Dear UF: No donations for you until Gov D is gone

Feb. 17. 2026

TO:             University of Florida Annual Giving Program

FROM:       Michael T. Shay

RE:             Gator Nation Stand Up and Holler Giving Day

I am a proud Florida Gator, class of ’76. I have donated to UF when the budget will allow. I’m retired now and the budget allows but I am not donating and there is one reason for that: Interference in UF by Gov. Ron DeSantis and the GOP-run Florida State Legislature.

It is alarming to see the search for a UF president go on and on as we await DeSantis’s choice to rule the state’s flagship university, my alma mater. These right-wing politicos take their order from the Trump wing of the GOP and it has led to disaster on the national and international scenes.

So today, on the eve of Giving Day, looking at Mr. 2-Bits’ tie pinned to the bulletin board above my PC, I decline to donate until DeSantis and his MAGA goons are gone. Instead, I donated $25 to the Independent Florida Alligator. Their reporters are on the case and I will continue to follow the Alligator with interest and with whatever support I can send their way.

I leave you with this:

Two-bits, four-bits, six-bits, a dollar

All for an independent UF stand up and holler!

The crowd cheers.

Editor's Note: Read the Alligator's latest story on the unending UF presidential search.

Personal reflections on the student loan forgiveness policy

I got some very good news last week. An email was tagged: “Your student loans have been forgiven.” First I thought it was fake and then I checked it out and yessiree, no more student loan payments. I have been paying off $20,000 in grad school loans since 1993. Successfully, at first, and then as our financial situation experienced some serious ups and downs, I worked with my student loan provider, one of the businesses that the government contracts to provide this service. I would get them down to a payment I could afford and then they would suddenly, as if some invisible switch was pulled, jack it up to a higher level I couldn’t pay. I then would request a forbearance for six months or a year and that would expire, the company added in all of the unpaid interest, and my payments would be higher than ever. Or I would sign on to a payment plan and suddenly my company shuffled me over to another and I had to start all over again. When my wife's coffee shop/art gallery business failed (she was ahead of her time) 20 years ago, we declared bankruptcy which I thought would include my student loans. I neglected to read the fine print.

I consolidated my loans in 2012 when they reached the $102,000 mark and worked out payments with Nelnet and the amount with accrued interest and fees reached $165,000. Interesting to note that the federal government paid off the student loan servicer and it, conceivably, was very happy to have the money and scratch me off their to-do list. Not such a great deal for the feds and my fellow taxpayers. But, as a taxpayer, I was also supporting the government to contract with this servicer which didn’t seem to give a damn about me and millions of others in debt for attending college. One of the worst servicers is FedLoan Servicing, an arm of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, a company co-owned by Betsy DeVos, Trump’s “secretary of education.” The PHEAA was, for a short while, my loan servicer. DeVos made millions while arguing forcefully against student loan forgiveness. She now is back under the rock she came out from under. A very fancy rock to be sure.

But, in good faith, I was paying off my debt. All I asked is that the servicer find me a level I can afford and I will pay it until its paid off or Doomsday arrives, whichever comes first. We all got a reprieve when Covid hit and payments were suspended. According to Mohela, a new loan servicer that picked up my account under President Biden’s watch, when my future payments resumed, I would be billed $1,963 a month. My Social Security deposit (I am 72 and retired) each month is $1,940, slightly above the average Social Security check of $1,701. My wife, who volunteered to go on this journey with me, gets $1,240 a month, below the national average because her working years were spent with childbearing and childcaring and household management, none of which enhanced her Social Security benefits. I am disabled and my wife in a Type 1 diabetic and breast cancer survivor. It’s ludicrous to think that a retiree should remit his Social Security check to the government which deposits it into his credit union account every month. But there you have it. Then again, we have GOPers who believe that Americans should not be allowed to retire at 65 or should never retire and, if they do, don’t deserve the funds that came from their paychecks for 40 years.

The Supreme Court aided by GOPers such as Wyoming's entire Congressional delegation and Governor Gordon, stymied Biden’s forgiveness plan so he found new and interesting ways to relieve the burden of millions, many of whom are senior citizens. Because I made a certain number of payments and loans older than 20-25 years were considered time enough to pay, I was forgiven. My loans were 30 years old. I also worked in public service so I was credited with monthly payments I made which go toward forgiveness. All of Biden’s positive ideas to solve this crippling debt were fought by Republicans because CRUELTY is their middle name. Also, they despite higher education, education of any kind – witness the New College fiasco and GOP-mandated public education requirements in Florida. GOPers, even Harvard-educated ones such as DeSantis, have used the loan forgiveness issue as another cudgel for the MAGA crowd to use against the so-called elites.

I send thanks to Pres. Joe Biden and his allies. 

Remember that the Loan Forgiveness Program could be reversed if the wrong people take control of governance in 2024. 

Boring old college lecturer responds to "The Chair"

Watched the last episode of "The Chair" this week. I laughed, I cried. Various faculty and administrators and students pissed me off.  All in all, a good investment of six Netflix hours. 

I have never served time on a college faculty and I've been an adjunct at community colleges. I was an undergrad English major at one community college and a land-grant university in the Palm Tree South and a grad student at a land-grant university in the Rocky Mountain West. I never got within spitting distance of a small liberal arts college such as Pembroke. 

But Pembroke's people seemed familiar. As a grad student T.A., I experienced some of the same frustrations of Pembroke faculty, those f*cking f*cks referenced in The Chair's (F*cker In Charge) desk sign. Some faculty members were old and stuck in their ways. The Literature, Composition and ESL faculty didn't like creative writing faculty and vice versa. The administration was always targeting the English Department for cuts due to the fact that we all speak English so why in the f*cking f*ck do we need an English Department? Shouldn't it be the  'Merican Department since we all speak 'Merican here? 

All an MFA grad student could do was teach our two sections of comp, keep our heads down and write a lot. We had regular classes to attend on top of writing workshops. And, in my case and some others, I had a family to support. 

One of my favorite aspects of "The Chair" are insights into faculty's families. Dr. Ji-Joon Kim has a daughter who is as argumentative as faculty ("You're not my real mom"). Dobson's wife died and his only daughter went off to college. No matter he gets stoned before and after class, and sometimes doesn't show up at all. Dr. Joan Hambling gave up her personal life and career advancement to prop of the fragile egos of male colleagues. She is working on a relationship with a college IT guy who is as much as a wise-ass as she is. Dr. Rentz (Bob Balaban) chats with his wife before a college event and we find out that she gave up her academic career to raise three kids. "Someone had to cook dinner," she says as she urges her aging husband to wear his Depends.

My daughter, an English major, is watching "The Chair" but I don't think she's finished. After a couple episodes she was angry at the students, which I thought was interesting since she is a student and a Millennial. I was angry at the students too but possibly for a different reason. They didn't want to learn Chaucer and Melville? I fondly recall my red-haired prof at UF who taught us Chaucer in Middle English. She spoke it like a native and there were times I imagined her as The Wyf of Bathe. 

The Pembroke students just didn't want to learn it the old-fashioned boring Boomer lecture way. They liked the way Moby Dick was taught by Dr. Yaz, a Millennial who approached it in a new way. By the end of the final episode, I was depressed about the state of academia. No surprise -- I was a boring old lecturer and probably still am. Back in my day, etc., etc., and so on. 

Part IV: The Way Mike Worked -- This job stinks!

"This job stinks," I complained to Ronnie.

He looked at me over a pile of dirty laundry. Smoke from a Marlboro wreathed his face. He removed the cigarette and exhaled a big cloud. "Do what I do."

I stared. I was dense. "What?"

He unrolled the pack of cigs from his T-shirt sleeve and popped one out. He walked over to me, stuck the cigarette in my mouth and lit it with his Zippo. "Inhale," he said.

I inhaled. I'd smoked a few cigarettes before, usually late at night at a beer bash when anything seemed like a good idea: smoking cigarettes, skinny dipping in a gator pond, driving on sidewalks. In the summer of '69, I was a latecomer to nicotine. My parents smoked, as did most of their friends. Some of my buddies smoked. But I was a jock in high school and coach commanded that we not smoke. I wanted to do what coach said. 

"Watch me," Ronnie said in his Tennessee drawl. He gripped the end of the rolling container with its mound of laundry. You could almost see the fumes coming from the sheets and towels accumulated in 24 hours at the nursing home. "Let the smoke drift up into your nose -- that knocks out the smell." He pushed his cart out the laundry room doors and down the corridor, smoke trailing behind him. I followed with my load. Smoke rose from my mouth to my nose to my eyes. Within seconds, my eyes watered. I kept close to Ronnie, lest I run over one of the dazed oldsters wandering the halls. I was getting it -- the smoke blocked the smell. It also burned my nose and eyes, but it was a small price to pay for not smelling the smells of incontinent old people. I was 18, Ronnie my elder at 25. We were usually not burdened with inconvenient odors unless we let loose with a fart as we drove to our appointed rounds for the Acme Laundry (not its real name) of Holly Hill, Florida. But that was different. We were not old.

When we finally wheeled our loads up a ramp into the step van, our smokes were burned down to nubs. We tossed the butts on the ground as we returned to the truck cab. My eyes still watered as we continued on our rounds. Ronnie was already on another smoke. "See how easy?" he said. 

I just nodded.

I became Ronnie's assistant one hot Florida July afternoon. I worked in the laundry, loading washers and dryers with towels and sheets from old folks homes, beachside motels, and other businesses. I had left my job as bagboy at the Pantry Pride grocery store because I needed to make more money for my upcoming college expenses. The laundry doubled my salary. The work was tougher and sweatier than hauling housewives' groceries out to their station wagons. I hated the laundry, doubted I could make it to the end of August. One day, after Ronnie delivered a load to us peasants chained to our machines, he came over and introduced himself. He was a big guy with Elvis-style hair and tattoos. He looked like something out of 1955 instead of 1969. I probably did too, with my Howdy Doody face and short haircut. 

"My helper just quit," he said. "Want the job?"

"When do I start?"

"Tomorrow at 6."

"Six in the morning?"

He laughed. "See you then."

What a reprieve! Riding with Ronnie started an hour earlier but I didn't care. We hit the mainland businesses first as the laundry only started piling up in the late morning at the beach motels as the housekeeping staff worked their way through the rooms. Sometimes Ronnie picked me up in his muscle car as I had sold my own car as it was a POS after three years of hard use. We knocked off at 3 just as the world really heated up or burst into an afternoon thunderstorm. 

Ronnie just got out of the Navy the year before. He served a stint on a ship off of Vietnam and had accumulated some tattoos and a dose of the clap in the Philippines. He got a kick out of the fact that I was off to be a Navy ROTC student, someone who one day might be an officer giving orders to the likes of swabs like him. For now, he was the one giving orders. "You ain't no officer yet," he'd say if he caught me loafing. "Yes sir," I'd say. His response: "I ain't no sir -- I work for a living. That's what my chief used to say."

I think about my 18-year-old self. I was excited and scared to be off to college. I was sad to leave my girlfriend behind -- she was attending a school 300 miles from me. I loved her and I said so and she loved me, or so she said. What did we know? Our family home burned down that summer but all 11 of us survived. We lived in a small place while waiting to rebuild. Problem was, all the clothes I'd collected for college burnt up in the fire or were impregnated with smoke. Early in the summer my surfboard had been stolen and, for the first time in four years, I felt left out of the beach scene. 

About a week before I quit the laundry, Ronnie took me to his trailer for lunch. He wanted me to meet somebody. We got out of the step van and walked to the door. A woman answered. Ronnie introduced us.. 

"Hello ma'am," I said. 

The woman wore long gray hair pulled back in a braid, a pleasant face etched with tiny lines around the mouth and eyes. "Don't call me ma'am -- I'm Shirley."

"OK, Shirley." 

Ronnie planted a kiss on her lips and I suddenly realized this was his wife. I'd called her ma'am because I thought she was his mother. I was surprised and a bit embarrassed for me and for Ronnie. Shirley served us tomato and mayo sandwiches and lemonade. She as nice and had a good sense of humor. She wasn't really that old, maybe in her late 30s or 40s. Old enough to be my mother but not Ronnie's. As we ate at the trailer's tiny table, she asked about me, what I liked to do, my plans for the fall. 

"You got a girl?" She smiled.

"Yes ma'am..."

"Shirley."

"Shirley, I have a girlfriend."

"She's pretty, too," Ronnie said as he chewed. "Drives a Firebird."

"It's her dad's," I said.

"Your girl going to the same college?"

"No. We plan to see each other for football games, and during school breaks.,"

"That's good, hon," she said. "Absence makes the heart grow fonder."  She explained that she and Ronnie met at a Daytona bar after she left Georgia after a bad divorce.They hit it off and married after a few weeks. "Newlyweds," she said.

Earlier I had caught a glimpse of an unmade bed at the far end of the trailer. I imagined the two of them in that bed. I didn't want to but I couldn't help it. The trailer began to close in around me and I was relieved when Ronnie said it was time to get back to work. We said our farewells and that was the last time I saw Shirley. 

As we returned to our route, Ronnie, as if divining my thoughts, said, "She makes me happy." 

I just nodded. He drove the rest of the way in silence.

On my last day at work, Ronnie and I sat in the step van in a motel lot watching the waves break. A half-dozen surfers bobbed in the line-up.

"Those good waves?" he asked.

"Pretty good."

"We could have brought your surfboard with us on some of our runs. You could have done some surfing."

I told him that my board had been stolen. 

He nodded. Handed me his Zippo. On its side was a U.S. Navy emblem. "Going-away present."

"Thanks," I said. "I may try to give up smoking."

"No matter. You can light some of your marijuana cigarettes with it."

I laughed. "They're called joints, Ronnie."

"No matter. All you kids smoke it. My shipmates did. A lot of the guys in Vietnam. I tried it a few times. Just made me tired. I'll stick with beer and whiskey."

I thanked him again.That afternoon, I said my farewells to Ronnie and the laundry. My girlfriend picked me up. A week ;later, we said our own forlorn farewells during a last walk on the beach. 

Somewhere along the line, I lost the lighter and I lost my way. Shall I pin the blame on marijuana cigarettes? It's more complicated than that. 

Blogger's Note: I changed the names of the characters in this piece and the name of the laundry. I had to reconstruct the dialogue because it was 49 years ago and I wasn't taking notes. Most of the rest of the story is true. 

Another blogger's note: The Laramie County Public Library kicks off the fall season with the Smithsonian exhibit, "The Way We Worked." Sponsored 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. I viewed the exhibit-in-progress yesterday. Great display of tools used to mine, log, and build railroads and dwellings in the West. I finally understood the difference between a dugout and a sod house or "soddie." One thing I know -- I would have gone stark-raving mad living in either one. 

Drama nerds and debaters seize the day after Florida school shooting

It seems that arts education can be a wonderful asset in standing up to bullies.

That was on display last week at the CNN town hall meeting on gun violence. Young people from Margory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., schooled Sen. Marco Rubio and an NRA flack on just about everything. No surprise that the students had honed their skills by participating in the school's drama club and speech and debate programs.

Memorizing lines and defending your views in front of a crowd can give you the confidence to take on a U.S. senator and the NRA. I encourage these students to continue the fight. Their #NeverAgain movement is sponsoring March for Our Lives march on Washington on March 24. Allied marches will be help around the world. Some are being planned for Wyoming. I will keep you posted on these pages. Several high-rolling liberals have donated to the cause. The rest of us can donate by going to https://www.gofundme.com/8psm8-march-for-our-lives . As of noon Sunday, the campaign has raised $2.5 million of the $2.8 million goal.

Further reading on the topic:

Emily Witt wrote this Feb. 19 New Yorker piece on how three drama club nerds sparked the #NeverAgain movement: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-the-survivors-of-parkland-began-the-never-again-movement

New Yorker article on Feb. 23 about high school protester Cameron Kasky and his "Spring Awakening" at https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-spring-awakening-of-the-stoneman-douglas-theatre-kids

The high school's drama club wrote and performed an original song for the CNN-sponsored town hall session Feb. 21. Get more here: http://womenyoushouldknow.net/marjory-stoneman-douglas-powerful-shine-song/

Here are some of the song's lyrics:

But you're not gonna knock us down
We'll get back up again

What I learned in graduate school, part one

It seems as if I've read hundreds of critiques about M.F.A. writing programs over the years. They usually fall into two camps.
No. 1: I spent three years and tens of thousands of dollars on an M.F.A. program and all I got was this lousy diploma.
No. 2: Grad school was worth it -- I learned more than I thought I would.

Alas, I've read more of the former than the latter. They usually are written by young people who have joined the system without much life experience which, of course, is what it means to be young. Does this 65-year-old retiree remember how it was to be 19 or 21 and flummoxed by a university system -- any university system? I was an overachiever, a scholarship student, who crashed and burned after two years at a major American university. The fault was my own, although I spent many years blaming the university and the government and my parents and the phases of the moon. I am an ex-newspaper reporter and satirist who loves it when people take on any system. Doesn't mean the writer is correct in his/her critique. It's fun to be pissed off in print and get attention. 

I'm going to say some nice things about my M.F.A. program. Stop here if you prefer to read the negative over the positive. You may learn something but no guarantee, just as there is no guarantee that an M.F.A. program will make you a stellar writer and a denizen of the Literary World. 

Before I begin, let me thank writer Marian Palaia who wrote a recent essay, "The Real World vs. the M.F.A." for Literary Hub at http://lithub.com/the-real-world-vs-the-mfa/. If fact, you can skip this blog and go read Palaia's piece, as it covers most of the same ground that I do. She's close to my age (pushing 60) and earned her M.F.A. as an older student, older even than I was at 41. Such a wonderful essay that I'm ordering her novel and reading it. The least I can do for a fellow writer.

I liked these lines from her essay:

I do not advise waiting as long as I did to get an MFA, if you are sure that what you want to do is to write. What I do advise is gaining some awareness of the world, and of the people in it who are not like you, before you go into a program.

At 37, I had met a lot of people not like me. Gang-bangers, corporate CEOs, jocks, cabbies, political activists, druggies, yuppies, loonies, etc. I had held tons of jobs, some temporary gigs as hospital orderly and warehouse worker, to full-time jobs as corporate editor and newspaper reporter. When I began to look around for creative writing programs, I had one goal in mind: become a better writer. I had written articles on teen-age swimming phenoms to automotive fan belts. I'd written a novel, which earned me an agent but not a publisher.  My agent advised me to quit my job, go down to my basement and write full-time. I knew that hunkering down in my basement with my typewriter was a bad idea. I could see myself typing, the clatter of the keys clanging off of the basement walls. But I could also see myself wandering the basement rooms, haunted look on my face. Not good for an introvert depressive to be alone all day in his basement. Visions of Emily Dickinson, tormented in her attic. Ernest Hemingway and shotgun at his writing desk in remote Idaho.

I also wanted to meet interesting people. I guess you can do that anywhere. But writers, even in academia, should be interesting, right?

Thee first interesting person I met was writer and faculty member John Clark Pratt. My wife, son and I were in Fort Collins looking for a rental. I decided to drop into the CSU English Department. Dr. Pratt (I could call him John but he'll always be Dr. Pratt to me) was the lone M.F.A. faculty member hanging out in the Eddy Building on a July afternoon. He welcomed me, told me a bit about the program, which only began the year before. Only later did I learn that Dr. Pratt was the author of "The Laotian Fragments," a pilot in Vietnam, and one of the country's experts on the literature of the Vietnam War. He helped establish the CSU library's special collection on Vietnam. In the late 1980s, it featured unpublished manuscripts by veterans, published works by some well-known writers and an assortment of notes and research and ephemera. You can visit it still. Might even be online now.

When school began in late August, I met the rest of the faculty and my fellow students. For the most part, the faculty was closer in age to me than the students, but I had expected that. John Calderazzo was the creative non-fiction guru, A world traveler, he wrote mostly on environmental issues and wrote an excellent book on volcanoes. He'd been a free-lance writer for years, writing articles for corporate, real estate and automotive mags to make extra cash. We free-lanced a real estate piece together, since I also was on the lookout for extra cash.

David Milofsky was a novelist and short-story writer. He'd just left a position with Denver University to take the job at CSU, and commuted from Denver. Milofsky had been an investigative reporter in Milwaukee and still had that hard-bitten city reporter attitude. He was my adviser as I liked his fiction and he liked the fact that I was a bit older than the other students and not so naive and wide-eyed. Poet Bill Tremblay was from Jack Keroauc's hometown and played football before turning to poetry. He was more coach than academic. Mentor to many poets and the faculty member that you knew would turn up for every student reading. I worked for him as student editor of the campus literary magazine, the Colorado Review.

Mary Crow was the other poetry prof. She may have been the most academic of the bunch. She traveled widely, was bilingual and made sure that students got a taste of writers from all over the world through the visiting writers program. Receptions were always held at her house, potlucks where us budding writers got a chance to gnosh and chat with writers such as Paul Monette, Linda Hogan, Tomaz Salamun, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Mary talked me into being the M.F.A. student rep to the university's Fine Arts Program, which led to my career in arts administration -- more about that later. Leslee Becker was a fine short story writer and quirky human. She mentored us short story writers and also LGBT students in the English department.

One of my four semester-long workshops was with short story writer Steve Schwartz. I learned a lot in the workshop, but possibly the best info I got from Steve was about the Colorado Council on the Arts' Arts Education program. I applied, was accepted, and next thing I know, I'm signed up to spent a month in Peetz on the prairie as a paid visiting writer. The goal was to mentor high school students for half the day and write the other half. I never made it to Peetz as a writer/teacher, The students never knew what they missed, and neither did I. My job in Wyoming would place me in charge of a visiting writers program called Tumblewords, brainchild of the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF), then located in Santa Fe, now in Denver.

Most of these writers who also were teachers are now retired, as I am. A new crew took over, which is the way of things. I learned so much from them, and I was able to work with them in new and interesting ways when I found my calling.

In my next installment, I'll talk about all the good stuff I learned during my three years in the M.F.A. program. Stay tuned...

Americanism trumps Conservatism this week in JeffCo schools

Kudos to those Jefferson County, Colorado, students who staged a walkout this week to protest to new conservative school board's attempt to to ram their "America is Perfect!" history curriculum down student throats. They are perhaps a bit more wise that we were, back in the 1950s and 1960s, when we blithely attended our "Americanism vs. Communism" classes. BTW, Americanism, whatever that is, won.

One thing I will tell those students: history education only begins when we get out of school. Experience will teach you that Americanism has many faces, some of them glorious and some quite ugly. I'm hoping that you will read widely, watch a lot of offbeat indie films, learn another language, travel all over, and talk to everyone you meet. People will tell you the darndest things, if only you lift your head from the iPhone and really listen. Family elders are a great source of information and bullshit. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. My suggestion is to check your elders' facts. If they tell you, as Bluto Blutarsky did so famously in "Animal House," that the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, check it out. After all, fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.

I'm impressed with the student activism I've seen out of this generation. Elders are supposed to spend an inordinate amount of time criticizing the younger generations. I suppose I've done some of that. But those 20-somethings and 30-somethings that I've met in the arts world and progressive politics, well, they are amazing. Young artists, impatient with the entrenched art establishment, have gone to crowd-funding and other resources to meet their goals. The Wyoming Democrats employed a young undocumented UW graduate as its PR person until recently, when he decamped to Austin to help the Texas Democrats hone their social media outreach. When the Occupy Movement was in full flower, I met young people from throughout Wyoming who were fed up with the status quo and willing to take to the streets to do something about it. Just as those JeffCo students did this week.

Now here comes the advice -- you knew that was inevitable, right? Activism is not a short-term strategy. You have to be in it for the long haul. You will be disappointed. You will fail. At times, you will succeed. When you get to be 60-something, you can look back with satisfaction and say that you fought the good fight.

And that you are fighting it still.

Dear Students: It ain't easy to feed this fiction-writing habit, but you gotta do it

What secrets will I be sharing with student writers at Western Wyoming College on Feb. 7?

It's a secret. Don't want to ruin the suspense. What kind of fiction writer would do that?

I will begin by telling them a bit about myself. I was born a poor white child in suburbia. My father built homes for rocket ships. My mother was the Florence Nightingale of Denver. I spent my youth reading and taking care of my many siblings. Along the way I started to write and haven't stopped since.

Words of wisdom: The Nike ad said it best -- "Just do it!" If I had a nickel for everyone who told me, "I want to write a book," I would be as rich as Warren Buffet. If I had a nickel for everyone of those people who actually finished a book, I would have enough to buy a cup of coffee -- at Starbucks. If I had a nickel for everyone who finished a book and got it published, I would have enough for a cup of coffee -- at the Loaf 'n' Jug.

Last year, I read a quote by Florida Governor Rick Scott who said that Liberal Arts degrees were a waste of time. He may be right. If you measure an English degree on production values, it isn't very practical. Will it help it get you a job? Possibly. Let me make a list of the jobs I've had since graduating with an English degree from the University of Florida:

Correspondent for a construction industry trade journal
Book store clerk
Book warehouse order filler
Sports reporter
Telephone salesman
Junior high paper grader
Weekly newspaper managing editor
Weekly newspaper columnist
Business newspaper editor
Teaching assistant
Partner in an advertising/marketing firm
Free-lance writer
Free-lance editor
Newsletter editor
Literary magazine editor
Anthology editor
Corporate publications editorhttp://hummingbirdminds.blogspot.com/
Fiction writer
Essayist
Photographer
Free-lance writing teacher
Adjunct professor
Arts administrator
Event planner
Grants panelist
Grants writer
Arts magazine editor
Public Information Officer

Some of these jobs overlapped, especially the free-lance ones. Almost all of them had something to do with writing and editing. All of them fed my fiction writing habit.

Author and National Geographic Magazine roving correspondent Mark Jenkins of Laramie (who spoke at WWC last year) once told me that he majored in philosophy at UW and then retreated to the mountains for a year to think big thoughts. Eventually he had to come down from the mountain and decide how to make a living. And he did. He became an international adventurer and wrote about it. Wrote very well about it. He's won all of the fellowships you can win from the Wyoming Arts Council. We don't have any fellowships for philosophers. But we do for those people who want to spend the 10,000 hours it takes to become a good writer or artist or musician. And that's just for starters.

I can't wait to address those emerging writers coming to my workshop at WWC in Rock Springs on Feb. 7. By the end of my workshop, they will either be scared to death, ready to find a practical major such as agronomy or nursing, or they will be fired up and ready to go write and write and write some more.

I'm guessing it will be the latter.

Wyoming Democratic Party looking for interns

College students can get four credit hours and a semester's worth of learning progressive politics from the inside by applying to be an intern with the Wyoming Democratic Party. The Dems are looking for people interested in the following areas: research, communications, new/digital media, voter contact, constituency outreach, resource development, polling, campaign management. More fun that taking another dry political science course. You also will meet battle-hardened veterans of the Wyoming political wars. We promise not to bore you with stories of how we did it back in ought-eight. Go to http://www.wyodems.org/internship

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.

Who's your favorite music teacher?

My two children had excellent music teachers in the Cheyenne schools. My daughter Annie was so smitten with music that she's now a vocal music major at Laramie County Community College. Justin Timberlake joined Grammy Foundation member Ryan Seacrest and of President/CEO Neil Portnow in announcing a new award for music teachers sponsored by the foundation. Earlier in the night. Here's the info:

GRAMMY Music Educator Award: In recognition of the significant role of teachers in shaping their students' musical experiences, the GRAMMY Foundation and The Recording Academy are partnering to present the first Music Educator Award. Open to current U.S. music teachers in grade kindergarten through college, the Music Educator Award will be given out during GRAMMY Week 2014. The nomination process opened Feb. 10 at www.grammymusicteacher.com. The deadline for submissions is April 15. See the awards announcement from last night's Grammies at http://www.grammy.com/news/neil-portnows-55th-grammy-awards-telecast-remarks. 

Teachers are the real job creators

Democrats will have no problem with this one...

LCCC music ensembles in concert Dec. 1

The Laramie County Community College music ensembles will perform a "Holiday Gala" on Saturday, Dec. 1, 7:30-8:30 p.m., at the Cheyenne Civic Center, 510 West 20th St., Cheyenne.

Says a press release: The LCCC music ensembles will perform favorite tunes to help put you in the holiday mood. Admission is free, and donations will be accepted for the COMEA House.

COMEA House is the local homeless shelter, always in need of donations during the holidays or any time of year.

This proud papa will be there to see and hear my daughter's first solo.

Vote for these good people for the LCSD No. 1 Board of Trustees

The Wyoming Public Employees Association (WPEA), the union that represents Wyoming's public servants, has endorsed a slate of candidates in Laramie County. In my previous post, I forgot the mention the endorsements for the Laramie County School District No. 1 Board of Trustees. They are:

Nate Breen
Mark Klaasen
Tim Lockwood

There is another great candidate in the running. That is Lynn A. Storey-Huylar. Not sure why she didn't get the endorsement. It's possible she didn't come into the WPEA for an interview. Anyway, all of these people are worthy of the post. They decide school district policy and make sure that we have the best teachers and administrators. They believe in public education. Pick the best three.

There are a few knuckle-draggers among the other candidates. Avoid them.

This Liberal Arts grad in Wyoming urges Florida creatives to come to a place where they are valued

Florida's Gov. Rick Scott and his hand-picked education commission want to charge creatives more college tuition than science and math majors. Students in creative fields at the big Florida universities, such as UF (my alma mater) and FSU (the enemy campus in Tallahassee), will pay more than students pursuing high-demand fields, such as ag and engineering and medicine. Read all about in the Huffington Post.

I have only one response: Go West, young creatives. In the Big Square States, we value your contributions. Thus far, Colorado and Wyoming and New Mexico and Utah are not talking about charging higher tuition for budding painters than they are for budding lawyers. Sure, tuition is rising, but the Colorado governor (himself a creative sort and an arts supporter) and legislature have said nothing about charging a higher rate for a poet than for a pediatrician. This is a good thing, as I would like to see more writers and musicians attending Colorado State University in Fort Collins than fewer. Sure, I want the pre-med people too, and the computer tech and agronomy majors. We need creativity in all economic sectors. But to charge more? Absurd.

I earned my master of fine arts degree in creative writing from CSU in 1992. I parlayed that into a career in arts administration. Along the way, I've published my own work and continue to do so.

I'm also talking about the University of Wyoming in Laramie. For the first time, according to the UW President's special assistant Mike Massie. campus enrollment has crept above 14,000. 14,000? That's the number of business majors at UF. And, a few years ago, UW embarked on an amazing building boom. Know what the coolest new buildings are on campus? Visual arts and the expanded library. Anthropology, too, and business. The performing arts building will soon get a multimillion dollar overhaul. And so will one of the oldest buildings on campus, the one that houses the English Department and humanities. The English Department! That includes the fine creative writing program, too, a place that boasts fine writers such as Alyson Hagy and Brad Watson and Jeff Lockwood, who's a bug scientist (entomologist,, for those non-English majors) and a fine writer. There's also a slate of visiting writers that will knock your socks off: Salman Rushdie, Francine Prose, John D'Agata, Rebecca Solnit, Don DeLillo, etc. 

Come West, young creatives. We won't stigmatize you or your passions. It will still remain difficult to find jobs, English majors. No guarantees! You still will have student loans to repay and you still must eat (unofficial Wyoming state motto: "You can't eat the scenery"). But a blue ribbon state commission will not tell you that your dreams are worth less than others.

A word about campus censorship. And this is especially important for visual artists. You may have heard about the removal of Chris Drury's environmental sculpture, "Carbon Sink." It truly was a cowardly act, removing a sculpture just because it offended the state's coal industry. We are a conservative state with some heinous attitudes. We have our own birthers and fundies and "Don't Tread on Me" loonies. But what the heck -- you now live in Florida with the likes of Rick Scott and Marco Rubio. The Florida Panhandle is about as redneck as it gets. And you don't have to read Carl Hiaasen's Miami Herald columns or his funky novels to understand the lamebrain nature of the Florida legislature. If you're going to be embroiled in an arts controversy, you may as well come West where the air is clean and you can escape to nearby mountains for solitude and inspiration.

The Front Range is also known (by some) as the Silicon Valley of Craft Breweries. While I shy away from encouraging indulgence in spiritous substances, I also know that  where there are microbrews, there are artrepreneurs and mountain bike shops and nifty bistros and high-tech start-ups. Scientists have yet to prove the axiom: "Which comes first, the microbew or the creative economy." I do know that they go together. When it comes to overindulgence, it's a fact that the craft beer community polices its own. So, if you want to get drunk and cut the fool, you can go back to Florida, get your Parrothead on and drink Jimmy Buffett's crappy beer. Sorry, Jimmy, I love your music but dislike your books and beer. Can't do everything well, even if you do have a mighty platform to operate from.

In my next post, I'm going to share helpful links that can illustrate to you creatives what "Out West" has to offer.

BTW: Go Gators! Beat the Dawgs!

Let us now praise famous songs, and those creative types who begat them

Chris and I attended the "American Tapestry" concert this afternoon at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Cheyenne. Our daughter was singing, as she's in the Laramie County Community College Collegiate and Cantorei choirs. She does both well. You're probably not surprised to hear a proud father say that.

Several of the selections were taken from the page -- poetry, to be specific. First came three selections from A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad. My accountant father gave me a copy of that book when I was still in high school. He thought it might be an encouragement to my budding poetic soul. It wasn't (I was more attuned to Jim Morrison back then), but it was still a nice gesture. Housman is still not my favorite, but his verse sounds great when set to music and sung by collegiate voices.

Robert Burns made an appearance as the Men's Ensemble sang "My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose." The men, all dressed in black suits, held a rose as they gathered around the piano and intoned Burns. Very nice.

The recessional song was "The Promise of the Living" from the opera The Tender Land. Music was composed by Aaron Copland with libretto by Horace Everett, a pseudonym for dancer and choreographer Erik Johns. Copland was inspired to write the opera after viewing the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, with text by James Agee and photos by Walker Evans. The book arose from a 1936 magazine assignment Agee and Evans accepted in 1936. The goal was to document the lives of white sharecroppers in the South. The magazine article didn't pan out, but the book did, and is now one of those volumes studied for its trail-blazing blend of straight reportage, creative nonfiction, poetry and photos.  Another one of those interesting works of art to emerge from the Great Depression.

Fine concert today, and I'm looking forward to the next one. Thanks to talented  singers, and the wonderful teachers who trained them.

Pat Conroy's response to the "censors, book-banners and teacher-haters" of Charleston, W.V.

Author Pat Conroy has witnessed his books being challenged and banned 

all over the country. Read a letter he wrote to the editor of the 

Charleston Gazette in response to one such incident in 2007, shared in

honor of Banned Books Week (from the Open Road Media blog):

October 24, 2007
 
I received an urgent e-mail from a high school student named Makenzie
Hatfield of Charleston, West Virginia. She informed me of a group of
parents who were attempting to suppress the teaching of two of my
novels, The Prince of Tides and Beach Music. I heard rumors of this
controversy as I was completing my latest filthy, vomit-inducing work.
These controversies are so commonplace in my life that I no longer get
involved. But my knowledge of mountain lore is strong enough to know
the dangers of refusing to help a Hatfield of West Virginia. I also do
not mess with McCoys.
 
I've enjoyed a lifetime love affair with English teachers, just like
the ones who are being abused in Charleston, West Virginia, today. My
English teachers pushed me to be smart and inquisitive, and they
taught me the great books of the world with passion and cunning and
love. Like your English teachers, they didn't have any money either,
but they lived in the bright fires of their imaginations, and they
taught because they were born to teach the prettiest language in the
world. I have yet to meet an English teacher who assigned a book to
damage a kid. They take an unutterable joy in opening up the known
world to their students, but they are dishonored and unpraised because
of the scandalous paychecks they receive. In my travels around this
country, I have discovered that America hates its teachers, and I
could not tell you why. Charleston, West Virginia, is showing clear
signs of really hurting theirs, and I would be cautious about the word
getting out.
 
In 1961, I entered the classroom of the great Eugene Norris, who set
about in a thousand ways to change my life. It was the year I read The
This letter first appeared on the Open Road Media blog during Banned
Books Week 2011.Catcher in the Rye, under Gene's careful tutelage, and

I adore that book to this very day. Later, a parent complained to the

school board, and Gene Norris was called before the board to defend his

teaching of this book. He asked me to write an essay describing the book's
galvanic effect on me, which I did. But Gene's defense of The Catcher
in the Rye was so brilliant and convincing in its sheer power that it
carried the day. I stayed close to Gene Norris till the day he died. I
delivered a eulogy at his memorial service and was one of the
executors of his will. Few in the world have ever loved English
teachers as I have, and I loathe it when they are bullied by
know-nothing parents or cowardly school boards.
 
About the novels your county just censored: The Prince of Tides and
Beach Music are two of my darlings which I would place before the
altar of God and say, "Lord, this is how I found the world you made."
They contain scenes of violence, but I was the son of a Marine Corps
fighter pilot who killed hundreds of men in Korea, beat my mother and
his seven kids whenever he felt like it, and fought in three wars. My
youngest brother, Tom, committed suicide by jumping off a
fourteen-story building; my French teacher ended her life with a
pistol; my aunt was brutally raped in Atlanta; eight of my classmates
at The Citadel were killed in Vietnam; and my best friend was killed
in a car wreck in Mississippi last summer. Violence has always been a
part of my world. I write about it in my books and make no apology to
anyone. In Beach Music, I wrote about the Holocaust and lack the
literary powers to make that historical event anything other than
grotesque. People cuss in my books.
 
People cuss in my real life. I cuss, especially at Citadel basketball
games. I'm perfectly sure that Steve Shamblin and other teachers
prepared their students well for any encounters with violence or
profanity in my books just as Gene Norris prepared me for the profane
language in The Catcher in the Rye forty-eight years ago.
 
The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave
anything out. I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the
genius of English teachers touched me with the dazzling beauty ofprogre
language. Because of them I rode with Don Quixote and danced with Anna
Karenina at a ball in St. Petersburg and lassoed a steer in Lonesome
Dove and had nightmares about slavery in Beloved and walked the
streets of Dublin in Ulysses and made up a hundred stories in The
Arabian Nights and saw my mother killed by a baseball in A Prayer for
Owen Meany. I've been in ten thousand cities and have introduced
myself to a hundred thousand strangers in my exuberant reading career,
all because I listened to my fabulous English teachers and soaked up
every single thing those magnificent men and women had to give. I
cherish and praise them and thank them for finding me when I was a boy
and presenting me with the precious gift of the English language.
 
The school board of Charleston, West Virginia, has sullied that gift
and shamed themselves and their community. You've now entered the
ranks of censors, book-banners, and teacher-haters, and the word will
spread. Good teachers will avoid you as though you had cholera. But
here is my favorite thing: Because you banned my books, every kid in
that county will read them, every single one of them. Because
bookbanners are invariably idiots, they don't know how the world
works— but writers and English teachers do.
 
I salute the English teachers of Charleston, West Virginia, and send
my affection to their students. West Virginians, you've just done what
history warned you against—you've riled a Hatfield.
 
Sincerely,
 
Pat Conroy
 
This letter first appeared on the Open Road Media blog during Banned
Books Week 2011.

Amidst the convention hoopla, Republicans take time to praise arts education

Sometimes you have to depend on a city's alternative press to get the story behind the story. From Creative Loafing Tampa Bay's RNC web site:

Officials from varying levels of government talked on the importance of arts and arts education in a panel discussion moderated by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee at the Tampa Theatre Tuesday afternoon.

“Arts education is fundamental , not ornamental,” said Art Keeble, executive director of the Arts Council of Hillsborough County. He said those who will prosper and succeed in a new economy will be those who “think like artists.” He predicts MFA's will soon be as sought after as MBA’s.

In conjunction with the Arts Council and Tampa Theatre, the discussion was hosted by the non-profit Action Fund of Americans for the Arts, an organization which supports arts education within communities and schools. Americans for the Arts has about 200,000 members throughout the country. According to the Action Fund's website, students with an arts-rich education have higher GPA’s, better scores on standardized tests, and lower drop-out rates.

Utah Governor Gary Herbert said that the benefits of arts education extend beyond the classroom. He said supporting the arts has economic benefits, too, since creative people are keen problem-solvers and able to develop better solutions to market needs.

He added that arts education requires a two-pronged approach, combining reinforcement in the home and a comprehensive curriculum for arts appreciation in schools.

 “Frankly, I’m one who believes that a good balanced approach to education includes an appreciation of art and opportunities to be taught,” said Herbert.

MFA's as sought after as MBA's? Possibly. But MFA education will have to change to incorporate aspects of the MBA curriculum, don't you think? Artists are becoming (or expected to become) artrepreneurs, but have very little training in the entrepreneurial arts. That needs to change. And it's possible the MBA candidate would benefit from some visual arts, performing arts or creative writing courses.

Read the entire article at Creative Loafing Tampa Bay : Former Governor Huckabee moderates art education forum at Tampa Theatre

New Cheyenne performing arts group holds informational meetings Aug. 26 & 27

Jeff Tish is a freelance theatre scenic designer from Cheyenne. He sends this news about a new non-profit organization dedicated to the performing arts:

Next Step Performance Company, a newly formed non-profit organization, will be hosting two informational meetings and Q & A at the Laramie County Library August 26th (Willow Room) @ 2:00 PM and August 27th (Cottonwood Room) 7:30 PM. The public is encouraged to attend. We will discuss the plans for our first season as well as answer questions about public involvement, funding, performance opportunities and our plans for a Performing Arts Scholarship that will be funded by Next Step events.
• No need to RSVP.
• Seating is limited.
• Open to the Public

The NEXT STEP PERFORMANCE COMPANY will be a producing company that will support local and regional programs in Dance, Music and Theatre related performances. At the heart of the NEXT STEP PERFORMANCE COMPANY is our performing arts scholarship program. We will be raising money to give to performance arts students attending college and performing arts schools. We hope you will be as excited in this project as we are.

Please feel free to pass this information to anyone you think may be interested in this. If you have any questions please email me @ jtish52@gmail.com or call me at 307-630-7778.

Early intervention and prevention crucial for children's mental health

Here are some points to ponder about children’s mental health. As a parent of children with mental health challenges, and as an adult who's dealt with recurring bouts of depression, I ponder these things often and not only during the upcoming week devoted to education and awareness. Governor Matt Mead will sign a proclamation on Wednesday, May 9, 10 a.m., designating May 6-12 as Mental Health Awareness Week. The following stats come from the Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health. 

• One in five young people have one or more mental, emotional, or behavioral challenges.  One in ten youth have challenges that are severe enough to impair how they function at home, school, or in the community.
• One-half of all lifetime cases of psychological challenges begin by age 14, and three-quarters begin by age 24.  In addition, 80% of people who experience multiple issues with mental health and substance abuse report onset before the age of 20.
• Suicide is the third leading cause of death in adolescents and young adults. Children experiencing symptoms of psychological challenges, particularly depression, are at a higher risk for suicide.  An estimated 90% of children who commit suicide have a diagnosable mental illness.
• Despite high rates of mental illness in children, 4 out of 5 children ages 6 to 17 who have experience symptoms do not receive any help.  The majority of those who do not receive needed mental health services are minority children.  For example, 88% of Latino children have unmet mental health needs.  In addition, Latino children are less likely than others to be identified by a primary care physician as having a mental disorder.
• Unmet mental health needs may complicate daily activities and education for youth.  Almost 25% of adolescents who required mental health assistance reported having problems at school.  Over 50% of students who experience psychological challenges, ages 14 and older, drop out of high school—the highest dropout rate of any disability group.
• Early detection and intervention strategies for mental health issues improve children’s resilience and ability to succeed in life.  According to a study by the National Institute of Mental Health, preschoolers at high risk for mental health problems showed less oppositional behavior, less aggressive behavior, and were less likely to require special education services 3 years after enrolling in a comprehensive, school-based mental health program.

What can you do?

Create awareness surrounding positive mental health practices and supports.  Work to reduce stigma!

Contact your local, state and federal legislators to request funding for early intervention and prevention programs. 

Encourage culturally and linguistically competent supports and services.

UPLIFT has a terrific list of resources for Wyoming families at http://www.upliftwy.org/resources.html. I am on the UPLIFT board and admit to a certain bias. But it is a terrific list.