Joan Didion and "Slouching Towards Bethlehem"

I was a bit shocked to find out that the Saturday Evening Post was still alive and celebrating its 200th anniversary. I know the Post from my youth, when it arrived in the mail with a new Norman Rockwell cover. My grandparents has copies of the Post and Life and Reader's Digest all over their houses. Required reading, and encouraging in an all-American sort of way. In 2021, for $15 a year, you can get six issues of the print magazine, a digital subscription and access to the online archive. I'd love to dig into the online archives -- that alone is worth the price. I will recognize many of the covers from the 1950s and 1960s. Display ads tout cigarettes, appliances, and shiny big cars made in Detroit.

I won't always recognize the articles. That was clear to me when Joan Didion's piece "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" appeared on Facebook with the news of Joan Didion's passing. It was a variety of journalism known as the long feature. She was among the coterie of American writers known for "new journalism" which blended reporting with fiction techniques. Some of you may know it as creative nonfiction or, in the case of Hunter S. Thompson, gonzo journalism. 

"Slouching Towards Bethlehem" was published during Didion's prime in June 1967 and republished by the Post in 2017. Didion dropped into the Haight-Ashbury scene on the cusp of the Summer of Love. The famous Human Be-in had been held in January at Golden Gate Park with lots of acid, hip speakers, and bands such as Jefferson Airplane and the Dead. Word about this Hippie Utopia spread and by summer, school was out and thousands of young people crowded into the city. Media, too, even Saturday Evening Post.

Didion, of course, was no TV talking head who dropped in to marvel and possibly be shocked at the ribald behavior. She was an incisive reporter who dug into the culture and found it wanting. She sets her tone with a quote from W.B. Yeats's poem "The Second Coming." Yeats' poem is much-admired for its stark symbols. It is also much abused. It employs Biblical Revelations-style symbols to warn humankind of what becomes of society's upheavals. He specifically addressed the Irish "Rising" of 1916 and its after-effects, which included a revolution and a civil war that involved much bloodshed. 

Didion's "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" records what she sees. Reading it now, I thank my Lucy in the Ski with Diamonds that I didn't bug out and go to the Haight. Sure, there was drugs, sex, and rock-n-roll, but also addiction, STDs, and poverty. Lots of teen runaways looking for adventure and a place to call home. I was 16, the age of some of the girls in Didion's piece. If I had read "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" in the summer of '67, it would have seemed as if it was happening in another world, which it was. My summer was spent in Daytona Beach. I surfed as much as I could. I worked evenings at the Village Inn Pancake House and KFC outlet. But I also had to help Mom with my eight brothers and sisters. My father was working at GE in Cincinnati. We thought we were going to follow him and move there as soon as we sold our house. My Father Lopez High School classmates even gave me and two of my peers a going-away party. They moved. I did not. We couldn't sell our house in a down market so Dad decided to accept a job at NASA in Daytona and forget about Cincinnati. Such good news. 

But what about the hippies and The Summer of Love? I thought the music was cool but was much more interested in the Motown sound. It was beach music, music to dance to at sock hops. I was keen on dating tourist girls from Kentucky and Georgia down in Daytona on family vacations, just itching to break away from Ma and Pa and meet some of the local hunks, or so we thought. The Catholic Church had ruled that underage sex was taboo and Catholic School girls were the first to take the edict seriously. But we boys didn't know anything either. That mutual ignorance was not a good thing. 

In Didion's essay, a five-year-old girl is high on acid. An older guy is turning a teen girl into addict and sex slave. Everyone is high. I've been on both sides of LSD, the experiencing and the observing. Have you ever been the only non-high person in a room full of acid heads? The experiencing can be fun. The observing, not so much. You might get the idea that this is cool and join them. Didion observed the scene and with a keen and sober eye described it to the world. She wasn't judgmental. She was known to have a good sense of chaos and what she saw was the "rough beast" that lurked within the frivolity. 

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, 

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 

The ceremony of innocence is drowned; 

The best lack all conviction, while the worst 

Are full of passionate intensity.

Conservative institutions, such as the Catholic Church, along with cultural critics of the Right, blame the '60s for this blood-dimmed tide. There's a kernel of truth in that. 

I watched "Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold" last night on Netflix. A fine 2017 documentary by her nephew, director Griffin Dunne. I went to bed pondering what it takes to be a writer. Didion knew early on that's what she wanted to do. After college, she moved to NYC, worked for Vogue Magazine, met her future husband, also a writer, and spent her life illuminating the universal through the personal. She left a template that many writers have followed, some better than others.  

Part VII: The Way Mike Worked -- And the Way He Didn't Work

I was convinced that I could persuade a Florida newspaper to take me on as a reporter. I had very little to base this on. I was an English major who took some journalism courses. I had a work-study job in University of Florida Information Services where I snapped photos of no-neck linemen, worked in the darkroom, and wrote press releases. I worked for two semesters as a general assignment reporter at the Independent Florida Alligator. I had clips from two free-lance articles I did for national publications.

That seemed sufficient. But I had lots of competition. 1976 was a heyday for newspapers. Two young investigative reporters for the Washington Post had brought down a president (imagine that now). Newspaper unions were strong. Most cities boasted at least two papers, some more. Newsrooms had yet to be invaded by computers. I figured that there was at least one paper that needed an eager and creative writer. My colleagues at the Alligator were getting on with the Miami Herald and Cocoa Today which grew up to be USA Today.

I decided to approach my job application as a fiction writer. In my 30 months at UF, I had completed three creative writing courses, one taught by the brilliant and enigmatic Harry Crews. I had submitted scores of stories and received lots of harsh critiques. I felt that I was ready for the rough-and-tumble world of the daily newspaper. I wrote an application letter in the third person. The normal approach was first person, as in "I am the greatest thing to happen to journalism since Gutenberg's press." Instead, I wrote "Michael Shay is the greatest thing to happen to journalism since Gutenberg's press." I typed the personalized letters on my Smith-Corona portable, using plenty of White-Out. I fired them off and awaited positive results.

I waited and waited. I got some form-letter responses, thanks but no thanks. I might have called some editors but my roommates and I didn't have a phone. Our landlady, Stormy, whose notable forebears had one of Florida's largest counties named after them, had the phone. Her house behind us was in worse shape than ours. Looking at it from the front, it seemed to lean. We kept expecting it to fall. When Bob or Bob or I got a call, Stormy would yell at us from her front door. We tried not to be summoned too often as we were afraid of her dog, Joe, who gave us the evil eye. And that's all he had, one eye, as he'd lost the other one in a fight.

I waited some more. A personal response came. It wasn't good news. The editor of the Pensacola paper had accepted my challenge and responded with a letter in third person. I can't remember the exact wording but it went something like this: "The editor of the Pensacola News Journal was  thrilled to received the job application of Michael Shay. The cover letter was very creative and gets an A for effort. As the editor read, he was not so impressed, as it included at least one factual error, a typo and several run-on sentences that were more Faulkner than Hemingway. The editor has marked-up these errors as we do in the newsroom and hopes that the applicant takes them to heart as he continues his job search. For now, this newspaper will continue looking for an experienced reporter." It was snarky and well done, with no typos or bad grammar. I was embarrassed. I always prided myself on sharp, clean writing. How many of my mistake-ridden job apps were floating around the Sunshine State?

A few weeks later, the editor at the Lake City paper called and offered me a job. I asked if I needed a car as I did not have one. He said that I would need a car and I would be covering the county. I said I would see what I could do. It seemed hopeless. I'd had a car earlier that year, a black Ford station wagon I bought for $150 from my friend Mike, a Vietnam vet who worked as a bouncer at a strip club. Mike and I took visiting writer Nelson Algren to the strip club one night and he seemed to have a pretty good time. I got about $150 worth out of the station wagon and sent it to the scrap heap. My girlfriend had a car but she was a full-time student and also had a job. One of my roommates owned a car but he needed it. I had no money - student loans were gone and I'd finished my work-study jobs. I pondered my situation. Lake City was a small cracker town where nothing significant ever happened. I turned down the job.

About this same time, a one-time law student who looked like an aging frat boy was working his way through the West, from his home state of Washington to Colorado. He raped and murdered women.  He was arrested twice and escaped twice, in both Aspen and Glenwood Springs, Colorado. In 1978, Ted Bundy came South and cruised north Florida roads in search of victims. In February 1978, he kidnapped, raped and killed a 12-year-old girl in Lake City. The girl's body was found in a pig farrowing shed near Suwanee River State Park, where I had spent many hours swimming, canoeing and hiking. I always thought that I might have covered the Bundy story had I been able to come up with a car and taken the reporting job in that one-horse town. It's gruesome to think about but it could have happened. Bundy had raped and murdered two sorority sisters and beat up two others that January at FSU in Tallahassee where two of my sisters and many of my nieces and nephews attended college. He was caught later in Pensacola, tried and then executed in Florida's Raiford Prison in 1989. Prison guards celebrated with a raucous party and fireworks. He was cremated in Gainesville and his ashes scattered in Washington's Cascade Range.

I might have written the book on Bundy. That would have entailed me looking hard into Bundy to see what caused one man to become a savage. It would have made me a different person, one I might not have liked. As a free-lancer in Denver in 1982, I wrote a story for an alternative weekly about Colorado cold cases. Some were women who had been kidnapped, raped and murdered in the mountains when Bundy was on the prowl. They fit the killer's M-O. I was surprised to learn later that investigators knew about 30 murders by Bundy but suspected him in dozens of others, maybe as many as 100.

It snowed in Gainesville in January 1977 and our pipes froze. In February, I borrowed a car and went on a job search in Orlando, Tampa and St. Petersburg. I stayed with friends along the way. I did not return with a job. The money was gone so I moved from Gainesville back home. I was blue. If Florida had basements, I would have been moping in the basement. As it was, I moped in the spare bedroom. I eventually rallied, got a job with a construction industry magazine, and moved out.

Looking back, I see a creative person trying to get a job. Stories surrounded me but I didn't know that yet.

Here are some tips to avoid those typo gremlins

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some recent examples:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness a great read

Imagine it's 2009 and you're a 24-year-old newspaper reporter living and working in New York City. An exciting life, sprinting all over town for stories and interviews. At night, hanging out in bars with your main squeeze and young friends. One day, you wake up with bites on your arm and imagine that your body and tiny apartment are infected with bedbugs. Then you start to hallucinate. Paranoia grips you and you are convinced that your boyfriend is cheating. You have trouble speaking and then erupt in epileptic convulsions.

I'm going crazy. That's your first thought but it's wrong. You are in the beginning stages of autoimmune encephalitis. Your brain is on fire. Your immune system is attacking your brain. Seizures, convulsions, hallucinations are part of it. You speak in tongues, as it says in the Bible, and if you lived in medieval England, your contortions and babbling might be mistaken for demonic possession. If you lived in 2009 America, your loved ones might think you were in the grip of schizophrenia or some other mental illness. You might end up in an institution for the rest of your life, which could be short if you contract the illness in its most lethal form.

Susannah Cahalan was lucky. She found the right neurologist and became the poster child for the disease which, before her, had only been diagnosed 217 times. She recovered and, being a dedicated journalist, wrote a book, Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness. It's now a movie.

It's scary reading. Compelling. My daughter Annie gave me her copy. She is bipolar and devours books on mental illness or supposed mental illness. She intends to become a music therapist once she and her therapists get a handle on her illness. She will be a good one, too, as she has experienced a good decade of struggles within the mental health system. It's not really a system. It pretends to be but not enough attention or time is devoted to it. We tend to warehouse those with mental illness, especially those who have the more challenging schizophrenia or schizo-effective disorder or are bipolar, which used to be known as manic-depression.  These people are challenged every day. They can be treated but it takes so much time and attention and money which could be spent on more important things,, such as a billion-dollar aircraft carrier to fight Islamic terrorists lurking in an alley in Mosul. Or more tax cuts to the ridiculously rich. Heaven help the needy amongst us now that Trump is running things.

I just finished reading Brain on Fire. It's well-written and, as I already mentioned, scary, especially for those of us who struggle with mental illness -- or have loved ones who do. Highly recommended. Not sure about the movie -- haven't got around to watching it. It screened in September at the Toronto International Film Festival and received lukewarm reviews. Read the Hollywood Reporter review here. Read the book instead. A 2012 New York Times review by Michael Greenberg offers insight.

Halfway through painful legislative session

On this last Saturday in February, snow is falling and more is promised. On the plus side, the legislative session is half over. But that also means two more weeks of nuttiness from Republicans. I try unsuccessfully to keep up with the "Cheyennigans," the new term for legislative goings on. So I have to depend on the crusty commentary of others:

In today's post at Blowing in the Wyoming Wind (reprinted in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle), Rodger McDaniel explores the influence of American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) bills in Wyoming. He concludes: "And Wyoming voters thought their representatives were dreaming up these crazy bills on their own!" Read some of my commentary on ALEC here and here. Here's the editorial cartoon the WTE ran above Rodger's column:

Veteran reporter Geoff O'Gara covers the legislature for Wyoming PBS. He wrote a column on Feb. 21 wondering if lawmaking in WYO hasn't become too complicated for the four- and eight-week sessions of the "citizen legislature." The Lege is proud of its part-time status. Yet is increasingly grapples with the world's complicated issues -- energy policy, education issues, healthcare, technology -- and a budget that now exceeds $3 billion. Despite conservatives' pipe dreams of returning to a golden era when men were men, women were in the kitchen, kids were in the one-room schoolhouse and the flocks were in the fields, Wyoming can't avoid the 21st century.

Kerry Drake was upset on wyofile on Feb. 18. He wrote about two Republican bills (one in the House and another in the Senate) that proposed turning every teacher in the state into a pistol-packin' mama or papa. Those bills mercifully died yesterday when they failed to get their first reading in their houses of origin. So much for gun-totin' in schools (until next year, anyway).

Wy Pols is a feisty new Facebook page that takes on the excesses of WYO Repubs. It features all sorts of snark and memes and gifs. Sen. Charlie Scott (R-Wacko County) is a favorite target of late. Not necessarily a bane to conservatives (who probably don't "Like" it) but it has been a delight to us Liberals. Here's a sample:

Wy Pols has been excerpting chapters from a 1980s book by new state legislator Troy Mader (R-Wingnuttia). Mader was named by Campbell County Commissioners to take the place of Rep. Sue Wallis, who died suddenly on Jan. 28. The commissioners may not have been aware of Mader's publishing efforts. In his 1987 book, "Death Sentence: AIDS," Mader blamed “homosexual terrorism” for the AIDS crisis and advocated for sexual and actual quarantine of people with HIV/AIDS. You can find Mader's complete list of must-read batshit-crazy books on the Wyoming Authors Wiki.

Mader's rise to prominence made its way to the pages of the Think Progress blog. Wyoming politics are quite popular on prog-blogs. It's too bad, really, since Wyoming is home to a thriving arts scene, good writers, a growing local food movement, some nifty creative placemaking ventures and award-winning craft beers. Not to mention bitchin' landscapes and wonderful people. But crackpots live amongst us, and their utterances are tempting fodder for bloggers such as yours truly. This is Republicans' Achilles Heel -- retro beliefs is an increasingly interconnected world. Their wacko POVs can fly around the world on the Internets. And, yes, we have the Internets in WYO. True, it's coal-powered and will remain so until I can get the high school kid down the street to patch me into the nuclear fusion reactor he built in his garage.

New York Times article explores death-dealing nature of sodium in our food

Great NYT graphic by Anthony Freda for April 1 article about a new effort to reduce sodium in food, one that could save up to a half-million lives. It's only April 3 but I have already used up my five free monthly reads at NYT Online. But you can go to http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/sodium-hiding-in-plain-sight/?ref=health.Take a look at the American Heart Association's new book, "Eat Less Salt."

Welcome to the internet tubes, Casper Citizen

The Casper Citizen went live at 5:30 p.m. MDT.

According to a press release:

Civic and corporate leaders and professional journalists have joined to provide a free public platform to connect the people of Casper and surrounding areas and engage them on issues, programs and activities that make their lives better.

"Journalism is meant to educate, inform, bring us together, help us be better community members," said Deirdre Stoelzle Graves, the founding director. "This new media venture combines community input with journalistic expertise to make an online site that's by and for the community."

Designed by Russell Weller, with photos from Tim Kupsick, The Casper Citizen highlights arts and entertainment, health and wellness, food and travel, and news and opinion by and for the people of Casper. Its easy-to-use online framework will connect community members with one another around activities and issues that increase social opportunities and volunteerism. The Citizen's professional journalists will develop and train contributors in emerging media to help them report with ethics and compassion on people and issues in Casper.

Editor-in-Chief Kerry Drake said the venture is the next frontier of journalism, the culmination of a longer-term trend in the industry, with downsizing, layoffs and newspaper closures forcing local journalists to find better ways to serve their communities.

"Incorporating as a nonprofit sends a message that local journalism's commitment is to its community," Drake said. "Free and unbiased reporting that accurately and ethically informs is critical to democracy and social well-being."

The Citizen plans to host community discussion forums, provide project and program support, highlight innovation and recognize community heroes and acts of kindness. 

The first issue tackled by the Citizen is the attempted reversal of the smoking ban by the Casper City Council. Something's apparently in the Casper water supply, making normally clear-thinking citizens want to abandon the present and inhabit the dim, dark past. The Citizen points out that after Cheyenne passed its smoking ban, a group of disgruntled smokers tried to get enough signatures to put the issue on the ballot. But they fell short and, guess what, bar patrons got used to the smoke-free environs and liked it. Something about eating and drinking without inhaling clouds of toxic smoke. Bar employees were able to work in a smoke-free environment, thereby avoiding high-risk exposure to lung cancer, emphysema and heart disease.

Good for the Citizen for bringing some attention to this issue.

Kerry Drake is an able editor and a fine writer. His columns for Wyofile have illuminated some of the shadier dealings of the Wyoming Legislature.

Go, Citizen, go!

Recommended reading: "Raising Adam Lanza" in the Hartford Courant

My wife Chris and I raised two kids with special needs. Our son was diagnosed at five with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Our daughter had learning disabilities and mental health challenges. They are both adults now and doing well. But Chris and I know only too well the frantic calls from school, the many meetings with teachers and counselors, the convoluted Individualized Educational Plans (I.E.P.s) and the heartache that goes along with it all.

That's one of the reasons it was so intriguing to read "Raising Adam Lanza," the first installment in a series in the Hartford Courant. It's the kind of article that newspapers used to be known for. Courant reporters interviewed friends, family, teachers and neighbors to try to get to the bottom of Adam Lanza's murderous rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Adam was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, and sensory integration disorder.

The vast majority of teens with ADHD or OCD or any of the many alphabet soup of disorders or syndromes never turn to violence. Those that do tend to make big, bold headlines. That's why it's important to learn all we can about them. In hindsight, Adam Lanza's mother made poor choices in withdrawing her son from school, and keeping him isolated at home. She also chose the wrong hobbies to help her bond with her sons: gun collecting and target shooting. And Adam spent way too much time playing violent video games. All that taken together led to the Sandy Hook shootings. There may be other reasons, too. I suggest you read the articles and/or watch the concurrent airing of the story on PBS's Frontline. This is an interesting collaboration between a daily newspaper and a PBS show. Maybe it's the wave of the future.

Read today's Courant article here.

Wyoming Democratic Party hires Brodie Farquhar as new communications director

This is good news:

The Wyoming Democratic Party has hired Brodie Farquhar as its new communications director.

Farquhar came to Wyoming in 2000 and has written extensively for state and regional media.

Farquhar has written for the Casper Star Tribune as a staff writer and as a freelancer, covering natural resources, politics, education, the state legislature and more. He served two years as managing editor for the Wyoming Business Report, building a cadre of freelance writers around the state. He has also written extensively for New West, High Country News, Yellowstone Journal, Billings Gazette and Wyofile.com, which he co-founded.  

Farquhar has also served public relation stints for the Colorado School of Mines, Crested Butte Mountain Resort and Michigan chapter of The Nature Conservancy. “I know how to work with reporters, from small-town weeklies to major dailies and networks,” he said. Guiding reporters around the West’s energy development sites was a particularly valuable experience when Farquhar worked with the Energy & Minerals Field Institute at Mines.

He has a bachelor's degree in journalism and a master's in natural resource policy from the University of Michigan, where he was a Scripps Fellow for Environmental Journalism.

Farquhar said he's always striven to maintain journalistic objectivity, but is looking forward to an opportunity to be an advocate for the Democratic Party and progressive values. "I believe most people have beliefs and values firmly rooted in fairness, common sense and the progressive tradition, contrary to the drumbeat of right-wing talk radio. I want to help Wyoming citizens look beyond the surface, to the real core and context of today's issues," said Farquhar.

Farquhar has covered every conceivable beat in his journalism career, but has developed expertise in covering such natural resource issues as energy development, western water rights, agriculture, wildlife, the Endangered Species Act, snowmobile use in Yellowstone, wolf and grizzly bear recovery plans. In his coverage of the 2006 Wyoming legislative session, Farquhar first wrote about the American Legislative Exchange Council, which writes corporation-friendly legislation, and more recently, voter ID and “shoot to kill” bills.

Farquhar and wife Sharon have three children and one grand-daughter, as well as a mellow golden retriever and calico cat.

"Good Night, Ryan:" Yet another Iraq veteran dies by his own hand

The film that accompanies Nicholas D. Kristof's New York Times story makes me incredibly sad -- and pisses me off. Why isn't more being done to take care of these young people that we send to war?

THERE’S a window into a tragedy within the American military: For every soldier killed on the battlefield this year, about 25 veterans are dying by their own hands.  

An American soldier dies every day and a half, on average, in Iraq or Afghanistan. Veterans kill themselves at a rate of one every 80 minutes. More than 6,500 veteran suicides are logged every year — more than the total number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq combined since those wars began.

Investigative reporter Ari Berman to speak at Wyoming Democratic Party state convention May 26

Delegates, alternates and interested parties are invited to hear Ari Berman speak at the Wyoming Democratic Party’s state convention luncheon on Saturday, May 26, noon-1:30 at the Hilton Garden Inn in Laramie. Tickets are $25.

Berman is a contributing writer for The Nation magazine and an Investigative Journalism Fellow at The Nation Institute. He has written extensively about American politics, foreign policy and the intersection of money and politics. His stories have also appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone and The Guardian, and he is a frequent guest and political commentator on MSNBC, C-Span and NPR. His first book, Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics, was published in October 2010 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. He graduated from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University with a degree in journalism and political science.

The registration deadline for guaranteed event seating is midnight on Thursday, May 10, 2012. Register at http://www.wyomingdemocrats.com/ht/d/RegisterForConvention/i/1374582

"Just the Facts Please" -- Casper forum will analyze Affordable Care Act

This cartoon is a few years old, but the corporate influence in U.S. health care is still the main problem.

"Just the Facts Please." Great title for a health care forum.

Ever since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, there has been precious little in the way of fact-based discussions on health care issues.

Raucous yet clueless Tea Party Republicans, propped up by lots of money from insurance conglomerates and right-wing think tanks, have hammered away at what they snidely call "Obamacare." A slew of conservative states, Wyoming included, have joined in a lawsuit to block implementation of the ACA. Our Congressional delegation has used the issue to scare constituents and to push their own ultra-conservative agendas. One of them, Sen. Barrasso, is one of only two physicians in the U.S. Senate. Instead of trying to find ways to insure thousands of uninsured Wyomingites, he uses it as a political football and a surefire way to get on Fox talk shows.

So, it is in this poisoned atnmospehere that One Health Voice, a group of Wyoming agencies and organizations "working together to improve access to healthcare in Wyoming," is hosting the 2011 Wyoming Health Care Symposium on Tuesday September 13 from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Ramada Plaza Riverside in Casper. The symposium, “Just the Facts Please,” will be the first in a series of informational programs about the Affordable Care Act. Policy experts will be on hand to speak on the issue and take questions.

Keynote speaker will be T.R. Reid. He is the bestselling author of “The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper and Fairer Healthcare,” 

Here's what Publishers Weekly had to say about the book when it came out in August 2009:

Washington Post correspondent Reid (The United States of Europe) explores health-care systems around the world in an effort to understand why the U.S. remains the only first world nation to refuse its citizens universal health care. Neither financial prudence nor concern for the commonweal explains the American position, according to Reid, whose findings divulge that the U.S. not only spends more money on health care than any other nation but also leaves 45 million residents uninsured, allowing about 22,000 to die from easily treatable diseases. Seeking treatment for the flareup of an old shoulder injury, he visits doctors in the U.S., France, Germany, Japan and England—with a stint in an Ayurvedic clinic in India—in a quest for treatment that dovetails with his search for a cure for America's health-care crisis, a narrative device that sometimes feels contrived, but allows him valuable firsthand experience. For all the scope of his research and his ability to mint neat rebuttals to the common American misconception that universal health care is socialized medicine, Reid neglects to address the elephant in the room: just how are we to sell these changes to the mighty providers and insurers?   

Great question, PW, especially when so many opportunists are clouding the waters.

I hope that the forum helps get us down the path to adopting and understanding the ACA, which still only puts a few steps along the road to real universal health care.

Key presenters, aside from Mr. Reid, are:

·        Lynn Quincy, Consumers Union (Non-profit Publisher of Consumer Reports);

·        Nona Bear,  healthcare consultant and former president of the Council for Affordable Health Insurance;

·        Elizabeth Arenales, Colorado Consumer Health Initiative

·        Doyle Forrestal, outreach specialist for Regional Director or U.S. Health and Human Services

·        Marguerite Salazar, Regional Director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service; and

·        Elizabeth Hoy, health policy advisor to Wyoming Governor Matt Mead

Organizations involved with One Health Voice include AARP, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, Children’s Action Alliance, Consumer Advocates: Project Healthcare, Equality State Policy Center, National Multiple Sclerosis Society CO-WY Chapter, Wyoming Center for Nursing and Health Care Partnerships, Wyoming Epilepsy Association, Wyoming Health Care Access Network/PhRMA, Wyoming Hospital Association, and the Wyoming Primary Care Association.

To register and see the full schedule of events, please visit www.OneHealthVoice.com or email LRosedahl@pubaffairsco.com.

New study links fracking with water contamination

The Wyoming Outdoor Council reposted a long article by ProPublica about a new study on fracking by four researchers at Duke University. This has been a big issue in Wyoming after the E.P.A. discovered methane gas and fracking chemicals in water wells in Fremont County near Pavillion. The E.P.A. still is investigating. That controversy also was featured in the documentary "Gasland" that was screened in Cheyenne a month ago. Our neighborhood in southeast Wyoming is in the Niobrara oil play where fracking will be the rule rather than the exception.

Read the article here: Fracking Linked to Water Contamination

Tea Party Slim is rested and ready for June rally

Tea Party Slim is back from his travels and looking forward to the big June 15 Cheyenne T.E.A. Party Movement rally in front of the State Capitol Building.

“It’s been a good year for freedom,” said Slim. “That’s Freedom with a capital F.”

“At least you can spell,” I quipped.

Slim glared at me. “That’s all the media could talk about – misspellings on signs at Tea Party rallies. Fat lot of good it did in the 2010 elections. Tea Party candidates won across the board.”

“Good point,” I said. “The Tea Party is ridicule-proof.”

“Damn straight. You elitists can make fun of us all you want. But we show up to vote and you don’t. So we won.”

“Another good point, Slim. That’s the second time I’ve said that in as many minutes.”

He smiled. “Better get used to it.”

Slim’s skin was bronzed from his time in Arizona. I couldn’t help noticing the stitches on his forehead. “What happened there?”

He touched the wound. “ Just a little skin cancer. Doctor thought it looked suspicious so she dug it out. Thank God for the V.A.”

“You can thank me and all the taxpayers for the V.A. We’re glad to oblige.”

“We served our country and we deserve medical care.”

“I’m just noting that it was taxpayer-supported medical care. I may be an elitist, but I pay my taxes.”

“Too many taxes,” he growled.

“That may be, but without taxes there wouldn’t be a military and there would be no military benefits like the V.A.”

“My turn to agree,” he said. “I’ve paid my share of taxes over the years.”

“We all have. All of us except for the rich and big corporations.”

“Don’t start with the class war stuff. Big corporations pay plenty of taxes. Besides, a lot of those companies are defense contractors. We wouldn’t have the best-equipped military in the world if it wasn’t for them.”

“General Electric earned $14.2 billion in 2010 but paid no U.S. taxes. A New York Times report said that the corporation had a negative U.S. tax rate last year, getting a $3.2 billion tax benefit. During the last five years, GE made $26 billion in what it lists as American profits, but got the IRS to write it a $4.1 billion check. So we’re paying G.E.’s share of taxes.”

“I don’t trust the New York Times. Where did it get its information? Probably from some disgruntled overpaid former employee.”

“Public records,” I said.

“The IRS? I don’t trust them.”

“Do you know how G.E. got out of paying taxes? It lends to foreign companies, which means American taxpayers indirectly subsidize those foreign loans. Meanwhile, G.E. is slashing its U.S. workforce and sending jobs overseas.”

“All companies have to make a profit. To compete, they send the jobs to countries where labor costs are lower. Everybody knows that.”

“Maybe so. But why do you and I have to subsidize these businesses? Shouldn’t they be left to the free market that you Tea Partiers love so much? And we’re paying taxes when they aren’t. And they’re closing factories and putting tax-paying Americans out of work.” I paused to catch my breath.

Slim glared at me. “That’s the problem with you pointy-headed intellectuals. You hate the businesses that made America great. But you love the IRS. And the New York Times.”

I was tempted to unleash a barrage of ridicule at Slim. But what good would it do? The Tea Party is ridicule-proof and logic-proof. “Hope your forehead heals up soon,” I said.

He touched his wound again. “I have an appointment at the Cheyenne V.A. tomorrow. Doc will take out the stitches -- and give me my annual physical.”

“I wish you good health,” I said. “Want to be in tip-top shape for that June Tea Party anti-tax rally.”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” he concluded.

Photo from Cheyenne Tea Party rally, March 2009

I don't care if your mother says it's true. Check it out!

Rocky Mountain News R.I.P.

The Rocky Mountain News in Denver will publish its final issue tomorrow. Read all about it at http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2009/feb/26/rocky-mountain-news-closes-friday-final-edition/.

The newspaper was founded in 1859 by William Byers, one of the many hucksters to stake claims at the fledgling outpost located at the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte in Colorado Territory. Byers hauled his printing press in a wagon all the way to pre-Denver. The paper survived floods and fire and the ravages of time. It just couldn't deal with the Internet.

In the early 1980s, I covered high school sports for the Rocky. Just for a year. From 1978-1981, I wrote about high school sports for the competing Denver Post. I moved on to managing editor of a weekly newspaper, Up the Creek, which began its life covering the lively singles scene in Denver's Glendale enclave. It moved from drooling (in print) over wet T-shirt contests to covering arts and entertainment and culture in a rapidly growing city. We made fun of the Rocky and Post for their mistakes. We dueled with Westword over stories and ads (Westword won). I then moved on to other things, as people do. I love newspapers, and hate to see a good one go into the dustbin of history.

But here I am, writing on the Internet and reading newspapers such as the Rocky and the Post and the NY Times and the London Guardian and all the others for the price of a few cents of electricity.

Weird times, eh?

Football aside, which university is the best?

A non-sports argument erupted yesterday on "Mike & Mike in the Morning" on ESPN2.

Mike Greenberg, a graduate of the Northwestern University Journalism School, saw the match-up between Northwestern and Missouri Dec. 29 in the Alamo Bowl and dubbed it the Journalism Bowl, a battle between schools with the best two J-Schools in the U.S.

He received all sorts of e-mails in response. One really cracked him up -- me too. It came from a guy who worked at NBC 17. It read: "With all do (sic) respect... you forgot the Gators and its great Journalism School." That last part is not verbatim, but the first line is. Here's a guy arguing for the superiority of his university training and he doesn't check his spelling. It's possible he made a mistake. More likely he didn't know the correct word.

Can we forgive him because he's a TV guy?

Mike didn't. He and Mike Golic banned the perpetrator from the show for life but later changed their minds, banning him though the Gators-Sooners national championship match-up. Along the way, Greenberg wondered about the national rankings for Journalism Schools, saying he'd look it up later.

I looked it up and and found that most people in the know consider Northwestern, Missouri and Columbia the three top J-Schools in the country. After that, it depends on who you talk to. University of Florida is on some lists (with all do respect). Syracuse, USC, Texas, Arizona State, Ohio State, and UC-Berkeley all appear regularly. Columbia will not be in a BCS game anytime soon. So Greenberg may be right about the Alamo Bowl. Oklahoma-Florida may be the BCS championship game, but it will not decide the fate of journalism in the 21st century.

I bring this up because I was an English major at UF and came within a couple credits of minoring in journalism. During my final two semesters (1976), I worked as a reporter for the Independent Florida Alligator, which is one of the best college newspapers in the U.S. (you can look it up). I also worked for UF Information Services, writing press releases and taking photos of jocks for game-day football programs.

I wonder how the UF English Dept. stacks up against Oklahoma's? How do you compare the two? Number of graduates? Graduates who went on to be famous? How many of them know the proper spelling of "due" as in "with all due respect?" What about college creative writing programs, especially the graduate M.F.A. programs? Iowa gets the nod there. The Hawkeyes play South Carolina in the Outback Bowl On New Year's Day. Wonder how many poets play linebacker for Iowa? Wonder how those corn-fed Iowa novelists would match up against the Gamecocks' brooding Southern memoirists?

Other M.F.A. writing programs of note are Stanford, which breeds some pretty good football players; Syracuse (ditto); Brown, where lacrosse is preferred over football; Arizona and Arizona State, both having off-years on the gridiron; Texas (got screwed by the BCS computer); Columbia, which hasn't fielded a real football team since Kerouac's era; and Florida State, which boasts scores of great creative writing faculty but still can't find a way to beat the Gators on the football field. FSU plays Wisconsin in the Champs Sports Bowl on Dec. 27. Pound for pound, I think the gritty short-story writers from FSU can lick the post-modernist weenies from Madison. Wanna bet?