Dark times demand dark humor

We live in absurd times. A Reality TV show star is president. He is a narcissist who is never wrong about anything but is wrong about everything. He enlists creepy people, straight out of a Dickens' novel, to do his dirty deeds.

You gotta laugh. How did we get into such a mess? If I was a serious columnist for a major metropolitan newspaper, I could dissect Trump's faults with a litany of facts and figures. Real journalists do that.

I'm a blogger so am not constrained by facts. I do know truth from lies and I try to adhere to them when it matters. I'd rather turn a nice phrase or get a laugh. I'm a fiction writer, too, which gives me a certain leeway to embellish, maybe even lie.

What makes us laugh at serious topics? It's in our genes, a human response to inhumane acts. How else can we deal with a monster like Trump, a ghoul like Stephen Miller? How can we tolerate war and pestilence?

It takes some talent to get us to laugh at human foibles. It takes skill and wit. Wit in the old-fashioned sense. A person with wit has "the ability to relate seemingly disparate things so as to illuminate or amuse," according to Merriam-Webster. Here's another: "a talent for banter or persiflage," persiflage meaning "light or slightly contemptuous banter or mockery."

A good stand-up comedian has wit. A bad one just tells jokes. A witty politician can turn a phrase, helps us laugh at ourselves. A bad politician heaps scorn on helpless people, afflicts the afflicted.

There's a darkness to good humor. And it takes skill to tease the humor our of war and pestilence, sex and death. The Seven Deadly Sins, a.k.a. capital vices, are as serious as the name. A good comic writer can find a lot of fun in "lust" and its sister, "envy." I've heard many a comedian describe their lustful ways -- failed relationships, oddball sexual practices, the inevitable heartbreak that comes with opening up yourself to others.

A novelist gets thousands of words to show you heartbreak. It can come in many ways. The pursuit of love. How love of country or religion can turn out badly.

We could blame war on "wrath," another deadly sin. For those who experience war, heartbreak may best describe its aftermath.

In the film version of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, a platoon of heroic U.S. soldiers back from Iraq are celebrated at an NFL playoff game. The pageantry of a big NFL bash is juxtaposed with Billy Lynn's memories of Iraq and the guilt he feels at not saving a buddy. One of the scenes involves Billy Lynn and the team owner, played straight by comedic actor Steve Martin. The fatuous owner chides Billy for his uncertainty and notes that his platoon now is bigger than Billy Lynn -- it belongs to America. So America gets to celebrate by playing a football game and shooting off fireworks. EDM beats power the costumed dancers who writhe around the stage while the soldiers stand and get appreciative applause from the crowd. The pageantry and pathos of America on stage.

Dark humor and satire are cousins. Often, dark humor is poking fun at a cataclysmic event. World War II was not a laugh riot but some amazing books came out of the struggle. Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five. Same goes for World War I. The Good Soldier Svjek is a great example, a book that set the stage for later war books and movies all the way up to the present. In the hands of a good writer, one with wit, the most serious war novel can yield some laughs. All Quiet on the Western Front is a good example.

Vietnam was my generation's heartbreak. Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato with its magical-realist elements. Meditations in Green by Stephen Wright is another darkly comic take on Vietnam and its aftermath. The movie Full Metal Jacket came out of a novel by Gustav Hasford but took a darkly comic path in Kubrick's hands. No surprise from the director of Dr. Strangelove. Michael Herr, Hasford and Kubrick collaborated on the screenplay. Herr wrote the memoir Dispatches which was part of the inspiration for Apocalypse Now, which has its own absurdist moments. Herr was a correspondent in Vietnam for Esquire Magazine. Although Herr has admitted that he invented some of the characters and did not actually witness some of the events and dialogue, he contends it is all true. In France, Dispatches was published as a novel. In Vietnam, it was all true and it was all fiction.

Fiction writers yearn to go beyond the history into a place of story, a place where the reader is compelled to move on and possibly laugh or shake their heads or both.

Hunkered down -- four months and counting

I posted my first blog about the pandemic on March 15. In "The pandemic comes to Wyoming," I mused about the deadly virus and the impact it could have on us. I don't have to read between the lines to know I was scared. The spiky virus laid in wait for us all. I had nightmares. Already there was a toilet paper shortage.

Four months to the day later and I'm still here. Still hunkered down, for the most part. I'm high risk so wear a mask when I go out. In the beginning, the only masks I could find were bandannas. I then graduated to hospital-style paper masks that my daughter brought home from her part-time job. Later I ordered cloth masks and we now have plenty. Not enough to share with all of the maskless shoppers at the grocery store. But enough. I still tend to buy too much food when I shop, especially non-perishable items such as canned milk, canned fruit, soup, and pasta. I'm versed on various ways humanity can perish thanks to books and movies. I go all the way back to the bomb shelter building days of the 1950s, duck-and-cover classroom drills. The threat was real then. We thought atomic fire would end us. Other threats lurked, less bombastic ones that could do us in.

And here we are.

If you add to that an imbecile in the White House, economic meltdown, global warming, racial strife, and unhinged evangelicals, we are in deep shit.

It also is a great time for creativity especially if it involves humor. Dark humor. The darker the better.

To be continued...

COVID-19 highlights lowlights are in the headlines

Some days, I get up and stare at the coronavirus news on my smartphone screen. I can access every news source on the planet and, even though most of them have paywalls, many allow me to read the headers and sometimes a bit of the story. Here are some lowlights from today:

New York Times:  With Virus Response, Governors Face Unending and Very Public Test

Denver Post: More Colorado families consider online education as COVID-19 risks look over upcoming school year

Reuters: Coronavirus cases hit 13 million, WHO sounds alarm

Miami Herald: This iconic Miami Beach hotel recently reopened. Coronavirus is making it close again

Wyoming Tribune Eagle: UW confirms a person working on campus contracted virus

And this: UW expects substantial enrollment decline

Toronto Star: Canadian snowbirds in flux as insurance firms deny them COVID coverage – but there is a solution

TrialSite News (Italy): University of Padua Vo Study: One Possible Hypothesis of How to Contain COVID-19

The Jakarta Post: Hong Kong Book Fair postponed amid spike in coronavirus cases

CNN: Trump turns on Fauci as disaster grows

Fox News: Local governments weigh tax hikes to plug coronavirus-induced shortfalls

The news is dismal on this Monday morning. It was dismal yesterday and the day before. The U.S., especially, is seeing spikes in the South and West. A sputtering economy tried to roar again but many leaders, even some Republican ones, on backtracking on their open strategies. The Atlanta mayor, a Democrat, has been diagnosed with the virus and is slowing its reopening which has made the Republican governor very mad. When I say mad I mean angry, although both apply in this case. Florida’s governor. A Trump ass-kisser, is moving ahead full speed on reopening. He plans to get school open next month, saying that if Wal-Mart can open so can schools. U.S. Education Secretary DeVos, a Trump flunky, tells communities to get kids back in school OR ELSE!

This could be a tragicomedy but it’s real. Very real. The Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracking site lists more than 3 million U.S. cases and 135-plus thousand deaths. New cases are at 24,000 and climbing as it’s early yet.

Trump fiddles as the U.S. burns.

Chris and I are both high-risk and are staying home. I wear a mask when I do go out to the grocery store or fast-food drive-ups. Hunkering down is still SOP for us.

Good luck, wherever you are.

The "Poetry Apothecary" prescribes plenty of poetry and art

How have the arts been impacted by the pandemic?

Bigly.

No surprise, since the creating of art can be a solitary act but it's enjoyed with others. We gather for concerts, dance performances, plays. We gather in museums and galleries to appreciate the visual arts. We read singly yet gather for talks and book signings by writers. We gather in book clubs to celebrate our favorite writers and maybe drink some wine.

This is the summer of ungathering.

Many arts groups, not content to start planning for 2021, have come up with creative ways to reframe their events. Impromptu performances from city balconies. Zoom collaborations. Drive-in concerts.

I wrote about one of these groups this week for WyoFile's Studio Wyoming Review.

The coronavirus cancelled the annual June Jackson Hole Writers Conference, one of the most esteemed events on the country’s literary calendar. Since planning is done years in advance, staffers scrambled to put conference sessions online for free (registration is usually around $375) and only charged fees for critiques offered by faculty.

Matt Daly, assistant director of the JHWC, came up with the "Poetry Apothecary" that showcases visual arts and writing. The show is up at the Center for the Arts gallery until the end of July. The JHWC web site features a video tour (updated regularly) of the exhibit along with two other videos featuring artist/poet collaborations.

Daly proposed “Poetry Apothecary” well before the pandemic but needed to do some fancy footwork to adjust to the times. As he was helping to redesign the conference, he also was installing the show at the Center for the Arts. As anyone who works in the arts knows, fancy footwork is part of the job.

Read my Studio Wyoming Review article on the show on WyoFile. It was posted yesterday in a slightly edited form. 

All articles need editors. As one, I have revised, reframed, and rejected many stories. I tell young writers to expect changes to everything you write. My daughter Annie recently submitted a script to the True Troupe. The acting company is reviewing play scripts for the fall. Annie read one of my old short stories and transformed it to a one-act. She asked me to be thorough in my critique. I was. What I wasn't prepared for was Annie's interpretation of my story. She condensed and rearranged it. I had the chance to experience my work anew. She had workshopped my story before I had a chance to edit her. 

One of my Dad the Editor lines is "it's not finished until it's finished." She obviously was paying attention. My story, 15 years on, was still being finished. And it won't be finished yet. If the troupe adopts the script, the director and actors and crew will workshop it again. Lines may be dropped and lines may be added. Characters may change or disappear altogether. It's a wonderful process and not one for the faint of heart. 

Take some time to read Studio Wyoming Review. It's supported by WyoFile and grants from the Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund and the Wyoming Arts Council. 

And then there's this:

From noon to 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, July 23, “Prescribe,” a livestream "Poetry Apothecary" reading, will be presented in the Center for the Arts Mainstage in Jackson. Medical professionals read poems as acts of healing. Masks and social distancing will be in effect.

Life in the Time of Distancing

My sister-in-law, Ellen Berry, died last week in Florida after a three-year bout with lung cancer. She was 61.

She was a wonderful person and I will miss her. My wife Chris, her only sibling, was with her at home for five days before she passed. Chris was lucky to get a flight out at a decent price. She was in shock when Ellen’s husband Chuck called with bad news on Saturday morning, June 20. He came home from work on Friday evening and found her on the floor. She was rushed to the hospital and put in ICU.

Chris and I scrambled to get her on a plane from Cheyenne to Daytona Beach. She flew Delta on June 23 on a bereavement fare. She was thankful to be with her sister in the final days.

Chris stayed in Ormond Beach for the planned celebration of life. This morning, she called and said that it had been cancelled due to the coronavirus. In case you haven’t heard, Florida is one of the states where Covid-19 has spiked. Chris’s family decided that gathering for a wake was too risky for all, not just for the over-60 high-risk crowd but for everyone. Many young people have been admitted to hospitals in the last few weeks. They have also acted as disease spreaders, the Typhoid Marys of their generation.

It’s a sad thing when you can’t get together to send off a loved one. This is happening all over the world. We need these farewells just as we need the welcoming ceremonies for newborns. Joy and sorrow must be shared. It leaves a hole when it is not. Weddings, reunions, graduations all need to be shared. For those who can’t attend, the photos are gifts to be shared. They also provide mysteries for future generations. Who is that guy with Aunt Mary?

I feel that lack of togetherness today. Chris and I have been hunkered down at home since mid-March. No St. Patrick’s Day parties and now there will be no Fourth of July parties. I miss human contact. I grew up in a big family and we thrived on human contact. I’m also a writer and spend a lot of time by myself, just me and my imagination and my laptop. When I emerge from my den after composing a few pages of prose, I seek out people to bother. These days, most of that bothering is done by phone, e-mail, Zoom. My family members get together almost every Sunday on Skype. It’s a welcome connection. My siblings and their kids are mostly in Florida, a few hours’ drive from each other. I live in Wyoming, a few days drive or a day-long airplane ride away. We have family clusters in Georgia and North Carolina. A niece works in New Zealand and my sister and her husband live in Lyon, France.

While it is wonderful to see and hear relatives via laptop, I miss the in-person gatherings. In December, I attended my niece Meghan’s wedding in Atlanta. It was such a pleasure to shake hands and hug, so much of it in the four days I was there. It’s a small thing, this contact with another human, but now I miss it when it can’t be done. 

A pleasure center activates when we touch. It’s a rush. Sometimes, it’s scary or sad, as when a family member jets off to take a job a half-world away. Our rushed farewells are now at airport curbside. Maybe we get in a quick farewell as we hustle to the security line-up. Back in the day, you could see your wife all of the way to departure gate. You could hold hands and kiss right up until the final call. You could stand by the plate-glass window and see the plane back up and taxi out to the runway. If you were lucky, you could watch as it took off and disappeared over the horizon. Maybe it was worse to linger at the airport instead of being shooed away from the unloading zone by a robotic voice. 

My grandmother Florence, born a decade before the Wright Brothers flight, took my brother and me to lunch at the old Denver airport, Sky Chef I think it was called. We ate and watched the planes. There even was a balcony where you could stand outside and watch all of the comings-and-goings. I was fond of airports. I wasn’t always fond of flying, especially when I jetted away from loved ones, or jetted toward a loved one’s funeral.

Sadness has crept into everything. Hunkering down has had a price. People have lost friends and lost jobs. Police have killed people just for being black. We have a president and an entire political party that thrive on cruelty. We can’t go out to the brewpub and have a beer with an old friend. I wear a mask and I expect you to wear one even though I can’t see your smile.

During all of this, we have discovered humanity in unexpected places. Creativity, too. Let’s let those thrive as we figure a way out of this.

Haiku for departed robins

Minnows got to swim
Robin hatchlings got to fly
One feather remains

Watching the robins like a hawk

Robins are good parents. Both mom and dad brings food to the chicks. When the adult robin alights on the nest, the movement prompts sightless hatchlings to reach for the sky and open their beaks. They cheep, too, a tiny sound but one that the parents recognize. The adult robin regurgitates a diet of worms and insects into the outstretched mouths. They make the trip from nest to great outdoors back to nest up to 100 times daily. They seem insatiable, these young ones. They grow as big as their parents within a month. They are klutzy when they try to fly and this is the most dangerous time in their young lives. A fall can be fatal because parent robins can't boost the kids back into the nest. They fall prey to cats and foxes and raptors. Humans are told not to pick them up and put them back in the nest because the human scent will cause the parent to shun the offspring. Not so, say the experts. Mom and dad know their kids by sight and sound and not smell. To catch falling birds, Chris draped a blanket over a trash can three feet below the nest. Our robins' nest is accessible but most are not. It was built on top of our porch's solar control box. It's just out of my reach if I wanted to reach it. The adults buzz us humans as we water the plants or barbecue a steak. Unlike blue jays, robins seem content on close encounters. Blue jays peck at the heads of interlopers. The shock troops of the bird world. The time from robin egg to hatchling to fledgling is a short one. Humans take note. Thirty days for robins. Thirty years for the process in the typical human nest. Robins should be glad they don't have basements.

As the hymn says, gonna lay down my sword and shield

A viral plague kills thousands and forces millions to hunker down at home and practice social distancing when out in public.

Black Americans killed on the streets by rampaging police.

Millions of Americans lose jobs due to record unemployment.

The President of the United States hides in the White House guarded by armed troops and a fortified fence.

Riots in the streets.

Armed secret police of unknown origin face down peaceful protesters in the nation's capital.

This could be a blurb for a best-seller or an action-packed new movie.

Instead, they are news headlines.

That was the week that was. The U.S. is in deep do-do. Trump can't be blamed for it all. But he can be blamed for making it much, much worse. He is totally unfit for the highest position in the land. Where other leaders unite, Trump divides.

What makes it worse is that Trump is a lifelong racist and a narcissist. He can't look weak even when he is. He has all the traits of a schoolyard bully.

What does a person like this due when threatened? We've seen it. Brute force. He is the commander-in-chief and thus he commands unlimited power, or so he believes. He wanted to unleash troops on protesters. It's been done in the past but you have to go back the Vietnam War protests to see it in action. It happened but not to the extent we feared. Heads were beaten, rubber bullets fired, tear gas employed, arrests made. But the protesters didn't give up and critics of both political parties and a phalanx of retired U.S. generals condemned Trump's tactics. Protests have calmed down. The rioters have not been identified but you know they were radicals intent on watching the country burn. White supremacists. Anarchists. Black radicals.

The protesters cause is just. Peace prevailed. Many police sided with the protesters. A Tennessee National Guard unit laid down their shields after protesters sang the anthem of nonviolent protest.

I'm gonna lay down my sword and shield
Down by the riverside.

And study war no more...

I have a part to play in this. Not sure yet what it is. But it's clear we need to change the way government employees treat minorities. Not just police. Everyone up and down the chain of command including police and the President. I was a government employee for 25 years. Now retired, I wonder what I could have done better. As many have said, racism is a systemic problem. I am not a racist. But as a white guy, I worked for a system that perpetuated certain racist policies. It was built that way. I may have thought about that briefly during my public service. But how did I transform it to serve everyone's needs?

I was slightly woke but really blind and now I see.

What did I do in the arts that made a difference? And what can I do now?

Stay tuned...

Stand your ground, speak out, act up

Last night it appeared that the country was coming unglued.

I'm not talking about the pandemic or massive unemployment or peaceful demonstrations staged all over the U.S. (and overseas) by people outraged by the Minneapolis policeman's murder of George Floyd. The murder was only one of many deaths of black men by police over the years.

Some of the peaceful demonstrations were hijacked by others who just want to watch the cities burn. Nobody seems to know who they are. White supremacists? Antifa activists? Anarchists? Police provocateurs? All of the above?

One thing is clear -- citizens of Minneapolis/Atlanta/NYC/Denver/L.A./D.C. saw their efforts go up in the smoke during the past week. In some of those cities, police put down their batons and marched or knelt with the marchers. A powerful gesture by people under siege.

By far, the worst provocateur of all was Donald Trump. Using typical strongman tactics, he brought in police to clear the streets near the White House with tear gas and rubber bullets. His goal? Posing in front of a church that he last visited on Inauguration Day, 2017. It was a photo op for his rabid base of followers that for some odd reason includes millions of evangelicals. To the rest of us, it looked like a desperate gesture by a pathetic loser. Comical, too, in that he apparently did it because he looked like a coward on a previous night when he was hustled by the Secret Service into a bunker beneath the White House. He took shelter out of fear when young black D.C. residents chanted "I Can't Breathe" with pictures of George Floyd. We already knew that Trump is a bully and a coward. This act crystallized his reputation.

I could say that "I have no words" but apparently I do (see above). This year has been a shitshow from the start. First, we weren't prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic. Then leadership in D.C. showed no leadership and we ended up with (at last count) almost 2 million cases of the virus and more than 100,000 deaths, so far. We are the world leader in COVID-19. Not something you want in the Guinness Book.

Trump has lied repeatedly about the U.S. response. It was no big deal, he said. It will go away quickly. Hydroxychloroquine is he magic elixir. Anybody can get a test -- we have millions of them.  Blame China! Take off your masks and get back to work at Wal-Mart.

All ridiculous. Trump is ridiculous except when he's not. He has all the traits of a dictator and none of the redeeming qualities. Hitler, for instance, loved his dogs. After his death, Franco became an ongoing skit on Saturday Night Live. Mussolini made the trains run on time. Putin is buff. Juan Peron was married to Madonna (or someone who looked like her).

Trump does not have a dog and has no sense of humor or wit. His only hobbies seem to be golf and grabbing certain parts of the female anatomy.

Where do we go from here? I donate to causes I believe in. As always, I will vote. I requested an absentee ballot due to possible COVID-19 restrictions in November. Also, Tinpot Dictator Trump may call off the election due to a fake national emergency. Dictator-for-Life seems to be the title he seeks. I will take to the streets when necessary. Rapper Killer Mike gave a rousing speech in Atlanta the other day and named some social justice orgs we can get involved in. Last night on Colbert, KM urged everyone but especially blacks to get involved in politics. Outrage doesn't always translate into action but it can.

Perhaps the activists of the ACT UP movement, such as the recently departed Larry Kramer, said it best. Silence=Death.

Silence=Death.

The robin and the solar system

Between sunup and sundown on a May day, a robin built a nest on my solar system. When I say solar system, I mean to the control box that monitors the roof's solar panels. The greater system, the one that is powered by the sun, is also the source of power for my house's system. The electrician and crew spent a week installing the metal boxes and the panels. The robin watched from her perch on an elm branch. She pounced when the networks of steel and aluminum and copper were in their proper spots. Hers is a fine nest, a work of art. Robin sits in the nest and stares when I arrive on the patio to water plants or grill a burger. If I linger too long, she flees and and watches me from an elm branch. She is wary of the bipeds who built her foundation. We're known for our mischief. Any living thing can tell you.

Hunkered down at the pop-up drive-in on a May Wyoming evening

Our first public outing of the COVID-19 era was to a combination drive-in concert and movie. It was held in a pasture on the Terry Bison Ranch south of Cheyenne. It had a gentle slope so cars could park and most of us could see the inflatable screen and the covered bandstand. 

When we arrived about 7:15 p.m., a line of cars, trucks and SUVs stretched out of the ranch onto the I-25 service road. Chris said it was a sign that everyone is just aching to get out and do something normal and fun. I agreed. A great idea that entertains and keeps us safe. Kudos to the ranch and Blue Pig Productions. They planned for everything including the rain squall that swept through just as the headliner band started playing. We had seen the storm front assembling as we drove to the event along Terry Ranch Road. A typical one for late May. A black swatch against the sun lowering over the Rocky Mountains. Pretty and ominous. But these storms are hit or miss. Sometimes you get missed and sometimes you get hit. 

This one hit us just as we got settled into our space. The sounds of the warm-up band came over the car radio at 90.7 FM. Raindrops speckled the windshield as Sean Curtis and the Divide took the stage. As the band played the rain fell harder, swamping our windshield and the band. But they performed uninterrupted until the lead guitarist's amp shorted out and he had to flee. The rest of the band members played on, wet and cold. "I can't feel my fingers" said the bass guitarist after one of the songs. But they played on. Good stuff, too. A C/W band with a touch of alt-country and Americana, a sound a bit like Drive-By Truckers or Turnpike Troubadours. 

The emcee, Dominic Syracuse, had prompted us to applaud by honking our horns. We did. By the time the band wrapped up their last song, the sky was clearing and the sun colored pink the retreating clouds. 

We picnicked in the car. Daughter Annie joined Chris in a preemptive strike at the port-a-potties. Annie returned with some chicken nuggets and fries from the snack stand. I ate ham and cheese and crunched chips. Cookies for desert. I drank sparingly because I didn't want to face the trip to the johns with my walker. I would have felt silly, all those people staring at the poor cripple poking along on the prairie. I don't know why I should care but I do. More my problem than anyone else. 

Everyone returned to the car and the movie started after some of the staff adjusted the screen that kept tilting in the post-storm wind. Wyoming not the place for anything inflatable. We're seen inflatable Halloween and Christmas decorations flying down our street. Unanchored bounce castles have gone airborne in summer gusts. A brisk wind came through the annual Superday event a few years back and blew tent awnings and brochures and hot-dog wrappers to Nebraska. 

But "Back to the Future" came on with the darkness. There was only a brief period when the wind tilted the screen and the actors' heads disappeared. I forgot how much fun the movie was as I hadn't seen it for decades. I didn't think of COVID-19 for two hours. That's what it's about, right? We want it like the old days when people could venture out safely and go to concerts and drive-ins. We want to be closer to people that a car-length away but that's still in the future. 

The ranch staff cleared us out quickly. They had some cleaning-up to do and we had the trek home via the interstate. I hope the ranch does it again. This high-risk guy wants to stay safe but I also want to be back out in America again. Summertime America. It's a short season here in the High Plains. Short and glorious.

See you next time. 

Still sort-of hunkered down somewhere in Wyoming

Listening to "Dear Prudence" on WPR's Throwback Thursday. Song from the Beatles White Album. Not sure if I bought the White Album but listened to it a thousand times. Many of the songs were in the movie "Across the Universe," a movie that tugged at the nostalgia that comes with the 1960s.

Beautiful morning here in the High Plains. Heard some good news yesterday. The Cheyenne Botanic Gardens Conservatory opens for business on June 2. Only the ground floor will be open. Each group gets an hour to tour so more people can visit. Not sure how we're supposed to time them. "All right, people. Scram. Your hour's up. Vamoose!" Still, it shows a slight return to normalcy. I've been in touch with the staff over the shutdown. Talked to Amelia to see if we could arrange an August literary reading at the Conservatory. Amelia said that she's not booking anything new for the summer. They are going to rent out rooms for paying customers but nothing new until fall. Rick Kempa of Rock Springs asked me to schedule a summer reading for his new book and mine. I will try the library.

Masked up yesterday and ventured out to Lowe's to buy some plants and replace a window screen. I got the plants but no screen. I did get my money back. I had to wait in line six feet behind the first customer. Two people behind me. My cart was filled with plants, herbs and a few veggies, and some potting soil. The clerk, not happy, gave me my money back and pointed out the aisle where I could find screens if there were any. There weren't. Did find some twine to make a trellis for my herb rack. Trying to do everything on the cheap in this pandemic year. I planted herb seeds in egg cartons and then into pots. But two weeks later and no sprouts. The egg carton approach does not work for me. The soil and the egg carton gets soggy and I think it damages the seeds. Anyway, as I dug up the transplants yesterday there were no seedlings there, nothing of anything. I replaced the nothing with something. I had requested the free seeds from the library seed bank and thought I would be growing my garden from scratch this year. The other day I did plant seeds for cukes, pea pods, and pole beans and am waiting for them to sprout. I have two growing racks on the back porch that get full morning and early afternoon sunshine. I'll be doing more transplanting today.

Local business are opening up. A new downtown craft brewery opened on Monday. Black Tooth Brewery's second location -- its first in downtown Sheridan. During my work travels I visited the Sheridan site and liked it. Sheridan has a neat downtown with lots of indie businesses. Great coffee shop that I frequented when I was at the Jentel Foundation writing a novel that I am now going to finish. The pandemic has been deadly for indie businesses and reviving downtowns. Trends for the last decade have been toward gathering places most located in downtowns that had seen better days and were trying to come back. Black Tooth is the fourth microbrewery in downtown Cheyenne. They've been closed since March 18 except for takeout and the brewing of hand sanitizer. Chronicles Distillery downtown made lots of hand sanitizer and I bought nine spray bottles since none could be found in the grocery stores. Chronicles donated most of their supply to health workers, hospitals and clinics. Then they started peddling the goods to the citizenry. I ordered online and then pulled up outside for the exchange of the goods. Other customers were ordering some of the locally brewed whiskey and vodka which is a whole different kind of sanitizing..

Chris, Annie and I will attend a concert and drive-in movie Saturday night at the Terry Bison Ranch. Tickets for each car were $25 and we registered online. Must stay in our cars which may be a challenge for those of us of a certain age who need to pee. Not sure how we will manage. Might have to leave mid-way through "Back to the Future."

It's ugly on the national scene. Our ugly president wants to reopen the economy no matter how many people it kills. 93,000-plus have died in the U.S., and there are probably many more that went uncounted. The U.S. leads the world in confirmed cases. There's been no direction from the federal government and that's a crime that Trump and the G.O.P. will have to answer for it at the ballot box. Trump is trying to prevent people from voting by mail but this is a state responsibility and not a federal one. Democratic Party-led states are having none of the president's blather and neither am I. I ordered a mail-in ballot and plan to use it. The better the turnout the more likely it is that we can get rid of the criminal element in D.C.

Chris, Annie and I continue to take safety precautions. Annie wears a mask during her shifts at Big Lots. Chris and I wear masks going out and if someone needs to come in the house.

Wyoming reports 11 deaths statewide with more than 500 confirmed cases. The worst hot spot is on the Wind River Reservation in Fremont County. The Navajo Nation in Arizona has more per capita cases than New York and New Jersey, the epicenters of the virus. Very sad. Minority communities in urban centers are being hit hard. All of this points out the many holes that exist in our slapdash health care system. And did I mention that the GOP-led feds are clueless in the face of a national emergency?

Barrasso and his GOP pals have a COVID-19 message: Forget Trump, Blame China

Note of paranoia from Wyoming Senator/Sawbones John Barrasso.

Somehow I got on his email list. I haven’t yet unsubscribed because it is so telling to see what he’s sending out to his broader constituency.

On May 1, I received an e-mail with some helpful hints about the pandemic. It opens on a hopeful note: “We are all in this together.” I had to laugh. Together? The senator, thanks to deluded Wyoming R voters and those who stayed home, has a guaranteed job through 2024. A guaranteed paycheck and staff goes with it as does health care paid for by you and me. He can get a COVID-19 test whenever he wants. He’s become a millionaire since going to Congress. If Trump is reelected and the GOP keeps its majority in the Senate, Republican Barrasso will be up for a major leadership role. Meanwhile, he joins #MoscowMitch in opposition to the new stimulus bill approved by the House and now a-mouldering on Mitch’s desk.

In an interview on, of course, Fox, Barrasso said that :

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "must be living on Fantasy Island" if she thinks her $3 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill will become law…. It's bloated and partisan, and it's a payout to her liberal constituencies. 

Barrasso may look thin on TV but he's usually all about being bloated and partisan. Remember, he voted for Trump’s tax cut for the rich and he hovers around #MoscowMitch in every blasted press photo and every televised news conference.

In the meantime, Barrasso and his right-wing pals stir up a war with China. It’s a dandy way to take our minds off of Trump’s ineptitude in handling this health crisis. Here’s his May 8 message, courtesy of Friend of John Barrasso:

The coronavirus has changed our daily lives and brought our economy to a standstill. 

We’ve had to adjust to social distancing and making tough calls between health and safety, and keeping essential parts of our country going. 

China’s response, or lack thereof, led to our current pandemic, shutting entire countries and the global economy down. Rather than warn the world, it appears the Chinese government chose to cover up their deadly mistake.  

Mike, China has a history of being a bad actor, from human rights violations to privacy concerns, and their role in the coronavirus pandemic is no different. We must hold China accountable - will you add your name to our petition? 

SIGN THE PETITION 

We must stand together to hold China responsible. Not only did China choose to withhold information about the virus, they have been actively pushing propaganda and attempting to deflect blame to the United States. 

We must take a stand. Add your name to join us in holding China accountable. 

HOLD CHINA ACCOUNTABLE 

Thank you for your commitment to our fight, 

Team Barrasso

I disabled the links as I don’t want to lead you astray. If you must blame China, don’t buy anything at a big box store or in one of America’s disappearing malls. That’ll show ‘em.

Pandemic Days: Wyoming Legislature convenes and experts try to get a handle on virus death count

Our legislature gathers for a short special session tomorrow to decide how to divvy up the federal pandemic stimulus funds. I’d vote to give it all to hospitals and health care workers especially those in smaller communities. These small hospitals have been hit hard by lack of elective surgical procedures which pay most of the bills. They could also be helped by Medicaid expansion. Unfortunately, the majority-GOP lege has decided to once again study the issue until the Obamacare-related program rides off into the sunset just like Obama.

Governor Gordon has stipulated that the opening of the state shall proceed in a step-by-step plan that most seem to be ignoring. Social distancing and mask-wearing have been crucial in stemming the COVID-19 tide. The state has registered 600-some cases and only seven deaths. We see numbers similar to those in neighboring Montana and South Dakota, other places where social distancing is the norm. Populous Colorado, on the other hand, has more than 20,000 cases and 1,009 deaths. Neighboring Weld County on our southern border shows 2,190 cases, the fourth-highest tally in the state – the top three are in the Denver metro area.

Whenever my wife and I go out, we wear masks and carry hand sanitizer. We had a dryer delivered yesterday because our old one conked out. The delivery guys showed up with no masks so we happily lent them some. They put them on once we explained our high-risk status. Chris and I are both Democrats and are much more open to COVID-19 due to our Godless status and opposition to Donald Trump. Governors of hard-hit urban states have been labeled “blue-state whiners” when they complain about lots of death and no testing or PPE for health care workers. Apparently health care workers in red states just quietly get sick and die. Especially vulnerable are staff members in nursing homes and long-term health facilities. One-third of U.S. fatalities come out of those places. Since retirees congregate in warm places such as Florida, Arizona, and Texas, many of the casualties are from those states. My stepmother was one of them (see previous post).

Other visitors to our house have included Instacart delivery people. They don’t come in but leave the groceries on the porch. We had the crew from Skyline Solar here ten days ago to install the wiring and panels for going solar. They wore masks to the job at our request and were very nice. One young worker was tasked with adding support beams in our attic. It couldn’t have been easy working in our hot attic while wearing a mask and work gloves. When he reappeared, he was drenched in sweat. The electricians were in and out and wore masks. 

Our house was built in the middle of the previous century so needed some upgrading to join the 21^st century. They installed a new breaker box on the patio wall and tackled the interior breaker box with a mixture of awe and frustration. We have one of those punchbox types so popular in the 1950s and woefully inadequate in 2020. The electrician said he could replace it with a new breaker box but it was a bit expensive for our current budget. So we had to make do.

Annie is a Millennial so she orders food via Door Dash and all of the rest. A few days ago she ordered a chocolate pie. I like pie but the only kind I’ve had delivered is a pizza pie, a name that’s fallen out of favor. Chris and I now are used to the doorbell ringing and opening the door to find a sandwich or wings or burger in a bag on the porch. We wipe them down when we bring them in. All of us have to trust in the cleanliness of the purveyor when it comes to the making and bagging of the food. It would be so much easier if stainless steel bots did all of the work but we’re not there yet. Before the pandemic, most fast-food outlets took pride in assembling your order while you watched. Subway is a prime example. So is Chipotle. Not sure how that will change when bistros return to some sort of normalcy.

One thing about COVID-19 deaths. This morning’s New York Times carried a Nicholas Kristof op-ed about the virus’s true death count. It’s not a number that Trump will like but it’s more in keeping with what experts such as Dr. Fauci say. Taking into account “excess deaths” during the first seven weeks of the pandemic ending April 25, the U.S. has already passed the 100,000 casualties mark. In the early weeks of the plague, people were dying of COVID-19 but because they had other maladies and they were elderly, their deaths were logged in as heart failure, respiratory failure, acute dementia, etc.

I know at least one example of this in my own family. My stepmother bore a litany of health issues before the virus snuck into her nursing home and killed her. But the cause of death wasn’t listed as such until she was swabbed for COVID-19 at the medical examiner’s office because she came from a nursing home experiencing an outbreak. The test came back positive. So, her death was not recorded properly by the State of Florida. That state’s excess death count is estimated by the NYT as 1,800. In Wyoming, its 100 which puts our tally at 107 instead of 7.

We don’t really know what we’re dealing with. Coronavirus causes strange sicknesses in children. It applies the coup de grace to old people in nursing homes and the younger workers who take care of them. So many outbreaks have occurred in these facilities from Florida to Colorado. A tragedy and a travesty. In the nurturing industries, the people we pay least work with our young children and our old people. It’s almost like we didn’t care about our future and our past. Our present isn’t doing so well either.

Telling the story behind the statistic

My stepmother died at a Florida nursing home on April 9. She was 94 and suffering from an assortment of maladies. She had end-stage celebral atherosclerosis. She was blind and bedridden and very weak.

It was coronavirus that dealt the final blow.

Our family didn't know it at the time. Her obituary said nothing about coronavirus because nobody knew she was yet another COVID-19 casualty. The nursing home, the Opis Coquina Center in Ormond Beach, Fla., said nothing. It was only through the efforts of the Daytona Beach News-Journal and other Florida papers that the medical examiner's office issued the names of those in nursing homes diagnosed, mostly post-mortem, with COVID-19.

This is from an April 20 article in the News-Journal by Nikki Ross:

Constance Shay, 94, was an Ormond Beach woman with coronavirus, who died of end stage cerebral atherosclerosis on April 9 at Opis Coquina Center, a nursing home in Ormond Beach, according to the Volusia County Medical Examiner’s report. 

Her medical history includes coronavirus, vascular dementia, hypertension, GERD and atherosclerosis. 

Since Shay resided at Opis Coquina Center, which has an active COVID-19 outbreak, her cremation was flagged. She was swabbed for COVID-19. 

She’d been a patient of the nursing home since 2016. Over the years her health declined and by February 2018 she was unable to care for herself or make decisions, and she had lost a significant amount of weight. She was placed in hospice. 

Her death is not included on the Florida Department of Health’s list of coronavirus related deaths.

The newspaper article was the first time that any of us, including my Florida siblings, knew about this. The newspapers dug deep to get this info and find out that the many of the Central Florida nursing home deaths were not included in the state's count of coronavirus-related fatalities. This is crucial because Florida is one of those states accused of undercounting the death count for political reasons. The Florida Office of Health reported this morning that more than 40,000 in the state have tested positive and 1,735 have died.

Today's New York Times had this:

While just 11 percent of the country’s cases have occurred in long-term care facilities, deaths related to COVID-19 in these facilities account for more than a third of the country’s pandemic fatalities. 

At least 28,100 patients and workers have died at nursing homes and long-term care facilities for the elderly.

None of this tells us who Constance Shay was as a person. She was Connie to us. She and my dad married in 1992. Both had lost spouses. My father had been devastated by my mom's death of ovarian cancer in 1986. The CPA was keeping busy doing people's taxes when he dropped by Connie's house to square her with the IRS. One thing led to another and they got married and stayed that way until my father died of prostate cancer in 2002. Connie stayed in Ormond Beach and eventually sold her house and moved into a long-term care facility. The last time I visited from Wyoming she had lost most of her sight. My sister and brother-in-law came over from Winter Park to visit and chat and read to her. She had other visitors from the family that remains in Florida, which is quite a crowd.

Connie was a lifelong Catholic like my father and they attended mass together every Sunday. One of their hobbies was tending to the flower gardens at St. Brendan Catholic Church, the same place Chris and I were married in 1982. They also had a verdant garden at their home. They both read a lot.

They are both gone now. I don't know if I will one day meet with them in heaven because I am no longer certain there is such a place. But I do know that we are made of stardust that will be floating around the heavens for eternity. We will run into each other somewhere in the cosmos. I hope to tell my birth mother and my father that we found a cure for cancer at long last. I hope to tell Connie that nobody ever died alone again and had the real cause of their death printed 11 days later in the morning paper.

Hospital stories on Nurse Appreciation Day

On the one side, you have Trump and his narcissistic minions.

On the other, you have nurses.

I align myself with nurses. They are on the front lines of the fight against coronavirus. They run toward the danger and, thanks to the Trump administration's incompetence, lack the necessary PPE to keep COVID-19 at bay.

Today is Nurse Appreciation Day and it launches National Nurses Week which ends on Florence Nightingale's birthday on May 12. They should be celebrated everywhere and every time. Mostly nurses are taken for granted until we are gasping for breath with COVID-19 or, in my case, from a heart attack.

I lie in the hospital bed in the ER. I am hooked up to oxygen and poked and prodded by doctors and nurses and techs. Chris is with me so she holds my hand when she can. When she can't and the nurses are tending to me, I feel a strange sense of calm.

I see my mother's face in theirs. She was a nurse from 21 to her early death at 59. Tomorrow, May 7, is her birthday. Happy 95th birthday, Mom. She took care of strangers and she nursed her family. I was born in December of 1950 at Denver's Mercy Hospital. Mom trained there at the tail end of the war thanks to the U.S. Navy and the Sisters of Mercy. She worked there when I was born. Later she joked that she was working the night I was born and took off a few minutes to deliver me and then was back at her job. The truth is that Mom took a week off to chill in the hospital after each birth. It was important the first time out with me. It was even more crucial in the 1960s when she had 5-6 kids at home and needed a break as the new ones arrived.

She could have been the poster child for nurses' week. We came to her for our miseries. As a nursing supervisor at a Florida hospital, staff members came to her to unburden themselves. For awhile, I was both -- son and employee. A university dropout with a low draft lottery number, I figured that I would surf and work as I waited for the inevitable. I worked an as orderly or nursing assistant, now known as Certified Nurse Assistants (CNA). People actually go to school for this now and I'm glad of it. Me and my coworkers got OJT. The nurses were patient and, at times, stern. There were a couple nurses we didn't challenge. We didn't mess with Mom, either, although her management style was more encouragement than stern lectures.

I do admit here and now that sometimes, taking temps and inserting catheters, I was a bit stoned. When my coworkers Jim and Sharon picked me up at  6:45 a.m., a smoke cloud greeted me when I opened the car door. When we abandoned the car for work ten minutes later, the cloud followed us inside. It's a wonder we never were caught. We tried to cover up our shenanigans with after-shave and perfume. One day I heard a nurse proclaim that she always liked Jim to work at her station because he always smelled so good. A blend of Jamaican herb and Hai Karate. I can still smell it 49 years later.

My youthful indiscretions faded at my next job as orderly. I worked the graveyard shift at Shriners' Burns Institute in Boston. It was a serious place. All patients were children under 18 who had sustained bad burns. House fires, electrocutions, accidents, and, yes, child abuse. The staff of nurses and nursing assistants were all young and energetic even at 3 a.m. Some of the NAs were enrolled in nursing school. My girlfriend Sharon (the same Sharon) was making plans to return to school, this time for a nursing degree. I was thrilled when the nursing supervisor brought me into her office one day and offered me a nursing school scholarship paid for by the hospital. I was doing good work, she said. I thanked her and said I would think about it. It felt good to be noticed. I talked about it with Sharon and on long-distance calls with Mom from the corner pizza parlor (we didn't have a phone). But I already knew my answer. My practical side urged me to do it. But I was just beginning to explore my creative side.

I blame it on the Boston Phoenix and The Real Paper. Both were distributed weekly on Boston streets I always snagged both of them and read them from cover to cover before I settled into my daytime sleep. The writing, at turns, was spectacular and sloppy. The subjects tended to revolve around the counterculture which is where I placed myself. Music, books, politics, wacko cults and conspiracy theories. I also liked reading Boston's daily papers. They were in their heyday in 1972 and 1973. Dynamic political coverage and great sports sections. But they ignored most of the topics the Phoenix reveled in.

The alternative press ruined me. I wanted to be a writer. Nursing was a great calling and would provide a steady income. Maybe my girlfriend and I could attend the same nursing school and work at the same Boston hospital..

But I wanted something else. I quit my job, returned to Florida, and went back to school as an English major. Write and teach, teach and write. That was what I wanted to do and that is mainly what I did.

Mom is just one generation of nurses in the family. My grandmother, Florence Green Shay, was an army nurse in World War I and two of my sisters are nurses. Another sister works at a Florida hospice center. I am so glad that nurses are getting their due during this plague. Let's keep them safe and pay them what they deserve. .

In the spring of 2020, we live in an absurdist novel

People are struggling. They are sick and dying; their businesses are shuttered or they are unemployed, either for the duration or for good. Many are caught in a virus hot zone such as New York City or New Orleans. Health workers battle it out with an invisible enemy every day. Sometimes, the enemy wins.

Sometimes you eat the bear and, sometimes, well, he eats you.

As in The Big Lebowski, the world is, at turns, hilarious and deadly serious. Creative types take to Zoom and Instagram to sing, dance, and read poetry. Poetry, especially, is a balm for hard times. I've been reading a lot of it. It's also a counterweight to the heavy and feckless hand of Trump. Whenever he weighs in, I feel like Atlas with the weight of the celestial heavens on my shoulders. Trump should be like Roosevelt or Churchill, sharing the weight with regular folks and, sometimes, removing it altogether. But he lacks all empathy and compassion and leadership skills.

For now, we're stuck with him. His minions, too, like Turtle-face McConnell and the right-wing wing of the Supreme Court and the knuckleheads with guns who barge into state capitol buildings. All this repulses me. And, as a writer, it fascinates me. I am a big fan of absurdist lit with big themes: Catch-22, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Good Soldier Schweik, anything by Terry Southern (Dr. Strangelove, Candy, etc.), Fran Liebowitz, National Lampoon writers, Lewis Nordan and other writers whom I can't remember right now. As I said, though, I'm reading poetry which is more about feelings and images that ripping off the mask of contemporary society. It's about that, too, but primarily the power of words. So much great poetry is short.

"The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell:

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

"The Pool Players: Seven at the Golden Shovel" by Gwendolyn Brooks. 

Sylvia Plath wrote "Poppies in October" on her last birthday following several suicide attempts. Her next attempt would be fatal.

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly – 

A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky  

Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.  

Oh my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frosts, in a dawn of cornflowers.

Not many of us could write so movingly of deep depression. And we can forgive her for palely and flamily, her turning strong adjectives into pale adverbs. But they work with carbon monoxides and eyes dulled to a halt under bowlers. She wrote this while living in London in the 1950s when men wore bowler hats. It invokes a grey day in London, crowds of faceless men wearing bowler hats.

You could say that these are depressing poems, and you would be right. But life is not a sitcom or a stand-up comedy routine. I take that back -- it is those and a thousand other things. Plath's last stanza echoes what happens to most of us if we live long enough and experience enough horror. Late-blooming poppies that "cry open" amidst the frost while dawn brings beautiful cornflowers.

I leave you with a Dad joke. These are the dumb jokes Dads tell which elicit groans and may be remembered fondly by their kids. The joke, as always, is on us.

Helvetica and Times Roman walk into a bar.
"Get out," shouts the bartender. "We don't serve your type here."

After hunkering down, what comes next?

Excellent article in The Atlantic about how the pandemic will change the nation's retail businesses and our cities. I've always loved these long-form articles and remember reading each print issue of The Atlantic from front to back. I now pick and choose on the mag's reader-friendly web site. There is a limit of the number of freebies you get each month. Annual online subscriptions are $49.99. Crucial to support those pubs that allow us to think bigger than we do on Twitter.

So what will COVID-19 do to retail such as restaurants? It's the end of so many of those quirky city joints that serve Ethiopian or Moroccan or Salvadoran. Many are not going to make it through the crisis as they have limited cash reserves and won't be able to survive to the normal with fewer customers spread further apart. Same goes for bars and brewpubs. The raucous atmosphere is what we crave along with our IPA. Quaint bistros, places that serve organic chocolates and exotic teas, they'll be gone too. Those city rents are killers and you have to sell a lot of notions to make ends meet. Millennials won't find a shopless Adams-Morgan in D.C. or Denver's LoDo very appealing and they will leave all those cool lofts and walk-up apartments for cheaper pastures in smaller cities and even the burbs. Chains will take over downtowns and we will be bored to tears with the same ol' same ol'.

It's not just Millennials. Raise your hand if you know retired Boomers who have downsized their suburban digs for lively downtown lofts or small condos? I'm raising both hands. One only has to leave Cheyenne and drive to Colorado's Front Range to see what that looks like (wear your masks!). When I was a grad student in Fort Collins in the 1980s, nightlife was lively in Old Town FoCo but nobody lived there. Lots of new buildings have brought hundreds downtown, young and old. Loveland has a revived downtown. Greeley, too. Denver is Denver and Boulder is Boulder. Problem is, you need big money to live in these downtowns. Some have set aside affordable housing with the unaffordable. A few years ago when our daughter lived in Denver, we spent the New Year's weekend at the downtown convention center hotel. We were waiting for our car and chatted with one of the valet guys. He pointed over to the old Denver Dry Goods Building on California and said he lived there. He told us they set aside a number of affordable units with the pricey ones, although he had to get on a waiting list and wait for two years. The kooky Northern Hotel in Old Town FoCo was renovated and now houses low-income seniors. Chris and I don't qualify but it seemed like a cool place to live.

Affordability is an issue. Those of us who worked for Wyoming wages usually fall into a netherworld. We've paid down on our Cheyenne houses but really can't sell and move to a $300,000 Colorado condo. Strangely enough, new condos in Cheyenne also are unaffordable and there are no new nifty retirement developments as options. Retired friends who've moved to Colorado (and there are many) either moved to Front Range cities before the housing boom or bought in smaller mountain communities that aren't Aspen or Vail. All of them are liberals looking for a friendlier political climate.

Back to The Atlantic article. Winter is coming! Maybe not winter -- let's call it autumn, after the leaves fall and before big snows. Big changes are in the works and many lives will be upended. We love cities but will have to experience them as visitors. Some of those urban amenities will no longer exist but enough will survive to offer us plays and concerts and good food. Not sure how DCPA performances of The Book of Mormon and Hamilton and Hadestown will look. We won't be jammed together feeling the rush of excitement that comes with it.

COVID-19 has changed almost everything. More surprises to come...

To see today's COVID-19 briefing from WyoFile, go here.

In the COVID-19 era, what happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas

For my novel set in 1919 Denver, I've conducted research on World War I, women's suffrage, Prohibition, transportation, and the Flu Pandemic of 1918-19. There's plenty of info on all of them. The most chilling stories outside of Europe's trench warfare come from the pandemic. I was rereading historian Phil Roberts' account of the flu pandemic in Wyoming. It originally appeared on wyohistory.org and reprinted recently on wyofile. This was part of a story in the Thermopolis newspaper on Jan. 8, 1919:

“Entering the home of a neighbor a few days ago J. B. Baer, of Ismay, found the farmer and his wife with two children lying dead in their beds, a third child dying on the floor. All were victims of influenza. The last child died shortly after he had been taken to another ranch for treatment. Indications showed that the entire family had been stricken together and had died partly from starvation, being unable to help each other.”

Wyoming's Bighorn Basin was the last part of Wyoming to be settled at the turn of the 20th century. You can still see a whole lot of wide open in the Basin. Imagine how it looked in 1918, a few decades after settlers wandered in. More than likely, that neighbor in the article lived miles away instead of right next door. Wyoming's towns had it tough enough in the 1918 pandemic with proximity breeding contagion. Just think how it would be if you lived miles from nowhere in winter-bound WYO, caught the flu and brought it home to the family.  

CNN featured an opinion piece by John Avion on the pandemic's course in Denver. The flu had swept through the only city of any size in the northern Rockies. The mayor called for a shutdown in October. Flu cases subsided and in early November and the city decided to  have a parade to celebrate the armistice. A week later, the flu came back with a vengeance. On Nov. 22, new cases began to spike and on Nov. 27, the Denver Post featured this headline: "All Flu Records Smashed in Denver in Last 24 Hours." All told, 8,000 people died in Colorado, compared to 700-800 in Wyoming.

Avion sums up his piece this way:

As Harry Truman said, "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know." Public health is among the most difficult government actions -- when actions work they seem like overreactions. What's unforgivable is for leaders to remain willfully ignorant of history and therefore doomed to repeat it. Their weak-kneed decisions could result in the death of someone you love.

Think about this as we see governors such as Brian Kemp in Georgia want to open up tattoo parlors and gyms. Or when a mayor such as Carolyn Goodman in Las Vegas offers up her city to be the country's  "control group" for removing strict social distancing measures. 

Hate to tell the mayor this but when COVID-19 parties in Vegas, it does not stay in Vegas. 

I could protest the protests but I'd be a hypocrite for it

The Wyoming governor updates us regularly on the coronavirus pandemic. A good thing, since he's come under fire for both not issuing a mandatory stay-at-home order and for issuing a suggested stay-at-home order. He issued several orders that closed businesses and schools.

On Monday, Gov. Mead walked put of the capitol building to speak to a crowd of people protesting the Gov's stay-at-home suggestions and mandatory closures. Following cues from right-wing social media sites, protesters have gathered at state capitols to vent their spleens. Their constitutional rights are being trod on because the Gov won't let them die in their own stupid way. They've held rallies in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Colorado, to name a few. More to come...

The president eggs them on as do GOP activists. We high-risk Boomers stay at home and wonder how many of these protesters will get COVID-19 and infect others. Chris and I have attended some memorable protests in our day, including Cheyenne's first Women's March in 2017 and a big Occupy rally in Denver. I'me marched against several wars although now the conflicts just blend in together. I protested the Vietnam War in 1970 and 1971 and the Nicaraguan Contra War in the 1980s. I joined a friend's family at the Honor America Day Rally on the National Mall in the summer of 1970. We ran for cover when tear gas clouds drifted over the picnicking Silent Majoritarians as the cops misjudged wind direction when gassing the Yippies smoking pot below the Washington Monument.

I believe that everyone deserves a right to protest, no matter the cause. I attended some of the Tea Party rallies in 2010-2011 on the state capitol grounds. The crowd mostly made up of white people my age -- over 60. Many looked just like me. Gray-haired (or bald), wearing glasses, probably lugging around a per-existing condition or two. I listened to the speeches and wondered how my sensibilities were so different from theirs. Some are white supremacists without knowing it. Others know it and show it with their signs and stars-n-bars flags. I didn't know it at the time but these were the same people who went to the 2016 polls in droves to elect Trump. And now they're back out yelling about the COVID-19 hoax and governors stomping on their constitutional right to die at work.

So, protest away, all you White Lives Matter people. I can be understanding to a certain point. Not as understanding as Gov. Gordon, who spoke over shouts from the angry crowd Monday. The best revenge is to get to the polls and elect Democrats. Wyoming now is a one-party state kind of like North Korea and the countries of the old Soviet bloc. Trump and his GOP minions like it that way.

They must go.

Coronavirus impacts the West's writers, artists and performers

Millions of Americans await federal stimulus checks or unemployment benefits during the current crisis. Artists are entrepreneurs (artrepreneurs if you prefer) and have been hit hard by social distancing and stay-at-home orders or, in Wyoming, stay-at-home-pretty-please-why-don't-ya. Galleries and museums are closed. Touring musicians are at home. Literary events (readings, book signings, spoken-word performances) don't have venues. Some artists have transitioned to an Internet presence by hosting online concerts, drawing classes and poetry workshops. But, as with most online efforts, it's sometimes difficult to make them pay. For writers, libraries and bookstores are shuttered. On the plus side, online book sales are up. Amazon is an OK resource -- it started with books -- but best to order from one of the indie stores such as Powell's in Portland or Tattered Cover in Denver. 

For writers, resources are available:

The Wyoming Arts Council is sensitive to the inherent economic challenges that are rising in relation to the CDC recommendations for social distancing. In the midst of this ever evolving situation, we will be processing grants to eligible individual artists who have lost significant income due to COVID-19. The Wyoming Arts Council believes that artists must be able to maintain their livelihood during this time in order to continue to create and contribute to the creative economy in our state. To apply visit: https://forms.gle/CPjpEif4adh7jsaY9 or contact Taylor Craig at taylor.craig@wyo.gov or 307-274-6673.

PEN America is supporting writers affected by the crisis through the Writers’ Emergency Fund, with grants of “$500 to $1,000 based on applications that demonstrate an inability to meet an acute financial need, especially one resulting from the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak.” They expect to take 10 days to review and respond to applications.

Summer is an incredibly busy time for writing conferences. For obvious reasons, locales in the West are popular sites. Some, especially those scheduled for early in the summer, have been cancelled, postponed or shifted online.

The Wyoming Writers Conference, originally planned for Lander June 5-7 has been canceled. Visit the conference’s website for additional information. WWI President Kathy Bjornstad said this: "We are tentatively hoping to travel to Lander in 2021 and shift as much of our programming to that conference as possible."

The Jackson Hole Writers Conference, originally planned for June 2020, has been canceled. In response to the cancellation, starting in late April 2020, select components of the originally scheduled programming will be offered online, including workshops, panels, and manuscript critiques. Visit the conference’s website for additional information on the cancellation and on alternative online programming. 

The Squaw Valley Writers Workshops, July 6-13, have been postponed. Workshops in fiction, nonfiction, and memoir have been canceled; the 2020 summer workshop in poetry will be offered online as the “Virtual Valley” from June 20-27. Visit the conference’s website for more info.

Summer Words set for June in Aspen has shifted online. FMI: http://www.aspenwords.org/programs/summer-words/

The Northern Colorado Writers Conference was cancelled and rescheduled for April 29-May 1, 2021, in Fort Collins. FMI: https://www.northerncoloradowriters.com/Conference

Montana's Beargrass Writers Workshop retreat set for May at Ruby Springs has been cancelled. Get updates at https://www.beargrasswriting.com/rubyspringmay

Hunkered down, somewhere in Wyoming, part 7

As of the end of the day on April 15, the U.S. had reported 639,628 COVID-19 cases. Confirmed deaths are 30,980. New York leads the list with more than 14,000 deaths. New York has been one of the nation's hot spots and the daily counts blow my mind.

Just to compare, last Wednesday, April 8, the U.S. led the pack with 432,132 confirmed cases and almost 15,000 deaths. Confirmed cases haven't doubled in a week but the deaths have. A sobering reminder of the pandemic's scope. Wyoming is showing 287 cases and two deaths with Laramie County in front with 64 cases. Just 6,329 have been tested which is woefully inadequate.

Our family remains hunkered down. No idea when we can get back to work. When I say "we," I mean "they" as I am retired, Chris has been laid-off and Annie is taking her two college classes online. The weather this week has been snowy and cold which has stymied our walks in the park. Last week I was barbecuing on the back porch.

I got a bit stir-crazy yesterday. As I was writing, it suddenly dawned on me how many days I've been doing this. Darkness descended. I turned to my writing which is the only task that keeps me away from Coronavirus stories and stats for hours at a time.

We keep checking our shrinking account for stimulus checks and unemployment deposits. The State of Wyoming made Chris's first unemployment payment overnight. It's not much but we are thankful to have resources.

Where's Herbert Hoover when we need him?

In times like these, we need a guy like Herbert Hoover.

Hoover has long been a joke for his poor performance in reacting to the Great Depression during his presidency. Prosperity is "just around the corner," or so he said. Can you say Hooverville?

When World War I erupted overseas, while his country remained neutral, Hoover jumped into the fray and chaired the Committee for Relief in Belgium. He was responsible for feeding thousands of starving people in Belgium and northern France

When the U.S. joined World War I in April 1917, Hoover was the man they called upon to get shit done. He was named head of the Food Administration and came to be known as the "food czar." Most people know of Victory Gardens on the home front in World War II. But there were War Gardens in The Great War. While President Wilson called on Americans to make sacrifices for the war effort, Hoover fed the civilians at home and the doughboys in France.

After the war, he led the American Relief Administration which shipped four million tons of food to Central and Eastern Europe and post-revolutionary Russia. In 1920, the newly-elected President Harding made him head of the Department of Commerce. His competency earned him the title of "Secretary of the Department of Commerce and Under-secretary to all of the other departments." During the big Mississippi River flood of 1927, Hoover ran the relief efforts.

Hoover ran for president as a Republican in 1928 and decisively defeated Al Smith. The stick market crash came less than a year later and, in 1932, FDR took over the White house for 13 years.

Hoover was, as I said before, a guy who could GSD. So why did this go-getter from modest Midwestern roots lose the 1932 election to a rich guy from New York? He never took seriously the suffering of Americans during the Great Depression. FDR made a lot of promises and ended up keeping many of them, earning him the hatred and some envy from Republicans. Hoover had tried to get the economy moving again. But he was adamant that the government should not be directly involved in relief efforts.

Sound familiar?

It;s one of the ironies of history that Hoover could feed millions across the globe but let those in his backyard starve. He was all food food relief efforts as long as they didn't come from the gubment. He wasn't a cruel egomaniac like Trump. But his Republican small-government stance was almost America's undoing.

I'm no historian but Hoover's dilemma seems to be playing out inside the Beltway almost 90 years later. Unlike Trump, Hoover was an accomplished administrator in the private sector and in government. But their approach to an emergency seems the same. It's no big deal. Americans can't starve. We are immune to Third World viruses. The suffering was all around.

Last night, as I watched the third season of "Babylon Berlin," the stock market crashed in October 1929. In the Berlin streets, men ran madly to their banks and brokerage houses. One of protagonist Inspector Rath's colleagues goes crazy and takes hostages at a bank, threatening to kill them if they don't hand over his money. Outside an office, a businessman shoots himself in the head. As Rath walks down stairs, a man's legs hang limp above him, obviously a case of hanging. Rath is not oblivious to the suffering. He knows a little bit about it. He's a combat veteran of the war and treats his serious shell-shock symptoms with hits of morphine. He also knows that Nazi sympathizers plot to take over the police department and he is on a mission to do something about it.

There are those who are oblivious due to political orthodoxy. That is not Trump. Remember that he was a Democrat for much of his life, probably because he had to deal with lots of Dems in NYC. Trump is what he has always been, an unscrupulous narcissist. Yesterday, when threatened by America's governors charting their own way out of the pandemic, he said that they couldn't do that because he alone was in charge. Period. Spoken like a true autocrat. One of these days, he will read the Constitution and discover that we have three branches of government. They've all been compromised by the GOP but we know how it's supposed to work. In November, we will have the opportunity to return the country to its roots. I hope that all those nurses and doctors and CNAs and first responders will remember that it was Trump who left them unprotected against the COVID-19 scourge. When it happens again, and it will, we need an adult in charge.

Hunkered down, somewhere in Wyoming, part 6

Is anyone else checking those daily COVID-19 tallies from Johns Hopkins University?

It's become a habit. It's always bad news. Thousands of new cases and thousands of deaths. The USA leads the pack as of right this very minute with 432,132 confirmed cases and almost 15,000 deaths. New York is still the epicenter, with NYC reporting the highest death count.

We are lucky and/or blessed in Wyoming as we have 230 cases and 0 deaths. I don't really trust those numbers as only 4,000-some tests have been done in a state of 580,000. We've seen in other states that deaths are being uncounted due to various reasons, notably the shortage of tests. The  Worldometers site has started including U.S. military cases provided by the Department of Defense. Its page reports 3,160 more cases than JHU.

The numbers are sobering. They scare me. I'm not as scared as I was when the pandemic swept into the USA and some hysterical reports made me believe that all of us over 60 were doomed. And then the toilet paper and hand sanitizer ran out. What will become of us? That was three weeks ago and friends and neighbors have kept us supplied and my family is still intact. We don't leave the house except to take walks in the park on nice days and maybe get ice cream cones at the DQ drive-up. This "social distancing" policy is working to "flatten the curve" of infections. The University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation has feeds COVID-19 stats onto its super-computers every day. The numbers are beginning to be reduced, showing fewer infections and deaths if we continue social distancing through August. If restrictions are relaxed too soon, we risk another outbreak.

We shall all go mad if we need to hunker down until August. Of course, some states do not have mandatory social distancing in place (looking at you Wyoming) which may affect the numbers. And there's a guy named Trump who wants everybody to return to work by May so the country's employment numbers will get better and everybody will be happy and vote for Trump and then he can finish fucking up our democracy.

People are dying. Time to listen to the scientists and statisticians and tune out the white noise from the White House.