What does a small-town Florida firehouse have to do with a two-story Wyoming outhouse?

On Tuesday, Aug. 18, I voted and got a history lesson. Can’t beat that, especially if you’re a writer and a curious human being which is sort of the same thing.

This wasn’t my first Florida vote. 

I voted by mail from Ormond-by-the-Sea prior to that dreary November day in 2024. 

Trump and SCOTUS are now working overtime to halt mail-in voting. So I ventured to the polls in Flagler County for the 2026 primaries.

At 18, I was not eligible to vote in the 1968 Florida elections. The voting age was still 21.

The 26th Amendment fixed that. It became law on July 1, 1971. "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote."

So, in 1972, I was 21 and old enough to vote under old rules and new. I voted in a tiny church on Boston's Beacon Hill. I voted for the man from South Dakota, George McGovern, a decorated World War II bomber pilot and fierce antiwar candidate. I put McGovern over the top in Massachusetts. Alas, Massachusetts is not the center of the universe. Nixon's "Southern Strategy" ruled the day.

I heard the news while working graveyard shift at Shriners' Children's Hospital. Physician from Mass General came on rounds and said. "Nixon won! You hippies are in for it now!" Not sure who he was addressing. Couldn't be me -- I wore a wig to work.

Fifty years ago, when I was a UF student a month away from graduation, I cycled over to my polling place in Gainesville and cast a vote for Jimmy Carter. Chip Carter had come to town and dropped in to rap with the Alligator staff. The Allman Brothers supported Carter and so did Hunter S. Thompson so that was enough for me.

In 1978, I moved to the West and voted there for 46 years.

Now I’m back.

My 2026 polling place was listed as the Korona Fire Station on U.S. 1. I remembered the town of Korona as a blip on the road from Ormond to Bunnell. Its firehouse was a tiny station that you get to before you hit the town. The Flagler County supervisor of elections sent us flyers reminding us that the station was “permanently closed” for firefighting purposes but will be open for voting. My first instinct was the curse the GOPers in charge of Florida for shutting down both fire stations and polling places. I’ve been so depressed since Trump’s 2024 win that I blame first, and then check it out. I’ll have to work on that.

I documented our voting experience in my Aug. 19 post. It was very pleasant. I looked up Korona on Wikipedia (Hey Wiki – I’m wearing my [edit] T-shirt!). It directed me to the Flagler County Historical Society where I looked up their info on Korona. Its history was written by the Sisco Deen, late of Korona. The historical research library at the museum is named for him. I e-mailed the society and thanked them for the info and they emailed back. Here’s some of what they sent me:

So glad to hear from you and your interest in Korona. The town was indeed the first planned Polish settlement in the State of Florida. St. Johns County Commissioner Isaac Moody purchased 40,000 acres in the area of what is now Bunnell in 1906 and hired marketer Thomas Verdenius from Chicago to sell city houses and farmsteads to people in Chicago. Verdenius had all of his marketing information translated into Polish and sent into a community of Polish immigrants outside of Chicago who had been farmers in Europe. In 1913 the first wave came down to investigate. In 1914 the first group moved down. They built St. Mary's Church in 1914 - the church still stands today. For the past month we have been speaking with descendants of the original Polish settlers to expand our knowledge base of the community.

This is like a gold nugget to writers who incorporate history in their work. The first planned Polish settlement in the State of Florida? Wow! What did those newly-arrived Poles, living in smoggy and crowded Chicago, think of muggy and buggy Florida? Some returned immediately to Illinois, some tried it out and then returned, and some stayed. The ones that toughed it out built a church which still stands today, according to Ed Siarkowicz, president of the Flagler County Historical Society. I plan on visiting the museum in the near future. 

So what is a fiction writer to make of this? First, my always practical wife Chris asked, “So where will they build the new fire station?” The question rolling around in my mind was this: “What would a young Polish kid, one who knew a dozen English words, make of this swampy, bug-infested place?” Some rich writing material there. I also had to wonder what Poles settling in 1914 Florida might think of the Great War about to erupt all around their old homes overseas. If the young immigrant was anywhere near conscription age, he would thank his lucky stars. He might end up fighting in the U.S. Army but his homeland would not be under assault. And should that boy grow up and have his own family, his sons might be in the U.S. Army fighting Nazis who were murdering every Pole in sight and then, later, the Russians arrived to continue the killing. He might have relatives in the Warsaw Ghetto. He might have relatives who were Nazi or Commie sympathizers. Maybe they would return to their homeland to see the first Polish-born pope or get to see firebrand Lech Walesa in action.

I will keep all that in mind when I visit the Historical Society, 204 E. Moody Boulevard in Bunnell. It’s open for walk-ins on Wednesdays, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. You can also schedule an appointment. Mr. Siarkowicz supplied me with plenty of accessibility info and I thank him for that. I love these community museums. Such care is taken to preserve the past and usually funding is scarce.

During my arts and humanities stint in Wyoming, I worked with many of these organizations. You find oddities, like the two-story outhouse in the Grand Encampment Museum in Carbon County. Two-story? The volunteer docent in Encampoment may ask you if you know anything about winter snow totals in the Sierra Madre Mountains? Then the answer will come to you.

You never know what inner fire you may ignite with a story from the past.

I say zeppelins, you say dirigibles

Signal Corps Dirigible No. 1, U.S. Army, circa 1908

I found this nifty photo of the Army Signal Corps' first airship. I don't know the photographer's name. Thomas Scott Baldwin designed the SC-1 at the urging of Chief Signal Officer Brigadier James Allen who had seen one of Baldwin's dirigibles at an air show in 1907. The SC-1 was based in Fort Omaha, Nebraska, and drew big crowds whenever its tiny engine propelled the hydrogen-powered dirigible from its hanger. This photo was taken between 1908 and 1912, when the army's only airship was scrapped. The Army brass saw no further use for it.

Postcard featuring the Baldwin Dirigible. It is part of a set collected in a scrapbook entitled Album Gravures et Cartes-Postales: Vieux Paris Types Petits Métiers et Cris De La Rue (1909).

Meanwhile, in Germany, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin patented his plans for a rigid airship in 1895 and the first working model, the LZ-1, made its maiden flight in 1900. By 1912, Luftschiffbau Zeppelin had built 14 hydrogen airships, one in use for passenger travel and another in the Kaiser's navy. More were on the way. When the Great War began in September 1914, Germany wasted little time in sending zeppelins LZ-3 and LZ-4 on a Jan. 19, 1915 bombing raid over Yarmouth and Norfolk. Four dead on the ground and 16 injured. It was the first aerial bombing of civilians in modern warfare. 

A note on language: According to Wiktionary, Dirigible comes from the French  ballon dirigeable (“steerable balloon”). Zeppelin comes from the last name of Count von Zeppelin and his manufacturing company, Luftschiffbau Zeppelin.  

Voting is easy at the permanently closed Korona Fire Station

The Korona Fire Station has seen better days.

It’s no longer a fire station. Chris and I received a notice that it was permanently closed but it would be open for primary voting on Aug. 18. Good news, as that’s our polling place here in unincorporated Flagler County.

As we left my Ormond dentist’s office (good news on teeth!), Chris called the election office just to make sure we were headed to the correct polling place as we are new to this neighborhood. Mark, Office of Supervisor of Elections, answered. “Yes,” he said, “the Korona station is permanently closed but open for voting.”

We drove east on Grenada to U.S. 1 and headed north. Korona sounded familiar but I didn’t know why. Once we reached the white cinder-block building, memory took me back to road trips in the ‘60s, driving Daytona to Bunnell for basketball games. Driving north to Jacksonville before the interstate opened in 1967. Korona was a blip along the way, a tiny town with a tiny fire station.

Still tiny. But open for business this election day. An election judge motioned to the handicapped parking spot, I grabbed my rollator, and we rolled and walked  inside.

The interior is about the size of a two-car garage (or maybe one for two 1940s fire trucks). Election judges greeted us. They are paid, these good citizens, but not much. Trained, too. I served as one during many elections in Cheyenne, Wyo. I asked for electronic voting as I need the big screen to read tiny type. They showed me to my seat. I voted. I knew the candidates for the major offices. I was clueless about the local school board candidates. Are they right-wing loonies out to keep books from the minds of our youth? Or are they moderate GOPers or Democrats? I just took a stab at it.

I printed out my ballot, placed it in a “Secret Folder” and brought it to the judge at the tabulator. The ballot then comes out of the Secret Folder to be fed into the machine which is monitored by a judge. He can see my ballot as it’s sucked in. So much for secret. But unless he had special high-tech glasses equipped with a camera, there is no way he could see my ballot and report that there’s another commie in the neighborhood.

I sat in the SUV as Chris went back inside to use the restroom. In the station’s fenced backyard, the weeds are getting a bit out of control. A concrete basketball half-court stands empty. I imagined the firefighters out there playing three-on-three, shirts off under the oaks. Good-natured in-your-face taunts.

More voters arrived as we left. We were stopped at a traffic light at the entrance to Plantation Bay, one of the many housing developments that have skyrocketed the population of a rural county we used to refer to unkindly in our youth. Palm Coast didn’t exist. Bunnell didn’t have a massive new city/county building. Flagler Beach was not becoming another Daytona Beach. Aging World War Two veterans played ball outside the Korona station, awaiting the latest barn fire or fiery collision between liquored-up teens.

I awoke this morning to good news. Democrats made impressive showings in Florida. In Wyoming, 14 members of the Freedom Caucus went down in flames, bested by more moderate GOPers.

Here’s this morning New York Times headline:

“A Stunning Win for the Left in Florida: 6 Takeaways fromTuesday’s Primaries.”

And this from Wyoming’s WyoFile:

“Wyoming Freedom Caucus loses at least 14 incumbent lawmakers.”

Maybe, just maybe, “the times they are a-changin’.”

For some background on the community of Korona, founded in 1914 by Polish immigrants from Chicago and Detroit, see the late Sisco Deen's entry at the Flagler County Historical Society 

Just who is the Batman in this old photo?

The older you get, the more photos appear. Brothers and sisters drop by with a few boxes, say they were cleaning out their closets and would I want these. Before you can answer, they are off in their Kia and the boxes remain. So you bring them in and put them next to other boxes and swear you will get to them someday.

I went through one of those boxes yesterday. It was stifling outside, the Colorado Rockies game wouldn't be on until 4 our time (they won!) so I pulled out a box and sorted through it. There are moments of nostalgia, moments of joy mixed with sorrow. Most are moments of confusion. Who are these people? It seems that not labeling photographs is a family trait. 

I include the above aged and torn photo because it is so puzzling. At first glance, it seems as I am looking at a dapper Batman (note the dapper hat) in the foreground and his offspring in a carriage pushed by his mysterious spouse. But no, because the pic is in with others from my father's family, I peg the foreground figure as my grandfather Raymond Shay, the woman is my Grandmother, Florence, and the baby in the buggy is my father Thomas, their first-born. 

The location has to be the fringes of Denver, looking out on the wide prairie. When Ray and Florence built their first house, it was on the eastern fringe of their City Park neighborhood, so close to the new airport (not much of one in the mid-20s) they could see Eddie Rickenbacker or Charles Lindbergh take off. Rickenbacker cracked up an aeroplane north of Denver in the 1920s and lived to tell the tale. Lindbergh was an airmail pilot flying love letters from Omaha to San Francisco through Wyoming with stops in Denver. He also cracked up a few times but lived a long and complicated life.

The day of the photo: What was it like? It wasn't summer, judging by Florence's big coat and the winter bat cape worn by grandfather. The baby, my father, is wrapped in his swaddling clothes, whatever they are. The fields look bare with harvest long gone. It was just a walk in the neighborhood. The sun is behind the photographer. In the afternoon, it would be heading toward the mountains. Grandfather is probably using a viewfinder camera, which he has to look down into to frame the shot and click the clicker. 

These new parents have been off to war. They met at the army hospital in Aurora where she was a nurse and he was an officer with lung problems. The army sent the lungers to Denver and points west for the dry air and sunshine. Colorado was famous for its TB sanatoria. 

My father, a toddler in the photo, went off to war in 1942 and returned. He met my mother, a Navy-trained nurse in the late 1940s and I was born in the middle of the century.

My wife Christine and I met at a keg party in Daytona Beach and lived our working and procreating lives in Colorado, Wyoming, and Washington, D.C. We retired in Florida. We have a cabinet filled with family photo albums, many of them labeled. We have boxes in closets that our kids will inherit and eventually try to pawn off on relatives. That's the way of the world. 

A young Irish lad awaits his ship, any ship, at the Liverpool docks

The Mersey River at the Liverpool docks. Credit: "Merchantmen-at-Arms: The British Merchants' Service in the War" by David W. Bone, 1919. Illustrator: Muirhead Bone.

Baba, Unsinkable, 1915

Short creative nonfiction by Michael Shay        `

A young Irishman looks up at the mighty S.S. Cameronia, unsinkable. He is my grandfather, father to Anna my mother and Baba to me. I hung the name on him, my toddler-self trying to say Papa I guess. Grandfather “Baba,” all his belongings in a canvas sack, leaves the Liverpool docks and walks the gangplank to the ship’s deck and down to steerage.

This motherless boy is bound for America. He left Roscommon at 12, three years before, cast out by his stepmother, his mother dead at childbirth, father a wayward drunk, older brother and sister already in America. Roamed Dublin streets. Peelers grabbed up boys and sent them to England and the mines. Donkey boy, he was, guiding the animals that hauled the coal. Later, he grew so big, they handed the Irish boy a shovel and lamp. He and the boys replaced the men being pulled from the mines and sent to trenches along the Somme. 

He saved his wages and walked to Liverpool. Along the way, he found a picture postcard of Lusitania and claimed her as his ship. Such a ship. Unsinkable. He waited at the dock with rootless boys, farm families fresh from the dirt. They waited and waited for Lusitania. Heard the news it was sunk. Now he’ll never get to the States. He had saved enough for passage and spending money. He got in the queue for another ticket. The clerk announced that too had been sunk. He waited for the next, the stalwart S.S. Cameronia. Unsinkable. 

Grandpa boarded Cameronia on a late May afternoon, 1915. The ship was five years old. Spiffy little vessel, so said the Anchor Line of Great Britain, flew the flag, built in Glasgow. 10,963 gross tons, 515 feet long, 62 feet wide. Top speed 17 knots. Two masts and two funnels, steel hull with four decks. Carried 1,700 passengers, 250 in first class, 450 in second class, and 1,000 with Grandfather in third class. Port of departure: Liverpool. Port of arrival: New York City. Arrived with all hands June 7, 1915. 

America, at last. Almost two years later, grandfather lived with his brother’s family on the South Side. Worked on the Chicago El with his brother. He swept out the cars, picked up the trash, a man now. It was April; spring slowly arriving. Wilson declared war. Grandfather was stateless, an invisible man. Undraftable. 

On April 15, 1917, just a week after America declared war, the unsinkable Cameronia, loaded with 3,000 English troops, was torpedoed and sunk in the Mediterranean. Survivors rescued by destroyers Nemesis and Rifleman. Its final moments were recreated by mariner David W. Bone who had a fine name for a historian. 

This prose writer shall construct a poem of his words, his exact words, now sailing in history's public domain:

We are little more than clear of

the settling fore-end when the last

buoyant breath of Cameronia 

is overcome. Nobly she has held afloat to

the debarking of the last man.

There is no further life in her. Evenly,

steadily, as we had seen her leave the

launching ways at Meadowside, she

goes down.

Grandfather lived to 90. Died abed 1990 in Denver, Banshees in the burbs. Never again crossed the ocean. Or flew it, no yearning to return to Ireland or England. Preferred his growing American family. Loved his grandkids and ice cream that he first tasted on crowded New York City streets. Baba the Irishman, motherless child, donkey boy, train car sweeper, postman, family man, ice cream man, blessed, lucky.

Loss of a Liner, 1917. Credit: 

"Merchantmen-at-Arms:

the British Merchant Service at War" by David W. Bone, 1919. Illustrator: Muirhead Bone.

Wyoming Public Radio: "Good morning Wyoming and Central Florida!"

I listen to Wyoming Sounds almost every morning. It's on Wyoming Public Radio. It used to be aired just mornings during olden times prior to 2016 when I retired and began spending mornings writing my historical novel, "Zeppelins Over Denver." "Throwback Thursdays" was my favorite, most of the show dedicated to musicians and bands celebrating music milestones. Wyoming talent was showcased. Grady Kirkpatrick live-casted from Cheyenne Day July 22 at Cheyenne Frontier Days with special guest Jalan Crossland from Ten Sleep who performed that week at a special 250th U.S. birthday bash on the state capitol grounds.

I opened up the WPR site while still abed this morning and heard Grady's interview with Tom Owens. He's a Kansas City author who's written a trilogy on the Kansas/Missouri border wars prior to and during the Civil War. His first volume, "The Chimney," covers the U.S. Army's order to evacuate four counties on the Missouri side of the border so Quantrill's Raiders and Bloody Bill Anderson would have no way to resupply their raiders. The army used a scorched earth policy to move the settlers, kill the livestock, burn the fields and the houses, leaving only a burned landscape of limestone chimneys, thus the title. If this tactic sounds familiar, read about Sherman's March to the Sea, U.S. tactics during the Vietnam War, or Russian tactics during the Nazi invasion of World War Two. 

Owens' follow-up novel, "The Great Wide Open," features members of the Duncan family from the first novel as they travel to locales in the mountain west, including Fort Laramie. I admit that I downloaded both novels for free on Kindle Unlimited. That happened with my novel on its release in May. A mixed blessing. It might get you more readers. It also allegedly boosts your ranking on Amazon. This morning, "Zeppelins" is ranked #667,407 in the literature and fiction category. I believe it inched up a bit. A few more sales wouldn't hurt. 

I contributed to WPR during Wyoming Gives and will do it again. We creators are lucky these days as we can tune in almost any music on our PCs while we write and revise and revise some more. I am doing that this week as I plow through the "Zeppelins" sequel, "Patrick of the Mountains," set in 1922 Colorado, in Denver and in a mountain town adjacent to Rocky Mountain National Park. The sequel is due out in 2027. The Ridgeway Press of Michigan published the first book and it is enjoying some modest success among friends, family members, and devotees of historical fiction. 

Ridgeway Press is currently upgrading its web site with a little help from me. Ridgeway was co-founded by poet, performer, and Wayne State University prof M.L. Liebler. It's published some intriguing books, including the collected poetry of John Sinclair, war resister, pothead, and manager of the Detroit band MC5 best known for its call from the stage: "Kick Out the Jams, Motherf**kers!" It also features some of the Trump Sonnets by traveling troubadour Ken Waldman and poetry by Zilka Joseph. Take a look at the upgraded Ridgeway web site. There is no bookstore on the site but links send you to Bookshop.org and to Amazon.

The press appreciates those who request the book from your local bookstores, such as Novel Tea Books or Fern & Fable in Ormond Beach, or asks your local library to feature the books in its "Local Authors" section. Find my novel and story collection in the Ormond Beach Public Library. The reading room looks out on the bridge that straddles the mighty Halifax River. This 25-mile long tidal estuary was once called the North Mosquito River for obvious reasons and probably had a name from the local Timucua Tribes before "Arrival." It was renamed during the British occupation of Florida (1763-1784) after the Earl of Halifax, George Montagu-Dunk, who served as head of the British Board of Trade and Plantations; his name was hung on Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the Florida river.

History holds many surprises, does it not?

Buy on Bookshop.org

May 4, 1970, Four Dead in Ohio, thousands in Vietnam and Cambodia, it never stops

Kent State Massacre, May 4, 1970; me (in uniform w/DEWAT rifle) marching at U of SC Navy ROTC drill, May 7, 1970; me (in civies) marching against the war on streets of D.C., May 9, 1970. Four dead in Ohio, two shot dead at Jackson State U, May 15; thousands in Vietnam, more in Cambodia, dozens of school children blown up by U.S. in Iran. It never ends.

Welcome to Moses Lake! We lived here once upon a time

Postcard, probably early 1960s, of downtown Moses Lake, Wash.
Elmer's, my father's favorite Chinese/American restaurant, is shown on the left. 

I was going through some of my parents' old postcards that were sent to me by my sister Molly. She was making a clean sweep of her house in Tallahassee for a move to Decatur, Ga. She asked if I wanted these. Heck yes, I said. You never know what you might be missing when a family member sends you old family stuff. There be treasures within.

Let me explain. Two days ago, Chris and I were having lunch in Ormond Beach with my sister Eileen and her husband Brian from Winter Park, the Florida one not the Colorado one. They are planning a trip to Washington State to visit an old friend of Brian's, a rancher outside Moses Lake. I attended half of fourth grade and all of fifth grade at an elementary school I can't remember the name of and we lived on a street whose name I can't remember. Eileen was a toddler so her memories are limited. Mine are sharp, surprisingly so, considering I can't remember the school or street. I do remember my brother and I played little league baseball on the Moses Lake Lakers and I pitched the longest inning in small-time baseball history the summer of 1962. I was the team's last resort, a frustrated righty first baseman normally relegated to the outfield. That evening, we ran out of pitchers so they drafted me and regretted it. My brother Dan was very supportive. 

I also remember one of the books I read in the fourth grade: When Worlds Collide and After Worlds Collide, by Edwin Balmer and Phillip Wylie. I like my sci-fi. It was a warm-up for all the Tom Swift books. I read those in Wichita and a sci-fi collection my father got from Book Of The Month Club. 

Eileen and Brian wanted some details about our time in Moses Lake. I told them about the baseball and the books and our neighbors, the Hattori family, and how Dan and I walked downtown to the movie theater to watch westerns for a pittance. We saw Dan Blocker, Hoss from Bonanza, in the Moses Lake Roundup parade. I remembered rescuing Eileen from drowning at one of the local lakes, Soap Lake or the Potholes Reservoir. We visited the Grand Coulee Dam where my brother Pat was in a photo showing him leaning over the railing and looking down at the massive dam wall, One of my parents took the photo, and then probably yelled at Pat to get off the damn railing. Kids! 

I remember some things and not others. Eileen and Brian seemed impressed with my memory banks, for the most part, but disappointed I didn't remember the street we lived on for 18 months. In those days, your street address was usually drilled into you in case we got lost walking downtown or maybe we had to call the fire department some night. 

My dad's favorite restaurant was Elmer's Chinese-American. I think Elmer was Chinese-American -- that's what Dad told us. We had Japanese-American neighbors and their presence is common on the West Coast, even the dry dusty places like Moses Lake. World War Two was still fresh in the minds of vets like my dad and probably most of the guys he worked with making a home for nuclear missiles in Russki-proof launch silos. 

Moses Lake now has an arts center where an artist friend of mine in Spokane recently had a show. Population here is 27,000 but 104,000 in the county. Not unusual in the West to have people spread out all over the county. I found that out when I worked in Wyoming and Colorado. 

I wish Eileen and Brian Godspeed and hope they find out the dad-blasted name of the street we lived on for only a short while. B-52s used to fly over our house. On cold days, I watched the big birds fly during Operation Chrome Dome. Their big engines rattled the house. In their wake appeared a shower of silver disks, shining like jewels in the November sky. Always wondered what that was. 

Lately I’ve been having dreams, Train Dreams w/update

For decades, I kept a copy of “Fiskadoro” by Denis Johnson. I liked the idea of the book more than the book itself. It was an early post-apocalyptic novel set in the Florida where I grew up, the Keys, way south of my youth in Daytona Beach, but still, Florida. With my brother Dan, I was writing a post-apocalyptic novel set in the Central Florida I knew. It was the 1980s and we wanted in on the post-apocalyptic scenario that Reagan’s anti-Soviet MX Missile plan engendered. Dan, Air Force veteran and air traffic controller, was a Reagan man and I was not. There was energy in that – and we were brothers. I miss him still. Today is his birthday.

But back to Johnson. I read “Train Dreams” a decade ago when I still lived and worked in Wyoming. It’s a novella and I read it in two days. It touched me. I didn’t think it would. I did my best to read “Fiskadoro” but failed to finish -- I just couldn't get inside. Is this the same writer? My heart ached by “Train Dreams” end, much as it did last night when the credits rolled for “Train Dreams” on Netflix. It’s set mostly in Idaho, my old neighbor, and in the tall-timber forests I grew to love in my 40 years in the Rockies. Most of that time, the timber industry and environmentalists waged war. I wasn’t in the fight, but my location in the cities of the Colorado/Wyoming Front Range made me suspect.

I put that aside as I watched Robert and other loggers in early-20^th-century Idaho and Washington cut 500-year-old trees. Robert worked for his wife and daughter. He traveled to jobs by train, the most efficient form of transportation then. This was a love story featuring Robert and Gladys and little Katie. The couple planned and built the cabin themselves and did all the work. Tragedy came and some resolution followed. The ending is breathtaking yet somber.

It's a beautiful work, Johnson’s novel and the Netflix film directed by Cliff Bentley. The credits roll to a song called “Train Dreams” by Nick Cave. He was the right person for the job. I have it on my playlist now: 

Lately I’ve been having dreams, crazy dreams I can’t explain; A woman standing in a field of flowers, a screaming locomotive train; Crazy dreams that go on for hours and I can’t begin to tell you how that feels.

Robert doesn’t have the words.

I keep searching for them.

UPDATE: The Dec. 1 New York Times carried a review of a new biography about the late Denis Johnson. The book, "Flagrant, Self-Destructive Gestures," is by Ted Geltner. He assembled it through interviews with family and friends and fragments of notes left behind by Johnson. The writer spent his last years living in a cabin in north Idaho. If you live in the West, you can picture the cabin and know what it feels like as December snow swirls outside.

Death by Lightning: To be gone, gone and forgotten

On the morning after I watched the conclusion of “Death by Lightning" on Netflix.

One of the final scenes really got to me. It’s First Lady Lucretia “Crete” Garfield (Betty Gilpin) confronting the assassin Charles Guiteau (Matthew McFayden) in prison before he is hanged. She is angry and distraught about her husband’s death at the hands of this addle-brained miscreant, the likes of which we’ve seen too many times. Crete (President Garfield’s endearing name for her) tells Guiteau that she has halted the publishing of his tell-all book. “You will be forgotten!” She also knows that history will forget her husband, that he will be some sort of trivia question about the shortest-serving president. Nobody will remember what a fine man he was.

But this viewer now knows. President Garfield, streets will be named for you. Millard Fillmore too. In the 1980s I lived in the Cherry Creek block north of the funky-but-soon-to-be-ritzy Cherry Creek North Shopping District. Chris and I walked from our rental on Fillmore Street to the old Tattered Cover Bookstore when it actually had tattered covers for sale – cheap! – and the Cherry Cricket for football and beer and burgers.

Millard Fillmore. Yet another forgotten one. From Wikipedia:

Millard Fillmore was the 13^th president of the United States, serving from 1850 to 1853. He was the last president to be a member of the Whig Party while in the White House and the last to be neither a Democrat or a Republican. A former member of the House of Representatives, Fillmore was elected vice president in 1848 and succeeded to the presidency when Zachary Taylor died in 1850. Fillmore was instrumental in passing the Compromise Act of 1850 which led to a brief truce in the battle over the expansion of slavery.

"Brief truce” indeed.

He also later ran for president as a member of the Know Nothing Party.

Fillmore is now mostly a Jeopardy question: Who was the one-term 13^th president? Here’s a hint: There is a comic strip about a duck named for him.

Not surprisingly, there is also a comic strip named “Garfield” that features a misbehaving cat. Baby Boomers’ kids had Garfield stuffed animals.

You can look it up.

In Denver, Fillmore is situated between Detroit and Milwaukee streets. We rented a typical Denver bungalow brick house with a porch and a swastika on the chimney. I walked to the branch library and found that this swastika stood for auspiciousness and good luck until the 1930s when the Nazis hijacked it.  

A writing colleague lived in our basement and another writer friend and his girlfriend lived in the big corner house on the next block. Fillmore was a friend to writers if only for a short time.

Now, Garfield. It was named in the 1880s. The street runs north and south and dead-ends on the north at the old City Park Golf Course and on the south at City Park. After Fillmore, Chris and I lived in a walk-up apartment on Cook Street that was so close to the Denver Zoo that we could hear peacocks screeching at all hours. Garfield was a few blocks east as you walked to Colorado Boulevard.

The unforgettable thing that happened to us on Cook Street was the Christmas blizzard of December 1982 that buried us in three feet of snow for a week. The infamous event in the neighborhood was the assassination of radio talk-show host Alan Berg in June 1984, by The Order Neo-Nazi gang. He was at 14^th and Adams, another street named for a president, actually two of them. They were not assassinated. They are not forgotten.

I have a library of presidential books willed to me by my father. No Garfield or Fillmore volumes in the collection. I have an original copy of Mark Twain’s hardcover bio of Ulysses S. Grant, known as one of the best memoirs in presidential history. I also have a trade paperback of it. Several other Grant bios.

We bought our first house in 1985 on South Grant Street in Platt Park in Denver. The next street over was Sherman. We all know the origins of those names. Street names you won’t find anywhere in the South. Our bungalow-style house was built in 1909 and needed work. Our son Kevin was born there. Neighbors were nice. We let them rent our two-car garage for their woodworking business which is how we got our living room furniture that we no longer have. I walked to work at Gates Rubber Company. I came home, got on my running clothes, and jogged to Wash Park where every Yuppie jogged after work. 

My mother grew up in the Wash Park neighborhood. Wash, of course, is short for Washington, our first president. In the 1920s, the resurgent KKK once burned crosses in this Irish-Catholic neighborhood. Public school kids used to harass my mom and sister when they walked home from St. Francis. Mom said that was the first time she was called a redneck. Their father, my grandfather, was an Irish immigrant whose neck had been burned many times. The streetcar ran nearby. Some of the original houses have been “scraped off” and now are monstrous million-dollar-plus townhomes.

I looked to see if there were any streets named for Garfield in my Florida county. Garfield Avenue runs through Deland, not far from Stetson University and the historic downtown. There is a house like ours for sale on S. Garfield.

Every day and everywhere, we live with ghosts.

Down by the river with family, friends, and Rockefeller's ghost

There was no wedding, but one hell of a reception.

Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025. My niece Bryce celebrates her wedding to Zak. They eloped and got hitched, as my grandparents might have said. They wanted it that way, Bryce’s mom Nancy said. She is my sister-in-law, widow, high-school sweetheart of my brother Dan who died at 60 from blood cancer. That was 12 years ago. He never got to see his daughter go to college, get engaged, and set off on a new life. But I did. His older brother, his childhood pal and mentor. I saw it all from afar, from Wyoming. And now I am back on home turf.

The reception was held under a massive marquee tent on The Casement grounds along the Halifax River in Ormond Beach. It was a gorgeous November night, beautiful sunset and warm breezes. The Grenada Bridge begins at property’s edge and rises majestically west over the Halifax River and butts up against mainland Ormond and its fine library. The bridge is crowded with weekend motorists off to their own dinners and receptions. Someone is off to the ER in a wailing ambulance. It’s loud here, the most traveled stretch of Ormond Beach. But picture perfect..

That’s why John D. Rockefeller chose this site for his Florida digs. He entertained guests at The Casements, so known for its innovative window design that allowed plenty of air to circulate in the pre-AC years. Rockefeller played host to celebrities such as Will Rogers and industrialists such as Henry Ford. They too had a chance to escape their winters for a short while. Florida lore is filled with tales of snowbirds.

Across the street, Rockefeller built the Ormond Hotel. It went to seed after John D’s death in 1937. Replaced by condos, an oft-told Florida story. But The Casements remain. Its splendid lawn is where Chris and I picnic watching free concerts in the winter and spring. The spacious porch hosts the bands. Its nine acres are a historic site and the house is a museum.

To the north of the marquee tent are the caterers. They cook paella (seafood and chicken varieties) and steaming bowls of seasoned rice. I enjoyed my chicken paella and wonder why paella and not a barbecue or shrimp boil. I consider this a fine choice as I eat everything on my plate. I drink soda water and look around at this mostly young crowd most of whom are drinking alcoholic beverages. They are a spiritous and spirited bunch. Mostly strangers, but friends of the happy couple and their families. I run into my old friend Tommy who had a stroke and walks with a cane. Tommy and I reminisce about a trip we took long ago. My girlfriend and I lived in Boston and we were walking back to our apartment on Beacon Hill when I spotted Tommy walking down the street. The next day we hitched rides to Vermont to see his friend Danny who made marijuana pipes. I was 21 and so was he and we both hitched many rides in those days. When I returned to Boston, I started a new job. We were both younger then than most of the people at this gathering are now. We are still here.

My niece and her husband threw a magnificent party. We joined in Jewish champagne toasts – l’chaim! -- from the groom’s family and the bride and groom were hoisted in chairs onto the dance floor in the traditional hora ceremony.

Chris and I pose for goofy photos at my niece’s photo booth. I have to make a stop at the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream cart. I accompany my wife to the dance floor. I put the e-scooter in neutral and we move about. She loves to dance. We recently decided no more “sitting this one out” for me. We rock and weave to The Village People, slow-dance to Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon.” I try to match her natural rhythm to my machine glide. So good to be close.

We had a lovely time.

Fiction writers bring new life to dusty historical figures

Last night I finished reading "The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson" by Jerome Charyn. A beautiful novel, wonderful historical fiction. Charyn has made waves the past couple decades with his unorthodox takes on historical figures: Dickinson, the notorious Orson Welles/Rita Hayworth relationship, famous recluse J.D. Salinger, and Johnny One-Eye in the American Revolution. There are hundreds of other lives worth a second or even third look by someone of Charyn's skills. ,

Historical fiction is my new reason for living past 74. I've written two HF novels, the first will be out later this year from The Ridgeway Press in Michigan. I'm editing the second now. In the process, I've grabbed as many books off the HF shelf as I can muster. I was floored by "James" by Percival Everett, "Booth" by Karen Joy Fowler, "Horse," by Geraldine Brooks, "Gone, the Redeemer" by Scott Gates, and "Clark and Division" by Naomi Hirahara. 

All this innovative HF isn't without its detractors. Some traditionalists say that writers are playing fast and loose with the facts. Some say that facts are facts and that the timelines of history should be respected. They're valid points. Some HF writers are dogged with the facts. And so are some HF readers. Some writers also have hordes of researchers to help their work, as was the case with James Michener as his career progressed. He was so intent on research that he has a library named after him, the James Michener Library at University of Northern Colorado in Greeley. I've devoured Michener's novels most of my life, first "Hawaii," recommended by my mother, and onto "Centennial," the first novel I bought when I moved back to Colorado after college, and on to "Chesapeake" when I lived in Maryland.

But I also love the art of fiction and don't mind it being bent and twisted for a good yarn. I loved the real underground railroad in Colson Whitehead's "The Underground Railroad" and I was totally caught up in Jim's journey in "James" even when the story veered away from Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" which, of course, was also fiction. 

This reminds me of arguments about creative nonfiction during my days as an M.F.A. student. Annie Dillard was taken to task for some inventions in "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek." It led to a prize-winning book so I'm willing to forgive and forget. Others aren't. Remember that CNF stands for "creative" nonfiction.

It may be that I'm too old to care about literary minutiae. Or that I'm too pissed-off about MAGA savageries to mind when a writer invents something lovely to read.

A bit of both

Emily Dickinson could not stop for death but could for poetry

How did the Dominican sisters think I could understand an Emily Dickinson poem, "I could not stop for death?"

Sister Miriam Catherine: What is this poem about Mr. Shay?

16-year-old Me: Death, sister.

Sr. MC: What about death?

Me: She could not stop for it.

Sr. MC: Anything else?

Me: There's a carriage.

Sr. MC: Are you a dunderhead, Mr. Shay?

Me: Yes, Sister. Please don't smite me.

There was no smiting on that day. 

I am now smitten with Ms. Dickinson's poetry. I did not, would not, could not understand its full meaning then. I was a kid. She began writing as a youngster but her lifetime of creativity was enormous and almost unknown at the time of her death.

I turn my attention to the poet who became "The Belle of Amherst" on stage but was anything but. Since her death in 1886, Dickinson's reputation has been battled over by family, friends, and biographers. Lyndall Gordon tried to make sense of it all in his biography, "Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds." And Jerome Charyn writes of Dickinson in his 2010 W.W. Norton historical novel, "The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson." You guess that this is a different kind of look at a literary legend because the cover shows Dickinson's bloomers illuminated by candlelight under her hoop skirt.

I'm only through Charyn's first section but know this is a different look at an American poet who bored high schoolers and even college English majors. 

I now know that I didn't get it when I was young. Why does knowledge come so late in life? 

It's a dangerous time to be woke to literature. Liberal arts majors are being threatened in the U.S., maybe no more so than in Florida where I came of age as a writer. If I can identify a fellowship of dunderheads, it rests in the Florida governor's office. He aims to gut everything I treasure at the University of Florida: The College of Liberal Arts, English majors, arts programs, "wokeness" in general, and the Independent Florida Alligator. As a movie hero of mine once said, "This will not stand, man."

Back to Emily Dickinson. Charyn notes in his intro that he is obsessed with her poetry and has been for decades. His first sentence in the author's note: "She was the first poet I had ever read, and I was hooked and hypnotized from the start, because in her writing she broke every rule."

I returned to her poetry and I know what I was missing. I read and reread "I could not stop for death." I couldn't get enough. I went to the Emily Dickinson Museum web site. I read about her and more of her poetry. 

I laughed when I read this on the museum's online Q&A (thanks AI): 

"Q: Is Amherst close to Boston? A: No, Amherst is not close to Boston. It is located in the western part of Massachusetts, about a 90-minute drive from Boston, which is a significant distance for a quick trip. The two locations are in different regions of the state, with Amherst being further west in Pioneer Valley."

I laughed because when I lived in Boston 1972-73, my woman friend and I hitched regularly to Storrs, Conn., to see friends. The two of us had logged some 7,000 miles the summer of '72 by thumb, ending up in her hometown of Boston. My pal Tommy and I hitched from Boston to Putney, Vt., passing just minutes from Amherst, on our way to get high with friends among the colorful foliage. I spent my career driving Wyoming and Colorado. Significant distance, indeed.

I wish I had gone. I still could. For now, I will finish Charyn's novel and read more Dickinson. I live in memory and imagination. 

Read more about Dickinson's "Secret Life" in upcoming posts.

 

Bill Bryson’s “One Summer, America 1927,” when “America First” came to call

As I read Bill Bryson’s “One Summer: America 1927,” I realized that our history is comprised of an amazing number of knuckleheads and heroes. And sometimes, they are one and the same.

Charles Lindbergh, for instance. He became a hero overnight when he flew The Spirit of St. Louis over the Atlantic Ocean, the first solo flight by airplane. Many had attempted it. This scrawny bland fellow from Detroit accomplished it. Thousands of Parisians swarmed him when he landed at Le Bourget Airport. Ticker-tape parades in the U.S. followed. Crowds greeted him everywhere. He often took to his airplane to escape into the wild blue yonder.

By the time the U.S. entered World War II, he was disgraced by his embrace of eugenics and Nazism. He participated in the first “America First” campaign and proudly wore an air medal awarded him in Berlin by Herman Goering, one of the architects of the Nazi scourge. He survived to be one of the defendants at the Nuremberg Trials. “Lucky Lindy” tried to redeem himself by training American pilots in the Pacific during the war. But damage had been done. His name was stripped from all those streets and schools and airfields named in his honor.

You can still see The Spirit of St. Louis displayed at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum along the National Mall in D.C. I’ve taken my family there many times. The plane, so flimsy and tiny when compared to modern aircraft. It’s quite possible those other aircraft wouldn’t exist without it.

Bryson has been one of my favorite writers since his 1989 book, “The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America.” Writing humor is no mean feat and he does it with aplomb in so many books. Humor helps you understand contradictions such as Lindbergh, Babe Ruth, and Al Capone. But that’s why I read, to be entertained and educated in the ways of the world. This book did that. I almost quit several times.

My sister Eileen gave me the trade paperback a month ago. She enjoyed it and knew I was working on novels set in the 1920s. I am of an age where reading big books with small type is difficult. I read to page 80 in bright light but put it down. Then I remembered I have a Kindle Reader for such challenges and I borrowed the book from Libby. Ah, a lit screen and large type. Heavenly. I still put it aside for other things until Libby warned me that I had only five days left on my loan. I hunkered down and read the rest, including a bit of the back matter. So much research!

Sitting in front of another lit-up large screen, I wonder about a century from now, 2125, when a book comes out about 2025. The year of Trump and A.I. Who will be the heroes and villains? As someone who’s been resisting Trumpism since 2016, you can probably guess my answer. “One Summer: America 2025.” A nonfiction tale, told with panache by someone. First we have to survive this period of U.S.-bred fascism and racism. First that. Will books survive?

Big Bill Thompson was mayor of Chicago in 1927. Chicago is in the Trump crosshairs as are all cities in blue states. Big Bill knew that to rule the people must be kept clueless so, writes Bryson, “he started a campaign to remove unAmerican books from Chicago libraries.” He even scheduled a bonfire to burn “treasonous books.” One city employee upped the ante:

“The head of the Municipal Reference Library announced that he had independently destroyed all books and pamphlets in his care that struck him as dubious. ‘I now have an America First library,’ he said proudly.”

America First? Will that be the fate of Chicago’s libraries now that Trump’s goon squads are on their way?

Remember all those great songs about getting a letter, or not getting one?

The Letter

Wait a Minute Mr. Postman 

Return to Sender 

P.S. I Love You

Take a Letter, Maria

A Dear John Letter

Just a few of the pop songs about the good and bad of mail. Youthful memories, from a time when getting a letter meant getting A LETTER. Might be good news such as a letter from an old friend, birthday card from grandpa, or fan mail from some flounder, or not-so-good, say a missive from Selective Service, the IRS, a fed-up girlfriend. 

And yes, this is grousing from a Baby Boomer. Mail has lost its cachet. But mail still gets delivered, or not, depending on who's doing the delivery. Our postal delivery in Ormond Station has been dismal. Mail sent to us in June that was supposed to be forwarded to our new address was never forwarded. I got a call from my former employer in Wyoming that asked for my new address. She said mail sent to our address on Ocean Shore Drive was not forwarded to Melogold Drive but just returned to sender, as in the song. Somehow it missed a step. We put in a forwarding request before we moved. I dialed in my new address to address change sites for credit cards, car payments, payees like Dell and Lowes, and often it responded that there is no address. It was odd, since I was living in this new address and as far as I knew, it existed as did my wife and I. Now, houses in our Groveside neighborhood were still getting their finishing touches and some had yet to sell, but it seems like the P.O., a very large and respected organization, would have the Internet, GPS, drones, even printed maps at its disposal, the combined knowledge of thousands of postpersons, and they could figure this out. But they did not.

I have great memories of the mailman, as that person was known in my youth. They walked routes in those days. They had tales of ferocious dogs and snarling customers. They told of days cold enough to freeze your keisters and hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. 

Our woman delivery person in Cheyenne was the friendliest person I know, always with a greeting and mail that might mean something or might mean nothing. She wore arctic gear in January and plowed through snow-packed roads in those funny little vehicles. My brother Tim delivered the mail in Daytona Beach until a brain tumor took hold. I shared cardiac rehab with a woman younger than me that sometimes arrived at rehab in her uniform. One day, both of us on treadmills, chatting, she had a follow-up heart attack and quick response by rehab nurses brought her back. 

The U.S. Mail meant something. Lots of great songs. The Beatles, of course, and Elvis. 

I was 16 when "The Letter" by the Box Tops climbed the charts to number one. I viewed it on YouTube and I would post a link here but I never know if it will work down the line. Go watch it. The band members look high. A flashback to 1967. Vocalist was the great Alex Chilton. Joe Cocker had a big hit with it too. 

"A Dear John Letter" was a hit in 1953 by Ferlin Husky and Jean Shepard. In it, a young woman writes to her boyfriend under fire in Korea that she is dumping him for his brother. I'd like to think the song spawned the term we use now, but I've heard World War 2 soldiers talk about Dear John letters. Maybe it goes back even farther than that. What say, history buffs?

Word Back: Trump reached his goal: Make America Grate Again

Make America GREAT Again

Great as in...The Greatest Generation.

As he wrote his famous book on his Montana ranch, Tom Brokaw gave a lot of thought to the GREAT-est Generation. He gets credit for popularizing the term although its first documented use is by U.S. Army General James Van Fleet ("our greatest General" Pres. Truman called him) during the Korean War. Brokaw might cover it in the book but, well, you see, I never read it. As offspring of that generation, I already knew how great they were. 

It took some time to realize it. 

My parents, two Denver natives, born 1923 and 1925, who found themselves growing up in The Great Wall Street Collapse of 1929, the Great Depression, The Great War Part Deux, and America's post-war boom which, as far as I know, does not have "great" attached to it. Great Caesar's Ghost! That was a term The Daily Planet Editor Perry White in "The Adventures of Superman" made famous, first in 1946 on the radio show and then on TV in the 1950s. We Boomer kids loved Perry White's apoplectic outbursts. We loved cub reporter Jimmy Olsen getting blasted by White: "And don't call me chief!" And his outbursts at Clark Kent, "mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan daily." "Great Caesar's Ghost, Kent!" Kent just took the abuse as underneath all the mild manners and big eye glasses was a super man from another planet who "could leap tall buildings in a single bound" and round up passels of bad guys before breakfast. 

We loved Superman. Our parents were not so sure about this hero worship. But our first heroes were our World War II fathers. We sort of knew their good deeds. We played with his medals and shoulder patches and uniforms. He had a helmet and machine guns, booty from the war. We played war, having no idea what it was preparing us for. But our parents' generation accomplished great things and we knew it.

Vietnam and assassinations and Watergate almost banished the greatness. Today marks the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings. The end of the war was in sight. Our fathers were still in great danger and we wouldn't know the stories first-hand had they been killed on that day and the others that followed in 1944-45. Death on all fronts. Our Denver neighborhoods swarmed with our fathers' memories and the ghosts of those who made it home or made it home and died later or were not quite right. You'd think all of that would be enough to lift a nation, cause it to avoid pointless wars and entanglements. You would think it would be enough to stop a charlatan and his goons from taking over our great country. 

Researching this post, I came across all kinds of references to great. I watched the first season of "The Great," a satiric retelling of the Greats of Russia: Peter and Katherine Very funny. Educational too.  

I came across this reference: "Literae humaniores, nicknamed Greats, is an undergraduate course focused on the classics (Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, Latin, ancient Greek, and philosophy) at the University of Oxford in England and some other universities."

Make America THE GREATS Again!

Finally, the Online Dictionary writes this: "great is sometimes confused with grate."

We can certainly see that Grate is a far better term for what America has become. Make America Grate Again. Yes, MAGA is grating, it grates the nerves. It's prime spokesperson, POTUS, may be the most grating person on the planet. His online rants are beyond grating, they get on my last serve.  Not so great.

Sad days for poets, writers, and historians in Washington, D.C.

A. Friend (not a real name) told me that she and her husband are traveling to Washington, D.C., this week to see the National Museum of African-American History. They want to visit it before the Trump people purge the exhibits and dismantle the building. A. Friend is not a Trump voter, not even a person undergoing what MAGA calls Trump Derangement Syndrome or TDS. She and her husband are just regular folks who visit museums and art galleries and historic sites during their travels. Over the years, she has sent me postcards from sites I never knew existed and I am the richer for it. 

Trump's Nitwits have already purged some of the exhibits from this museum. They have never met a museum they didn't suspect of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion or DIE which is an ironic acronym on its face. MAGA terms it DEI because, well IED was taken (Boom!) and IDE was too close to "Beware the Ides of March" which sounds too Shakespearean which might remind Idiocrats of a college English class they were forced to take in 1997. 

I wish A. Friend and her husband Godspeed and good luck. Make sure to take your REAL ID with you just in case there is an ICE sweep on the National Mall.

More bad news from D.C.: Trump's goons have eliminated the National Endowment for the Arts Literary Program and canned its staff including Director Amy Stolls whom I have worked with. The administration had already rescinded grants to literary magazines and presses whose only crime was admitting to DIE. 

I am going to list them here because I have read some of their books and they might not have existed with the writer's non-profit publisher, often hanging on by a shoestring. Here are the names:   Alice James Books, Aunt Lute Books, BOA Editions, the Center for the Art of Translation, Deep Vellum, Four Way Books, Hub City Writers Project, Open Letter Books, Milkweed Editions, Nightboat Books, Red Hen Press, and Transit Books as well as such literary magazines Electric Literature, McSweeney’s, n+1, the Paris Review, and Zyzzyva.

I have read books from many of these presses. I will mention one. Brian Turner's first book of poetry was published by Alice James Books. Poet, essayist, and professor Turner won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award for his debut collection, Here, Bullet, the first of many awards and honors received for this collection of poems about his experience as a soldier in the Iraq War. His honors since include a Lannan Literary Fellowship and NEA Literature Fellowship in Poetry, and the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship. His second collection, shortlisted for the 2010 T.S. Eliot Prize, is Phantom Noise, also published by Alice James Books on New Gloucester, Maine, a teeming metropolis filled with radical outfits such as the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community, Pineland Farms, and the New Gloucester Fair. And one publisher. 

Brian's bio a pretty standard description of a contemporary American poet. But what's that part about the Iraq War? Oh yeah, Turner is a U.S. Army veteran, and was an infantry team leader for a year in the Iraq War beginning November 2003, with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. In 1999 and 2000 he was with the historic 10th Mountain Division, deployed in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

"Here, Bullet" knocked me out. The title poem will tell you more about war's realities than any non-fiction book. Go to the Alice James web site and buy the book. Better yet, buy all of his books and e-books which include individual poems. 

During my time as literature program specialist at the Wyoming Arts Council, I brought Brian to our fall 2012 writing conference in Casper to read from his work and congratulate the writers he had chosen for the WAC's literary fellowships. Later, he joined two other veteran writers on a panel to discuss the role of soldier/poet in "Active Duty, Active Voices," featured Iraq War veterans and writers Brian Turner and Luis Carlos Montalván. The panel was moderated by Casper College professor and military veteran Patrick Amelotte. Montalvan suffered from severe PTSD and wrote the wonderful memoir "Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him." He brought Tuesday with him to Casper that October weekend. I worked with the state's military coordinator to bring other service dogs and their handlers to the conference to demonstrate what they do. 

I wish I could just end this blog with another Liberal's complaint about our current situation. But I have a sad story to tell. In December 2016, the 43-year-old Montalvan was found dead in an El Paso hotel room. He had left his dog Tuesday with a friend. He killed himself and was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Delivering the eulogy was Democratic Sen. Al Franken. Montalvan had persuaded Franken to sponsor legislation expanding the military dog program which passed a different Congress during different times. 

During his time in Casper, Montalvan said his favorite poem growing up conservative Cuban in South Florida was "Invictus." You know the one. It celebrates bravery. William Ernest Hanley wrote it and it's always been a favorite to memorize because it rhymes and is in iambic tetrameter. Montalvan memorized it. It ends this way: "I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul."

Rest in peace, Captain.