All the propaganda I am falling for

 

Courtesy the Denver Public Library by way of a librarian/propagandist/writer
 from Wyoming. The downtown DPL was the first library my parents took me to
in the 1950s. Falling for propaganda even in kindergarten.

Git along little dogies -- and watch out for that six-foot gator behind the palm tree

When I moved from Florida to Denver in 1978, I wandered down to the local bookstore and bought “Centennial” by James Michener. It was published in ’74, two years before the Centennial State’s centennial. That tie-in helped boost the book into the bestseller lists. Michener had a history at UNC. He taught there from 1936-40 when it was called the Colorado State College of Education. He donated all of his papers and research material to UNC and it became the Michener Special Collection. The library was named for Michener in 1972.

When I moved to Wyoming in 1991, I picked up John McPhee’s “Rising from the Plains.” In it, McPhee, with the help of legendary Wyoming geologist David Love, Tracked the amazing millennia of land masses rising from and falling into the plains. On one of my first work trips around the state, I listened to the audiobook and found myself on site at the Red Desert and the Snowy Range and the big caldera that is Jackson Hole. Never looked at them the same again.

I’m writing this because I now have returned to Florida from Wyoming which, as I remind people who seem a bit confused by its whereabouts, I say it’s the big (almost) square state just north of another square state, Colorado, where both pot and membership in the Democratic Party are legal.

But I digress. When I arrived in Florida in August just before back-to-back hurricanes, I vowed to read a book by a Florida writer about an era of the state I knew nothing about. So, naturally, I chose a book about Florida cowboys and their cattle drives. Head ‘em up and move ‘em out – and watch out for the snakes and the gators and malaria-carrying skeeters.

“A Land Remembered” from Pineapple Press of Palm Beach is an excellent novel by Patrick D. Smith. It tells the story of three generations of the MacIvey clan from 1858-1968. In the early years, they face starvation, gator attacks, ambushes by Confederate deserters, and all kinds of wild weather. They round up stray cattle with bullwhips and the crack of the whips give them the name “Crackers.” They assembled herds, drove them to the west Florida port of Punta Rassa near Punta Gorda, and faced all sorts of adventures along the way. They eventually moved from cattle to citrus to land developers, each with their successes and pitfalls. They lost friends and family to raging bulls and rustlers. But all of that land that the family bought in what’s now Dade County became very valuable once air conditioning entered the picture.

It's a fantastic tale, the book worthy of the kudos heaped on it. I couldn’t avoid making comparisons to books and movies of cattle drives in the West, especially Wyoming and Colorado. I worked for 30 years in Cheyenne and learned a lot about the history of the cattle biz in the West. Cheyenne Frontier Days is in its second century and that history is featured in the CFD Old West Museum, the Wyoming State Museum, and many works of art around the city.

“A Land Remembered” is a great novel and opened my eyes to Florida history I knew little about. The MacIveys make their home on the Kissimmee River near the town that’s mostly known as the neighbor to DisneyWorld, SeaWorld, and all those other amusements of Central Florida. Kissimmee hosts an annual rodeo and an excellent museum, the Osceola County Welcome Center and History Museum at 4155 W. Vine St. There you can view dioramas of some of the scrawny cattle rounded up from swamps and scrubland, the outfits worn by Florida cowboys (no Ray-Bans but they could have used them), and info on the various predators that threatened cow and cowboy. The Seminoles also played a part in the trade and Smith does a great job describing their culture in his novel.

I think my next move will be to the Ormond Beach Public Library and see if I can find a Florida-based book targeted by Moms for Liberty. There should be scores to choose from. I’ve been here for two months and don’t yet have a library card or whatever they use for library access these days. I do have access to Libby on my Kindle but Libby is not the same thing as spending hours scanning the new books section. I have found so many treasures there.

"Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books" brings comic relief to the book-banning hubbub

In several Wyoming communities, including Casper, Gillette, Lander and Sheridan, some members of the public have turned typically staid school board meetings into chaos by clamoring to have all LGBTQ-themed or sex-related books -- even textbooks -- pulled from shelves.--Kerry Drake, WyoFile, May 21, 2024

Add Cheyenne to the list.

Author Kirsten Miller's new novel takes its cue from the recent book-banning tide by Moms for Liberty and other right-wing groups. While whiney complainers go ballistic over books in schools and libraries that feature minority and LBGTQ characters, Miller's book provides us with some welcome comic relief.

“Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books” is a rollicking novel about this most timely of subjects. I cared for the characters – even the bad guys -- and I ploughed ahead to find out what happens to book banner Lula Dean and Little Library saboteur whose name I won’t reveal here because it was so nice to shout “Ah ha!” when that character is revealed. One of the pleasures of reading is anticipating what happens on the next page. Our protagonist finds a way to use Lula Dean’s library to get banned books into the hands of everyday people in the town.

If you have ever come across a Little Library in your neighborhood, it’s like finding a treasure. A Little Library is as quirky as the people who install these distinctive structures in their front yard and stock it with books. It might feature one topic, say astronomy or gardening or children’s literature. A little librarian who is a fiction fan might stock mysteries or cowboy romances or just a hodgepodge of novels set in 18^th century France, Mars of the future, or modern-day Manhattan.

In a county library, books are arranged just so by trained librarians. You want “Beloved” by Toni Morrison, you stroll to the fiction section and find it under M. If confused, you can look up the location on the library’s bank of computers. And, this may seem quaint and outdated, but you also can ask a librarian. They are very helpful.

In Lula Dean’s case, she is so outraged by some of the “filth” foisted on unsuspecting teen readers. ] Lula Dean stocks her library with hardcover books on wholesome subjects. Titles include “The Art of Crochet,” “Contract with America,” “Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs,” and “Buffy Halliday Goes to Europe.” It won’t be long before a bored teen turns into a dedicated saboteur who will muck up Lula Dean’s efforts to invoke the tenets spelled out in Project 2025.

Crystal Moore is a textbook housewife until she sees her husband cheating on her with a cashier at the local Piggly Wiggly. Desperate, she goes to Lula’s library to find a way to win back her husband. She picks “The Rules: Time-tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right.” Once she starts reading she discovers the book is “All Women are Witches: Find Your Power and Put it to Use.” The preacher’s daughter is shocked, at first, but starts reading and finds some helpful advice that might “keep Janelle Hopkins’ giant boobs away from my husband.” 

Well, first she wanders into the woods to pick up items for a love potion from the "Witches" book. She gets lost in the woods and unleashes a string of obscenities that might not win her Mother of the Year honors. She finds a pond, strips, and goes swimming. She dries off by the pond and is absorbed by nature. She’s still there when the sun sets and the moon rises. Next thing she knows, it’s morning and a search party is calling out her name. She returns home but life is never going to be the same for her husband and family or the town of Troy. Its residents find secret texts in Lula’s library and put them to good use.

The author, who grew up in North Carolina, sets the novel in a small community in  Georgia. Why not some little town in the Carolinas or possibly even Wyoming? Why not, indeed (see the intro quote). Georgia has featured heavily in the Christian Right’s effort to take away books from our kids and eventually (we know it’s coming) from adult readers and even crotchety old guy readers such as myself. Georgia is not all MAGA hats and smoke-belching pickups. It’s also home to liberal Atlanta with its thousands of curious readers as well as Tyler Perry’s groundbreaking movie studio. Georgia is also home to Athens which enlivened the independent music scene with R.E.M., the B-52s, and Widespread Panic. Georgia-based Jimmy Carter and Habitat for Humanity practice the “woke” Bible with good deeds for communities across the globe.

We are reminded daily that not every burg wants to ban books. But there are too many that are. Ignoramuses with Bible in hand and a seething resentment they can’t explain serve on too many local school boards in every Wyoming county.  

This hubbub may eventually die down and readers decades from now may wonder what the fuss was about. I’m reminded of Carl Hiaasen’s book “Squeeze Me” and its predatory humans and Burmese pythons. The book’s only four years old and man what a fun ride it was. We had hoped that by this time the book’s main character, a certain human predator in South Florida, would be gone from the political stage. But he’s not. Someone should write a book about it.

Miller was inspired, finished the book in record time, and Harper Collins wasted little time in getting it into our hands. The publishing process is agonizingly slow so credit goes to Miller, her agent, proofreaders, and HC.

The big question: Do satires ever do any good? “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” is now 60 years old and me and everyone else in Wyoming’s Capital City are surrounded by nuclear missiles that could wipe out humankind at the punch of a button. Know-it-alls who want to tell the rest of us what to do and what to read have always been with us. The pungent film “Idiocracy” is now seen as a documentary. The brilliant “Catch-22” and “Slaughterhouse Five” did little to stop warfare. What’s the point?

The point is that fine books such as “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl,” “Fahrenheit 451,” and “The Handmaid’s Tale” have something important to tell us. People who read are more informed and more engaged citizens. Maybe that’s what Lula Dean and her crowd are afraid of.

That’s exactly what they are afraid of.

 

 

Finding a home for Grant’s tome

I’m having a hard time deciding which books to keep and which ones to give away. Why this comprehensive shelf-cleaning now? Is it time for the retirement home and everything must go because the young ones are not interested in any of our treasures? Not exactly. Chris and I are moving and selling our house. It is filled with 18 years of accumulating. I have bought and traded for many books in this time. I would put the count in the hundreds but Chris puts it in the thousands because that’s what it seems like to her.

Some might say I have book clutter. Chris is a reader (she just finished the second Abraham Verghese novel which is even longer than the first). So books are not the problem but their arrangement in the household is up for debate. I have swept clean three bookshelves, keeping only those volumes dear to me. We have moved out most of the bookshelves so the books have nowhere to go except out. Hey, I’m doing my best..

The other day, I filled a plastic bin with the section of the presidential library my father willed me in 2002. In the bin behind me, I see titles about JFK (“One Brief Shining Moment” by William Manchester, FDR (“Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants & Their War” by Eric Larrabee, and USG (“Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant: Volume 1”) with Ulysses S. Grant holding the 1885 copyright and published by the Press of J.J. Little & Co., NY, NY. I also have the trade paperback on Grant’s memoirs (volumes 1 and 2) printed in 1952 by Da Capo Press. 

Buried among these was my slim paperback “JFK: Boyhood to the White House” (Crest Publishing, 50 cents). JFK and this book meant a lot to me. I was 10 at his inauguration and 12 almost 13 when he was assassinated. I had a tween crush on JFK and the whole Kennedy clan. It’s still sad to remember those times.

I am taking the presidents with me. It’s a darn heavy bin because nobody writes a slim biography of a U.S. president. Most are hardcovers which weigh in heavier than paperbacks. It will take a strong back or someone with a hand truck to carry this to our moving trailer. I estimate I will have ten of these monsters to take with me cross-country. My son will drive and I will be on one of those flying machines, you know, the ones with the extremely comfortable and spacious seats. 

I love to fly.

In Florida, I will reveal my presidential cache to family members with the hope they will put them on their shelves because I won’t have room in my new place. They are a legacy, after all, and deserve a place of honor and it will be up to my siblings’ children or grandchildren to decide where they go next. That’s the plan anyway.

Book banning in Gillette: A Wyoming story

The American Library Association wrapped up Banned Books Week and now there are no banned books in the land.

Wishful thinking. Know Nothings keep intruding into our book-reading lives. The most recent and newsworthy attempt comes from Gillette in Campbell County. The first salvo came when a few crackpots decided that the library should disinvite an LGBTQ author slated to give a children's workshop. The library received threats. The author received threats. For safety's sake, the author cancelled her appearance and the library moved on to other things. That included fielding challenges for various books, most with LGBTQ subject matter. As staff sorted through the complaints from a cabal of Christian Nationalist zealots, they celebrated Banned Books Week. The county commission held a hearing in which the following exchange occurred (as noted in an Oct. 4 Casper Star-Trib article):

On Sept. 27, during a meeting between the library board and commissioners, Commissioner Del Shelstad suggested cutting the library’s funding.

He said the library shouldn’t come asking the county for more money because in his opinion, “we shouldn’t fund you at all.”

Commissioner D.G. Reardon, who had called into the meeting, asked if he’d heard Shelstad correctly, and if Shelstad meant he wanted to close down the library.

Shelstad said he wanted to cut funding to the library, and ”if that means closing it, then we close it.”

Shelstad received a salvo of complaints and a few days later he back-tracked, sort of:

“I didn’t mean 100% of their funding,” he said. “I said cut their funding. That comes in a lot of shapes and sizes.”

A threat is a threat. He obviously supports and/or is threatened by the naysayers in the county. We know who those people are. Trumpsters. People who go to extremes to “own the libs.” The see any diversity initiative as a threat to their ignorance, which it is. There is a voting bloc of these people and their influence is felt every day at the library, in the media, county commission meetings, and at the polls.

Gillette parent Matt Heath, who spoke up for the library at the commission meeting, summed it up: "hypocrites and bullies need to be stood up against."

Amen, brother. These dogged bullies have always been with us. Trump unleashed them. It is too much to hope they go back into their hidey-holes. We must out-vote and out-talk them. Support your local library. Read a banned book today. And vote, as our complacency as people who value democratic principles have allowed this to happen. Far-right politicians and legislative bodies continue to suppress voting rights and gerrymander the hell out of our states. Misinformation spreads freely.

So get out there, go do that voodoo that you do so well. 

Every poetry book tells a story don't it

Chris and Annie decided to round-up boxes of books in the basement and bring them upstairs to me. Disability prevents me from diving into the dungeon's stacks but my wife and daughter are only too happy to do the work if I promise to get rid of books, some of which have been sitting in the basement for more than a decade. I have a keeper box and a give-away box which will go to Phoenix Books or the Laramie County Public Library store. I get a smaller box for the keepers in an effort to fool me into thinking it's a good idea to get rid of books when actually I believe the opposite. But we are downsizing, fixing up our house and cleaning the cobwebby places with an idea to sell and move in 2022. Over the years, I have moved many heavy boxes of books. I'm retired so I have some incentive to divest.

My wife, daughter, and sons all are readers. My grown children live in an e-world but they still read physical books. They know it pains me to decide what stays ands what goes. They also know that they will inherit my library and we all know that I should be the ones making the decisions. Before passing from prostate cancer, my father split up his presidential library into five sections, one for each of his sons. I got Reagan (very funny, Dad) but also Jefferson, Grant, and Kennedy. I will ask my two remaining brothers if they want them. If not, to my son will go the spoils.

I have seen wonderful personal libraries left behind when a dedicated reader dies suddenly. Cancer killed a CSU creative writing professor and friend a few years ago. His will sent his Vietnam War books to the CSU library's special collection on the war. Thousands of others remained. I was among his associates who were allowed to pick through the books. I could have filled boxes but I chose three volumes that I now will put in the keeper box..  

Every book tells a story. I met and worked with many of the authors after I switched careers in 1988. after stints as a sports reporter, weekly newspaper editor, and corporate writer, I went back to school in the CSU MFA program. As a teaching assistant, I got involved with the visiting writers program and eventually the CSU Fine Arts Series. I met many writers in my roles with the Wyoming Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and on planning committees for book festivals in Casper, Cheyenne, and Denver. 

I have signed books by Ethridge Knight and Gwendolyn Brooks. In 1990, I was only vaguely aware of Brooks and knew nothing about Knight. An ex-con who got hooked on drugs after being dosed with morphine for wounds in the Korean War, Knight wanted to speak to prisoners so I accompanied him to the county jail. He recited his poems filled with African-American vernacular, prisons slang, and voices of the streets. I heard a different poetry that day. Like rap and spoken word, it had its own rhythms. The inmates, many of them Black and Latino, paid attention, chatted with Knight when the performance was over. 

Knight spoke as a member of the Black Arts Movement. He found his voice based on his own experiences but also influenced by Brooks, Sonia Sanchez and other African-American voices of the 1950s and 60s. You could hear similar rhythms in Brooks' poetry. A prime example is her oft-anthologized poem "We real cool." You can hear Knight's influence in rap and hip hop and slam poetry.  You can hear it in groups such as San Diego's Taco Shop Poets and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in NYC. 

I have a signed copy of Knight's "Poems from Prison," published by Broadside Press the day he was released from prison. It's a keeper, as is Brooks' "The Near-Johannesburg Boy and Other Poems." Brooks won a Pulitzer for an earlier book, "Annie Allen."

I'm keeping Ernesto Cardenal's "With Walker in Nicaragua." Cardenal's life as interesting as his poetry. A priest de-priested by the Vatican when he got too close to the Sandinistas and liberation theology, his role was restored by Pope Francis in 2017. William Walker was a freebooter from Tennessee who conquered Nicaragua and served as its president prior to the U.S. Civil War. He legalized slavery and made English the official language in an effort to link Central America and Cuba with the South's slave states. Imagine if he had succeeded -- our country's politics would be even weirder than it is now. The book from Wesleyan University Press is bilingual with wonderful translations by Jonathan Cohen. 

"The Country Between Us" by Carolyn Forche goes in the keeper box. It includes the "The Colonel," her amazing remembrance poem of a dinner with an officer in El Salvador's death squads. Forche was a finalist in this year's Pulitzer poetry category. 

It breaks my heart when I place a pile of slim poetry books in the giveaway box. Nobody will value them like me. They may sit on the library store's shelves until its next clearance sale. Even then, they may remain unclaimed. Poetry is endangered. Much still is published but a lot of it is online and available only as e-books. The Death of Poetry has been foretold many times. Still, it persists.

Next up: What do I do with all of these novels, story collections, and memoirs? 

Boomers and Millennials live in different worlds when it comes to books

A university professor complained on Facebook that her upper division literature students don't know the name Gerard Manley Hopkins. Never heard of him, never read any of his work.

These youngsters have also never read Gwendolyn Brooks. They don't know Gwendolyn, they also don't know the greatest spoken word poem of all time.

The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We
Left School. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

Ms. Brooks recited that poem in a room in the CSU student union one night in 1990. It's hard to find more meaning in 24 simple words. Kind of like the poet herself -- so much talent in a tiny frame. Nobel Prize winner.

Some English majors have never heard of her. Take heart, youngsters. It took me awhile to discover our Ms. Brooks. I had to read up on her as I planned her trip from Chicago to Fort Collins. I'd never encountered her work in any of my undergrad or grad courses. I discovered her by meeting her when I was 39, a late-blooming M.F.A. student.

Better late than never. Probably won't see that over-used phrase in any good poem. And what if you did? At least you'd be reading. That seems to be the problem. Kids are reading but only certain things. Sci-fi and fantasy. Harry Potter. Superheroes. Graphic novels. Zines. Manga. Etc.

Lest I be another Baby Boomer ranting about Millennials, let me say this: "I'm not." I am glad that Millennials continue to read. Some of their reading is online and on smart phones but it's still reading.

Millennials complain about Baby Boomers, those aging humans that are parents and grandparents to new generations. Millennials are tired of Boomers asking for computer advice. Much like the techs in BBC's "The IT Crowd," many are basement dwellers surrounded by high-tech gizmos, When we call them for help, they advise us, "Have you tried turning it off and then back on?" Even worse, sometimes we call them from land lines which youngsters regard as quaint items from another century, which they are.

Other things that annoy Millennials are our tendency to accumulate things, especially old china sets and fine silver. Chris and I have three sets of china gifted to us by various relatives. Chris has art and figurines from Japan, Ethiopia, and German, parents where there army family was based. Should Antiques Roadshow ever come to Wyoming, Chris is ready to haul her treasures to the stage and rake in some cash. Our kids hope she does as they do not want to deal with them when we pass into the other realm. I am told that businesses have cropped up aimed expressly at disposing of all the collectibles Boomers leave behind. 

Books are my treasures. Many of them are in boxes in the basement. My basement-dwelling daughter occasionally brings me a box to go through, saying she will be happy to take the castoffs to the library bookstore. I open the box and cull the castoffs. Unfortunately, I often find an old favorite
or one signed by a writer friend. I insist on going through these thoroughly lest some classic should slip through my fingers. Annie comes along hours later and is flummoxed that I have added just a few volumes to the library pile while  the box remains nearly full. Often I am in my easy chair, reading a book I enjoyed decades ago. She feigns anger, vowing to wait until I die to get rid of all the books. Who cares, I say, I will be in the great library in the sky. All the universe's books will be at my fingertips. I will be able to read them in any language, including Tralfamadorian. That would be heaven.

Hell would be TrumpWorld with no books. We already live in that hell.

The library's "The Way We Worked" series features Tuskegee Airman on Nov. 10

The Laramie County Public Library presents another program that's part of "The Way We Worked" exhibit. This family-oriented presentation features one of the last surviving Tuskegee Airmen, a group of Africa-American young men whose job entailed escorting U.S. bombers over Europe and shooting Nazi planes out of the sky. They also had to endure the wrath of hateful fellow Americans, both before, during, and after the war that beat the fascists. 

Franklin J. Macon is the author of I want to be a Pilot: The Making of a Tuskegee Airman. He will talk about it and sign copies of book on Saturday, Nov. 10, 1-3 p.m., in the library's Storytime Room. Here's more info on Macon's presentation:

Franklin J. Macon was one of the famous Tuskegee Airmen and is now 95 years old. Come hear him speak about his incredible journey from a childhood in Colorado Springs, Colo., to the skies over Tuskegee. His amazing life story speaks of overcoming all odds to reach your dreams by never giving up, living an honorable life and keeping close to family (…and maybe being just a bit mischievous). Inspirational for every member of your family, young and old. Book signing of I Want to Be a Pilot: The Making of a Tuskegee Airman will follow the event. The book is written for upper elementary and junior high school students. 

FMI: 307-634-3561

Library's Sept. 28 Hands-on History Expo explores "The Way We Worked"

"The Way We Worked" exhibit is up and running at the Laramie County Public Library. This Smithsonian-sponsored traveling exhibit features interactive displays on various aspects of working in the U.S. Technology plays a major role, as you might guess. Assembly lines, automated farm equipment, telephone switchboards, manual typewriters, and the dawn of the computer age.

On the library's third floor is a display board that addresses organized labor's struggle through the years. Under a photo of two little boys operating a dangerous looking machine is a selection of labor songs you can select for your listening enjoyment.  I chose one of my favorites, "De Colores," which I had to be reminded was an organizing song. So many great songs and poem came out of the labor struggles of the 19th and 20th centuries. In 2018 America, we may need to sing some of the old songs and compose some new ones for Trump's Gilded Age.

For several weeks, I have written a series of posts about "The Way Mike Worked." The most-read one if about the bygone days of paperboys. I've barely scratched the surface of the many jobs I have had in my 67 years, 55 working years. I will keep writing to bring myself up to the present. If you are looking for poems, stories and essays about work, I suggest you check out the anthology "Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams," published by Coffee House Press and edited by Detroit's M.L. Liebler. One of my short stories is included. I wrote about the anthology here and here when it came out in 2010.

On Friday, Sept. 28, 6-7:30 p.m., the library hosts a Hands-on History Expo. Come out to take a look at an antique tractor and a well-digging machine. Watch a weaving demonstration. You might have a chance to type on a manual typewriter and explore an original library card catalog. Ponder those fast-food jobs of your teens and jobs you had as an adult, and maybe ones you wish you had.

Part I: The Way Mike Worked

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

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

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

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

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

Where was my passion?

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

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

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

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

Literary Connection Part II: Craig Johnson, from book to screen to novella

For my first Oct. 8 post about the Literary Connection, go to https://hummingbirdminds.blogspot.com/2017/10/we-ask-old-question-why-do-writers-write.html

At Oct. 7's Literary Connection at LCCC, I bought three books by Craig Johnson: "Western Star," the newest Longmire mystery; "The Cold Dish," the first published Longmire novel; and "Wait for Signs: Twelve Longmire Stories," including "Old Indian Trick," winner of the Tony Hillerman award.

I have others on my jam-packed book shelves and undoubtedly in some of the many boxes of books I have stashed around the house. I've read three of the author's Walt Longmire mysteries. They are well-written and exciting, with memorable characters. They are set in the mythical Wyoming burg of Durant in the county of Absaroka. These are stand-ins for Johnson's neighboring village of Buffalo in Johnson County. Johnson is not related to the Johnson of the county name. He is affiliated with Buffalo's Longmire Days celebration which celebrates the books featuring the mythical sheriff. It's a lot of fun -- I attended it during the summer of 2015. Johnson is the master of ceremonies for events. Presenters include a roster of the actors who bring the characters to life on the Netflix series. The writer and actors sign autographs and pose for photos with fans. There's also a street dance and a pancake breakfast. The Johnsons staff a pop-up store on Main Street where they sell Longmire merch. I have several T-shirts and books galore to prove their merchandising skills.

Johnson and his wife Judy live in the town of Ucross, just off the intersection of two state highways. Johnson has written 20-some books st the old homestead. The characters that he dreamed up come to life on the Netflix series. That must be awesome. He's said as much at the various talks and book signings I've attended.

Johnson presented the afternoon talk at LCCC's Literary Connection on Oct. 7. I couldn't stay for it. I had to get home to meet my daughter and go shopping. Family matters come before the matters of writing and everything else.

Netflix airs the sixth and last season of "Longmire" starting in November. The network cited declining viewership as the main reason it cancelled the series. Chris and I are long-time "Longmire" watchers. The Netflix version is edgier than its A&E counterpart. That's the way of Netflix. I have enjoyed the edgy "Ozark," which also features a rural setting -- Lake of the Ozarks in Arkansas. Netflix just cancelled the edgy "Bloodline" set in the Florida Keys. I watched season one and was impressed with the cast and acting and the non-sequential storytelling. Netflix said it was too expensive to produce. Who knows?

What makes a Netflix success? How edgy can you be until that becomes a stereotype? Stories thrive on conflict. You need real characters, too, people that are believable and are a bundle of contradictions too. Just like a great novel.

"Longmire" had something no other show has -- Native American characters or, at least, minorities playing Native Americans on the show. Lou Diamond Philips who plays Henry Standing Bear in part-Cherokee. The mother of Denver native Zahn McLarnon, who plays tribal police chief Mathias, was Hunkpapa Lakota. We have shows with Hispanic characters and African-Americans. With the death of "Longmire," Native Americans disappear from contemporary stories on the screen. A shame. Craig Johnson has gone out of his way to bring Native characters into his fiction and onto the screen. And he does his research.

The show's success has spawned novellas such as "The Highwayman" subtitled "A Longmire Story." The novella's cover prominently promotes the show. So the novels begat the show and the show begat novellas. Kind of interesting how this business works. I knew Johnson back when he was writing his first novel. The encouraging thing is that he's the same good guy he was back then. He rides for the brand, to borrow a phrase from Wyoming's Cowboy Code. Or to quote a line from one of the my favorite movies -- he's bona fide.

For more about Johnson, go to http://www.craigallenjohnson.com/.

We ask the old question: why do writers write?

When we speak about books, we often speak in the singular case: the writer's vision, the poet's voice. We talk very little of writing communities. Writing is a solitary pursuit. Beginning in childhood, we are influenced by our family and friends and teachers. The media, too, of course, a factor that surrounds us in 2017. But what turns this interest into a passion? The rewards can be substantial. Fame and riches await.

Pause here for laughs.

There are easier ways to get rich. So why do writers persevere?

My parents were readers but not writers. My father was an accountant, my mother a nurse. They read books. They bought books and took us to the local library. My mother often joked about writing a book. She had subjects: nine kids, plenty of pets, a profession that put her in contact with suffering and transcendence, skill and ineptitude. She was sociable. She had friends. She had a career, unusual for that generation. 

My father read books and hung out with his kids. He had few friends, typical of his generation of men. War chums, college friends, a few relatives. He only had one sibling and they didn't get along. On occasion, my Catholic parents made babies. How and why they did this remains a mystery. They left it to the nuns and priests to explain it to us. They were no help.

I grew up surrounded by mysteries. I remember things forgotten by my siblings. Or they remember things differently. What is memory and why does it play such strange tricks on us?

I thought about this yesterday as writer Sharman Apt Russell explored the reasons that writers write. She presented the morning talk at Literary Connection, the annual literary gathering at Laramie County Community College in Cheyenne. Russell and fellow writer Craig Johnson were part of a long line of writers who have appeared at this conference. I've attended every one going back at least a decade. Annie Proulx, Tim O'Brien, Kent Haruf, Laura Pritchett, Pam Houston, Mark Spragg. Those are some of the names you might recognize. There are so many others. Ernest Cline attended one year to talk about his best-seller "Ready Player One," now being turned into a film by Stephen Spielberg.  Connie May Fowler talked about her southern heritage and her work. Her 2005 novel, "The Problem with Murmur Lee," is one of the best books I've read with a Central Florida setting.  It's simply a great book. I had a hard time finishing her memoir because the pain and the person it was happening to were so real. I blogged about Poe Ballantine's 2013 appearance at the Literary Connection. I read his true-crime book "Love and Terror on the High Plains of Nowhere" and was dazzled by it. One of the book's subjects did not appreciate my commentary. The book world is sometimes a very small place.

Russell began to write when she was eight years old. Not unusual for writers. Her father, a test pilot, died when she was two.

People write, Russell said, for many reasons.

"We love to read, particularly when we were children," she said. "Those who fell in love with reading as children, it's entered your bones. You want to be part of something that's given you so much."

So true. My parents read to me. They taught me, and I read as soon as I could. I have fallen out of love with books and reading and writing on many occasions. I keep coming back to it, probably because it's in my bones.

Writers like to play. We make up stories to learn how to survive as a human and to try on other roles, as actors trying out different characters. We are storytelling animals. It's part of our engagement with the world.

"When you write, you find your thoughts being clarified," Russell said. "It's your conversation with the world."

Writing is discovery. It helps you to be vulnerable and honest.

Russell thinks you not only should write a book but publish it. Technology has never made it easier to publish, whether it be with a small press or one we call our own. You can publish online. You can publish here. You can publish there. You can publish anywhere.

This gave me hope. Most writers worry too much about publishing. I do. It's the goal of our writers' critique group. We want to be better writers. But we also want readers.

"Getting readers is the follow-through for writers."

She half-jokingly wrapped up her talk with this: "If you are spending a lot of money on therapy, just write books." And it got a big laugh. I thought to myself: "I spend my treasure on therapy and also write books."

In my next post, I'll post about the other co-presenter at the Literary Connection, Wyoming mystery writer Craig Johnson. 

One Cheney cancels, another still is coming to Cheyenne

Novelist Margaret Coel will be replacing Lynne Cheney as the featured speaker at the Booklovers' Bash on Oct. 20 in Cheyenne. The event is a fund-raiser for the Laramie County Public Library. Tix are $80. Get more info at http://lclsonline.org/blb/2017/

I love Margaret's books set on the Wind River Reservation and its environs. What I like even more is that Lynne Cheney is not coming. She sent her regrets as she faces hip surgery, which is not a pleasant experience.

Thing is, the library already sent out color flyers advertising Ms. Cheney. This is every event planner's nightmare. The postcards/flyers/newsletters are in the mail and the speaker cancels. I've been there. I can just imagine the mad scramble that ensued when  the library and its foundation heard the news.

It's also a bummer, personally because I had crafted a snarky post about Cheney coming to town. It follows, because I spent minutes on this piece and hate to waste it. Please note that Cheney's effervescent daughter, Rep. Liz, is coming to town on Oct. 6 to tell us about her plans for affordable healthcare, edible coal, and the glory of posing with Donald Trump as he signs ridiculous and dangerous legislation. You are invited to express your love and admiration for Rep. Liz by going to the Raddison Hotel on Oct. 6, 11:30-1 p.m., where Cheney will be addressing the Chamber luncheon. Bring a sign. More info here. BTW, I can't find a thing about this on Cheney's web site.

Here's my Cheney post:

Lynne Cheney advocates a whitewashed version of history.

No surprise, as she is a diehard Republican. She has a brand to promote and protect. But she is being billed as an "author and historian" for a speech at the Laramie County Library System's Booklovers' Bash on Oct. 20 in Cheyenne. Tickets are $80.

A library-sponsored event is a good time to talk about free speech.

The library board is comprised of good people. I am sure they have the best intentions for the library.

But Lynne Cheney? What has she contributed to the world of letters? What has she contributed to the world?

I realize that we live in a post-truth society. Trump reveals this with every tweet and every public pronouncement. To resist, we have to be certain of our facts. Bloggers have to do some research to see that their snark is based on truth. I use humor in my posts to make a point. A wealth of material is available. Even if you're lazy, it doesn't take that many clicks to find out if a Trump Tweet has any basis in the factual world. I didn't say Real World because that was a TV show based on a staged situation. This makes it Reality TV. People wouldn't watch it if it was Unreality TV. They want to see real people in real situations that are fake. Thus we have Reality TV and Trump in the White House.

Confusing, isn't it?

So I am going to do what I tell others to do: check it out. Read Ms. Cheney's books and her pronouncements on the arts and humanities. And then advise you, in a snarky manner, if you should attend the event or not.

Funny story. Once, the head of the Casper College Library suggested that we bring in Lynne Cheney as a featured speaker at the first Equality State Book Festival in Casper. Ms. Cheney, wrote books, was once head of the NEH in D.C., was a Casper native, etc. Also married to Dick, former Veep. He has a federal building and football field named for him.

Committee members, me and my colleague whom I will call L, voiced our objections. Later, the miffed librarian was heard referring to us as liberal twits. We have treasured than name ever since. I use it as a handle on Twitter. L has taken a less public role, although I still suspect she is a liberal twit in good standing. I only use her first initial because word comes that Jeff Sessions, the gnome who runs the Department of Justice, is considering opening detention camps for liberal twits and their fellow travelers, snowflakes, progressives and libtards. If history serves, Wyoming would make an ideal place for such a camp. Cold, isolated and crazily conservative. Just like Trump.

As far as I know, nobody has organized a protest against Lynne Cheney. It's a bit tricky as this is a library fund-raiser. When Lynne's daughter Liz arrives in Cheyenne at a Chamber luncheon on Oct. 6, a protest is planned. Get more info here. Liz is WYO's lone congressional rep, one shown often in bill-signing photos with Trump. She skipped holding town halls during the summer recess due to the fact that some crazy liberal might show up and ask an embarrassing question, such as "How can you, as a woman, support a misogynistic, racist swine such as Trump?" This language is mild in comparison with some of the Facebook comments I've seen. But of course, we are gentlemen and gentlewomen here at hummingbirdminds.

I am going to try to check Lynne Cheney's books out of the library and read them. I will not buy them. Or maybe I will after reading them. This is what thoughtful people do. This is what thoughtful Americans do. Besides, lobbyists and Halliburton and government service already enriched the Cheneys. They don't need the money. They are giving it away to charities before the Nazgul carry them off to Mordor.

Latest post on Studio Wyoming Review talks about dystopia and book arts and boxed wine

From "Liberty Walking" by Sue Sommers

Studio Wyoming Review is in the Extras section of Wyofile, Wyoming's online publication. It's kind of like a newspaper in that it features fresh content every day. But it's also like a magazine in that it does long-form features which newspapers, especially small ones, don't do, unless they come from wire services. And just like this blog, it is only online.

Here's some background info on Studio Wyoming Review.

I've been writing for the site for a couple months. I have written two reviews during that time. You can read my first one here. The second one appeared today and is available here.

I am not an artist. I am an arts appreciator. I worked as an arts administrator for 25 years, mainly in the literary arts and publications. What I know about the visual arts I picked up from wonderful artists in Wyoming, Colorado, and others across the U.S. I have to view an exhibit two or three times to get down what I want to write about it. That's not too unusual for magazine writers. It is odd for newspaper reporters, especially beat reporters who often have to interview people on the fly or by phone and submit an intelligible story before deadline. That's what I had to do as a sports reporter.

Me: Hey coach how does it feel to whip the tar out of the Bulldogs?
Coach: Great. The boys gave it 110 percent tonight. They left it all out on the field.
Me: What exactly did they leave out on the field?
Coach: The usual. Guts. Heart. Attitude. Spleen. Brain matter.

Artists leave it all out on the canvas, or in the 3-D piece. Guts. Heart. Attitude. Spleen. Brain matter. Artists, though, care less about the score and more about what shows up in the finished work. It's up to us to see what that is. Sometimes I can be off base. Sometimes I'm dead-on. It's subjective, as are all things human.

Take a look and see what you think and feel. You have to hurry for the "Utopia/Dystopia" exhibit, as it is only up through Aug. 7.

During spring cleaning, the bell tolls for booklovers

What do I keep? What do I recycle? What do I throw away?

The questions of spring cleaning.

Over the weekend, I vowed to clean up my writing room. Spring cleaning fever hit us on Saturday as we helped our daughter move to a new place in Fort Collins. We tackled her room first, which she hadn't lived in for 18 months. Because it was vacant, I used it as a storage room for the stuff overflowing from my office. The jig was up. She's at home, searching for stuff for the move. So I had to comb through the boxes of receipts and old checkbooks and manuscripts and books.

I tackled the books first. The difficulty is that I want to read parts of a book to decide if it's a keeper. Got stuck on a Brad Leithauser poem, "The Odd Last Thing She Did" by his collection of the same title. It's about a suicidal young woman who disappears after leaving her car running on a cliff overlooking the ocean. "The car/Is Empty. A Friday, the first week/Of June. Nineteen fifty-three." A mystery is at the heart of this poem. Could be the setting for a 250-page hard-boiled mystery novel, a case for Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. But it's a four-page poem, long for a poem, short for a novel. The summer night is lovely with "the stars easing through the blue,/Engine and ocean breathing together." She could have been abducted, but that's not what the poem implies. She threw herself off the cliff. A suicide. A pretty, 23-year-old, and one with a car. But she didn't want to live.

"What are you doing?" Chris asks

I look up. "Reading," I say.

"That's not spring cleaning."

"Yes, but..." I want to say that this poem is wonderful and filled with mystery. It's why we read. But realize that I have been caught in the act.

Now my daughter is looking at me. She writes poetry. "C'mon, Dad," she says, hauling another box of rejected books out to the car trunk. She will take three boxes of books to the library today.

Caught in the act. I close Brad's book and put it into a box labeled "Mike books." Our rooms and basement have many such boxes as the bookshelves are full. In some circles, I would be labeled a hoarder. But among booklovers? Also in the box is "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy, which I keep pledging to finally read; "The Voice of America," stories by Rick DeMarinis, which doesn't have my fave DeMarinis story ("Under the Wheat") but does have "The Voice of America" and "Aliens;" and a 1968 Fawcett Crest Book edition of Erich Maria Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front" or, if you prefer the German, "Im Westen Nichts Neues." I have been tempted lately to reread the latter book as I am working on a novel set in the years after The Great War. But I have other research to do and may never get to it.

Therein lies the bookie's dilemma. What to keep, what to send to the library? I cannot bear to throw away a book as it seems too much like burning a book. Someone, somewhere wants to read the book that I don't want. Just as I want to read a book that someone else doesn't want, which is why I stop at garage sales.

I am 66 with grown children who are both readers. What will I make of all of this when I am gone? My accountant father painstakingly put the division of his library in his will. He read history and presidential biographies and autobiographies. I got everything from Lincoln to Kennedy, including a beat-up 1885 edition of the "Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, Volume 1." Not sure which of my four brothers got the other volumes, if there were any. But I also got a trade paperback of the Grant memoirs which is comprehensive but not nearly as compelling as the original.

Technology is changing reading and collecting habits. Old books fall apart. Indie bookstores die along with their proprietors and aging customers. Good news, though -- it appears that this trend may be reversing. Our kids read books but spend a lot of time on Kindle and online reading.

I am tempted to bring up all these issues with my family. But I am in a losing battle against time. Nobody will care for these books as I do. Some will be claimed by my heirs but most will end up in library second-hand sales or in paperback bookstores or on the curb in garage sales. I will get rid of those that I can now and let time take its toll on the rest. John Donne said it well, and I don't have a single Donne book, not even holdovers from my undergrad and grad school English courses.

Here's the quote, which you may recognize:

"... any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

Before those bells start tolling, I need to tackle these books. Wish me luck.

The Broncos vs. The Bard

A writer, dead for 400 years, caused me to miss the first half of the Denver Broncos season opener.

I know, where are my priorities? William Shakespeare vs. two NFL teams that battled it out in Super Bowl 50?  Denver, our southern neighbor, was at a fever pitch for weeks leading up to the game. My Colorado hometown may no longer be a cow town but it still bleeds orange and blue every fall. Three Super Bowl championships, multiple Super Bowl appearances (we don't talk much about the first three or the one in February 2014), many league championships and wins over the dreaded Raiders. I was a jock in high school and a sports reporter as a young man. Sports are in my blood.

But so is Shakespeare. My accountant father's library still had his college Shakespeare texts but nothing on finance and economics. I was more interested in reading first-hand accounts of World War II. Dad seemed happy that his eldest child loved reading and books. I think he was a frustrated academic, one who would have been more comfortable surrounded by books than IRS rules and regs. Not a teacher but /probably a researcher, as he wasn't all that good with people.

Shakespeare's First Folio is touring the U.S., courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. Actually, six of the first folios are touring and one landed at the State Museum in Cheyenne. Published in 1623, it is kept under lock and key in a climate-controlled glass case watched over by a security guard. The pages are open to Hamlet's famous "To be or not to be" speech. The text is small and difficult to read, not only because of its size but because the language -- Early Modern English -- is arcane to us. Here's a sample:

A bad quarto was basically a bootlegged copy of the script, written hurriedly by an audience member or recalled later by actors. Think of a bootlegged copy of, say, a Grateful Dead concert in the 1970s. The good quarto was a copy of the play taken from the source. The first folio is the 1623 version that featured 36 plays, 18 of which had never before appeared in print.

I didn't have to read the fine print to know the value of what I saw. The first folio saved 16 of Shakespeare's plays from oblivion. They include Macbeth, The Tempest, Henry VIII and Twelfth Night. Forsooth, what would Hollywood have done without the three witches or Prospero's island? I would never had been treated to a nude version of Macbeth's witches at Gainesville's original Hippodrome Theatre. My life would be leff without it. 

If you want to talk monetary value, a first folio was sold at auction in 2001 for $6.1 million. I'll take two! When it was hot off the presses, a first folio went for about a pound. In today's money, that's somewhere between $150-$250.

But it's not the money really now is it? As the State Museum exhibit points out, Shakespeare and his plays have given us phrases that we use every day and countless hours of entertainment at the movies. I believe that I first heard lines from Romeo and Juliet in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Every state boasts a Shakespeare company, usually one that tours performances every summer. In Wyoming, that's the Wyoming Shakespeare Company out of Lander. I recall a memorable version of King Lear on the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens lawn. Nature provided its own thunder and lightning for the famous storm scene with King Lear and The Fool. Here's Lear: 

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!
You sulfurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o' th' world,
Crack nature’s molds, all germens spill at once
That make ingrateful man!

Now that's a storm. 

Last night was rounded out with a presentation by UW Prof Peter Parolin: "From the Fringes to the Folio: Crossing Borders with Shakespeare in Life, on Stage, and in the Globalized World." Fascinating talk, and I was surprised on how many stayed after the food and wine and entertainment to hear an academic speak. I had not thought about "migration as one of Shakespeare's principal themes." But Parolin has, at length. He accompanied it with  a PowerPoint presentation, his first, which acted as a helpful assistant to the talk. 

I had not thought of migration and immigration as big Shakespeare topics. But crossing borders happens a lot. The Merchant of Venice and Othello are good examples, with their "foreigners" as key characters. Parolin even quoted a brief snippet from Shylock's speech: "In Aleppo once..." The Syrian city has been in the news lately as it suffers the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune -- and the forgetfulness of presidential candidates. 

Thanks to everyone at Wyoming Cultural Resources for bringing the folio to Cheyenne and staging the event. The First Folio will be in town through the end of September. 

I made it back to my Smart TV to watch the second half, in which the Broncos staged a comeback. With 9 seconds left, the Carolina Panthers kicker nailed a field goal but it was negated by a Broncos timeout. The second kick went wide to the left. That kicker was feeling some slings and arrows last night on Twitter. In Denver, they were partying like Falstaff and Prince Hal in 1402. 

Don't miss Wyoming author Mark Spragg this Friday at Booklovers' Bash

Plan to attend the Booklovers’ Bash, the primary annual fund-raiser for the Laramie County Library Foundation, on Friday, October 24, 6 p.m., at Little America Hotel & Resort in Cheyenne. Featured speaker this year will be well-known author Mark Spragg.

Mark Spragg grew up working on Wyoming’s oldest dude ranch just east of Yellowstone National Park and is a graduate of the University of Wyoming.  His memoir, Where Rivers Change Direction, won the Mountains & Plains Book award for nonfiction in 2000.  He is also the author of the novels The Fruit of Stone, An Unfinished Life and Bone Fire. All four were top-ten Book Sense selections and have been translated into fifteen languages. An Unfinished Life was made into a major motion picture starring Robert Redford, Jennifer Lopez and Morgan Freeman in 2005. Spragg and his wife Virginia co-wrote the screenplay. The couple live in Cody, Wyoming.

There will be silent and live auction items.Tickets must be purchased in advance. Call 307.773.7221 for more information. 

Hang out on the air during Banned Books Week

Banned Books Week, Sept. 22-28:

Hangouts on Air: Check out the awesome Hangout on Air schedule we have planned for Banned Books Week. Feel free to reshare the events and invite your circles. We’d appreciate any and all support to help spread the word.

9/23: PEN American Center and the ALA Presents: A Live Hangout On Air with Sherman Alexie

9/23: Banned Books Week event: Author Mark Vonnegut reads from Slaughterhouse-Five and discusses his father’s experiences with censorship 

9/24: Google+ and BookTrib Presents: A Live Hangout On Air with Jay Asher, 

9/24: Celebrate Banned Books Week - Discover What You’re Missing 

9/24: CBLDF Presents: Brad Meltzer on Banned Books Week, a Google+ Hang Out! 

9/25: Lauren Oliver and Friends: Banned Books Week 

9/26: PEN American Center Presents: A Live Hangout On Air with Erica Jong

350Cheyenne screens award-winning "Chasing Ice" Sept. 12

This announcement comes from writer and Wyoming Tribune-Eagle columnist Edith Cook:

We are showing the film Chasing Ice at the Laramie County Library in Cheyenne on Thursday, September 12, 2013, at 6:30 PM.

The event is free of charge, sponsored by 350Cheyenne. 

This film of electrifying beauty documents the quest of one man (National Geographic photographer James Bolag) to explore glaciers and ice-sheets worldwide; he wished to determine how and why they melt. 

Winner of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, Roger Ebert labeled the film “heart-stopping.” The New York Times made it its Critic’s Pick and the NY Daily News gave it a five-star rating.  Please attend if you can do so.

Feel like writing 50,000 words in November? The library wants to help...

Press release from the Laramie County Public Library:

Get ready with your laptops, pens and paper (or even quills and parchment!) for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)! Participants begin writing on November 1 and must finish their novel on or before November 30. The Laramie County Library will host several events for adults and teens.

The kick-off will be Thursday, November 1, from 6:00-7:30 pm in the Willow Room. We’ll have plenty of food and drink available as you buckle down and get writing for this annual challenge. Bring everything you need to make this a successful hour and a half and get started on your 50,000 words!

Next, on Saturday, November 10, 10:00am-4:00 pm in the Cottonwood Room, participate in a one-day workshop designed to help you navigate the next steps toward publication of your novel. Paths to Publication will have you joining seven Wyoming authors for a day of workshops filled with insights into the journey from “the end” to publication. These workshops are designed for teen and adult novelists at all levels.

Have some crazy fun on Thursday, November 15 from 6:00-7:30 pm in the Willow Room, where you’ll be designing your own book cover. Now’s your chance in this hands-on workshop to create your own cover for a blank book that could be used as a journal, sketchbook, recipe anthology, or even the first draft of your novel! We provide all the supplies needed – just bring your imagination.  Sign up required for this – call 307.634.3561, or visit the library.

The final event for NaNoWriMo will be the wrap-up party on Sunday, December 2, 3:00-4:00pm in the Willow Room. Prizes will be given to everyone who finishes their 50,000 words on time!

Laramie County Library is located at 2200 Pioneer Avenue, Cheyenne. For more information call the library at 307.634.3561.

Quills and parchment? Count me in...