Cold War nuke site open for visitors on Wyoming’s high prairie

M as in Mike

I as in India

K as in Kilo

E as in Echo

That’s the spelling of my nickname in the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, commonly known as the phonetic alphabet. You’ve used it if you have a commonly misspelled name, or if you find yourself on the end of a Mumbai-based IT help line. Help: H as in Hotel, E as …….

The alphabet is helpful but can be crucial in a military operation or if you’re a pilot on an international airline flight.

Or, let’s say the unthinkable happens and you are charged with the launch of a nuclear strike from a hole in the ground beneath the frozen Wyoming prairie. “Attention Quebec Zero One, we have some bad news for you and the rest of the planet….”

It never happened at the Quebec 01 Missile Alert Facility located about 30 minutes north of my house in Cheyenne. Coincidentally, that’s the amount of time it would take from missile launch in Wyoming to detonation in the former Soviet Union. On Friday, I thought about that as we returned from our tour of Q-01, now a Wyoming State Historic Site. Born in 1950, I’ve had nightmares about a nuclear apocalypse. But it’s been awhile since those duck-and-cover drills of elementary school and the very real scare of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

My father worked at Denver-based Martin Company, later Martin-Marietta and now Lockheed Martin. He supervised subcontractors building the earlier iteration of Minuteman and MX sites – Atlas and Titan. He did that job in Colorado and Wyoming and Nebraska and Washington State and Kansas. He dragged his big family along, which gave us a unique view of the western U.S. and fodder for future therapy sessions. 

I was 11 when he arrived home from work in Wichita laden with canned goods and water jugs and commanded us all to get down in the basement. That spooky, musty place was where we were going to ride out the nuke firefight unleashed by the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba.

The fear was real. History provided a better ending, thankfully. We avoided life as cellar dwellers or death as crispy critters. Two years later, we moved to Florida. Dad’s work with nukes was over and he now turned his attention to getting Americans to the moon.

Our family history is part of the fabric of American history. Maybe that’s why I was so anxious to take my visiting sister Eileen to the state’s newest historical site. She loves history, as do I. She is eight years younger than me, so we experienced those times in dramatically different ways.  But, as curious historians, we both know what happened in the world since World War II. The nuclear age began with the twin bombings of Japan that ended World War II. The arms race began between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. that many thought would end with M.A.D. – Mutually Assured Destruction. 

The western U.S. played a major role with Los Alamos and the first tests in the New Mexico desert. Many nuke tests followed, their fallout drifting over many cities, including Denver. We were all downwinders. Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant was established between Denver and Boulder. Coloradans built plutonium triggers there. It was the site of at least one major accident that created a crop of local downwinders.

According to interpretive exhibits at Quebec 01, the government chose the interior West as hidey holes for its missiles for several reasons: Low population density (more antelope than people}; distant from the coasts and possible Russki nuclear sub strikes; the northern Rockies and Plains were closer to the Arctic Circle, the quickest missile route to Moscow and Red nuke sites. 

B-52s took off from western sites on their way to their fail-safe lines. Many a missileer did stints in the frozen wastelands of Minot and Great Falls and Cheyenne and still do. You can forgive a young airman/woman from Atlanta getting orders for Cheyenne and saying something about going to the middle of nowhere.

But I live there and it’s not so bad. I spent much of my working life touring Wyoming on behalf of the arts. You might be surprised by the art that’s created in this big semi-empty space. The humanities play a major role in our lives. Thus, we spawn some fine state parks and historic sites, even have a state agency to oversee them. Wyoming State Parks and Historic Sites employees staff the sites spread around the state. They are based at Quebec 01 to conduct tours and answer many questions posed by the curious. The site opened just three weeks ago after the feds gifted it to the state in 2010.  Staff say that it was stripped to the bone after being decommissioned in 2005. The Air Force brought back some items. Former missileers, retired airmen, and just plain collectors donated other items, such as the VHS player located next to one of the launch chairs (the TV is no longer there). The space looks fine now but it still a work in progress, according to our guide.

There are entrance fees, as there are at most state sites. If you are disabled and use a wheelchair or a walker as I do, call ahead and staff will deploy ramps over the challenging spots in the underground launch capsule. An elevator takes visitors from the topside facility and its historic exhibits to the capsule. Step off the elevator and pass through the gateway that, back in the day, could be sealed by a 30-ton blast door.

For background, go to https://wyoparks.wyo.gov/index.php/places-to-go/quebec-01. The site includes photos going back to its building in 1962 all the way to the recent renovation.

Our history, and maybe your family’ history, is just a short drive away.

Democrats' Sept. 8 fund-raiser features cake walk, garden tour

We'll save you a seat in Joe's Garden. 

Help us celebrate the final days of summer at the Laramie County Democrats Grassroots Coalition’s garden party and cake walk on Sunday, Sept. 8, 1-3 p.m. at Joe’s Garden, 3626 Dover Road, Cheyenne.

Light hors d’ouevres and desserts, as well as iced tea and lemonade, will be served. Attendees are invited to bring a cake to donate to the cake walk. Joe Corrigan will conduct tours of his award-winning garden and give tips for next year’s growing season.

Admission is $15. All proceeds go to local Democratic Party candidates running for office in the 2020 election. Come out Sept. 8 to meet and mingle with your fellow Democrats.

FMI: Mike Shay, 307-241-2903.

What are pop-up galleries and why do they matter?

My 1,600-word piece on pop-up galleries appears in the summer issue of Artscapes, the magazine of the Wyoming Arts Council. Council staff calls on me occasionally to do some free-lance work for the mag. I worked at the WAC for 25 years so I have some sense of what it takes to put out a statewide publication on a consistent basis. A print publication has appeared in many forms in the WAC's 52-year history. Artscapes is the most recent iteration and the slickest one. In fact, it is what they call in publishing a "slick," featuring a cover in coated stock and lots of color inside, like the fashion and lifestyle mags that still survive in the grocery store check-out aisle.

Pop-up businesses have been around for awhile. A clothing boutique takes over a busy downtown storefront during a summer festival. A toy store takes over a vacated mall space for Christmas. They set up, exist for a few days or a few weeks, and then disappear. It cuts down on the heavy overhead costs of a physical site. This is a real bonus in this day of failing brick-and-mortar stores. A pop-up can generate some visual excitement in a formerly empty space. And it can take advantage of increased traffic brought in by a festival or holiday.

Cheyenne is investing in a pop-up gallery trial run in its downtown. Instead of writing a whole new paragraph, here's a short explanation from my story:

May's exhibit at the Fill the Space Gallery is the first outing in a pop-up pilot program, a collaboration among local artists, the Downtown Development Association, the Cheyenne Artwalk, and Arts Cheyenne. The five-month program will feature a different theme and different artists each month. Steve Knox and his partners hope that this effort not only promotes artists but brings some after-hours life to downtown. Get more info on upcoming pop-ups on the Cheyenne Artwalk and DDA Facebook pages. 

The article goes on to profile the pop-up project at Cheyenne's Blue Door Arts and the Pop-up Artwalk scheduled each September in Laramie.

Read the rest in the print magazine or on the WAC web site.

Next Cheyenne Artwalk is set for Thursday, Aug. 8, 5-8 p.m.

When young people say "I don't feel safe here," you know you have a problem

"I don't feel safe here."

This isn't a Baltimorian, besieged in his (Trump's words) "disgusting rat and rodent infested mess" of an apartment building, one possibly owned by his slumlord son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

They aren't the words of a Salvadoran mother, fleeing with her children to an unknown and possibly worse future in The Land of the Free.

Not a Syrian fleeing his country's mess, one caused, in part, by the USA's ham-handed policies in the region.

The quote above comes from a well-educated, young Caucasian gay man who lives in Cheyenne, Wyo. I spoke to him at a recent party. I don't use his name because I do not have his permission and I'm not sure he'd give it to me if I asked. He's soon to be married and then, he and his Air Force husband, will relocate to Larimer County, Colo. That's the Colorado county that neighbors Laramie County, where he lives now and where I live too. The man and his fiance don't venture outside much, not even during our glorious summers, because they feel threatened by their neighbors. I didn't ask him if his neighbors had threatened or done violence to him. I know what he means. The couple's very presence is an affront to their conservative neighbors. And conservatives these days feel free to let their hatreds run wild. Trump and his henchmen loosed the dogs of hate. Now they unleash their venom at Trump rallies ("Send her back!") and daily in cities and towns across America.

In the Obama days, it seemed as if the U.S. was making strides in tolerating "the other." They were those who looked differently than the average white person, those who practiced a religion other than White Evangelical Protestantism (or no religion at all), and LGBTQ Americans. We should have known that just the act of electing an African-American president couldn't dampen hatreds brewing for hundreds of years. The signs were all around us. Trump's Birtherism. Rise in hate crimes. Tea Party rallies. The tilt to the Right by many state legislatures, especially our own. Even the Republican-dominated Congress's efforts to stymie Obama at every turn had racism at its roots.

With Trump, America's worst instincts have been turned loose.

Wyoming's population ages. Politicians wonder why young people, raised in the "western Way of life," nurtured in Wyoming churches and schools, and beneficiaries of full-ride UW Hathaway scholarships, kick it all over for life in crowded cities. Cities on the Rocky Mountain West have benefited from this great migration from Wheatland, Wyo., and Sterling, Colo. Denver, Salt Lake City, Boise, Albuquerque. That's where the jobs are. That's where young people congregate. They may be afraid of losing their job or their house, but they aren't scared of their neighbors who are a rainbow of ethnicities and lifestyles. They live in peace. Learn tolerance at work. They pack up their family and return to Cheyenne during CFD. Amongst the parades and night shows, they hear Rep. Liz Cheney rant about how Native Americans are ruining our "Western way of life." WTF? They read letters to the editor praising Trump's non-racism and cursing liberals. Republican legislators convene at summer meetings and speak about their latest efforts to curb open voting, immigration, LGBT rights, reproductive freedom, etc. Then they ask: "How can we keep our young people in the state."

Stop being assholes. That would be a start. Then, dear legislator, you can go about the task of funding education, alternative energy, community development, arts and culture and all those amenities that make life worth living.

Then, maybe, young people will stay in Wyoming, maybe even move back home from their $500,000 bungalow in Denver's Wash Park or their $2,000-a-month studio apartment near downtown. They won't be afraid. They will be invested in the present and future of their home towns. They will say, "I feel safe here."

1969 moon landing memories linger on the beach and in The House of the One-Eyed Seahorse

I like to think that I was a witness to history during Moon Landing Week in July 1969.

I witnessed the launch from the beach the morning of July 16. The Hartford Avenue beach approach in Daytona is located 62 miles northwest of Cape Canaveral. The Saturn 5, NASA's largest-ever launch vehicle, lit up an already bright morning and its sound waves seemed to ruffle the smooth Atlantic. The rocket arced into the sky and out to sea. It was visible only a few minutes. When it was gone, we went back in the water. Or maybe I was in the water already. I forget, as I saw so many launches during my 14 years in Florida. They merge into one big launch that shows the U.S. commitment to space exploration in the 1960s and into the 1970s. JFK showed the way with his 1961 speech. Congress shoveled money at the program as it took seriously Kennedy's vow of a man on the moon in 1969. An American man on the moon. Take that, Russkis!

It was all about the Cold War. The USSR ambushed us with Sputnik, Laika the Space Dog, and Yuri Gargarin. We fought back with Mercury and Alan Shepard and Gemini and finally Apollo. We won the Space Race with the moon landing. It was important to win something in the mid-60s, since we were losing in Vietnam and young people were lost to their elders and some of our biggest heroes were gunned down by assassins in 1968.

My father was a rocket man. He didn't fly them or test them. But he was a contract specialist with General Electric and later NASA. He worked out deals with suppliers of nuts and bolts and many of the gadgets that went to the moon. He could look at a launch with pride and announce that the big hunk of metal ferrying Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin to the moon was partly his doing. He and thousands of other Americans had worked together to get the U.S. first on the moon.

But all was not well in Rocketland. Workforce cutbacks had started two years earlier. One day, GE honchos told Dad that his services were no longer needed in Florida. He accepted a transfer to Cincinnati where GE was building all kinds of new and wonderful things. He said he would go on alone and the family would join him when school got out in June. Dad didn't like Cincinnati and we couldn't sell our house in Daytona as hundreds were leaving and  it was a buyer's market. This well-educated workforce that had come from New York and Ohio and New England in the fifties and sixties were no longer needed. It hurt Daytona. It was not exactly the Silicon Valley of the 60s. Most jobs were in the service industries that fed the tourist industry. I worked some of those jobs. Busboy, bagboy, laundry pick-up guy for beach motels, worker on a beach float stand. My brother was a gremmie selling suntan lotion by a hotel pool. One of my sisters was a nursing assistant taking care of old people who flocked to Florida's Promised Land. The engineers who made the rockets (and their families) would be missed by local businesses and schools.

But Dad grew tired of city life and found a job with NASA back on Daytona. I was happy because I had just made my high school's basketball squad after a year's worth of practice and visualized a bright future as a power forward.

On the afternoon of July 20 when Apollo 11's Eagle landed near the Sea of Tranquility, I was parked by the Atlantic Ocean with my girlfriend K. The radio news followed the ship's descent which we only partially listened to. When "The Eagle has landed" was announced, we paused our kissing and fondling for several minutes to let history wash over us. It rained heavily and the beach seemed deserted, odd for a July afternoon. Minuscule waves broke on the sandbar 50 yards in front of us. No surfing today. Once the announcers returned to just talking about the landing of the Eagle, we returned to our previous engagement.

I know the exact spot where this happened. When I'm in town, I walk by it and remember that historic afternoon. I see my rusty red Renault Dauphine with the light blue door that replaced the original, sheared off in a hasty back-up from my garage. Two people are inside, at least I think it's two people, as the windows are fogged. The spirit of that day drifts over that spot as does the memories of an eighteen-year-old me. This presence remains at the beach even when I'm back home in Wyoming. It may still be here when 68-year-old me and then (God willing) the 78-or 88-year-old me toddles down the beach, cane poking holes in the soft sand. When I'm gone, will the ethereal presence remain of the radio broadcast and the automobile and the young man and young woman, their thumping hearts and hopes and dreams? I like to think that beachgoers in 2069, parked in the same spot in their futuremobile, will pause their canoodling to listen to the voices of astronauts landing on Mars or orbiting Saturn. Maybe in the background they will hear a faded voice: "The Eagle has landed." 

That night, in The House of the One-Eyed Seahorse, I joined my family to watch Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon. The video feed was grainy but I could make out Armstrong and then Buzz Aldrin cavorting on the lunar surface. We watched on a TV that struggled to pull in signals via antennae supplemented by a coat hanger and a broken channel changer replaced by vice grips. Nine kids are tough on TVs, even ancient ones that received but three channels. We no longer live there, haven't in a long time. My brothers and sisters and I carry around those memories. Fifty years ago, we were plotting our escape. Now, in quiet times, those memories swirl in our aging heads. They also exist somewhere in the house that almost burnt down in August of '69. We could have lost everyone but for the quick actions of my sister Molly. I was on a date and running late so I salvaged one of the cars, the other one burned to a cinder in the garage where the fire started. My memories would be vastly different as a lone survivor.

This all will be on my mind as I watch film of the July 16 launch and the July 20 walk on the moon and the July 24 splashdown.

Return of the Jackson Hole Art Blog, and other arts news

I was excited to see that Tammy Christel restarted her Jackson Hole Art Blog. Back when I was the communications guy at the Wyoming Arts Council, I borrowed liberally from Tammy's blog. It was chock-full of news about Teton County arts and artists. She teased upcoming events and critiqued exhibits and happenings. She took off a couple years to take care of some family issues. Just yesterday she posted her first JHAB blog. Take time to read it.

Jackson has long been recognized as an arts hotbed in Wyoming and the region. It is the epicenter of Teton County, possibly one of the most picturesque in the country. Home of Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks, you can't open your eyes without ogling a magnificent view. Naturally, it draws landscape artists  which has enriched the community. It's been a draw for writers, too, and is home to the Jackson Hole Writers Conference every June. Residents include starving artists and conservative gazillionaires. Millions of tourists flock to Teton County for the scenery and hiking and skiing and rock climbing. There are a fair number of liberals in the mix but also conservative cranks such as Dick Cheney and Foster Friess.

This heady mix causes many Wyoming residents to insist that Jackson is not a part of Wyoming, as if it existed in its own universe which, sometimes, it does. Those same critics spend an inordinate amount of time enjoying Jackson and Wilson and Teton Village and the slopes of Jackson Hole Ski Resort. But Jackson can't be denied. It's as much a part of Wyoming as Yellowstone and coal mines and rodeo and wind. And its clout as an aesthetic destination can't be ignored.

Jackson isn't the state's only arts town. You can find out more by regularly perusing the Wyoming Arts Council web site. Many Wyoming communities have their own arts councils. Look up Pinedale Fine Arts Council, Casper's Artcore, Arts Cheyenne, and many others. Look them up on social media. Get involved locally.  Often you find that the arts in smaller communities is spearheaded by one or two residents. That can get mighty lonesome. Volunteer!

And finally, badger your legislators when they are close to home. Remind them that you are a voter who cares deeply about the arts and he/she should too. Be cordial but insistent. However, should that legislator disappoint you with crackpot bills and anti-arts behavior, you might vote for someone else or even run for office. That may sound extreme, but I have worked for more than one candidate who won or lost by fewer than 20 votes. If just 11 of those people had changed their votes, the make-up of our legislature would be different.

Now get out there and appreciate the arts. I am a front desk volunteer at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens this afternoon. Come see me and I will point out the wonderful animal sculptures by Don Ostermiller that are scattered about the grounds. I will also direct you to the art show on the conservatory's second floor. I also may remind you that all of the blooming flowers are nature's works of art. You might even see a plein air artist out in the plein air painting the scenery. I will remind you that tickets are still available for Thursday's Summer Concert Series performance by Jason Burge, the Dauphin of Mississippi who's from Mississippi, once worked at the Wyoming Humanities Council and now lives and works in New Zealand. A very talented singer/songwriter.

See you there.

The Fourth of July bash at the National Mall will feature lots and lots of Trump and big tanks -- don't forget the tanks!

In February, when Trump announced plans for his grandiose Fourth of July celebration, conservative commentator Bill Kristol responded on Twitter: 

"The last president to try to hijack July 4th was Richard Nixon, who staged Honor America Day on July 4, 1970. It was widely ridiculed. Nixon later left office in disgrace."

What's past is prologue. Trump's "Salute to America Day" on the National Mall will feature Trump (of course), VIP seating, a Soviet-style military parade with lots of hardware (tanks included), and fireworks.

There were lots of fireworks at the July 4, 1970, event, not all of it in the sky. American Nazis attended to protest Vietnam War protesters and the Yippies staging a smoke-in at the Washington Monument. Police tried to maintain a DMZ between the protesters and Silent Majority picnickers. Then that failed, park police fired tear gas at the rowdy hippies and gas clouds drifted over the multitudes. This led, as one reporter wrote, to a "mad stampede of weeping hippies and Middle Americans away from the fumes." At the same time, the U.S. Navy Band played the Star Spangled Banner from the Lincoln Memorial stage.

I was in that mad stampede. I picnicked with my buddy Pat's family. When the fumes reached us, Pat and I scrambled to lead his grandmother and younger sisters to safety. Pat and I had been tear-gassed several times that spring during campus protests of the Kent State killings. It was no fun for young people but could be dangerous for the elderly. We made it out of the gas cloud and, when the hubbub died down, we returned to our picnic. Later, we listened to Honor America Day jokes from Bob Hope and Jeannie C. Riley's version of Merle Haggard's "The Fightin' Side of Me." Then, despite the chaos or maybe because of it, we admired the bitchin' fireworks display. 

Back at Pat's family's house, Pat and I and his brother smoked a joint and remarked on the day's strange happenings. Looking back, I can see that it was a fine snapshot of those confusing times. The next day, I hitched back to Norfolk Naval Base which my buddy Paul, one of my companions on an eight-week midshipmen summer cruise on the John F. Kennedy. On Monday, I called my girlfriend in Florida to say good-bye and she broke up with me because she was tried of saying good-bye to me all of the time. .Here I was, not yet officially in the Navy, and I got a Dear John phone call. I spent the next six weeks sailing the Atlantic and sampling the aircraft carrier's many jobs. And moping, I did a lot of moping. I remember how nonsensical it all seemed. I was 19 and confusion comes with the territory.

So here it is, 49 years later, and I am still confused. Trump is president. He's staging a Nuremberg Rally an our National Mall. As it was with Nixon in 1970, there seems no end to Trump. But Nixon did come to a bad end, as even conservative stalwarts now admit. But the confusion at the National Mall on July 4, 1970, only cemented Nixon's hold on the voters. Hippies interrupting Bob Hope was just too much to bear. America needed a strongman to stem the rising tide of anarchy. So, he cruised to victory in the 1972 election. I was depressed -- I voted for the man from South Dakota, an honorable man, a warrior who wanted to stop the war.

The big question for 2019: when will we see the end of Trump? Think about that as he rants on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Independence Day.

Artists go where the cautious fear to tread

People who open businesses in downtown Cheyenne are cockeyed optimists, to steal a line from Nellie Forbush in "South Pacific."

The failure rate is sobering. Rents are high. The consumer's taste is fickle. Parking is a problem, Cheyenne is just short of the population base needed for a thriving downtown. Sometimes, it's just too damn cold to venture downtown.

And the booming cities of the Colorado Front Range are just down the road.

Still, they persevere. New restaurants are opening in Cheyenne almost as fast as others go out of business. Downtown residences are being built and people explore ways they can live in those second stories that sit empty in almost every building.

Artists are busy occupying empty spaces. I recently wrote an article for Wyofile about artists invading the Hynds Building at Capitol and Lincolnway. See my commentary and get a Wyofile link here. I just wrote an article for WAC Artscapes about pop-up galleries in Cheyenne and Laramie. That appears in the summer issue.

The Hynds is a big block of a building. Its main claim to fame was that it was built by Harry Hynds, an early settler in Cheyenne. It's been empty for decades. Next door is the infamous "Hole." Nothing says downtown redevelopment like a gaping hole on your main drag. Like a black hole, it has threatened to suck the entire downtown into oblivion.

Then came the artists. Still, they persevere.

A group of artists has moved into the Hynds, encouraged by building owner and Cheyenne native David Hatch. Arts @ the Hynds features work by Mitch Guthrie, Mike McIntosh, Kevin Robinett and Greg Fladager. Next door is Blue Doors Arts, a space occupied by Terry Kreuzer and Georgia Rowswell. On the building's east side is Three Crows Gallery & Gifts. This triumvirate gives the Hynds that live/work look, even though the artists don't live in the building. One of the many plans floated for the structure was a live/work facility by ArtSpace, a Minneapolis-based non-profit property manager. ArtSpace promoters envisioned living spaces on the upper floors and a gallery and some retail spaces on the main level. This would liven up this part of downtown. As it is now, the Cheyenne Artwalk is the best time to visit these spaces. It's held the second Thursday of each month.  Get more info at http://www.cheyenneartwalk.com/

One of the most interesting downtown exhibits is "The Hidden Language of Horses" at Clay Paper Scissors Gallery, 1513 Carey Ave. Here's a short description:

For the July Artwalk, Clay Paper Scissors will feature artwork that showcases the beauty and utility of horses. A variety of paintings, prints and mixed media will be on display from John Giarrizzo, Mark Ritchie, Lynn Newman, David Klarén and Eric Lee. The horse represents freedom, energy, strength, endurance, stamina, and power. Don’t miss this creative interpretation of one of our state and nation’s enduring symbols!

Part of Artwalk is Fill the Space Gallery. The 17th Street storefront has been the site, so far, for two versions of a pop-up gallery. Artist and art teacher Steve Knox is the catalyst for this project, supported by a collaboration among local artists, the DDA, the Cheyenne Artwalk, and Arts Cheyenne. Go see the next pop-up during the July 11 Artwalk, 5-8 p.m. Go here for the list of artists.

"That's some catch, that Catch 22"

"That's some catch, that Catch-22. 

"It's the best there is."

Those lines stuck in my head in 1969 and never left. I heard them again in the Hulu iteration of Joseph Heller's "Catch-22." It was good to hear those words said aloud on a big smart TV. It acknowledges the elegance of the term, its evil logic. Yossarian would be crazy to fly the increasing number of combat missions. To get out of them, all he has to do is ask. By asking, he shows that he is sane and thus must fly more missions.

Fifty years ago, we could easily see the parallel for our times. Yossarian would have to be crazy to go to Vietnam and fight strangers. All he has to do to get out of it is ask. By asking, he shows that he is sane enough to go. It was a bind many of us found ourselves in.

Yossarian summed it up his self-centered beliefs during a talk with Clevinger who would soon disappear into a cloud. "The enemy is anyone who's gonna get you killed, no matter which side he's on."

We knew the people trying to get us killed in 1969. Johnson/Nixon/Westmoreland/Selective Service System. Also, our family and neighbors and teachers and all the people who were solidly behind the war. Fast-forward to this generation's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and its architects -- George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld -- and you can see through recent history what Heller was getting at.

In the Hulu version, by executive producers George Clooney and Grant Heslov, Yossarian is a wide-eyed antihero and a self-centered jerk. His acts of self-preservation hurts others. He whines and complains. He retreats to the hospital. As the scenes add up, it becomes increasingly clear that he is correct in his assumption that everyone is trying to get him killed. Still, he goes on his bombing missions, eager to drop his bombs so the planes can escape the flak field and he has one less mission to fly. The horrors multiply until Yossarian reveals Snowden's secret in the back of the B-25 (one of the book's proposed titles was "Snowden's Secret").

The most telling scene thus far comes at the end of the second segment, when Yossarian reaches out of the bombardier's window in mid-air and tries to erase a spot of blood. During the previous mission, the plane next to his is hit by flak. The plane's bombardier, his body streaked with blood, slides across the glass on his way to his doom. He leaves behind a bloody trail and we see the look of horror on Yossarian's face. On the next mission, some of the blood remains and Yossarian attempts to scrub it off, as if he could banish all of the blood that he has seen and will see. The music accompaniment: is Benny Goodman's "Goodbye," which can't be meant irony-free.

I finished watching the series late one night. That seemed somehow appropriate. There were plenty of laughs, many absurdities. The final scenes are eerie as Yossarian confronts the secret they all share and the blood of the innocents causes him to ditch his bloody uniform for the duration. Catch-22 loyalists may not like the last scene. It's not as hopeful as the one Yossarian chooses in the book. He revels in Orr's survival and his escape from the war. He contends to duplicate it or die in the attempt.

The Hulu series does not give Yossarian an out. The look on his face after yet another bombing run says it all.

Clooney and Heslov made other changes to the narrative. They work, for the most part. I missed Chief White Halfoat and Dunbar. Major ____ deCoverly gets very little to do. In the beginning, I thought it seemed a bit dated, maybe because we have been through so many absurdities (and absurdist fiction) since World War II spawned the book. And now, Trump, a true Scheisskopf, claims our attention.

Maybe it's not so dated after all.

It just doesn't end. There are so many enemies, those who want to kill us for nebulous reasons. Norman Mailer, another World War II combat veteran, said that Heller takes "his reader on a more consistent voyage through Hell than any American writer before him." That may be the biggest secret of all. Life is a trip through hell. Our assignment, should we choose to accept, is to make it heaven without losing our souls. At 18, "Catch-22" gave me an inkling of the challenges ahead of me. At 68, I see the road I traveled, how many choices I had to make along the way. I suppose that's the gift and curse of aging. Sometimes we get a little gift, such as the resurrection of a beloved book, to ease the journey.

The most thoughtful article on Hulu's "Catch 22" was by Jeffrey Fleishman in the L.A. Times, "Why Joseph Heller's 'Catch-22' is a relevant antiwar satire in the age of Trump." You have to get by the firewall, but read it at https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-et-st-catch-22-novel-hulu-20190515-story.html

In finding fault with Heller's depictions of female characters, he refers to Susan Straight, the writer who teaches a fiction class on love and war at UC Riverside. She lambastes Heller's treatment of women, especially the nurses. Most serve as just sex objects, an oversight that the producers try to remedy in this adaptation.

The following paragraph wraps up the article. To me, it sums up the real byproducts of war -- the damage done to the men who fight them, and the damage they do to the people who love them.

Straight’s memoir “In the Country of Women,” which will be published later this year, reflects in part on women in her family who endured their own private battles. “I’m writing about the women who fled all the men who had been in war,” she says. “My ancestors survived the men who survived the cannons and they were terrible men.”

Of course, you don't have to go to war to be a terrible man. Draft-dodger Trump is proof of that. But in "Catch-22," we see the bullet and the damage done.

My sporty new rollator walker is safe at any speed

I own a  Drive Nitro Euro-Style Tall Aluminum Four Wheel Rollator. It's one of the new breed of assistive devices that allow people like me to get from one place to another. Commonly known as a walker. A device to help this injured biped walker walk.

On the last snowy day in May 2018, I fell on my rear end in a Fort Collins parking lot. I got up and brushed the wet snow off of my butt and continued the day's routine, which included moving my daughter into an apartment. My wife noticed my wet jeans. "Your butt's wet," she said. "And so is yours," I said in a playful retort. We laughed, our daughter looking on in bemusement and a little bit of love, although impatient to get on with the task.

You think that there are days that don't matter, They all matter.

Four days later, I awoke with a terrible backache. I don't believe in backaches. I've had them after long backpacks up steep slopes, many miles on my racing bike, a series of pickup b-ball games on the asphalt. But this was a raging backache, one beyond my ken. A few days later, I began to limp. A few days later still, I had trouble walking and I dug out my knee-replacement cane for balance. I grew worried. I consulted my knee guy. He x-rayed my knees and hips and said all was well with those parts. I was relieved as I didn't want to revisit the pain of another knee replacement. The doc prescribed PT. Ten days later, the PT guys saw me limping into the center using a walker, me dragging my left foot. They grew alarmed.

"We sent you out of here two years ago and you were walking just fine," they asked. "What happened?"

"Fell on my keister."

They conducted a few exercises and pronounced that something was wrong that they couldn't address. "We have to talk to the doc," they said.

The doc called me at home the next day. He had made an appointment with a neurologist and urged me to go. I went. The neurologist conducted some tests. She thought my brain was fine but my spine may be injured. She sent me to a spinal surgeon in Fort Collins who operated on Aug. 1. A few days later, I felt more mobile, especially mu upper body. That was the part I was most worried about. I had nightmares about lifeless arms with fingers that couldn't type. That was not to be the case. Read my post about the surgery at https://hummingbirdminds.blogspot.com/2018/08/a-return-trip-to-mind-eraser-may-help.html

Eight and one half months later, I still use a walker. I started with a standard aluminum walker with four rubber-tipped legs. You could always hear me coming. I lifted the walker, smacked the floor a couple feet ahead, and then moved to catch up with the device. You could hear me coming from one end of the house to the other. I stooped over because we borrowed the walker from a short person. My arms and shoulders hurt. I looked like one of those old guys slouching across the retirement home cafeteria. I located a taller walker at a retirement center, this one with two wheels on the front axles. I could stand tall and move faster. I thought I had reached the pinnacle, walker-wise.

I had seen four-wheeled walkers and thought this was the next step. I wanted my next step to be on two feet with any assist coming from my cane. That wasn't to be. I tried the cane for a few days and abandoned it when I fell getting into my car. I tried to get up but couldn't. A young couple driving by saw me sprawled in the street and guessed I was having a problem. They rescued me, guided me into the car, probably wondering "this old guy drives?" If asked, I would have told them that my right leg is fine but it's just the left leg and back and upper spine that torment me.

The world looks a little different when looking at it from a walker. Back when I was fully abled, I remember resting my eye upon someone in a walker as they passed. I walked, my legs perfectly fine. I barely noticed people using assistive devices. Now that I've joined the club, I see them everywhere. They were there all along but I looked through them or over them, barely giving them a thought. As a bleeding heart liberal, I feel empathy. But the dirty truth is this: you don't know the pain of disabilities until you're disabled. We don't want to admit that it can happen to us. And then it does, and you get a glimpse of what some people face their entire lives.

War, disease, accidents all leave damaged bodies in their wake. I read recently that 5 percent of adults in the U.S. use helper devices such as canes, walkers, and wheelchairs. Our town has an older population. We also are home to a major military base and a V.A. Hospital. Back when I swam laps at the YMCA, I would encounter the disabled vets from the V.A. doing their water exercises. Some of them had to be plucked from their wheelchairs and lowered into the water using a crane bolted to the side of the pool. I would watch without really watching, as I was sure these men got their share of stares when they were out in public. The other day as I rode one of the Y's stationery bikes, the swimming pool director told me that I could use the crane in the pool if I wanted to get back in the water. I thanked her but cringed inwardly. Is that why I had been avoiding the pool? I didn't want to be one of those disabled guys who needed the crane?

People do stop me to admire my colorful ride. I was putting Nitro in my trunk at Olive Garden the other day when a middle-aged woman stopped and admired it. She said she wanted to upgrade her mother's walker. I told her how to order and she left. The humor in my situation is pretty obvious. My Nitro walker is fire-engine red and vampire black. People admire it as they would a cherry '57 Chevy or bucket-T roadster. In some future place, old people will stage races that pits Nitro against Lightning. These are short-track races, sprints. A Daytona 500-style race would go on for months. We could fill in gaps in NASCAR's off-season schedule.

This reminds me of a story from my first collection, "Safe at Any Speed." In it, Florida retirees soup up their golf carts and stage races at an abandoned airstrip near Ormond Beach. Lest you think this complete fantasy, golf carts are now called golf cars. And for good reasons. You can spend $9,500 on one designed like a sky-blue 1957 Chevy Bel Air. This is a couple steps up from my Nitro, I can see myself tooling around in something similar when I retreat to a retirement village.

My disability is short-term, or so I tell myself. It has taught me one thing: people go out of their way to offer me assistance. This is especially true as I haul groceries to the car. One woman, possibly older than me, didn't ask as she edged me aside to load groceries in my trunk. I thanked her as she buzzed off. I got the impression that she is not a person who waits around for permission. Airmen, elderly, mothers with kids -- all have offered help. I usually refuse as I stubbornly avoid accepting assistance.  Humility is at risk. Humility can be dangerous. It  can lead to empathy and, God knows, we could use more of that in these cruel times.

Keep up with the arts scene at WyoFile's Studio Wyoming Review

WyoFile periodically runs art reviews in its Studio Wyoming Review section. I, periodically, write one of those reviews. My latest appeared on April 9. The subject was "The Art Of Assemblage" exhibit at Blue Door Arts in the Hynds Building downtown. Read it here.

Running through the review is some commentary on the role of the arts in Cheyenne's downtown redevelopment. I moved my family from Fort Collins to Cheyenne in the summer of 1991. The people we met thought we were crazy moving from a cool university town to a cold and windy Wyoming burg. Those same people escaped to FoCo when the roads were passable. It boasted good food, swinging bars, lots of concerts and other activities. It also had a lively downtown.

Cheyenne had none of those things. "There's nothing to do in this town" was the constant refrain, and not only from my kids. Downtown was a ghost town after 5 when the staties (like me) went home.

A lot can change in 28 years. I mentioned some of them in my last post. New restaurants opening. Condo complex even going up, probably the first new residences built downtown since World War II. I dropped by West Edge Collective's parking lot yesterday to buy a six-pack at the Pufkins food truck. It's Cheyenne Restaurant Week and pufkins (muffin-style pancakes) are $10 for six and I bought a couple of breakfasts' worth. Tomorrow I am getting some $1 tacos at La Paz ("Best Tacos y Burritos") on 18th Street just catty-corner from Danielmark's Brewery. IPA first, then tacos.

But wherefore the arts? I have been writing about them for years, both as writer/editor at the Wyoming Arts Council and as a free-lancer. The future looks good for a concert space at the old Lincoln Theatre. The Civic Center offers a great new line-up of events. The summer outdoor concert season will begin as soon as we get all of the snow out of the way. I'll be writing more about the arts in Cheyenne and around the region as time goes by. See you soon.

Cheyenne girds its loins for first boom since Hell on Wheels

I am surrounded by nuclear missiles. They lurk in their hidey-holes on the rolling prairie of Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado. I give little thought to them on most days. I sometimes drive past F.E. Warren AFB's main gate and see the three Cold War missiles that greet passers-by. Convoys of missileers pass me on the highway on their way to their `24-hour shifts underground. A recent CBS 60 Minutes piece spoke of the antiquated launch equipment at Warren. This gave me pause, as "antiquated equipment" is not a term you want to associate with our nuke strike force. It's bad enough when films of the 1960s scared us with untoward nuke launches. Col. Jack D. Ripper went a little funny in the head and plunged us into a celluloid Armageddon. While the fail-proof fail safe system showed its flaws, our bomber crews carried out their mission. And the Russkis Doomsday Machine went off without a hitch.

So, when 60 Minutes showed that our local launch equipment is falling apart, that our airmen and airwomen are using computers from the Stone Age to take care of Space Age missiles, the Pentagon sprang into action.

It's a good thing that the U.S. Government is funneling taxpayer dollars ($90 billion) to Boeing and Northrup-Grumman to modern our nuclear capabilities. Cheyenne is agog that at least $5 billion of that will be spent locally. Boeing, one of the contractors, will hold a meeting April 11 for businesses "to learn about program support and Boeing supplier needs." N-G cannot be far behind with its own round of meetings..

I scrolled through the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent web site -- GBSD Bound. In flowing language, the writers describe the past, present and future of this program. The Chamber eloquently supports all this. The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades. Really good shades, as the flash of a thermonuclear fireball can melt the eyeballs.

It is good news for Cheyenne. Our capital city has experienced incremental growth the past five years. Many here say that this is the spillover effect from Colorado's boom. Cheyenne is the northern terminus to the Front Range. As such, it benefits when billions are being invested into infrastructure and businesses in Fort Collins, Denver, and Colorado Springs. That same boom has caused Coloradans to question their devotion to a Denver filled with overpriced housing, crazy traffic, and herds of shaggy hipsters roaming the territory as bison once did prior to 1859. "This isn't the Colorado I knew" is a common refrain among family and friends in the Centennial State. They ponder moves to the wide-open spaces of Wyoming and Montana and Idaho if only someone would buy their two-bedroom house for $500,000 and some visionary start-up would pay them bundles of cryptocurrency to telecommute from Laramie. The cryptocurrency/blockchain thing is no joke. Our legislature has passed a dozen bills in support of this as-yet unproven e-currency but is scared shitless with the thought of brown or transgender people moving into their neighborhood. And damn that federal gubment (except when it brings $5 billion to town).

Despite my peacenik roots, I am fond of missiles and rockets. My father fed his large family by planting ICBM sites through the West. He worked as a contract specialist with the Martin Company, later Martin-Marietta. He didn't so much build the sites as find reliable people to do so. He later did the same job in Florida for the space program, helping get Neil Armstrong to the moon in 1969, the year I graduated from high school. I saw Apollo 11 blast off. I canoodled with my girlfriend on the beach as we listened to the crackly car radio announce that "The Eagle Has Landed." My brother Dan and I spent our childhood building missile models and memorized all the names of the U.S. arsenal. I read all the Tom Swift books, in which rocketry played a key part. I watched Sputnik arc across the night sky. We were looking up, all of us. We did it together, maybe the last time that Americans were together on any one thing.

As we revamp our nukes, we are faced with new problems. The main one is in the White House, Donald Trump, buddy of the old Soviet spy who runs Russia. We have the North Koreans and Iranians. Saudi shenanigans. Dirty bombs from terrorists. Clean bombs from China. "Paranoia strikes deep/Into your life it will creep/It starts when you're always afraid/You step out of line, the man come and take you away."

We've come a long way from the so-called peace dividend we expected with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. Remember that?

Cheyenne hasn't been a boom town since the Iron Horse rolled into town and Hell on Wheels was born. Its incredible growth back then earned it the nickname of "Magic City of the Plains."

Let's hope we're ready for this boom.

From facts and fragments and anecdotes, I make up a story

The high temperature for Denver on Feb. 18, 1950, was 53 degrees. The low was 22. That's according to the Farmers' Almanac online weather search app.

Anyone familiar with High Plains weather patterns would see nothing unusual in this. Yes, 53 seems pretty warm for mid-February. But not unusual. On Valentine's Day 2019 in Cheyenne, located 100 miles north of Denver along the Front Range, I wore a T-shirt outside as I took out the trash. Sunny, warm, no wind, 55 degrees. During these mid-winter thaws, temps in the 50s can seem like 70s. You can feel spring in the air, even though spring is a long way off and sometimes delivers worse weather than January or February.

Today's temp in Denver will barely break 20. We expect 15 in Cheyenne. Yesterday I forgot my gloves on a trip to the grocery store. Wind chill was so bad that my hands didn't defrost until I grabbed a fresh-baked loaf of Italian bread and held it close. I must have looked odd. An old guy, bundled for winter, leaning against his shopping cart, hugging a loaf of bread, sighing softly.

On this day 69 years ago, my parents were married in Denver. The photos from that day were shot inside, although the photog could have herded everyone out into the sunshine. My parents are young but not that young. Dad had spent his late-teens and early-20s engaged in World War II. He then went to college on the G.I. Bill. He was 26. My mom was 23, a nursing school graduate and a working nurse. The couple looks happy in their photos. Members of the wedding party, brothers and sisters, spouses and friends, smile at the camera. They all have been through a lot, Great Depression and global war, and look ready to take on the world.

It wasn't easy. It never is. All of the people in the photos are gone now. We are left with their frozen images. And memories. I was born exactly ten months later in Denver's Mercy Hospital. Although family stories say I was born in a snowstorm, that's not what's in the Farmers' Almanac. It was clear and sunny. The high temp was 51 and the low 27. A day much like my parents' wedding day. Mom said she was cleaning the oven when she went into labor. She was trying to take her mind off of the waiting. I like the story but have no way to check it out, as happens with many family stories. Time moves on, memory atrophies, and what we think we know is not accurate at all.

We have stories. The stories sustain us. That's what I'm discovering as I research a novel set 100 years ago in Denver. We know some facts. Denver existed. We have maps and census stats. Hundreds migrated to the Mile High City from other places. Four of them were destined to become my grandparents. They didn't know each other at the time but fate threw them together. They married and I can't tell you what the weather was like on those days because I don't know their anniversaries. With a bit of research, I could find out. But that's not the important thing to me. I've always wanted to know why they came to Denver. I know a few things about their trajectories from elsewhere to here. Grandpa Shay, a cavalry officer in World War I, sought medical help for his lungs at Fitzsimons Army Hospital. There, he met Florence Green, an army nurse from Baltimore. They fell in love, were married, and  produced my father in 1923. They are buried together at Fort Logan National Cemetery in southeast Denver. Surgeons removed one of my Grandpa Hett's diseased lungs and told him to get out of Chicago or the winters would kill him. He jumped on a train to the Rockies. Agnes McDermott took a road trip with her sister and gal pals to Colorado in the summer of 1919. She and her sis liked it so much, they returned to southern Ohio, packed up and moved to Denver. My Mom was their second child.

That's how I got to Denver in 1950.

Time plays a trick on us. When we are young, our relatives tell us stories but we are so self-absorbed that we don't listen. Later, when we can appreciate the stories, the tellers are gone. We know only fragments, anecdotes, stories. The rest, we leave to research and DNA tests. The stories are important because, even if they aren't quite true, they can tell us about people's hopes and dreams and sorrows. We may listen more than we think we do. We may absorb the hopes and dreams and sorrows of those people important to us. I like the idea of genetic memory, that the traumas of our ancestors can be passed along via our genes. This is scary if there is a genocide or war or abuse in your family tree. It also may tell us something about why we get beat down by depression or rejection.

Fiction writers have advantages unknown to genealogy buffs. We respect things that can be proved. Nazi Germany invaded Poland on such a date. The U.S. landed on the moon on such a date and such a location (f*** you, conspiracy junkies). But everything else is subject to interpretation. We make things up. We try to get our hard facts right so you believe the fiction. It's not so easy to compose fiction when you base your story on real people. You have to go off-script. Readers often ask, "Is that a true story?" People, even creative people, crave a lived experience. We also like fairy tales. We like to get the bejesus scared out of us by an evil clown that lives in the sewer. By dragons and orcs. By serial killers who enjoy their liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Today is a good day to remind myself that I was produced by people whose life stories are incomplete and will remain a mystery. I know a few fragments. From those, I can build a bigger story that can eventually be called a novel.

During a bad weekend for equality, I ponder the Catholic Church's social justice traditions

By now, everyone has viewed the video of the Catholic school boys mocking tribal elder Nathan Phillips on the National Mall.

To review, students from the all-boys Covington (Ky.) Catholic High  School are shown mocking Phillips as he beats the drum and chants the American Indian Movement song. Phillips is a member of the Omaha tribe, a Vietnam veteran, and one of the organizers of the Standing Rock oil pipeline protests of 2017. Videos show white school boys wearing MAGA hats. They also chant Trumpisms such as "build the wall." Obnoxious brats, sons of privilege. One wonders where their clueless hatred came from. One need look no further than our clueless hate-filled president, who mocks Native Americans with terms such as "Pocahontas" and references to the Wounded Knee massacre. They heard these things on talk radio or watched them on Fox News. Maybe they heard mockery of ethnic minorities around their house, from parents who shouted similar things at Trump rallies. Some teachers may be to blame, not so much for spouting racism but by failing to nip it in the bud. Certainly social media spreads the hate, although to blame the Internet for these boys' behavior is too convenient. It takes them -- and the rest of us -- off the hook. That's part of the problem.

Some Facebook commenters have urged the school to expel these students. Too easy. This is a teaching moment. Boot the kids from school and they will head off to the local suburban public school where they will remain smug in their ignorance. The Catholic Church has many teaching tools at its disposal. The New Testament, especially the Sermon on the Mount, is a good place to start. WWJD when confronted with a situation where empathy and understanding were called for? Phillips said in an interview that he was trying to insert himself into a brawl. He then tried to escape the melee but the smug-faced teen in the MAGA hat stood in his way. Here was a test to show what true Christianity looks like. Big fail, boys from Covington Catholic High.

The MAGA crowd loves to poke fun of "social justice warriors." Some of us, me included, proudly claim the term. Where did I learn the precepts of social justice? First, at home, then through the Catholic Church during mass and at Father Lopez Catholic High School. The nuns and priests and lay people taught us well. It's fashionable to criticize the church for its many transgressions throughout its 2,000 years. In recent history, we have the scandal of priest sexual abuse. Over he years, Catholic orphanages turned "unwed" mothers into pariahs and treated their young charges like cattle. The church loved its crusades and its bloody Inquisition. Spain and Portugal sent its men to the New World to convert the heathen and kill any who resisted. Nathan Phillips may be a product of one of many Catholic boarding schools, where youngsters were ripped away from their families and bullied into becoming good Catholics. The Catholic Church was a major player in the horror show of history.

It also offers me solace. Not lately, as I quit going to church. I used to find peace in the ritual of the mass. In adulthood, when sinking in the swamp pf depression, I found as much relief in prayer as I did from therapy and meds. I still pray. The main thing that turned me away from the church is what I sometimes refer to as its deal with the devil. The devil is represented by the evangelicals and their handmaidens, the Republican Party. The church decided decades ago that the war against abortion was more important than the spiritual health of its millions of members in the U.S. They allied themselves with the fundamentalists to impose a litmus test on its members. There are only a few questions on the test, I guess you can call it a quiz if you want. You are in the in-crowd if you oppose abortion, birth control, sex outside of marriage, women in leadership roles (including priests), and LGBT rights. This makes you a fellow traveler with the Evangelical Right Wing, a group whose roots are in anti-Catholic bigotry. Of course, Catholics did their own Protestant-bashing. When I was a kid, I was told it was a sin to go to a Protestant church service. I've sinned repeatedly in my adulthood.

So I'm a Cultural Catholic. My roots are in Catholicism but my present is not. I can't ignore memory. My final thoughts may be of a snippet of Latin from the old mass. My Irish grandfather and his rosary beads. Sister Norbert winding up to whack one of us misbehaving boys. Thankfully, I won't be thinking of how I hated Native Americans, Hispanic immigrants, Jews, Liberals, Obama, the transgender kid who just wants to use the bathroom, and all those other people who might look or think differently from me. I won't make others feel small so I can look big. That's a blessing right there.

LATER: Just returned from the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Black Tie Banquet at the Red Lion Inn. Full house. Sat at the Laramie County Democrats' table with Chris and Dem friends. Saw so many people I've met over the years, people I've met through the NAACP, Juneteenth and the arts. All of us were celebrating Dr. King. Guest Speaker was Dr. Olenda E. Johnson, Ph.D., a Cheyenne native who was the first African-American full professor at the U.S. Naval War College. Uplifting speech from an uplifting person. She talked about the late Wyoming State Senator Liz Byrd of Cheyenne who brought up the King holiday in the legislature nine times before it was finally adopted by that body's white majority. Talk about persistence and dedication. Now I'm home and realizing how wonderful it is to get out to meet people who make a difference day by day by day. Another blessing...

What it was like to be in England "The Summer Before the War"

The war was World War I or The Great War, as it was known before there was a second installment to worldwide slaughter. In the village of Rye in Sussex in England, the Edwardian Era was in full bloom. Men were men, women were women, and sheep grazed peacefully in verdant pastures. A young Latin teacher, Beatrice Nash, lands in the village. She still mourns the death of her father, a semi-famous poet. In Rye, she confronts the sexism of the time with great aplomb which caught this reader's attention right away. Her story is woven into those of Agatha Kent, a spunky middle-aged matron who lobbied to bring Beatrice to the local school. She also shelters her two nephews, Daniel, a foppish budding poet and Hugh, a medical student. The scene is set for this comedy of manners which eventually runs headlong into The Guns of August.

"The Summer Before the War" is Helen Simonson's second book and her first historical novel. She's done her homework, as far as I can tell. I am researching the same era in the U.S. for my novel "Zeppelins Over Denver," although a more accurate title might be "The Summer after the War." Only five years separate 1914 from 1919, but those years changed forever the very different worlds of Rye and Denver. The scope of those changes in Rye were perhaps more remarkable, given that the place had hundreds of years of history with pubs in buildings built in the 15th century. The settlement and later the city of Denver was but 60 years old in 1919, Colorado just 42 years into statehood and still possessed many of the traits of the frontier. Native Americans lived there for centuries but they were expendable during The Great Western Expansion, especially when gold was discovered in Cherry Creek. And we all remember the Sand Creek Massacre.

What happens when you deposit a crop of restless people into a restless place going through its own historic changes? A novel, I hope, a good one and publishable. Some 20 million people died in World War I and millions more in the Flu Pandemic of 1918-1919. More than a million U.S. soldiers went overseas and many returned changed in body and in mind. Nurses, too, women who had only imagined a quiet married life found themselves in bloody field hospitals while German shells exploded around them. Wars tumult sent many of them on the move to new places. Women would get the vote in 1920 and Prohibition began (Colorado got an early start in 1916). Racial strife spawned the "Red Summer" of 1919, when race riots flared in U.S. cities as black soldiers returning from war said they weren't going to take this shit any more. Working men went out on strike and were beat up and killed for their efforts. The Communists had turned Russia red. That "subversive" influence was felt in the U.S., and helped spawn the investigative unit that would eventually become J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. People traveled in automobiles and airplanes, even zeppelins. Jazz was the new sound and the Charleston the wild new dance.

What a time. I share Simonson's passion for the era. It involves digging into archives and digital records available through Google. War videos can be viewed on YouTube, and you can also listen to some great tunes such as "Come Josephine in My Flying Machine" and "How You Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Farm after They've seen Paree." The audio is tinny and scratchy which only adds to my listening pleasure. As I conducted research, it occurred to me that this entire generation is gone. A baby born in 1900, such as my Irish grandfather, would turn 119 this year. If you were born when the war ended, you would turn 101. There are some centenarians out there, but they are rare. Their collective memories lie within us, their descendants, and in the records they left behind. Their stories live on. However, it is through fiction that they really come to life.

Thus it is with Simonson's novel. Her leisurely writing style is reminiscent of the writers of the era, some of whom lived and worked in Sussex, such as Henry James and Virginia Woolf. But a formal tone and leisurely pace does not a boring book make. Simsonson''s characterizations are sharp and her conflicts very real. Humor, too, a real penchant for satire with writers as her favorite target. She has a lively time portraying the Henry James-like Tillingham, the poet Daniel who, a few decades on, would be wearing a black beret and mumbling his poems in a smoky coffee house, and Beatrice's almost-but-not-quite-famous father.

SPOILER ALERT! The townspeople rise to the occasion when was breaks out. They welcome refugees from Belgium. However, when one of the young women, Celeste, turns up pregnant and its discovered she was raped by German soldiers, angry residents lobby to turn her out. When her father arranges for Celeste to go to a convent, Daniel, the foppish poet, agrees to marry her. While Simonson sets her book in a bucolic setting in the midst of a beautiful summer and fall, she doesn't want us to forget that humans are fallible, even horrid, creatures..

"The Summer Before the War" is published by Random House. The trade paperback sells for $17. Listen to the 2016 Diane Rehm NPR interview with Simonson at https://dianerehm.org/shows/2016-03-22/helen-simonson-the-summer-before-the-war

Part XIV: The Way Mike Worked -- How the Contract with America bit the NEA on the ass

The story resumes...

It's been a few weeks, but today I get back to my series "The Way Mike Worked," based on the Smithsonian-sponsored exhibit "The Way We Worked," featured in the Cheyenne library this fall. I've been busy with my novel and some free-lance writing assignments. These later chapters of my saga also take some research, as they deal with my time as an arts bureaucrat at the Wyoming Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. I lived the first four decades of my life clueless about the world of arts administration. For the ensuing 27 years, I lived and worked in that world. I'm still active as a volunteer. My hope is that we all will get a chance to promote the arts in our communities. Taking an active role in creativity may save us all. It may not, but we will have a much better time along the way.

On that day in D.C., I witnessed history.

On Tuesday, September 27, 1994, Rep. Newt Gingrich assembled 300 Republican candidates for a photo op in front of the U.S. Capitol. The occasion was the signing of the Contract with America, a document designed by Newt that featured 10 bills that Republicans hoped to pass once the 1994 Mid-term Red Wave led to a Republican majority.

I was just starting my second year in D.C. and still a new hand at inside-the-beltway politics. Did I have a gut feeling that Gingrich's contract would change my life? Not really. Curiosity moved me. That, and a request from my National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) boss that it would be good to keep an eye on Gingrich and his pals as we closed in on the November mid-term election.

That day, I skipped my usual Metro Station stop that led to a two-block walk to NEA offices in the Old Post Office, now a Trump Hotel. I rode all the way to Union Station to take in the event. Republicans had been promoting the gathering for weeks and I was curious. I also had a feeling that it would affect my stint at the NEA. Newt had waged war on Democratic Party policies since his election to Congress in 1979. He had been active in the culture wars, a vanguard in the Religious Right's fight against the NEA, NEH, sacrilegious art, naked art, hip-hop -- any creative strain within 1990s America that threatened The Word in the Bible and U.S. supremacy in the secular world. Not exactly the opening salvo in the struggle but one that would steer politics right into the Trump era.

In late September, D.C.'s oppressive summer bubble of heat and humidity was just beginning to release its grip. But that day at the Capitol, a Republican fever dream was being born in Newt's image.

On this day, Newt launched a war against Democratic Party policies. Total war, akin to Sherman's March through Georgia, which Newt wrote about in one of his novels that I never read. A continuation of Nixon's Southern Strategy, which convinced Southern whites that Republicans were on God's side and Democrats had forged an evil alliance with ethnic minorities, feminists, gays, and college-educated pacifists. It wasn't just that Dem policies were misguided and needed correcting. It was that the Dems were the enemy and needed to be crushed. It was like a Newt Gingrich alternative history. Except it was real and, like the Civil War, had lasting consequences.

Newt wasn't content with writing alternative histories. He actually wanted to make history. Whatever the subject, Newt wrote a book. He's written 18 non-fiction titles. He's authored or co-authored at least a dozen fiction titles. You have to hand it to him. Hatching an idea, writing, revising, finishing, publishing and promoting -- the writer's life is not for the meek. Newt had a platform, still does if you look at the plethora of new titles. It is clear he had a vision and he could write. This one-two punch proved dangerous for the liberal agenda. It was a gift to conservatives waging the culture wars.

As Newt bragged at that 1994 event:“Today, on these steps, we offer this contract as a first step towards renewing American civilization."

What did you do in the culture wars, daddy?

I am a veteran of the culture wars. I don't have any medals and I don't brag about my service. I'm a survivor, which is something to be proud of. For 25 years, I worked to nurture the arts on the local, state, regional and national level. It was fun and heart-breaking. I'm here to tell the story.

What, exactly, are the culture wars? The most significant battle on the national front was waged over explicit photographs of nude gay men and a photo of a crucifix soaked (allegedly) in a container filled with an artist's urine. The NEA helped fund a grant that funded the Robert Mapplethorpe photo exhibit at DC.'s Corcoran Gallery. The crucifix art, "Piss Christ", won the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art "Awards for Artists," also funded by the NEA. Hysterical press coverage followed and evangelical yokels such as Sen. Jesse Helms and  Moral Majority's Jerry Falwell stirred up their followers with tales of blasphemy and obscenity and misuse of taxpayer dollars because, as you know, the national arts budget is so bloated that it puts the defense budget to shame.  

Pause for laughter.

Meanwhile, the NEA found itself in the middle of a lawsuit when it yanked fellowships of four artists for their ostensibly offensive art. All of these offending artists were linked with Satan and all of the Coastal Elites. Pres. Clinton, an evangelical from Arkansas raised by a single mother, was somehow one of those elites. The Republicans aimed to sabotage every one of his programs. This wasn't the first time a combative Congress took on the opposition's sitting president. But it led to all the battles yet to come. 

When confronted with an African-American Democrat as president (a guy who made good the hard way), Republican leaders vowed that none of his programs would become the law of the land. What they failed to obliterate then, they now put in the ruinous hands of the current benighted resident of the Oval Office. The battle will now be joined by the new Democratic majority in the House. Let's hope that the Democrats' tendency for appeasement has been replaced by a need to kick ass and take names. There are some encouraging signs, such as Rep. Pelosi taking Trump to the woodshed this week over the government shutdown.

Let's get back to Newt. His goal was to destroy the NEA and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Museum and Library Services Office (MLS), all part of the same funding bill. That was not as easy as it sounded. Newt, in fact, ran into what other conservatives have discovered over the years, that Republicans support the arts and many have children who are schooled in the arts and grow up to become artists, arts consumers, even arts patrons. They have museums and performing arts centers named after them. They weren't so sure that depriving their city's symphony/art museum/ballet of tax dollars was the proper thing to do. They appealed to their moderate Republican Congresspeople (there were moderate Republicans back then) to teach the Democrats a lesson but don't go overboard for goodness sake.

Newt was faced with a problem. How to satisfy the newly-elected rural-state rabble-rousers and their urban and suburban counterparts who had all of the money. Cuts came, as did compromises. The Right liked the fact that the 1996 federal budget cut funding for the arts almost in half and eliminated troublesome fellowships in visual and performing arts. Newt could declare victory and his colleagues could brag about their success out in the hinterlands. And get re-elected in '96.

It led to my early departure from the NEA and a return to my job in Wyoming. It also had other results that were less well-known. The survival of the literary fellowships. That's a story in itself and worth another post. But first, I have to go back 20-some years and do some research. I like research, although sometimes its tentacles grab me and won't let go..

Next chapter: Newt Gingrich, the writer's friend?

Part XIII: The Way Mike Worked -- On the road to D.C.

My eight-year-old son Kevin and I were on our third day of cross-country travel from Cheyenne, Wyo., to Washington, D.C.

I had promised Kevin three things to coax him into traveling with me in the U-Haul. No. 1, each night on the road we would stay at a motel with a pool. No. 2, we would eat every meal at McDonald's. No. 3, we would take his dog, Precious, with us.

He asked if he could drive but I said no, even though I could have used some relief behind the wheel. But I did stick to the other three promises and on this, the third day, I had a bad case of heartburn to match my driver fatigue.

We were passing through the sliver of West Virginia between Ohio and Pennsylvania when I spied a rest area and stopped. It was Labor Day weekend and one of the service clubs staffed a coffee stop. I hit the restrooms and then the coffee stand staffed by a pair of middle-aged guys. As he poured my coffee, one of the guys asked where I was headed.

"Washington, D.C.," I said. "I start a job there Monday."

He nodded, handed me the Styrofoam cup. The coffee was as hot as the afternoon. "You aren't one of those Clinton fellas, are you?"

"Afraid so." I smiled. They didn't. I heard the Deliverance banjo playing in the background. I thanked them for the coffee and retreated to look for my son. Clinton fella? I guess that I was, although far down on the list, way below the political appointees and the thousands of full-time D.C. bureaucrats and the hangers-on that accompany any new administration.  The National Endowment for the Arts was borrowing me from the State of Wyoming because, as a writer from a flyover state such as West Virginia, my higher-ups thought that I would lend a new perspective to the work of the government arts agency. I had signed up for two years with a possible two-year extension. I was part of a pool of Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) employees that made their way to D.C. every couple years. There was a surge now as V.P. Al Gore was tasked with trimming the federal work force.

Kevin and I spent one more night on the road. We could have made it to Rockville, Md., by nightfall but our new house wasn't available until the next day.  The motel had a nice pool and we could see the golden arches from our room. This Clinton fella was pretty tired and tomorrow was moving-in day. Chris and our infant daughter Annie were flying in from Denver in the afternoon. Soon we would all be together in a new house in a new town. Chris was going to stay home with Annie while Kevin went to the third grade. We would try to survive on one mid-level bureaucrat's salary in one of the most expensive suburbs on the East Coast. North Bethesda -- that's what city leaders wanted to rename our section of Rockville. The new name would probably bring higher rents and higher prices all-around. Bragging rights, too, I guess.

But that was all ahead of us in this new adventure.

Part XII: The Way Mike Worked -- Welcome to Wyoming

INTRO: "The Way We Worked" exhibit wrapped up its stint at the Laramie County Public Library on Nov. 16. This Smithsonian-sponsored traveling exhibit features interactive displays on various aspects of working in the U.S. Technology plays a major role, as you might guess. Assembly lines, automated farm equipment, telephone switchboards, manual typewriters, and the dawn of the computer age. The exhibit has moved on to other libraries. But while it was here, it prompted me to look closely at my own work history. My final batch of posts have to do with my life as an arts administrator. It's a specialty I knew nothing about until I tried out several other career paths. I was clueless when I started in 1991 and, by the time I retired in 2016, I had a few clues. I feel it's my civic responsibility to share them with you, no matter how many words it takes. 

My first year as literature program manager at the Wyoming Arts Council got off to a rocky start.

But it might not have started at all.

I was so tentative with State of Wyoming application that I filled it out by hand instead of typing it. I don't know what I was thinking. Or if I was thinking. I almost had an advanced degree, which I thought would be a plus. But my only experience in arts administration was as a reluctant volunteer in my university's Fine Arts Series. My only grant request thus far, for the Colorado State University English Department's Visiting Writers Series, was turned down by Fort Fund, Fort Collins' local arts agency, despite my eloquent presentation to the grants committee. I was 0-1 in the grants department.

On the plus side, I was a published writer and well acquainted with the literary world after three years in an M.F.A. program. I did some research and discovered that there actually was an arts administration degree track at a number of universities. What did this kind of person do? A lot, as it turns out. Grants, yes, but a list of other things. Outreach to non-profits, budgeting, arts promotion and marketing, diplomacy with hard-headed politicians, schmoozing with rich patrons.

That last one did not figure in my research. But it's a real thing, as I found out over the years. I am a liberal but a pragmatic one. Many rich people are Republicans. That doesn't make them bad, despite the tenor of today's politics. Many of these rich Republicans have an abiding interest in one or more arts forms, usually those that involve large buildings for symphonies, opera, and the visual arts. Most do not fund avant-garde or political arts projects as that can lead to trouble when some rabble-rousing artist makes art that enrages community leaders. The free spirit in me loves the free spirit in others. As a bureaucrat, charged with spending taxpayer money responsibly, well, you can see the conflict. More on this topic later.

My background in the arts was limited. I didn't attend a live symphony performance until well into adulthood. I was in my 40s before I first attended an opera. None of my K-12 schools had arts education beyond basic drawing and making some simple pottery that could be a bowl or an ashtray, the perfect all-around Christmas gift for Marlboro-puffing parents. None of my family members were artists. They tended to be accountants or nurses or insurance sellers. They would have seen an arts career as impractical. "That's nice as a hobby but how are you going to make a living?"

Good question.

I digress. I was applying to be an arts administrator in Wyoming. To my surprise, I landed an in-person interview. I drove up to Cheyenne. The staff interviewed me. They were trying to decide if I was someone they could work with. As I had already discovered in the corporate and academic worlds, it was important to be collegial in a small department where people often worked together.

One WAC staffer asked me what made me want to live in Cheyenne. I answered that I didn't want to live in Cheyenne -- I wanted to work at the Arts Council. It seemed like a perfectly logical answer. I didn't know anything about Cheyenne except that it was the capital city and sponsored a big ten-day rodeo every summer. When we moved to Cheyenne, people seemed dismayed that we had moved from Fort Collins, which was a weekend destination for adults and their teen children. Elders went to shop at Sam's Club and the city's mega-mall, eat dinner at one of the cool restaurants. Young adults went to party. And this was before legal pot!

I got the job. I was hired by director Joy Thompson who, by the end of the year, was on her way elsewhere. My first assignment was to drive to the Sundance Institute in Utah to meet with literary types from the region to plan a collaborative literary initiative. Joy told me they needed someone from Wyoming and I was it. So I teamed up with Robert Sheldon of the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) and we drove across Wyoming to Redford's place. A great intro to my colleagues in other states. National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Literature Program Director Joe D. Bellamy was there. I met reps from literary organizations like the Aspen Writers Conference and a sampling of writers, including Terry Tempest Williams and Ron Carlson.

I absorbed it all, spoke little. Hiked the mountain and pondered my future. I entered the cliche of "steep learning curve" but was prepared for the challenge. When I went to the office the next week, I was charged with coordinating the initiative for Wyoming. I also was tasked with researching, writing, and editing the WAC's 25th anniversary annual report. A tall order, because I knew nothing about the arts in Wyoming. As the WAC's first full-time staffer for literature I had much to do. I had to show that the investment was worth it.

That introductory year is now a blur. One thing stands out. When the 1992 legislature convened, I began to discover the precariousness of my position. Republican leadership declared war on Democratic Governor Mike Sullivan when he vetoed their latest redistricting plan because it was a clear-cut example of gerrymandering. They retaliated by zeroing out the budgets of all of Sullivan's favorite projects, including the Arts Council. This was a blow. Just when I was figuring out what was going on. I refreshed my resume and waited for the hammer to fall. I alerted my family. At the WAC, we mobilized the arts community and its members flooded legislators with calls and letters -- not sure if we had e-mail at that point. A few Republicans groused in public about what a nuisance artists and arts educators were. That seemed ominous. But the response was paying off.

I began to realize that the arts community in the state was a tight-knit web. Legislators had artist neighbors. Their kids were involved in the school orchestra or drama club. Relatives ran arts groups that brought artists and performers to their small towns. Cutting the arts budget was personal. And personal relationships are crucial to life in a place challenged by long distances and rough landscapes and weather. An important lesson.

This story has a happy ending. The budget was restored in a roundabout way but restored it was. Legislators learned a lesson, a short-term one at that as budget cuts to the arts and arts education were always a threat. I kept the resume updated. I was adding lots of experience as an arts administrator. Still learning, as it turns out. That never changed.

In 1993, the NEA came calling. And I answered.

Part XI: The Way Mike Worked -- The long road to a career as arts administrator

Arts administrator.

Nice alliterative term. Features the noun arts, which we all know is a right-brain function, with administrator, which is decidedly left brain. I always felt that I had some of the left and some of the right. I wasn't artistic, but I did enjoy the arts, as in the kind of art you see at galleries and museums and that which you see on stage in the form of theatre and music. My music tastes were shaped by the '60s and '70s, preferring rock and roll to the classical, what used to be called "longhair music" before there were actual long-haired hippies rocking out to Led Zep. My father loved classical music and played the loud stuff: Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky and Ravel. 

Dad loved the bagpipes.The only concert he ever took me to was the Black Watch, the military band that used to scare hell out of Native Africans, Afghans, and any other peoples the Brits yearned to subdue. He played bagpipe records too, probably to escape a house filled with squabbling kids and a frazzled wife. I was usually reading. I can still read when it's noisy. All through my childhood, my father played his stereo at night.

While studying creative writing at CSU in the late '80s, I supposed that I would teach if my fiction didn't start bringing in the dough. I was a teaching assistant, teaching freshman comp and eventually, creative writing to the young and restless. Much to my chagrin, I discovered that an M.F.A. in 1990 could land you a teaching job at a community college and maybe as a college adjunct. But I set my aims higher. I applied to colleges and universities all over the U.S. I snagged a couple in-person interviews, too, at the Modern Language Association conference in late December in Chicago. They bore no fruit. Too cold. I didn't stay at the conference hotel right by the waterfront but one that I could afford a few blocks away. 

During the three-day event, I encountered many young people engaged in the job search and, when they had a few minutes, attending some of the pedagogy sessions. I went to a few of those. The one I remember best featured Chicago hard-boiled crime writer Sara Paretsky. I'd read a few of her books and she was fascinating and funny. She talked about the movie being made based on her novels, V.I. Warshawski starring Kathleen Turner. She cracked up the audience when she told how the male director tried to talk Turner into showing a bit more skin as she battled the bad guys. Paretsky wondered then if Hollywood might not be ready for a female private eye. The talk filled me with joy until I again ventured outside into the snow and wind. I'd been living in Colorado for 12 years and knew snow and cold and wind. But there was something evil in the wind that howled off of Lake Michigan. 

In 1991, I was 40 and possibly unemployable. I started thinking that I might have to go back to the corporate world. I was broke and had a family to support. What to do?

That's when I started thinking of life as a working artist. The prospect filled me with dread and by the spring I was up to my cerebral cortex in depression. I'd been depressed before but never like this. I couldn't sleep and couldn't concentrate in class. We took off for a spring break trip to Tucson. I sat in the back seat; Chris and Kevin sat up front.  At one rest stop in New Mexico, I bolted off into the scrub, headed for God-knows-where. Eventually I stopped and returned to the car. Chris and Kevin were concerned. I was just a bundle of angst.

It wasn't much of a spring break. My psyche broke, or was breaking. On our way home, we stopped for the night at a cheap motel in Albuquerque. I was created a few miles away in 1950 after my newlywed parents partied in Old Town and then went back to their cramped apartment and had sex. It was about this time of year, too, mid-March, when the crab apple trees were trying to bloom and snowstorms collided with the Sandias. That was happening right this moment, the mountains squeezing fat snowflakes out of a Pacific Low. In my angst-ridden state, I didn't feel like driving or doing much of anything Elsie but hunkering down to wait out the Apocalypse. We waited through two nights. And on the third day, I arose from my somnambulist state and drove us the 500 miles back to Fort Collins. In this state of anxiety, my heart raced and I imagined scary things that would never come to pass. If one snowflake fell, by God, I was going to park this thing and never get out. But it didn't and I didn't. My wife wondered if I had flipped my lid. My son was confused by Dad"s odd behavior. We got home, eventually.

At this point, my experience with therapy consisted of three talk sessions with a therapist in training at UF Health Services. I was 26 and had just broken up with a long-time girlfriend or she had broken up with me. I was depressed and confused. After walking by the Health Services building a half-dozen times, I went in and asked for an appointment. I met with a guy who may have been younger than me, and we chatted. I quit after three sessions because I started to feel better. Not really -- spring was in full bloom and I found many outdoor things to do including spring break at the beach. Nothing like a little suds and sand and surf to ease a person's psyche or at least preoccupy it.

Back to 1991... A week after the trip to Phoenix, I was in the office of the campus psychiatrist.  A real shrink, not one-in-training. He sized me up pretty quickly and put me on a small dose of Prozac, a mind-altering drug. He warned me that it would take a month or more for me to feel its effects. I asked him about any unwanted side effects. Reduced libido, dry mouth, weight gain. I figured I could live with all of those, for a short time at least.

On a nice spring day, a guy I knew from my Denver church shot down his estranged wife in front of her workplace and then killed himself. The Denver Post article about it said that the killer had been under the care of a psychiatrist and was taking Prozac. Experts quoted in the article debated the pluses and minuses of the drug known generically as Fluoxetine. I read all of it but didn't have to as I knew that Prozac was involved. During our next session, I asked the psychiatrist about dangerous side effects such as murder. He took my question seriously but advised me to be cautious when reading about antidepressants because a lot of misinformation was circulating and the Internet was in its infancy. I stuck with the program and gradually, as spring turned to summer, I began to feel better.

I signed up for the arts education project at the Colorado Council for the Arts (now Colorado Creative Industries). They planned to send me to a small town in eastern Colorado for a semester to teach writing in the mornings and model my writing skills in the afternoon. I'd get paid a stipend and would stay at a teacher's house. I could see my family on weekends.

That summer, I worked on my thesis, taught composition at AIMS Community College in Greeley, and served  as the English Department rep to the CSU Fine Arts Committee.  I learned how to stage events, some of them quite big. I was charged with bringing writers to campus. Over the course of 18 months, I worked with Gwendolyn Brooks, Etheridge Knight, Maya Angelou, Linda Hogan, David Lee, Larry Heinemann, and others. It was a thrill to meet some of the writers I had read. As I shepherded them around campus, I had some one-on-one time with them, asked them about their work, tried to get tips to help my own writing.

I brought Etheridge Knight to the Larimer County Jail where he coaxed a group of inmates to try out their poetic voices. Knight had been a jailbird himself, and a heroin addict after being wounded in the Korean War. He spoke from a deep well of experience. I spoke to Heinemann about the voice he used in Paco's Story, winner of the National Book Award. When I picked the novel off of the library shelves, I was hooked by the voice, a dead grunt who addresses a man named just "James" ("This ain't no war story, James") and narrates Paco's tale in a "sad and bitter voice." I took David Lee on a tour of his old dorm which now served as offices for me and my fellow teaching assistants.  It was a thrill listening to the diminutive Brooks reciting the "We Real Cool" poem that's included in almost every 20th century poetry anthology:

All of this took time away from my writing and classes. But it was this experience that led me to my 25-year career as an arts administrator.

You just never know where life will lead you.