"Old Girls and Palm Trees" by Meg Pokrass is a dream

I am reviewing a new book today but first wanted to outline the pleasures and dangers of late-night reading on the Fourth of July weekend.

I've read about the gender gap among White American Male Literary Fiction Writers, notably novelists. Upstarts such as Salinger, Hemingway, and Updike seem to be a vanishing breed. Guys whom you can't wait to read. Guys that hog the bestseller charts. 

I made the mistake of choosing Marc Tracy's July 3 New York Times article for late-night reading. My wife Chris was asleep, or trying to get to sleep as fireworks exploded around us in Ormond Beach suburbia. A few hours earlier we'd joined friends for dinner at a Flagler Beach bistro with a view of the rickety old pier under reconstruction. Made me wonder about hurricane season. The sky burned red as we drove west toward home. Should have taken that as an omen.

"The Death and Life of the Straight White Man's Novel" was compelling reading. I am an old straight white man fiction writer who has published one story collection and written two as-yet-unpublished novels. I've published a number of short stories and a smattering of flash fiction and prose poetry. I left the corporate world to get my M.F.A. in creative writing. I wrote and raised a family while working full-time as an arts administrator, a rapidly dissolving field thanks to MAGA. Agents and editors will admit over late-night beers at writers' conferences that white guys aren't getting published because it's a new world out there, a new multigenerational, multiethnic, gender-neutral world out there. And young white guys are spending their 10,000 hours gaming and not sitting alone in a cafe populating their journals with trenchant observations. So suck it up, buttercup (what is a buttercup anyway? Must Google it). 

I am including a photo of a buttercup.

This buttercup looks happy. Or surprised. Or maybe it's surrendering. They can be poisonous and in the South they are seen as an invasive species. On the plus side, kids like to hold the flower up to their chins and the reflective petals turn skin the color of butter. Like butter!

Since I'm a buttercup, I ordered a nifty little chapbook by Meg Pokrass, "Old Girls and Palm Trees." Published by Bamboo Dart Press, a nifty little outfit with offices in Claremont, Calif. It's illustrated by artist Cooper Renner, who has a playful style. I tackled this book late at night and it pleased me. Meg is a writer friend I met a dozen years ago on Facebook who wasn't afraid to put her flash fiction on display for all the e-world to see. She's from California but now lives in Scotland. Many writers, me included, were a bit concerned about placing our work on social media. Into what dark and dreary and corporate place will it end up? Any Tom or Dick, Harry or Sally, can scoop it up and claim it as their own. That occurred to Meg but didn't faze her, probably because she is represented by crackerjack agent Peg Mokrass who sports huge eyeglasses and looks a bit like Meg. So here it is, years later, and Meg had published some 900 pieces in various mags and online sites. And she's published eight flash collections and two novellas. I brought her to Casper, Wyoming, in September 2014, as a presenter at the Equality State Book Festival.  

The book is delightful. Can a SWMW say delightful? I await your response.

Meg's book features flash pieces about her imagined life with an old friend in California. In the opening piece, she imagines this old friend behind her, "a friend who had become a shadow that needed to be sewn back on." I had to stop there because this is a scene from the black-and-white "Peter Pan" I grew up on. Peter loses his/her/their shadow and has to sew it back on. I watched my own shadow for weeks after that, afraid if it came off I wouldn't know how to sew it back on. I close my eyes and remember that feeling. I'm scared, but also aware that my shadow is a living thing with its own life. It may have turned me to writing, as my Mom read Peter Pan to us after and I saw that words were kind of like a shadow of life, that the writer has thoughts and it travels down the arm for finger to make imprints on the page. Did I think that at five? No, I am imagining that now. Something magical was going on, I knew that much. Somehow I understood that knowing how to read those shadow words could open up new worlds to me. I was a nuisance. I read everything: cereal boxes, candy wrappers, billboards, and eventually magazines and books. I am still a nuisance; any printed matter within reach is not safe. I can read upside-down like a noir detective. So much joy and heartache comes from reading and I wouldn't have it any other way.

There is joy and heartache on the pages of "Old Girls and Palm Trees." It is a dream, basically, and dreamily written. 

About the book: It's a chapbook, 6.5 x 6.5 inches. Well constructed, with a sturdy coated cover, and easy to carry on the Metro or to the beach (as we retirees do) in your E-Cycle or E-Tricycle basket. Nice gifts at $10.99. E-book version available but that kind of defeats the idea of having a nice little chapbook to carry around. As I mentioned, art is by Cooper Renner. Cover art by Meg and Dennis Callaci. 

Support small presses: www.bamboodartpress.com

How to choose art for the bare walls of a new house

It began with a June 19 Facebook post by artist Linda Anne Lopez of Winchester, Virginia. Linda and I met several times over the years. She's married to diehard reader and biker Ben Lopez, a longtime friend of my late brother Dan and his wife Nancy. They met in Santa Barbara while going to UCSB. Turns out they all moved to Florida for work and kids and riding motorcycles year-round. 

Ben is the most voracious reader I know and we trade book titles on FB. His most recent: a biography of Rudyard Kipling. My most recent is a novel The Sleeping Car Porter by Canadian author Suzette Mayr. I am now hip-deep in Carl Hiaasen's newest, Fever Beach. Ben sticks mainly to non-fiction and I'm a creature of fiction as that is what I write. And, sometimes, like these crazy times right now, who can tell the difference?

Linda got serious about her art after retirement. Photography was her thing. Along the way she discovered encaustic mixed media and that's what you're seeing here. 

Linda is  a bird-and-flower person which carries a lot of weight with me, a hummingbird admirer and gardener. She describes her specialty as Encaustic Mixed Media. She combines her love of photography with the ancient arts of encaustic. See further explanation below. Find out more at Lindalopezartist.com

And I spent most of my professional career in the art world, mostly in the realm of state arts agencies (SAAs), local arts funding, a stint at the National Endowment for the Arts, and dabs in arts and literary criticism. All of these worlds are being decimated by Trump and his goons but I will leave my political critiques to other posts on Hummingbirdminds and other rabble-rousing sites.

Linda got my attention with this FB post on June 19:

Hummingbird and flowers, encaustic mixed media, 8-by-8 inches, Linda Lopez

It got my attention because it is beautiful and because it features a hummingbird and flowers. I must have it, I told my PC, and contacted Linda. It was for sale and she also had a companion piece, shown in this June 25 FB post by Linda: 

Encaustic mixed media, Linda Lopez, work at left is 9-by-17 inches.

The new home this refers to is mine in Ormond Beach, Florida. They will be the first works of art to go up in our new home in a woodsy place called Groveside at Ormond Station. I plan to turn these bare walls into a gallery of sorts, one that will feature groups of pieces celebrating my wife Chris and me. These two pieces will hang above our dining room table which, strangely enough, matches the color schemes of the art. It will feature work by Florida and Wyoming artists with a Virginia and Colorado artist in the ranks. 

You might ask: Hey Mike, what, exactly, is encaustic? I will let Linda answer that:

Explanation and History of Encaustic 

Encaustic is a wax-based paint (composed of beeswax, damar resin, and pigment), which is kept molten on a heated palette. It is applied to an absorbent surface and then reheated to fuse the paint.  The word ‘encaustic’ comes from the Greek word enkaiein, meaning to burn in, referring to the process of fusing the paint.  

 

Encaustic painting was practiced by Greek artists as far back as the 5th century B.C. The Fayum portraits are the best-known encaustic works. These funeral portraits were painted in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D. by Greek painters in Egypt. 

 

Modern encaustic painting was made possible by the invention of portable electric heating implements and the availability of commercial encaustic paint and popularized by its usage among many prominent artists. Encaustic paintings do not need varnishing or protection with glass. Beeswax is impervious to moisture, which is one of the major causes of deterioration in a paint film. Wax resists moisture far more than resin varnish or oil. Buffing encaustic will give luster and saturation to color in just the same way resin varnish does. 

 

Encaustic can be used as a traditional painting medium, but it can also be used to create sculptures, with photography (transfers and prints), drawing, and printmaking (monotypes). Painting with encaustic is a multi-step process. First, the paint must be melted. Then the molten paint is applied to a porous surface. The wax is then fused into the working surface, allowing it to form a bond. As a final option, the cooled paint can be buffed to bring up the luster of the wax and resin. Every layer of encaustic wax must be fused. 

Drive-by photos of a closed Flannery O'Connor Childhood Home

 

Photos of the Flannery O'Connor Childhood Home Museum in Savannah (building in center). It was closed to visitors on the day we were there. Built like a brick fort, sturdy and tall. Savannah's early residents built tall so they could fire down on their enemies, whoever they might be: warriors from local tribes, the King of England's soldiers, Yankees, The Misfit, or any rabble who might storm the gates. This makes it almost impossible for this fallen-away Catholic to access the place in my e-scooter. The backyard garden might be accessible but it was closed tight on Wednesday but open Friday-Sunday. It's the meeting place for the Peacock Guild writing group. Members are critiquing and polishing their work for a June reading. As the story goes, the young O'Connor taught her chicken to walk backward in the garden. Read my 2023 blog: "In Flannery O'Connor's Garden of Life, chickens walk backward"

The lone hollyhock in my garden

Lone Hollyhock

My version:

Only one stalk this year. Hollyhock rises among the bachelor buttons and coreopsis. Elbows its way up, beefy stalk, heart-shaped leaves as big as, well, a human heart, if the human heart was shaped like a valentine heart. A cluster of buds promise alcea rosea flowers in magenta, fuchsia, pink, and one I’d like to see, Queeny Purple, which promises a royal presence, a long reign.

Alcea rosea marched from Japan and China all the way to the Middle East and into my 21^st-century garden. Twelfth century crusaders made a salve from the pretty flowers. They rubbed it on their horses’ rear legs (the hocks) to relieve the soreness of many rough miles. Those few holy warriors who made it back to Merry Ol’ told tales of a beautiful flower that grew in the Holy Land that eased their horses’ hocks. It became Holy Hock changed by a monk to Holyoke and later given its present name. Hollyhock was born.

Hollyhocks are in the disjointed Mallow family that includes okra, cotton, hibiscus, and marsh mallow which found its way into s’mores, a staple of every summer campfire. Think of a mallow camp surrounded by hollyhocks, okra in your gumbo, shirts of cotton, hibiscus for your true love, and the dessert ritual of gooey s'mores.

My hollyhock is alone out there in the garden, blooming the magenta of nature, the magenta of the inkjet canisters on his laser printer. A storm is coming. West winds whip the hollyhock. It ticks like a metronome, the rhythm of a horse’s hooves on the hard rocks of Judea, the Cajun beat that rocks the fais-do-dos, that marshmallow smear my wife licks from her upper lip.

I asked AI to make mine more descriptive. This is what happened:

In my garden this year, there stands a remarkable sight: a solitary hollyhock stalk amid the colorful company of bachelor buttons and coreopsis. Its robust, heart-shaped leaves are as large as a human heart, and a cluster of promising buds foretell an imminent spectacle of alcea rosea flowers in vibrant hues of magenta, fuchsia, pink, and the intriguing Queeny Purple. This resilient plant, alcea rosea, has a rich history, journeying from Japan and China all the way to the Middle East before finding its place in 21st-century gardens. Legend has it that 12th-century crusaders used a salve made from these exquisite flowers to soothe their horses' sore legs during their arduous travels. Tales of a magnificent flower that grew in the Holy Land and its beneficial properties to the knights' trusty steeds eventually led to the transformation of Holy Hock into Hollyhock, a name that has endured through the centuries. It's fascinating to think of hollyhocks as part of the disjointed Mallow family, which also includes okra, cotton, hibiscus, and marshmallow – the very ingredient that adds sweetness to the timeless tradition of s'mores enjoyed around summer campfires. As the storm approaches, my lone hollyhock bravely stands, presenting blooms that mirror the vivid magenta of nature and the modern inkjet canisters. Exposed to the whipping winds of the approaching storm, it maintains a steady rhythm reminiscent of a horse's hooves tapping on the hard rocks of Judea or the infectious beat of a Cajun fais-do-do, elevating the marshmallowy treat enjoyed by my wife, licked from her upper lip.

The things that tickled me:

The knights’ trusty steeds

Colorful company of bachelor buttons and coreopsis

marshmallow – the very ingredient that adds sweetness to the timeless tradition of s'mores enjoyed around summer campfires.

A 21-century editor wouldn’t like the overuse of adjectives and adverbs. 

The AI version reads more like the style of a traditional 17^th-century poem. Without the rhyming couplets.

Legends of the fall, as told by a guy upside-down in his garden

My fall yesterday caused no lasting damage to my poor body. Strange. From the street, it must have looked like a comedy routine. A spider web had attached itself to the rain gutter and it stretched all the way to the mailbox. I was sweeping it away with my left hand when I lost my footing, bounced off my concrete porch, and landed head first in my garden adjacent to a clump of bachelor buttons (a.k.a cornflowers). My head was in the dirt and my legs rested on the porch edge and stuck up a few feet in the air. I could not move. My wife Chris heard me and ran out and shrieked in surprise. I was glad she was there because I might have stayed that way all day. But the preacher from the local church was walking his dog and he came over to lend a hand. 

Chris called 9-1-1 and we heard the siren right away. My wife kept asking if I was OK and I replied that I was upside down in my garden and feeling a bit embarrassed. I took a quick inventory of my moving parts and nothing seemed broken. The ambulance arrived and two EMTs scampered over to me. “You OK?” asked the guy EMT. “Well, I’m upside down in my garden.” Later, my wife said she thought I had brain damage because I kept repeating the same thing. Was it not the most obvious way to describe the situation? The EMTs were a short skinny guy and a tiny woman. 

I was thinking how are these little people going to get me out of this fix? I am a 255-pound, 6-foot-2 guy. I saw a fire engine drive up but the EMTs waved it off which, at the time, seemed like a big mistake. Meanwhile, the preacher asked if he could say a prayer and I said yes, of course, because right now it looks like I was need some divine intervention. The two EMTs found a way to get on either side of my and pull. At first, I didn’t detect any movement but slowly they got me upright. My wife Chris brought over my walker and I grabbed it and pulled it close and stood tall. 

She grabbed my arm and asked, “You OK?”

I replied, “Well, I’m no longer upside down in my garden.” Some dirt stuck to my face and hair and there was a small scrape at my temple. My rescuers guided me to the front door and I glanced over at the mailbox and saw that the spider web was no longer there. That was something, at least.

Thought I would give ChatGPT an opportunity to write a story on the theme "old man falls off of porch." Here's the result:

One sunny afternoon, an elderly gentleman was enjoying the fresh air on the porch of his house. As he reached for a fallen leaf, he lost his balance and tumbled off the porch. Thankfully, his family rushed to his aid and called for medical assistance. After a brief visit to the hospital, he returned home with minor injuries but a newfound appreciation for safety measures around the house.

That's good as far as it goes. In my story, this old man was trying to clear a spider web off his mailbox. But a "fallen leaf" would have worked. I did not go to the hospital or as the EMT guy wrote in his laptop: "Patient refused treatment" He handed it to me: "Sign here." I do have a newfound appreciation for safety measures around the house. From now on, spiders may spin as many webs on my porch and get no interference from me. Also, when autumn arrives, I will not reach for any fallen leaves. That is very dangerous. 

I am now hooked. Will have ChatGPT write all my stories. 

We prepare for take-off

June normally would see me outside coaxing my tomato seedlings. But this year, I’ll leave the gardening to others. We are giving our house, both in and out, a thorough sprucing up. Plants are being selected for color, enough color to lure someone to buy our house. I keep looking for “A Planting Guide for Guaranteed Home Selling” but can’t even find it on Amazon. My bulb plants have already bloomed and faded into obscurity among  the asters, coneflowers, and four o’clocks. It was good while they lasted, these brave perennials braving spring’s snow, cold, and wind to present their colors to my part of the world. I have two big pots that flank the porch and I will probably fill them with hardy petunias. They are fast-growing and stick around most of the summer. They are annuals and need to be replanted every year. You can’t kill them, although drought and h-a-i-l have tried. Add this to the yard work being done the next few weeks and you have a house ready-to-sell. So says our realtor.

Visitors streamed into the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens this past weekend. A must-see destination as Wyoming warms up. We have the Conservatory with its tropical gardens and a Children’s Village to keep the kids occupied. Nine acres of gardens bloom outside. The most color comes from the crevice garden just outside our entrance which showcases Rocky Mountain plants, the kind you can spy on any hike in the Snowies, Wind Rivers, or Big Horns. The gardens will not reach their peak until late July or early August and on through fall’s beginnings. A short growing season with lots of pizzazz. The first freeze usually happens in September although last year it was mid-October. It’s sad, really, when the colors fade. I will not be experiencing that in my new home in Florida. Gardens grow year-round and always need attention which is fine with me. I can go into the Conservatory’s main floor and see many of the tropical and sub-tropical plants that grow in my new yard.

I should be reading up on Florida. Instead, I am sorting my books for departure. We are giving the furniture to our kids and taking a few bins of books and journals. Our new place is furnished so we don’t need much. Moving is never fun but this time Chris and I are retired and want some time to ourselves. The beach is two blocks away, so that doesn’t hurt.  Also, family and friends live nearby. It’s odd how you can be away for decades and return to your growing-up place and feel at home. We will be scouting the horizon for hurricanes. The crackerjack meteorologists at CSU, my alma mater, predict a record number of hurricanes this year. Who knows – they may all batter other places and leave us alone. That’s probably what everyone says in Florida. Cane cane, go away/I hear that Galveston and Charleston are nice this time of year. The rhyme is strained but you get the idea.

The lateness of my cherry tomatoes and other Wyoming gardening tales

On May 29, I wrote about Eudora Welty’s garden in Mississippi, prompted by a post from another Mississippian and musician Jason Burge. In May, hope is in the air and in the ground. My daffodils and tulips were fading away, replaced by a mass of asters that took it upon themselves to reseed my front garden. Asters are tough. I’ve been deadheading them all summer, taking care not to grab a blossom currently occupied by a bee. Bees love my asters, whether purple, blue or pink. Such a beautiful little flower from such a spindly stem. They’re a wildflower and you can find them out on the prairie. Wonder how much of our locally-produced honey can be credited to astrum which is the Latin name for star. They are shaped like stars in the sky and they are stars of my garden. Aster is in the sunflower family, Asteraceae. Sunflowers also grow wild in Wyoming. I planted a variety of sunflower in my big flower pot, now surrounded by transplanted petunias. My sunflowers have not yet flowered and they probably shouldn’t be in a pot but at least I know what they are. I took tons of Plant ID photos and had it identified as everything from knotweed to a large variety of poison ivy. At one point, they were identified as Jerusalem artichokes. I dug some out by the roots hoping to find a Jerusalem artichoke that is neither an artichoke or from Jerusalem. I just found a tangled mass of roots that were wrapped into a batch of petunias which also came out of the pot. Petunias, of course, are the workhorses of a garden, blooming all summer, attracting bees and the first hummingbird moth I had ever seen. Such a creature. It buzzed me and sounded exactly like a passing hummingbird. I have grown tons of pink four-o’clocks or I should say that the four o’clocks grew themselves. I had them in a pot last summer and when they died with the frosts, I took the twigs and stuck them in the ground. There was no sign of them for awhile and then boom, there they were and the plants are about three-feet high and festooned with pink. Also sprouting nearby were three deer tongue plants which are odd grasses and sprout sprays of tiny flowers. The sprouts actually look like corn. No surprise, corn is also the grass, Zea mays. Deer tongue are considered an invasive species which I can see because they are propagating themselves. One final word on my 2023 garden. I planted only one veggie this year -- a red cherry tomato whose name I can’t recall. I grew them from Seed Library seeds and they got a late start that curtailed pollination and led to some late-appearing cherries that may not have time to ripen on the vine. My bad. I usually get plantlings about four- to five-inches along. They need the head start.  They didn’t get that this year. Frost will be here within the next couple weeks. Lesson learned.

 

In Flannery O'Connor's Garden of Life, chickens walk backward

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the intersection of writers and gardening. I mentioned that Flannery O'Connor's Andalusia in Milledgeville, Georgia, had gardens and peacocks. Yesterday, as I looked up writers with Savannah ties, I came across the fact that O'Connor was born and mostly raised in Savannah. Her childhood home is now site of a museum and gardens. Now I have two O'Connor-related gardens to visit next time I'm in Georgia. One of the more interesting facts on the museum's web site, was a snippet about a 6-year-old O'Connor and her trained chicken. She trained a chicken to walk backward. This apparently caught the attention of Pathe News Service and they came to Savannah to see for themselves. They filmed O'Connor and her talented chicken and it ended up in a 1931 newsreel that theater patrons would see before the cartoon and double feature. The writer sarcastically noted later that this was quite an event for her and everything that followed was an "anticlimax." The writer died of lupus at 39. Her anticlimax included some fine writing. She's influenced thousands of us with her spare style featuring "grotesques" (her term) of the South. Plenty of humor too. Not sure if any story or novel featured a backward-walking chicken. Who would believe that? The Misfit?

The craft and dedication of gardening and writing

A Facebook post by musician, Mississippian, and one-time Wyomingite Jason Burge caused me to go on a tour of writers' gardens. Jason showed a little envelope of zinnia seeds from Eudora Welty's garden. His aunt sent them. What a gift. It caused me to seek out Welty's garden. The Eudora Welty House & Garden is located in Jackson, Miss. It's the house where Welty grew up and wrote her stories. I've read her "One Writer's Beginnings" more than once. I read some of her stories in high school but they hardly made a dent in my consciousness. I've read others since and now I know what kind of craft goes into them. I also know the craft and dedication that goes into a garden. It takes time. You may plant something today that you may never see. Others will.

The web site says this:

Conversations with Welty, her photographs, and her mother’s detailed garden journals guide our historic restoration. Welty asked that the garden not be turned into something it wasn’t, explaining it was never a show garden -- merely a work of love, typical of its time.

A work of love. There is a 20-minute audio tour of the garden here. In it, Susan Haltom leads the tour and Welty’s niece Mary Alice Welty White reads author’s excerpts. Interesting to note that Haltom refers to each section as “garden rooms” which I assume is a Southern expression as I’ve never heard it Out West. We hear from Welty’s stories and novels including “A Garden of Green,” “The Robber Bridegroom,” and “The Optimist’s Daughter.” I’ve never read these stories but I will and notice the sections that call out roses and camellias and many other growing things in Welty’s garden. I don’t know how many writers’ homes feature gardens. I recall a fine one on the Thurber House grounds in Columbus. I know Flannery O’Connor’s house in Georgia features a big garden as well as peacocks. There should be a national garden tour of writers’ homes. Is there?   

Cheyenne Botanic Gardens celebrates Earth Day

What better place to celebrate Earth Day at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens on Saturday, April 22, 11 a.m.-3:30 p.m.? Tour the Conservatory, enjoy the spring tulip show, have lunch at the Chicago Dog House food truck and attend a series of classes. Bring in and old computer or other electronics for recycling and Blue Peak will provide you with a free Earth Day plant. Fee for the three "Let's Talk About Water-wise Landscaping" series of classes is $20. Please pre-register. 

High Plains Gardening, 11 a.m.-noon: Horticulturist Isaiah Smith will be presenting the steps you can take to turn your yard into a water wise landscape while increasing the aesthetic appeal. Starting with small steps to a full renovation of your existing landscape you will learn how to garden in the High Plains successfully.

Crevice Gardening, 1-2 p.m.: Isaiah Smith will discuss the history and techniques of crevice gardening. Ready to learn more and plant a mountain in your front yard? There will also be tips to how to construct and plant your very own crevice garden.

Turf-grass Management, 2:30-3:30 p.m.: Do you want to manage your High Plains lawn with less fuss and fewer inputs? Director Scott Aker will give you some tips and tricks that could help you have a nicer lawn while using less water, less fertilizer, and less herbicide to control weeds. 

FMI: 307-637-6458 or botanic.org

I'll be volunteering at the front desk from 2:30-5 p.m. to field your questions and then send you to someone who knows the answers. 

 

Saturday Morning Round-up: Pretty Flowers, a Cornhusker Goes South, and Outrage in Tennessee

It’s mid-April and we’re experiencing our usual schizoid mix of warm days in the 70s interrupted by bursts of snow and cold. Humans are confused but bulb plants (amaryllis, tulips, daffodils, crocus) continue their rise into the sunshine. I have some nice yellow daffodils and purple crocuses emerging in my front yard garden. They are getting extra sunshine this spring because we took down the dying blue spruce on the house’s west side so the shade is gone. I’ll plant annuals in the gardens and maybe grow some cherry tomatoes to add some veggies to the mix. I’ve always wanted tomatoes in my front yard although critters may prove to be a problem. Wish me luck.

I volunteer at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens this afternoon. At the front desk, I am surrounded by blooming things, mostly tulips who have already passed their prime and gloxinias which are beautiful but eerily have no scent. The scent of orange and lemon blossoms drift in from the Orangerie. The Tilted Tulip Gift Shop sells the nicest smelling candles, their scents drifting my way even when they aren’t alight. April is when I see the first visitors with sunburns from walking around the lake or strolling through the gardens. They bear beatific looks and sly grins, as if they can’t believe they have survived another Wyoming winter.

My university newspaper, published five days a week and independent of the University of Florida since 1971, is having a blast goading the new UF president, a toady Republican named Ben Sasse. If the name looks familiar, it’s because Sasse retired from his seat as one of Nebraska’s two U.S. senators to take the job. We know Gov. DeSantis played a role in this since he is working overtime to sabotage both the public school K-12 system and the state’s public universities. The Independent Florida Alligator mocks Sasse for ignoring their reporters’ calls and e-mails. He’s kept a low profile since being heckled at a public gathering when he first appeared with his Cornhusker roots and started telling Floridians what to do with their flagship university. It doesn’t look good for him even with his nose firmly planted in DeSantis’s backside. I worked at the Alligator for two semesters in 1976 as a G.A. reporter, General Assignment because I arrived with no specialty such as sports or local government and I knew a tiny bit about everything because I was an English major, the academic equivalent of G.A. Good luck Alligator – we are cheering you on from Nebraska’s superior western neighbor.

Wyoming GOP legislators are no prize but they take second place to their colleagues in Tennessee. The GOP ran two African-American Democrats out of their seats because they had the temerity to join a demonstration at the state capitol. The demo was aimed at gun violence, the most recent murders happening March 27 when six people, including three kids, were gunned down at a Nashville Christian school. The Tenn. GOP like their national leaders have refused to do anything to limit access to automatic weapons. Instead, they send meaningless “thoughts and prayers” to victims’ families and scamper to Indianapolis for the national NRA convention (“14 Acres of Guns & Gear”). I’ll close this out with a quote from U.S. Army special counsel James Welch when hectored by Sen. Joseph McCarthy at a congressional hearing. From the History Channel web site:

“Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.” It was then McCarthy’s turn to be stunned into silence, as Welch asked, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” 

Saturday morning round-up: Insurrections, a Plant Pandemonium, and Waterloo Bridge

Saturday morning round-up

Watched the first hearing Thursday night of the Jan. 6 Insurrection Committee. Compelling television. I'm not being facetious when I say that its production values were excellent. That's the way it is in visual media and politics. I cringed watching the previously unseen video footage. I was saddened by the testimony of Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards. It occurred to me that one must possess a certain amount of empathy to be affected by the life-threatening injuries suffered by Edwards. You see her being crushed beneath the bicycle rack that served as the first line of defense. Such rank cruelty was visible throughout. American vs. American. It turned my stomach. Will it change minds? I don't think so. Hearts and minds were locked into place when Trump swaggered into the White House in 2017 during the usual peaceful handover of power. We didn't know how much would change during the next four years.  

Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming served as co-chair of the committee. She was only one of two Republicans seated on the committee. The rest of them are in thrall to Trump. Cheney was excellent. Made me proud to be from Wyoming. I e-mailed congratulations to her office after the broadcast. This Democrat objects to almost all of Cheney's actions in the House. She supported too many Trump policies. But she deserves credit for taking a stand for the Republic.

Today is Plant Pandemonium at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. Hundreds of flowers will be planted in the beds in front of the Conservatory. Flowers were always meant for these spaces but we ran out of summer during the first year we opened so the director decided to sod the space and we would get to it later. Then Covid happened. Supply chain issues exist in the horticulture world too. We plant thousands of seeds each winter, some as small as the period on my keyboard. Their seedlings are spoken for. We have nine acres of grounds as well as the Paul Smith Children's Village and planters in the park and around town. Thanks for staff and volunteers out planting today. Drink plenty of fluids. Wear sunscreen. Laugh a lot.

Finished reading an intriguing book by Aminatta Forna, "Happiness: A Novel." I was attracted by the title and the author's bio. I want to voyage to different worlds when I read. The novel is set in London and features a psychiatrist from Ghana who's an expert in PTSD and an American divorcee who works as an urban biologist. They are going to meet up -- the author teases you so bravo to her as I kept reading to see what happened. There are gruesome stretches. Innocents are tortured and killed in the world's killing fields. Animals are injured and killed by brutal, unthinking humans. But we meet a wonderful cast of characters, cab drivers and cooks and hotel doormen, many of them African immigrants, whom the main characters befriend. You know those Africans and Asians and Latinos you observe on your business trips to big cities? They all have a story. Forna makes sure to tell them and see the rich biospheres of a city, a place where humans and foxes and coyotes try to exist side-by-side. I was impressed by many scenes that take place on and around the Waterloo Bridge. Books and films have used the bridge for a backdrop. One of them, "Waterloo Bridge" is a wartime drama (flashback to World War I) in which two mismatched people attempt to match up. Drama and heartbreak ensue. This can happen in novels too. 

Read it. 

Trees can soothe the beast of depression

Fun fact for Arbor Day: 

There are now 99 elms encircling the CSU Oval and lining its walkways.

So reports an April 2022 story on Colorado State University's web site, Literally just 46 facts about CSU's trees. 

Literally, it was interesting stuff. 

Here's a few other items from the CSU list:

When CSU was first founded 1870, it was located on a treeless prairie. 

Some of the [elm] trees are 80 to 90 feet high, and their roots are 1.5 times their height. 

This one is a surprise:

The Heritage Arboretum/Woody Plant Demonstration and Research Area has the largest collection of woody plants in the region, with more than 1,100 different taxa represented. 

The Arboretum is on the south end of campus, within shouting distance of the new stadium. It's surprising because I passed through this site many times during grad school and didn't know it was an arboretum. Time now for a return visit.

The Oval elms are special. During the spring and summer of 1991, as I worked on my M.F.A. in creative writing, I was gobsmacked by severe depression, I found solace among the elms. As noted, they are sturdy and tall, providing shade for the lawn and itinerant students who need some elm goodness to buck up their spirits. I would bike on over to the Oval, prop myself against a tree, read and study. The tree gave me strength. At the time, I thought they were cottonwoods but it didn't really matter. Trees carry energy and silently impart strength to those humans who take the time to appreciate them. I took antidepressants for the first time but it took a long time for them to work. Meanwhile, I had trees. 

I'd dealt with depression before. When I was an undergrad, a break-up caused me to go sleepless for a week. That was the first time I saw a therapist and talked it through. This was 1975 and pre-Prozac. I was 24 and pleased. I faced the beast and came out the better for it. 

During the next couple decades, I muddled through. Married, had a kid, worked various jobs in Denver until I went to school. After I turned 40, family issues took me back to therapy and anti-Ds. I kicked the drugs several times but the result was always the same. Finally, a psychiatrist in Cheyenne issued a mandate: You'll be on these the rest of your life. And, thus far, I have been.

While the meds percolate through my system, I walk among the trees. It's never been a mystery to me that elms and maples have healing qualities. Psychology Today writes about "Forest Bathing in Japan." Full immersion in the forest. PT referenced a 2012 Outside magazine first-person article by Florence Williams, Take Two Hours of Pine Forest and Call Me in the Morning. Here's the subhead:

These days, screen-addicted Americans are more stressed out and distracted than ever. And there’s no app for that. But there is a radically simple remedy: get outside. Florence Williams travels to the deep woods of Japan, where researchers are backing up the theory that nature can lower your blood pressure, fight off depression—and even prevent cancer.

These days, I need assistance when walking. I'm missing out on forest bathing. But last time I was in the mountains, last September, I sat under pines as my family joined friends in a hike on Vedauwoo's Turtle Rock Trail. I'm usually the one leading these and may again if the docs can get to the bottom of my disability. I can park my rollator walker under any tree. And breathe deeply. 

Happy belated Arbor Day.

Botanist Trevor Bloom doesn't like what he sees in Wyoming's early wildflower blooms

This April 6 WyoFile post brings us more good news about global warming:

Wyoming botanist Trevor Bloom spotted his first springtime blooms of the year on March 28. Bloom, while tracing the footsteps of famed ecologist Frank Craighead at Blacktail Butte in Grand Teton National Park, saw the orogenia linearifolia, or snowdrop, wildflower. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wildflower, besides a dandelion, flowering in March,” Bloom said. The snowdrop bloom was nearly a month earlier than Craighead had recorded in the 1970s. “It means we’re probably going to have a very early spring this year. It probably means that we’re going to have very low water levels, and we’re probably going to have an increased risk of wildfire this year.”

So, early spring, lack of snow, low water levels, and more fires. Ah, summer in the Rockies, 2022.

Seems as if we are ahead of schedule as far as bulb plants. Some of mine already are flowering. The Cheyenne Botanic Gardens show some early blooms in its “Hero Garden” of native plants. Not sure what effects the wild winds have had. Most plants seem to be deciding if it’s safe to raise their heads or if we will have our usual spring of snow and wind and cold punctuated by 60-degree calm and sunny days.

My home gardening will be limited this year. During The Covid Year, I commandeered the kitchen table to sprout my seeds. When June arrived, the containers on the porch were filled, absorbing the sun and hiding from hail. It felt normal, as if a plague wasn’t decimating the globe. We all had our survival; tactics. Some gardened, some baked sourdough loaves, others watched endless video loops on YouTube and TikTok. I gardened and read and wrote. Also, Netflix and Hulu.

I will buy some seedlings and plant seeds. I need to grow something. Call it a celebration of summer’s arrival. It may bring drought and fire. But I’m going to grow flowers and cherry tomatoes beneath my rooftop solar array. The pensive William Wordsworth, wanderer of England’s Lake Country, loved to conjure daffodils when resting on his couch.

They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Just what are the origins of that tuna casserole my Mom used to make?

CBS Sunday Morning was all about food and drink. An historic Mexican cafe in San Bernardino, a Yemini coffee speakeasy, the origin of Ranch dressing, the rise and fall of NYC Automats, the art of making Italian Orecchiette pasta, the refined tongues of taste testers, and so on.

It caused me to think about my food traditions. I have none. I cook Mexican enchiladas, Asian stir-fry, Kansas City-style barbecue, U.S.-style Thanksgiving dinner. Typical American diet, right -- a sampler of cuisine from elsewhere. Or a smorgasbord, a Swedish type of cafeteria that was a thing back in the 1950s. Because Americans come from everywhere, so does our food. 

I should have Irish-American foodways. If only I knew what those were. Corned beef and cabbage? Irish oatmeal? Irish Stew? Rashers? Soda bread? Guinness-infused desserts? Irish coffee? 

No idea. My mother passed along recipes for Jello molds and tuna casserole. My father made his Scots-Irish mother's spaghetti and meatballs. One could live off of that I suppose, but would you want to?

The anti-tuna-casserole stance involves a bit of food snobbery. I began to think of my Mom in the kitchen, faced with the hungry stares of her many children, and I realized that a couple cans of tuna, a can of cream of mushroom soup, a dash of milk, and a handful of corn flakes for crunchiness made dinner for eight for a few bucks. All she needed was a can opener and a stove (no microwaves yet). Many "homemakers" of the 1950s faced the same challenge. Bless you Mom. Sorry I made such a fuss. 

I Googled tuna casserole recipes and there are thousands. Still. Heather Arndt Anderson wrote a witty "Brief History of the Tuna Casserole" for Taste Magazine. In it, she traces the origins of the dish to a traditional German noodles and fish casserole. The first recipes in the U.S. show up in the 1930s. It started in the Pacific Northwest and then migrated to Middle America. Modern conveniences such as COMS and canned Charley the Tuna was all that was needed to feed hungry groups of fledgling Baby Boomers. That led eventually to Tuna Helper and a recipe for tuna casserole that's "not for wimps." 

As an American, I come from nowhere and I leave no food traditions for my offspring. A sad state of affairs. My daughter Annie will help me cook Thanksgiving dinner. The recipe is a 16-pound roasted turkey, mashed potatoes and turkey gravy, stuffing, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie. I bought cranberry sauce but use it on my turkey sandwiches. I like sweet potatoes but the family does not. I have a childhood memory of my Aunt Ellen's sweet potato casserole topped with marshmallows. It was a revelation -- marshmallows on taters? What wondrous world is this? I brought the recipe home to my mom but she never made it. I never have either. 

My parents and my wife's parents were meat and potato people. Who could blame them? Growing up in the 1930s, they were lucky to eat regularly. The Depression cast a pall on my parents' generation. That's why food companies found a willing populace for beef roasts, hamburgers, hot dogs, and, eventually, TV dinners. What miracle is this, an entire meal in an aluminum tray? Mystery meat, whipped potatoes, green beans, and an apple crisp dessert hot enough to burn away the roof of your mouth. We loved them. Mostly, though, we lived on casseroles, macaroni/cheese, hot dogs and burgers. Cereal for breakfast. Baloney sandwiches for lunch. 

I continue these non-traditions. Sure, I try new things from other cultures but keep returning to the tried-and-true. We eat a lot of stews and chilis in the cold months, many kinds of salads in the summer. But if I was asked about traditional foods, I would draw a blank. Why do I cook chicken on the gas grill? Why do I use a certain marinade? When I make Irish stew, how Irish is it really? Research shows that stew is a catch-all for whatever you have around the house. Hobos cook Irish stew from veggies they scrounge in the fields. Who invented the chili  make and why? I cook Italian sausages made in Boulder, Colorado. How Italian are they anyway? The Tex-Mex dishes I make are not the same ones you find in El Paso and Mexico City. I do not like corned beef and cabbage and have no ideas about its origins. The most Irish thing I imbibe is beer, usually stouts like Guinness which is made in Dublin and now in a Baltimore brewery. 

Now I'm rambling. But the same question remains: what am I eating and why? One of the reports on CBS today was about the rise of plant-based diets. Vegan and vegetarian restaurants have been a thing for awhile but there's a rise in popularity. You can assemble a vegan meal at most restaurants in Cheyenne but there isn't an all-vegan one. Closest WYO vegetarian restaurant is Sweet Melissa's in Laramie and quite a few in Fort Collins.

I do not want to go vegan but I do grow vegetables and eat them. Fruits, too, but all of mine comes from Colorado, California, and Texas. I eat less red meat but I eat a lot of chicken. There's a company called Daring Foods making veggie-based chicken and I plan to try it if I can find it in Wyoming stores. Tabitha Brown grew up in the meatcentric South but now is vegan and wrote a vegan cookbook, "Feeding the Soul." Her reasons for changing her diet is to stop chronic pan and fatigue. A very good reason. My heart condition makes it crucial to cut down on bad cholesterol and its tendency to cause inflammation that upsets the heart. 

My goal is modest. Replace a few meat-based meals with plant-based. Some practice Meatless Mondays which sounds reasonable. Alliterative, too. I also want to track the origins of the food I eat. I like to lose myself in the maze of research. It's habit-forming. Like bacon.

Weekend Round-up: Wolf says Meow, gigantic garden seed pods, and Notre Dame Cathedral visits the West

The garden has been winterized and the bulbs are in the ground. A pretty good year for tomatoes and Purple Podded Pole Beans, which I keep getting from the library's seed library because I like the name. Sounds like a crop a Martian might grow. The vines took over my container garden. Not tasty raw but can grow to incredible lengths because the beans blend in with the purple stems. There are some big ones, too. Not "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" big, but they're scary. The bigger they are, the tougher they are. Tomato varieties: Gold Nugget and Baxter's Early Bush Cherries. 

Mystery foliage still thrives in my big front yard flower pot. Looks like parsley but at first I thought cilantro since I was throwing around cilantro seeds in the spring. I used Plant ID but came up with nothing. I'll take some leaves into the Botanic Gardens and ask the experts. 

My two crabapple trees seem to be taking hold. Planted by Rooted in Cheyenne in August, they're six-feet tall and the leaves are dropping with the seasons. Must remember to water them on a regular basis. Weather Channel has mega-storms hitting the West Coast but whether the moisture makes its way to the Interior West is yet to be seen. Forecast calls for hurricane-force winds and giant waves on the Washington coast and up to eight inches of rain in California and multiple feet of snow in the Sierras. Pray for snow! Fortunately, Halloween is nigh and we all know what Halloween usually looks like around here.

I finished an article for WyoFile this week and it should appear online mid-week. It features two Wyoming-bred artists now living in Denver who highlight their work at the new Meow Wolf Denver. The four-story art outpost, wedged between I-25 and Colfax Avenue, opened Sept, 17. More than 300 artists contributed to the immersive art exhibit called Convergence Station, “the convergence of four different dimensions.” Haven't seen it in person yet but traveled there virtually through the imaginations of the artists. Look for my byline this week.

I just read "The Lincoln Highway" by Amor Towles. Color me clueless but I had never heard of this writer who has written many books. I will read more now that I blew through the latest on Kindle. The title attracted me. I live along the Lincoln Highway which was Hwy. 30 until it was swallowed up by I-80. I've researched the origins of America's first transcontinental highway for my novel. Fascinating stuff. Billy, an eight-year-old Nebraska boy in Towles novel, is fascinated by it and wants to travel it. But wanting to travel it in 1954 as Kerouac did just a few years earlier is tougher than it seems and launches his 400-page adventure. Great read. 

I'm also reading the new book of poetry by Betsy Bernfeld of Jackson and Laramie. Betsy is not only an accomplished poet but also an attorney and former librarian. I still treasure the tour of the old Jackson library Betsy led me on when I first came to work at the Wyoming Arts Council. That was the old log cabin library that smelled of wood. The new library is a work of art. I visit it every time I'm in Teton County. Betsy's book, "The Cathedral is Burning," was published by the fine Finishing Line Press in Lexington, Kentucky. It's one of the small presses that keeps literature alive in the U.S. and around the world. The book's cover features "The Mothers: Las Madres Project. No Mas Lagrimas, a public artwork about migrants in the Arizona desert at Pima Community College in Tucson. 

The other day I was thinking: how come there aren't more movies about poets? There are a few big names who have made it to the screen: Dante Alighieri, Allen Ginsberg, Shakespeare, Sylvia Plath, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Emily Dickinson. That's a pretty good start. 

Surfing the streaming channels, I came across a film on Netflix about John Keats. I know Keats as a suffering English poet of the Late Romantic Period who died young at 25. He excelled at odes -- you don't see to many of those these days. "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," etc. I wasn't familiar with "Bright Star," a poem that speaks of mortality and youthful love. It's a beautiful poem that became the title of Jane Campion's movie, "Bright Star." Set in 1819 in a rural area just outside London, it tells the tale of a morose Keats and Fanny Brawne, a lively young woman was makes her own clothes and loves to dance. She is smitten with the scrawny poet. He eventually is smitten enough to write her several poems. His consumption gets supercharged after a night out in the rain. 

It's all over but the suffering. 

Thing is, Keats is doomed but the film is about Fanny's lovesickness. She is obsessed with Keats and she gets little in return. When he travels to London, she's in bed for five days, asking her mother why love hurts so bad. I kept hearing Nazareth's "Love Hurts" in my head. But her infatuation puts any pop song's lyrics to shame. She is physically ill when Keats goes to Rome to heal and won't take her along. She is torn asunder when word reaches her about the poet's death. They weren't married but were only informally engaged because her mother won't consent because she thinks her daughter is tetched and "people are talking." In mourning, she makes her own widow's weeds, cuts off her hair, and walks the heath for six years reciting her man's poems. That is worth a collection of odes right there. So sad to see her walking the heath reciting "Bright Star." She eventually marries and has three children but her future is also tied to Keats' gathering fame. 

Today I read a batch of Keats' poems and they are impressive. I also read some criticism that followed Keats post-mortem. I've always been more taken with Wordsworth and Coleridge and Blake of the Early Romantic Period. Later, Shelley was pretty cool although his wife was more cool. Lord Byron dies the true Romantic's death when he leaves poesy to fight a war that had nothing to do with him. Strange thing is, it seems as if Keats has a stronger legacy as the suffering creative genius. He was poor and unknown in his time. But the poet who suffers is still with us. And the poet's betrothed is the one whose suffering I felt most.