What does fog sound like in a place known for noise?

February in a place known for its noise. Race cars that roar to grandstands of screaming fans. The pounding noise of motorcycles on every city street. Crowds of collegians arrive in March, their music and noise rise from beachside hotels, their cars parade A1A. On this morning wrapped in fog, I rolled outside, watched and listened. Birds sang and I didn’t know what kind of birds but it didn’t matter. The tap-tap-tap of a woodpecker. What does a bird hear? Fog doesn’t caution the noise nor does it enhance it. It just is. A carpenter saws and pounds nails next door. I live between two north-south main roads and cars hiss on wet pavement. An SUV’s headlights glow as it drives down my street which connects the two main roads. A train blares on the Ormond mainland a mile away, a train that stops traffic daily on the main east-west road that’s a hurricane evacuation route. Neighbors pass, quietly walking their dogs. They say nothing but wave. One sound I can’t hear – the sounds of surf slapping the beach. That came through my bedroom window last night but the day’s fog stole it away. A plane flies and it’s hidden by the fog and I wonder what fog looks like through the windshield of a small plane. In ten years, will I hear any of this? Will it be lodged in my memory, that foggy February morning when I skipped the TV news and cellphone screens and just listened? Will it be a molecule among my ashes swirling in the Atlantic? Where will these moments live?

How does the fog come in on the day after Christmas?

The fog comes/on little cat feet

Thought of this Carl Sandburg poem as I sat watching the ocean as fog crept in. Cats weren't on my mind as much as the view from Tom Renick Park in Ormond-by-the-Sea. My visiting daughter stood beside me. Waves rolled through the fog and crunked on the shore. The surf wasn't bad. Rollers breaking outside but you could ride them out of the fog like a vampire surfer. Three young surfers appeared suddenly, boards under arms, walking north on the beach. No wetsuits. Gotta admire those guys. Two days ago there was sun and a bit of wind and all the surfers wore wetsuits. Must be the wind. The fog today traveled on a light north breeze. We were shielded by the adjacent condo high-rise. Still, tiny mist dabs fell on my exposed legs and dotted my windbreaker. I kept expecting a cat to appear but the only sound was traffic along A1A and kids on winter break cavorting in the playground. No way to hear little cat's feet. I imagined it just the same.

My first winter solstice on the Florida coast

This solstice I awoke to lawnmowers, just one, the riding mower Brian pilots as he mows my yard and the ones adjacent and across the street. It’s winter solstice and in Wyoming I didn’t wake up to lawnmowers. Snowblowers sound similar but the pitch is different, closer to a screech than a roar. And the mowers move quickly as they crisscross the salt-air-resistant St. Augustine grass that is like a weaving rather than the upright bluegrass or fine fescue of Wyoming. Yes, bluegrass, a lawn type suited more for the green of Kentucky racehorse pastures than the brown of the high prairie. When bluegrass matures, it feels fine on bare feet. Not so the Florida varietal; its runners poke feet. It keeps growing after summer and Brian is here every other week in December instead of every week in June. The Florida rains arrive and you can almost watch the grass grow.

Winter solstice announces the rough part of winter and the beginning of longer bouts of sun although we barely notice it day by day. Summer solstice announces the glorious days of summer and the slow passage of the sun across the sky or so it seems when you live in the Sunshine State and you work mowing lawns or pounding nails or laying down roofing shingles. Brian finishes the big front law and moves to the back. He makes three passes in my tiny yard and then he’s on to Number  70 or Number 66 or motors across the street to Number 67. I hear him most of the morning and it’s odd is what it is, this summer sound at Christmastime. Soon the leafblower erupts and it’s more akin to snowblowers and I wish I found comfort in it but don’t.

In Florida and Wyoming, the sounds of December 21 mean one thing: summer is coming. In Wyoming, it takes its own sweet time. In Florida, well, it’s already here.

A snowless Christmas season ain't all bad

The most beautiful song about missing snow at Christmas is one written by Steve Goodman and performed by Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. The song’s narrator looks out the window of his Hollywood Hotel on Christmas Eve and sees billboards, neon, traffic, and palm trees, and notes it’s 84 degrees.

He yearns for Colorado. The song’s refrain goes like this: “The  closest thing to heaven on this planet anywhere/is a quiet Christmas morning in the Colorado snow.”

Nothing gets me as nostalgic for Colorado. John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High,” maybe, a 1972 song that planted the seeds for Colorado’s marijuana boom.

The state is not always snowbound at Christmas. I do remember a time when it was, Christmas of 1982, the year of the Great Christmas Eve Blizzard. Two feet of snow fell in one day. I watched it outside my walkup apartment window in City Park South, where we could hear the zoo’s peacocks almost every day.

Chris, alas, was trying to figure out a way to get home from her downtown job. Buses weren’t running as businesses and government shut down. A coworker herded Chris and four others into his 10-year-old compact car and raced up Colfax (“The Fax”) to drop everyone off. He hoped for the best, as did they. After maneuvering through a maze of stuck cars and two-foot drifts, Chris was released on Cook Street. As she said later, “He just slowed down and I jumped out.” A bit later, I saw her maneuvering the drifts, her diminutive figure whipped by the winds and flurries. She was shrouded in snow and ice by the time she reached the apartment. We unwrapped her carefully, fed her coffee and soup, and soon she was able to tell her tale.

We went to sleep secure that the snow would wrap up in the night, Santa would arrive, and we would wake up to a winter wonderland.

Chris woke up with a cold, and went back to bed. I ate, grabbed the snow shovel, and wandered out looking for people to help. Our neighborhood was a mix of old brick houses, apartmentized houses such as ours, and small apartment complexes. Most of the neighbors were young but there were some elders in the mix. I sought them out. But they knew better than to venture out. I was able to help a driver dig out his stuck car but that was it. I headed home.

We had other big snows but rarely ones like this. In 1982, we were recently married and were only four years into our Denver adventure. We still remembered snowless Florida Christmases. It snowed once in Daytona and twice one year in Gainesville. Never a blizzard but a sprinkling could shut down the city. And did

Fleeing Milton but I never did get to the end of "Paradise Lost"

We decided to evacuate to a friend's house further from the water. Tides on the beach are running high due to some troublesome hurricanes in the Atlantic and high tide may be really high. Watching hurricane news all day. Many press conferences by the governor and his minions. I almost hate to say this but I now find the voice of Gov. DeSantis quite soothing. It's quite a departure from the scolding uncle voice we usually hear when he's blasting "Woke" folks and supporting Moms for Liberty book bans. And cutting Florida arts funding due to a semi-nude character in a stage play. Big cuts, $160 million I think. No excuse for that but he found one. Maybe it was an R-rated "Paradise Lost." Milton -- get it?

The night is rescued by the south wind

August Wind from the South

 

The setting sun turns the sky red the west wind

Pushes smoke from fires in Oregon and California.

Red haze settles over Wyoming mountain valleys and

The smoke burns the eyes catches in the throat.

 

The wind arrives after dark it surprises us all

it flows from the south the monsoonal flow

and its saturated air designed to douse the

fires sweep the sky clean send it all north.

 

Pull back the curtains open the windows wide.

I smell the rain or think I do but there are no clouds

no lightning no rumbles of thunder. The wind from the

deserts of Saguaros and scorpions and sweeps of sand.

 

I turn my chair to the open window tune out the ball

game the cell phone the gurgling kitchen noises.

Tonight it’s just me and the wind over the high prairie.

The high dry prairie. The rare south wind.

The accountants who got us to the moon, July 1969 -- Part 2

I stepped off the plane at the old Jacksonville airport expecting the worst. It was after dark and August’s heat and humidity wrapped me in its stifling embrace. I herded my mother and brothers and sisters down the airplane stairs, across the tarmac, and into the terminal. I greeted my Dad and complained about the heat. “You get used to it,” he said.

We loaded kids and luggage into our Ford Falcon station wagon and headed to a motel as it was getting late and the babies were crying and the rest of us were cranky. We drove by a car and its window was wide open and the guy driving was not wearing a shirt. Seems ridiculous to remember that decades later but in Colorado or anywhere else in the West I had never seen a guy driving without a shirt. We landed at a motel and my brother Dan and I saw a family swimming in the pool. Swimming at night? My God, this was a different sort of universe. We bugged our Dad to let us go swimming and he did, probably because he’d been on his own for a couple months and had forgotten how many unruly children he had spawned and wanted to get rid of a few of them. The pool felt great after a day spent on planes and in airports.

The next day, we drove to our new home in Volusia County. Every bridge we crossed had at least one person fishing on it. It was a workday in the middle of the week and everyone seemed to be fishing. We breezed into town, crossed the Intercoastal Waterway, drove through a tunnel under a big hotel and right onto the beach. I had seen the Pacific during our vacation trip to the Seattle World’s Fair in 1962 (we lived in Washington State then) but I had never actually been in an ocean. And so many girls in bikinis.

The next day, we all went to the beach. The water was kind of rough but being in the ocean was so cool. Mom made us wear shirts when not in the water to cover skin vulnerable to the sun like any other Irish-American kids who’d spent their youth in snow country. Mom came in the water with us but Dad watched from the beach because he never learned how to swim. Hurricane Cleo was coming up the coast and passed through Daytona the next day, stirring up the surf on its way to St. Augustine. It dumped plenty of rain, more than I’d ever seen in one storm.

Next: Trial by hurricane

Saturday Morning Round-up: Raging Florida Man, Thoughts on Historical Fiction, and March Goes out Like a Lion

Saturday Morning Round-up

Florida continues to be a highly entertaining place to be from. The legislature keeps passing ridiculous bills and the Gov signs them. Meanwhile, the Disney Mouse continues to be a force to be reckoned with. How long can a leader of a state known for its tourist attractions keep biting the hand that feeds it? If you’ve ever been detained at the Orlando airport, you’ve seen the families arriving from all over the globe to go to Disney World. Hang around the airport long enough, and you can hear Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Italian, Esperanto. Overseas tourists bring their families and their money and most could not tell you what the “Never Say Gay Bill” has to do with the Magic Kingdom.

Thursday’s temps in Cheyenne were in the 50s with lots of sun and very little wind. Yesterday was all wind. We’re fortunate to not be in any of the country’s tornado hot spots this week. Some of the photos from Iowa, Illinois and Arkansas are frightening. Chris, a big “Twister” fan, said that the videos from yesterday were so ominous that they looked fake. She contends “Twister” twisters look more real. Thanks for smart phones with great cameras, we get close-ups of these powerful storms. Thanks to drones, we get close-up shots of the devastation on the ground. I keep reminding myself that these videos are real. I keep reminding myself that real people died and were injured in these spectacular storms. I keep reminding myself how lucky I am.

What is a historical novel? That’s a subject being kicked around on the Historical Fiction Book Lovers Facebook site. One person said it was any book that “captured the zeitgeist of a time and place.” I liked that. Others say it is either 30 or 50 years after the event being written about. There is some disagreement as to whether old classics written near to the time it happened should be included. I am an old classic so I realize that some of my favorite novels may not be historical fiction. “All Quiet on the Western Front,” for instance, was written by Erich Maria Remarque just a few years after the Great War he fought in. In the 1920s, it was not historical fiction. In the 21^st century, it is. Vietnam War books and those set in the turbulent 60s can be historical fiction or maybe not. Tim O’Brien’s “Going After Cacciato” was published in 1979 barely a decade after his service in Vietnam. It wasn’t historical fiction then but the American War in Southeast Asia was declared over in April 1975 and that’s 48 years ago. Any novels set during that time should be on the HF lists, right? Young people, especially, are reading Larry Heinemann’s “Paco’s Story” and Stephen Wright’s (the writer not the comedian) “Meditations in Green” as great books set in the long-ago time of the 1960s, back when their grandparents were young. I am writing historical fiction novels set in the U.S. after World War I. Two of my grandparents served in that war. It was old news in the 1950s when my Iowa Grandpa told us how he brought his horse to the first mechanized war. It seemed like ancient times to kids listening to their fathers’ WWII and Korean War tales. What are your thoughts on historical fiction?

Take a break from the raging wind and get over to the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. Spring is rough around here but you find tropical gardens and friendly people there. I volunteer at the Gardens and will be at the front desk from 2:30-5 p.m. Come on by and say hi.

Me and MyAmigo

We cruise through the Cheyenne grocery store like angels on the wing. We ride MyAmigo scooters, tidy charged-up EVs that transports you through the valley of soft drinks and into the foothills of baking supplies and to the mountaintop of the candies you crave but say you’re buying for the grandkids who never visit. We greet other grayhairs as we pass, josh about drag racing down the aisle at 3.521 mph. I round a corner and encounter Floyd Lopez in his own MyAmigo and we adjourn to Starbuck’s for coffee and talk about Spanish declensions. I insist it’s MiAmigo and he agrees but argues that my idea will make no sense to the majority of Anglo geezers like me. He says that “MyAmigo” is the perfect Spanglish term. “Pancho used it all the time on The Cisco Kid.”

Caffeinated and informed, we return to our respective routes. We try to avoid returning to the other end of the store for items left off the list somehow. That drops the MyAmigo charge to dangerous levels, causes us to seek out a staffer to transfer us and the groceries to a fully-charged EV if one is available and not in the hands of another retiree who breezes around the store as if there was no tomorrow as there may not be. Most shoppers avoid eye contact. What we need is on top shelves. Elders who walk upright ask if they can help. Young couples too, guys in middle age who just got off work and we remind them of their parents tooling around a store in Case Grande or Fort Myers.

Check-out is odd. Cashiers are nice but young ones especially try not to look at you, as if grayness is catching. They hope you will not pay in bills and small change, or labor over a check, or redeem too many coupons clipped out of the Wednesday print ads. They move you right along as they don’t want any repeats of the old lady who yelled about how the leaking deli chicken got all over the muffins. The baggers ask to help you out but you lack any small bills and the kids won’t usually take tips but you never know. You cheat a bit by scooting outside into the lot even though the cart’s label reads “indoor use only.” Some people stop to help as you load groceries into the trunk. Some days you need it. The snow comes down, bitter winds blow. Once I forgot my gloves and it took too long to unload; spent 15 minutes in front of the car’s heater to defrost the claws of my fingers.

I drive home through the blowing snow. My son unloads my haul at home. It's done.

A change in the Wyoming weather

It happens fast. One afternoon in September you sit in the easy chair, fan blows the sweat off your body. Next morning, you reach for a blanket against the chill that you haven’t felt since May. The heat had been getting to me. Our portable AC broke just when the August-September heat wave settled on us. Those long days, 85, 90, 95. Our house built without AC in 1960 because that was what you did, post-war building boom still roiling the prairie. It changes quickly. I turn on the furnace, open all the registers which is a funny name when you think of it. Spiders crawled through the open vents. Nothing poisonous, as far as I could tell. A Daddy Long Legs. A small brown spider (not a Recluse). Chris was concerned. “The spiders are coming! The spiders are coming!” We gave them little time to rejoice. The first burst of heated air carries with it Halloween and Christmas and those long nights of January and February. The gas jets click on and then the fan blows. I lay awake at night listening. Many nights, the heat challenging 45 and rainy. Summer is over. I am glad.

Botanist Trevor Bloom doesn't like what he sees in Wyoming's early wildflower blooms

This April 6 WyoFile post brings us more good news about global warming:

Wyoming botanist Trevor Bloom spotted his first springtime blooms of the year on March 28. Bloom, while tracing the footsteps of famed ecologist Frank Craighead at Blacktail Butte in Grand Teton National Park, saw the orogenia linearifolia, or snowdrop, wildflower. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wildflower, besides a dandelion, flowering in March,” Bloom said. The snowdrop bloom was nearly a month earlier than Craighead had recorded in the 1970s. “It means we’re probably going to have a very early spring this year. It probably means that we’re going to have very low water levels, and we’re probably going to have an increased risk of wildfire this year.”

So, early spring, lack of snow, low water levels, and more fires. Ah, summer in the Rockies, 2022.

Seems as if we are ahead of schedule as far as bulb plants. Some of mine already are flowering. The Cheyenne Botanic Gardens show some early blooms in its “Hero Garden” of native plants. Not sure what effects the wild winds have had. Most plants seem to be deciding if it’s safe to raise their heads or if we will have our usual spring of snow and wind and cold punctuated by 60-degree calm and sunny days.

My home gardening will be limited this year. During The Covid Year, I commandeered the kitchen table to sprout my seeds. When June arrived, the containers on the porch were filled, absorbing the sun and hiding from hail. It felt normal, as if a plague wasn’t decimating the globe. We all had our survival; tactics. Some gardened, some baked sourdough loaves, others watched endless video loops on YouTube and TikTok. I gardened and read and wrote. Also, Netflix and Hulu.

I will buy some seedlings and plant seeds. I need to grow something. Call it a celebration of summer’s arrival. It may bring drought and fire. But I’m going to grow flowers and cherry tomatoes beneath my rooftop solar array. The pensive William Wordsworth, wanderer of England’s Lake Country, loved to conjure daffodils when resting on his couch.

They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Saturday Morning Round-up: Snow arrives -- finally -- and "Stay Close" keeps you guessing

Saturday Morning Round-up:

I’ve been interviewing the recipients of the 2021 Governor’s Arts Awards. These are the awards given annually by the Wyoming Arts Council for "substantial contributions made in Wyoming that exemplify a long-term commitment to the arts," Recipients include intriguing artists and very interesting people running arts organizations. Sometimes the person running the arts org is an artist, That artist continues to make art while promoting the arts in their community. It’s a time-consuming task, one that pays very little. But real people keep doing it. Read the articles in the next issue of WAC Artscapes. 

Just finished watching the eight-episode Netflix series “Stay Close” from the novel by Harlan Coben. Kept my attention through all the twists and turns. Surprise ending. The murderer is a character I didn’t suspect. The series is set in an English town surrounded by lots of water which figures into the plot in ways major and minor. Coben’s novel, as are most of his works (including scripts for the "Fargo" series) is set in the U.S. It’s a funny thing to watch a murder thriller transplanted to England. It’s almost as if we don’t expect people to die gruesome deaths in the land of Downton Abbey, stiff upper lips, and way too much tea-drinking. It’s also the home of Jack the Ripper, Sweeney Todd and inventive ways to torture and kill those who have ruffled the king’s feathers. Its staid demeanor helps make throat-slitting and gang-style executions stand out. Some inventive killing goes on in “Stay Close.” Keeps you guessing. Watch it.

Jan. 6 marked the anniversary of the 2021 Capitol Insurrection. While the Democrats in Congress, the president, and TV hosts made a big deal out of it, Republicans were nowhere to be seen except on Fox and some loony right-wing outlets. For those of us in the reality-based world, the attack on the Capitol was an attack on democracy. Repubs don’t see it that way. A few do. Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney does. Her pops too. They were the only GOPers that attended the Congressional prayer service on Thursday. I know, Dick Cheney to war criminal standing up for what’s right? It was rich in irony seeing his masked face. But Rep. Cheney is one of two Republicans serving on the Jan. 6 Commission. She’s also blasted Wyoming GOP leadership as deluded radicals leading the party down a dangerous path. I’m no fan of the Cheneys. But when people do the right thing, you have to thank them.

We’re finally getting some snow. November was almost snowless but we started catching up with the season on Christmas Eve and the ground is covered as I write this. Ski areas that delayed opening are now chest-deep in the stuff. I am closer to most Colorado ski areas than I am to Wyoming's Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. But JHMR reports some incredible snow amounts on its blog this morning:

As of January 8, since New Year's Day, we have received 63"! We received 42" in the last 48 hours. As of this morning, we received 24" in 24 hours. Total snowfall is now 240" on the year.

Damn. Most Colorado ski areas have received half of that. For the record, Cheyenne at 6,200 feet elevation receives about 60 inches of snow in an average year. Last year was one of extremes when we received half our total in one March blizzard. If we received 240 inches of snow, we would be digging tunnels to our cars and those tunnels would be pointless because the city would be waiting for the sun to come out for the its primary snow removal tactic. And waiting.

Snowbound and Covidbound all in the same week

We received 31 or 36 inches of snow in our weekend blizzard, depending on who's doing the reporting. Anything more than 30 inches is a lot so I won't quibble. What I can say is that I haven't been out of my house since last Friday when I ran a couple of errands on a cloudy day with all the weatherpeople saying that you bastards are really in for it with this Snowmageddon. Pshaw, said I. But they were right. 

Our governor announced on March 12 that most Covid restrictions will expire on March 16. On that day, residents from Cheyenne to Casper were practicing weather-enforced social distancing. Cheyenne doctors and nurses were shuttled to work on a snowmobile belonging to a 17-year-old high school student. You can still get around our neighborhood on snowmobile.

By the time the snow abated on Monday, I could not open our front door. Snow on the porch was piled at least two feet of hard-packed snow. A winter snow is usually what they call "champagne powder" at Jackson Hole Ski Resort. It's light and airy enough to blow into a ground blizzard when the wind blows. When stacked up, it's great to ski in. You can glide and carve into it, blowing up white clouds as you make your way downhill. 

Snowmageddon snow is like concrete. I say "is" because it's almost a week later and our neighborhood is a snowscape. A plow made its first appearance yesterday afternoon. It made one pass down the street and then was gone. It created a path wide enough for one vehicle flanked by four-foot walls of snow. The mounds block our driveways so we're still stuck. Not sure what comes next. Melting is going to take a long time. Our food is running out. We are going stir crazy. 

In days gone by, I would have been out there with the shovel as I was in so many other storms. After the Christmas Eve Blizzard of 1982 in Denver, I was outside with my shovel on Christmas Day, shoveling my walks and those of my neighbors in City Park South. Chris and I lived on the top floor of a 100-year-old two-story house. We shared it with a lesbian couple who were our son's first babysitters three years later. We sometimes barbecued together on the tiny front porch. I never knew our neighbors in the basement apartment. 

Our landlord was the one-man Danish counsel for Colorado who owned a tie store downtown. His lavish City Park home had a security gate and was surrounded with cameras just in case the Swedes decided to invade. We sometimes drove over to pay our rent just to see how the other half lived. We wondered how working for Denmark in a remote outpost and selling ties led to such opulence. We imagined that a tie shop on a side street might be a perfect cover for a drug dealer or arms smuggler. We wondered what they made in Denmark that might find a black market in Denver. Cheese danishes? Fjord photos? Reindeer antlers? We didn't know much about Denmark.

So here it is Thursday and maybe I will get out of my driveway and maybe I won't. I haven't shoveled snow since my heart attack in 2013. I rely on a walker (a.k.a. personal mobility device) now. It's possible there exists a walker equipped with a snow blower but I haven't yet looked that up on Amazon. Even if I get in my car and get out of my driveway, I'm not sure about the condition in the rest of my neighborhood. I'm really stuck if I get stuck. 

Our neighbor Mike sent over a couple of teens to clear our walks. They did a good job and we paid them $20. We wanted to make way for the mail delivery person but we haven't got any mail since Saturday. I've been missing those fliers for vinyl windows and life insurance. I might have received a St. Patrick's Day card or two but won't find out for a couple more days. Over the years, I have seen USPS vehicles chained up and struggling through the snow. But chains won't help them get through big drifts of concrete snow.

Daughter Annie has been staying with us during spring break. She has many assignments due next week so we don't see much of her. She ordered a grocery delivery yesterday but didn't tell us. The Instacart person drove up in a massive SUV. She dropped off three 12-packs of Diet Pepsi and packages of toilet paper and paper towels. For edibles, she delivered a family pack of Chips Ahoy cookies, a bag of Cadbury mini-eggs, and a carton of eggs. We quizzed Annie about why she had paid a person to collect Cadbury mini-eggs and Diet Pepsi and drive these crucial, life-giving items through snow clogged streets to our house. We wondered why she hadn't asked us if we needed anything from the store such as bread or peanut butter or soup or spaghetti. You know, necessities for the snowbound.

We're still waiting for an answer.

It ain't spring yet, but I can see it on the horizon

In normal years, spring is opening up time in Wyoming. Bright morning sun streaks through the windows. We open the windows to let in the fresh breeze. Then we close the windows when the 60 mph gusts blow in. We wave to our neighbors the first time we see them outside since October. I check on the bulbs planted last fall t see if anything is blooming. That often happens with the spring snow, lilies making a show of it by bursting colorful heads through the white blanket.  

Spring 2020 brought a radical change. We closed down just as the weather turned nice. Houses became fortresses against the gathering plague. Schools closed. Jobs disappeared. Events cancelled. As the fatalities rose, we hunkered down. Stores delivered our groceries. Beer could only be bought by stealthy visits to drive-up windows where you almost wanted to whisper your order through your new mask that didn't fit. Our downtown craft distillery stopped bottling vodka and churned out plastic bottles of hand sanitizer. Overnight, Zoom became a thing.

This spring feels different. It won't officially be spring for another 25 days. But we yearn for it. Chris and I got our two Covid shots of vaccines that didn't exist this time last year. I've ordered seeds for sprouting -- I'm already a little late doing that. We are already a week into the Lenten season and it seems like a miracle that the plague is receding. I am blessed to be alive and among the vaccinated and I can pay my bills and buy groceries. I have a roof over my head. I'm retired so my 8-to-5 working days are behind me. 

I thought about all of this last night as I watched "Nomadland" on Hulu. Thousands of my fellow Americans live in vans and small RVs. They crisscross the country looking for a place to land and a place to work. They exist on disability checks and small pensions. Work service jobs when they can get them. Their humanity comes through in a film that features real people and real places. Credit goes to director Chloe Zhou and lead actor Frances McDormand who transforms from Fran to Fern in the film.

Some people opt as a life as a nomad. Others are forced into it due to substance abuse, mental illness, or circumstances beyond their control. It raises big questions about the state of our country. But it merely asks you for empathy which is in short supply after four years of the hate and greed of Trumpism. Not too much to ask. I came away from it with the same feeling I had after watching "The Florida Project." In it, a different kind of nomad moves from cheap motel to cheap motel in Orlando's Disney neighborhood.  The film shows a lot of heart notably in the form of the six-year-old main character.

We haven't yet processed the Time of Trump. If you carried a bleeding heart into the 2016 election, it has been bleeding since. We may be suffering from a type of PTSD, a reaction to four years' worth of daily outrages. Reading good books and watching good movies may help us heal. It may also help us to greet our human comrades with good will when spring opens our doors.

Hurricane Matthew, "Our Town," and Florida memories

Over my second cup of coffee on this beautiful Wyoming Saturday, I wondered why I still had the Weather Channel blaring from my Smart TV.

Hurricane Matthew. Matt, to his friends, which are few after he pounded the U.S, coast and the Caribbean this past week.

I do like the drama of a hurricane compounded by the melodrama of media coverage.

It gets more real when you're there. Many family members and friends were in the path of Matthew. All are fine although much clean-up to do. My brother Tom in Palm Bay has trees down in his yard -- but not on his house.

One of my first experiences as a 13-year-old Florida resident was with Hurricane Cleo in 1964. On my first full day on Ormond Beach, the waves broke big and the current was strong. Our parents warned us kids not to go out too far or we'd be sucked out to sea. My brother Dan and I listened (sort of) and waded into the surf, keeping an eye on (sort of) our younger brothers and sisters, who were many. The sun beat down and we body-surfed, or tried to. We were from Colorado and had never been in the ocean before.

The next day, Cleo brushed the coast, leaving us inside to watch the rain fall and the wind blow around the big palms. The next day, Dan and I were back on the beach and rarely left it for the next five years. By the following summer, we were surfing. Hodads, gremmies -- wannabe surfers. We moved south to Daytona and surfed with the big boys at Hartford Avenue, a group later known as the Hartford Heavies and included my brothers Pat, Tom and Tim. Hell-raisers and good short-board surfers. They ripped the waves, ditched school for good surf.

Hurricane Dora targeted Daytona in the fall of '64. The illustration on the front of the morning paper showed a swirling storm. On its landward side, an arrow pointed right at me. Our father picked us up at Our Lady of Lourdes Grade School and whisked us off in the Ford Falcon station wagon to a motel on the mainland. Ten of us jammed into two tiny rooms. We watched the rain fall and the palms sway, listened to storm reports on the radio. Dora swerved and hit St. Augustine instead, giving us a glancing blow, a little less severe than the one Matt just delivered.

I lived in Florida for most of 14 years. Those are the only hurricanes I remember. 1964 was an active season, with three of the six named hurricanes hitting Florida. Isbell was the third, cutting across south Florida on its way to North Carolina. Cleo, Dora and Isbell were all retired from the official hurricane naming list, which featured only names of the female persuasion back then.

In the ninth grade, Father Lopez High School put on Thornton Wilder's Our Town. Our director was a woman with Broadway experience. She thought Our Town was just right for a small Catholic school with no theatre budget and no theatre but a serviceable gym. This was the minimalist version, with no stage design, except for a pair of stepladders and a few chairs. And no complicated costumes. I auditioned because I had time on my hands that fall after not making the cut for junior varsity basketball. This particularly irked me after my successful season with the OLL Falcons, runner-up in the 1965 parochial league tournament. I channeled my anger into an unforgettable role as Second Dead Man in the poignant cemetery scene. It was the closest I got to the gym floor all year.

After her funeral, the dead Emily appears at the cemetery.

EMILY: "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?"
STAGE MANAGER: "No. Saints and poets maybe...they do some.”

They do some. It's pleasant to think so, that poets and writers actually live life and notice it at the same time.

Maybe it helps if you're a saint.

I was dressed in an old suit and pretended to be a dead guy from Grover's Corners. The apex of my acting career. Our Town could be seen as a nostalgic look at life in a quaint New England village. What it does is rip your heart out.

I didn't know that as 15-year-old  Second Dead Man.

I do now.

Lest you deny Wilder's seriousness in this play, he often noted that it was rarely performed correctly and that it "should be performed without sentimentality or ponderousness--simply, dryly, and sincerely."

And this from Wikipedia:

"In 1946, the Soviet Union prevented a production of Our Town in the Russian sector of occupied Berlin on the grounds that the drama is too depressing and could inspire a German suicide wave."

Post-war Germans didn't need yet another reason to end it all.

Today in Cheyenne, the sun is shining, Matthew is on his way to open ocean and Trump will not be president.

A good day to be alive and noticing it.

Sunday morning round-up: Unforgettable cancer stories, Gonzo Derby Day, and snow, lots and lots of snow

Happy May Day!

While many of you bask in May sunshine, we are buried in snow. A moisture-laden three-day snowstorm covered my lawn and garden. It would look like March 1 but for the daffodils and blades of grass poking out of the white blanket. It's not that winter is too long, but spring is too cold and snowy. But without it we get the wildland fires of August.

Since my Jan. 18 retirement, I write every morning. I write journal entries, short stories, and a novel. I write what matters to me. I haven't been blogging as often as I find myself preoccupied by imaginary stories and memoir. It's not as if there is a lack of blogging topics, especially in this wacky election year. I so miss the gonzo journalism of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. If this isn't a "fear and loathing" year, I don't know what is. As is true with most writers of my generation, Thompson influenced me. I don't/can't write like him, but his style infected all of us.

Fellow blogger Ronny Allan featured my sister Mary's cancer journey last week. Mary works at Big Bend Hospice in Tallahassee and, a few years back, was selected as a bone marrow donor for my brother Dan, struggling with leukemia at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Mary was undergoing pre-op tests when the doctors discovered a spot on her lung which turned out to be a carcinoid tumor. She was successfully operated on. That also ruled her out as a bone marrow donor. My sister Molly was the eventual donor, leaving her nursing job in Italy for several months to come back to the states. How did this family drama turn out? Click here to find out.

On Saturday, May 7, 2-5 p.m., the Laramie County Democrats Grassroots Coalition (LCDGC) holds its annual Derby Day and Wild Hat party/fund-raiser in Cheyenne. Admission is $15 and you can buy one of the Derby horses as well as bet on side races managed by your fellow Democrats. Prizes also given to the wildest hat. The Kentucky Derby is known for swanky attire and wild hats. Swanky attire in Cheyenne usually is rodeo duds. Wild hats are usually not big and floppy as the incessant wind will send them off to Nebraska. Cowboy hats? Well, if you get one that fits right, it should stymie most wind gusts. You can probably "wild up" any cowboy hat, although you may get some weird looks at Frontier Days. For all the details of the event, click here.

BTW, DYKT Hunter Thompson's magazine article on the 1970 Kentucky Derby became the first of his pieces to be labeled gonzo as in "gonzo journalism?" 'Tis true. You can read "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved" in Thompson's 1979 collection, The Great Shark Hunt. Will Cheyenne's Derby Day be decadent and depraved? One must attend to find out.

The Wyoming wind (finally) blows itself out

It's as if I went to sleep in winter and awoke in spring.

For the past two days, hurricane-force gusts have toppled semis on the interstate and ripped roofs off of businesses. In Laramie County, we had gusts measured at 73 mph, just shy of the 75 mph that makes a hurricane. Big Horn Basin monitors measured a 91 mph gust. A weather station on the crest of Colorado's Monarch Pass, recorded a wind speed of 148 mph. Now that's a gust that could knock you down or send you flying, depending on your BMI.

Last night, for the second night in the row, wind rattled my window frames. The metal frames were installed with the house in 1960 and are not energy efficient, even with the storm windows in place. The cold greets the window and radiates inside my house, causing my furnace to kick into gear more often than it should. We replaced our 25-year-old gas furnace last winter. It went kaput. The new machine is as energy-efficient as I could afford. I looked at some fancy systems, some more than $10,000. Gas condensing furnaces, geothermal heat pumps, high-efficiency boilers, radiant floor heating, You could go totally solar, or combine wind and solar. Once you open to door to new energy, the sky's the limit.

This morning, spruce tree branches wave lazily in the breeze. The sun shines. When I turned on the TV this morning, a gardening show was on. The personalities on the Weather Channel spoke of a phenomenon called spring. Apparently, in some parts of the country, flowers and trees bloom in March. That's an odd concept at 6,200 feet in the Rocky Mountains. The arrival of spring here just means more snow and wind and cold. We get some blossoms in May, and usually delay planting until Memorial Day weekend. On the plus side, summers are glorious and often extend into October. Warm, dry days and cool, clear nights.

It takes its time getting here. But summer is worth the wait.

May showers bring August tomatoes -- we hope

During my recovery from April's knee replacement surgery, my friend Liz brought me a Roma tomato seedling. I placed the sprout in my kitchen's south-facing window. If I lived in a more temperate climate, I would have marched the plant outside and put it into the ground. But I live in Wyoming, where April is still winter. Many of us have turned to the use of high tunnels or cold frames or other sheltering devices to ensure an adequate harvest. But not me. I continue to wait for those frost-free days of late May. Very late May, or even early June.

Two weeks ago, on a rare sunny day, I bought some flowers. I sat out on the porch, repotted them and set them out to enjoy the sun. While I was at it, I repotted the Roma and two cherry tomato plants brought over by my neighbor.  The dirt had a calming effect on my throbbing left knee. The sun, a welcome visitor. Still, I knew I was tempting fate to ignore the first commandment of High Desert gardeners: "No outdoor planting until Memorial Day."

True to form, rain and snow and frost arrived in southeast Wyoming this week. I could have hauled the potted plants inside, as I'd already done once. Instead, I pulled out my trusty tarp and covered them. It traps heat and moisture, and keeps snow and frost from the leaves. It's a big tarp -- I can cover the entire garden plot adjacent to my back porch. There was no need as I had kept to the letter of the law and not planted anything in the ground. I did cover the strawberries, But there's really no need, as my strawberries are hardy varieties cultivated at the Ag Dept.'s old High Plains Research Station. These babies can take the snow and ice and, to prove it, keep coming back year after year.

The tarp covered the plants four days and four nights, through a light snow and two overnight frosts and days of rain. I uncovered them Thursday evening after work, the moment I glimpsed the first ray of sun. The weathercasters assure me that the frosts are over, with low temps going down to 40 degrees but no colder. Soon, the usual warm, low-humidity days of summer will take over and I can put away the tarp.

This morning, the sun is out. Soon, so shall I be.

Spring 2015 is deceptively pleasant

Ah, spring.

In Wyoming, that usually means snow and wind and cold. March and April are our snowiest months. Usually.

This year, the snow spigot shut off early. Not sure if this is an El Nino or La Nina year, but whatever it is, the storms went to the south and then moved on to hammer Boston and points east.

Today is Saturday, March 28. First day of spring break for local school kids. Trips to ski areas, or those that are still operating. Jaunts to see grandma in Sun City. College kids head to the beaches. Those that stick around, will get sunny skies and 70-degree temps, at least they will today. My neighbor is hammering on something. I can hear it because my windows are wide open. Harleys rumble in the distance. But I've been seeing the local bikers on the roads since January. Their bikes didn't get much of a winter break this year.

This balmy weather has a dark side. If it's dry now, it will be really dry come July. That means wildland fires. A huge grass fire scorched property around Chugwater earlier in the week. Cheyenne experience a grassland fire a month ago that crept to within sparking distance of our newest high school.

Wyoming had a similar dry spring three years ago. The summer of 2012 saw a whopper of a fire west of Fort Collins that carried smoke and ash north to Cheyenne with a south wind. Mix together the smoke with a very hot summer and you get a lot of unpleasantness.

But today, well, I plan on spending time outside. There are gardens to prepare. Leaves to rake. Weeds to ignore. The Home and Garden Show is going on this weekend. My old writing pal, Joanne Kennedy, is staging a book signing at the local animal shelter -- a benefit. I have a new used car to wash. I totalled my old used car a month ago and, no, I didn't skid on icy streets and slam into a telephone pole. The weather was much like it is today. A young woman in an SUV rolled right through a stop sign and I slammed into her. I was OK but not the car.

Plenty to be thankful about on this gorgeous spring day.

Thoughts on gardening in the hail zone

I wrote this on Wednesday morning but didn't get around to posting until today:

Watch a hail barrage shred months of work. It’s merely an inkling of what a farmer must feel. Farmer stands at the edge of his/her field and surveys rows of plants decimated by last night’s hailstorm. That means loss of a livelihood. For me, it’s a major disappointment but I won’t starve. 

One of my friends said, “Forget gardening. This is the third year in a row this has happened.”

I escaped last year’s storms and had a bumper crop of tomatoes. Two years ago, I was too depressed to garden. Three years ago, back-to-back July hailstorms got my garden and roof and car. 

Sucks.

I have other friends who garden in small greenhouses and high tunnels and cold frames. Mini-greenhouses are all the rage for street cafes and backyards. Some limit their gardening to containers and move them into shelter as needed. I do that, too. I moved my containers under shelter on the back porch but the storm came in from the south and attacked my plants. They have protection when a storm comes from the west or north. Not so with those from the east or south. This one came from Colorado. Thanks, Greenies. 

Farmers’ markets are starting up around the region. Wonder how those family farmers made out?