to 20 percent now. Light rail helps some, when it works. The Union Station to DIA train has hit some snags. My wife recently took the A Train to Transylvania Station and loved it. During the 2008 Democratic National Convention, I took the train from Hampden to downtown and never had a problem, despite crowds of rapid-transit-loving Dems.

People keep moving to Denver to smoke pot and ogle the hipsters and attend concerts at Red Rocks. This has to stop.

But it won't.

To remedy the traffic situation, Denver is working on a plan that matches ride-share companies (Uber, Lyft, etc.) with rapid transit schedules. The problem is that there are many people who would use rapid transit if they could get to it. People with transportation needs find themselves moving further out to find affordable rents. The further out you go, the more spread out the bus stops and light rail stations. People with means, it seems, want to live in or near downtown. Developers are building studio apartments and condos like there is no tomorrow, betting on the idea that Millennials will rent anything that is close to a brewpub and coffee shop. So the move is on to the inner-city that their parents and grandparents fled many moons ago. Meanwhile, the inner suburbs are filling up with people of color which leads to the Little Vietnam you find in Westminster and the mercados along East Colfax Avenue in Aurora. The outer suburbs, like those in Louisville and Castle Rock, are filling up with white Republicans and any day expect Trump to drop by and deliver a wheelbarrow filled with cash.

I learned all of this after spending ten days in Denver waiting for my daughter to receive ECT treatments at Centennial Peaks Hospital in Superior, which butts up against Boulder and Louisville. In other words, I know very little and am eminently qualified to be the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development if Know Nothing Ben Carson finds another job, such as Secretary of Silly Walks.

I have been stuck in traffic about half the time I've been in Denver. Today I saw scores of CDOT plows and plows of many municipalities on the streets, which made me thankful for governmental services that soon will be sold to the highest bidder, probably Halliburton. Remember the bang-up jobs they did in Iraq and Afghanistan? Enjoy the snow-free streets while you got 'em, folks.

Remember that Colorado is a blue state and went solidly for Hillary Clinton despite Republican voter suppression, scary fake news stories and the many fundies in Colorado Springs that believed Trump was doing the Lord's work. Perhaps ye recall Matthew 6:24 in the King James Bible:

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

Mammon, of course, is money, as in the huge Scrooge McDuck-style vault of riches that Donald Trump goes home to every night.

My work is done here for today. Not sure what it was. But that's it.

Name an issue and the Know Nothings are against it

A letter writer to the local paper this week used the tired old trope "love it or leave it" in regards to Cheyenne newcomers advocating for change.

Downtown redevelopment. Bike lanes. Legal protections for the LGBT community. The arts and education.

Name an issue and they'll be again' it, dammit. Cheyenne's fine just as it is. You darn California and Colorado liberals go back to where you came from.

The issues are many. Young people such as my daughter cannot find competent mental health care. Hundreds of K-12 students would go hungry over weekends so get shipped home on Fridays with sack lunches. UW graduates cannot find good-paying jobs in their hometown. When they do find one with, say, the state, the pay is 13 percent below private sector wages and Republican lawmakers call you bums. Our downtown has a big hole in its midst and dozens of unoccupied buildings. Gays and lesbians go to public meetings to voice their opinions and abuse is heaped upon them by ranks of grouchy Know Nothings.

Everything's just peachy in Chey-town.

My family and I have lived in Cheyenne since 1991. I'm still a newcomer in some eyes. Because I'm a liberal, me and my views are always in the minority. I have a good job and own a house and my kids attended public schools. I have great friends. As I've said before, if I counted on only having liberals for friends in Wyoming, I'd be lonely.

Americans are migrating to silos. I don't mean the missile variety -- we have plenty of those and people even live in decommissioned ones out on the prairie. People are finding other like-minded people to dwell with. If you're a liberal, you live in a city. If you're conservative, you live in the country or small town. Depending on your location, the suburbs are a mix of outlooks but tend to be conservative.

For much of its existence, Cheyenne has been pretty good about avoiding progress. But during its "Hell on Wheels" days, it was the fastest-growing city on the high prairie. We were supposed to be Denver, you see, but the sharpies down south lured the railroad and developers and boosters and before long its largest daily newspapers was promoting itself as "The Voice of the Rocky Mountain Empire." Wow. Didn't take long for this dusty two-bit cowtown at the confluence of the South Platte River and Cherry Creek to become the capital of an empire.

And Cheyenne got left in the dust.

One in six Wyomingites live in our county tucked into the southeast corner of this big square state. Who are they? Older than the national average, and overwhelmingly white. Lots of retired government workers live here, including many military. Working cowboys are outnumbered by railroad retirees and those who managed to survive the oil patch. We do have a lot of cowboy fans -- that's University of Wyoming Cowpokes fans not the ones who cheer for Tony Romo on Sundays.

So I'm surrounded by old white guys like me. They tend to be the watchers of FOX News and members of the Tea Party. I can relate to their gripes. But I just don't see how blaming Latinos and gays and our black president helps the future. Their kids and grandkids in Omaha and SLC pick up their smartphones and see a bunch of angry old guys making a scene at a Cheyenne city council meeting. This is not their idea of a good time -- or of a dynamic place to live.

Advice to my Boomer peers -- tone down the hateful rhetoric or this place has the same life expectancy as a roomful of Medicare recipients.

In "Interstellar," the future is as corny as Kansas in August

Imagine that humankind gives up its dreams of space travel to farm corn in Kansas full-time.

That’s the kind of boring future imagined by Christopher Nolan in the film “Interstellar.”

Humans no longer shoot for the stars. An unnamed blight is killing all the crops except corn – and even its days are numbered. Dust Bowl-style storms blot out the sun and everything (laptops included) is coated with a fine layer of dust. Unemployed astronaut Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) farms corn with his two kids, an irascible father and a fleet of robotic combines. His daughter gets into trouble at school when she writes a paper contending that the U.S. did land on the moon as “corrected” textbooks proclaim that we invented our space triumphs to bankrupt the Russkis. The new reality is not to “look to the skies” but look down at the dirt as humans try to save a planet that’s beyond saving.

A fascinating conceit for a movie. We make fun of conspiracy nuts who contend that the moon landings were invented on a Hollywood soundstage. In Nolan’s universe, scientists are the kooks. Waste money on rocket ships when the earth is dying? No sirree bob -- not with my tax money.

NASA’s scientists have been driven underground. They are busily at work launching space probes to find other habitable planets to screw up. They recruit Cooper to join other astronauts to explore those likely places to resettle the populace. As we know from the Kepler telescope observations, earth-like planets exist but they are 100-plus light years away. The solution: fire a rocket through a wormhole that has mysteriously appeared near Saturn. “They” put it there, whoever “they” are (their identity is revealed by film's end).

Will the scientists find a new home for earthlings? That’s the question that involves the viewer for most of the movie. Great special effects, as befitting the CGI era (no streams of flashing lights as in “2001”). The robots are cooler than HAL, equipped with wit and sarcasm. The main robot threatens to shoot one of the crew through the airlock as happened in the pivotal scene in “2001.”

Woven through all this are complicated human relationships. In the end, that’s what motivates humans – their relationships with others of their kind. Cooper would not leave his beloved family behind, especially his daughter Murph, unless he could save them by jaunting off into space. Turns out that Cooper’s colleague in space, Dr. Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway), has a love interest who was on an earlier space probe. It is love that motivates humans. As the Beatles sang, “love is all you need.” Not bad when you can wrap up a sci-fi epic with a sixties melody.

What else is there? What makes us distinctive among known life forms? Any big-brained chimp can plant corn or build a space ship. But it takes love for a wife or daughter or father to motivate us to reach for the stars. Humans are a mess, for the most part. But we are always offered a path to redemption that is as mysterious and complicated as the physics of a wormhole.

Love is all you need…