Catching up on my reading -- D.H. Lawrence's "Sons and Lovers"

The most recent book I've read by D.H. Lawrence is "Sons and Lovers."

It's the only Lawrence novel I've read. Ever.

Not sure how I missed them. Although he published this and two other books prior to The Great War, his reputation was mostly made in the 1920s. He was in the midst of the "Lost Generation" of writers shaped by the war. He and his German-born wife, Frieda, were booted out of Cornwall in England for allegedly signalling German submarines. Lawrence is is mainly known in the U.S. for his time with Georgia O'Keefe and Mabel Dodge Luhan and writers such as Aldous Huxley in a ranch near Taos, N.M. He is the author of "Lady Chatterley's Lover," banned in the U.S. and U.K. in 1928. The first unexpurgated edition came out in 1960, 30 years after Lawrence's death from TB.

As spawn of the 1960s, I am surprised that I never read -- or tried to read -- "Lady Chatterley's Lover." Wasn't on the shelves in any of my K-12 schools, public or Catholic. It may have been in the public library but librarians of the day were on the lookout for impressionable teens attempting to check out smutty books. Guardians of the Book Galaxy.

Published in 1913, "Sons and L:overs" tells the story of Paul Morel as he comes of age in the Nottinghamshire coal-mining district. That's what initially attracted me to the book -- the coal-mining setting. But, unlike the film "How Green Was My Valley" (saw it on TCM last week) very little time is spent on the coal miners and their daily grind. Instead, we are absorbed in Paul's tale, almost absorbed as Paul is in his young life. Nothing new for a coming-of-age tale. But Paul's mother has a smothering presence. She's not evil but has transferred her attentions from her nogoodnik husband to her sons. When eldest son William dies, Paul is left holding the bag. He is talented, too, a young man who loves to paint and who knows his poetry. He is not destined for the mines, but something greater, and his mother intends to help him along the way.

That's the "sons" part of the tale. The "lovers" are Paul's, the innocent Miriam and the worldly Clara. You'd think an artistic chap such as Paul would have fled his one-horse town for life in London or Paris. But his mother keeps him close to home into his twenties.

I admire Lawrence's skill as a novelist. It's as plain a plot as any in literature. Will the guy flee his mother? Will he get the girl? I admit that the first 100 pages were hard-going. The pace of a 104-year-old novel is slower, as were the times. Lawrence takes his time noticing his home town of Eastwood, renamed Bestwood in the book. The flowers of summer, dazzling sunsets, people's feelings. We get inside Paul's head as he tries to determine the course of his life. Sensual -- but not sexual -- scenes power the novel. And leads me to rethink my own writing, more influenced by Raymond Carver than Henry James. Minimalist. Funny thing is, Lawrence was shocking in his time. His books were banned and so were the paintings, which were labeled as part of the daring Expressionist movement.

One of these best sensual sequences is when Paul accompanies Clara to the theatre. She wears a daring frock (daring for the time, anyway). "The firmness and softness of her upright body could almost be felt as he looked at her." (page 360).

'And he was to sit all evening beside her beautiful naked arm, watching the strong throat rise from the strong chest, watching the breasts under the green stuff, the curve of her limbs in the tight dress."

Something is going on on the stage but Paul hardly noticed. Clara and her parts "were all that existed."

The priggish Paul is enraptured. The foreplay goes on for quite a few pages until Paul and Clara finally get together in her bed. Sort of.

It's instructive to notice the shift in perception from 1907 rural England to 2017. Today, foreplay takes many fewer than 200 pages. Two-hundred characters, sometimes.

I did not find any graphic sex scenes in the edition I read, issued by Barnes & Noble Classics. It was published in 2003, so the scenes initially cut from the novel and returned in 1993, should be in there. Just for kicks,

This brings us the issue of censorship. That novel you are reading -- what edition is it? Was it cut up into a more acceptable shape before being published? To return to Carver, I've read varying versions of his stories. Apparently, his editor Gordon Lish had his own vision of Carver's stories. In our modern era, how much editing should authors allow? How much should they do?

I have found a few of Lawrence's public domain stories on the Internet. I will read some, especially those written during and after the war. One of my motives for reading Lawrence is to get a feel of the era, which is the setting of my novel. I've read quite a bit of nonfiction about The Great War and its aftermath. In some ways, fiction can do a better job of recreating the era. Good examples abound. "All Quiet on the Western Front." "The Good Soldier Schweik." "Farewell to Arms." And there are the British war poets who had a great influence on how the war was perceived by other generations. Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. "Dulce et Decorum Est.."

"Wintry Peacock" is a malevolent short story by Lawrence. While some of the wording is dated, its theme of betrayal is as current as today's headlines. Here was a writer not Flannery O'Connor who featured peacocks in a story. Lawrence portrays the peacocks as dumb as stumps, more dim than the Morel family, which is experiencing a drama of its own making.  His style reminds me of that of his friend, E.M. Forster. See "The Other Side of the Hedge."

That is what aging provides, some perspective of what came before. I had good schooling. I have been filling in its blanks for 50 years. Maybe that's one of the positive aspects of the love of books and reading and writing. University liberal arts majors are belittled and, at some schools, discontinued. But my knowledge of books powered a career and sustains me in my retirement. I continue to discover treasures of other ages.

I just started "Three Soldiers" by John Dos Passos, yet another complicated writer of the Lost Generation. The writer was an ambulance driver in the war. I bought a slightly-used 1921 edition of the book for four bucks at an estate sale of a veteran of another war. The book still has the sleeve that housed the borrowers' card at the Merced (Calif.) Free Library. A date stamp on the title page reads March 21, 1922.

I hold history in my hands. I read.

Artist Al Farrow repurposes the world's armaments to produce "Divine Ammunition"

From "Divine Ammunition" at the UW Art Museum: Al Farrow, Trigger Finger of Santo Guerro, guns, gun parts, bullets, shell casings, steel, glass, bone, crucifix, 19 x 16 x 16 inches, 2007. Photo: Michael Shay

Here's the opening salvo of my Dec. 19 post on Wyofile's Studio Wyoming Review:

If I was a gun guy instead of an arts guy, I might have been at the gun show at the Laramie Fairgrounds. It’s Christmas, right, and all of us deserve a Glock in our stocking. 

But I was a few miles away at the University of Wyoming Art Museum viewing “Divine Ammunition,” an exhibit of the work of California artist Al Farrow. The work was selected from private and public collections. There were guns galore in the Friends and Colorado galleries. Matching handguns serve as a cathedral’s flying buttresses. Rifles frame the door of a synagogue splashed in blood-red. The very real skull of an imaginary saint sits in a reliquary fashioned from guns and shell casings. 

Happy holidays, ya’ll.

Read the rest here. 

An October column about writing reappears on the Writing Wyoming blog

I guest-posted today on the Writing Wyoming blog. One of the editors, Cheyenne writer Lynn Carlson, asked to re-post a column in October and I had nearly forgotten that until a link popped up today on Facebook. You may have read it a few months ago, but if you missed it, here it is: "We ask the old question: why do writers write?" Thanks, Lynn.

Flashback: How the LSD revolution almost came to Wyoming

Always on the lookout for mentions of Wyoming on the Internet. This one is a chapter in Wyoming counterculture history.

An Oct. 31 Westword story by Chris Walker was headed "Acid Trip: Denver's secret LSD labs fueled the psychedelic revolution."

It  tells the story of Tim Scully, LSD-maker in the 1960s. Scully spent time in a federal penitentiary for making and distributing LSD. He and his pals had two labs in Denver. They were discovered, but in a fluke, Scully didn't  serve time for his Mile High City transgressions. He later got busted in California and served hard time.

In November of 1967, Scully and his childhood friend and drug partner Don Douglas scouted the West for places safer than Berkeley, a counterculture hotbed in the sixties.

From the Westword article:

He convinced Douglas to join him on an interstate scouting trip. They managed to evade the feds and travel to Seattle, where they bought a used station wagon that they used to drive east through Washington into Idaho and Wyoming. The pair had envisioned setting up a lab in an extremely rural, isolated location, but they realized that wouldn’t work for two reasons. 

“In Wyoming, we learned that cowboys don’t like hippies. We stuck out like sore thumbs,” says Scully.  

The other reason? To run certain processes in the lab, they’d need plentiful supplies of dry ice — which were only available in big cities. So Douglas and Scully turned south, setting their sights on Denver.

The article doesn't mention just where in Wyoming cowboys hated hippies and there was a shortage of dry ice. Any guesses? Could be almost anywhere, I suppose. It must haven't occurred to the duo that two longhairs settling in any small town was sure to cause reactions from the populace, since nothing that happens in a small community goes unnoticed and gossiped about.

Small town resident #1: What do you suppose those two longhairs are doing in that house over on Elm Street?
Small town resident #2: Making some bitchin' batches of pure Orange Sunshine, most likely.
Small town resident #1: That's a relief. Thought they might be plotting the overthrow of the U.S. government.
Small town resident #2: That's the job of the John Birch Society. They meet over at the Grange Hall.

Hitchhikers cruising through Wyoming in the late 60s and early 70s heard stories of cowboys picking up a hitchhiker and taking him into Cheyenne for a mandatory haircut. I heard the story in 1972 when hitching rides in Wyoming. I also have heard the tale since moving to Cheyenne in 1991. It could be one of those Hitchhikers' Myths, kind of like Urban Myths but passed along by hitchers of yore. I heard many similar stories during my years on the road. Grisly murders in New Mexico. "Easy Rider"- style shootings in Georgia. Rapes and near-rapes everywhere.

I only experienced a few scary episodes, most in Nevada for some odd reason. Rural Nevada can be a lot like Wyoming, only hotter. .Rednecks are rednecks, I guess, but I got rides from some in my longhair days.

What a long, strange trip it's been....

A final note on LSD. Microdosing LSD is a hot topic. This from Business Insider:

LSD microdosing has emerged as Silicon Valley's favorite illegal drug habit, with engineers, programmers, writers, and artists sharing their stories of the practice in numerous blogs and outlets, including the New York Times. Many people say it improves their concentration or creativity; others say they use it to help treat symptoms of mental illnesses like depression and anxiety. 

And this:

Paul Austin, 27, bills himself as a professional microdosing coach. After personally experimenting with the regimen — which involves taking tiny, "sub-perceptual" doses of LSD or another psychedelic for up to 7 months — Austin said he was inspired to share what he learned with the world. He now offers 30-minute Skype microdosing "consulting" sessions for $127 through his website, The Third Wave

As a writer with depression, I may have to explore this further. Just as an academic exercise, of course.

Wyoming wingnuts bash gays at legislative meeting in Sundance

I've often remarked on the cruelty of the current crop of conservatives. Whether it's Trump picking on people of color to Congress shafting the poor and middle class, the right's raison d'etre is inflicting cruelty on people, usually those least likely to be able to respond.

But the right-wingers who showed up in Sundance to bash gays has to be a new low. Why? They did it with Rep. Cathy Connolly in the room. Connolly of Laramie was the first openly-LGBT state legislator here in the Equality State. She drafted a bill, along with co-sponsors (and Republican moderates) Sen. Cale Case and Rep. Dan Zwonitzer, to make our state's legalese more gender-neutral.

The wingnuts, spurred on by local evangelicals and the Arizona-based right-wing group Alliance Defending Freedom, showed up to spew their hatred at the Nov. 20 Joint Corporations, Elections, and Political Subdivisions Committee hearing in Sundance. Crook County boasts some of the nicest people in Wyoming. Venomous creeps, too, it seems, although some came from neighboring Campbell County. 

I will let Wyofile tell the story, as the reporter did a fantastic job tracking down the creepy proceedings. 

Here is the link to the Wyofile story by Andrew Graham. 

The stuff that dreams are made of

What do you dream of, Laramie County?

That's the question asked in the lead editorial in the Nov. 19 Wyoming Tribune-Eagle.

Good question. Dreams should be big. Write the Great American Novel. Cure cancer. Become president (please, someone, anyone but T).

What is my vision for Cheyenne?

Develop downtown into a destination that reflects the soul of Cheyenne. This place is called The Magic City of the Plains because it is located in what used to be known as the middle of nowhere. Ask any twenty-something and they will say it still is the middle of nowhere. They will wave at you as they depart for Fort Collins or Boulder or Denver.

I am not advocating for some fake Wild West town such as the frontier village out at CFD Park. Cheyenne was founded in 1867 when the West was wild. It experienced its heyday in the 1880s, when Cheyenne was a beacon of civilization among the frozen wastes.

We are 150 years old now and it's time to act like a grown-up. Let's create a downtown that reflects the needs and tastes of 2017 and beyond. Breweries and coffee shops are great -- both beverages make the world go around. We also need reasons to shop downtown. People will then want to live downtown, sacrificing their suburban spread for a two-bedroom condo above a busy art gallery or bistro. To make that leap, people need a solid infrastructure within a walkable distance. They need reasons not to have their Nissan Sentra parked within feet of their front door.

Shelter. Food. Culture. What comes first? Downtown boasts galleries and shops but we need more. We need a grocery store. A wide range of activities to attend. We need more venues for those activities.

I know that Cheyennites are tried of comparisons with Colorado cities. But some examples are worth noting. Old Town Fort Collins was not always the community's busiest hub. When I lived there in the late 1980s, it was just showing signs of life -- Foothills Mall was the happening place. A few years back, developers tore down the semi-deserted mall and created a pseudo-Old Town in its place. The same sort of transformation is happening at our mall. The newest tenants occupy outward-facing stores to give it that downtown look. Now that Sears is gone, the mall has a lot of space to fill. Let's hope the owners thing creatively.

The Denver Center for the Performing Arts (DCPA) was not an instance success when it opened. Its main promoter, Donald Sewall, was called names and tumbleweeds blew through the deserted DCPA plaza. Same with the 16th Street Mall. On a typical Saturday night, the mall was almost deserted because there were no reasons to wander downtown. In 1979, when I worked the night shift at The Denver Post at 15 and California, there were only a handful of dining experiences, most of them bars that also served greasy-spoon fare (Sportsman's, Duffy's), one lone Burger King and the Mercy Farm Pie Shop. A myriad of places that served locally-sourced ingredients in small portions at high prices was a thing of the future. Beer selections were Bud and Coors.

What happened? A population boom fueled by legal pot and a rootless generation looking for The Next Best Place. Jobs, too. Professional sports teams and the arts jockeyed for position. Downtown won with its many venues. The DCPA was deserted no more. When Chris and I go to touring productions there, I always run into people from Cheyenne. They would avoid Denver traffic if only The Book of Mormon played closer to home, say, at the Cheyenne Civic Center. We just don't have the facilities or the numbers here. We need more seats. More butts in the seats.

Big dreams come with a population increase. No way around it. Cheyenne is already the largest city in the state. Laramie County will be the first to reach a population of 100,000 some time in the next decade. We already are home to one in six Wyomingites.

It's not as if there isn't hope in Wyoming downtowns. You can see successful examples of thriving Main Streets in Laramie, Lander, Sheridan (its new WYO Performing Arts and Education Center is a gem), and Casper. You don't need a total eclipse to have people wandering downtown Casper. Its David Street Station, reminiscent of Cheyenne Depot Plaza, has sparked a downtown renaissance in what's called the Old Yellowstone District. Breweries, bistros, a performing arts center. Outdoor summer concerts on the plaza. What did Casper do that Cheyenne didn't?

I have no solutions. Lots and lots of ideas, but those are a dime a dozen. What we need is imagination and investment, two things sorely lacking in this burg.  The Dinneen family and the City of Cheyenne collaborated on the transformation of the former Dinneen auto dealership. It'snow home to businesses and one of the best restaurants in town -- the Rib & Chop House. It's a small chain, but it has invested heavily in Cheyenne, also spawning a brewpub to full the empty retail space in the historic Depot. My one-time colleague at the Wyoming Arts Council, Camellia el-Antably, and her partner, Mark Vinich, rehabbed an old building downtown and now it's home to Clay Paper Scissors Gallery and its fine arts shows. The arts play a crucial role in any dream of future prosperity. Arts Cheyenne gives us an organization and an events calendar to rally around.

Just a couple of examples. If I had the money to invest, I would put it into downtown ventures or the nascent West Edge Project. It's going to happen. The only questions is WHEN?

Forget Christmas -- 'tis health care insurance selection season

It's that time again.

Christmas season. Or holiday season if you are a damn liberal like me who doesn't believe in saying "Merry Christmas" to every Tom, Dick, and Donald I meet. I even like the new Starbuck's Christmas cup that shows two cartoon women holding hands, at least that's how paranoid Evangelicals see it.

More importantly, 'tis the season to Make A Decision on Health Care for 2018. The U.S., in its wisdom, has the most screwed up health care system in the world and bound to get worse with Trumpists making the rules. Our family has a triple layer of coverage from private insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid. Cash, too, in the form of deductibles and co-pays.

For most of us out here who live amongst Trump voters in Flyover Land, the situation is made worse by indecision. The Republicans sabotage Obamacare in any way possible because they want to totally wipe out any sign of an African-American president. Trump's Ministry of Truth will soon create an America that is all-Trump all of the time.

Meanwhile, the American people are left in limbo. Will the ACA remain or will it be dismantled bit by bit since Repubs can't seem to muster enough votes to kill it outright? This affects millions.

I am 66 and my wife Chris is 61. I am on Medicare and she is not, covered instead by my allegiance to CIGNA via Wyoming State Government, my former employer. I pay $1300 a month to keep my CIGNA policy for me, Chris and daughter Annie, who is younger than 26, the cut-off date in family insurance created by Obamacare. For me, Medicare is primary and CIGNA is secondary. \Once I meet the deductible, I am covered like a blanket through my investment in Medicare and private insurance.

Let me pause here and say that I have no quarrel with CIGNA. While corporate-fueled insurance is expensive (must pay stockholders and CEOs a princely wage to afford those gated communities they are building for the apocalypse), it provides great coverage. When I inconveniently suffered a heart attack on Jan. 2, 2013, I ended up paying less than $1,000 for a bill that totalled $150,000, when you factored in ambulance, ER, oblation, stent, a week in telemetry and great cardiac care at CRMC. That summer, I received an ICD courtesy of  Syrian ex-pat cardiologist Dr. Obadah Al Chekakie. Since I already surpassed the $100,000 threshold, I paid spare change for a Made in the U.S.A. gizmo that monitors my heart 24-7 and sends results to master control at CRMC. It also includes a defibrillator which can kick me back into life should I ever experience Sudden Cardiac Arrest, which is as bad as it sounds.  My heart needs this assistance because it suffered damage during the long-term 100 percent blockage of my LAD artery, the so-called widowmaker. At a recent funeral, a long-term heart patient said that he had never met someone with a LAD who lived. I was pleased to hear that. I am pleased to hear almost anything. Except Trump is on Twitter again -- not that.

Chris is a diabetic so she benefits from plans that guarantee coverage for pre-existing conditions. That could go away too. So she's worried that the ACA will go away along with all of its guarantees and she has to shop for health care on the open market which may not cover a diabetic. I am worried with her, as Medicare is three-plus years away for her and we will have the clowns in the White House and Congress during that time. A dangerous time.

This brings us to our daughter. She is 24. She has been in and out of mental health treatment centers for 11 years. With some exceptions, most care was covered by CIGNA. You think our health care system is a mess? Just try to figure out the mental health care system. Annie, fortunately, moved to Colorado and got on the state's Medicaid program and when I received Medicare, she did too. So she is covered. Republicans threaten her coverage. One saving grace is her Colorado residency. It's a blue state south of our very red border. Not too far-fetched to think that we will have health care refugees in the near future, diabetics and cardiac patients and the mentally ill leaving their backward red state to find sanctuary in places such as Colorado and Oregon and Massachusetts. Canada, maybe even Mexico. Wouldn't that be ironic?

I am a retiree with a pension. Half of that goes to health insurance. In 2018, Chris will be covered by ACA and Annie will be covered by Medicaid/Medicare. I will be covered by Medicare and CIGNA. All of these programs (except for CIGNA) are in the sights of Congressional Republicans. They aim to reduce or eliminate these programs to give tax breaks to their corporate masters. We no longer live in a democratic republic but an oligarchy. It will truly be a country run by the rich for the rich if all of these lame-brain actions come to pass.

So it's decision time. You make the best decision you can under the circumstances. I have to remember to be thankful for what I have as there are millions who suffer from inadequate health care or none at all. Those ranks are certain to grow in the next few years. So be thankful -- and fight like hell to stop the Republican assault on "the general welfare" of the U.S. and its people.

On the look and smell of old-fashioned print books

The New York Times reports that sales of "old-fashioned print books" are up for the third year in a row, based on figures from the Association of American Publishers. And indie bookstores are doing well, reversing a decline sparked by big box bookstores, Amazon and e-books.

Good news for book lovers. Are the books being read and understood? No, if the American electorate is any indication.

But I am a book lover. At this point in my life, I am trying to shed books with little success. I occasionally clean up the shelves and take a few boxes of books to the library store. But I find a need to read a certain book that I can't get at the library and I end up buying it. My latest purchase was "Sons and Lovers," the 1913 novel by D.H. Lawrence. When a friend and one-time indie bookstore owner saw the book in my car, he picked it up and said, "This is how I learned about sex." I replied that I hadn't reached that part yet. Paul Morel and his potential sweetheart Miriam are still in the platonic stage.

I had a selfish motive for reading "Sons and Lovers." I discovered it was filled with wonderful details about a British coal-mining village of Eastwood before World War I. My grandfather lived and worked in a British coal-mining village before and during the early years of the war. I portray a character like that in the novel I am working on. Also, I never read a Lawrence novel. How I could be an English major and not read Lawrence is a surprise to me. I knew more about his life in Taos than I did about his books.

"Sons and Lovers" is a good read. The prose is dense at times but it was 1913, the same era as Edith Wharton, William James and Upton Sinclair. I read "The Jungle" earlier in the year and it was slow going at times.  Lawrence's prose is better that some of his contemporaries. He had an eye for detail.

This edition of "Sons and Lovers" is a trade paperback published in 2003 by Barnes & Noble Classics. It carries a scent but doesn't have that old-book smell.

But my 1921 copy of John Dos Passos' "Three Soldiers" does. It got it at an estate sale for $4 with the tag "library condition." Well used but not battered. From the Merced County Free Library. It still has the sleeve for the borrower's card and date stamps on the outside front cover. It smells like old paper. The pages are yellowing. But it's still readable, so that's what I'm doing. The novel concerns the journey made by three young men as they volunteer for service in World War I. Written after the war by veteran Dos Passos, the slang and expressions and description are of that time and are quite something. I can read about old times and smell them all at the same time. Not possible with an e-book.

Not sure what I will do with my books (old and new) after I'm finished with them and my research. I would say leave them to my adult children but they look upon their parents' accumulated goods as if it were radioactive waste. They're both big readers but my literary passions are not theirs.

It's good news to see that print books are back. Is it a trend or a passing fancy? Who knows. My habits are not likely to change. I will still get suckered into used book sales and garage sales and will just have to have that 1930 edition of "Death Comes for the Archbishop." I found that book at the annual Delta Kappa Gamma used book sale in Cheyenne. Only 50 cents. Who could pass that up?

I remember Uncle Bill

When my first book of stories was published in 2006, I drove from Cheyenne to pick up copies from Ghost Road Press in Denver. I stopped by my Uncle Bill Taylor's house and delivered a signed copy. He called me the next week to comment on the stories. He was complimentary, and especially liked the ones set in post-World War II Denver. He did have a critique, though, one I always will treasure. He commented that my stories didn't seem to have endings. True, I said. I explained that contemporary short stories don't have endings, that some writers describe them as "slice-of-life." He took that in, absorbing the words better in his mid-80s than most of my 20-something students did. He said he would take another look. I am not sure if he did. But I appreciated his diligence. He didn't read books as a rule and I was glad that he read mine. Uncle Bill's reading consisted mostly of the Denver Post sports section. This was fortunate when I was a stringer covering high school sports for the the Post in 1978-81. I knew my uncle would read my blow-by-blow account of the latest game under the Friday Night Lights.  

Uncle Bill died Sunday morning. He was our family's last link with what's sometimes called "The Greatest Generation." They were great, in our eyes. My older siblings and I had the pleasure of growing up with grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. Then my father began to be transferred around the country to build sites for Atlas missiles. We never lost touch, though, but the moving around frayed our connections. We are an itinerant bunch, we Americans. It was traveling that helped our Florida-based family reconnect with our Denver roots. In our gallivanting days, my siblings and I wandered out to the Rocky Mountains to visit relatives, drink Coors beer (couldn't get it in the South), and to see what all the Colorado hubbub was about. My brother Dan ventured to Denver in the summer of 1971 and came back with some stories. Dan's future wife and her pals ventured West that same summer and dropped in on some of our Denver family on the way to the Grand Canyon. I hitchhiked through Colorado with a girlfriend in 1972. My brother Pat and I hitched from Houston to Denver in 1975 to traverse the mountains and see our relatives. Aunt Mary and Uncle Bill always welcomed us wayward family members. 

My brother Pat was stationed at Lowry AFB in the 1970s. He found family with the Taylors and my paternal grandparents, who, as luck would have it, lived in a senior housing complex that looked out over the Lowry AFB runway where the Army Air Corps trained its pilots during World War II. My sister Molly moved to Denver for a short time in the late 1970s. She knew she was in trouble when she discovered she had to wear a sweater on July nights. Same goes for my sister Eileen, who kept having complicated encounters with ice and snow on Denver roads. The last straw was a spinout and collision on Florida Avenue in southeast Denver. She saw it as a sign and soon after decamped for the real Florida where the road hazards are real but much less icy. 

When my then-girlfriend Chris and I arrived in Denver during the very pleasant summer of 1978, Mary and Bill took us in. We stayed there until we found an apartment in Aurora at the edge of the air force base. We had family but didn't know anyone else. They took us in and we were grateful. 

The World War II generation passes and we are sad. My life is different because of the experiences of our forebears during that era. Uncle Bill told me stories of how he and my father drove the Ribbon of Death (the two-lane precursor to I-25) from Trinidad to Denver to see their girlfriends in Denver. They were two sisters, Mary and Anna Hett, who grew up in an Irish neighborhood near South High School . My father worked as a salesman for Armour Meat Company in Albuquerque and Uncle Bill sold insurance in Trinidad, a sleepy town on the New Mexico border. My father would get off work on Friday and take a bus to Trinidad. Bill drove them in his jalopy up the dangerous road to Denver, where they arrived early on Saturday morning. After some frenzied courting, the two young college grads and war veterans were back on the road, reversing the trip they had made less than 48 hours before. I can imagine their conversations as they negotiated a snowy Colorado night. Do you remember when you were in your 20s and in love? You would do anything to bridge the gap. Anything. They did, as soon both couples married and began families. I was conceived in Albuquerque after a spicy Mexican dinner and a few beers in Old Town. I have been fond of Mexican food ever since. Beer too.

We would be nothing without stories. They tell us who we are, and were. I transform tales of those who came before me into tales of the present. One of the critiques I get is "You have so many people in your stories." Yes, I do, because I have so many people in my life. I grew up in a big family and have many friends. They find their way into my stories, with names changed to protect the innocent and guilty alike. And, as Uncle Bill said, they don't always have tidy endings. 

I hate to tell you this Uncle Bill, but your story is not over. We will continue telling stories about you as long as we are part of this world. Some of those stories will outlast us, and tell our descendants what sort of people we were. 

We hope we are worth remembering. 

Cheyenne: When will you get serious about your role as a city?

Tuesday was election day.

In Laramie County, we voted on a bond issue to fund three new projects at the community college. It would generate some $30 million for the construction and revamping of three buildings: fine arts, rec center, and a new dormitory. All necessary. But this is the second bond issue for the college in four years. Still, I voted for the bonds because I would like to see Cheyenne shake off its dusty image and plan for the future.

The measure was defeated 59-41 percent.

Bummer.

Meanwhile, 90 miles south, Denver voters approved a $937 million bond issue for package for roads, parks, libraries and cultural facilities. The measures passed by large margins. They include money for the city's big cultural entities such as the botanic gardens, zoo, DCPA, art museum, etc. The central library and ten branch libraries will get major renovations. The city will build a rapid transit project on infamous Colfax Ave. It also will build 17 miles of protected bike lanes and 33 miles of sidewalks. The city will revamp the 16th Street Mall, which has needed it for awhile. Bridges will be built and repaired.

Damn. That's a community planing for the future.

I know, there is a world of difference between Denver and Cheyenne. Denver grows larger and more expensive and traffic is a nightmare. Cheyenne stays basically the same, just how the old-timers want it.

But the old ways are getting really old. Cheyenne's 60,000-plus population makes it the largest city in the state. County population nears 100,000, which makes it the largest county in the state, home to one in every six Wyomingites. It is the state capitol and home of state government. Cheyenne is seen as  the northern terminus of the Front Range of the Rockies, usually described as the area between Pueblo and Cheyenne. One of the routes proposed for the Hyperloop Project is Cheyenne to Pueblo, with the first link proposed to be built between Greeley and DIA.

Cheyenne is often seen as an aberration in Wyoming. It's a rural state and many of its residents like it that way. In some parts of this windswept place, Cheyenne is described as North Denver. This earns laughs from Denver natives such as me. Still, when you live in Lusk or Thayne, Cheyenne is a metropolis with strange ways. Denver is, well, the L.A. of the prairie.

In the 2016 election, good liberals in the state legislature were defeated. We are close to living in a one-party state. Legislation is crafted by rural white men who won seats guaranteed by Republican gerrymandering. In Laramie County, suburban Democrats are represented by Rep. John Eklund.  During the 2014 session, he sponsored a bill that repealed gun-free zones in public schools. This, apparently, was the only solution to massacres such as the Newtown school shooting.

Those of us who complain are told to leave the state if we don't like it the way it is.

Young people have no problem departing for points south along the Front Range. My daughter Annie has lived in Colorado for the past year. I am with her often as she explores ways to live with her mental illness in a state that takes mental health seriously. I meet Wyomingites at every turn. The receptionist at the dentist is from Sheridan. Annie looked at renting an Aurora apartment from young man who happened to be a Cheyenne native. One of her therapists in Fort Collins had just moved from Casper. Teachers are in high demand in Colorado. One of my daughter's former teachers just left a decades-long high school job for new opportunities in Denver. A good friend who twice ran for the legislature recently moved to Greeley, finding a better political climate in Weld County's biggest city. Airmen and airwomen at Warren AFB live in FoCo, or spend all of their off-hours there. It's become such a challenge to keep its troopers close to home that Air Force brass has looked at plans to build a mini-Fort Collins in Laramie County. How you gonna keep them at the base after they've partied in FoCO? When alerts come and the weather is bad, the base can't get the necessary staff back to the base to man the missiles that might be pointed at North Korea or, as we like to call it, NoKo.

All this is distressing to those of us who have made it our mission to make Cheyenne and Wyoming a better place. Chris and I are among them. We have served on many committees and boards. We have planned hundreds of arts and culture events. We vote and work at the polls. We attend arts events. We drink our beer here. We own a house.

My question on this post-election day is this: When will you get serious, Cheyenne, about your role as a city?

After the Trump deluge: One year later

Donald Trump was elected president a year ago.

With our fellow Dems on Nov. 8, 2016, Chris and I watched the results come in, first with elation and then with a deep darkness. So this is what it's come to? Our depression that night was only an inkling of what was to come.

Think about all that's happened in the past year. The crack-of-dawn tweets. The hirings and firings. The Russian links. The rise of hate and prejudice. Fascist undertones and overtones.

Trump represents everything venal and hateful about America. Trump represents all of those Americans who hurled venom at Barack Obama when he was in office. All our unhinged uncles and neighbors. Late night AM talk show hosts. Some of the more outrageous right-wing legislators currently sitting in the Wyoming Legislature. Cliven Bundy. Ted Nugent.

What do we do next?

Outrage and criticism will not derail Trump. It feels good. I get a kick out of watching Steven Colbert and SNL. It's good to know there will be a video and audio record of The Resistance. The New York Times and Washington Post do their research, keep punching away. Yet we are no more near getting rid of Trump than we were at The Women's March on Inauguration Day in January. If we get rid of Trump, what is waiting in the wings. Mike Pence? A horror-show right-wing evangelical straight out of The Handmaid's Tale.

The State of the Union is more than distressing. We can't give up. But it's going to be a long slog.

All kinds of helpful people have weighed in during this distressing anniversary. Notable therapists advise us how to cope "in the Age of Trump." Trustworthy columnists tell us not the lose faith in the system.

I already see a therapist that is no fan of Trump. I continue to stay involved in "the system." I will vote for the LCCC initiatives on Tuesday that will make our community college and community a better place. I will volunteer for Dem candidates and my community, which is basically the same thing. I continue to support good causes with money and effort. If I did not, the Trump terrorists would win. I want no part of that capitulation.

Your vote Tuesday will make a difference. The county clerk expects a low turnout, as this is an off-year election on one issue. Trumpenstein is not on the ballot. Or is he? Any vote is a blow for freedom and democracy.

Thousands of Denverites plan to go to Cheesman Park on Nov. 8 at 7 p.m. to "scream helplessly at the sky on the anniversary of the election." This kind of gathering may seem pointless but it gets people together in a common cause and allows us to vent, both good things. Who knows, you might meet somebody, as the park has been a meeting place for decades. And a bonus -- as a former cemetery, Cheesman has experience with helplessly screaming. Some graves are still occupied, as a contractor hired in 1893 by the city neglected to transfer all of the bodies before it began to be transformed into a park in 1894. For event info, go to
https://www.facebook.com/events/1969220523402820/

Vote on Tuesday. On Wednesday in Denver (or wherever), scream your bloody head off.

It's "Heart of Darkness" all over again as U.S. war in Africa heats up

From CNN Online on Oct. 23:

Americans should anticipate more military operations in Africa as the war on terrorism continues to morph, Sen. Lindsey Graham warned Friday.

"This war is getting hot in places that it's been cool, and we've got to go where the enemy takes us," Graham told reporters on Capitol Hill.

We are embarked on another military spree. It's best to bone up on the literature of Africa, lest we make the same ignorant mistakes we made in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Saharan Africa, Southwest Asia, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Dakota Territory, and so on.

My first thought was "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad. While a tad racist, it’s a magnificent cautionary tale for overseas adventurers with a terminal case of hubris. You know, Marlow and Kurtz, Willard and Kurtz. Francis Ford Coppola used the 1899 novel (and Michael Herr’s nonfiction “Dispatches”) as a blueprint for “Apocalypse Now.”

Four American Special Forces troops were killed in an ambush in Niger two weeks ago. Most of us didn’t know that the U.S. had troops in Niger. We had to look up the country on a map and practice our spelling and pronunciation of the country so as not to sound as stupid as Trump. It’s not Nigeria. Nijz-AIR, is as close as I can get. It’s near Chad and is poorer than that country, which is saying something. According to the Africa Guide, two-thirds of the country is desert and the northeastern part of the country is "mostly uninhabitable." Most Nigeriens live in the southern third of the country described as "savannah." That is where the U.S. has a base and where our troops were killed. 

We've got to go where the enemy takes us. 

Any Vietnam War novel should be instructive as Africa’s cold war gets hot. “The Quiet American” by Graham Greene is a good primer as it was written way back in 1955, long before our misadventure in French Indochina heated up in the 1960s. While Ken Burns PBS Vietnam War series has its flaws, special screenings should be held for Sen. Graham, President “My heel hurts and I can’t go to Vietnam” Trump, Mr. Tillerson, Gen, Mattis, and any other member of this passel of fools who hasn’t seen it. The PBS does an excellent job of following our descent into madness or, if you prefer, our own very special heart of darkness. Stanley Karnow’s “Vietnam: A History” is also an excellent historical account of the war.

Novels and poetry may be the best route into understanding how quagmires happen, and what the effects are on countries.

But Vietnam isn’t the only useful example. I have been researching World War I as background for a novel I am writing about the post-war years of 1919-1920 in my home state of Colorado. In the summer of 1914, the entire world lost its mind. Except for the U.S. – we waited until spring of 1917 to do so. A few nights ago, I watched most of the 1971 Brit film “Nicholas and Alexandra.” Nicky thought that dashing off vaguely friendly letters to his wife’s German relatives would keep Russia out of the war. Not only did Russia suffer millions of casualties, but the czar’s repressive policies fed right into the hands of the Bolsheviks. Decades of terror followed. And then the Soviets suffered their own Vietnam in Afghanistan. I have yet a read a novel about this war – I’m sure there are some good ones. We have our own novels coming out of the Afghan misadventures. It doesn’t end.

The best novel I’ve read to come out of the American Wars of the New Millennium is “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” by Ben Fountain. The juxtaposition of Billy Lynn’s shattered soul with the spectacle of the NFL Super Bowl took my breath away. It seems especially relevant now as we watch African-American players take a knee to bring attention to injustices wrought on the streets of the USA. And the critics say “Don’t mix politics with football.” Too late. America is all about these things: war and football and prejudice and spectacle and greed and cheerleaders in skimpy outfits.

I am woefully lacking in reading books by the writers of Africa. This is not a surprise, as English majors are woefully lacking in books outside those written in native English. I have read novels set in Africa by U.S. and British writers. Time to read a novel by an African author. A dedicated Ghanaian/American reader/blogger Darkowaa hosts a blog called African Book Addict! Go to her reading list at https://africanbookaddict.com/to-read-list/ It would help if you also read French, German, or a selection of African dialects. 

We've been in Africa before. "Black Hawk Down" by Mark Bowden shows what happens when a country's military ventures into a place such as Mogadishu that it doesn't understand. The Horn of Africa can be a dangerous place. The U.S., once had military and naval bases in Ethiopia. Until it didn't. The Soviets moved in and Haile Salassie was a dead man. 

Maybe that’s the lesson of all of these works of art about wars past. It never ends. Humankind keeps making the same mistakes. We never learn.

We can keep reading. We will always have that. I hope we will.

Love is love is love is love -- but not at Florida's Father Lopez Catholic High School

Below is an e-mail I sent to Father Lopez Catholic High School President Pat LaMorte in Daytona Beach, Florida. It's in response to Mary Kate Curry's "resignation under duress" at the school when it became public that she was engaged to a woman. To read more about this, go to the New Ways Ministry web site at https://www.newwaysministry.org/2017/10/23/catholic-school-teacher-fired-gender-engagement/. Thanks to fellow Lopez alum John Bartelloni (Class of '70) for alerting me about this.

My letter:

Dear Pres. LaMorte:

My Father Lopez High School education taught me that the Catholic Church should be alleviating pain and suffering in the world, not adding to it.

I just read about Mary Kate Curry's "resignation under duress" as a theology teacher and the school's decision to forbid her from coaching (even volunteering to coach) the FLHS girls' basketball team. 

Curry's letter was heartbreaking. She obviously loved her jobs as teacher and coach. To take those away from her is the worst kind of cruelty. 

And the reason? She publicly outed herself as a member of the LGBT community, someone who loves someone of her own gender. She couldn't live a lie any more and you punished her for it. Shame on you, the school and the diocese. Shame.

I attended Father Lopez from 1965-69. I was president of the National Honor Society and lettered in basketball, part of the team that went to the state tournament in 1969. I am proud of being a Lopez alum. 

Make us all proud. Alleviate the pain you caused in this young woman's life by reinstating her as a teacher and coach. 

Some 50 years from now, a 2018 Lopez grad will look upon his or her time in the classroom or on the court with Ms. Curry and say, as I do today, that I learned how to be a honorable human being at Father Lopez. 

Do the right thing.

Sincerely,

Michael Shay

Cheyenne, Wyoming

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get your reading groove on at FoCo Book Fest

Great line-up tomorrow, Oct. 21, for the Fort Collins Book Fest: Writers and Riffs. I have known about this for a few weeks but may not be able to attend. But you can.

My mentor and one-time colleague John Calderazzo conducts a nonfiction essay writing workshop at 10:45 a.m. in the Old Town Library. The workshop, unfortunately, is filled up. No surprise, as John is one of the best teachers around for this genre. If you are interested in the "next steps for you in your publishing adventure," author and entrepreneur Teresa Funke conducts some one-on-one sessions from 11 a.m.- 3 p.m. in the Old Town Library. Sign up by calling 970-221-6740. Buy her book, "Remember Wake" about the survivors of the battles on Wake Island (and later imprisonment) in World War II.

Some of us recall warbling late night renditions of Loudon Wainwright III's 1972 ditty "Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road" (you know who you are). If you can't remember, go here for a refresher: https://youtu.be/Uu5hzc2Mei4. Wainwright will speak about his memoir, "Liner Notes," and sing some of his songs on the Linden Street stage from 1:30-3 p.m.

The session that interests me is "For What It's Worth: A New History of the Sixties" by cultural historian Craig Werner. As Werner says, the 1960s is "a decade that has been obscured by nostalgia, controversy and a nearly impenetrable veil of politically-motivated mythologies." Couldn't agree more. See what you missed at 12:15 p.m. at the Downtown Artery on Linden St.

Another session that mixes contemporary sounds and books features Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon talking about her memoir "Girl in the Band." It's from 3:30-4:30 p.m. at Book One Events on Linden Street.

As you can see, music weaves its way through the bookfest. The organizers were anxious to seize on FoCo's newly-minted rep as one of the most exciting music towns on the Front Range. As someone who has been on planning committees for three book festivals and dozens of literary events, I like this group's vision. Face it, people don't read or buy books as they once did. They are crazy about music. Mix the two and you might get a crowd younger than book-loving me at 66. And that's what you want.

I wish you luck, FoCo Book Fest. More info at https://www.focobookfest.org

No instant remedy for mental illness; no instant cure for Trumpism

From The Hill, (10/14/17): Psychologists march through NY to call for Trump's removal

Let's talk about President Trump's mental stability -- or lack thereof.

It's too easy to label Trump as crazy. He may be unstable. He may be dumb, as is old prof at The Wharton School called him the other day. He may be an asshole.

But the name-calling concerns those of us who deal with mental illness on a daily basis. I am a normal guy. But I do have a case of depression handed down by generations of Irish peasants. I live in the suicide capital of the nation. Depression has many roots.

Our daughter is severely mentally ill. As I write this, she is on a 72-hour psych hold at a Colorado hospital. She went in for an ECT treatment. The docs were alarmed by her mutterings during the treatment, so thought they should keep an eye on her through the weekend. This is not unusual. Millions of Americans get put on these holds every year. A mentally ill person might be brought into the local ER. Maybe he was sleeping in an alley. Maybe he was yelling obscenities at a policeman. Maybe she tried to commit suicide and someone intervened. Many reasons. Your local ER crew would tell you stories, if they could. Mental illness is a problem everywhere. Lest you think otherwise, here are some handy stats provided by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI):

Approximately 1 in 5 adults in the U.S.—43.8 million, or 18.5%—experiences mental illness in a given year.  

Approximately 1 in 25 adults in the U.S.—9.8 million, or 4.0%—experiences a serious mental illness in a given year that substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities. 

People in the throes of a mental health emergency may get held in one of the four mental health rooms at CRMC Hospital. They may be transferred to Behavioral Health at CRMC East. They may be held for 72 hours, as the law allows. They may be held longer. Some go to the Wyoming State Hospital in Evanston. Others are transferred to community mental health centers such as Wyoming Behavioral Institute in Casper. Others may go to a local halfway house managed by Peak Wellness. There are options. Families often are stuck trying to figure out the health care system, especially whether treatment is covered by insurance. Or not. For family members caught in the insurance maze, life may come to resemble some of the worst scenes from "Brazil" or a short story by Kafka. Our health insurance system is a nightmare. Trump and his cronies are making it worse. What can one say about an unhinged leader attempting to snatch insurance from the ill and mentally ill? You need to call on literary and celluloid references for something like this. We find ourselves in the midst of a cataclysm. We turn to poetry and books for solace and possibly some answers. This is a marvelous time for creative people. A bad time for the mentally ill.

Alas, art will not save us. Civic engagement is what's needed. Your mentally ill family member is too busy negotiating the health care maze to be much help. The rest of us need to act for ourselves and one other person that we care about. Speak up. Write letters. Go to city council meetings. Vote, please vote. We dug ourselves a hole. A "Snake Pit," if you will. A black hole. Darkness at noon. Bedlam. All these references apply to America's current unsettled state.

Let's not call Trump crazy. Our system has experienced a nervous breakdown. We are the cure.

Artistic and mentally ill and homeless in Cheyenne

What happens when you go to an art opening and you run into an old family friend who has descended so far into mental illness that she is homeless?

Her name is the letter A. I know her real name but I can't bring myself to use it. I don't know what's going to happen to her and wonder what I can do about it.

On Thursday, I attended the opening of the new Hynds Building gallery space featuring six of our finest artists. I was perusing Georgia Rowswell's fabric work when a woman in black sidled up to me. She wore a big floppy hat and a black coat over a leotard top and jeans. I knew her right away. She once worked at the coffee shop across the street from the Hynds. She's a local, went to school with my son. She has a son, whom I remember as a elementary school kid. A is a talented artist and musician.

I hugged her. She started crying. "You recognized me," she said through tears. I asked her what was going on. She said her 12-year-old son had run away, everyone was plotting against her, and last night, as she slept in an alley, a man urinated on her.

I was shocked. It skewed my evening art adventure.

As A told her tale, I realized how far she had sunk into despondency. When I say that, I mean mental illness. She had no place to stay, although she told me that some guy had let her use his apartment but other guys kept hitting on her. This is a good-looking woman in her 30s. I am old enough to be her father or grandfather. She and my 32-year-old son used to hang out in the same artsy crowd.

Isn't it dangerous out on the streets for a homeless woman? I suggested she go to the homeless shelter. She told me that she had been banned but that was OK with her because all the people there wore pentagrams and were Satanists. She couldn't go into most of the downtown businesses because she had been banned for various reasons which I was just beginning to understand.

She said she was hungry so I steered her to one of the food tables. She ate hummus and crackers. Filled her traveling cup with punch. "For later," she said. Other people came up to talk to us but quickly veered away when they saw my companion. A looked like an artsy person but people seemed to know to steer clear. She was known. How come I didn't know? Where had I been? Retired, I guess. Old and out of the way.

Meanwhile, my phone kept buzzing. My daughter was texting from an ER at a hospital in Fort Collins. She had experienced a bad reaction to the anaesthesia used in Wednesday's ECT treatment in Boulder. I was caught up in one of those texting rounds when everyone seems to be talking over each other. I was worried that I would have to rescue my daughter from the ER and bring her home. There had been plenty of calls and texts like this during the past few years. Sometimes my wife and I went to her aid. Sometimes we did not, as she has spent time in recovery centers in L.A. and Chicago.

I felt bad for A, but kept thinking, "Hey, I have my own problems." It was clear by now that A was homeless because she did what many mentally ill do. They elude available help because they are paranoid or schizophrenic or drug-addicted or an alcoholic or any combination of these things. The helpers are out to get her because they tell her what to do and how to behave. She freaks out and hits the streets. She sleeps in an alley and a guy pisses on her.

I am upset because I know this person to be a sane, creative person, a single mom who took care of her son, at least when I knew her. I took the last resort and offered her money, I had $100 in my pocket that I was going to spend on drinks or a small art piece. I gave her $40. She said it would get her food and maybe help with a room. I was going to ask if she was going to spend it on drugs or booze. But I didn't have the heart.

As I walked her out of the gallery, we passed a musician and his son. They were homeless themselves at one time. The musician plays his guitar on street corners and the farmer's market. He took one look at A, grabbed his son and hurried off. This was odd as it is usually what I feel like doing when I see him.

I told A that I had to go because my daughter might need me down in Fort Collins. I told her that my daughter was having ECT treatments. She panicked, told me not to do that as it can erase your brain. She then turned her attention to The Hole on Lincolnway hidden behind the Atlas Theatre banner. She pointed to the corner of the rubble-strewn hole. "I used to make a fire there -- it's out of the wind," she said. OK. We walked on. We ran into a downtown entrepreneur known for his libertarian rock 'n' roll roots. He asked what I was doing. "Visiting with an old friend," I said. He shook my hand, looked askance at A. He then disappeared into the Crown Bar. "He doesn't like me," she said."I'm banned from his store."

I got to my car and got in. I said good-bye, said I would meet her a 5 the following evening across from the gallery. I didn't go, as I was taking my daughter to an ECT treatment in Boulder. While there, her psychiatrist admitted her to the hospital for a 72-hour hold. She has been self-harming and threatened to do more. I left her there and headed back to Cheyenne on my own. I carried with me that old sinking feeling, that my daughter will never get better.

On the streets of Cheyenne is a homeless 30-something woman. She once was a family friend.

My mentally ill daughter is not homeless but could be. How come she seeks out help and A does not? All mental illnesses are not alike. A does not equal B. My daughter has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, severe depression and borderline personality disorder. She can hold intelligent conversations. She is a musician and is a talented painter. She cuts her arms with razors.

I read the news today in The Denver Post. It was about a 13-year-old Latina nicknamed Bella in Thornton . She hung herself while her family gathered downstairs making fajitas to celebrate her sister's fiance's birthday. Bella had been the target of cyber-bullying and just couldn't take it anymore.

Even in death, this life doesn't make any sense.

We ask the old question: why do writers write?

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

Pause here for laughs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

People write, Russell said, for many reasons.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Good Doctor from Wyoming: Trumpcare bears no resemblance to healthcare

Driftglass blogged about the Trump and Roy Moore connection yesterday (and cross-posted by Meteor Blades on Daily Kos). An excerpt:

Donald Trump is a petty, vindictive, racist ignoramus and pathological liar who resonates powerfully with the base of the Republican party for the simple reason that they are, in the main, petty, vindictive ignorami who have been trained by decades of conditioning via Fox News and Hate Radio to mindlessly accept as gospel any comforting bullshit that comes from the mouths of pathological Republican liars. 

I don't know how many different ways we can say it........

Trump is the Party and the Party is Trump.......... 

How about this? Moore is the Party and the Party is Moore. 

Our Wyoming delegation is a telling sample of Republican lawmakers: Sen. Barrasso, Sen. Enzi, Rep. Cheney. These otherwise intelligent people have lost their minds under the sway of Donald Trump. Sen./Dr. Barrasso's resume includes stints at RPI, Georgetown and Yale Medical School. He once replaced people's busted knees for a living in Casper. He was the spokesperson for TV's Wyoming Health Minute. He led the Wyoming Medical Society. A Catholic high school grad, he must have been absent on the days social justice doctrine was discussed. He now somehow believes in Trumpcare, which is no health care at all. In an MSNBC interview with Katy Tur this week, this was the following exchange:

Tur: “There are not protections for essential healthcare benefits in this bill.” 

Barrasso: “And there shouldn’t be!” 

Barrasso, a well-educated ignoramus. Or an opportunist. Or a narcissist like Trump. Or all three. Wyomingites, normally people who will stop to offer aid if they see you stranded on a snowy highway, keep voting for Barrasso. They may help you change a tire. But they also are OK if you just get sick and die. Hard to fathom. In the same post, Driftglass included a screen shot of a tweet by Randi Lawson:

Never could've guessed in our country's divorce, that the left would get custody of football.

How did that happen? That head-smashin', rip-roarin' American religion has been subverted by ethnic activists. So, people who wear nothing but shorts and paint themselves orange and blue for a January Broncos playoff game, now say they will burn their season tickets if black athletes don't stop their uppity behavior. We lefties cheer on the athletes and fellow travelers (including fat-cat owners such as Jerry Jones) as they link arms in solidarity during the anthem. Theirs is a protest against racial injustice.

Strange bedfellows indeed.

So where are we? The United States of America 2017 seems like a banana republic on steroids.

And the doctor offers no cure.

Car-centric or people-friendly?

I have traveled to Fort Collins a lot lately, mostly to visit our daughter Annie. She lives a block from the university. She can walk or ride her bike almost anywhere. This summer she took the shuttle bus to concerts at the Mishawaka up the Poudre Canyon. The city has great bus service, including the north-south MAX line. Uber and Lyft are Ubiquitous. Uberiquitous!

FOOTNOTE: Writers might find this interesting. I first learned ubiquitous from a title of a Philip K. Dick strange novel, "Ubik." This illustrates the instructional side of sci-fi.

Our daughter had a car but it met the fate of so many vehicles in a college town after dark -- driving after partying. It now rests in a Denver junkyard, a totalled 10-year-old car with what seemed like so many more miles to go. Alas.

So as I visit and help her with errands, I notice that Fort Collins is much less a car town than when I lived here from 1988-91. That's no surprise to its residents. It is a surprise to someone from Cheyenne, a decidedly car-centric city in a very car-and-truck-centric state. Rapid transit is still exotic in the Capital City. We do have taxis and Uber and car-pooling. We have a superb greenway, although street bike paths are still a work-in-progress. You see pedestrians downtown during the day, most of whom are state employees looking for a double caramel macchiato to get them through the long afternoon. The crowds thin out at night as there just aren't that many businesses worth visiting. We have three craft breweries, all three worth a visit. And there are bars. A few coffee shops. Some restaurants.

If you look for pedestrians along the Dell Range shopping district, you won't find many. You will find a mall and lots of chain restaurants. But people don't walk on Dell Range. It's a place for cars.

One thing I notice about Fort Collins 30 years after my grad school days -- it's a car environment gradually morphing into something else. It's funny, too, since most of the older residential streets were built along Utah's Mormon model -- wide enough to easily turn around an ox cart. Ox carts are rare these days. Most of what you see are young people on bikes and skateboards. Pedestrians of all stripes. All the major streets are lined with bike paths. Some through streets have been mined with those annoyingly huge speed bumps, the kind you see in neighborhoods that include city council reps with kids. Not a bad idea -- you still see plenty of cars in FoCo, many of them going too fast. Many in this one-time cowtown still drive pick-ups, whether they use it for ranch work or just want to look like they do. The CSU Rams used to be the Aggies, which accounts for the big white A on the hill above town. Still a lot of ag and geology and veterinary students here, which differentiates it from its rival university in Boulder. The CU Buffs probably still refer to the CSU bunch as "the Aggies," especially in the lead-up to the annual Rocky Mountain Showdown on the gridiron.

Fort Collins actively discourages cars. It's every wingnut's nightmare. Walkable downtown and neighborhoods. Limited parking. Wide sidewalks. Very rare to see a coal roller. I heard an announcement on FM 105.5 that talked about a city program that closes streets on a rotating basis so people can eat and drink and listen to live music. What's the world coming to?

Not sure what the next few years will bring. Driverless cars. A light rail. A Hyperloop connection is in the works, if Colorado's entry into the project is picked as the one to be actually built. Who knows what that portends for Fort Collins, even Cheyenne.

Meanwhile, my goal in Fort Collins is to slow down and  beware of cyclists. It could be someone's millennial, maybe even mine.

One Cheney cancels, another still is coming to Cheyenne

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

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

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

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

Here's my Cheney post:

Lynne Cheney advocates a whitewashed version of history.

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

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

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

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

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

Confusing, isn't it?

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

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

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

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

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