Hunkered down, somewhere in Wyoming, part 5

I've started two blogs with Coronavirus stats. By the time I finish, the figures are outdated. Just shows how fast this thing is moving.

I've been hunkered down for two weeks or so. I'm retired so time stretches and contracts anyway. Insert a stay-at-home order (in WYO, it's more of a suggestion) and who really knows what day it is?

My most recent abandoned blog began by wondering how many Coronavirus cases there really are. I've been checking stats from a variety of reliable sources but nobody really knows exact figures. Due to equipment shortages, testing is sporadic or nonexistent. Some states, New` York for example, are testing thousands every day but still require a physician's order. Cuomo, not really a guy who likes Trump, had nice things to say about him and Pence in one of his impressive early press conferences. The D.C. duo had answered New York's call for more test kits. Maybe it was Cuomo's desperation. Maybe Trump still has feelings for his home state. Maybe it was good PR for a bungling administration. It happened, The state leads the nation in all categories. Cuomo said the other day that 21,000 medical workers from out-of-state have responded to pleas for help. New York City is the epicenter. Reminds me of the response to 9/11 when Americans answered the call to the World Trade Center attack. We can respond in an emergency. We're just not that good at taking care of each other on a daily basis.

On the other end of the scale is Wyoming. We have the same brand of Coronavirus -- COVID-19 -- but our numbers are much lower because our numbers are always much lower. Our population is sparse (580,000) as is COVID-19 testing. As of this morning, WYO has 162 active cases after some 2,000 tests by the state lab. No deaths, thank goodness. Our hot zones are Laramie, Teton and Fremont counties. My county of Laramie leads the list with 37. We're the capital city with the largest population so that makes sense. Fremont includes Lander, Riverton and the reservation. Teton is gateway to the national parks, which are closed along with ski areas, so it gets many travelers from all over. Colorado also closed ski areas when Eagle County became a hot zone with as many cases as Colorado Springs.

But how many are there really? I read in the Gillette News-Record that there are 131 possible COVID-19 cases in the county who have been asked to shelter at home. The Fremont County Incident Management Team has directed 608 people to self-isolate. Most of these people show symptoms but can't be tested because there are no test kits. That makes it even more important to stay home.

Colorado, our neighbor with the largest population, reported 3,728 cases as of yesterday. Those stats come from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. On Thursday, neighboring Weld County listed 329 cases, twice as many as Wyoming's state total. It's a bit daunting to see a map of the COVID-19 hot spots in Colorado and see two of them (Weld and Larimer counties) clustered at the Wyoming border. There is an incredible amount of travel between Cheyenne and Laramie, Wyo., and Fort Collins and Greeley, Colo.

Colorado has tested eight times as many people as Wyoming. No surprise there, as Colorado has about eight times the population of Wyoming, most of whom are on I-25 the same time as I am.

Numbers are important. But what we'll remember are the stories spawned by Coronavirus. I will remember that my family declared its own quarantine when things started getting bad about two weeks ago. I'm a cardiac patient, Chris has diabetes and our daughter Annie had elective surgery the day before the hospital cancelled all non-essential operations. We have ventured forth a few times to get take-out or just to take a drive to nowhere.

On the afternoon of March 31, as I was applying 2021 stickers to my license plates, I saw my neighbor Mike in his yard and asked if he had any toilet paper. He was on his way out to buy some and said he'd see if any was available. An hour later, he came to the door with two four-packs he had found at Dollar Tree. He left them on the porch. My wife wiped down the shopping bags and the two TP packages.

The next thing we will lack are cleaning wipes. We started the lockdown with five rolls of those and we're down to one. I tried to order some yesterday with my groceries. Not available, the King Soopers site said. I ordered groceries to be delivered by Instacart, the contractor that selects and delivers from KS. Instacart employees on the East Coast went on strike for more pay and better working conditions. I hope they get it, and hope they seriously consider unionizing after seeing how little the bosses care about their safety. Ditto for amazon.com employees who run ragged trying to fill our orders for TP and sanitary wipes and Fitbits.

Most talk show personalities are broadcasting from home. You see family members meandering by in the background. TV personality and philanthropist Bethany Frankel was being interviewed on Good Morning America when her dog entered the scene and licked her face. Andrew Lloyd Webber is taking requests to perform songs he plays from home on his piano. YouTube is filled with homebound people singing or playing an instrument. We are watching a lot of YouTube videos. Chris was overjoyed to discover vids of Jane Fonda workouts, the same ones she did in our living room when they kids were little. Sitting at my desk in the office, and the Fonda soundtrack came on, I flashed back to the eighties.

I am impressed by the major and minor contributions to the cause. Since today is payday, the family is donating to several good local causes. Cheyenne crafters have been making masks for doctors and nurses. Police officers deliver groceries to shut-ins. Students at Newcastle High School are making masks for the volunteer fire department. Cheyenne Botanic Gardens staffers deliver soup to their elderly volunteers. New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft flew his own plane to China to fetch equipment for medical personnel. This blog has no love for the Patriots but it was a great gesture.

It's odd to be at home watching the world go by. It's in pretty sad shape but we find ways to be human. And there are ways to contribute, both in money and time. I will list some of those resources in my next blog.

Part X: The Way Mike Worked -- The Passing Parade

I can't remember The Retiree's name. He had worked in my division, Information Services, at Denver's Gates Rubber Company, before I arrived on the scene in 1983. He came by occasionally to visit the other old-timers. At 32, I was part of the younger cohort stepping into their shoes as they gradually marched off into the horizon. My parents' generation, the generation that weathered major cataclysms to give birth to many children and kick-start the post-war economy.

Sometimes The Retiree came for lunch at the corporate cafeteria. One afternoon, I came across him in the lobby. He recognized me, invited me to sit in the comfy chair next to him. We watched as the corporate parade passed. The Retiree gestured to a middle-aged guy he used to work with.

"Wanted to buy a sailboat and circumnavigate the globe," The Retiree said.

The guy worked in my department. "Did he do it?"

"What do you think?"

I thought no, he did not.

We chatted some more. He spotted a woman he knew. She walked over to say hi. "Hi," she said.

They exchanged pleasantries. He asked if she was still making fantastic cakes.

"Not as much. Julie moved back home with her two kids. I do a lot of babysitting." She seemed a bit embarrassed. When she went back to work, The Retiree explained.

"She made the cakes for employee birthdays. You had to get there early -- guys stampeded to the break room. Fights broke out to get that last piece of three-layer devil's food cake." He got a faraway look. "I still dream about it."

"That good?"

"Better. Yeah, she was going to open her own bake shop. But she didn't. One thing or another came up." He shrugged.

I sensed a theme developing.

"You know a lot of people," I said. "And their stories."

"People tell their stories all the time. You just have to listen." He paused. "What you pay attention to makes the difference."

Another guy walked by. We called him The Actor. He just played Sweeney Todd for a local theatre and got to murder a bunch of obnoxious people whose meaty parts were made into pies. He was talented and drank a bit.

"I worked with him for a few years," The Retiree said. "He went out to Hollywood for awhile. He probably told you that."

"Not a word."

"He had a few bit parts. Played a dead guy in a soap opera."

"So I work in the graveyard of broken dreams?"

He laughed. "Beware." With that, he took off, probably to take a nap. I went back to work to ponder my future.

The above conversation is fictional. You can probably tell because the exchange rolls so trippingly off the tongue. As if it were a scene from a play or novel. That's something a fiction writer can do when blogging. If I was trying to write, say, a memoir, I would have to let you know that I was reconstructing the dialogue because there was no way I could remember what was said verbatim more than 30 years ago. What I can do is recall the feeling I had when sitting in the lobby with The Retiree. Holy Shit, if I don't watch out, I could end up like this endless retinue of sad sacks going back to work in the rubber mines. On some days, I was already there.

It would be rare to find a kid that says he or she wants to grow up to write paeans to industrial rubber hoses. Yet, there are a surprising number of us who grow up to sing the praises of hoses or cars or computers or paper products. We want to be something else but, as the saying goes, a job, any job, pays the rent. In 1983, I was approaching 33, was married, and tired of living on a prayer. I wanted to land a job that entailed some writing, and that's when I began looking for jobs with big companies. 

At Gates, I did know The Retiree I quote at the beginning of this piece. I knew many of them. I photographed scores of retirement parties, took a lot of employee anniversary shots.  Lots of grip-and-grin shots of a VP  congratulating a union guy who had spent the last 30 years making radiator hoses in the deepest darkest confines of the ancient factory. The cavernous work rooms were loud and covered in carbon black, the ingredient that blackens your hoses and fan belts. It was everywhere -- on the walls and floor and machinery. It was in and on the machines. It was on the employees and their work clothes. When I ate lunch with my female coworkers, they always grabbed extra napkins so they could wipe the carbon black off of the seats less their dresses get streaked black. I followed their example until I noticed that the union guys watched us. We were literally trying to wipe away their presence. I was a writer supposed to know a metaphor when I saw it.

I eventually saw it.

I left the corporate world for academia in 1988. We sold our house that we bought with money from rubber writing. I could walk to work. Now, when I'm in Denver and I drive down South Broadway, I see that corporate HQ now bears a different company logo. Across the street, the massive factory is gone. After Gates abandoned it and it turned into a magnificent ruin, urban explorers made it their playground. Replacing it are rows of modern condo complexes for the new crop of college graduates eager for the Mile High lifestyle. They can catch the light rail at the hub at the corner, where the Gates garage once fixed employee cars at a reduced rate. The company clinic and grocery store are no longer there. "The song "16 Tons" says "I owe my soul to the company store. That wasn't exactly the case, as it was just convenient to shop at the company store. This wasn't Appalachia during the Great Depression. But it was the ending of a certain type of employment. Chris and I paid nothing for an emergency Cesarean and seven days in the hospital for mother and son. All the prenatal and postpartum appointments were free. A billion-dollar privately-owned company in a booming economy could be generous. Every employee's kid got a free gift at the annual Christmas party and rode the Lakeside rides for free at the summer picnic.

It sounds good. But Gates was already building factories in right-to-work states and overseas. The ranks of the URW were beginning to decline. A new health care plan was in the works and a fully-funded retirement plan was being replaced by a 401(K). I know because my department was tasked with explaining the changes to employees who weren't always appreciative when being lied to. The new century approached. Technology would save us all. The international open market would signal a new golden age. Reagan said so.

The first short story I wrote in my CSU M.F.A. writing workshop was called "Who Needs Fedder?" It concerned a young corporate guy who chronicles the travails of his co-worker Fedder when he quits the corporate softball team. He quickly became a non-person, like Doc Daneeka in Catch-22. The story seemed outlandish to my younger classmates. The older ones thought it said a lot about people they had known in the corporate world or in the military. The story was published in 1990 in Bob Greer's High Plains Literary Review in Denver. I never knew what my former Gates colleagues thought about the story as I lost touch over the years. Now they're all retirees like me, reminiscing about those glory days.

You can read "Who Needs Fedder" in my book of stories, The Weight of a Body. It's out of print, but I'll find the file and link it to this post. I will reread it, just to find out what this writer thought of his corporate career.

Sunday morning round-up: Labor Day weekend edition

If this is Labor Day weekend (and it is) that means that we honor the hard-working people of the world by shopping at the new Wal-Mart that pays such sub-standard wages that many of its employees avail themselves of social welfare programs such as SNAP (formerly known as food stamps).  It is true that Wal-Mart has raised its wages of late, no doubt disliking bad publicity. Cheyenne now has two Wal-Marts as well as a Wal-Mart distribution center west on I-80. A real Wal-Mart town, we are. Meanwhile, some Cheyennites prefer to take their hard-earned wages south to Fort Collins to the CostCo store at I-25 and Harmony. CostCo offers livable wages and benefits even as it offers low prices. It can be done.

I attended my union delegate assembly last week in Cheyenne. I wrote about it last week. Gov. Matt Mead addressed the assembly. He said that the next legislative session "is going to be ugly." Oil, gas and coal revenues will be way down. Despite that, he recommends funding the standard budget as is but the state will probably have no money to fund exception requests which, in the past, have been funded to upwards of an additional $600 million. That's a lot in this expansive but least-populated state in the union. He advocates dipping into the state's $2 billion rainy day fund. Stingy Republican legislators, on the other hand, may have other ideas, such as cutting state agency budgets and/or cutting state employees. Gov. Mead says that this approach causes the state to "lose talent and skill" and will cause us to "go into a death spiral" Fewer state services and fewer state employees cause losses in the private sector and this is something Wyoming may not recover from. While many Republican legislators continue to shame state employees, they might want to take a page from our governor's game plan and his new "Wyoming Grown" program. Do you really want to keep your sons and daughters in the state? Or are you just whistling Dixie?

One of the heroes of the labor movement in the West was Joe Hill. I had to wait until I was in college and watching "Woodstock" to discover Joe Hill of Utah. Joan Baez sang "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night" in front of a half-million or so people. Joe Hill was a union organizer who was framed for murder and executed by one of The Beehive State's notorious firing squads. Because he was an IWW organizer -- a Wobbly -- and branded as a Red and a troublemaker by the powers-that-be, it was easy to frame him as the bad guy. A group of poets and musicians and union organizers gathered this weekend in SLC to celebrate Hill's legacy. Denver-raised Judy Collins headed up the concert for this "true blue rebel."

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night; Alive as you or me; Says I, But Joe, you're ten years dead; I never died, says he; I never died, says he.

Grady Kirkpatrick at Wyoming Public Radio in Laramie often devotes his "Morning Music" show to a theme. Friday it was Labor Day and working people songs. He played the Stones' "The Salt of the Earth," which I haven't heard in a long time. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote the song in 1968 and the Stones featured it on the "Beggars Banquet" album. According to a Wikipedia article on "Salt of the Earth," the Stones have only performed it in concert a handful of times. It has all the qualities of an anthem, with a paean to working people and a rousing chorus, but doesn't get the crowds going quite like "Sympathy for the Devil" or "Brown Sugar." Still, it's worth remembering what the Rolling Stones, perhaps the richest rockers in creation, were thinking about in 1968: 

Say a prayer for the common foot soldier; Spare a thought for his back breaking work; Say a prayer for his wife and his children; Who burn the fires and who still till the earth.

Notes from a Wyoming union meeting

Wyoming Retirement System Director Ruth Ryerson speaks at Friday's town hall meeting sponsored by the Coalition for a Healthy Retirement at the WPEA delegate assembly in Cheyenne. On the job for two years after stints in Colorado and Texas, she's upbeat about the healthy state of WRS, adding that "the majority of your legislators gets it; the Governor gets it."

Wyoming is a right-to-work state.

Stop laughing all you Wyomingites currently enjoying the right to work two or three or more jobs.

Here's a Wyoming joke:

Q: "What do you call someone in Wyoming working three jobs?"

A: "Under-employed."

Statistics show that Wyoming state employees make 13 percent less than our colleagues in private industry. Our benefits, however, are worth 21 percent more than those in private industry. Those benefits include a public pension, an old-fashioned defined benefit plan where retirees work 25 or 30 years and retiree with a defined monthly benefit for the rest of their lives. Wyoming also offers a defined contribution plan, known by the feds as a 457 plan. You put some in every month, as does your employer. This nest egg grows and grows and by the time you retire, you have a kabillion dollars in the account, enough to buy a solid gold humidor for your mansion in Dick Cheney's Jackson Hole gated community. Many have these plans as 401(K)s. My wife, for instance. All of those folks are supposed to save enough in those plans to retire to a life of leisure.

National statistics show that the average amount in a retiree's 401(K) is $18,000,

That, coupled with Social Security, may be enough to see you through to your date with the Grim Reaper. It also may allow you the right to work at McDonald's.

I spent the past three days at the delegate assembly of the Wyoming Public Employees Association. It's my union, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union or SEIU. My first time at the assembly, even though I've been a union member for most of my 24 years with the state. Members are snowplow drivers, nursing assistants at the state hospital, clerks, mechanics, supervisors, veterans outreach specialists and even a stray arts administrator -- me. Some of my colleagues in larger, more union-friendly states, call themselves "arts workers." I like the sound of that. I feel that my work at the Wyoming Arts Council has paved the way for the Wyoming arts boom of the past five years. With more good things to come. My fellow union members feel the same way. They make Wyoming a better place to live. When my car spun out last February between Rawlins and Muddy Gap, the first person to stop to help was a WYDOT snowplow driver. Nurses and CNAs at the State Hospital in Evanston took care of my daughter when she was a patient there last year. All these people get paid 13 percent below their Nebraska colleagues. Yet they do their jobs with dignity and aplomb.

Still, we heard that our supervisors are taking much longer to hire replacements for those who retiree or leave for jobs in Colorado. Increasingly, those people are not replaced at all and we do the work of two people instead of one. That increases the danger to patients and staff at places such as the Wyoming Life Resource Center in Lander. How many Republican legislators want fewer snowplow drivers clearing the summit between Cheyenne and Laramie as they drive over to a UW football game? Do they think about that when they're calling state employees "bums?" Or when one of our Republican legislators, Rep. Harlan Edmonds, said this during the last session (as remembered by Rep. Mary Throne, who spoke at the assembly): "Our problem is not keeping the good state employees but getting rid of the bad state employees." Edmonds is a state employee. It's possible that Edmonds may be a good state employee, but he's in the "very bad" category as a legislator.

I often wonder if these Tea Party types know there is such thing as Facebook and blogs, places where their hateful words live forever?

I'll write more about these topics in the coming weeks. The upcoming legislative session looks to be combative as the state faces revenue shortfalls with the dip in oil, natural gas and coal revenues. Stay tuned....

Note: See more photos from the assembly on my Facebook page. 

"I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night..."

The first time I heard Joe Hill's name was during the 1970 "Woodstock" movie. Joan Baez, at night, fog swirling around, singing about this man who I'd never heard of.

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
Alive as you and me.
Says I "But Joe, you're ten years dead"
"I never died" said he,
"I never died" said he. 

"The Copper Bosses killed you Joe,
"They shot you Joe" says I. "
Takes more than guns to kill a man"
Says Joe "I didn't die."
Says Joe "I didn't die" 

Who is Joe Hill? Who are the Copper Bosses?

As a 20-year-old, I had to look them up. No Internet in 1970. Throughout my K-12 education, nobody ever mentioned Joe Hill, not even in Colorado, Utah's neighbor. The library was my only choice. Books! Joe Hill was a union organizer. Copper bosses? Fat cats who crushed the union members. In Joe Hill's case, he was executed by a Utah firing squad. 

Nobody celebrates the Copper Bosses, although they undoubtedly have some buildings named after them. Nobody knows the names of the men on the firing squad.

But we do remember Joe Hill, thanks to songwriters and singers and union activists. Joan Baez. Pete Seeger. Woody Guthrie. The Weavers. Utah Phillips. The Wobblies. 

The 100th anniversary of Joe Hill's murder will be marked this summer at the Joe Hill centennial celebration in Salt Lake City. Joe might not have envisioned this, but the event is being promoted and funded through a Kickstarter project. 

Take a look at the Kickstarter video. It includes singer-songwriter Kate McLeod from Utah. I had the pleasure of meeting Kate in at arts events in Jackson Hole a few years ago. She is amazing. The whole event is amazing. Crowd-fund it and attend it on Sept. 5. 

Sunday morning round-up: Workers Memorial Day, pipeline protest and Microsoft taking over Cheyenne

I work in front of a computer in a temperature-controlled office. It's hard to imagine being injured or killed on the job.

But workers die every day in the oil patch, in mines, on the construction site, in factories and driving truck. It's tough work. Pays well (mostly), but the risks can be enormous.

Wyoming doesn't have a sterling record when it comes to workplace safety. The state marks Workers Memorial Day on Monday, April 28, in the State Capitol Rotunda. Get the details at the Equality State Policy Center web site.

At Friday's Cheyenne rally opposing the XL Pipeline.

Good turn-out Friday at the rally opposing the XL Pipeline. It was organized by Edith Cook who writes amazing columns for the local paper. BTW, if you'd like to read her words in their raw form before they go under the editor's knife, go here. She's a good writer and researcher. Her columns stir the blood and rile up the energy industry and its apologists. They incite a hue and cry from the right-wing crazies, who must all be unemployed as they seem to have plenty of time to pen angry online responses -- witness the recent online dust-up over Wyoming's proposed immigration resettlement program.

Edith spoke at the rally yesterday. Many protestors wore hazmat suits in keeping with the topics of tar sands and oil spills. I saw some familiar faces and met new people, some from Laramie and Fort Collins. After the speakers, everyone made a circuit around the Capitol, chanting about environmental trespasses and the legislature's recent efforts to dumb-down our schools' science curriculum. We will need well-educated scientists to solve some of the problems that science and technology have wrought over the years. Teaching kids that coal is earth's yummy candy and oil is mother's milk is not the solution.

News came in yesterday's paper that Microsoft is adding on to its data center here in Cheyenne. Its property is west of town in the North Range Business Park, adjacent to NCAR's super-computing center. We're going high-tech around here. Microsoft honchos seem to like working with business promoters such as Cheyenne LEADS. They also like southeast Wyoming's computer connectivity and its cool weather, which keeps down energy costs. Wyoming will be far from high tides caused by 21st century global warming which doesn't exist anyway.

It's all good for the economy. The initial Microsoft construction brought 400 jobs. While not all of these jobs employed locals, lots of dough was spent buying food and supplies and lodging and vehicles. As is the case with any Wyoming building project, workers were imported from Fort Collins and Greeley and Denver and  other exotic climes. Some skilled workers prefer Colorado to Wyoming, as it's the homeland of their forebears, dwelling place of the Broncos and Rockies, and purveyor of find suds and smoke. Cheyenne, of course, is a working person's city, with its refinery, chemical plant, military base, mega-truck-stops and sprawling fulfillment centers. A skilled union pipefitter can live in Fort Collins, work in Cheyenne and then hunt, fish, boat and hike all over Wyoming. We're also drawing many of our high-tech workers from ColoradoLand. Borders, it seems, are permeable when it comes to employment -- not so much when it comes to immigration issues.

 

The return of ALEC to Wyoming

Wyofile's Kerry Drake wrote another excellent column Dec. 10 about the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC, This time, he wonders why Wyoming Gov. Mead traveled to a recent ALEC gathering to deliver a speech.

Good question.

ALEC is the well-funded arm of conservative corporate donors such as the Koch Brothers. It drafts model retro legislation, pours it into the empty heads of conservative legislators, and sends them home to craft anti-democratic legislation that abridges workers' rights, make it harder to vote for minorities and the elderly and curtails environmental protections. ALEC was behind Florida's "make my day" gun legislation made infamous in the Trayvon Martin killing. ALEC's latest crusade is to make it illegal for homeowners to install their own solar panels, calling them "free-riders" on the U.S. energy grid. Interesting that a conservative group would use a term commonly used by union memberss to describe their non-union co-workers. Arizona has already passed such a bill. See the Dec. 4 article in the Guardian.

ALEC has found some willing dupes among Wyoming Republican legislators (see list at http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Wyoming_ALEC_Politicians). Only one Democrat was a member but did not renew his membership in 2012. All of this means we can look forward to more wacko bills when the 2014 session convenes. Expect more attempts to weaken the state employee retirement system and new and interesting ways to steal all employees' hard-earned sick and vacation days. I am a state employee and pay close attention to these types of bills. Trustees of the state retirement system have consistently asserted that the retirement system is strong and well-funded, unlike those in other states and cities. Legislation has mandated an increase in employee contributions to the fund. Other modest increases are expected and that is only fair. That hasn't stopped regressive legislators from devising ways to sabotage the entire system.

As noted western conservative Barry Goldwater once said: "Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom." Especially important for us outnumbered progressives living in a conservative state.

Read Kerry Drake's column at http://wyofile.com/kerrydrake/alec-wyoming/

Read a Dec. 12 wyofile article about Gov. Mead's ALEC speech at http://wyofile.com/dustin/matt-mead-alec/

History is not a game

We live in the age of miracles and innovations. I walk around with a device that helps my heart correct arrhythmia -- I got rhythm! I just watched an online tutorial (complete with code) by a young man explaining how to hack a drone and take it over for your own purposes. Amazon, beware! 

At work, I supervise print and online communications. I typed my first book manuscript on a portable non-electric typewriter. My younger colleagues have never seen such a device. 

The year I was born, 1950, was closer to the bombing of Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7, 1941) by propeller-driven aircraft than to the 1969 launch of the Atlas rocket that carried the astronauts to the moon.

1950 was closer to the Russian Revolution (1917) than it was to the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the end of the global Cold War (1991). 

My birth year was closer to the first 1951 airing of "Duck and Cover," a film by the U.S. Civil Defense Administration, than to the dawn of the atomic age (1945). 

My birth year was closer to the founding of Hewlett-Packard in 1939 than it was to the 1976 launch of the Apple-1, a single-board computer for hobbyists, designed by Steve Wozniak, and the founding of Apple Computer by Wozniak and Steve Jobs. 

We are approaching the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I. 1914 was a very big year. An archduke was assassinated in Sarajevo, the machines of war were set in motion, and four years later, millions were dead, the world map was changed and the seeds were planted for the next world war. 

One hundred years ago (1913), members of the United Mine Workers of America at Ludlow, Colorado, went on strike. At Christmas, it's possible that a little girl in the miners' tent colony received the gift of a bisque doll that was made in Germany and purchased from a Sears and Roebucks catalog. The remains of that doll were recovered in the exhumation of the tent colony. Also recovered were the remains of somewhere between 19 and 25 men, women and children slaughtered by Colorado National Guard troops and goons from John D. Rockefeller's Colorado Coal, Fuel and Iron Works on April 20, 1914. Most of them were immigrants, trying to make a living in their adopted country.

The remains of that doll is now part of the collection held by the UMWA. It also is a significant Colorado historical artifact, according to the Center for Colorado and the West at the Auraria Library in Denver. 

How this artifact relates to Colorado history: 

At the turn of the century coal mining was a large part of the labor force in Colorado, and the working conditions were poor, which prompted the miners with the help of UMWA to go on strike. This artifact reflects the families that were directly involved in the violence and turmoil during that time. This coal strike affected Colorado as well as the nation. On April 20, 1914, the death of the women and children at the Ludlow Massacre shocked the nation. This watershed moment spurred stricter labor laws to be enforced, and is considered the breaking point for American labor relations.

The doll's head is chilling to behold, its sightless eyes staring out at us a century later.

You can vote for Colorado’s most significant artifacts by Dec. 31 at https://collectioncare.auraria.edu/content/vote-colorados-most-significant-artifacts

I voted. My duty as a Colorado native and a union member. 

The object also has a connection to Wyoming history. Rockefeller moved much of his iron-ore mining operations to Platte County, Wyoming, in the wake of the bad press he received after Ludlow. Sunrise was a company town, far away (Rockefeller hoped) from trouble-making unions.  

Now Sunrise is a fenced-off ghost town, much like the Ludlow town site. By 1928, the Sunrise mine employed 547 and featured brick housing, modern utilities, a hospital, parks, playgrounds and the state's first YMCA. It closed in 1980. Both Ludlow and Sunrise are National Historic Sites.

Rockefeller learned some lessons from Ludlow. 

A beat-up doll's head helps us remember Ludlow. 

Performance by Wyoming artist remembers the 1913 IWW strike at a New Jersey factory

Suzanne Morlock is a socially engaged artist from Wilson, Wyoming. This bucolic Rocky Mountain valley town is a long way from Paterson, N.J. But that's where Suzanne is traveling to mark a labor tradition shared by the hard-rock miners of the West and the factory workers of the industrial East.

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) were known as "Wobblies" and nobody seems to know how it got its nickname. Its organizers were fed up with the tactics of the larger unions and decided to take their fight to the streets and the factories and the mines. Joe Hill may be the best-known members of the Wobblies. Remember the folk song that Joan Baez made famous at Woodstock:

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
alive as you and me.
Says I "But Joe, you're ten years dead"
"I never died" said he,
"I never died" said he.

Hill was framed for murder by the "Copper Bosses"and executed in 1915 in Utah. His martyrdom has been used as a union rallying cry for a century. Hill himself was a talented poet and songwriter, dedicating his work to the union.

The Wobblies were active throughout Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Colorado. They also were part of the Paterson, N.J., Silk Strike in 1913. Some 1,800 strikers were arrested, including organizers Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Big Bill Haywood. In 1907, Haywood was tried for the murder of the retired governor of Idaho, who had been a fierce opponent of organized labor, especially Haywood's radical Western Federation of Miners. The WFM was involved in the Colorado Labor Wars in the Cripple Creek mining district in which 33 people were killed. The defeat of that strike led to the formation of the IWW a few years later

Which now leads to a performance and art exhibit by a Wyoming artist in New Jersey.

Here are the details from a press release via the CultureFront web site:

On Sunday, October 27, visual artist Suzanne Morlock from Wilson, Wyoming, will create a new kind of textile operation at The Art Factory in Paterson, New Jersey, from 1-3 p.m.

Morlock has reimagined the traditional art of fabric creation with her own brand of magic at venues from the Central Museum of Textiles in Lodz Poland to the Charles Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa California. Morlock brandishes a set of over-sized “needles” made from PVC pipes and re-imagines cast-off materials into new and curious forms.

This performance pays homage to the Paterson Silk Strike which took place 100 years ago in protest of poor working conditions for workers in textile manufacture industry in the town of Paterson, New Jersey. Morlock’s intent with this performance entitled Industrial Workers of the World, the name of the union at the time of the strike, is to also highlight other areas of the world where substandard working conditions run rampant. At the conclusion of the performance, the finished textile will be displayed for the remainder of the exhibition. Visitors to the exhibition will be invited to tie on strips of paper with the names of other manufacturing areas of the world where unacceptable working conditionals continue.

The Textile Show has been designed to celebrate Paterson’s rich textile heritage, highlight the role that the Art Factory is playing in that continuing history and showcase the talents of emerging and established textile-based artists – both domestically and internationally. This annual textile art exhibition opened in September in various locations within Art Factory properties. The exhibition will be open daily by appointment until the closing reception on Saturday, November 16. Contact 973.ART.1500 or email create@artfactory.us.com to arrange for a tour.

The Art Factory is a spacious, inspiring collection of 19th century textile mill buildings in the heart of Paterson’s Historic District. The Art Factory is restoring these historic textile spaces and converting them into galleries, studios, lounges, classrooms, workshops and event spaces.

You can see some of Suzanne's work in Wyoming at the Wyoming Arts Council's biennial fellowship show through Jan. 26 at the Nicolaysen Art Museum in Casper. She will be attending the exhibit's reception on the evening of Nov. 8. Come on out, view the work, consume some munchies, and talk art and Wobblies.

Leader of Fremont County Dems and Rep. Tim Stubson to spar over Vacation Theft Act

This bit of news comes from the Fremont County Democrats:

Monday at 8 AMish, Fremont County Democratic Party Chair, Bruce Palmer, will be on radio KVOW AM 1450 talking with John Vincent about the Enrolled Act 37, the Vacation Theft Act. Also scheduled to appear is the bill's sponsor, Representative Tim Stubson.

It should be interesting hearing Rep. Stubson explain why taking a workers earned, accrued vacation is actually positive for the worker.

Don't think we can get KVOW in Southeast Wyo. Try this Internet link.

For some background from a Dem POV, read Pete Gosar's "An Unprovoked Attack on Wyoming Workers" in today's Star-Trib. 

Have fun at the Celtic Festival, but don't barf on my boots

My people are in town for a party.

My people are the Celts, descendants of a loose band of European tribes who eventually settled Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Some of them made their way to the Western Wildlands of America where they built the railroads, mined coal, opened bars and played the bagpipes at funerals.

The party is the Cheyenne Celtic Musical Arts Festival, held this last weekend in June at the Historic Depot downtown. It features concerts, vendors, a gathering of clans, a parade, Irish step-dancers and a fiddle contest. Beer and food, too. There are Scottish-Americans in kilts walking around with flasks disguised as cell phones and pens. A clever lot, those Scots. We Irish-Americans just walk around openly with a pint of Guinness or a black-and-tan, preferably one in each hand.

"The drink" has not been kind to the Irish. I drink, but the drink has never laid claim to my soul as it has to so many of my brethren and sistren. Without it we wouldn't be the Irish, I suppose, but with it.... It may lead to good stories and music, but it's laid waste to a lot of us.

Enough with the teetotaling talk. It's a downer at festival time.

One of the key elements of any Celtic fest is the Scottish-Irish-Welsh heritage. There are whole counties in Appalachia populated by Scots-Irish. They gave us bluegrass, folk and country music traditions, and a feisty attitude. Unions, too, as the Scots-Irish miners rose up against their Scots-Irish millionaire overlords. We've always been good at pummelling our own kind.

Last night, after the torch-lit march of the clans (my wife Chris was in there with the Cumming clan), there was much talk about the 2014 vote on Scottish independence. Some are for it, some against it. "The Staggers" blog at The New Statesman says that if the vote on the "devolution settlement" were held today, Scotland would remain in the U.K. First of all, doesn't "the staggers" refer to a state of staggering drunkenness? Secondly, I though that the devolution issue was settled once and for all in the 1970s with Mark Mothersbaugh and Devo.

In the so-called British Isles, history binds and history divides.

And gets increasing confusing to us colonials.

All of the Celtic or Scots-Irish festivals I've attended have been fun. There's even a Celtic band in Cheyenne called Gobs O'Phun. That's what it should be about, after all.

So, get out to the plaza this evening to enjoy Molly's Revenge and Ceili Rain, which lit up the stage last night. Enjoy a draught or two of Guinness. But I warn you, if you throw up on my boots, I'll apply my shillelagh to your noggin. That tradition is Irish and Western.

Wyoming Legislature continues long tradition of anti-worker legislation

We shouldn't be surprised when more anti-worker legislation emanates from the Republican-dominated Wyoming State Legislature. It's a long tradition. Kerry Drake explores this long line of anti-labor legislation today in wyofile. Read it here.

Paul Krza remembers Rock Springs as an "island of Democrats"

Good to see Paul Krza return to the op-ed pages. I used to love reading his rabble-rousing columns when he lived and worked in Wyoming. A good progressive voice in a sea of conservatives. He grew up in Rock Springs, a one-time "island of Democrats" due to its population of unionized coal miners and railroaders. That island has shrunk as union membership dropped over the years in this so-called "Right to Work" state.

In Sunday's Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, Krza wrote about how his own Sweetwater County collectivist roots were vindicated by President Obama's inaugural speech in which he stressed that "working collectively is the new political normal -- solving our problems 'together'."

Krza wrote about how his Slovene ancestors worked together to form a fraternal lodge, the Slovenski Dom, where the Socialist Party met and where members could buy health and life insurance. The lodge library was stocked with socialist tracts. Teno Roncalio, the last Democrat to represent Wyoming in the U.S. House, campaigned there. Meanwhile, says Krza, the Rock Springs schools were "an ethnic mishmash that nurtured open-mindedness and my own willingness to ask questions."

As we gaze upon the strange proceedings of our State Legislature, in which even the Sweetwater County delegation is rife with Republicans, one has to wonder what happened to Wyoming Left-leaning traditions. Gone with the wind....

Paul Krza is syndicated by Writers on the Range. Read his latest column, "When frontier socialism thrived in Wyoming."

Poet Mark Nowak wants to hear your stories about "Working in Wyoming"

Poet and labor activist Mark Nowak is coming to Wyoming and wants to hear your stories about work. This comes from the "Working in Wyoming" Facebook page:

Have an uncle or a sister or a cousin or a friend or a neighbor who works in Wyoming and always tells great stories about their job? Invite them -- no, BRING them -- to one of our "Working in Wyoming" workshops in February. We want all the great Wyoming storytellers to tell us what it means to work in Wyoming. 

The writing workshops will be held in the conference room in the Laramie Plains Civic Center in Laramie. We hope to see you there!

Wednesday, February 20th from 6-7:30 PMSaturday, February 23rd from 2-3:30 PMWednesday, February 27th from 6-7:30 PM

Rep. Tim Stubson takes aim at state employee benefits, part two

HB79 looks like another anti-state-employee bill to me. It passed the House while budget talks were going on a topic that always gets the lion's share of attention. Let's hope our senators have more sense. Read about Tim Stubson's HB 79 here: http://www.wyomingbusinessreport.com/article.asp?id=64480. What's gotten into those Republicans from Natrona County? One hopes that Laramie County senators have more sense than to sign on to this one, thereby alienating a key constituency. Contact info for your Reps and Senators can be found at http://legisweb.state.wy.us

Wyoming Rep. Tim Stubson plans to punish state employees by taking away benefits

Wondering what Republicans talk about when they have time on their hands?

If you're Rep. Tim Stubson, House Majority Whip, an attorney and an independently wealthy man-about-town from Casper, you think to yourself: "Those state employees make too much money and have too many benefits. Let's take something away from them just for the hell of it."

Stubson's spouse, Susan, should know better, as she once served on the Wyoming Arts Council board. Stubson also has two sons, one of whom served as a page at the legislature. Said the Rep. Stubson to his son: "This is how we Republicans stick it to state employees, son."

Here's Stubson's big plan:

House Bill 0079 - Redefining vacation as unpaid wages: Sponsored by Representative Tim Stubson, it passed the State House last week and is awaiting introduction in the State Senate.  It would remove vacation pay as a "unpaid wage" in the case of termination from employment, effectively removing it from the worker's final paycheck.  We do NOT SUPPORT this bill in the Senate, and believe it would harm workers in this state greatly by withholding necessary income that they earned during the time they were employed.  Please contact your Senator and let them know you do NOT support this bill! Tell your senator you don't believe in punishing state employees: Just in case you didn't know....the State of Wyoming changed all of the Legislator's emails this year to a uniform email address: Firstname.Lastname@wyoleg.gov

Shame on you, Rep. Stubson.

What the heck is wrong with these stingy, right-wing politicians from Casper?

Poet and labor activist Mark Nowak is eminent-writer-in-residence at UW in February

Poet and labor activist Mark Nowak in coming to Wyoming:

For the much of the past decade, Mark Nowak has been extricating the poetry workshop from the academic classroom and re-employing it in factories, workplaces, and other labor/working-class spaces. These workshops include his early transnational "poetry dialogues" with autoworkers at Ford plants in St. Paul, Minnesota (through UAW 879) and Port Elizabeth and Pretoria, South Africa (through NUMSA, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa), another series of workshops with Muslim/Somali nurses (through Rufaidah, a Somali nurse support organization), and his current ongoing project with members of Domestic Workers United <http://www.domesticworkersunited.org/> in New York City (to be featured in the 2012 PEN World Voices Festival). 

While at the University of Wyoming, Mark hopes to work with graduate students and other community members in facilitating a Wyoming version of these creative writing workshops with workers in the area. In advance of his visit, he would like to work with interested students in identifying potential groups to work with, making initial contacts, and selecting a group of Wyoming workers with whom several creative writing workshops could be facilitated. As always, the goal is to also produce an event at the end of these workshops (and the end of Mark's residency) in which the participants read the work they produce to their family, friends, co-workers, and the larger community. 

Mark Nowak, a 2010 Guggenheim fellow, is the author of Coal Mountain Elementary (Coffee House Press, 2009) and Shut Up Shut Down (Coffee House Press, 2004). He frequently speaks about global working class policies and issues, most recently on Al Jazeera, BBC World News America, BBC Radio 3, and Pacifica Radio’s “Against the Grain.” A native of Buffalo, New York, Nowak currently works as director of the graduate creative writing program at Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY. 

Mark Nowak will be on campus February 18th - March 1st.  Public workshops will be held between February 17th and February 27th and will culminate in a Reading and Celebration the Gryphon Theater on February 28th.  There will be a public reading by Mark Nowak on February 22nd at Second Story Books. 

Website

Workers urged to share their voices in a "community-building, creative investigation of what it means to labor in Wyoming"

Today's news from Michigan shows that the Republican war on workers continues unabated. Southern Wyoming once had a strong union presence in the mines and on the railroads. But most of the railroad jobs were moved out of Rawlins and Rock Springs and the mines got all "Right-to-Work-State" on its workers.

Mark Nowak is a documentary poet, teacher and labor activist who will will serve as eminent writer-in-residence for the University of Wyoming creative writing program in February. He and I are two of the writers featured in Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking out the Jams, a 2010 anthology from Coffee House Press.

This is an excerpt about working in a steel mill from Mark's poetry series, "$00 / Line / Steel / Train," which is included in the anthology:

Because the (brake) past is used because the tearing  (past) of the (brick) form is used is used because the fence (in) of the (goddam) frame is used is used is utterly used against us and by us and upon us and for us is used is used in the present (past) future (form) we are used yet users yet used.

Every day you put your life on the line when you went into that iron house. Every day you sucked up dirt and took a chance on breaking your legs or breaking your back. And anyone who's worked in there knows what I'm talking about.

Mark sent along this info about the "Working (in Wyoming)" project he'll be conducting when he's in the state. Here it is:

Working (in Wyoming) is a community-building, creative investigation of what it means to labor in Wyoming. A series of creative writing workshops will be held in southeastern  Wyoming (Laramie and Cheyenne) in February of 2013.

These workshops will be facilitated by Wyoming writing instructors and students in the University of Wyoming's MFA program in creative writing. In these workshops, Wyoming workers of diverse backgrounds will have the opportunity to collaborate with others in the Wyoming community to create a short piece of creative writing (a poem, a parable, a short story, a piece of flash fiction/nonfiction, etc.).

Working (in Wyoming) will culminate in a large-scale yet intimate evening event in Laramie on February 28. Here working people from across the state will have the opportunity to share what it means to work in Wyoming with a presentation of pieces created in workshops. 

To get involved in the project, contact Kay Northrop at knorthrop@uwyo.edu or Brie Fleming at briennafleming5@gmail.com Read more on the project's Facebook page.

Mark's blog is filled with info about union organizing and strikes worldwide. If you think that workers in the U.S. don't have anything in common with coal miners in China or maquiladora laborers in Mexico, think again, and take a look at Mark's Coal Mountain blog.

Black Friday strike by Wal-Mart workers keeps its distance from Wyoming

This is about the closest that the Wal-Mart strike got to Wyoming. Photo from Wal-Mart protest in Lakewood, Colo. See more at http://changewalmart.tumblr.com/. Click photo for larger image. Kind of ironic when you consider that the richest Wal-Mart heir, Christy Walton, lives in Jackson, Wyoming.

Wyoming Retirement System holds its next town hall meeting Nov. 28 in Casper

The Wyoming Retirement System will hold its next town hall meeting in Casper on Wednesday, November 28, 7-8:30 p.m. It will be held in Nichols Auditorium, McMurry Career Studies Building, Casper College. The meeting is open to anyone who is concerned about the threat by Republicans to mess with the state retirement system in the name of Tea Party politics. At a town hall meeting on Nov. 8 in Cheyenne, WRS Director Thom Williams sounded a cautionary note about any changes to the state's defined-benefits plan. This is from the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle:

The head of the Wyoming Retirement System says a major overhaul of the state's public pension program is unnecessary and potentially dangerous.

Thom Williams, executive director of the WRS, told a group of state workers and retirees Thursday that the Legislature should resist any efforts to move to a 401(k)-style defined-contribution plan. 

"The problem is (defined-contribution plans) are not a reliable means for providing retirement security," he said. "These defined-contribution plans oftentimes result in people running out of money."

HM urges state employees in Natrona County to attend the meeting. Maybe some of those right-wingers that county residents keep electing to the legislature will show up and learn something.

The town meeting is co-sponsored by the Coalition for a Healthy Retirement and the Equality State Policy Center.