Capital Chorale adds a dash of humorous seasonings to a rainy Cheyenne night

By now, decades into the electronics revolution, you would think that everyone would be safely at home on a rainy Friday night playing e-games or watching a super-hero flick on their mega-widescreen TV.

That's not the case. The more electronic options available, the greater the need to get out among our fellow humans. Yes, we are an untidy and argumentative bunch. We do like to get together to enjoy the arts.

Friday night featured a variety of offerings in Cheyenne. Chris and I attended the Cheyenne Capital Chorale "Tasteful Tapestries" concert. The Cheyenne Little Theatre offered "9 to 5 -- the musical" and the LCCC Theatre featured "Anne of Green Gables." Bands performed at local bars. The Suite Bistro held its usual karaoke night, which could be considered an art form depending on who's on stage at the time. If it's me, forget it.

My daughter Annie, however, has a great voice and was performing with the Capital Chorale last night. "Tasteful Tapestries" was all about food, as am I, so it was a natural choice to attend. Because I've been homebound for a month due to knee replacement, I've had an opportunity to hear Annie rehearse her solo and the other songs on the CCC repertoire. Unlike her violin practice in the fourth grade, which set neighborhood dogs howling, Annie's singing is a joy to hear. Her solo was the classic tune from "The Sound of Music," "My Favorite Things." A tuneful little ditty that I've heard hundreds of times during screenings if Chris's favorite film. The song has plentiful references to Austrian foodstuffs -- schnitzel with noodles and strudel -- so it fit easily into the evening's program. Janet Anderson performed "The Big Rock Candy Mountain," a song by Harry McClintock about the musings of a Depression-era hobo made famous in "O Brother, Where Art Thou." The Cheyenne Capital Quartet (plus one) tackled the classic "Snap, Crackle, Pop" advertising jingle, which brought back memories of endless bowls of Rice Krispies. The trio of Paula Egan-Wright, Sarah Scott and LuWana DePorter celebrated caffeinated beverages with the "Java Jive."

After breaks to bid on silent auction items and to buy yummy pastries (pecan pie!), the chorale launched into "The Seasonings" by P.D.Q. Bach, the pen name for musician and humorist Schickele. It's been decades since I've heard P.D.Q. Bach (1807-1742) performed. I forgot how clever and irreverent he can be. Songs included "Tarragon of Virtue is Full," "Bide Thy Thyme" and "To Curry Favor, Favor Curry." The pianist was accompanied by bicycle horns, triangles and some mysterious homemade instruments. The cast expanded to include a pair of cheerleaders, a chef, football players, and soothsayers.

A whopping good time was had by all. And money was raised for the 2015-2016 season.

And to think that all of this entertainment was brought to us by volunteers, our family members, friends and neighbors who are in it for the love of music.

Summer arts events flourish in Wyoming communities

Looking for something to do this summer?

You don't have to look very far.

The Wyoming Arts Council and the Wyoming Humanities Council have teamed up to chronicle "125 Days of Arts and Humanities." Why 125? Because this summer marks the 125th anniversary celebration of Wyoming statehood. The official big day is July 10. On that day, the Wyoming Territorial Prison State Historic Site holds a Statehood Celebration Day. That same weekend, you  can view Chinese artist/activist Ai Weiwei's sculptures in Jackson or groove to sounds of Marty Stuart and His Superlatives at the Big Horn Mountain Festival in Buffalo or ogle the art at Jackson Hole's art fair or talk mountains at the international climbers' festival in Lander or travel to the powwow in Ethete. Everyone should attend at least one powwow, Interesting and instructional, especially for us white folks who think we have all of the answers.

And that's just one WYO weekend.

On any weekend, you are almost certain to find a beerfest. A beer festival addresses the basic necessities of a summer weekend: craft beer, BBQ and music. Craft beer continues to make waves in WYO. We have some award-winners at Melvin Brewing/Thai Me Up in Jackson and Alpine. Snake River Brewery in Jackson has been brewing up Pako's IPA and a whole host of specialty brews for decades. They were among the first in the region to can their output. A new brewpub, Cheyenne Brewing Company, opens in early June in Cheyenne. You can get a more comprehensive list of craft brewers in Wyoming at

The Wyoming Brewers Festival is set for Cheyenne June 19-20. One of the interesting things about this festival is that its proceeds go toward rehabbing our city's historic train depot. The brewfesr culminates with a Saturday night concert by the Taylor Scott Band. Scott grew up in Cheyenne. There was a time when you could see the teen-age Scott and his band perform for free downtown. He's gone on to bigger and better things, his voice and musical skills honed from constant touring with his new band. Don't miss it.

Some final words. I've been working in the arts in Wyoming for 24 years. I continue to be amazed by the scope and variety of summer events. Many of the festivals on the list have arisen in the past 10 years. This is especially true of the brewfests, most of which feature music and some have art exhibits. Local food is a major element. At the Wyoming Arts Council, we joke about the fact that our small staff couldn't possibly attend all of the summer arts offerings. We could try, but who would be left to shuffle the state paperwork? But all of you can get out and support these events. That's what keeps these events going -- the sweat equity of local organizers. And your attendance.  

In "Interstellar," the future is as corny as Kansas in August

Imagine that humankind gives up its dreams of space travel to farm corn in Kansas full-time.

That’s the kind of boring future imagined by Christopher Nolan in the film “Interstellar.”

Humans no longer shoot for the stars. An unnamed blight is killing all the crops except corn – and even its days are numbered. Dust Bowl-style storms blot out the sun and everything (laptops included) is coated with a fine layer of dust. Unemployed astronaut Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) farms corn with his two kids, an irascible father and a fleet of robotic combines. His daughter gets into trouble at school when she writes a paper contending that the U.S. did land on the moon as “corrected” textbooks proclaim that we invented our space triumphs to bankrupt the Russkis. The new reality is not to “look to the skies” but look down at the dirt as humans try to save a planet that’s beyond saving.

A fascinating conceit for a movie. We make fun of conspiracy nuts who contend that the moon landings were invented on a Hollywood soundstage. In Nolan’s universe, scientists are the kooks. Waste money on rocket ships when the earth is dying? No sirree bob -- not with my tax money.

NASA’s scientists have been driven underground. They are busily at work launching space probes to find other habitable planets to screw up. They recruit Cooper to join other astronauts to explore those likely places to resettle the populace. As we know from the Kepler telescope observations, earth-like planets exist but they are 100-plus light years away. The solution: fire a rocket through a wormhole that has mysteriously appeared near Saturn. “They” put it there, whoever “they” are (their identity is revealed by film's end).

Will the scientists find a new home for earthlings? That’s the question that involves the viewer for most of the movie. Great special effects, as befitting the CGI era (no streams of flashing lights as in “2001”). The robots are cooler than HAL, equipped with wit and sarcasm. The main robot threatens to shoot one of the crew through the airlock as happened in the pivotal scene in “2001.”

Woven through all this are complicated human relationships. In the end, that’s what motivates humans – their relationships with others of their kind. Cooper would not leave his beloved family behind, especially his daughter Murph, unless he could save them by jaunting off into space. Turns out that Cooper’s colleague in space, Dr. Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway), has a love interest who was on an earlier space probe. It is love that motivates humans. As the Beatles sang, “love is all you need.” Not bad when you can wrap up a sci-fi epic with a sixties melody.

What else is there? What makes us distinctive among known life forms? Any big-brained chimp can plant corn or build a space ship. But it takes love for a wife or daughter or father to motivate us to reach for the stars. Humans are a mess, for the most part. But we are always offered a path to redemption that is as mysterious and complicated as the physics of a wormhole.

Love is all you need…

For Baby Boomers, the arguments go on forever

Big news from the Brookings Institution: Baby Boomers are in each other’s faces – again. According to a Brookings report:

“The primary political output of the divided boomers has been frustrating gridlock and historically low evaluations of congressional performance.”

As an early cohort Boomer (born 1950), I’ve been engaging in political arguments since my high school days. I grew up Catholic, attended Catholic school and went to mass regularly with my large family – I’m the oldest of nine children. For most of my childhood and teenhood, arguments with my parents revolved around curfews and whether rock was devil music (Parents: Hell Yes; Mike: Hell No.)  Vietnam wasn’t a hot topic – not yet, anyway. Civil rights, drugs, abortion, and all of the rest.

My first two years if college was one long political argument. I was a ROTC guy, but didn’t want to be. But I also didn’t want to go to Vietnam. I solved this by smoking pot, skipping classes and engaging in dorm-room political arguments that raged into early mornings, punctuated with long sessions of devil music. 

Over the decades, family gatherings have been filled with toasts to our continued good health and raging political arguments that may last an entire Thanksgiving weekend.  Most of my friends are boomers. Many are liberals, even here in Wyoming, but others are not. I no Longer have lunch with some conservative friends because it leads to indigestion on all of our parts.

These arguments will rage until we can rage no more. They can be traced back to the divisions caused by the Vietnam War. You might say: “That was a long time ago, guys – can’t you get over it?”

In a word, no. The divisions are deep and will only be solved by cohort replacement – death of all of the Boomers.

Go back to spring of 1970. On April 30 of that year, Pres. Nixon announced that U.S. troops would be sent into Cambodia. We had been told that Vietnam was winding down and now here was news that is was winding up instead. That led to protests in college campuses across the U.S. The most radical one was held at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, a place I had never heard of until then. On May 2, KSU students burst down the ROTC building. That was a bit off a shock to us ROTC guys at University of South Carolina. We spent quite a bit of time there. Attended naval science classes there during the week. Played basketball in its gym at night and on weekends. We assembled there in uniform weekly for our drills. Following Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968, demonstrators had trashed our ROTC building. There were no real signs of the damage when I arrived in September 1969.

Ghosts remain.

We make enormous decisions when we’re young. We hope to receive guidance from our elders. We don’t always get it, or the right kind. So we end up making decisions on our own that come back to haunt us later. Then, at 64, we have to forgive our younger selves for our ignorance and our passion. I can remember how lonely and afraid I was at 19. It’s as if it happened yesterday. I was supposed to be a man but I was just a little boy.

I was sensitive and gifted with a great memory. That helped me lead a life of empathy. It also contributed to my passion as a writer. I could have turned out otherwise. Nixon parlayed a natural distrust of pointy-headed intellectuals and anti-American college brats into an election strategy. At a NYC demonstration after Kent State, hard hats rallied for Nixon. Most of these blue collar guys were Democrats then. By the next election (1972), Vietnam and student protestors and civil rights had turned them all into resentful Republicans. Many of their sons and daughters continued this policy of resentment. Some of them remained liberals and activists who continued to march for peace and justice. After the Vietnam War and civil rights struggles came the women’s movement and LGBT rights. The anti-nuke movement and swarms of environmentalists. All of these people looking for special treatment! Reagan and his policies arose from that resentment. That, eventually, gave rise to the Tea Party, that privileged group of Boomers who are wildly indignant about nearly everything.

But for me and my fellow liberals, there were more struggles ahead, more wars to protest, more inequalities to be addressed.

So Baby Boomers continue to argue. Not sure how our descendants will see us. Hippies. The Me Generation. Warmongers. Peaceniks. The generation who brought us the Millennials with all of their faults (everybody gets a trophy!). The generation that despoiled the planet with their excesses and stood by and did nothing.

Argumentative? You bet. And don’t expect the conflict to cease as long as we have breath enough to hurl an invective.

Another frustrating go-around with the mental health care system

Dear Mental Health Care System:

We turned over our daughter to you last September. Actually, we didn't turn her over to you -- she attempted suicide and called 9-1-1 for the umnpteenth time. Once that happens too often, the system steps in and says hey maybe we should see what's wrong with this person. M spent the required six-to-eight hours in the ER before being checked into the Behavioral Health Services, dressed in size XXXL blue scrubs and assigned a room with someone who screams all night. Over the weeks, she was put on hold and had to go through a series of court hearings which we had little or nothing to do with since she is 21 and an adult. We could visit for an hour each evening. She wasn't happy but as the time marched on, through the first snow on to Columbus Day and into Halloween, we awaited word from the professionals about the mental state of our daughter and her future prospects. The State Hospital was talked about as a destination. M said she attended groups during the day and received some one-on-one counseling, but we detected no change in her behavior and outlook. The cast of characters changed on the ward. M remained. The mysterious docs put her on some heavy-duty drugs that seemed to offer some stability. Was she feeling better about herself? Did she still have thoughts of self-harm? What about her underlying psychological disturbances? Were we going to find her dead at home some day? That was one thing about BHS -- the staff kept M safe. They were and are, for the most part, caring individuals. Case managers would pull us aside and say, "She doesn't belong in here. She's a talented kid. Talkative, Funny. She doesn't walk the hall like a zombie as happens with many of the patients." She did have a zombie phase early on, when she received too much Seraquel or Latuda or Lamictal or Trazadone or Cymbalta or good ol' reliable Prozac, my drug of choice. It is tempting, I know, to dose the patients and hope they go to sleep for 20 hours instead of banging their heads against the wall while they recite "Howl" in its entirety. Some of the patients here are right off the streets or out of jail or graduates of the juvenile justice system But others? During visiting time, I see people I know. A state legislator. Local business people. A couple of wayward Democrats. They are visiting other patients, engaging them in conversations, laughing it up. At times, I've visited friends at BHS. They are no crazier than I am, than M is. I look them in the eyes and they look in my eyes and we all know what's going on. "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked...." We know that this is just a holding pen for those with mental health challenges. It is not a treatment center. The order is to stabilize the patient and get him or her off to the State Hospital, a halfway house, a homeless shelter, or home, which has its own hazards. I use "treatment center" loosely as there doesn't seem to be such a place, at least in Wyoming.

More after I catch my breath....

Meanwhile, in Liverpool, my grandfather awaits the Lusitania

In "Dead Wake," Erik Larson tells the story of the last Atlantic crossing of the R.M.S. Lusitania, Larson is a fantastic storyteller and I should have known better than to start reading his latest book before bedtime. Two hours later, I was deep into the tale but had to get some shut-eye. Tomorrow's another day....

Larson's "Isaac's Storm" was my first contact with the writer. As always, he takes a defining historic event, this time the devastating 1900 Galveston hurricane, and takes it down to sea level, seeing the cataclysm through the eyes of local meteorologist Isaac Cline.

Wasn't that a mighty storm
Wasn't that a mighty storm in the mornin'
Wasn't that a mighty storm
It blew all the people away.

Larson has a novelist's eye for detail and characterization. We all want to hear other people's stories. When we tell stories, we always tell it from a person's P.O.V. What did you do in the way, daddy? How did you two meet? Who are you named after?

How did you get to the U.S., Grandpa?

My maternal grandfather, Martin Hett, waited in Liverpool for the Lusitania to dock on May 7, 1915. Martin,. 14, held a steerage ticket for New York. One way. For the past two years, Martin had worked in the coal mines of northern England. In 1912, he left the poverty of County Roscommon in Ireland to make his own way in the world. His ultimate destination was the United States, home to an older brother and sister who earlier had fled Ireland.

Martin was not a gregarious Irishman. Gruff and hard-working, he didn't spend a lot of time telling tales. His Lusitania tale was a short one. He waited for the Lusitania to arrive in Liverpool. Pieces of it arrived, the flotsam and jetsam left after a German U-boat attack. He rescheduled his ticket for the next ship to New York. The Germans sunk that one, too. The third time was a charm.

That's it. No florid touches. No grandiose descriptions. He made it to New York and then to Chicago, where his brother got him a job working downtown's elevated trains.

As a trained reporter and researcher, I could easily trace Martin's story. And I will, one of these days. It's a fine story as is. It's as good as my paternal grandfather's story about General Pershing riding his Iowa National Guard cavalry mount during a break in the action during World War I. It's as good as my maternal grandmother's claim to have served as the first postmistress of a PO in small-town Ohio. It stacks up against my Maryland-raised paternal grandmother's claim that her mother's family was kin to Robert E. Lee of the Virginia Lees. All of these claims can be tested. That's what the Internet is for. DNA tests, too.

I'm also a fiction writer. I make stuff up. Sometimes I begin with the kernel of a story. Sometimes it's a situation or a snippet of conversation. It might be an old memory. It might be someone else's memory. I am blessed and/or cursed with wonderful recall. Thing is, when I tell a story at a family gathering, other family members remember the same situation differently. Memory plays tricks on us. Writers need fact checks if they are writing non-fiction. If writing fiction, we still need to make sure that we have the names and dates right. The Lusitania was sunk on such a day and such a time. As for the reasons why, we still have writers speculating 100 years later. And why is that? The sinking of the Lusitania is one of the reasons given for the U.S. entry into the European war two years later.

The more history I read, the less I understand. I love the stories, as does Larson. One incident leads to another. The Lusitania, the fastest ship in the Cunard Line inventory, the greyhound of the Atlantic, races toward Liverpool. Unterseeboot-20 awaits. The German submarine is captained by Walther Schweiger, his surname the same as my wife's maiden name. "No relation," she says. "How do you know?" I reply. She shrugs. Her German relatives were simple farm folk who immigrated to the U.S. before World War I. Capt. Schweiger was a well-to-do city boy from Berlin, "No relation," she said.

My grandfather must have been wrapping up his job in the mines, ready to head to America. At 14, a veteran coal miner. Imagine that. What were you doing at 14? At 14, I graduated from Catholic grade school which, in those days, was eighth grade. My only job up to that point was paperboy. I had never seen the inside or the outside of a coal mine.

Martin Hett had already left his home country of Ireland. He now was leaving his adopted country to travel to America. His adopted country was at war, as he would discover dramatically in Liverpool. That was 100 years ago next month.

Larson illustrates his tale of the Lusitania with portraits of the ship's captain and crew, and a variety if passengers. He imagines life in a crowded and dangerous submarine. He doesn't mention my grandfather awaiting the big ship to dock and take on new passengers. That's up to me, of course.

It's all in the story.

My future as a Wyoming dandelion wrangler

The last Saturday in April. Windows thrown open. Breeze riffling curtains.

I hear a lawnmower.

This is transition season between the sounds of snowblowers and those of lawnmowers. There's no clear-cut demarcation line in Wyoming. On April 17, the snowblowers were out, shooting a foot of heavy wet snow into The Big Sky. On April 25, it's lawnmower time, at least for one neighbor. I took a gander at my backyard and it could use a trim. It's unruly. Nice crop of dandelions add a yellow splash to the yard. The common dandelion, taraxacum officinale. As is true with most owners of lawns, I shout out, "Death to all dandelions."

Foolish homo sapiens. Dandelions preceded us and will no doubt outlive us. While clever humans have one way to propagate, dandelions have many. On the About Home web site, writer David Beaulieu opens his article on "how to control dandelions" with this caveat:

What makes dandelion removal from lawns so difficult? Well, dandelions enjoy the best of both worlds. Above-ground, their seeds ride the wind currents, poised to drop into the slightest opening in your lawn to propagate the species. Meanwhile, below-ground, they strike down a taproot up to 10 inches long. Pulling the taproot as a means of removal is problematic. Thick but brittle, the taproot easily fractures -- and any fraction of the taproot that remains in the ground will regenerate.

Before you get out the weed killer, you might want to contemplate some of the culinary and medicinal benefits of dandelions. From Wikipedia:

Dandelions are harvested from the wild or grown on a small scale as a leaf vegetable. The leaves (called dandelion greens) can be eaten cooked or raw. They are probably closest in character to mustard greens. Usually the young leaves and unopened buds are eaten raw in salads, while older leaves are cooked. The leaves are high in vitamin A, vitamin C and iron, carrying more iron and calcium than spinach. 

Dandelion flowers can be used to make dandelion wine, for which there are many recipes. Most of these are more accurately described as "dandelion-flavored wine," as some other sort of fermented juice or extract serves as the main ingredient. It has also been used in a saison ale called Pissenlit (the French word for dandelion, literally meaning "wet the bed") made by Brasserie Fantôme in Belgium. Dandelion and burdock is a soft drink that has long been popular in the United Kingdom. 

In Poland, dandelion flowers are used to make a honey substitute syrup with added lemon (so-called May-honey). This "honey" is believed to have a medicinal value, in particular against liver problems. Ground roasted dandelion root can be used as a non-caffeinated coffee substitute. 

Historically, dandelion was prized for a variety of medicinal properties, and it contains a wide number of pharmacologically active compounds. Dandelion is used as a herbal remedy in Europe, North America and China. "Empiric traditional application in humans of dandelion, in particular to treat digestive disorders, is supported by pharmacological investigations. It has been used in herbal medicine to treat infections, bile and liver problems, and as a diuretic. Dandelion root is a registered drug in Canada, sold principally as a diuretic. Dandelion is used in herbal medicine as a mild laxative, for increasing appetite, and for improving digestion. 

The milky latex has been used as a mosquito repellent and as a folk remedy to treat warts. A recent experiment shows that đandelion leaf extract can reduce the spread of tumor cells. Although these researches are still on beginning stages, but many scientists believe that it can be used as an effective treatment in many types of cancer. With very low or even no toxicity at all, taraxacum can be used as a drink like tea on a daily basis. 

Contrast this with the many uses of the ornamental lawn. This is my own list, compiled with the assistance of a growler of home-brewed Pissenlit:

1. Pretty to look at it.
2. Playing field for softball, croquet, volleyball, etc.
3. Good place to lie down on a summer day and stare up at the clouds.
4. Cool grass feels good between the toes.
5. Bathroom for dog.

The most dangerous trait of dandelions may be the fights they cause with neighbors. If I decide to do nothing about my crop of taraxacum officinale, you may view this as a threat to your bluegrass lawn. You would be correct, of course, and you might ask your neighbor: "What are you doing with a bluegrass lawn in the middle of the high desert of Wyoming?"

But you, of course, also have one of these lawns. I've been tempted to kill off my lawn since I inherited it when I bought my house in 2005. But if you kill off a lawn, what do you replace it with? Xeriscaping? Rock gardens? Pavement? Weeds? Vast vegetable gardens? Overflow parking lot for Cheyenne Frontier Days?

Current trends favor veggie or rock gardens over lawns. Entire urban neighborhoods from Boston to L.A. have been converted to tomatoes and cucumbers. In Denver, where I once protected my garden from invading slugs with a minefield of Miller Lite, front yards have been given over to berry thickets and twisted clumps of zucchini plants. My old Platt Park neighbors have opened farm-to-table stands on their front porches. Chickens lay eggs in the garage and Bessie the cow yields gallons of raw milk which is shipped to Wyoming along with fresh buds of Boulder's Best. All that's needed is a couple dozen cookies. Homemade, of course.

Dandelion cookies anyone?

Reflections on a new knee

Funny how surgery can throw you for a loop.

Fifteen days ago, I had a knee replaced. Pulled the 1950 chassis into the OR, went to sleep and woke up with a new part. The old knee saw me through 64 years. Not bad for original equipment. I could say that they don't make them like that any more, but that's not true. Blood and bone and sinew continues to be manufactured into humans on a daily basis. Thanks to modern medicine, the old, worn-out stuff can be replaced. Knees, shoulders, hips, heart valves -- all available for the asking and the affording.

I took the long route to replacement. Despite daily pain, I had the left knee scoped the same weekend Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. I watched round-the-clock hurricane coverage almost guilt-free. The weather was glorious in Wyoming and I would have felt awful staying inside to immerse myself in tragedy. But I had an excuse. For the next decade, I relied on exercise and Alleve and occasional steroid injections. Finally I got the word from my orthopedic doc. I had four options. I could do nothing, always a popular option for us procrastinators. I could rely on the calming ministrations of Alleve. More injections. Finally, surgery.

This is elective surgery but should not be undertaken lightly, especially if you're a heart patient, as I am. Dr. Shannon sent me to my cardiologist and my family doctor. After a battery of tests, including a stress test that wasn't too stressful, they cleared me for surgery. Meanwhile, I wrecked my car. There was no replacing parts in my Ford Fusion. Totalled. Not something you want to hear about your favorite car or favorite human. So, I got a total car replacement.

Until Jan. 2, 2013, I had been a stranger to hospitals. I was ten years old the last time I was a hospital patient. I was 62 when dragged to the ER with a heart attack. A five-decade hiatus -- not bad. My heart attack and subsequent surgeries made me comfortable with hospitals. I almost look forward to visiting them now.

Almost.

Knee replacement surgery takes less than an hour. The surgeon applies a tourniquet so staunch the blood flow. The experts work fast. Soon I'm in the recovery room wondering what the heck happened. I'm hooked up to oxygen and IV. My left leg was being flexed by a CPM. Must move that new knee -- no rest for the stunned.

So here I am -- 15 days out. The pain is lessening. Dr. Shannon's assistant removed the 32 staples that sealed the incision on April 8. Doctor's orders say I must keep moving and keep recuperating.

OK, doc.

"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. 

Loveland getting national attention for its creative placemaking projects

Chris poses with my new car as train rumbles by the Loveland Feed & Grain Building, which is being transformed into the Art @ The Feed and Grain facility. You can't see it in this pic but the new ArtsSpace live/work spaces for artists are being built on the other side of the Feed and Grain.  

SF Gate in San Francisco carried a neat article Saturday about the ArtSpace project in Loveland, located an hour south of Cheyenne on I-25. Loveland is a one-time farming community and jumping-off point to Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. The city is known for two things: it amazing array of outdoor sculpture and its dueling summer sculpture shows; Valentine's Day postal cancellations (LOVE-land -- get it?). Loveland once was home to my aunt and grandfather. Back in the eighties, my grandfather used to grabbed his cane and tottered over to the old downtown coffee shop where he used to entertain the waitresses with old war stories. My aunt was a bit concerned that Grandpa would get run over on his morning walks. But Loveland was pretty sleepy back then. As long as he didn't wander over to Eisenhower Blvd./U.S. Hwy. 34, where a steady stream of behemoth motor homes made a beeline for the national park. Grandpa lived to a ripe old age, still spinning his tales to anyone who would listen at the Denver V.A. Hospital.

Thirty years later, Loveland is a different place. The old feed and grain building along the railroad tracks is being renovated into an arts center. Next door, live-work spaces for 30 artists are under construction. The projects are being sponsored by ArtSpace of Minneapolis, the country's lone non-profit property developer. Read more about it here and here. Cheyenne is also trying to get an ArtSpace project off the ground. Read about it here -- and, if you live within 50 miles of Cheyenne, take the survey.

Chris and I visited downtown Loveland two Saturdays ago. We were on our way back from a car-buying trip to Denver. Viewed the nifty ArtSpace project on the edge of a revitalizing downtown. We dropped in on the Loveland Creatorspace on the other side of the tracks from the feed and grain. Place was humming with young people working Cad-Cam computers and 3-D printers. A machinist was making parts for some gizmo. A guy my age tutored students. Such a neat place. Creativity comes in so many forms.

Laramie County Democrats Grassroots Coalition holds elections March 30

This invitation comes from the Laramie County Democrats Grassroots Coalition:

Greetings fellow Democrats. 

If you were unhappy with the 63rd Legislature and what they did or didn't do, let's start our call to action now by attending the next LCDGC meeting on Monday, March 30, 6-8:30 p.m., in the Laramie County Public Library Rainbow Room.

Sign up or renew membership. We'll have some hors d' oeuvres and refreshments. The proposed slate of officers is as follows: Kathleen Petersen, President; Ken Trowbridge, Vice-president; Cherry Kildow, Secretary and Joe Corrigan, Treasurer. These are the suggested names, but we will be calling for nominations from the floor also. 

You must be a member of the Laramie County Democratic Grassroots Coalition to vote, so you can fill out a membership form on Monday night.

Get more info here. 

See you there. 

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.

"Depression is a beast that no one should have to face alone"

I've written about my own depression on these pages. I've written about my daughter's struggle with depression and borderline personality disorder. I've written about the suicides of veterans and family friends. I've discussed Wyoming's alarming teen suicide rate and the predilection of boys and men in The Cowboy State to turn a weapon on themselves when things go bad.

Philanthropist and arts patron Mick McMurry of Casper committed suicide this week. He was 69, five years older than me. I saw him most recently at the Governor's Arts Awards Gala in Cheyenne two weeks ago. We knew each other from afar, as people who saw each other occasionally at arts events and other gatherings. In Wyoming (pop. 580,000), many of us are acquainted. It is sad when one of those acquaintances is suffering and we don't know about it and can't do a thing about it.

This story by Tom Morton appeared Friday on the K2 Radio web site with the headline: ‘Depression Is A Beast’: McMurry Family Vows Greater Mental Health Awareness After Mick’s Death:

Mick McMurry’s mental health rapidly declined after back surgery in February, which led to his suicide earlier this week, his daughter and a family spokesman said Friday.  

“This is somebody who’d never been sick and never had taken much medicine, and it had an after-effect of some depression,” George Bryce said at a news conference at the home of Susie and Mick McMurry.  

“Depression manifests itself in many different ways, and can sneak up on you,” Bryce said. “Some people that suffer from depression have a way of hiding it. And we knew that something wasn’t quite right, and we were kind of saying, ‘is that really Mick?,’ and then the next day it was really Mick,” he said.

 --clip --  

“Depression is a beast that no one should have to face alone,” Trudi McMurry Holthouse said. 

Holthouse said her father’s decline was quick after the surgery. Her father would refer to a gathering “black cloud,” yet he hid the symptoms well, she said. 

“He’s so poised about himself and handling people,” Holthouse said. “The way I looked at it was just a change of heart like an enlightening was happening and he was coming to us with deep sorrow and grief,” Holthouse said. 

The family supported him, but that apparently wasn’t enough, she said. 

“It just got to be such a burden, he couldn’t bear it anymore, Holthouse said. “His body had never failed him like this before. He had never not had a clarity of mind, and his heart was just so heavy, but you know, we didn’t know, we didn’t know how heavy it was.” 

Bryce, a trustee with the the McMurry Foundation, said mental health long has been the step-child of the overall health care system and people need to be more aware and aware of what’s happening in others’ lives. 

The McMurry Foundation has supported mental health and depression awareness, but her father’s death will sharply change that because she wouldn’t wish that on anyone, Holthouse said. 

“You can bet there will be some things that we will now be more focused on and take note to help more people. You just never know when someone is as desperate and destitute as that,” she said. “It will be a priority.”

Read more here: Family: Post-Surgery Depression Lead to McMurry's Suicide

Let's all make a vow to improve mental health care in Wyoming. As I write this, my daughter is a patient at Wyoming Behavioral Institute (WBI) in Mick McMurry's home town of Casper. She is at WBI after spending four months at the Wyoming State Hospital and then a week at a group home in Douglas. She's been in and out of treatment centers since she was 14. She's made several suicide attempts. We want to keep her safe. We want her to get the correct treatment for her smorgasbord of mental health impairments. Not too much to ask, right?

In Wyoming, it may be.

Cheyenne Artspace wants you to take its Artist Market Survey

I've always been pleased when people who live in the far-flung regions on Wyoming refer to Cheyenne as North Denver. They mean it as a slam. I take it as a compliment.

I'm a Denver native. My parents were Denver natives. My son was born in Denver. Both sets of grandparents met, fell in love, got married, and had kids in Denver. They were from elsewhere but found themselves in the Mile High City 100-some years ago and did what humans have been doing for centuries -- they got busy being human.

But this isn't about Denver. It's about NoCoSoWy or, if you prefer, SoWyNoCo. It's about Cheyenne, Laramie, Fort Collins and Greeley. It's about the counties of Laramie, Albany, Larimer and Weld. More than 720,000 souls live in this region, far less than the millions who inhabit Colorado but more than the 580,000 or so who inhabit the Great State of Wyoming.

Some 350,000 people live within a 50-mile radius of Cheyenne. There should be 600 people in there who are interested in taking the Cheyenne Artspace Artist Market Survey that was launched on Thursday. That's the number that Arts Cheyenne and Cheyenne DDA/Main Street hope to reach in the next eight weeks. I think they can do it. I attended the survey launch party Feb. 26 at Asher-Wyoming Arts Center across from the Cheyenne railyards. A pair of engines pulled a line of graffitied railcars toward San Francisco. A teamster was wrangling a loaded semi in the parking lot. Lace-like snowflakes danced on my windshield.

Attendance was pretty good for a cold, snowy Thursday. We hung out at tables arrayed around the bare-brick second floor center. Sixty of us ate, chatted and listened to music by Todd Dereemer and his band. The stage was designed as a multi-media stage/altar for the Vineyard Church. The church moved out and the arts center moved in.

Here's how's Arts Cheyenne described this initiative:

Artspace is a non-profit consultancy and property development organization specializing in affordable housing and work space for artists and arts organizations. Artspace has developed 37 similar projects in 13 states, with a dozen more in development or under construction. A nearby Artspace project in Loveland, Colo. is slated for completion this spring.

Artspace representatives visited Cheyenne last year to tour buildings and make presentations to community leaders and artists. The visit convinced Artspace there was a market for an artist live/work project and in Cheyenne Feasibility Report recommended the survey to help determine project specifics, like space, location, and number of potential users. 

Artspace and Arts Cheyenne will work together to promote the online survey to local artists and arts organizations. A survey report will be compiled and delivered in August 2015. 

At Thursday's gathering, Shannon Joern from Artspace HQ in Minneapolis gave us an overview of the project and provided a rough timeline.

The survey may show a need for the project. It may not. That happened in Casper a few years ago. While a live/work style project wasn't in the cards, Artspace is still working with Casper on a consulting basis. Casper's core business area is booming. The Casper Artists' Guild will move into its renovated downtown warehouse on May 1. A brewpub, gelatto shop and other small businesses will occupy the other half of the warehouse. In some ways, Casper is ahead of Cheyenne when it comes to creative placemaking. If only they could get a new library....

Felicia Harmon of Loveland Artspace noted that the arts survey conducted six years ago in the south end of Colorado's Larimer County helped to "quantify and qualify the arts in our community." Even before construction started on the live/work space, Loveland Aleworks opened a block away because it "wanted to be close to another arts community," Harmon said. Across the railroad tracks from the former feed and grain depot, now the arts center adjacent to the Artspace development, is a group of new studios for mid-career artists and in the works is a new maker space. The Arts Incubator of the Rockies (AIR) has moved into the neighborhood, adding a regional arts component to the local one. AIR was based in Fort Collins but heard the drumbeat of innovation and moved south.  

My advice? If you're interested in the arts and the future of Cheyenne, take the survey. A good investment for 15 minutes. I'll wager that you spend at least 15 minutes a year listening to people say, "There's nothing to do in Cheyenne."

Well?

Clever neighborhood nicknames the key to Cheyenne's cultural renaissance

This is for all of you forward-thinking folks who believe in odd concepts. That downtown Cheyenne can be a vital place. That Cheyenne can one day be an arts mecca or, at least, an arts Vatican. That urban planning is a good thing and not a U.N. plot to destroy our Merican way of life and force us to live in Hobbit homes and ride commie bicycles to work.

Here's news from Arts Cheyenne:

The next phase of the Cheyenne Artspace initiative gets underway this week.

Cheyenne DDA/Main Street, Arts Cheyenne and Artspace will begin an eight-week-long Artist Market Survey process designed to measure interest in an artist live/work environment in the downtown Cheyenne area.

The online survey will be unveiled at a public launch event at the Asher-Wyoming Arts Center, 500 W. 15th St. in downtown Cheyenne. That will be held on Thursday, Feb. 26, 5:30-8 p.m. It includes a presentation by Artspace representatives Shannon Joern and Felicia Harmon, music by the Todd DeReemer Band and refreshments. 

Artspace is a non-profit consultancy and property development organization specializing in affordable housing and work space for artists and arts organizations. Artspace has developed 37 similar projects in 13 states, with a dozen more in development or under construction. A nearby Artspace project in Loveland, Colo., is slated for completion this spring. Artspace representatives visited Cheyenne last year to tour buildings and make presentations to community leaders and artists. The visit convinced Artspace there was a market for an artist live/work project and in its Cheyenne Feasibility Report, recommended the survey to help determine project specifics, like space, location, and number of potential users. Artspace and Arts Cheyenne will work together to promote the online survey to local artists and arts organizations. A survey report will be compiled and delivered in August 2015. 

The Cheyenne Artspace survey will open Thursday, February 26. 

The survey will be sent to artists, arts groups, arts businesses and other interested parties within a 50-mile radius of Cheyenne. That includes Laramie, Fort Collins and Greeley which, with Cheyenne, make up the Quad Cities of NoCo/SoWy. It includes all of Laramie County. If you're interested and don't get a survey, contact Arts Cheyenne. You can also come out to the launch on Thursday evening in the DeNo (Depot North) area of downtown Cheyenne.

One of the most important parts of downtown development is to create short, quirky nicknames for each district. In Denver, you have LoDo (Lower Downtown) and RiNo (River North). NYC has the famous SoHo (South of Houston) and TriBeCa (Triangle Below Canal Street) neighborhoods. I  challenge all of my readers to come up with catchy nicknames for our downtown areas. There are no prizes, but you can entertain people at future DeNo loft parties with stories of how you, almost single-handedly, brought the cultural renaissance to Chey-town back in the early part of the 21st century.

Furnace Repair 101 for English majors

When my 33-year-old furnace coughed, sputtered and died. I called an English major.

Just kidding. Our household already includes one English major -- me. Everything I know about furnaces can be put into this capital O with plenty of room left over for use in one of my short stories.

When faced with the decline and fall of our furnace, I called an expert. The machine expired on a Friday night -- of course -- but Marv's Plumbing and Heating was willing to send a crew out to take a look, with no sky-high weekend charges. The crew inspected the furnace. They pronounced a few possible problems. I stood by, nodding knowingly, icicles hanging from my mustache. They concluded that they didn't know enough about my ancient furnace to diagnose the problem accurately. They said their top-notch HVAC (that's heating, ventilation and air conditioning for you laypeople) expert could come out on Monday and take a look. I said that would be OK.

When they left, I dialed up another heating company. I asked the man on the phone if he fixed old Lennox furnaces. He chuckled and then said it would cost me $120 for him to come out and take a look on a weekend. I thanked him, hung up and waited until Monday. My wife and I huddled around the space heater as prehistoric humans once huddled around the fire. We could have repaired to a motel for the weekend. Alas, I am an English major, salary-wise, and my wife works for a non-profit org, so repairing to a motel until my furnace was repaired was beyond our means. You will notice that I employ the old-fashioned, Middle English use of "repair" (from Anglo-French repairer) to add some language playfulness to the situation. I also can diagram any of the sentences I use in this blog.

I cannot, however, diagram or repair a furnace.

Chris the HVAC guy came over on Monday. I expected a guy my age, a battle-hardened, gray-haired veteran of the furnace wars. What I got was a furnace expert from the Millennial generation. He carried all the right equipment and diagnosed the problem quickly. Along the way, he said he had graduated from a heating and air conditioning school in California. While there, he met a young lass from Cheyenne who spirited him away to Wyoming. They live in an old house with a 60-year-old furnace which he could fix, and did regularly. He said that he would get back to me with an estimate. He did. The cost was astronomical. I called around, got estimates for a new heating unit.

Randy at Mr. B's replaced my furnace a week later. Unseasonably warm weather made life without heat bearable. I came home while Randy worked in the basement. We struck up a conversation. His roots go back to Tennessee, the Civil War and beyond. We swapped family history stories. His grandfather, a B-17 pilot during World War II, was shot down and spent 18 months as a prisoner of war. His grandfather kept a journal on the backs of wrappers of the soup cans that came in Red Cross packages. Those makeshift journals survived the war and were typed up. Randy had a photocopy and gave it to me. I read it. Amazing what people can do under duress.

Also amazing are the stories people tell. You have to listen, though. I advised Randy that there were many inexpensive ways to print his grandfather's journal as a book or booklet. Thanks to technology, the jots and scribbles of our forebears can be put into forms that will last for generations. My sister Eileen is doing that with our grandmother's World War I diaries and my father's World War II letters. I told Randy to get in touch with me and I could give him some publishing guidance. That's one of my specialties at my day job.

Randy provided a tutorial on my new Daikin furnace. He gave me a booklet with instructions and detailed diagrams. The diagrams look the same to me right side up or upside down. Randy knows the meanings of manometer and total external duct static pressure. I am grateful.

My new furnace hums along.

And here I am, writing.

Great line-up of writers and editors for WWInc Conference in Cheyenne

In a Dec. 8 post, I wrote about Colorado poet Aaron Abeyta coming to Cheyenne June 5-7 as the keynoter for the Wyoming Writers, Inc., annual conference.

What I forgot to mention are the other fine writers and editors serving as faculty at the conference. Fiction writer and essayist Laura Pritchett from Fort Collins will be there, as well as Kent Nelson, a great short story writer from Salida, Colo. Editor Patrick Thomas will represent Milkweed Editions, one of Pritchett's publishers ("Hell's Bottom, Colorado") and one of America's great non-profit presses based in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Other editors include Tiffany Schofield from Five Star Publishing and Meghan Saar, senior editor of True West Magazine.

The WWInc conference launches the summer art season in Wyoming. School's out, the flowers are in bloom, and the snow is mostly over. People enjoy the outdoors all day and sip Wyoming-made IPAs on the front porch in the evening. Air Guard C-130s and Blackhawks buzz our house and the neighbor kid pops wheelies on his dirtbike. Al over the state, people dig music festivals, art fairs and brewfests. The mountains, too -- can't forget those.

At the writers' conference, I've agreed to serve as emcee for Friday and Saturday night's open readings. I enjoy the job. Each writer (me included) gets five minutes for their prose or poetry. Some accompany themselves on guitars or kazoos. When the timer sounds at the end of five minutes, the writer has to sit down. The hook comes out if they don't. You don't want to get the hook. It goes on your permanent record.

See you in June in Cheyenne.

In Wyoming, we have our own nattering nabobs of negativism

"In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4H Club -- the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history."

Former vice president Spiro Agnew said this in 1970 about enemies of the Nixon administration, which included journalists, anti-war activists and pointy-headed intellectuals. At the time, none of these categories applied to me. They do now, 45 years later. I had to grow into them.

Agnew resigned in disgrace in 1973, replaced by Gerald Ford, who had some Wyoming roots and later went on the be president when Nixon resigned in disgrace in 1974.

Agnew's alliteration can be credited to William Safire, himself a journalist, and Pat Buchanan, known mostly for being a TV talking head and a presidential candidate. They wrote speeches for the Nixon White House. These guys loved words and it shows. They reached all the way back to the utterings of Captain Haddock, a character in the Tintin comic strip (and a 2011 Spielberg film) by Belgian cartoonist Herge. Captain Haddock was known for his colorful epithets: "Billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles" and "Ten thousand thundering typhoons!" Herge knew that sailors were known for their swearing but many children read his comic strip. So he found that alliterative words strung together and said in an angry voice can have the same effect as, well, you know -- a string of obscenities. You can call your critics pansy-ass anti-war dipshits. Or you can call them nattering nabobs of negativism. Those white Southern fundies will know what you're saying, and they can still pretend in public that they don't drink and swear.

Nattering nabobs of negativism. That term could be used for extremist Republicans in our state legislature. They've never seen a new idea they liked. To them, progress is a dirty word.  Technology is almost as scary as immigrants, LGBT people and Medicaid expansion. When our civic leaders promote planning initiatives, Repub extremists see a U.N. plot.

Agnew grew up a Democrat in Maryland and became a Republican and a moderate until Nixon got his hooks into him. Agnew became a mouthpiece for the Southern Strategy, the successful attempt to turn Bible Belt Conservative Democrats into Republicans. We're still feeling its effects. Most conservative ridiculousness comes from the South and deep-red states of the West.

It's difficult to reconcile the overwhelming negativity of the conservative legislature with the positive things I see happening all over Wyoming. The arts are booming, especially art on the local scene. "Local" is the key term here. Artists and artisans are figuring out that the best way to ensure the survival of your community is to grow it from the inside out. Big Coal isn't going to save you, nor is Big Oil, Big Ag, Big Tourism, Big Biz of any kind. Wyoming has always served as energy colony to the nation. That era is over, or at least on its way out. Gigantic wind farms, such as the one planned for Carbon County, may replace gigantic open pit coal mines. But it will be community-driven initiatives that save us. A paranoid fear of the federal government will not help. Nattering nabobs of negativism breed fear and insecurity. Instead, you need to look at what makes your community unique and open the door to change. That's not easy when you live in a small town in windswept Wyoming. It's much easier to blame some outside force for the fact that your town is ready to dry up and blow away. Federal gubment. Liberals. Obama. Enviros. That kind of negativism just quickens the inevitable.

Communities need to ponder their own navels for a bit to know what makes it tick. They may even have to indulge in some planning. It isn't always pretty when people from throughout a community get together to air their ideas. But the opposite is true, too. The death of a town through neglect and attrition is an ugly thing. We keep hearing that Wyoming is aging rapidly and our kids are leaving for more thriving locales.

Nonsensical nattering negativity is not the solution. What about continuing creativity conversations?

How to turn your yard into a destination for birds, bees, and butterflies

The wind is driving me crazy. But the warm weather brings thoughts of gardening. Landscaping, too. I've been wanting to kill my lawn for years. Problem is, you have to replace that grass with something else. My small front yard would look good in rocks. My twin spruce trees rain down destruction. Those needles acidify the soil, a tree's way of banishing competition for resources. I can neutralize the soil and plant a hardier grass. Then I'd have to mow it.

There's no easy way out.

I like the idea of wildscaping, turning my lawn into a habitat for the birds and the bees and the butterflies.

Barb Gorges wrote this week in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle about a Habitat Hero workshop in Cheyenne that will address the idea of wildscaping on the high prairie. The workshop will be held March 28, 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m., at Laramie County Community College. One of the speakers is Susan Tweit, who earned her plant biology degree at UW and now lives near Salida, Colorado. Susan's a fine writer, author of "Rocky Mountain Garden Survival Guide." She also finds time to post a daily haiku and a scenic photo on Facebook. Other speakers include Jane Dorn, co-author of "Growing Native Plants of the Rocky Mountain Area," and Clint Basset, Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities water conservation specialist.

The three panelists will look at yards submitted by participants and describe ways to turn those spaces into destinations for wildlife.

I'd love to see what they recommend for my yard.

Tickets are $15. Register at Habitat Hero Cheyenne.

Can't help myself -- writing nice things about Republicans again

I can't help myself. I keep writing nice things about Republican legislators. This time it's newly-elected Sen. Stephan Pappas of Cheyenne. He's co-sponsor, with Democrat Chris Rothfuss of Laramie, of a bill (SF115) that would protect gays and transgender people from workplace discrimination. The bill passed its first Senate vote on Friday. Here's Sen. Pappas's comments about the bill in this morning's Wyoming Tribune-Eagle:

[Pappas] said Wyoming is being economically affected by not having an anti-discrimination law. Wyoming needs to show the country and the world it lives by its nickname of the Equality State, he said. 

"There's folks we could bring into Wyoming who have a lot of talent who otherwise might stay away from us if we don't protect folks from discrimination," he said.

Pappas defeated Democrat Dameione Cameron in the 2014 Senate race. I walked neighborhoods for Cameron and contributed to his campaign. He had as many Republican and Libertarian supporters as Democrats, a good thing in this red state. Not enough, though. Too many Democrats didn't vote. The campaign on both sides was noteworthy for its decorum. We know that national groups put pressure on Wyoming Republicans to not stray from the fold. In Gaylan Wright's House District 10 campaign, fliers landed in Republicans' mailboxes that said if you vote for a Democrat, your neighbors are going to know. Intimidating in a largely rural state with the highest rate of gun ownership in the nation. The same fliers from mysterious national right-wing groups probably made it to mailboxes in Senate District 7.

But Pappas and the rest of us know that Dameione Cameron is an Air Force veteran from South Carolina who stayed in Cheyenne, worked his way through law school and now has a thriving practice. We also know that he is a successful businessman, proprietor of downtown's Morris House Bistro, the best restaurant in town, known throughout the region for its Carolina low-country cuisine. If my knees were in better shape, I would walk 100 miles to sit on MHB's patio on a summer evening, eat shrimp and grits, wash it down with a cold beer. Almost like Myrtle Beach -- without the mosquitoes. Fortunately, I work only a block away from MHB and can saunter on over for lunch any time.

Did I mention that Mr. Cameron is gay? Must have forgotten. It hardly seems worth mentioning, Cameron being such an outstanding member of the community and all. To get down to basics, he's one hell of an economic generator, if you count both of his businesses and the people he employs. A homeowner, too, with his partner Troy Rumpf. A taxpayer, too. Stephan Pappas knows this. Sen. Pappas, an architect and USAF veteran, lives in Cheyenne and probably knows a few other people in the LGBT community. Whatever his reasons, Pappas is doing the right thing while many of his Republican colleagues dwell in the dim past.

We'll see how far this anti-discrimination bill gets. SF115 faces two more votes in the Senate and then moves over to the House. Let's see what our Equality State legislators do. Expect fireworks and crazy talk. But also some pleasant surprises.  

Wearing red -- and happy to have the past two years

Wear Red Day for heart health. 

A new study shows that many people would prefer to die sooner than take a daily pill. From the Atlantic Magazine Online:

In a study published earlier this week in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, a journal of the American Heart Association, researchers from the University of North Carolina and the University of California, San Francisco, surveyed 1,000 people on what they would be willing to give up to avoid taking a daily pill—one without any cost or side effects—to protect heart health. 

Here’s what people were willing to trade: 

• More than 20 percent said they would pay $1,000 or more; around 3 percent said they’d pay up to $25,000.

• Around 38 percent of respondents said they’d be willing to gamble some risk of immediate death; around 29 percent of the people surveyed said they’d accept a small (lower than 1 percent) risk, while 9 percent of them said they’d accept a one-in-10 chance of immediate death.

• When the question changed from risk of death to certain death, around 30 percent said they would trade at least a week off their lives, and 8 percent were willing to give up a full two years.

Eight percent were willing to give up a full two years?

Yikes. I wonder how I would have answered had I been surveyed three years ago? Would I gamble some dough, risk immediate death or trade a couple of years?

Not sure. Maybe I’d accept a small risk of immediate death (less that 1 percent) or trade at least a week. That is a bit unreal when you haven’t faced death, especially cardiac death. Once you do, well, it becomes all too real.

I experienced a heart attack two years, one month and 18 days ago. I had a pain in my stomach. I saw the doctor but he didn’t know what it was. Two weeks later I was in the ER with congestive heart failure. My life was saved, through little effort on my own. I received a stent at the juncture of my Lateral Anterior Descending artery or LAD. Its nickname is “The Widowmaker.” A few months later, I returned to the hospital for an ICD, a combination defibrillator/pacemaker. In the two weeks that I didn’t get help for my heart, it sustained blood loss and permanent damage. I now take ten pills a day to forestall another heart attack. Is it a pain in the ass? Yes. Do I wish I didn’t have to take them? Yes. But do I want to live two more years? I already have….

Today is #WearRedDay for heart health. I am wearing red. I took my pills this morning. I went to work today and tonight, my wife and I are going to a party to see our friends, many of whom visited me in the hospital two years ago. I am glad I had those two years. I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

This week in the legislature: Magna Carta Day and mandatory neon outfits for cyclists

This summer, we're going to party like it's 1890.

Doesn't it always seem like 1890 around here, especially when the legislature comes to town? But this summer is special because we're celebrating the 125th anniversary of Wyoming statehood. On July 10, 1890, a bunch of guys sat down in Cheyenne and agreed to join the union, a move they've been regretting ever since.

Darn federal gubment! Freedom!

We may also be partying 1215-style on June 15 with Magna Carta Day. House Resolution 10 introduced this week by Rep. Jaggi (he's one busy bee)  and other forward-thinking legislators think it's high time we recognize those ticked-off English barons that drafted and signed this historic document.

Be it resolved… That Wyoming celebrate June 15, 2015, the 800th anniversary of the day the Barons of England accosted King John at Runnymede in the defense of their Liberties, as Magna Carta Day. That Wyoming encourage the teaching of the lessons of Magna Carta within and outside the schools of the state. That Wyoming defend its Liberties with the same fierce steadfast determination that the Barons of England showed at Runnymede.

I'm as supportive of due process and as against taxation without representation as the next guy. But these feudal barons and their offspring were the same genocidal madmen who attempted to wipe out my Irish forebears. So excuse me if I don't wish everyone a Happy Magna Carta Day on June 15.

I also have to wonder about teaching the lessons of the Magna Carta in the same schools that forbid the teaching of evolution and climate change, and -- if Republican legislators have their way -- kindergartners soon will be packing heat. And what about legislative time management? Is a Magna Carta bill the best use of time during a 40-day legislative session?

Since I vote and work to elect legislators I can believe in, I earn the right the criticize. Conservatives might argue that bills calling for bicycle safety, marijuana decriminalization and workplace protections for the LGBTQ community are a waste of time. And don't get us started on Medicaid expansion!

Those bills are have one thing in common -- they look to the future rather than the past. The bipartisan bike safety bill (SB103) was introduced by Casper Republican Rep. Tim Stubson, someone whom I have criticized on these pages in the past. A bicyclist was killed by a motorist in downtown Casper last year. Other Casper cyclists have been injured while commuting or just taking a ride around town. We also hear reports from around the state of cyclists being targeted by disgruntled motorists in coal rollers.

Take a minute to ponder this. More people than ever ride bikes. The world celebrates the era of alternative transportation: Cycling, mass transit, electric cars. I saw an online ad for the Storm electric bike (ebike) the other day. Ebikes run on pedal power and, when you're tired or need an extra push, battery power. Top speed is 20 mph, which is much better than this cyclist can do on a flat surface. A Storm ebike costs $500, which is twice my car payment and equal to the cost paid by many truck owners. And just think of the fuel savings.

Wyoming draws cycling tourists. No surprise, with all of the cool scenery one can encounter across the state. I can't take a summer car trip without encountering a cyclist or a group of them. If those cyclists had the feeling that Wyoming was a particularly dangerous place for them, they would take their cycling and their money to some other scenic Rocky Mountain state. To Colorado, for instance, which deserves its bike-friendly reputation. Remember that tourism is a huge economic generator for Wyoming. Teton County and the national parks are the number one destination. My home of Laramie County is number two. Most tourists travel by car/truck/RV. Teton County is studying ways to draw tourists that don't want to be burdened with driving their car from Des Moines or renting one on site. We should be doing the same in Laramie County.

Thanks to Rep. Stubson for SB103. And to co-sponsors Sen. Charlie Scott (R-Casper) and Laramie Democrats Sen. Rothfuss and Rep. Pelkey.

Unfortunately, another bill was introduced this week. It has to do with cycling, but it's really an anti-cycling bill. It stipulates that all cyclists must wear 200 square inches of reflective neon and have flashing lights at the rear of their bikes. The strangest part is this: cyclists must carry a government ID card with them at all times. The bill is another attempt by conservatives to paint Wyoming as a crazy place. Not surprisingly, it was sponsored by House Reps. David Northrup, Donald Burkhart, Hans Hunt, Allen Jaggi (him again), Jerry Paxton and Cheri Steinmetz -- all rural Republicans. I have a feeling that these House Repubs picked up this gem from those Koch Brothers-funded ALEC confabs where lawmakers are wined and dined and programmed with loony legislation.

Here's more from an article in the Jackson Hole News & Guide:

“This is a deeply concerning bill,” Wyoming Pathways Executive Director Tim Young said. “We will not be in support of this. 

"Generally speaking, this is an inappropriate way to look at bike legislation in Wyoming,” he said.

Young said he wondered whether legislators would also force pedestrians to carry identification and wear neon clothing while on public thoroughfares.

One doesn't see many pedestrians walking along the state's rural highways. One doesn't see many pedestrians walking city streets. But maybe we would if neon clothing became a Wyoming fashion statement.

I look forward to walking The Neon Streets of Cheyenne. There might even be a song in there somewhere.

Ireland's Great Hunger lives on

"Skibbereen 1847" by Cork artist James Mahony (1810–1879), commissioned by The Illustrated London News, 1847

I have never been hungry enough to eat grass or old shoe leather.

Ireland's Great Hunger starved a million Irish and sent many packing for America. Some starved and sickened along the way in the so-called coffin ships. Those left at home ate anything they could find. Many starved anyway.

Our English overlords stood by and did nothing. They did import corn to Ireland but none of the starvelings could afford it. Some relief came from unexpected sources. Knowing what it was like to starve on "The Trail of Tears," Cherokees in Oklahoma sent food to the Irish. The Turks did too.

A mythology builds up around any earth-shaking event that causes the diaspora of hundreds of thousands of people. The Irish have immortalized the Great Hunger in song and story and art. Family stories, too. My own Shay relatives left Ireland for the U.S. in 1847. They farmed in New England and then moved to Iowa, where they prospered. They may have hungered and thirsted through the years, when drought and pestilence visited the Iowa City area. But they were never threatened with starvation of the type they faced in Ireland.

Even amidst prosperity, does the Great Hunger linger within us?

According to an article on the Irish Central web site:

Irish historian Oonagh Walsh believes that the Great Hunger triggered a higher rate of mental illness among later generations, including both those who stayed in Ireland and those who emigrated. 

She believes that severe nutritional deprivation between 1845-1850 caused "epigenetic change." Here's more:

Epigenetics is the study of changes in gene expression. These do not necessarily involve changes to the genetic code, but the effects may persist for several generations. Walsh estimated that the impact from epigenetic change from the Great Hunger lasted for a century and a half.  

Walsh’s research is still at an early stage, but she expects to see a correlation between the high rates of mental illness and the effects of maternal starvation. She also thinks there may be a connection between the Great Hunger and cardiovascular and other diseases.

Just think about this a bit. We all know that mental and physical traits can "run in a family." Red hair, height, odd behavior. Remember Aunt Clara? We had to keep her in the attic -- she thought she was the Queen of Sheba.

What if our genes, damaged by cataclysmic hunger, contributed to Aunt Clara's delusions?

Researchers have been busily studying the causes of mental illness for generations. Genetics play a role. Trauma, too, as in PTSD. And what is starvation if not a major trauma, as important as war or torture or physical abuse?

Walsh has also researched the dramatic growth in Irish lunatic asylums in the 19th century. The first was built a dozen years before the potato famine. But it continued well into the latter part of the century, along with increased patient populations. They included those with behavior problems as well as "lunatics at large." Families stashed their problem children in the asylums; Aunt Clara too. Husbands stashed inconvenient wives in asylums, freeing them to marry a newfound love interest.

The U.S. built asylums, too. Many are now closed, the sites of horrendous treatment of patients, torture and murder. Others grew up as medications and treatment options improved.

The Wyoming State Hospital in Evanston opened in 1887, three years before statehood, and was first called the Wyoming Insane Asylum. I don't have to imagine "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" scenes or strait jackets and padded rooms and lobotomies -- I'm sure all of that happened there as it did at other asylums, from Ken Kesey's Oregon State Hospital to the notorious Trenton State Hospital in New Jersey. Society's cast-offs are always treated badly.

We are now enlightened. We have super-drugs for the mentally ill. Our treatment has gone beyond shock therapy and mind-numbing drugs. We are stardust. We are golden.

If only that were true.

Anyone with a mentally ill family member knows the challenges of finding the right treatments. This isn't a problem faced only by rural states such as Wyoming. It is a problem everywhere.

It is refreshing to see researchers such as Oonagh Walsh dig deeper into the origins of mental illness. Perhaps my grandfathers' depression was due to being shell-shocked in World War I. Perhaps it was part of the epigenetic change inflicted on his Irish forebears. That doesn't help him, as he's long gone. But it might help me, an aging Irish-American who also suffers from depression.

It may also help my daughter, who's had major struggles with her mental illness since she was 14. She now is a patient as the place formerly known as the Wyoming Insane Asylum. Her parents are now trying to help her in any way we can. Some of that is practical parental involvement. We are strong advocates for our daughter. Knowledge is part of that. We more we know, the better.

And this is what feeds my imagination: the vision of a starving mother in 1847 scouring the fields of County Cork for a few grains of barley. Her future depends on it. She may starve, but the memory of it will last for generations.    

I know what kind of state I want to live in

One of the highlights of Gov. Matt Mead’s State of the State speech on Jan. 13 was his proposed initiative called Wyoming Grown. It was prompted by the fact that Wyoming is “losing 60 percent of our greatest talent” when young people educated in Wyoming move elsewhere after graduation. Gov. Mead wants to “keep kids in Wyoming after graduation.” So, Wyoming Grown will recruit those “who have left the state and bring them back."

He was skimpy on the details, which I’m sure he supplied those in his budget request for this program. But it will include a new web page by the Tourism Office. It will strengthen businesses that will be able to hire these young people in Cheyenne and Casper, Lusk and Meeteetse.

Concluded the Governor: “Let’s open the door to get our young people home.”

Kudos to Gov. Mead. This goes along with his description of Wyomingites as builders, not hoarders. We all want to build the state, not see it wither away. The state is aging rapidly and we need new blood desperately. This Republican Governor is big on technology and infrastructure and new jobs. He promotes local economic development, which has led to a downtown resurgence in Rawlins, Casper, Rock Springs, Lander and many other communities. He’s also a supporter of the arts and creativity. 

I cannot speak for young people as I’m not young myself. I am a parent of two Millennials, one of whom – my son Kevin -- lives and works elsewhere, namely Tucson, Arizona. What would lure him back to Wyoming? Well, he likes the outdoors. He was a Boy Scout and is a dedicated camper and rock climber. His parents and sister live in Wyoming and we would like to see him more often.
 

But Tucson is a city with a lively arts and cultural scene. Kevin is involved in theatre and music and also is a dedicated gamer. He’s a big fan of public transportation due to the fact that he’s never had a very reliable car and, well, insurance and car payments really add up. Tucson has light rail and a marvelous bus system. A university with lots of cultural offerings. It’s warm, too. His first summer there he described as “hotter than the surface of the sun.” But he’s acclimated and, like most Tucsonans, ventures out in July only under cover of darkness. But January, well, that’s when his Wyoming family visits.

Wyoming really can’t compete with the lights of the big city. How you gonna keep ‘em down on the ranch after they’ve seen Portland and Austin and Nashville?  See, we’re not even talking about huge metropolises such as New York and L.A. It’s the urban mix that draws young people. If they aren’t progressive when they arrive, they tend to get that way by mixing with folks that aren’t like them. Different genders. Sometimes people who are bending the genders and shattering the status quo. Different ethnicities. People from different parts of the country – different parts of the world. To be a part of the urban mix, you need tolerance and flexibility. Curiosity, too, a sense that you’d like to know what makes your neighbors tick. Sure, you can say the same thing about city folks coming to Wyoming. They have to be flexible and respectful when living and working in a more conservative climate. Some are better with that than others.

Wyoming has one big problem that won’t go away anytime soon. Some of its residents think that they exist in a “Wyoming is what America was” bubble. Right-wing loonies air their prejudices and grievances as if it were 1915 rather than 2015. We live in a world when the dumbest ideas hit the airwaves with lightning speed. Witness how much fun the talk show hosts had with all of the many nonsensical Republican responses to Pres. Obama’s recent SOTU speech.

So, when a conservative legislator proposes an anti-gay piece of legislation, the news travels far and wide. Young people, the heaviest users of smart phones and social media, are privy to the news immediately and spread the word about those dumbbells in Wyoming. I don’t like it when the legislators in my adopted state get painted as wackos.

But if the shoe (or boot) fits….

So, our Republican legislators promote a “right to discriminate against people we don’t like” (HB83) bill and an “Agenda 21 is a U.N. commie plot” (HB133) bill. Rep. Jaggi from Uinta County speaks like a bit player in an old Hollywood western when he refers to Native Americans as “Injuns” in a public meeting. This makes me wonder if Republicans really care about bringing our young people back to the state. Maybe they are angling for a certain type of young person, one who is already a diehard Republican, watches only Fox News and already believes that it is OK to discriminate against those who don’t think/act/look like you do.

I don’t think that’s what Governor Mead has in mind. He is a college graduate, earning everything up to his J.D. His wife, our First Lady, is a college graduate and a strong supporter of education. They have two children who will go to college and may be the future leaders of the state just as Gov. Mead’s mother and grandfather were leaders. I think that Gov. Mead is thinking ahead to the kind of Wyoming he wants to leave to his children. That’s not the regressive version of the state that the extremist members of his own party envision, if it’s appropriate to use that term. To envision, you need a vision, not just a tendency to dig in your heels and say no to all change and all progress.   

I don’t know if my children or grandchildren will live and work in Wyoming.

I do know what kind of state I want to live in.