Happy New Year: Fear and Loathing in 2025 America

A friend once asked me to name my favorite writers. It's a long, long list, but I gave him the top five: Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Flannery O'Connor, and Hunter S. Thompson. Fine writers all.

My friend who shall remain nameless made an astute observation: "But you don't write like any of those authors." 

A fair point. I don't write like any of them. But how could I? These writers had their own styles that are much admired and frequently copied. That's what beginning writers do: imitate their maestros. But you eventually move on to find your own voice if you stick with it. I've stuck with it and crafted my own style and it apparently has few fans in the publishing world but that's life in the fast lane. 

I haven't given up and I'm called to write for a number of reasons that make up my 74 years. My parents read to me and I gobbled up Yertle the Turtle and Winnie-the-Pooh. I read cereal boxes at the breakfast table and billboards as I peered out those big windows in post-war automobiles. I wrote stories for my third-grade teacher Jean Sylling and she put one up on the bulletin board. It was about aliens in a flying saucer landing in my Denver backyard. I was embarrassed but also thought it a bit grand, a story I wrote put up for all my classmates to see. 

My father the accountant had a big library and I read through many of them without really understanding what was going on. My mother usually had a baby in one arm and a book in the other. That's who introduced me to "Catch-22." She read and laughed and I was curious but was only 11 and not interested enough until I was in high school and close to draft age and Heller's novel haunted me and made me laugh. I turned on my chums to the book and its hilarity resonated with them but we rarely talked about the war part. 

Strange happenings were all around and I soaked them in but did not write about them. My parents and eight brothers and sisters were all distinctive entities and I inherited their nuances. My forebears visited my dreams. I attended Catholic School and irony and metaphors surrounded me but I was not aware of it until later, much later. I watched "Get Smart," "The Monkees," and the evening news and they all kind of blended together. Sex was a puzzle that we Catholic teens were left to figure out on our own and it's still a work-in-progress. 

My childhood and teenhood were all precursors to hard lessons to come. I really thought I had it made at 18 and the world was my oyster although I'd never eaten an Atlantic Ocean oyster as I surfed in that salty sea whenever I didn't have to take care of my siblings or go to school or go to work to afford that school. I dated the most beautiful creatures on Planet Earth but they might as well have been the imaginary aliens that landed in my yard in my third-grade story. 

Speaking of alien life forms: I am no closer to understanding the human condition than I was in the third grade. I refer to recent happenings in the U.S. of A. It is past time to revisit Thompson's Fear & Loathing chronicles and Yossarian's naked self and Billy Pilgrim's time jumps and the residents of Macondo and O'Connor's Misfit. I may not fully understand them but they live inside me every second of every day.

A salute to those books that taught me humor, satire, and the absurdity of being human

All this book-banning makes me think of all of those books I read that might meet disapproval now from the GOP Know Nothings. 

When I was in the fourth grade, my father told me I could read any book in his library. I tackled the war books, first, Guadalcanal Diary by Richard Tregaskis, Brave Men by Ernie Pyle and Up Front by Bill Mauldin, which included his Willie and Joe cartoons. He had some boys' adventure books from his childhood, Treasure Island and Ivanhoe. But I was more interested in the WWII books, as my father had been a radioman with an infantry unit in France, Belgium, and Germany. They seemed like boys' adventures to me. I read all of the Life magazines that my grandparents had saved for my dad while he was overseas. I watched war movies with my dad, as did my younger brother. We played war with our friends. 

None of my teachers ever assigned books on 20th century wars. They reached into the heroic past. The Revolutionary War had spawned books such as Johnny Tremayne and tales of Paul Revere and George Washington. The Civil War was acceptable reading as we all grew up knowing that the Yankees were the good guys and the Rebs the bad guys. This was way before we moved to the South and heard the term War of Northern Aggression. So many of the books I read as an English major and later were by writers of the American South. Their Southern Gothic tales owed their existence to the region's tortured history which included the Civil War, whatever you want to call it.

Now in my 70s, I look back on my reading as nostalgic. I also know more about the workings of the world. War can be heroic. It's also nasty, brutish, and final. Soldiers carry their experiences into old age, if they make it that far. There are brilliant antiwar books told from the warrior's POV. And books by observers, such as Red Badge of Courage and Dispatches, Michael Herr's wild book about life among the grunts in Vietnam (Herr got writing credits for Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket). 

Just about every book I ever read could be fodder for the book banners. My non-authorized reading at my Catholic high school included three oft-banned novels that influenced me more than anything I read in class: Catch-22, Slaughterhouse-Five, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. They are now considered classics and are read in some high school classrooms when Know Nothings are not disappearing books like Dunbar. They were telling me a truth that I barely knew at 18, that the world is a strange and terrifying place. 

Humor, satire, and sci-fi are great vehicles for getting at the truth. I passed Catch-22 along to my Class of '69 pals and we laughed at the absurdities. The dead man in Yossarian's tent. Major Major Major's name. Orr's pastime of ditching his bomber into the ocean to practice for his escape from war. Hilarious. We only felt a small tremor of the earthquake beneath. We could have watched the absurdity of televised military reports from Vietnam. Body count, Vietnamization, destroy the village in order to save it. It was all right there in front of us but we didn't know. 

Reading good books gave us a bit of a head start on adulthood. Still, you have to live it to really know. You can be an absurdist and still be an engaged human. You can love satire but also fall in love. Humor makes the ride fun even when it's challenging. 

I'd have none of that without the reading.

Birth control debate provokes sixties' flashback

Catholics of a certain age will recognize Foster Friess’s recent “aspirin solution” comment as a joke from an earlier age.

In case you hadn’t heard, Rick Santorum’s premier contributor, Foster Friess of Jackson, joked last week that back in his day, aspirin was the perfect birth control pill. Women were told (only half-jokingly): “Take an aspirin, and hold it between your knees.”

LOL.

Although we didn’t say LOL then. We said hardy-har-har, or something similar.

In America’s pre-pill era, women, especially Catholic women, were screwed. They were sexual beings who were told by the men in their lives – boyfriends, husbands, priests, politicians – that birth control was not an option. It was their womanly duty to have sex and their bear the consequences – children. It was God’s will. Barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen was the reality of this “every sperm is sacred” mentality.

The guys were in charge.

That changed with the advent of safe birth control. And the women moved out of the kitchen and went to work and here we are today, debating this subject all over again.

But men, especially older white men, are being threatened as never before by smart and successful women. Minorities, too -- we have a black president! Technology and rapidly changing world events are scary. All hell is breaking loose! Women back to kitchen!

I grew up Catholic and am still, nominally, a Catholic. My coming-of-age was in the sixties. My parents were devout Catholics and they practiced the rhythm method.

LOL.

This was the only birth control method available to church-going Catholics. Abstinence, too – can’t forget that. Thus, most Catholic families engendered multiple offspring. In the case of the Shay family, that was nine children (with two miscarriages). My mother used to joke, “I was pregnant for 15 years.” That would have been longer had she not had twins. In the end, she had a hysterectomy and that was that. She died at the young age of 59, two years younger than I am now. She lasted only 18 months after an ovarian cancer diagnosis.

My parents urged their children to be careful and judicious when it came to sex. My mother, a nurse, urged birth control upon her offspring. In the emergency room, she regularly saw the depredations of unwanted pregnancy. She cast a jaundiced eye on church fathers that urged sex-for-procreation-only and then turned their backs on the results. On the other hand, she was mightily offended whenever people would look down their noses at her brood. “Nine kids – heavens to Betsy!” It usually wasn’t elitist secularists and liberals making these remarks. In the South, it tended to be our Protestant brethren and sistren. They tended to have smaller families, whether the result of birth control or abstinence or sheer cussedness I cannot say. As I look back, I remember that we were a large family even among my Catholic high school friends. Three kids tended to be the norm, with a few in the five-seven range and some of us with whopping big numbers. But we were rare.

What kind of birth control did I practice in high school? Fear and guilt kept me from toiling in the devil’s workshop. We joked about the rhythm method or the aspirin-between-the-legs or chastity belts or whatever. Meanwhile, we only had lust in our hearts. Nothing could be done for it. In our senior year, the blonde-haired, blue-eyed head cheerleader got in trouble, courtesy of the football star. She was sent away to live with her aunt in Ohio, and she missed graduation. The football star did not. Both of these people were my friends. From what I hear, both have had more than their share of life’s struggles. But their fate could have easily been ours. Just say no! And that’s what I did until I was 21.

Catholics of a certain age know the tragedies behind the church’s procreation policies. There are tragedies repeated today, in a time when science has given us an array of dependable birth control, a time in which college students can purchase morning-after pills along with Twinkies in student union vending machines. Birth control has given us all more freedom. Women, especially. And they should have all possible means available to them.

What has happened to my brothers and sisters? Surviving members (we lost a brother in 2010) all seem to be leading useful and productive lives. Among the nine of us, we have 19 children. My two kids have plenty of first cousins, although they live far away in Florida. None of my siblings are devout Catholics, although some go to church. When my brother Patrick Kevin Shay (my son’s godfather) died in 2010, he had a secular ceremony in a park. I officiated. Good ol’ secular liberal me. There were remembrances and even a few prayers. We partied later and remembered the dead. We even argued politics, which we consider a contact sport.

Even when I was a practicing adult Catholic, I paid no attention to the church’s pronouncements of matters that were none of its business. The church cannot tell me whom I can sleep with, appropriate procreation methods, which candidate to vote for, what books to read, etc. Church fathers make it their business but they are regularly ignored, if recent polls can be believed. It’s interesting to note that most Catholics who have to live in the real world regularly ignore those who don’t.

Mr. Friess can joke about the aspirin solution all he wants. We know that it’s not a joke to most women. Women who vote, women like my wife Chris of 30 years, do not consider Foster Friess a comedian. They see him as a tired old man living in an imagined golden age. That’s the way she sees Rick Santorum, too, and all of his fellow travelers. They are throwbacks to another age. This is their last hurrah and they are being as loud and as obnoxious as possible. It’s up to us to ignore them, and then go to the ballot box to vote for people who believe in a future filled with intelligence and empathy and choice.

LCCC's Mental Health Awareness Week helps to stem Wyoming's shocking youth suicide rate

Heartwarming holiday statistics from the Wyoming Behavioral Health Division (formerly the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services Division):  

• Suicide ranks as the 2nd leading cause of death for Wyoming’s adolescents and young adults.
• One of every six high school students reported they had attempted suicide.
• More Wyoming teenagers and young adults die from suicide than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, and other medical illnesses combined.

On the local level, Laramie County Community College Counseling and Campus Wellness Center announces that Mental Health Wellness Awareness Week runs from Nov. 28-Dec. 2.


Come by the Mental Health Awareness table in Student Lounge in the College Community Center on Tuesday, Nov. 29, 11 a.m.-1 p.m.

Suicide Awareness & Prevention session will be held on Wednesday, Nov. 30, 3-5 p.m. in Room 179 of the College Community Center. Free, but RSVP required. The purpose of this training is to promote help seeking behaviors and reduce the stigma of seeking help. Learn to identify warning signs of suicide, risks, and protective factors. Learn skills to help yourself, a friend, family member, or another student.

FMI: http://www.lccc.wy.edu/life/wellness

I dispute the claim that all Tea Partiers are Baby Boomers -- and vice versa

A few weeks ago on Keith Olbermann's show, comedian and political commentator Christian Finnegan has a comment about members of the Tea Party Movement. It went something like this: "Teabaggers are a bunch of Baby Boomers scared that the world has passed them by."

I took umbrage with this. Normally umbrage is the last thing I take with the proceedings on Keith's show. I'm yelling at my flat-screen TV: "Yeah, Keith, go baby go!" Sometimes I'm yelling at Keith's guests: "Yeah [guest's name], go baby go."

But I had to chew on Finnegan's comment. As I've said on these pages before -- I'm a Baby Boomer who's a bit scared that the world has passed me by. I'm chewing though my 60th year on Planet Earth. I'm not overly scared about this world-passing-me-by-thingy -- but I do have some suspicions.

I'm a writer and I work in the field of arts administration. I could easily be an accountant like my father or a nurse like my mother or a machinist like one of my brothers or a postal delivery person like another one of my brothers. I'd have a lot more job security if I had chosen a more practical field. But I drifted into my career through stints in print journalism and corporate PR. If I had stayed in any of those fields, I'd probably be unemployed now. I could have fallen into other careers or other jobs. But here I am, an aging English major Baby Boomer who wants nothing to do with the Tea Party.

So note to Christian Finnegan: Baby Boomers come in all shapes and sizes and political persuasions. Just like you and your fellow Gen-Ys or Gen-Xs or Gen-Zs (how old are you anyway?).

Yes, it does appear that Tea Party demonstrators tend to be white and male and rotund. That could easily describe me, although I like to think that I'm not rotund but slightly overweight. I am white, with a Celt's traditional array of freckles. I'm male, and have been for almost 60 years. I'm a member of the Baby Boomer generation, one of the most annoying cohorts in U.S. history.

But not a member of the Tea Party.

I drink coffee.

"Games are the new form of narrative"

I attended a lecture at last week's Wyoming Humanities Conference by University of Minnesota professor and researcher Brock Dubbels. He designs classrooms that use virtual worlds and video games to improve learning. This is probably nothing new to you gamers, but Dubbels says that "games are the new form of narrative" and that games are difficult and challenging, offering "real-time all-the-time feedback -- it's all about interactivity."

Pretty much the opposite of your standard classroom, which hasn't changed much in the past 50 years.

I came out of Dubbels' talk thinking that my son Kevin and his gamer friends may represent a higher life form. And almost all of them had trouble in junior high and high school. Interactivity? Forget it. Most classrooms still are lecture-oriented. My daughter, now a junior in high school, complains that her teachers stand up in front of the room and talk. Talk, talk, talk. And when they are finished talking, it's time to write a paper or take a quiz. This may be a slight exaggeration, but I can't discount the fact that this is how it seems to her. She is 16. She loves to draw and paint and write and read and chat with pals on MySpace and take her dog for walks and play volleyball and toss the football around with me in the backyard.

None of that involves lectures, except when I'm using the "toss-the-old-football-around" occasions to slip in some parental bromides.

When I was in high school from 1965-69, it was all about lectures and taking tests and writing papers. I was designed for that sort of classroom. Sister Miriam Catherine spoke to us about Mark Twain and I dutifully took notes and spit the answers back at her via tests and "themes." Sr. Raymond and Sr. Norbert and Father Finn all taught the same way. About the only interactivity we got was in Father Finn's religion class. Every class period was the same. He chose us at random to read from the text. And then he'd call on someone else. If that person was daydreaming and had lost his/her place, there was a choice: a whack on the ass from the priest's paddle or an F for the day. Most of us chose the paddle because we were used to it. If we took an F, we might get paddled at home.

See, interactivity.

That sounds as if it happened in the Middle Ages. But it was 40-some years ago. Public school wasn't much different, except they had no penguins on the faculty. Lectures and tests. Paddling, too, on occasion.

Our lives have changed so much. Why hasn't the educational setting?

In Mr. Dubbels' Powerpoint presentation at the humanities conference, he showed an image of a maze. It illustrated the two-dimensional way that we learned how to tell stories. He then showed another maze, a huge 3-D network of stairways and passageways and dead ends. Multi-dimensional -- and definitely not linear.

My son's gamer friends are now in their mid-twenties. The ones that survived the usual drug-and-alcohol tribulations are teachers and mechanics and filmmakers and students and writers and IT guys. They still play games. They are still learning in new and different ways.

As for my high school daughter, she's learning in even newer and more different ways. She still goes to school. She still compalins about the teachers' awful tendency to drone on and on. As I'm doing right now...

Learn more about Brock Dubbels and his work at http://brockdubbels.efoliomn2.com/

Everything you know about Columbine is wrong

Jesse Kornbluth wrote in HuffPost today about Dave Cullen's new book, "Columbine." To read the column, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jesse-kornbluth/a-disturbing-new-book-abo_b_180613.html

Two weeks ago, during spring break, Chris and I wandered into the Tattered Cover LoDo and discovered that Cullen was in-house that evening talking about his book. We found a few chairs in the back of a very crowded room.

Didn't take long to get very depressed. Everything I thought I knew about Columbine was wrong. Eric Harris was a psychopath, according to the author, and Dylan Klebold was his disturbed follower. Cullen bases his conclusions of a huge cache of documentation, including journals from both killers and interviews with law enforcement and witnesses. He's been researching this topic since it happened on a pleasant spring day in the Denver burbs.

I have not yet read the book, so this isn't a review. But after sitting there in TC listening to Cullen's talk, I sank into my chair, life's fragility weighing me down. How well do we know our kids -- really know them? Sure, Harris's parents could have done a better job keeping an eye on their son. But the kid got good grades and went to the prom just a few days before the massacre. He'd been in some trouble, but weaseled his way out of any major punishment. He was a fine liar. And a leader. That's what's so chilling. The kid next door seemed pretty normal. Never shot up the neighborhood or blew up anything up. Bombs? Guns? Never saw any.

Until April 20, 1999. And then it was too late.

Never goin' back to my old school

It's odd to see your old high school going under the wrecking ball, even it's on video from 2,000 miles away. Father Lopez High School in Daytona Beach, Florida, gets torn down to make way for another Super Wal-Mart (can't have too many). FLHS was getting old and decrepit. It wasn't all that substantial when I was going there from 1965-69. No A.C. either. The last time I visited (1994) the old gym was still the same old gym where I played basketball for three years.

Fear not, the Father Lopez Green Wave have a new facility west of town near the Ladies professional Golf Association (LPGA) development. Football stadium, too, named after a guy I played b-ball with in the olden days. He died about a decade ago. No more nuns at the school to whack you upside the head if you get fresh. Probably all very civilized and air-conditioned and preppie.

God, I really loved this place. I'm one of the few writers I know who actually liked high school. The rules were rigid, but Sister Mariam Catherine helped me discover that I had some smarts and I could write. Coach John Chura kicked my butt -- and encouraged me -- on the b-ball court. We were all conservatives then, yet it was in this environment that I learned about Catholic social justice.

So, a little salute to the old school...

Video from Daytona Beach News-Journal.