Speaking of short stories -- return of Mrs. P

Here are the opening paragraphs of my story included in the new Coffee House Press anthology, Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams:

The Problem with Mrs. P

First problem: nobody was home to help. Not her two daughters, off to school. Not her husband Robbie, who hadn’t been home for weeks, probably right this minute at that whore Gloria’s house.


Second problem: she was seven months pregnant and bleeding like crazy. She pressed a cream-colored towel against her crotch; it bloomed with a red chrysanthemum of her own blood. She stood in the bathroom doorway, eyes sparking, knees shaking.

Third problem: her damn husband had the car. Not that she was in any shape to make the seven-mile drive into Cheyenne, ten if you factored in the hospital which was downtown.

Fourth problem: the telephone was dead, thanks to Robbie not paying the bills like he was supposed to. She had her own prepaid cell phone with a few minutes still left on it. But it was downstairs on the kitchen table. Just the thought of negotiating the stairs brought a throbbing to her abdomen.

Fifth problem, or maybe it was the first: she and her baby boy might be dying.


To be continued...

The Guardian: Tech helps short stories make a comeback

When making pitches to editors and agents, short story writers are often asked two question:

1. Why?

2. Do you have a novel?

My answers are usually these:

1. Because

2. Yes, I have several unpublished novels but right now I am writing stories so why don't you publish them, eh?

We short-form writers have plenty of venues for our work. Most are small magazines or literary magazines attached to colleges and universities. They usually pay in copies or in a subscription or in small amounts of what's known to novelists as "cash."

So, when we see good news regarding short stories, we latch on to it like a Tea-Partier onto a dubious factoid.

Here's part of a story from London's The Guardian:

Technology has enabled literary magazines to solve the two problems holding them back: print and distribution costs, and marketing. The Internet solved the first and social networking is fixing the second.

--snip--

These days, the process of "deep reading" – that is, entering into a trance-like state and becoming mentally and emotionally consumed in another world – often seems like a huge effort, especially when the cheap thrill of Twitter or a blog is just a tap away. However, people are starting to suspect that the Internet connives against us. It sells us the lie that it's better to click or flick in idle spare time than it is to read a book. But after half an hour – after you've exhausted your regular websites and blogs, and everyone on Twitter and Facebook is in bed – you get the same feeling as you do from eating chocolate all day.

Could we be in a place now where technology has brought us full circle? Where that which took us away from stories is now set to bring us back to them?

"The short story is an essential art form again," says [author and blogger] Nikesh Shukla.

Many writers are now selling their stories separately at places such as Shortlist Press and .

Read the full story here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/nov/10/literary-magazine-technology-internet

I, for one, am happy about this changing state of affairs. I published one story collection in book form and have been contemplating self-publishing the next one. I have published many stories in small mags, although none of them are strictly online versions. Most print mags keep your stories for 3-6 months and it can be up to a year before your story appears.

I've been blogging since 2005, and started my web site a decade ago. But neither has led to a publishing bonanza. I've posted snippets of stories on the web site and I blog regularly about prog politics and Wyoming and writing and mental health and assorted other issues. Perhaps I'm flitting around too much from topic to topic. But what the heck -- it's my time and my blog so I'll write what I want.

I'll be spending the next couple weeks exploring online publishers of short stories. Stay tuned for future reports....

Just what are those chemicals used in fracking?

I was watching the CBS 60 Minutes segment tonight ("Shaleionaires") about natural gas drilling and horizontal drilling and fracking in shale formations. Most of the episode was set in Louisiana and Texas and West Virginia. One guy demonstrated how he could light his water on fire.

This issue has come up in Pavillion, Wyoming, and has been well-documented. Wyoming is now the only state that requires companies to release the chemicals used in fracking. Kind of hard to believe that our oil-and-gas-and-coal state had the foresight to make a stand on fracking. Too bad CBS didn't talk about that.

Oil shale drilling is booming in Laramie, Platte and Goshen counties here in Wyoming. Lots of talk about danger to our water supplies but no hard data yet. Or maybe I should say -- no hard data that's been released to the public.

More later....

UPLIFT 20th anniversary reception on Nov. 16 in Cheyenne

You are invited you UPLIFT's 20th anniversary reception on Tuesday, Nov. 16, 5-7 p.m., at the Cole E.S. Gym, 615 W. 9th St., Cheyenne. Enjoy free food and beverages and learn about UPLIFT's services. More info at www.upliftwy.org

"Lived experience" is the buzz phrase for future mental health care

I am not a clinician.

But I am a parent of two children with mental health issues. As an adult who’s struggled with depression and takes wonder drugs for it, I am also considered a consumer of mental health services.

This “lived experience” may prove to be crucial in the future.

Change, you see, is on the horizon. I would say that the dark clouds of doom are looming, threatening to destroy us all, but that would depress me and I’d have to go lie down and read Kafka for the rest of the day.

The annual conference in Atlanta for the National Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health began the day after Black Tuesday, Nov. 2. Many presentations were colored by that fact.

Andrea Barnes, policy wonk for the federation, said this on the opening day’s overview session: “What we know about the Republicans’ agenda is they want to roll back everything, especially prevention funds. The Affordable Health Care Act has some very important pieces regarding mental health. There is no guarantee that all the provisions will be enacted now that the Congress has changed.”

Much talk about change – the bad kind. Some gloom and doom.

But by the end of the conference, I felt hopeful that stressful times and creative thinking may bring about a new and more family- and community-centered way of taking care of our youth.

“We have to find alternative ways to do business,” said Gary M. Blau, Child, Adolescent and Family Branch, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). He urged us to embrace the reality of huge deficits and the changing face of Congress. He said that it was our “lived experience” that will make the difference.

This changing dynamic will not only need involvement from parents and youth and family members and the community. It will be crucial. “We need to implement things that work – things our young people have told us,” Blau said.

As I said earlier – I’m not a clinician. Nor am I part of a social services non-profit and treatment center. I am a lay person on a board for a UPLIFT, the federation affiliate in Wyoming. I do not know all the lingo and acronyms tossed around like confetti at these conferences. However, my wife and I have 20 years of experience helping our children with their mental health challenges.

Here’s a brief intro from Gary Blau as to how this world is changing.

He outlined five areas in substance abuse and mental health that SAMHSA and the federation would like to be included in benefit packages, such as those that are part of Medicaid and Medicare.

1. Respite care, so parents can get a break and even go back to work.
2. Therapeutic mentoring to extend services
3. Behavioral health consultation services. Monitor children in daycare and preschool and get help for those who need it. Can reduce the number of kids kicked out of daycare for aggressive behavior.
4. Use technology to deliver services. “Our kids come out treatment and don’t go to AA meetings. They do communicate via social network sites.” This can be used for e-therapy and peer counseling.
5. Parent and caregiver support services. He said that this is the number one issue for SAMHSA. “We need a cadre of parent support providers, and we’re working on a certification process.”

All of these acknowledge the fact that parents and youth are on the frontlines and know what’s needed. That’s a big change from 20 or even 10 years ago when parents often were blamed for their children’s failing – and therapy was something done to a teen and not with the teen.

These changes will be needed as budgets shrink and more Americans (32 million) enter the health care insurance system via the (mostly) Democratic Party’s reform package.

None of it can happen without advocacy. “If folks in this room don’t advocate, our very existence is threatened,” said Blau.

I consider this blog an advocacy tool. More to do, of course, both locally, statewide and in Congress.

For more info, go to the federation web site at http://www.ffcmh.org/ or SAMHSA at http://www.samhsa.gov/. For help in Wyoming, go to http://www.upliftwy.org/ or call 307-778-8686.

Happy 65th birthday, Neil Young -- keep on rockin' in the free world

On Veterans Day... A story from the front lines of empathy

Six days before Veterans Day 2010, Afghanistan War veteran and author Wes Moore had this message:

“As a society, we need to be more empathetic, tolerant and proactive.”

This was unlike other speeches I would hear in the week leading up to Nov. 11. It was a crowd of some 700 people whose mission includes empathy, tolerance and activism. It is the annual gathering of the Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health. While I’m sure there were military veterans in the room, most attendees you would fall under that term sneared at by Mrs. Palin and her pals -- community organizers.

Lest you think that Mr. Moore is some namby-pamby community organizer…. Well, he is a community organizer. Not much namby in his pamby (or vice versa).

He served in Afghanistan in 2005-2006 with the U.S. Army’s elite First Brigade of the 82nd Airborne. Trained in the art of combat and the art of jumping out of planes in full battle gear. He grew up in a single-parent family in a tough Baltimore neighborhood. He graduated from military school and Johns Hopkins. He later became a Rhodes Scholar and studied in scores of foreign countries. He was special assistant to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2007. He writes. He thinks. Soon, he’ll be a father for the first time.

We should be thanking him for his service. Instead, he thanked us.

“Thanks for the work you do,” he said on this chilly Atlanta Friday. “There’s no way we can advance in society with only a sliver of society engaging in the conversation.”

He added that there are “no expendable kids and no expendable zip codes.”

As a teen, Moore felt that he was expendable. He started getting in trouble. His mom was scared. She found a military school who agreed to take her son. He went to Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania -- but wasn’t happy about it. Moore ran away. His mom sent him back. He ran away again. His mom sent him back. After returning from his fifth AWOL, Moore felt something click in him. He found himself in the midst of an opportunity. He was being encouraged to excel.

So he did.

As he pursued military service and education, Moore discovered that others who had grown up in his neighborhood were falling through the cracks in those beat-up mean streets.

One was Wes Moore – the one in the title of the book The Other Wes Moore. He and three other young men robbed a jewelry store. As they fled with $400,000 in stolen goods, one of the men drew a gun and shot and killed an off-duty Baltimore police officer. A multi-state manhunt ensued. The robbers were captured and tried. The other Wes Moore now serves a life sentence without parole in prison.

“This was the wind in the back of the project – I wanted people to understand these neighborhoods we come from.”

Moore corresponded with the other Wes Moore and later they met face-to-face. Soldier Moore found out that Prisoner Moore was smart and tough. He wanted no pity but agreed with Soldier Moore that action was needed to save other neighborhood kids.

“We can’t look at them as ‘those kids,’ “ Moore said. “We need to say ‘our kids.’ “

He added: “Potential in the U.S. is universal but opportunity is not. The biggest gap we have in our country is the expectation gap.”

We applauded wildly, of course. We all agreed on the mission. How could we not. Poor kids and kids of a different color and kids with mental health issues all need to be considered “our kids.” But we diverge on the methods.

Moore asked us to consider some things.

"You are out there every day and know we can’t wait for someone else to figure it out,” he said. “Answers don’t lie in state capitol buildings, they lie in our communities.

“You are all the change agents.”

He didn’t say it but I was thinking it – you can’t count on solutions from the federal government. We are moving away from that dynamic. Community organizers need to think more creatively about the first word in this description – community. For too long, we’ve looked at money and answers to come raining down from D.C. Most of the time, the answers were coming from us, although there was that fed cash, too.

But the rains have turned to showers and, once the weird new Congress is in place, a drought will surely follow.

We’ve already seen that with our Wyoming federation affiliate. Some of the government funding sources are drying up. Corporate and private sources don’t have the cash to spare. How will our youth get services during the coming drought?

Moore isn’t waiting around for someone else to take the lead. He wrote a book. He’s speaking to all kinds of groups, motivating grass-roots work on mental health and fatherhood in the black community and prison recidivism. He works with the kids in his old neighborhood and in New Jersey where he now lives (in the photo, Wes is talking to students at Patterson Middle School). He’s tackling it head-on, just the tactic you might expect from an Army officer turned community organizer.

“We have a saying in the Army – you can’t hit a target you can’t see,” he said. That got a spirited hoo-ah from the back of the room. Moore acknowledged it and moved on. He’s a mover.

Wes, since I didn’t get a chance to say this last week when you signed my book: “Thanks for your service. Happy Veterans Day.”

Wes Moore's book info: The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates, 256 pages, Spiegel & Grau, ISBN-10: 0385528191; ISBN-13: 978-0385528191

Can't leave well enough alone? You must be a blogger.

Did your mom or grandmother ever say, "You can't leave well enough alone?"

Funny expression. When it something "well enough" and why should you leave it alone? Shouldn't it be "well done" or just finished?

Many bloggers I know can't leave well enough alone. Maybe that's what drew them to blogs in the first place. Unlimited space where you can ignore well enough into eternity.

Anyway, some of you followed my serial tale of the Oct. 22 near-miss crash with a drunk driver on I-25. I told the installments on Facebook as sat in my Ford on the way to Pueblo later than day.

I received an "unsafe lane change" ticket which I was going to pay but thought better of it. The young driver who almost killed us was busted for DUI -- drunk at 8:15 a.m. So I decided to write a letter to the Colorado Department of Motor Vehicles and copies to various other agencies (see the end of the letter).

Here's the letter:

Oct. 26, 2010

Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles
Department A
Denver, CO 80243

To Whom It May Concern:

I am not a perfect driver.

But I am a pretty good one.

I drive thousands of on-the-job miles around Wyoming each year. That’s in all kinds of weather. I put thousands of personal miles on my own car each year traveling back and forth between Cheyenne and Fort Collins and Denver, which is my home town.

No tickets. No wrecks. Maybe a few close calls, but that’s to be expected in the Rocky Mountain states, where driving conditions can change in the blink of an eye.

That’s how accidents happen – in the blink of an eye. I may have blinked on Friday morning, Oct. 22, near the Harmony Road interchange on I-25 in Larimer County. I looked in my side view mirror, clicked my turn signal, and then eased into the left lane. I was avoiding the heavy morning traffic merging on to the highway.

Next thing I know, I saw a green Subaru on my left. I pulled back to the right lane, slowed and watched as the Subaru kicked up a cloud of dust from the median and then crossed right in front of me and off to the right. In the chaos, I slowed and pulled off to the right shoulder about 100 yards down the road. I got out of the car and made my way back to the Subaru. It was upright facing the wire fence. The car had a few dings and the tries were flat. The driver was out of the car and seemed to be O.K. I apologized, certain that I had caused the accident. The driver was young, maybe mid-20s, with a sparse beard. He was dressed in black. His hands shook from the shock, or at least that’s what I thought at the time.

Thirty minutes later, he wore handcuffs in the back of a Colorado State Patrol car. He was on his way to jail for driving while impaired.

And I got a ticket for unsafe lane change. Or, as the ticket read: “Changed lanes when unsafe.”

Funny how your perception can change almost instantaneously. One moment I’m feeling terrible because I may have made a bad move that led to the wreck of another person’s car. The next minute I’m thinking, “We could all be dead.” “All” meaning my wife of 28 years, my 17-year-old daughter and me. And the driver of the Subaru who was drunk at 8:15 on a Friday morning.

When I was merging left on the highway, I didn’t see the driver of the Subaru because he wasn’t there. My guess is that he was behind me and tried to speed around me on his way to work, which is where he said he was going. My statement to the police said that “I didn’t see the Subaru.” I meant that literally. When he looked in my side view mirror, the Subaru wasn’t there. And then, in the blink on an eye, he was there and spinning out of control in his 4WD Subaru Outback. That’s one safe car, known for its reliability and safety. That the driver emerged unhurt speaks to that.

But you can give an impaired driver the world’s best car and he or she can find ways to do unsafe and dangerous things in it.

I am contesting my ticket. I may end up paying it when I go to court in Ft. Collins on 1/14/11, and that’s something I can live with. But I want the record to show that the unsafe lane-changing driver was not me but the driver of the Subaru. He was unsafe when he got into his car that morning. He was unsafe speeding down the highway. My miscalculation resulted in his unsafe and unsound response that downed a highway light pole, wrecked his car, and could have resulted in death or injuries to my family and any number of other drivers on the road that morning.

I conclude by commending the Colorado State Patrol, the Larimer County Sheriff and the ambulance EMTs who were at the scene. Professionals all. One patrolman even jumped my car, dead on the side of the road from extended use of emergency blinkers. Thanks to him, we quickly resumed our trip to Pueblo. We were late, but intact.

Sincerely,



Michael Shay

Cc: Colorado State Patrol
Larimer County Court
Farmers Insurance

Art blossoms all over Georgia -- and in airports all over U.S.

"Dogwood," a sculpture by John Portman in downtown Atlanta. I think this a dogwood blossom in bronze I(although I couldn't determine the medium). These blossoms light up the Georgia spring which usually occurs in late March. In Wyoming, the calendar may say spring but the landscape cries snow and cold. The Atlanta airport has a fantastic public art program. Walking the concourse like walking the corridors of a museum. Art, history and science displays.

Here's another airport that really values art:

What hath Coke wrought?

Ol' Doc Pemberton offers up a serving of CoCola (Southern pronunciation) at the World of Coca Cola in Atlanta. I was taking a walk in the sun during a break in the Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health conference. One of the discussion topics has been the high incidence of drug and alcohol abuse among youth with mental health issues. Way back when, patent medicine was laced with coca and laudanum. Parents gave it too their kids for all kinds of reasons. Our heritage of abuse? My understanding is that the coke in Coke was replaced early on with caffeine, which is the drug of choice for most of us now.

'To Learning'

The entrance of the old Carnegie Library in Atlanta is now a monument or public work of art, depending on how you look at it. New central library not so new. One of those dreadful square concrete mid-sixties buildings. Art inside helps warm the space.

In U.S., opportunity is not universal

Wes Moore, author of "The Other Wes Moore," today at the Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health conference in Atlanta: "In the U.S., potential is universal but opportunity is not."

Looking forward to reading the book.

More Atlanta public art

"The Rites of Spring" by Eliot Weinberg. Cold day in Atlanta. It is warmer (I hear) back in Cheyenne. Wes Moore speaking at Mental Health conference luncheon.

Big statues, big themes, big vision

"Ballet Olympia" (1991-92), conceived and designed by John Portman from Paul Manship's "Maenad" (1953), a three-foot bronze figurine. Created in the run-up to the 1994 Olympics.

Harvey Deselms talking about a bronze on every Cheyenne corner. How about this one in Atlanta across from my downtown convention hotel? Within a block of the hotel are at least seven original sculptures. I don't like them all but none are horses or cowboys, which is a vast improvement.

Real Wyoming suicide problem trumps imaginary one

From Fox News:

U.S. Rep. Cynthia Lummis said Friday that some of her Wyoming constituents are so worried about the reinstatement of federal estate taxes that they plan to discontinue dialysis and other life-extending medical treatments so they can die before Dec. 31.

Instead of worrying about some imaginary suicide problem in Wyoming, Lummis could be doing something about a real suicide problem (from an article by Baylie Evans in the 8/28/10 Wyoming Tribune-Eagle):

Since 1999, Wyoming has had one of highest suicide rates in the nation. In 2002, 2003 and 2006, Wyoming had the highest rate of any state.
It's a statistic that many say is unacceptable, but is largely ignored or avoided by the general public.

Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among Wyoming youth, said Keith Hotle, the suicide prevention team leader with the Wyoming Department of Health. Only car crashes kill more teens.

If a new disease was the second-leading cause of death for youth, "that would be front page news all over the state," he said.

Instead, the topic makes people cringe.

People such as Rep. Lummis, no doubt.

Has she shown similar outrage about this real problem?

Read the rest of WTE's disturbing article at http://www.wyomingnews.com/articles/2010/08/29/news/01top_08-29-10.txt

Election Day 2010 Cheyenne

Mike and Mike in the morning -- electioneering for House District 8 candidate Ken McCauley. Lots of waves, honks and thumps-ups at the corner of Dell Range and Yellowstone. Hot chocolate helped too.

Join David Wendt and his "Lummis Left Us Behind Tour"

Last-minute pitch from Democrat David Wendt for Wyoming's lone Congressional seat:

Candidate for Congress David Wendt concluded his “Lummis Left Us Behind Tour” on Sunday in Green River. Wendt addressed a number of issues on the tour, including Lummis’ record of voting against student loan reform, against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and of failing to fully support our Veterans.
In Green River, Wendt spoke on those issues, and called special attention to the Wyoming Range. Lummis voted “NO” on a bill that protects the Wyoming Range from oil and gas drilling.

Here are his prepared remarks:

“Hello, thank you all for joining me today. I have had the great honor, over the past seven months, of traveling the state of Wyoming as a candidate for the United States House of Representatives. I am currently on the last leg of my final campaign road trip and I am very excited to bring the ‘Lummis Left Us Behind Tour’ to Sweetwater County. It’s always a pleasure to visit with the hard-working people here in this wonderful part of the state.

“I believed, when I began this campaign, that it was my duty to step up and run. I believed then and believe now that Wyoming does not have the representation that it deserves. Too many have been left behind by my opponent, Rep. Cynthia Lummis.

"In Laramie, I spoke with students left behind when my opponent sided with Wall Street on a bill on student loan reform. I met with veterans in Cheyenne and spoke about small businesses in Casper and discussed the fact that my opponent, in her first vote in Congress, opposed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which provides protection to women, who too often do not receive the same pay as their male colleagues when they perform the same job.

“But it isn’t simply this group or that group that has been left behind. Wyoming has been left behind. There is no better example than the Wyoming Range – just a short distance from where we stand right now. Opening the beautiful Wyoming Range to oil and gas drilling is absolutely wrong – and it’s not a partisan issue.

“Protecting the Wyoming Range was a signature issue of the late Republican Senator Craig Thomas. It is an issue that has won support from Senators Barrasso and Enzi. This is an issue that the citizens of Wyoming, from all political beliefs, can unite around. My opponent chose another route.

"It is time that we take some Wyoming values to Washington. We can solve the difficult issues facing this country, but we need to restore civility and a sense that we’re in this together. That’s the Wyoming way and I intend to bring Wyoming’s citizen-legislator style of governance with me to Washington. My opponent and her Tea Party colleagues are committed to a politics of division. That approach is wrong and fails to uphold our great Wyoming traditions.

"Because here in Wyoming, we roll up our sleeves, work together and solve problems. We believe that people should get a fair chance, that students should have opportunities to pursue world-class educations, that we must support our small businesses instead of special interests. We believe that women have a right to equal pay for equal work and that we must support our nation’s Veterans. We cherish our great land and believe we must maintain it for future generations.

"Wyoming has been left behind by Cynthia Lummis, but if voters elect me, I’ll go to Congress and take Wyoming with me.”

Wendt’s “Lummis Left Us Behind Tour” made stops in Laramie, Cheyenne, Casper and Green River.

David Wendt, a Democrat, has more than 30 years of bipartisan public policy experience working with Democrats, Republicans and Independents on issues of international security.

For more information on David Wendt, please visit http://www.wendtforwyoming.com/ or call the campaign headquarters at 307-734-3913.

W.D. Ehrhart's "The Farmer" from Working Words

Poem by W.D. Ehrhart, Vietnam veteran, writer and high school teacher. This is included in "Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams" from Coffee House Press.

The Farmer

Each day I go into the fields
to see what is growing
and what remains to be done.
It is always the same thing: nothing
is growing; everything needs to be done.
Plow, harrow, disc, water, pray
till my bones ache and hands rub
blood-raw with honest labor—
all that grows is the slow
intransigent intensity of need.
I have sown my seed on soil
guaranteed by poverty to fail.
But I don't complain—except
to passersby who ask me why
I work such barren earth.
They would not understand me
if I stooped to lift a rock
and hold it like a child, or laughed,
or told them it is their poverty
I labor to relieve. For them,
I complain. A farmer of dreams
knows how to pretend. A farmer of dreams
knows what it means to be patient.
Each day I go into the fields.

This poem is currently published in Beautiful Wreckage, New & Selected Poems, Adastra Press, 1999 Copyright © 1984 by W. D. Ehrhart, The Outer Banks, Adastra Press, 1984

You can still volunteer for Wyoming Democrats

From Linda Stowers, Laranmie County Democrats:

We still have much todo tomorrow, Monday and Tuesday. We are asking for volunteers to do some phone calls tomorrow and Monday. If you can make any calls for the Get out the Vote campaign, please stop by the headquarters at 408 W. 23rd St. in Cheyenne tomorrow (Monday) between 12-2:30 p.m. I will be at the office to give you some calls. These will be Democrat calls to remind people to vote.

In addition, if you don't have anything to do on Monday we are going to do some walking for Mike Massie. Please come to the headquarters office anytime you have free on Monday to receive some walking areas. Thanks for your help.

Cheyenne statue project should include all those people (and creatures) who influenced Cheyenne

Interesting front page article in today's Halloween edition of the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle.

Local gallery owner Harvey Deselms is promoting a project to put bronze statues on every corner of Capitol Avenue between the Historic Depot and the Capitol Building. That's eight blocks times four corners equals 32 statues.

A cowboy is next up, which is no surprise. There are no shortage of cowboy and/or cowboy with bucking bronco statues in Cheyenne. Sure, I guess there's room for a few more cowboys along the street. But this represents only a small part of Cheyenne's heritage.

I like the two new statues proposed for Depot Square. A young woman "dressed in 19th-century garb" leaving the train station and a cowboy on his way into the train station. The titles are, respectively, "A New Beginning" and "Hard to Leave."

But why cowboy-era cowboy and woman? Why not have a World War II G.I. emerging from the station to be greeted by his family? Wonder how many soldiers and sailors and marines and airmen traveled in and out of the depot during the war? Our entire region, from Colorado Springs to Cheyenne and up to Casper, were hugely influenced by war industries. It's often said that many young men who trained in Denver and Cheyenne and Colorado Springs returned here to live after the war. They were drawn by the wide-open spaces and mountains and climate. The Tenth Mountain Division soldiers returned from the war to create the modern ski industry.

I'd love to see oilfield roughnecks and miners and Basque sheepherders represented on the streets of Cheyenne. Native Americans, of course. It is pleasing to note that the renovation plan for the Capitol Building complex will include Esther Hobart Morris and Chief Washakie flanking each other in front of the historic building. We have a Buffalo Soldier in the pocket park outside of F.E. Warren AFB. But we need one on the city's downtown main street.

This is suggested only partly in jest -- what about a guy in a suit carrying a briefcase? Cheyenne is a government town, after all, and government employees outnumber agricultural workers (a.k.a. cowboys) any day of the week. Wyoming soon will add a statue of Governor Stan Hathaway next month to the front of the Hathaway Building. A governor is a bureaucrat -- probably the state's chief bureaucrat -- so it would be appropriate for the Gov statue to be surrounded by his aides and assistants and all the people who make the state work. This is not myth. This is reality.

We should consult the Cheyenne and Arapaho and Lakota tribes who used to inhabit the region before the railroad and horse soldiers arrived. While Wyoming's Chief Washakie is a great addition to the Capitol Complex, he was a Shoshone, a mountain tribe. As far as I know, we have no representation of the many Native American horsemen who inhabited these lands. 

Speaking of the railroads... Irishmen? Scotsmen? Chinese? Local visionary (and fine writer) Lou Madison has proposed a number of sculptures for the city. I especially like his idea of a monumental sculpture for the Cheyenne rail yards which would show workers building the rails that led to the founding of Cheyenne. The city would just be a bump in the road if not for the railroad.

And the highways that bisect our city limits. They are works of art unto themselves. Downtown Cheyenne offers some historic markers dedicated to the Lincoln Highway, and we have a huge Lincoln head at the top of the pass that marks the thoroughfare. But thousands of trucks and cars travel down I-80 and I-25 every day. How about a monument to a trucker on one of the downtown corners? How much money do truckers spend each day at the county's truck stops and restaurants and motels? Perhaps we could commemorate a trucker stopped by a blizzard that closes the Summit? Trucker sits in a booth at a truckstop while waitress serves him coffee and a slice of apple pie. Could call the sculpture: "Long haul trucker parks his ass." Something like that. Maybe "Night owls at the diner?" I think that's already been used.

My father built ICBM missile silos from Kansas to Colorado to Washington State. We should have a representation of that bit of history along Capitol Avenue. In many ways, nukes made Cheyenne. We could have a statue of a missileer at his/her station, or a down-sized version of an MX.

We can't forget our geological history. Cheyenne was once on the fringe of an inland sea. Wouldn't it be great to have a huge ancient crocodile rising from the concrete, trying to snatch its prey? The tourists would love that. Lots of photo opportunities. You could actually put a dinosaur bronze or one of a prehistoric mammal (woolly mammoths, sloths, etc.) on each downtown corner. 

Cowboys are wonderful. That's apart of Cheyenne's heritage. But that's not all there is. Delve into the history and let's come up with a sequence of statues that speak to Cheyenne's interesting and sometimes strange history.