Good news: Tea Partiers spelling improves. Bad news: Language goes into the crapper

Curious bystanders yesterday noted that spelling on signs of D.C. Tea Party protestors had improved dramatically. Cleverness was even detected on some: "If Brown can't stop it, a Browning can." In case bystanders didn't know what a Browning is, this teabagger thoughtfully included an illustration. The drawing of the Democratic Party donkey isn't bad. But this artist will never get a federal creativity grant due to the fact he/she/it shows the head of the head of the gubment (Pres. Barack Obama) coming out of the donkey's ass.

This comes from yesterday's Washington Post:

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus said that racial epithets were hurled at them Saturday by angry protesters who had gathered at the Capitol to protest health-care legislation, and one congressman said he was spit upon. The most high-profile openly gay congressman, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), was heckled with anti-gay chants.

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) issued a statement late Saturday saying that he was spit upon while walking to the Capitol to cast a vote, leading the Capitol Police to usher him into the building out of concern for his safety. Police detained the individual, who was then released because Cleaver declined to press charges.

--snip--

Protesters outside the Capitol hurled epithets at Reps. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and Andre Carson (D-Ind.) as they left the building after President Obama delivered an 11th-hour speech on behalf of the health care bill. Carson told reporters that protesters yelled "kill the bill," then used a racial epithet to describe Carson and Lewis, who is a revered figure on both sides of the aisle.

According to observers, Frank was confronted by about 100 protesters inside the Longworth House Office Building, where Democrats were huddling for another meeting about the legislation. Some targeted Frank with anti-gay epithets and urged him to vote against the bill.

Democratic leaders and their aides said they were outraged by the day's behavior. "I have heard things today that I have not heard since March 15, 1960, when I was marching to get off the back of the bus," said House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the highest-ranking black official in Congress.

And Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said in a statement, "On the one hand, I am saddened that America's debate on health care -- which could have been a national conversation of substance and respect -- has degenerated to the point of such anger and incivility. But on the other, I know that every step toward a more just America has aroused similar hate in its own time; and I know that John Lewis, a hero of the civil rights movement, has learned to wear the worst slurs as a badge of honor."

"This is not the first time the congressman has been called the "n" word and certainly not the worst assault he has endured in his years fighting for equal rights for all Americans," said Rotert, Cleaver's spokesman. "That being said, he is disappointed that in the 21st century our national discourse has devolved to the point of name-calling and spitting."

Study shows health insurance crisis hitting middle class the hardest

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation released a study this week to coincide with "Cover the Uninsured Week." The report concludes that the recessions of the last ten years "have taken a tremendous toll on people's ability to pay for health insurance and employers' ability to offer it."

Joan Barron wrote about it in yesterday's Casper Star-Tribune:

Dan Neal, executive director of the Equality State Policy Center, a nonprofit advocacy organization, said the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation study reinforces the argument for health care reform.

"It looks like the situation is bad and getting worse," Neal said Wednesday.

The study, he said, also shows the following about Wyoming:

-- Fewer Wyoming employees are getting insurance across the board, at all income levels. The change is worse among the working poor where 12,000 fewer people have job-based health insurance.

-- More people have public-funded insurance of some kind, probably because of the growth in government services -- with more people on state, city and school district insurance programs, or from safety net programs like Medicaid.

-- Fewer people can afford individual insurance and more middle- and upper-income families have been forced to the individual market probably because they can't get insurance at work.

-- Nearly twice as many middle- and upper-income residents have no health insurance coverage compared to 2000.

"I think all of these things add up to a clear description of the need for some sort of health insurance reform that makes insurance more affordable for people, and available," Neal said. "Some people apparently have dropped insurance and they are 'flying naked.'"

Who is "America's Greatest Unknown Writer?"

As a kid, I read everything in my path: books, comics, newspapers, newspaper inserts, cereal boxes, billboards, etc.

I'm one of those guys who accepts flyers from people on street corners. Never know when I might get a story out of some religious tract or political broadside or a come-on for aluminum siding. I also read my junk mail for the same reason. And for curiosity's sake.

Now I spend untold hours jumping from web link to web link to discover interesting and potentially useless information.

Combing through Daily Kos this morning, I came across a link to today's U.S. House floor schedule. The link took me to The Daily Leader on House Majority leader Steny Hoyer's home page. I figured that it would be loaded with items about health care reform legislation.

Instead, I got a reading tip about a writer I've never heard of.

Here are details about House Resolution 1040: "Honoring the life and accomplishments of Donald Harington for his contributions to literature in the United States."

The text (from http://democraticleader.house.gov/links_and_resources/whip_resources/dailyleader.cfm):

Whereas Donald Douglas Harington was born on December 22, 1935, in Little Rock, Arkansas;
Whereas at age 6, he attempted to write his first novel, `The Adventures of Duke Doolittle';
Whereas at age 12, Harington contracted meningococcal meningitis and as a result lost most of his hearing;
Whereas Harington graduated from the University of Arkansas with a bachelor's degree in art in 1956, a master's degree in printmaking in 1959, and from Boston University with a master's degree in art history in 1959;
Whereas Harington taught art history at Bennett College in Millbrook, New York, from 1960 to 1962, and at Windham College in Putney, Vermont, from 1964 to 1978;
Whereas Harington had short-term teaching appointments at the University of Missouri Rolla, the University of Pittsburg, and South Dakota State, and taught art history at the University of Arkansas from 1986 until he retired in 2008;
Whereas Harington's first novel, `The Cherry Pit', was published in 1965 and over the course of his literary career he also published `Lightning Bug' (1970), `Some Other Place. The Right Place' (1972), `The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks' (1975), `Let Us Build Us a City: Eleven Lost Towns' (1986), `The Cockroaches of Stay More' (1989), `The Choiring of the Trees' (1991), `Ekaterina' (1993), `Butterfly Weed' (1996), `When Angels Rest' (1998), `Thirteen Albatrosses (or, Falling off the Mountain)' (2002), `With' (2003), `The Pitcher Shower' (2005), `Farther Along' (2008), and `Enduring' (2009);
Whereas in 1999, Harington was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame;
Whereas in 2003, Harington won the Robert Penn Award for Fiction, and in 2006 received the first lifetime achievement award for Southern literature from Oxford American magazine;
Whereas writer Kevin Brockmeier expressed that `the signal feature of Donald Harington's novels is their tremendous liveliness. His books are not blind to suffering, featuring as they do murder, poverty, kidnapping, loss, and betrayal. Yet the mood of his stories is overwhelmingly one of celebration. He extends his sympathies so widely that even the trees and the hills, the insects and the animals, the criminals and the ghosts seem to sing with the joy of existence. He brings a tenderness and a brio to the page that prevents his characters from sinking beneath the weight of their troubles, and one finishes his books above all else with an impression of a robust, loving comic energy. You feel as if you have been immersed in life, both your own life and the particular lives of his characters, and that life, for all its misfortunes, is a pretty good place to be';
Whereas Entertainment Weekly called Harington `America's greatest unknown writer';
Whereas Harington was described in the Washington Post as `one of the most powerful, subtle, and inventive novelists in America';
Whereas Harington once said that his philosophy of writing was that literature, that all art, is an escape from the world that makes the world itself, when you return to it, more magical, bearable, or understandable; and
Whereas, on November 7, 2009, at age 73, Harington died in Springdale, Arkansas, from complications of pneumonia: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives honors the life and accomplishments of Donald Harington for his contributions to literature in the United States.

It's difficult to know who should get the honors for "America's greatest unknown writer." There are so many good writers in every corner of the country. Many are known locally or even regionally. Not sure if they all deserve renown. But I do know that they deserve a larger readership.

A modest proposal: Next time you're at the local library, seek out a book by an "unknown writer." This works for bookstores, too, especially those where you can grab a few titles and read the first chapter over a latte in the cafe. Take a crack at the book. It may not be your cup of coffee, but you won't know until you absorb a few pages. I've read some cool novels this way. Here are a few whose titles I remember: "Q Road" by Bonnie Jo Campbell; "When Bobby Kennedy Was a Moving Man" by David Boudinot; and "Gil's All Fright Diner" by A. Lee Martinez (just heard that it's being turned into an animated film). I may have been attracted by the titles or covers -- or both. I probably said to myself "This looks interesting." I know that I read a bit before I checked them out of the library or plucked down money at the bookstore.

It's a crap shoot, isn't it? Writers write the books, publishers publish the books and bookstores and libraries stock the books. New books don't get much shelf life at the stores these days. But almost all bookstores feature work by regional writers. Just sidle up to one of the clerks and ask "Who is Wyoming's (or Utah's or Mississippi's) greatest unknown writer?" And then: "Do you have any of his/her/its books?" This may stump the bookstore employee, as not all of them are as curious about literature as you are. But keep asking -- one of them will take the bait, maybe even view it as a challenge.

Then read, and keep on reading until you find that book that speaks to you.

Brit Tories and U.S. Democrats may be talking the same language

Button-down columnist David Brooks has the most popular piece in the New York Times today. Entitled "The Broken Society," it looks at solutions proposed by a Brit reformer who labels himself a "Red Tory." That would seem an odd juxtaposition -- commies joining with conservatives. But it's a handy little label for Phillip Blond's conservative communitarian politics. They sound a bit like policies advocated by New Urbanists and Greenies and locavores of the traditional left end of the political spectrum.

I'll let Mr. Brooks Brothers sum it up:

Blond lays out three big areas of reform: remoralize the market, relocalize the economy and recapitalize the poor. This would mean passing zoning legislation to give small shopkeepers a shot against the retail giants, reducing barriers to entry for new businesses, revitalizing local banks, encouraging employee share ownership, setting up local capital funds so community associations could invest in local enterprises, rewarding savings, cutting regulations that socialize risk and privatize profit, and reducing the subsidies that flow from big government and big business.

To create a civil state, Blond would reduce the power of senior government officials and widen the discretion of front-line civil servants, the people actually working in neighborhoods. He would decentralize power, giving more budget authority to the smallest units of government. He would funnel more services through charities. He would increase investments in infrastructure, so that more places could be vibrant economic hubs. He would rebuild the “village college” so that universities would be more intertwined with the towns around them.

Essentially, Blond would take a political culture that has been oriented around individual choice and replace it with one oriented around relationships and associations.

"Relationships and associations" instead of runaway individualism? Neighborhood stores and schools. Community gardens. Walkable neighborhoods. Local food and local arts. Grassroots politics. Etc.

Maybe Red Tories in the U.K. and Green Democrats in the U.S. are not talking the same language. But maybe we are. And if so, does this signal the places where we can come together on big issues?

Thanks, Brooks. Now I have another big book to read.

Boulder Book Store's innovative plan to promote local authors

Authors are being challenged by big changes in the publishing biz. Fewer worthwhile books are being published by the New York City houses. The biggies would rather pay obscene advances to the likes of non-authors such as Sarah Palin than pay modest advances to a hundred real writers of literary fiction, short stories, creative nonfiction and poetry.

We've all spent time whining about the realities of the marketplace.

O.K., maybe it was only me. But I'm finished whining.

My first book of stories came out in 2006. It was published by Ghost Road Press, a small Denver operation. They publish good books and promote them the best they can. But I did most of the marketing for my book. This includes setting up readings and appearances at bookstores and libraries around the Wyoming and Colorado, settings for most of my stories. I took my wares to two book festivals, a literary festival, the Wyoming State Fair and an assortment of author days at libraries. Sold -- and signed -- a few books. GRP sold books through its web site. Amazon sold a few.

I still hand-sell my book. I keep copies at home and at work -- just in case. A few in the backseat of the car.

Now it's time to get out another book. I have enough polished stories. But I dread the sending out and returning of the manuscript.

So I'm publishing this one myself. Lots of print-on-demand sources that make good-looking books. I'll come up with some cover art and do all the proofing. I have marketing resources in my 10-year-old web site and my blog.

I was cheered to read an article by Megan Garber on the Nieman Journalism Lab web site about an interesting new approach by Boulder Book Store to selling work by local authors.

The store charges its consignment authors according to a tiered fee structure: $25 simply to stock a book (five copies at a time, replenished as needed by the author for no additional fee); $75 to feature a book for at least two weeks in the “Recommended” section; and $125 to, in addition to everything else, mention the book in the store’s e-mail newsletter, feature it on the Local Favorites page of the store’s website for at least 60 days, and enable people to buy it online for the time it’s stocked in the store.

And for $255 — essentially, the platinum package — the store will throw in an in-store reading and book-signing event.

"Most people will come in at one of the higher fee amounts,” Arsen Kashkashian, the store’s head buyer and the architect of the program, told me. “That surprised us.” In fact, when the store first began charging its consignment authors back in 2007 (the fee-structure idea emerged when the store’s employees found themselves inundated with self-published books, and there was a lot of work involved and not much reward”), its staff “thought people would grumble and complain” about the charges. But authors, Kashkashian says, have been generally grateful for the opportunity to sell and promote work that might otherwise be seen and appreciated only by their friends/spouses/moms: “‘I want the marketing, I want the exposure. I worked so hard on this project, and you guys are the only ones who could help me with it.’”

And the books are selling. Not flying off the shelves…but sauntering off, steadily. In the first week in March, Kashkashian told me, the store sold 75 consignment books — which, given the store’s 40-percent cut of those sales, and the authors’ fees, accounted for 3 percent of the store’s total revenues for the week. Part of that number, Kashkashian believes, is attributable to the authors’ efforts at self-promotion, which amplify the store’s own marketing strategy. “Some are blogging, some are on Twitter, some just trying to get out there by word of mouth,” he notes. “They’re working their networks, whether it’s online or offline. They’re kind of learning how to do it.”

The networking takes place offline, as well. The readings and signings are proving particularly popular, says Liesl Freudenstein, a buyer at the store and its consignment coordinator — not only among authors, but among Boulder’s residents more generally. “It’s great community involvement,” she notes. “These are mostly local people, people within 50 or 100 miles, and they bring their family and friends.”

It’s that kind of outside-the-box-store thinking — building and fostering engagement around unique content — that independent booksellers “need to do right now to survive,” Kashkashian says. They need, above all, to find ways “to tie themselves into the community.” Sound familiar? Indeed, bookstores are like news outlets in more ways than the simple fact of their existential endangerment. The world of book publishing is experiencing a restructuring that is similar — and in some ways parallel — to the power shifts taking place in the world of journalism.

--snip--

In publishing’s increasingly DIY world, though, the Boulder model — one that charges authors for, essentially, microdistribution of their books — makes increasing sense. “In the last few years, a professional-looking project has become much more attainable for people,” Kashkashian notes. “And once authors have a professional-looking book to sell, the selling itself becomes more feasible.”

I'm one of those "local people" mentioned by Freudenstein. My house in Cheyenne is 99.5 miles from the Pearl Street Mall. The sale of a couple of books could finance a $25 basic package at BBS. I copuld find those Front Range stores that offer similar packages and, in no time, I could have it in more stores than stocked my first book, the one from an established press.

But it might be better to ratchet up the stakes and shell out the dough for $125 or $255 package. Boulderites read literary fiction and poetry. And BBS has a cachet not found at other indies. It might be better to place my book at strategic locales in Boulder, Fort Collins, Denver and Laramie rather than to bombard them all.

Just thinking aloud right now. But I love the Boulder Book Store approach. Innovative, yet realistic. And good for the localit movement.

Laramie County Democrats gather in Cheyenne March 20

Linda Stowers, chair of the Laramie County Democrats, sends this:

The Laramie County Democrats' Convention will be held on Saturday, March 20. Registration is from 9-10 a.m. at the UW Residency Auditorium (behind the clinic at 720 E 17th) in Cheyenne. You can see the platform at the website, www.laramiecountydemocrats.org along with the amendment form. The LarCoDems are going green this convention so it will not be mass-producing the platform. Laramie County is slotted for 54 delegates to the state convention.

Laramie County has 54 delegates eligible for the State Convention in Casper May 14-15. At the state convention, we will also be developing a state platform. Even though this is not a presidential preference year, it is still important for us to develop a strong party heading into the 2010 election year. All of the state's elected offices will be up for election this year and the state convention will be a forum to meet and hear from our Democratic candidates.

What does it mean to be Irish in America?

One version of Irish-American reality -- from Flogging Molly

Condolences to Keith Olbermann and family -- with a shout out to James Thurber

From Keith Olbermann's blog on Saturday:

My father died, in the city of his birth, New York, at 3:50 EST this afternoon.

Though the financial constraints of his youth made college infeasible, he accomplished the near-impossible, becoming an architect licensed in 40 states. Much of his work was commercial, for a series of shoe store chains and department stores. There was a time in the 1970's when nearly all of the Baskin-Robbins outlets in the country had been built to his design, and under his direction. Through much of my youth and my early adult life, it was almost impossible to be anywhere in this country and not be a short drive to one of "his" stores.

My Dad was predeceased last year by my mother, Marie, his wife of nearly 60 years. He died peacefully after a long fight against the complications that ensued after successful colon surgery last September at the New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center. My sister Jenna and I were at his side, and I was reading him his favorite James Thurber short stories, as he left us.

My condolences to Keith and his family. My father, too, was a fan of James Thurber's short stories. Thurber was a fine writer, funny and irreverent. He wrote for The New Yorker, but his stories were made to be read aloud, unlike most contemporary stories featured in that magazine.

Here's the beginning to "The Night the Bed Fell" from the July 8, 1933, New Yorker:

I suppose that the high-water mark of my youth in Columbus, Ohio, was the night the bed fell on my father. It makes a better recitation (unless, as some friends of mine have said, one has heard it five or six times) than it does a piece of writing, for it is almost necessary to throw furniture around, shake doors, and bark like a dog, to lend the proper atmosphere and verisimilitude to what is admittedly a somewhat incredible tale. Still, it did take place.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1933/07/08/1933_07_08_011_TNY_CARDS_000228579#ixzz0iINK1E1r

Read it, and remember the power of good writing.

So many good stories so close to home

I entered the creative writing program at Colorado State University just a few weeks after Raymond Carver died Aug. 2, 1988, in Port Angeles, Wash.

As a late-blooming M.F.A. student, I knew very little about Carver. Other writers spoke of him in hushed tones. I wanted to be be able to utter similar hushed literary tones. So I read "Cathedral." Such a story! I read everything of Carver's I could get my hands on. "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please." "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" "So Much Water So Close to Home." I was fortunate that Gordon Lish had discovered Carver and guided him through the publication of several collections.

One day I came across a different version of "So Much Water So Close to Home." I brought this up in one of my classes. The only answer I got was that Carver rewrote his stories because, like many writers, he wasn't pleased with the published version. I could forgive that -- and moved on. Carver's powerful minimalist stories played a part in my switchover from budding novelist to short story writer.

Twenty-some years later, I read the March 13 The New Republic article Mr. Coffee And Mr. Fixit by Christopher Benley.

It raises a big problem concerning Carver. Lish shortened most of the stories, eliminating Carver's wordier story-telling style. Religious references were curtailed as were hints of a happy ending.

These edits may have illuminated Carver's themes of honor/dishonor and conflicted human relationships. But maybe not. At the heart of every Carver story is the mysterious element that makes me feel that I have been punched in the gut -- and punched hard. Hundreds of us writers influenced by Carver's straightforward style tried to recreate the story's feel. We failed. We didn't live Carver's life and our aesthetic and instincts were all wrong. Stories were technically sound but heartless. We had to find other ways to tell our stories.

Were students at writing programs all over the country betrayed by Gordon Lish and Raymond Carver? Were we pushed in the wrong direction by Carverite writing profs?

Possibly. It is a strong-willed young writer who knows his/her style and is willing to defend it in the face of withering workshop critiques.

According to TNR article, the Library of America's Carver collection features conflicting versions of "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love' (Carver's story was called "Beginners" and was a longer and much different story the the Lish-edited version). I look forward to reading them and again trying to discover what made him tick. I'm interested in seeing if they have the same sort of gut-punch impact they had on first readings.

Meanwhile, I write like Mike. With just a touch of Carver.

Remembering a spring break trip to Willa Cather's Red Cloud, Nebraska

Intro: Eight years ago in March 2002, my wife Chris (shown above at left) and I bundled up our two kids and set out for a spring break trip to Nebraska. First stop: pick up our friends in Lincoln. Second stop: drive to Red Cloud for a literary sojourn. Spending an early spring day in a dusty prairie town may not be every family's idea of a good time. It's mine. Welcome to a Bookie's Spring Break. 

Chris wants a Cather board. 

She can choose from two big piles of generations-old boards ripped from Willa Cather's family home in Red Cloud, Nebraska. She picks gingerly through the pile on the winter-brown lawn, careful of the many jagged nails that once fastened the two-story front porch to the historic house which rises in front of us. The rest of us watch her progress. Two boys toss trashed boards into a big dumpster. A carpenter, who may be the father of the boys, saws two-by-eights for new porch decking. 

The house's current owner, a petite 40-something woman standing on the street next to her SUV, tells Chris that she could take all the boards if she wants them. 

"Should have brought my truck," I say, kidding around. Unlike many of my fellow Wyomingites, I do not own a truck. A Yuppie minivan is my conveyance of choice. Still, a good number of historic Cather boards could go into my van's cargo space. 

"I just want one," says Chris, surveying the pile as she might a stack of apples at the megamart. She is my wife of 20 years. While she grew up in a home devoid of books, she now is a voracious reader. Yet, she never has read any of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author's books. She only cares about Cather because I do. The same goes for our friends Kate and Stephen, who accompany us to Red Cloud on this spring break day in 2002 for a dose of literary tourism. A few blocks away, our kids play in the town playground, not really interested in strolling around this old burg looking at old houses. We keep in touch via walkie-talkies. 

"Everybody still alive over there?" I say into the tiny speaker. 

"No," replies my teen son Kevin, a writer but not (yet) a literary tourist.

"We won't hurry then," I say. I hear kids screaming in the background. They are either ecstatic with happiness. Or being torn to pieces by a wolf pack from one of Cather's pioneer stories. Maybe a herd of cattle stampedes through this town of a thousand souls. Or the kids have stepped into a nest of prairie rattlers, the kind Cather's grandmother used to kill with a silver-tipped cane. Or the kids might be spooked by the ghosts of Cather and Antonia or Neighbor Rozicky flitting around the town square. 

It is all about imagination. But if anybody is going to see a ghost today it's me. I have read My Antonia, many of Cather's stories, and seen the TV version of O Pioneers. My favorite story is The Sculptor's Funeral. It not only brings to life the chilled winter landscape of a town much like Red Cloud (but set across the border in Kansas). It also is a spooky reminder of the fate of the artist who grows up an oddball in a small town and will never be totally accepted for his/her quirky ways and intelligence. Paradoxically, this artist may deeply love the town and its people. 

This must have been Cather's fate. It's hard to know from the official literature of the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and Education Foundation. The pamphlet for the walking tour carries many references to the generosity of Cather and her family. The author donated two stained-glass windows and a walnut altar rail to the Grace Episcopal Church. Willa's father Charles and uncle-in-law helped build the town library, which opened in 1918, the same year as the end of WWI and the publication of My Antonia. Charles Cather's real estate office is the third stop on the tour. It is located on the west side of the town's main drag and across the street from the bank building that now houses the Cather archives and is owned by the Nebraska State Historical Society. We are in familiar "historic tour" mode here. 

But the brochure also refers to some quirkier traits of the young Cather. While her father "made farm loans, wrote abstracts, and sold insurance" from his downtown office, the young author "had her laboratory for dissecting cats and dogs." The office must have been a curious mix of loan paperwork and cat gut pickled in formaldehyde. During high school, Willa worked at Dr. Cook's City Pharmacy, north on Webster Street on the next block. She took her pay "in books, a magic lantern, and the rose wallpaper for her home at Third and Cedar." According to the pamphlet, she installed the wallpaper herself and it's still on the walls in her room in this house. She learned about French novels from her family's Jewish neighbors, the Weiners, who spoke both German and French. 

She loved the downtown opera house, now under renovation, which helped spark a lifetime interest in opera. According to the brochure, "one can still read the name of Willa's brother, Douglas, and others scrawled on the stage walls." 

What it doesn't talk about is the young Cather's first job delivering mail to county farms. That she was a tomboy who, like the "hired girl" Antonia, was proud of her muscles and liked to show them off. That she sliced open dead animals, hoping to learn how to be a veterinarian. That she showed up for freshman year at University of Nebraska dressed as her twin brother. That she probably was gay. 

As a writer with urban sensibilities, I try to be kind to small towns. I want to avoid stereotypes: rural people are slack-jawed yokels, born-again zealots, Timothy McVeighs waiting to explode. There are others who try to dredge up the bucolic nature of Middle American small towns: Such a quaint little town with the most gorgeous antique shops! I picked up a great little butter churn for a song! And they had the cutest little restaurant! 

Where I might give small-town residents the benefit of the doubt, Cather did not. Her novels and stories honestly show the vagaries of life in the small towns of the American prairie. The themes are universal: murder, rape, love, betrayal, and bigotry, to name some biggies. This is probably why her work still resonates 55 years after her death. Antonia is abused by a pillar of society. In death, the sculptor comes home to rest only to face the taunts of the townspeople. She’s pretty tough on city people too. Snooty artists get their comeuppance in Flavia and Her Artists. Opera snobs are skewered in The Song of the Lark. Wonder what she would have thought of us 21st century literary tourists? 

 The Tour

On this gorgeous spring day, we opt not to pay the five dollars that the Cather Society charges for the guided tour. This means we can’t actually get into most of the buildings in the Cather Historic District. We can't see the rose wallpaper in Willa's old bedroom. The churches and the archives are closed to us. We can't see the Willa Cather Animal Dissecting Room or go backstage at the opera house. We can pick up historic boards from the lawn of Cather's Retreat Bed & Breakfast. We can tour the courthouse, site of the World War I trial of German immigrants in One of Ours, the book that won the author the Pulitzer in 1923. 

We can also tour the library that the Cathers' endowed. We're lucky that it is afternoon, since the Auld Public Library on Webster Street is only open from 2-5 p.m. It is a neat old brick building and appropriately small for a small-town library. It loans books, videos, and cake pans. According to the librarian, the cake-pan idea came out of a need for a central place that provided residents with pans for special occasions. Star-shaped pans for Fourth of July cakes; heart-shaped ones for Valentine's day; huge pans for big events; and tiny ones for modest events. The library gets the occasional donated pan. Sometimes they get a bumper crop of pans with the passing of one of the town's leading bakers, an old woman who still took seriously the eating traditions of her German or Bohemian or Scandinavian roots. 

This is Catherland, after all, whose rich ethnic heritage was celebrated in the author's many books. In turn, Nebraska celebrates her with what may be the largest historic district dedicated to an American writer. There are 17 stops on the Red Cloud historic tour. The 10-mile-long Willa Cather Roadway leads you into town. Overall, the Willa Cather Thematic District includes 190 sites in Webster County, including a 610-acre tract of native grassland owned by the Nature Conservancy and dedicated to Cather's memory. 

All this might seem boring to those whose vacations center on DisneyWorld and Six Flags Over Anytown USA. Readers of all stripes, though, would have to admit that its a darn fine thing to have a town dedicated to a writer. We don't have many of them. And when we do, there may be some controversy involved. 

As we walk around Red Cloud, our friend Kate brings up her old stomping grounds of Salinas, California. Now home to the massive National Steinbeck Center, some Salinas old-timers are still smarting over their treatment in Grapes of Wrath and Tortilla Flats. Some people in Salinas still hate his guts, Kate says, noting that they are a little less likely to dislike Steinbeck if they own a restaurant or motel or one of the many small businesses that benefit from the library and its events, especially some of the big events happening in 2002, the centennial of the author's birth. Over the hills in Monterey, some people still consider Steinbeck a nogoodnik and commie sympathizer, an anti-business and pro-union rabble-rouser who wrote the acerbic Cannery Row and the passionate East of Eden. That tradition sometimes lines their wallets. 

It's tough to say if Cather's presence has the same effect on Red Cloud. Steinbeck and Cather are contemporaries. Both wrote of their hometowns and both won major literary prizes: Cather the Pulitzer, Steinbeck the Nobel. Both sometimes are disparagingly called regional writers and their work is sometimes seen as too sentimental and not obtuse enough for the deconstructionists who hold sway on campus these days. Strangely, their staying power in academia is due to factors other than their writing. Cather had lesbian affairs but never wrote openly about homosexuality. She is read as often in Women's Studies or LGBTQ tracks as she is in English Departments. Oddly enough, while Steinbeck's lack of literary finesse gets short shrift in English departments, his leftist politics get him lots of attention in disciplines such as American Studies, Political Science, and Labor Studies departments at some urban eastern universities. 

This first week of April 2002, the Center for Great Plains Studies and the Cather Project at University of Nebraska in Lincoln is hosting "Great Passions and Great Aspirations: A Willa Cather Symposium on Literature and Opera." Conferees can sit in windowless rooms and hear about Cather and opera, Cather and WWI, and other subjects. They can attend a performance of The Bohemian Girl at the Kimball Recital Hall in the evening. Cather saw this popular 19th century opera in 1888 in the Red Cloud Opera House. The conference wraps up with a bus tour to Red Cloud and surroundings. This should put a little economic development into Red Cloud which, like most small towns on the Great Plains, is in dire need of it. Those that don't get it are likely to dry up and blow away. 

We do our best to help. I buy hard-to-find Cather audiobooks at the Cather gift shop downtown. I also buy postcards and some cool notecards. I want to send a card and a memento to my ailing father in Florida, who let me freely browse his library once I learned to read. On our way out of town, we drop by Sugar & Spice for ice cream cones plus a massive cheeseburger for my growing son. I would love to browse the used-book store on the main drag but it is closed because the owner winters in Arizona. 

We also have our Willa Cather Memorial Board. Or Chris does. She finds just the right one. It's a very old one-by-four, rough on one side, gray paint peeling on the other. It has a lone nail jutting from one end. She and her board pose for several photos along our tour. We have fun with the board, calling it "The Willa" or just-plain "Plank," just as that kid does in the cartoon show Ed, Edd, and Eddie. 

I ask Chris what she will do with the board when we get home to Cheyenne. 

She shrugs. "I just wanted it," she says with a smile. 

She has her memento. I have mine. As we leave Red Cloud in mid-afternoon, I turn on The Troll Garden and fast forward to The Sculptor's Funeral. I can’t hear very well, because the girls are a bit raucous in the back seat. But at least I catch the opening as we head back north to the interstate:

"A group of the townspeople stood on the station siding of a little Kansas town, awaiting the coming of the night train, which was already twenty minutes overdue."

This is why I have come: the author's words, the magic they make when they are knitted together with precision and anger and compassion.

"Social Justice Christians" out themselves

Sojourners invites "Social Justice Christians" to send a letter to Glenn Beck. The message is designed to "out" the letter writer in the eyes of his/her chosen church, and in the clouded vision of Mr. Beck. To write your own customized response, go to http://go.sojo.net/campaign/glennbeck_socialjustice.

Here's my letter:

I'm a Christian who believes in the biblical call to social justice. I learned this lesson from my parents and at thousands of Catholic masses and during many Catholic school classes.

I learned my lessons well. When my Catholic Church abandoned social justice to make pacts with the unjust of the Christian Right, I stopped going to church.

I stand in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets and the teachings of Jesus that demonstrate God's will for justice in every aspect of our individual, social, and economic lives.

I hereby "report" myself to you. If I still attended church, I would report myself to the appropriate authorities. They now have no authority over me.

Keep your head down, Kowalski -- here comes another Dubya-Dubya-Two mini-series

We’d been slogging through this war for almost 70 years – and there was no end in sight.

It had been a hard go at first. Black-and-white versions of reality, filmed in Hollywood backlots. John Wayne on “The Sands of Iwo Jima.” Van Johnson spending “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.” Bogie vs. Vichy and Nazis in “Casablanca.” Valiant starlets hobnobbed with fresh-faced G.I.s at the “Hollywood Canteen.” Brits got into the act with “Mrs. Miniver” and “In Which We Serve.”

Coming home from that phase of the war was no “Best Years of Our Lives.” Later, color arrived at the movie theater of war. The war dragged on. “The Longest Day” returned us to the black-and-white beaches of Normandy. “Das Boot” surfaced from Germany.

The real hard fighting started when Spielberg invaded us with “Saving Private Ryan.” We had to sit through blood and gore, realistic bullets zipping by, coming within a gnat’s eyelash of our giant soda/big bucket-o-popcorn combos at the multiplex. Then everybody wanted to get into the act. Death on cable TV was a lot rougher than the old battles on regular TV’s “Combat,” as HBO followed a “Band of Brothers” from Normandy’s deadly hedgerows to sinister rows of hedges in Germany.

Dirty Harry led a kamikaze charge with both barrels -- “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters from Iwo Jima.” This was the first time that we knew our enemies had it as hard as we did – both films opened in wide release in Japan.

Last year, just when it seemed that the war was finally drawing to a close, bullets and bombs and Zeros came at us in high definition on the History Channel. We lost a few buddies in the skirmish. It was every man for himself.

Now comes “The Pacific.” Super-realistic battles and high-def to boot. We may not survive. Guadalcanal and Iwo without John Wayne and 1940s cliches. The platoon ain’t gonna make it, Sarge. Tell ma I love her. Keep your head down, Kowalski. But Sarge, I don’t think I can live through another Dubya-Dubya-Two mini-series.

Me neither, Kowalski. This is the longest slog I ever did see.

--to be continued--

Retracing footsteps of Kerouac in Cheyenne

"On the Trail: Jack Kerouac in Cheyenne" is Alan O'Hashi's entry into the Cheyenne Short Film Festival. You can view it http://www.wyomingshortfilmcontest.com/entries/38239

Some background from Alan:

Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” is a classic American literature work. Kerouac writes about his experiences in Cheyenne, Wyoming during “Wild West Days” on his way to Denver via Longmont.

“The stars seemed to get brighter the more we climbed the High Plains. We were in Wyoming now … As the truck reached the outskirts of Cheyenne we saw the high red lights of the local radio station, and suddenly we were bucking through a great crowd of people that poured along both sidewalks. ‘Hell’s bells, it’s Wild West Week,’ said Slim.”

That’s how Kerouac described the outskirts of Cheyenne in July 1947 from the back of a pick up truck traveling from Nebraska, probably on the Lincoln Highway.

I don't run away from social justice churches, I run toward them

The latest hubbub surrounding Fox's Glenn Beck is about religion.

What does Glenn Beck know about religion? A lot, it seems. And I'm not being facetious.

"I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words."

Glenn Beck is an oddball. But he knows a simple fact: the more liberal-minded the Christian congregation, the more it addresses social justice and economic justice and even peace & justice.

But not always.

During the Civil Rights struggle, many of the strongest advocates for social justice attended conservative black churches such as Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist. Their members turned to Old Testament scripture as inspiration for hymns, employing metaphor to sing about votings rights and human rights and workplace justice.

Across town, many of the most virulent racists attended white Baptist churches where they dug deep into the Bible to justify their prejudices. It's amazing what you can find in the Bible if you look really, really hard. Glenn Beck knows all about this.

I was raised Catholic. Catholicism, for the most part, finds its inspiration in the New Testament. Not surprising. The New Testament focuses on Jesus Christ's short life. His death and resurrection led to the founding of "The One True Church," a term you don't hear any more.

The mass was in Latin. The priests were the keepers of the Latin. During mass, the priest's back was turned to the congregation. Sometimes he turned around to share a stray "Agnus Dei, Qui tolis peccata mundi, misere nobis" with the dozing churchgoers. The altar boys mumbled along with him, ringing bells and fidgeting in their black-and-white cassocks. In the pews, nuns kept their eyes peeled for chatting kids and dozing parents.

I can't imagine a more conservative setting. The priest's homily was in English and focused on moral lessons. In Catholic School, amidst the Madrasah-like setting, the Christ-centered message was woven into every class. Do the right thing. Treat others as you want to be treated. Feed the poor. Comfort the afflicted. Afflict the comfortable.

Just kidding about that last one. But that is a lesson I learned in Catholic School. And one I continue to practice.

I never heard anything about social justice or economic justice. Those terms came later (a Jesuit priest is credited with the first description of social justice). I did learn that everyone had the right to vote and freedom to earn a living.

I don't go to church now. If I did, I would go to a social justice church, an economic justice church, a peace and justice church. I wouldn't attend a "healthcare is a privilege not a human right" church, a "get a job you stinkin' ______________ (fill in the name of your favorite despised minority)" church, a "bomb 'em all, let God sort 'em out" church.

Learn more and listen to Glenn Beck at http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/03/08/glenn-beck-urges-listeners-to-leave-churches-that-preach-social/

Tom Brokaw fails to define Boomers

I suffered through 10 cloying minutes of "Boomer$" (note the annoying dollar sign) on CNBC before Tom Brokaw broke in with a paean to the Boomers' parents "whom I call the Greatest Generation." Yes, Tom, we know that your "Greatest Generation" suffered through the Depression and beat the bad guys in "the Good War" and faced down the Soviets during "40 years of The Cold War." And we know that, in comparison, we Baby Boomers were a bunch of sniveling whiny brats who smoked pot at Woodstock and protested at swell land-grant universities such as University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Brokaw can't help it that he despises the Boomers. He was born in 1940, too late to be a member of the Greatest Generation and too early to go to Woodstock and/or Vietnam. Besides, Brokaw has made a living out of praising my parents' generation. They were pretty fine people. In that Tom and I agree.

But he isn't up to the task of defining the the contributions and idiocies of 74 million Americans born between 1946-1964. I made it through 20 total minutes of the show and I had enough.

To understand the Boomers -- and the last 60-some years of American history -- you had to be paying attention. Living your life, for one thing, and contributing to society in some sort of constructive way. The Boomers I know are big on volunteering. It could be the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure or the rodeo at Cheyenne Frontier Days. Takes a lot of volunteers to run a political campaign. Those I met during Gary Trauner's unsuccessful race for the U.S. House in 2008 ranged in age from Greatest Generation to Gen-X-Y-Z. In between, of course, were the Baby Boomers. We worked together, not necessarily in perfect harmony but pretty close.

I meet some nice Repub Boomers when I volunteer at the polls. We don't have a single thing in common except that we love our country and think working at the polls is a damn fine way to give back.

It's not only volunteering. It's working at something you like and raising decent kids and keeping in shape and making some dough and buying a house and 101 other things that people do.

It's nice to see Tom Brokaw interviewing aging jocks and Woodstock survivors and P.J. O'Rourke and Bill Clinton and an unemployed 50-something woman and potbellied guys who once twirled hula-hoops. But what did we learn from "Boomer$?" Not much, but I only watched 20 minutes. Perhaps if I watched the whole hour I'd be a smarter Boomer, almost as smart (and smarmy) as Tom Brokaw.

You say Unobtanium, I say Molybdenum

Does the Unobtanium in James Cameron's "Avatar" have anything to do with the struggle over Molybdenum minining in Crested Butte, Colo. during the 1970s? Unobtanium=Molybdenum? Interesting report tonight on Denver's Channel 7. Go to http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/22770743/detail.html

You chemistry and/or sci-fi geeks can get your Unobtanium T-shirts at http://www.bustedtees.com/unobtanium

The week in publishing...

Odd week in publishing. Two anthologies that I sent work to four years ago now have found publishers. One focuses on working class writing and will include my short story, "The Problem with Mrs. P" (the story is in my 2006 collection, "The Weight of a Body"). Coffee House Press will release it in the the fall. An essay about rock climbing with my ADHD son will be in another anthology about families and outdoor sports. Writers have to be almost masochistic in their persistence.

I also heard from Liz Jackson at Laramie County Community College that my short-short story, "Flying Nurse," was accepted for publishing in the 2010 High Plains Register. There will be a reading by contributors in late April. I'll keep you posted.

I sent out two new pieces this week. One was another ADHD essay, which I sent to a proposed anthology on the subject by CRT Press. ADHD is such an interesting topic. Researchers are still arguing whether it exists or not. And parents experiencing glorious adventures with their attention-deficit children are left hanging.

The second piece I sent out this week was a short story set in Denver. The city crops up a lot in my fiction. I'm a native and spent the first nine years of my life there. I also lived there 10 years as an adult. Formative years.

If you'd like to read samples of my work, go to my web site at http://www.hummingbirdminds.com/. I'm also happy to sell you a book. Just leave a comment below. Or go to Ghost Road Press.

One more reason to like Calexico

Wow! Arizona and France and Mexico on stage in London. Hummingbirdminds craves Calexico.

Book launch party of the week: "Cowboy Trouble" by Joanne Kennedy

Here's my writing group pal Joanne Kennedy as she got ready to sign books March 2 at the launch party for her first novel, "Cowboy Trouble." The Cheyenne Barnes & Noble sold lots of books (five to the Shay family) and Joanne signed them all. A good time was had by, especially when we bugged out of B&N to Uncle Charlie's where we drank beer and ate wings and listened to music by Todd Dereemer and his band. Get "Cowboy Trouble" at your local bookstore. Get more info about Joanne and her work at http://kennedysmyth.com

Dave Freudenthal will not seek a third term

Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal announced today that he will not run for a third term.

I was at the Capitol Building this morning when the news broke. The last few days of legislative business is filled with salutes to our troops and performances by drum groups -- along with some last-minute votes and bill signings. This morning, Wyoming Poet Laureate David Romtvedt read his poetry in each chamber. Both were about his daughter, who's now 21 and attending college out-of-state. This is the sixth year that David's read to the legislators. They always seem interested in his words. Maybe it's because his words are a welcome break from the avalanche of legalese they face each session. It's also because David tells stories they can relate to. Riding horses across the prairie or fixing fence in Johnson County. Kayaking with his teen daughter on a Wyoming lake. Love and fear and relationships and all the things people care about, whether they be legislators or poets or even bloggers.

While I waited for the reading, I ran into one of my fellow Dems from Laramie County. She's a lobbyist, and once upon a time staged a losing race for a legislative seat. We jawed about gubernatorial possibilities with the Democratic Party. Milward Simpson had declared several weeks ago that he wasn't running. He's a Democrat in a family full of Repubs, including his cousin Colin Simpson, son of Big Al. Colin is running for governor, but must first get through a phalanx of other Repub candidates, including Matt Mead, grandson of a former Wyoming U.S. senator, and Ron Micheli from the southwest corner of the state. Also, State Auditor Rita Meyer. There will be more, making for a lively primary.

Meanwhile, crickets are chirping on the Dem side of the aisle. Tumbleweeds roll unmolested through party headquarters.

My lobbyist friend today wondered if candidates could emerge from the ranks of county commissioners or city councils or the legislature. I wasn't sure. The name of Sen. Mike Massie from Albany County has been bandied about. But conventional wisdom has him running for Superintendent of Public Instruction. Conventional wisdom can be woefully incorrect. But he's also from the university town of Laramie, known for pointy-headed intellectuals, even in Wyoming. We even have special pointy-headed intellectual cowboy hats for them to wear to summer rodeos.

Someone will emerge from the shadows. It's possible. But this year's governor's race looks as if it belongs to the Repubs.